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Lord Touhig uses the case of Anne, a woman in her early 20s with Asperger's syndrome, to demonstrate the problems with face-to-face assessments for disability benefits.
Anne is in her early 20s and was recently diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. Eager to get the support she needs to find work, Anne applied for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and went for a medical assessment.
The doctor carrying out the assessment rushed through the appointment in 15 minutes, asking nothing about Anne's Asperger's syndrome and ignoring a seven-page psychiatrist's report about her diagnosis.
His report to the ESA decision-makers stated that he saw 'no evidence of communication difficulties', despite communication difficulties being fundamental to a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome.
A week later Anne's application for Employment and Support Allowance was turned down. She later discovered that she had scored nil points on her medical assessment. It was only after going to a tribunal that Anne was finally awarded the benefit to which she was entitled.
This story most powerfully illustrates the need to ensure that decisions taken around the award of benefit support must be made by medical staff who have knowledge and expertise of autism. In 2009 the National Audit Office report revealed that 80 per cent of GPs did not feel that they had enough training in autism.
The assessment process for ESA is currently undergoing an independent review by Professor Harrington. However, under the Welfare Reform Bill, the government is also implementing face-to-face assessments for those currently receiving another vital benefit, Disability Living Allowance. Unlike ESA, this benefit is unrelated to work, but supports disabled people of working age, including those with autism, to maintain their independence. There is already widespread concern at the impact the government's decision to cut the budget for this benefit by 20 per cent. If the government does not ensure that the assessment criteria takes account of the very special problems autistic people will have in any face-to-face assessment, and it also fails to guarantee that the medical assessment will be conducted by people with a complete understanding of autism, then a great many vulnerable people will lose a vital lifeline.
Their quality of life will be diminished and their opportunity to experience a level of independence which the present benefit allows will be gone forever. If these proposed benefit changes are not handled well they will become a burden on the most vulnerable in our country. I believe the British people, despite the economic problems every family faces, will take the view that is unfair, unjust and just plain WRONG.
James Donnelly Touhig was MP for Islwyn, until 2010, after winning a by-election in 1995. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Touhig, of Islwyn and Glansychan in the County of Gwent in 2010.
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