Disabled payment delay unlawful, judge rules

UK government took ‘unlawful and unacceptably long time’ to pay welfare benefits to two disabled people

The work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, has suffered legal embarrassment after a judge ruled that delays in the payment of disability benefits, which left two vulnerable claimants isolated, depressed and unable to afford food, were unacceptable and unlawful.

The high court heard that failures by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and its private contractors, Atos and Capita, left the seriously disabled claimants waiting months for the personal independence payment (PIP) support to which they were entitled, causing considerable and unneccessary distress.

Their experiences were shared by hundreds of thousands of individuals who had waited for long periods for their claims to be processed, in some cases for more than a year, because of delays and backlogs to the Pip scheme since its phased introduction two years ago, the court heard.

Mrs Justice Patterson ruled there had been a “breach of duty on the part of the secretary of state to act without unreasonable delay in determination of the claimant’s claims for Pip”.

However, she concluded that there had not been a breach of the claimants’ human rights and that the Pip system had shown “vast improvement” in recent months after the DWP and its contractors devoted huge resources to clearing the backlog.

Pip, which will eventually replace disability living allowance (DLA), is a non-means-tested benefit introduced in 2013 to help with the additional costs of disability or chronic illness. It is not an employment-related benefit. An additional 1.5 million DLA recipients will be assessed for Pip from October.

Anne-Marie Irwin, the specialist public lawyer at Irwin Mitchell who led the cases, said: “This is a significant legal judgment. A huge number of vulnerable people have been left in the lurch as a result of unacceptable flaws in the Pip system.”

She added: “While the decision is undoubtedly welcome and emphasises the clear failings seen with this scheme, attention must now turn to rethinking the planned wider rollout in October until reassurances can be provided that the delays seen in the past are not repeated in the future.”

The minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson, said: “The court has rightly dismissed the claimants’ absurd suggestion that their human rights had been breached. As a result they are not entitled to damages.

“We have taken decisive action to speed up Pip waiting times and we are pleased the court has recognised the huge progress made. The average new Pip claimant now waits only seven weeks for an assessment.”

Between April 2013 and the end of March 2015 742,800 new Pip claims were made, of which 130,000 were still outstanding. According to Irwin Mitchell, 12,600 claimants are still waiting after seven months and 3,200 have been waiting for more than a year.

One of the claimants, known as Ms C, was diagnosed with ME in 2009 and forced to give up work three years later. The court heard that the 27-year-old, who lives alone, suffered from severe vertigo, collapses and visual impairment, and rarely left her home. She was reliant on unemployment benefit and spent just £8 a week on food.

Although she made it clear her medical conditions made it difficult to travel, Atos twice told her to go to their office for a face-to-face assessment. On one occasion it threatened to cancel her Pip application if she did not attend. After 13 months’ delay, Ms C was assessed as eligible for enhanced rates of Pip and awarded £8,000 in backdated payments.

Patterson said in her judgment: “To require [Ms C] to attend a face-to-face assessment on two separate occasions was both inappropriate, causing her considerable distress, and was irrational in her circumstances.”

Ms C said after the ruling: “While my 13-month wait came to an end, thousands of people have not had the same luck. It is vital that the government makes sure that everyone affected in the past gets help and also that the system is fit for purpose before it is rolled out further.”

Despite ministers promising that the application process for Pip would take just two and a half months, poor planning and over-optimistic assumptions about demand meant the system developed backlogs. A year after its introduction many applicants were waiting more than six months, a state of affairs a parliamentary committee described at the time as “nothing short of a fiasco”.

The DWP has since been forced to hire 800 extra staff to deal with the delays, while Atos and Capita have quadrupled the number of clinicians they employ to carry out assessments, and opened more assessment centres.

Gillian Guy, the chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: “Delays to Pip assessments are unacceptably common. Over two years since [their] introduction they are still not fit for purpose.

“People are turning to local Citizens Advice in their thousands as they are left high and dry without the financial support they need to live with their health condition or disability.

“Pip is a key part of our welfare system. It defies common decency that some disabled people are waiting months on end just to find out if they’re entitled to the necessary support.”

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/05/disabled-payment-delay-unlawful-judge-rules-iain-duncan-smith

How any man who has made the absolute balls up he has, and has had to have £millions written off due to his incompetence, gets to keep his job is beyond me. But then, he's managed to kill off quite a few sick and disabled people, so they probably regard that as doing his job properly.

