Page 31 - JUSTICE and AJC Report - Reforming Benefits Decision-Making

access to “Mental Function Champions” who have specific mental health
expertise.

2.14 However, there are numerous reports of claimants with rare or mental health
conditions not being properly assessed and we heard various examples of this
58
during our evidence gathering. One medically qualified tribunal member we
spoke to was so concerned about the poor quality of PIP assessments they
were seeing, that they started to collect data to try and understand what was
happening. They analysed 50 consecutive PIP appeals between November
2019 and April 2020 and found that of the group of assessments classified as
‘substandard’ 60 per cent involved a primary diagnosis of a mental health
59
condition. The President of Appeal in Northern Ireland has also raised
concerns about the expertise of health care professionals, in particular in
respect of claimants with mental health conditions.
60
2.15 The Working Party is also concerned that, despite HCPs receiving training in
the assessment of fluctuating conditions, assessors do not have sufficient
knowledge of these conditions to assess them properly – giving undue focus
to claimants’ abilities on the particular day of the assessment.
61
2.16 A number of disability charities and activists have called for assessments to be
performed by professionals with expertise in the disabilities in question.
62

58 C. Hodgson, ‘‘Cruel and humiliating’: why fit-for-work tests are failing people with disabilities’ (The
Guardian, 22 May 2017); B. Geiger, A better WCA is possible (Demos, 2018), p. 40. We were told by
an advisor that during one telephone assessment the assessor admitted to “just googling” the claimant’s
condition.
59 Defined as a difference of greater than 12 points between the assessor’s points and the Tribunal’s
points.
60 J. Duffy, Report by the President of Appeal Tribunals on the Standards of Decision Making by the
Department for Communities 2017/18 (May 2021).
61 Z2K survey respondents said that the assessment processes fails to understand fluctuating conditions,
reducing how a condition effects someone to a snapshot on a particular day. Z2K
“#PeopleBeforeProcess’ (see n. 57 above); N. Bond et al., The Benefits Assault Course (see n. 50
above) p. 28.
62 Work and Pensions Committee, Employment Support Allowance and Work Capability Assessments,
First Report of Session 2014-15 (HC 302, 2014), para 61; B. Geiger, A Better WCA is possible (see n.
58 above).

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