Forum Home → Discussion → Access to justice and advice sector issues → Thread
MIND CEO quits DWP advisory post
Reports this morning that Paul Farmer, CEO of MIND, has quit his role on a 4-person advisory panel on the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). This is because the WCA is “deeply flawed” and he says that his position was “no longer tenable”.
Paul Farmer has now posted a blog piece setting out his reasons for standing down from the WCA advisory panel.
In July 2010, I joined a the Harrington Scrutiny Panel, which was set up to oversee the work of the WCA Independent Review team. My role was to give advice and criticism regarding the areas the reviewer was looking at and the changes they are recommending.
The DWP has committed to making some changes arising from the Independent Review, but these will take time, and some fundamental changes required haven’t even started to be addressed.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people are being reassessed using a test which is still not fit for purpose. Around 50 per cent of people are appealing against the decision, and a remarkable half of those appeals are being upheld, meaning that as many as one in four tests are wrong. The cost to the taxpayer of the tribunal system alone is £50m, around a half of the £100m a year being spent on reassessment.
I spent some time last week at Mind’s Infoline. Call after call was coming in from individuals with a mental health problem, or a member of their family, anxious about the reassessment letter, concerned about having to appeal and the potential impact on their lives. We’ve heard about Job Centres who are shocked when someone who is clearly unwell turns up having been told that they are fit for work.
The callers to our line were not benefit scroungers – they were ordinary people whose health had put them in a very vulnerable state. Ordinary people desperate to recover and be able to work, but who just weren’t yet well enough. And instead of offering support and help to recover and then find and stay in work, the WCA process is making their health worse and so, ironically, the prospect of a job even less likely.
More at Why the WCA isn’t working
Guardian published an article on Paul Farmer’s resignation. As well as the article, it’s worth reading the comments underneath.
Farmer’s decision to leave the four-person scrutiny panel, which includes two employers’ occupational health experts and the new president of the British Medical Association, is backed by Richard Hawkes, chief executive of the disability charity Scope. “We share Mind’s concerns about the work capability assessment,” he says. “The huge number of successful appeals are a damning indictment of a test that isn’t fit for purpose. There’s little point in scrutiny if the government doesn’t listen to it.”
Sarah Lambert, head of policy at the National Autistic Society, says colleagues back Farmer’s decision. “We share some of Mind’s frustration. There are a lot of problems with the WCA; the system is not working. We would like the process to be slowed down while improvements are made.”
I hope he didn’t really mean that the number of successful appeals means that the WCA isn’t working. It does mean that the assessment procedures as implemented by Atos and DWP aren’t working, but it tells you nothing about the validity of the legal principles involved, since that is what Tribunal decisions necessarily are based on.
There’s a lot of sloppy writing on this specific point: I don’t know how far it is simply reflecting sloppy thinking.