Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall am 4:13 pm ar 5 Chwefror 2015.
The hon. Lady may be reading too much into the wording, and she is straying into conspiracy theory. I cleared the language in the Government response, and I have tried to give the same impression in what I have just said. It certainly was not our intention to give the impression in the Government response that the hon. Lady took from it. I think that I have set out clearly what we are trying to do.
We are introducing three new measures, the first of which is a voluntary early intervention pilot for new ESA claimants, in which we are trialling occupational health advice and support prior to the WCA. We are doing so for a sensible reason. My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot, the hon. Member for Edinburgh East and the Chair of the Select Committee referred to the fact that the WCA was designed to be two things: a benefit eligibility test, and a test of the barriers that an individual faces to entering work, and the support that they require to do so. We ought to see whether we can intervene when somebody first applies for ESA, to see what support they need and get them that support early in the process.
That is important because—I know that this is an area in which you take a particular interest, Mr Walker—46% of people who claim ESA do so for the primary reason that they have a mental health condition, and 60% have a mental health condition as part of the issue. We know from the evidence, and from all the campaigning organisations that are expert in this area, that being out of work for a significant period of time makes a mental health condition worse, not better. If we can identify mental health problems earlier and deliver support earlier, we will either keep people in work or enable them to go back to work more quickly. There is a nugget of truth in what hon. Members have said about that, and that is why we are piloting some interventions to see what is effective. They are voluntary, so people do not have to take part in them, but we think that they will be useful and produce useful evidence. I will not set out anything about the other two measures that we are introducing, because I recognise that time is pressing.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot and other hon. Members referred to the WCA’s ability to deal with mental health issues. When we designed the ESA 50 questionnaire and assessment criteria, we had input from mental health organisations and groups that focus on other hidden impairments such learning disability and autism. Several hon. Members, including the shadow Minister, referred to my remarks at the Select Committee about the redesigned ESA 50 form. That will be implemented this month, and we are also looking at all the communications that we use for claimants following Dr Litchfield’s recommendations in his fourth independent review. We expect those to come into force over a rolling period this year.
The letter that we issue to claimants when a decision is made, the ESA 260, was revised in the autumn of last year, and I referred to that in the debate initiated by the hon. Member for Edinburgh East earlier this week. That letter now makes it very clear—the shadow Minister made a point about this—which group somebody has been put into. It informs them in clear, plain English about the time limiting for someone who is in the work-related activity group and on contributory ESA. It makes clear the consequences and implications of the decisions that have been taken, enabling the individual to act accordingly.
Let me say a word about information sharing, to which several hon. Members, including the Chair of the Select Committee, referred. As I believe I said at the
Select Committee, we share information from the WCA with the personal independence payment assessment process if someone is going through both of those, and we have done so in a significant number of cases. We will look at the evidence, but the initial indication is that that has enabled PIP decision makers to make decisions on paper without having to call somebody in for an unnecessary face-to-face assessment. That is our goal, because it is sensible to make such decisions on paper, without having to pull somebody in, where it is possible to do so.
The Chair of the Select Committee spoke about looking at other organisations, and her suggestion of using information from, for example, social care assessments is a sensible one. We ask those who apply for the benefit to produce the relevant information. I have asked officials to engage with colleagues in the Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local Government to think about such ideas. In the new social care environment, more assessments will take place as a result of the new, consistent assessment criteria introduced by the Care Act 2014. I want us to think carefully about how we can do that sensibly, because we must not place an extra burden on local government or those who deliver social care. The general point is a good one, however. We do not want people to go through multiple assessments if we can share the necessary information.
I will hurry through one or two other points, because I am conscious of the fact that I need to give the Chair of the Select Committee a couple of minutes at the end of the debate to sum up. I have mentioned conditionality for JSA, which is relevant to the point that several hon. Members have made about what happens when people are found fit for work. When people are found fit for work, they are not entitled to ESA any more and they should claim jobseeker’s allowance. As I have said, however, work coaches have the ability to flex the claimant commitment so that it fully reflects somebody’s health condition or disability. If hon. Members have specific examples of where that is not happening, I want to know about them, so that we can investigate whether they were isolated incidents in Jobcentre Plus or whether there is a wider problem with training, information or communication. Several hon. Members asserted that there have been such problems, but I did not hear any specific examples. If hon. Members have such examples, I would like them to share those examples with me.
I am conscious, as ever, of the fact that time in the Chamber is short. I welcome the Select Committee’s work on ESA and the WCA. We agreed with several of the Committee’s recommendations, a number of which were very sensible. Some of them were things that we were working on, and some were things that we had not thought of. We made it clear where we did not agree. At the end of this month, Maximus will take over the delivery of the WCA from Atos. Maximus has experience in this area, and I know that it is keen to improve the experience of our constituents who go through the WCA. There may be some hiccups at the beginning, because that is inevitable when a big change occurs, but I am confident that we will deliver an improved level of customer service, which is important to everyone who has taken part in the debate.