The migration from Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to Personal Independence Payment starts this summer. It’s such a dramatic move that many disabled people are worried about losing their benefits or being forced into work.
Firstly, PIP is not an unemployment benefit. PIP helps towards the extra costs resulting from long–term illness or disability. It is not means tested nor is it subject to tax. One of the key differences between it and DLA, the benefit it replaces, is that the amount awarded to a claimant is based not on the nature of their disability but how that disability affects them.
So why has the Government chosen to dismantle the old system and replace it, causing disturbance and upset and setting itself a time consuming and expensive task? The answer is that the DLA has been judged by the current Coalition Government as ‘old and outdated’. Even the name seems no longer fit to sit within a lexicon dominated by politically sensitive terms. It focuses on ‘disability’ with the word ‘allowance’ sounding rather patronising. ‘Independent’ on the other hand, sounds far more robust and positive.
Indeed, the system probably could use an overhaul. PIP is designed to give claimants a more personalised payment based on a better understanding of their daily needs. It is probably no coincidence that the changes arrive at a time when money is tight and claims for benefits (generally) have increased. This is an unsustainable path.
Although there are no specific targets by which the Government has suggested benefit claims should be reduced, the Citizens Advice Bureau has calculated that under PIP, 600,000 fewer disabled people would get the support they would have been entitled to under DLA.
Behind this view is a belief that the assessment criteria are alarmingly prescriptive and not nearly as personal as PIP was originally meant to be. One example cited, again, by the Citizens Advice Bureau explains that people who are able to walk just 20 metres are deemed fit. In fact, the information found on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) website outlines the following: “Individuals who can walk distances longer than 20 metres could still receive enhanced rate Mobility, if they are not able to do so safely, to an acceptable standard, repeatedly and in a reasonable time period”. The issue here is that words like ‘reasonable’ do not communicate anything solid at all. In this case both DWP and the Citizens Advice Bureau are correct. The assessment may only be as effective as the assessor is prepared to be ‘reasonable’ (on that day).
The fact is that consistency from one assessment to another is very difficult to achieve. An example of this rests in figures again collected by Citizens Advice Bureau about people seeking help about work capability assessments for Employment Support Allowance (ESA), stating that they received requests from almost 55,000 people with a further 89,700 looking for guidance on appealing an ESA decision. This sort of track record has not given disabled people overwhelming confidence in the way that PIP will be assessed. As a result, a cycle of fear, exaggeration and myth making has started.
Perhaps if the assessment system regarding PIP had been designed to incorporate more information from claimants’ doctors it would have gained more credibility. There is clearly an issue in how information is communicated and recorded. Naturally, sympathy builds between patient and physician over time and this might skew results. However, to discard the record keeping of honest medical practitioners seems to be a spurning of an excellent resource. Without this information assessments may well prove to give inaccurate long term prognoses and therefore result in a cruelly stripping benefits from people that need them.
It is difficult not to think that some disabled people will get better benefits packages than others because they can ‘pass an interview’. This isn’t to suggest that they are being dishonest but that they have more skill in being able to communicate how their disability affects their daily lives as listed on the criteria ‘ticksheet’.
It’s clear that disabled people will need to be aware of what’s at stake and that they should aim to communicate as much as possible to their assessors. For some this will be a daunting process, although claimants are allowed to bring a carer or companion with them who can help them to discuss their condition. Unsatisfactory decisions can also be appealed.
There will be winners and losers and with so many variables involved it’s impossible to say who will be adversely affected by the changes.
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