Welfare reform must be approached from a human perspective

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Natascha Engel MP writes for ePolitix.com ahead of her Westminster Hall debate on work capability assessments.

Across all parties, we all believe that work is the best way out of poverty.

However, telling stories of families staying in grand houses in Kensington on benefits payments of £10,000 per week doesn't help. It receives coverage in the papers because it is really rare. The vast majority of people living on benefits are vulnerable, they experience poverty of aspiration; their personal development is impaired; and their participation in social networks is limited.

We want people off benefits and into work because it is best for them. Good work can be creative and rewarding. Many people meet their life partners in the workplace.

The coalition government is introducing its welfare reforms because they see people on benefits as a drain on our resources. This is a bad motivation for change. It encourages ATOS healthcare doctors to get people off Employment Support Allowance and into work in order to get them off expensive passive benefits.

When the motivation is wrong it leads to errors and mistakes. The Department of Work and Pensions is big, the benefits system is complex, and there is a significant amount of 'traffic' moving on and off benefits. Embarking on the mass migration of people from one benefit to another will cause further complications.

We need to look at people, not the benefits they are on. They are people in their own right. Their needs are individual and they need support to help them work when they are able.

We don't want a medical assessment given by going through a check list of symptoms listed on a computer screen without the examiner ever making eye-contact with the claimant. The process is weighed too heavily toward the medical conditions, ignoring the social aspects of disability. We want the examiner to work with the person to understand their situation, how many days they can work, and what they are capable of doing.

There is a big difference between this Incapacity Benefit, and Employment Support Allowance. We need to be careful not to migrate problems of the Support Group and Work Related Activity Group from Incapacity Benefit to Employment Support Allowance.

I worry that the pilots in Aberdeen and Burnley that extend the Work Capability Assessment to those who currently claim Incapacity Benefit will shift people onto a lower rate with less support (Job Seekers Allowance). I don't want to see them going into Job Centres, where staff are already overworked, and losing out as advisors prioritise those who have recently lost their job and are closer to the labour market.

I believe there are colleagues across all parties who want genuine welfare reform, for the right reasons. The consequence of such action should be to cut the welfare budget. However, rather than launching these reforms on the back of a spending review, the government must look at it from a human, not a financial perspective.

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