Here’s a great piece of pub quiz trivia: according to the Press Complaints Commission, which newspaper holds the record for the highest number of complaints about a newspaper article in history? Give up? The answer is the Daily Mail, with a whopping 25,000.
Yes, love it or hate it, the Daily Mail certainly knows how to draw a reaction. The paper’s coverage of welfare reform has proved to be no exception, with headlines like “75% of incapacity claimants ARE fit to work: tough new benefits test weeds out the workshy” not only resulting in a flurry of written complaints, but also a full blown demonstration outside the Daily Mail's offices by people angered by the paper's stance on welfare reform.
Replete with deerstalker and smoking pipe (but sadly no Dr. Watson side-kick) I have been doing my own investigations into what is going on. Here is my update on some of the key developments in welfare reform that will be of interest to NRAS members in England and a brief description of how NRAS is responding to them:
1.The Universal Credit (UC). This will be the Government’s new flagship benefit, designed to improve financial work incentives to help people return to work and increase their working hours and earnings. UC will replace a lot of means-tested benefits, like tax credits, apart from council tax benefit. But it also won’t affect Disability Living Allowance, Job Seekers Allowance or Employment and Support Allowance. The Government published a White Paper in 2010 as well as a report outlining responses to the consultation. UC is now being discussed by Parliamentarians within the context of the Welfare Reform Bill. Having passed through the House of Commons, the Bill has just received its First-Reading the House of Lords.
NRAS is sitting on a Disability Benefits Consortium working group that is developing a briefing paper for policy-makers, which will provide recommendations on how to incorporate health costs into the new UC, including prescription charges and health-related travel for people on lower incomes.
2.The Personal Independence Payment (PIP). PIP is another new benefit the Government plans to introduce in 2013/14 for working-age disabled people. This benefit will eventually replace the Disability Living Allowance and will remain a non means-tested, non-taxable cash benefit payable to people in and out of work. There are ongoing discussions about what will happen to the mobility component that currently forms part of the Disability Living Allowance (DLA). Of equal concern, the Welfare Reform Bill as currently drafted would extend the qualifying period for PIP to 6 months (it is currently 3 months for the DLA), meaning that more people would suffer financial hardship before eventually obtaining the PIP. As well as the Bill itself, the Government has also published draft criteria for the PIP test. The deadline for comments on the draft criteria was 6 June 2011. The Government is now going to test the criteria and a second deadline for comments on the draft criteria has been set for 1 August 2011.
NRAS responded to the first consultation on the draft PIP criteria through the Disability Benefits Consortium. We also recently met with DWP officials involved in the development of the criteria and said that we wanted to see greater acknowledgement of the impact of fluctuating conditions within the PIP criteria. As part of the follow-up to this meeting we have sent over information to DWP to help medical assessors to better understand inflammatory diseases.
3.The Disability Living Allowance (DLA). As stated above, DLA is being phased out. However, that doesn’t stop people encountering problems with it right now. Anecdotally we have received reports from members that they are finding it harder to renew their DLA, or are being shifted from the higher rate to the lower rate with no justification.
NRAS recognises this is a real problem for our members and is now in the process of collecting a series of case studies that will be used on the NRAS website and as briefing material for face-to-face meetings with policy-makers. We are also in the midst of drafting a guidance note for members to help you escalate welfare-related complaints, if you decide to.
4.The Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). The ESA was first introduced in 2008 to replace Incapacity Benefit and Income Support. The main problems with ESA relate to the Work Capability Assessment, which we think is a poorly administered test that disproportionately restricts access to ESA. Another emerging issue, within the Welfare Reform Bill, relates to a time-limiting element which if implemented would limit peoples’ ability to claim the benefit for 12 months.
NRAS is unhappy about the time-limiting element and would prefer that no time limit is enforced. However, because of political constraints we are arguing in practice for the time limit to be extended to two years and we have been working with the Disability Benefits Consortium to provide oral and written briefings to MPs and Peers during the passage of the Bill.
5.The Work Capability Assessment (WCA). The WCA is the main test for ESA claims and involves a medical assessment that DWP uses to decide whether a claimant should be eligible to receive ESA. The test was first introduced in 2008 alongside the ESA. Since then problems have been noted with the way the test operates and a department-led review of the WCA took place in 2010. In November 2010, Professor Harrington also published an Independent Review of WCA, the first of five annual reviews into this matter.
As part of Professor Harrington’s ongoing reviews, in April 2011 NRAS contributed to a charities report on the WCA indicators (known as descriptors) and how they relate to fluctuating conditions like Rheumatoid Arthritis. NRAS is also due to provide written evidence to the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, for a report they are developing about the potential for a ‘real world test’ to provide a further safety net for individuals that may fail the WCA but still not be well enough to work.
6.The Hardest Hit campaign. The campaign is facilitated by members of the Disability Benefits Consortium, but is really a grass roots campaign designed to help members of the public get their voices heard. The campaign has its own website (www. thehardesthit.wordpress.com), where people are invited to write to their MP or sign the online petition. There is also information about forthcoming events, similar to the protest march in Westminster on 11 May, which attracted nearly 8,000 people (including NRAS member, Richard Cottee).
NRAS believes that the Hardest Hit Campaign is a vital piece of the campaigning jigsaw for a fairer welfare system. Following on from the successful protest march in May, the Hardest Hit campaign is planning a new set of regional protest marches later this year. The exact dates have yet to be finalised, but it is probable that these will take place in October 2011. NRAS is part of the steering group and we will help NRAS members to get involved when further details become available.
So as you can see, NRAS is doing quite a bit of campaigning around the issue of welfare reforms. However, we are only really beginning to get stuck-in and our campaigning messages are to a degree hampered by incomplete knowledge about the overall experiences of our members.
To correct this, as well as collecting case studies, we also want to collect more quantitative data. That is why next week we will be launching an online survey for our members about benefits. Our initial impression is that members have been finding it tougher to claim benefits of late and we hope the survey will uncover a bit about why this is the case.
Please rest assured the survey will be anonymous and won’t be attributable to any individual members. Furthermore, we will only be publishing aggregated information from the survey. So, please keep a look out for the survey when it goes live and help us to ensure the views of people with Rheumatoid Arthritis are fully represented
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