Limited capability of the welfare state.

If you happen to be in the unfortunate position of being too sick to work, you may have recoiled in horror over the last couple of days at the alarmist, scaremongering, anxiety-attack-inducing headlines gracing our right-wing media’s front pages. When they go for people who claim benefits they are savage; a pack of ravenous feral dogs, tearing at a piece of rotten meat thrown by their master; in this case, Mel Stride, Work and Pensions Secretary.

‘Claiming sickness benefits to be made harder’ decried the Telegraph. ‘Sick pay to be stripped from those who work from home’ warned the Daily Express, while the Daily Mail decided it would be fun to print that ‘One million people on sickness benefits could be forced to start looking for jobs’.

They are supposedly talking about proposed changes to the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) — that incredibly easy ‘test’ which lets anyone — regardless of whether they are ill or not — potentially not have to look for work because they are allegedly too ill to do so. Yep!

The WCA is so easy that experts are absolutely baffled at the numbers of appeals jamming up HM Courts and Tribunals service. If it’s so damned easy, why does it take a year to get an appeal heard? Why do people need to appeal at all? Doesn’t everyone just get it?

This rhetoric — making things harder, people being ‘stripped’ of this and ‘forced’ to do that — cannot possibly have a positive impact on anyone currently struggling with their mental or physical health and could unfortunately push the concept of wellbeing and returning to work even further away.

Let’s not just conveniently brush aside the fact that NHS England recently reported that 7.6 million people — that’s over 13% of the entire population of England — were waiting to start hospital treatment at the end of June. How many of these people might not need to claim benefits at all if only they could have their conditions treated? Does Mel Stride seriously expect us to believe that there is no correlation between a frighteningly long NHS waiting list and an increase in the number of people too sick to work? That somehow, despite Welfare Rights services being busier than ever, sickness benefits have simply become easier to claim? Has he ever endured a Work Capability Assessment?

The NHS appears to be suffering from a life-limiting condition and it is 50/50 whether it can or will recover at this point — but it is a simple fact that if people cannot get treatment when they need it, then they will not get better and they may well get worse. To be thinking of hitting them with a benefit sanction should manifest a sense of foreboding in all rationally-minded people.

This does not feel like a friendly, supportive environment in which every effort is made to restore people back to full health — if they indeed can be. The propagated culture is one of fear and blame, and shame if you are unfortunate enough to have to deal with an illness that stops you or your loved one in their tracks.

No matter how useful your contributions to society have been in the past, the day you find yourself needing to take advantage of the mythical social contract and draw upon that welfare support that is supposed to see you through the difficult times, that is the moment that, whatever your diagnosis, you realise that the safety net no longer exists. No-one is immune from this prospect (the wealthy, however, have their own ‘private’ safety net constructed of gossamer and titanium) and so, those making the decisions on this will never be at the mercy of the punitive system they hope to create.

Despite the popular myths, anyone who tells you that claiming sickness or disability benefit payments from the state is easy (I’m still looking at you, Mel Stride), is either being duplicitous, wilfully ignorant or is one of the pitchfork mob – you’ll know them by their posts on social media; none of them had the heating on in the 70s, they all ‘know’ someone on benefits who has designer clothes and they watch GB News because it speaks their truth. Thing is, sickness has no political bias.

I had a discussion recently with a concerned and frustrated parent, whose disabled adult son — previously sectioned under the Mental Health Act, then discharged to supported living accommodation, but now able to rent his own home and even managing — with support — to work a few hours per week in a low paid job, has had his disability benefits drastically reduced.

Why? Because he tried to get through a telephone assessment without support. The parent described a system that she truly believes tries to ‘catch people out’ because, despite her trying to supply the detailed medical evidence to support her son’s Personal Independence Payment application, the decision-maker at the DWP said ‘no’. We can’t be sure they even looked at it.

I had to tell the parent that it is likely to be approximately one year before her son will have his appeal heard at a social security tribunal. She was heartbroken for him. He has made so much progress in the past few months and the additional pressure imposed on him by the loss of this vital income is already taking a toll on his mental health. It could go further and ‘strip’ him of his independence, ‘make it harder’ for him to live the best life he can and ‘force’ him to withdraw from work and the world because of the anxiety this causes him.

He is by no means the only one. Comments on social media to the many concerned posts about this subject paint a picture of fear — no, terror — from people who are barely surviving as it is, and cannot face the prospect of further misery on top of the ongoing incapacity.

The cost of living crisis drags on and all but the wealthiest of us are feeling the pinch, (when we emerge from supermarkets these days it feels more like a gut-punch than a pinch), but for those reliant on a benefit system so bleak it’s beyond anything Charles Dickens could have written about, there is no making benefit payments stretch to cover the bare essentials. What there is, are repeated applications for discretionary payments from the Household Support Fund — a scheme whereby the government gives millions of pounds to local authorities to distribute because they absolutely know that people cannot survive on benefits as they are — but then anyone desperately in need must go cap in hand to ask for help. Dignity is just a little more ‘stripped’ away. Now add in disability or ill health to make all of this just that bit more challenging.

How could this way of life ever be described as ‘easy’ and why would anyone but the most callous want to make it harder?

Sanctioning and reducing benefits simply causes financial hardship and mental anguish. Bills don’t get paid, repossessions increase, clothes cannot be afforded, neither can food, nor bus fares. And when a person is unable to afford these absolute basics, please explain, Mr Stride, how you think this will encourage someone already struggling with chronic mental illness to seek work.

People don’t ‘languish’ on benefits, they languish on NHS waiting lists, and in poor, inadequate housing. They struggle to pay for their gas and electricity, their children’s school uniforms (which now — scandalously — cost roughly the same as a small second-hand car), their increased rent, their Council Tax. They languish in pain trying to find an NHS dentist and then give up and reach for the pliers. And they slowly, but surely, come to the realisation that the safety net doesn’t exist, that the social contract has indeed been broken.

When the State lets us down like this, how very dare these cabinet ministers, in their expensive suits, think for a moment that we ought to be thanking them for dreaming up ways to make life even harder for the most vulnerable of us. Contracts work on the basis of consideration, not coercion.

Make your voice heard about the Work Capability Assessment: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/work-capability-assessment-activities-and-descriptors Consultation closes 30/10/23

DWP will also be holding 5 face to face stakeholder events which will cover multiple topics for those unable to engage in the virtual events in the following locations:

• Birmingham — Wednesday 20 September 2023
• Leeds — Wednesday 27 September 2023
• Edinburgh — Thursday 5 October 2023
• Cardiff — Wednesday 11 October 2023
• London — Wednesday 18 October 2023

If you would like to attend one of the events please register by email at: HD.consultationeventrequest@dwp.gov.uk

Please give:

• your name
• your preference topic(s) for virtual events
• your location preference if attending a face to face event
• any accessibility needs you may have
• if you will be accompanied by anyone, this could be your carer or appointee

Please be aware places at the events are limited — they will provide venue addresses once we receive your email request to attend.

Request copies of consultation documents

To request hard copies of the consultation documents specifying the format you would like to receive it in please contact wcaactivitiesanddescriptors.consultation@dwp.gov.uk