Oral Answers to Questions — Work and Pensions – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 19 October 2009.
How many recipients of incapacity benefit who have been reassessed for employment and support allowance (a) have been placed in the work-related activity group, (b) have been placed in the support group and (c) did not meet the qualifying criteria.
Some 195,000 processes have begun for new ESA claimants, and we will migrate the rest of the incapacity benefit cohort from 2010 to 2013.
I am grateful for that answer, but my experience from my constituency case load, and the experience of the Inverness citizens advice bureau, is that the new rules for ESA are being used to exclude far greater numbers of people than were excluded from the previous benefit. In one case, a former member of staff at the Department for Work and Pensions was rendered unfit for work and retired on the grounds of ill health thanks to an assessment by an Atos Origin doctor. That same doctor then gave him a nil score for ESA. There is huge inconsistency in the process. Can the Minister assure me that Atos Origin doctors have not been instructed to-
Order. I think we have got the drift of it.
There is a new assessment, which considers what people can do rather than what they cannot do. As I said, 195,000 people have begun that process, which is backed up with the pathways to work programme. We are assisting people to find employment. The incapacity benefit test is very different from the work capability assessment under the new arrangements, and part of the programme is that we want to see more people in employment rather than confined to incapacity benefit year after year.