DWP confirms disabled claimants will still be penalised for going back to work

The Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed that disabled Universal Credit claimants going back into work will still face benefit reassessments. This is despite the ‘Right to Try’ scheme promising that reentering work will not trigger reassessment.

The DWP made a huge fanfare announcing the ‘landmark legislation’ that would mean:

Entering employment will not automatically trigger benefit reassessment for claimants on new-style Employment and Support Allowance, Personal Independence Payment, and Universal Credit health element.

This is supposed to alleviate disabled people’s fear that starting work would mean they lose their benefits. While PIP is not an out-of work benefit, starting a job could count as a change of circumstance. It could essentially signal, in the DWP’s eyes at least, that your disability has miraculously gotten better.

The Right to Try policy would, they claim, mean this doesn’t happen. It would basically just be a line inserted into different change of circumstances legislation, which says:

Doing work for payment or in expectation of payment, or doing voluntary work, is not a relevant change of circumstances.

However, as Benefits and Work discovered, this isn’t true. In a memo to DWP staff, the department explained that nothing is actually changing:

Previous guidance and policy for WCA reassessment and PIP award review does not refer to work, or voluntary work, as being a reason in itself to trigger a reassessment or award review.

DWP demonising disabled people even further

So what’s the fucking point? If that rule isn’t changing, it means the reassessment policy isn’t actually changing.

The memo continued to say that while, by starting work, the claimant won’t trigger a review automatically, it will if a DWP decisionmaker decides they want to do one anyway.

It continued:

The Secretary of State retains discretion to reassess entitlement to one of these benefits for other reasons (for example, a change in condition, improvement in functional ability or suspected fraud) which could be indicated, for example, by undertaking work of a particular nature.

So basically, if the type of work a disabled person chooses to do causes a not-medically-trained assessor to question their disability, they can be reassessed.

In theory, the only reason a reassessment should be triggered under this new legislation is if the DWP suspected fraud. But when they’re the ones deciding who’s committing fraud or not, it’s hard to see how this would reassure anyone.

This is particularly troubling in the current climate where the DWP is trying to prove many conditions such as ADHD, autism and anxiety are over-diagnosed. Just this week, the shady Tony Blair Institute have got the shitrags frothing with policy that would mean those conditions would be classed as ‘non-work-limiting’.

Disabled people are damned if they do and damned if they don’t – and that’s the whole point

A further memo from the DWP to decisionmakers has fully confirmed that this will be the case.

It told Universal Credit staff:

When notified that a claimant is working, DMs [decisionmakers] should continue to consider whether the nature of the work undertaken might indicate that a change in functional ability has occurred. Where this is the case, a determination can be made that a further WCA should be carried out in order to consider whether the claimant continues to have LCW or LCWRA.

For PIP claimants, while they don’t have to report a new job to the DWP, they do technically have to report anything that could mean their entitlement changes.

The example given in the memo is someone who says they can’t travel without assistance but has gotten a job that requires frequent travel. What’s missing here is that the decisionmakers don’t know if the person will have assistance to travel – they’re just assuming they won’t.

However, with the way the DWP is also absolutely decimating Access to Work, that person may have to travel unaided. Not only is Access to Work being cut, but they also have a horrific backlog of over 66,000 people waiting. On top of that, the department confirmed there will be no extra provision for the increased demand that will come from how many more disabled people will be forced into work.

It’s absolute absurd that, whilst the DWP is trying to force so many disabled people into work, they are the ones making it harder with their actions. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the department doesn’t give a fuck about actually supporting disabled people into work. They just want the public to think they are, so it’s easier to turn the public against us and make it easier to cut benefits.

Featured image via the Canary