Politics
DWP says WCA will still be going strong in 2031
The Department for Work and Pensions‘ (DWP) own figures show that the number of Work Capability Assessments (WCA) will be higher than ever in 2031. This is despite the DWP and it’s chief Pat McFadden insisting the WCA will be abolished by then
How exactly does the DWP plan to save money?
Benefits and Work sent the Treasury and DWP a Freedom of Information (FOI) request in December. They wanted a breakdown of the savings vaguely alluded to in the autumn budget.
Back in November, Reeves had announced that the DWP would: Improve operations by increasing face-to-face assessments, increasing WCA reassessment capability, and PIP award review changes, starting from April 2026.
She then said the DWP’s annual total savings would be 1.9 billion, but there was, of course, no breakdown of this in the autumn budget document.
Benefits and Work asked the DWP to:
Please give a detailed breakdown of how the £1.9 billion is to be saved, including:
a) Any additional assessment costs created by increasing the number of WCA reassessments
b) Any savings resulting from a reduction in the number of claimants found to no longer have LCWRA due to the increased number of WCA reassessments
c) Any savings in assessment costs caused by extending the time between PIP reviews
d) Any additional assessment costs caused by increasing the proportion of PIP face-to-face assessments
e) Any savings in PIP costs caused by increasing the proportion of PIP face-to-face assessments, due to the lower success rate for PIP applicants when assessed face-to-face rather than remotely.
Government not keen to be transparent, shocker
The government was, naturally, hesitant to give details about a figure they’d probably pulled out of their arses. The Treasury ridiculously told Benefits and Work it would cost too much to answer their request.
The DWP refused to answer repeated requests from both the Liberal Democrats and Disability News Service on where the savings would come from.
However, in December the DWP put out a press release about increasing face-to-face assessments. It said PIP face-to-face assessments would increase from 6% to 30% and WCAs would increase from 13% to 30%.
At first glance, it’s not clear how more work would mean savings. But this feels like a deliberate attempt to insinuate that so many people are getting benefits because it’s easier to “fake” over the phone.
Finally, some clarity — well….
Finally, this week, after more pressure from Benefits and Work, the DWP replied to their FOI:
The £1.9bn comprises the following figures shown in Table 1:
This £1.9bn figure does not include any additional assessment costs. This is because the reduced number of assessments for PIP releases resource to increase WCA reassessments and face-to-face assessments, and there is no assumed net increase in the number of health care professionals employed by DWP’s contracted providers as a result of these policies.
Benefits and Work have estimated that a huge proportion of the savings will come from reducing admin costs.
57% of savings over the next five years (£1.12 billion) will come from extending the amount of time between PIP reassessments, from 3 years to 5. 31% (£609 million) of the savings will be from increasing WCA assessments. Some of this saving will come from the health element of Universal Credit moving to PIP, meaning, in theory, fewer assessors are needed. But it’s also probably assuming many will get the new lower rate.
8% (£164 million) of the savings will come from face-to-face PIP assessments increasing, and just 3% (£58 million) will come from more face-to-face WCA assessments.
So, despite the DWP saying otherwise, it’s actually a very small amount that will come from kicking vulnerable people off benefits.
But the WCA is supposed to be gone?
What’s even weirder here, however, is that the WCA will still be taking place at all post 2030. This is because in the Pathway’s to Work Green Paper, the DWP planned to have it abolished by 2029. This is because the paper set out that the UC health element would be moved over to PIP and claimants would need to score so many points on the daily living component.
However, this paper was also reliant on PIP cuts going through and PIP eligibility changing so that you had to score at least 4 points in one activity to get the daily living element. But then PIP had to be completely written out of the cuts after huge campaign efforts saw Labour MPs rebel. So until the Timms Review concludes, both claimants and the DWP haven’t got a fucking clue what’s happening there.
Despite this, DWP chief Pat McFadden still hasn’t definitively said the WCA won’t be abolished, just that it’ll be delayed.
The Work and Pensions Committee asked him in December if he still intended to abolish the WCA. His response was, of course, vague as fuck:
Due to its link with the PIP assessment, WCA abolition will not happen until after the Timms Review into the PIP assessment has concluded and any recommendations have been made. In the meantime, work is continuing to determine the detail of how this reformed system would work and discussions are also ongoing with the Scottish Government regarding the interactions between the devolved and reserved systems. We will outline further details on the reformed system, and the timing of WCA abolition, in due course.
DWP — just more proof that the Timms Review is a sham
As Benefits and Work point out, it could be that McFadden knows exactly what will happen with the WCA, but to say otherwise would let slip what we already know. That the Timms review and any notions of helping disabled claimants is just smoke and mirrors when they’re already working so hard to turn the public against us. At the end of the day the department give a fuck whether disabled people live or die.
Featured image via the Canary