MPs have launched an enquiry into the migration from Incapacity Benefits to Employment Support Allowance (ESA), including the Work Capability Assessment (WCA).
The Work & Pensions Committee's enquiry will examine WCA assessment criteria, the service provided by Atos staff, suitability of assessment centres, and customers' overall experience.
It will also review:
• The Department's communications to customers going through the assessment and whether the information is effective in supporting customers through the process,
• The decision-making process and how it could be improved to ensure that claimants are confident that the outcome is a fair and transparent reflection of their capacity for work,
• The appeals process, including the time taken for the appeals process to be completed; and whether those who decide to appeal have all the necessary guidance,
• The outcome of the migration process and the different paths taken by the various client groups,
• The time-scale for the national roll-out for the migration process, including the Department's capacity to introduce changes identified as necessary in the Aberdeen and Burnley trials.
Dame Anne Begg MP, chair of the Committee, raised some of the process's inherent problems at the Health and working population conference, explaining how some claimants can have three health assessments, potentially by the same company, and be found neither eligible for work or ESA.
"There are people who through no fault of their own are going round the benefits system. It's very often the same companies and same people who are doing these assessments. There is an issue about how people are treated depending on what side of the equation they are on," she said.
"And for the individual, by the time they've gone round the cycle a couple of times their only option is to be on benefits and labeled by the Daily Mail as a benefit scrounger.
"But people don't want to be on benefits, they want to be in work but sometimes we make it very difficult for them," she added.
