Thanks to a decent piece of research, I now know what no politician will tell you: A decent chunk of PIP claimants are gaming the system with, in some cases, assistance from DWP assessors. I’m sure this will not come as a surprise to you, but the detail might do.
The first decision was to scrap in-person interviews during Covid and replace them with phone interviews. Fair enough, but why weren’t the in-persons brought back when Lockdown ended?
I presume it was a money-saving policy which has had dreadful repercussions, as the old system was a major deterrent.
Many claimants dropped out at the last minute because they knew they were swinging the lead and were going to get caught out.
However, many fancied their chances over the phone, not least because it’s a scripted process which can be easily gamed, and even crazier, both questions and the answers they would face are all online.
I could make an argument for the question being available, but surely the answers will simply lead to clever claimants simply gaming the system?
Clearly, bringing in the phone has been part of the surge in approval rates for PIP. It’s now 80 per cent, double the 2010 level.
And one of the reasons is that assessors are incentivised to get through as many claims as they can and are paid an £80 bonus for every one over a certain target.
Politicians are hiding the two rackets driving up sickness numbers. Let me expose them - Kelvin MacKenzie
Getty Images/PA
The only way of speeding up is to assess someone as too sick to work, and if the assessor does that, they can move on to the next claim.
This astonishing research, which the Work and Pensions Secretary has kept schtum about, is the work of Fraser Nelson, the former Spectator Editor and now a Times columnist.
If he can discover it, why haven’t numerous Tory Prime Ministers and even the hopeless Sir Keir Starmer done something to make the system work more effectively for the taxpayer?
One assessor, a former NHS nurse, said he was appalled that the interviews were not recorded, as it left the system wide open for abuse.
The cat is now out of the bag, and I would like to see Ms Kendall, who appears to be the personification of a chocolate teapot, stand up in the Commons and announce three things:
- That phone interviews are to be scrapped.
- That bonuses will no longer be paid.
- That all PIP claimants are to be reinterviewed.
The DWP is a complete mess. Nelson tells an amazing story in his column. He met Gavin, a taxi driver on the South Coast, who told the DWP he did not need sickness benefit anymore.
No, he was told, you must wait to be reassessed. Three years later, he was still waiting. What he didn’t know was that the reassessments were stopped during Lockdown- and were never properly restarted.
Once 350 were moved back to work this way. Now it’s just 50 a day.
With the Starmer humiliation, sickness benefits will never be cut during their term. Somebody - presumably you and me as the wealthy have all buggered off - will have to pay for these people.
I’m hopeful that Nigel Farage does the job. As Thatcher proved, the public loves a hair shirt. If he doesn’t rise to the occasion, we are done for
Most Read