Courtesy of

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2015/jun/05/iain-duncan-smith-has-disabled-in-his-sights-cartoon

perhaps they should blame people like this for the delay...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2537169/Fit-fiddle-Moment-benefits-cheat-stole-21-000-claiming-disabled-needed-help-getting-dressed-caught-camera-FITNESS-CLASS.html

or even people claiming to be disabled but want to be involved in politics....

if they can do that surely they can get a job....

Can't blame anyone but IDS for the fuck up, 100%

the more bent claims they get the more needs investigating to weed out the liars defrauding the system...

It's got nothing to do with bent claims, it's about the new system that was set up, the fuck up in setting it up as it had to be abandoned written off and started again and cost millions to do that, and resulted in sick and disabled people dying.

it is the defrauders who keep getting caught that are causing the back log, if people ere honest, yeah fat chance I know, the system would work better...

See, fake Christians trying to be as nasty as you can again, denying the facts. Are you sure you are not a Devil worshipper?

And capita and atos are private companies brought in to run essential public services by...???




Yes folks... you guessed it!!!


LABOUR!!!



Given that these and others like G4S, Serco etc were handed masses of lucrative public sector contracts under labour, from waste management, to running prisons, and even housing benefit and more... is it any wonder why they are worried that Tory might now be trying to stop them writing their own cheques for tax payer funds and maybe causing embarrassing stories for Tory could help their gravy train start rolling again...!?

Oh dear, another numb nuts. It had nothing to do with the people who were putting it into practice. It was because of the total bodge up IDS made, the fact that the debts he brought about by having to stop the original set up and completely rework it having to be underwritten, and the hold ups it caused.

risingsun wrote:See, fake Christians trying to be as nasty as you can again, denying the facts.  Are you sure you are not a Devil worshipper?

quite sure

The signs point to it, they certainly don't point to Christianity.

The systems wouldn't have had to be stopped and reworked if labour hadn't left them in such a complete mess in the first place!!!



A simple fact that you lefties fail to grasp!


Labour left govt with annual borrowing of £170 billion and rising!!!


Labour left govt with unemployed people being able to claim up to £100,000 a year in benefits!!!


Labour left govt with a PFI hospital bill of £300 billion for only £50 billion worth of new hospitals.


Labour left govt kicking and screaming against privatising public services after 13 years of handing out a multitude of lucrative public service contracts to the likes of capita, serco and G4S who are now running everything from waste management to prisons to even housing benefit!!!


All at enormous expense and inefficiency!!!



If you lefties are so against these things, why do you still support labour who were responsible for doing 13 years of it!!!???

You bloody idiot. They had to be stopped BECAUSE THEY WERE THE ONES IDS DEVISED THAT FAILED MISERABLY, THAT THEY COULDN'T DEVISE A COMPUTER SYSTEM FOR AND COULD NOT BE UNDERSTOOD BY EITHER CLAIMANTS OR THE PEOPLE HANDLING THE CLAIMS. So he had to start again, and the millions of pounds he had spent had to be written off.

His record on Universal Credits - his baby, that he thought up and is implementing:

After £40m was written off on IT systems that are no longer fit for purpose, it recently emerged that the body responsible for grading its implementation, the Major Projects Authority, had "reset" UC as an entirely new project, meaning that it was classed as having been sent back to the drawing board. It had failed all its tests, so it was starting again.

The Treasury, which refused recently to sign off on a new business plan for UC, is now said to be "drip-feeding" money to it, keeping it alive rather than committing to the huge funds it needs upfront. In April the all-party work and pensions select committee issued a report so scathing it read like a hatchet job. It complained that the original IT system for UC was already defunct and suggested that bad money was being thrown after good in the desperate chase to make new systems work. "The underlying issue ... is that the department has written off £40.1m on assets it will now never use and spent a further £91m on assets that will support only a limited service for five years, with clear consequences for public value."

The report also accused the DWP time and again of witholding information and failing to admit problems until forced to do so, and of a "deeply concerning lack of clarity" about how the eventual IT system – the so-called "end-state solution" – will work.

The National Audit Office has raised doubts about the new IT systems: when they will be ready, how much it will all cost and the competence of those managing it.

Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said last year: "The department's plans for universal credit were driven by an ambitious timescale, and this led to the adoption of a systems development approach new to the department. The relatively high-risk trajectory was not, however, matched by an appropriate management approach. Instead the programme suffered from weak management, ineffective control and poor governance. Universal credit could well go on to achieve considerable benefits if the department learns from these early setbacks and puts realistic plans and strong discipline in place for its future rollout."

But there are still doubts at the highest levels of government about whether it has done so. Progress is not being helped by a high turnover of executives. John Manzoni, head of the Major Projects Authority, told the public accounts committee earlier this summer that the current head of UC, Howard Shiplee, had been working only part-time after falling ill around Christmas.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow work and pensions secretary, says the entire project is well intentioned but chaotic and gave no guarantee that it could be resuscitated. "Labour supports the principle of universal credit, but we will not accept the huge waste and delays which have brought the government's £12.8bn welfare reform programme shuddering to a halt," she said. "A Labour government will call in the National Audit Office to review universal credit. This review will enable Labour to take hard-headed decisions about whether universal credit can be rescued."

So what, precisely, is the problem that is holding up the delivery of a vision that Duncan Smith still seems sure can earn him a reputation as a great reformer in the mould of Wilberforce? Brian Wernham, an independent project adviser and author of Agile Project Management for Government, who has more than 30 years' experience in both the public and private sectors, said computer systems were being asked to deal with hugely complex shifting human and family situations. "The system has to make fiendishly complicated calculations based not just on the income of one person, but everyone else in the household," he said. These would change constantly and the software had to show it could respond. "To make things worse, there is the 'lobster pot' principle – once a claimant is in the universal credit system, he/she remains in it. No matter how complex their life becomes, the IT just has to deal with it."

Wernham added: "We accept the occasional flaw in our everyday use of IT, like GPS car navigation, such as no right turns being missed, because we over-ride these mistakes by applying common sense, hopefully." UC is different, and the problems bigger. It has to be foolproof as "when dealing with a £110bn benefits budget, the risk of a small percentage error in calculations cannot be allowed. Fraudsters will open up even the smallest crack in the logic of such systems and hundreds of millions of pounds will evaporate, as we saw in the VAT frauds a few years back." He predicts that existing problems with the DWP's "sprawling systems and processes will take 10 years or so to iron out".

Fear of fraud clearly hovers over the project. What if hackers entered the system and invented claimants who did not exist, as they can do with companies, asked one well-placed official linked to the project? Dame Anne Begg, chair of the work and pensions select committee, said UC had the long-term potential to cut fraud, but there was a danger this could be "undermined because of the uncertainty about how DWP will administer the housing element of universal credit without increased risks of fraud and error".

She said that, under the current housing benefit system, local authorities can cross-check claims across a range of data relating to other council services; unless the centrally controlled DWP was able to cross-check universal credit claims in a similar way, "it may be less effective in tackling fraud and error".

Debbie Gibbons, national chair of the Local Authority Investigation Officers Group, which represents staff investigating fraud at local level, said moves to centralise fraud investigations inside the DWP in future risk leaving the new system badly exposed. "The proposal to create a Single Fraud Investigation Service (SFIS) for welfare benefit investigations would be a step in the right direction. However, the decision to create this service within DWP without the input of the existing and successful local authority investigation services will dilute the service with the loss of local intelligence, a major factor in the successful anti-fraud measures in local authorities."

Gibbons has relayed her concerns to government. Pete Challis, national officer for Unison, says fraud is the "Achilles heel" of universal credit. "Organised crime is already sophisticated at using identity theft and ghost employees, and the risk of organised crime infiltrating the state benefit system is significant. Relying on remote central IT systems, removing local knowledge and human contact, will make it easier for fraudsters."

Duncan Smith has no truck with the doomsayers and, while hearing them out, bats them away. He says he himself decided to reset the project to zero this year. "My overriding concern was to ensure we introduced universal credit carefully so that no one would be negatively affected – as they were when Labour introduced tax credits – testing it at each step before expanding across the whole country." Progress , he says, is now being made according to a "test, learn, implement" template. It may be tortuously slow, but it is safe, he says. He assures us that by the end of this year one in eight jobcentres will be offering universal credit and that by 2017 more than a million should be on the system.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/16/welfare-reform-iain-duncan-smith-benefits-universal-credit-logistical-nightmare

If labour hadn't left such a shambolic system after their 13 years of ruin then the system wouldn't need changing!!!



