A SOUTH Derbyshire councillor has joined calls for complicated work capability assessment tests to be scrapped after it emerged people who were unable to work could have their benefits stopped.
South Derbyshire Councillor Kevin Richards
Kevin Richards said the system was unfair and needed to be made more straight forward.
It came after GPs voted unanimously in favour of the tests ‘ending with immediate effect’ and South Derbyshire’s Citizen Advice Bureau raised concerns over the issue.
People who are disabled or have a health condition are eligible to claim for employment and support allowance after taking part in a work capability assessment, to prove they unable to work.
Under previous regulations, claimants with a National Insurance contribution record received support indefinitely — as long as they continued to be assessed as having limited capability to work.
But now support will only be given for 12 months, after which the benefits will be stopped — regardless of the claimant’s ability to work.
Councillor Richards, Labour leader on South Derbyshire District Council, joined criticisms of the system, and said the Calls for changes to work capability assessments number of successful appeals against loss of benefits showed it didn’t work.
He said: “It’s unjust — it doesn’t give a true reflection of people’s disabilities.
“There needs to be a true assessment which reflects disabilities. The questions are too ambiguous. There is an attitude that people on benefits were scroungers and didn’t have genuine disabilities.”
The assessments were lambasted by GPs at the British Medical Association’s Local Medical Committee conference in Liverpool where they labelled them ‘inadequate’ and said they could have a ‘devastating effect on patients’ medical and physical health’.
South Derbyshire Citizen’s Advice Bureau also raised its concerns.
Glyn Bird, supervisor at the bureau, based in Swadlincote, said: “There has been a staggering number of people coming to the bureau not knowing what they can do next — or how they are supposed to cope with a dramatic loss in income.”
4 Responses
but whos listening not the torys and not labour as such we are doomed with the lot of them different class society they got we aint jeff3
WCA, invented by Labour neo-con morons, continued by Tory neo-fascists, and do they care, no they want you all to die. Cuts the welfare bill and gives them more money to line their pockets with and have cheap drinks in the commons bar.
AND FOOD WHICH WE CANT AFFORD
You are both right, it is disgusting and something you might expect in some backward tyrannically led Country, not somewhere which is supposed to be a beacon of civilisation. They would rather we begged on the streets than touch their pot of gold. However they forget, if we were not around to clean up after them and work till we drop, they would not have a pot of gold to begin with. Even us useless ones with our disabilities and sickness make contribution however small. Even if it is to give a glimpse to the larger society we live in and remind them that “there but for….”. It is only a gracious and decent society that is able to flourish in all of its wonder that progress can really be made…an example is our great physicist Stephen Hawkin, who with all of the support he has enjoyed over the years has opened up a whole universe for us to see. They are the crippled ones with their ignorance but I refuse to lay down and die for their convienience.