Recommendation 2

For most people, disability and health-related benefit assessments go smoothly. But in a sizable minority of cases, things continue to go very wrong. This has implications for claimant trust in the systems that extend beyond those directly affected by poor decision-making. Our predecessor’s inquiry focused on improving technical aspects of PIP and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) assessments. There is a remarkable similarity between the recommendations made in evidence to this inquiry, and those made by our predecessor Committee in 2018. The Department has recognised that fundamental change is needed, but this will take time. The Department has taken some welcome and significant steps to improve health- related benefit assessments, but nearly five years on from the previous inquiry, important changes that could greatly increase transparency, improve trust in the process among claimants, and ensure more accurate assessments and fewer appeals, have still not been made. While it develops plans to replace the Work Capability Assessment, we urge the Government to make the changes we and our predecessor have called for to improve the current system for claimants. We recommend that the Department provide, in response to this Report, a list of actions it will take to improve the claimant experience of PIP assessments and Work Capability Assessments, while they remain in use.