This briefing anticipates the forthcoming DWP quarterly statistical bulletin about the Work Capability Assessment and casts a sceptical eye on what it will say.
It routinely misrepresents the numbers found fit for work, fanning the flames of misinformed media vilification of people who are sick or disabled and unable to work.
The DWP’s quarterly statistics on outcomes of the Work Capability Assessment , spun by departmental press releases and backed by ministerial innuendo, are built on fallacies and sleights of hand.
The next one is due: forewarned is forearmed.
Read Steve Griffiths’s excellent, concise briefing exposing the DWP’s propaganda by clicking on this link http://www.informedcompassion.com
One response
The article at ‘informedcompassion.com’ makes the point that those that end their claim before the assessment has taken place (36%) are included in the figures of those assessed fit to work, although they haven’t been assessed.
The inference drawn is that they have been deterred from claiming by the test, rather than having terminated the claim for some other reason. People make short-term claims for sickness benefit anyway, so if the assumption made by the government is true, the number of short-term claimants should have risen after the tests were introduced.
Surely this could be tested statistically. If it turns out that there is no rise in the short-term claims then all the percentages quoted alter, as there are no grounds for including these people in the total number assessed.
Secondly, the group that are too ill to take the test may be living in extreme conditions if they are needy and have no benefits and we should press for this to be investigated urgently.