The system labour created allowed unemployed people to claim up to £100,000 a year in benefits as well as allowing between £2-3 billion a year to be lost to fraud and overpayments in labours 'tax credits' system.


The same tax credits system that was only needed in the first place to prop up working peoples wages after labours mass immigration created a mass increase in costs of living while also driving down wages!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:The systems wouldn't have had to be stopped and reworked if labour hadn't left them in such a complete mess in the first place!!!



A simple fact that you lefties fail to grasp!


Labour left govt with annual borrowing of £170 billion and rising!!!


Labour left govt with unemployed people being able to claim up to £100,000 a year in benefits!!!


Labour left govt with a PFI hospital bill of £300 billion for only £50 billion worth of new hospitals.


Labour left govt kicking and screaming against privatising public services after 13 years of handing out a multitude of lucrative public service contracts to the likes of capita, serco and G4S who are now running everything from waste management to prisons to even housing benefit!!!


All at enormous expense and inefficiency!!!



If you lefties are so against these things, why do you still support labour who were responsible for doing 13 years of it!!!???

Stop talking nonsense Tommy. The Tories introduced Compulsary Competive Tendering legislation in 1988 and the ATOS contract that Labour were intending to scrap when it ended was kept going by the Tories and amended to kick people off the benefits system - even people that were dying.

We've been over all the other stuff before.

So... when did ATOS start getting UK public sector contracts???



And what about the huge number of highly lucrative public sector contracts awarded to capita, G4S and serco under the last 13 years of Labour govt...!?

Tommy is right though, all those tenders handed out to private companies have proved to be a bloody shambles.
That said, and it has all been said before, demonising a few disabled people wont solve the debt issue and the debt issue wont be solved whilst we ring fence so much money for overseas aid for example.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3113983/David-Cameron-s-ex-speechwriter-says-ballooning-foreign-aid-budget-bonkers.html

Why IS David Cameron handing out £12billion of our money to foreign thieves, dictators and charlatans? Our ballooning foreign aid budget is 'bonkers', argues PM's ex-speechwriter in an open letter
Britain is handing over £12billion a year in foreign aid and this is growing
Ian Birrell said this is the same amount set to be cut from welfare budget
David Cameron's ex-speechwriter said this is 'bonkers' in an open letter

Tommy Monk wrote:If labour hadn't left such a shambolic system after their 13 years of ruin then the system wouldn't need changing!!!



The system labour created allowed unemployed people to claim up to £100,000 a year in benefits as well as allowing between £2-3 billion a year to be lost to fraud and overpayments in labours 'tax credits' system.


The same tax credits system that was only needed in the first place to prop up working peoples wages after labours mass immigration created a mass increase in costs of living while also driving down wages!!!

allowed unemployed people to claim up to £100,000 a year in benefits what a year ?

Thank you Nems.

I agree international aid budget should be at least halved immediately and then only spent on real needs like disaster relief, vaccination programmes etc.


Also I want to see a real bonfire of the quangos who currently cost us about £100 billion a year.


And I want to see less tax payer money handed out to 'charities' a both central and local govt.


And yes KD, up to £100,000 a year in benefits to fund them living in luxury lifestyles in expensive areas that THEY would never dream of paying themselves if working, probably never even being able to earn a quarter of that themselves if working.

And they were then allowed to use the excuse of having so much rent to pay to turn down work that didn't pay anywhere near their benefits money.

That is labour lunacy in action!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:Thank you Nems.

I agree international aid budget should be at least halved immediately and then only spent on real needs like disaster relief, vaccination programmes etc.


Also I want to see a real bonfire of the quangos who currently cost us about £100 billion a year.


And I want to see less tax payer money handed out to 'charities' a both central and local govt.


And yes KD, up to £100,000 a year in benefits to fund them living in luxury lifestyles in expensive areas that THEY would never dream of paying themselves if working, probably never even being able to earn a quarter of that themselves if working.

And they were then allowed to use the excuse of having so much rent to pay to turn down work that didn't pay anywhere near their benefits money.

