So today Professor Harrington delivered his report on the nefarious Work Capability Assessment (WCA) test. In case any one doesn’t know – this is the test that decides whether a person with ill health or a person with disability is allocated to the support group of Employment Support Allowance (ESA), ( this is only for a very few people with no hope of ever working) or the work related activity group of ESA (WRAG where you suffer under the threats of conditionality) or goes straight to JSA without passing GO.
If you want to read the Harrington Report report you can read it here
If you want to read the response from MIND (Paul Farmer the MIND CEO was a member of the Harrington Commission) you can read it here
Read what Rhydian fon James form Broken of Britain says about Harrrington in the Guardian here
It’s packed full of excellent suggestions. And it isn’t really Professor Harrington’s fault that it completely misses the point. Professor Harrington was only asked to look at WCA and that was the extent of his brief.
It isn’t Professor Harrington’s fault that ESA isn’t fit for purpose and that the ESA groups are flawed and that there isn’t a safe group for people with severe and enduring illness or disability. It isn’t his fault that the dreaded ‘conditionality’ that is terrorising people with disability runs right through the WRAG and makes it unfit for people with severe disability. It really isn’t his fault that ESA in unfit for purpose.
Until a safe place is made under ESA for people with long term disability free of conditionality - no matter what you do to the WCA – it has nowhere safe to allocate them.
ESA isn’t fit for purpose
No threats and conditionality on people with severe and enduring disability
When is someone going to sort this out.
23 November 2010 at 21:49 |
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23 November 2010 at 22:04 |
Yes, why do they need conditionality at all? They say that most people want to work in whatever way they can and that the Universal Credit will offer greater financial incentives, so why the need to still wave sticks around? Under Universal Credit every hour will count – does it matter if it’s three hours or sixteen? It only matters if the government are still obsessed with getting people off benefits come hell or high water
24 November 2010 at 11:48 |
I agree that the entire ESA system is deeply flawed and unfit for purpose, and the tweaks that the Harrington report suggests will not disguise the past injustices and the future ones that will happen to people forced through this process. Before anything happens all past cases that have been deemed fit to work need to be looked at and review the decisions, all the appeals need to be dealt with under the new rulings, and i hope that ESA will be consigned to the rubbish heap where it belongs. No one should be transferred from IB to ESA until everyone is satisfied with any new system put in place, and this time ask the people it affects directly, and let them be the judge of their own conditions and whether they want help to get jobs, or whether they need more help with their everyday existence. Disabled people need a place of safety within the benefits system, this is still not the case.