That is labour lunacy in action!!!

we i know lots of people unemployed and they get Nowhere near that figure and they are not living in the lap of luxury ether and most do not live in "expensive" areas such as London for example but you comment implies every unemployed person claiming benefit is living in luxury and that`s just poppycock A freedom of information request by Full Fact showed that in August 2010, there were fewer than five housing benefit claimants receiving the equivalent of £100,000 a year.

Yeah... there were 4!!!


Now, how many getting £95,000?


How many getting £90,000?


How many getting £80,000?


How many getting £70,000, £60,000 or £50,000...???



And So on and So on...



Why are any being allowed to claim more in benefits than they would ever be able to earn in wages!!!???



The average working wage in this country is only about £25,000 and there are plenty of people working their socks off for much less than that and having to pay their own way in life and only able to live in the poor quality housing that their wages can afford... plus paying tax!!!


It was twisted leftie lunacy that allowed unemployed people to claim more in benefits than they could ever earn in paid employment.


Completely barny!!!

Around 300 households in England, Scotland and Wales have been identified as having received more than £40,000

why i have no idea i suspect most of it is housing benefit
I am not defending it but its a very small amount compared to the majority of claimants
what i did find in the research i is did they is a lot of fraud when talking about these huge sums paid out and a lot is housing benefit payments

It's only a few eh...!?


Labour allowed unemployed people to claim more in benefits than most working people... up to £100,000 a year!!!


All true!!!


Thanks for confirming that for us all!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:So... when did ATOS start getting UK public sector contracts???



And what about the huge number of highly lucrative public sector contracts awarded to capita, G4S and serco under the last 13 years of Labour govt...!?

I already told you that the Tories introduced Compulsary Competative Tendering in 1980 under statutory legislation and again in 1988 and they didn't eclude local government contracts. Do you understand what that means?

Labour scrapped the local government element by changing that to best value where cost wasn't the determining factor in who won a contract but they couldn't change it for national government contracts which covers all the contracts you are taking about. Privatisation of our services rocketed under the Tories under CCT which the Tories signed up to which tied the hands of all national government contracts and that's a fact.

ATOS were to get the boot when the contract ended in 2011 but the Tories extended it and made it even worse by introducing draconian rules and targets to get people off benefits - you must have read about in the papers.

And I'll just remind you that welfare payments under Labour were lower than they were under the Tories and that's a fact as well because not as many people needed wefare dut to higher employment levels and decents jobs with decent pay. The Tories spent a fortune paying out unemployment benefit - a price worth paying they said.

And as far as housing benefit is concerned and why it's so high is due to Thatcher flogging off the affordable council housing stock and refusing to allow the councils to use the money to build replacements. That created the shortage and it passed the means for landlords to cash in by charging the earth for rents on property particualry in the South East were property values were really high anyway.

Get real Tommy and just accept that the policies of the last Tory government lefta real and lasting legacy that has caused much of the problems that Labour inherited and are still around today.

Tommy Monk wrote:It's only a few eh...!?


Labour allowed unemployed people to claim more in benefits than most working people... up to £100,000 a year!!!


All true!!!


Thanks for confirming that for us all!!!

No family was able to claim £100,000, with the exception of those in temporary accomodation or homeless shelters.

The department for work and pensions (DWP) told The Huffington Post UK in November 2012 only 30 families in the UK were claiming housing benefit over £50,000, but could not break that number down any further

So 30 families claiming over £50,000 still not a huge amount compared to the number of unemployed but you would have people believe hundreds get this amount and its simply not true
But why are they getting this amount ? is it in cash or is it as a result of housing benefit
London accommodation is obscenely expensive
£340 pw for a 1 bed house to rent in london that`s what i pay a month for a 4 bedroomed bungalow with a big garden and a porch for the car
where all the moneys going ? over priced accommodation

perhaps Cameroon should address the price of accommodation in London that would put a big dent in the housing benefit budget don`t you think

Mass immigration is the root cause of rising costs of living and suppression of wages.


Labour were responsible for this.


Also the introduction of tax credits to prop up this resulting imbalance.


Costing tens of billions every year.


Also the resulting economic chaos.


How many people should be allowed to claim more in benefits than they would get for working before it becomes wrong...!?


Do you idiots understand anything about basic economics...!?