Welfare Reform Bill

In relation to whether the PCA should reflect socio-economic factors, of course it has an impact on the rehabilitation of people with a disability and on their confidence and ability to enter or return to employment, but entitlement to benefit must be defined in a way that applies nationally and consistently, not in a way that is dependent on local conditions, such as availability of transport or the attitude of prospective employers. The revised PCA, based on functional limitations, is an objective assessment that is consistently applied throughout the countries. Other factors will be assessed at later points in a claim, particularly as someone moves closer to work, but are not appropriate for the PCA itself. I turn to why we use ““disablement”” when the Disability Discrimination Act defines disability using ““impairment””. It defines disability as, "““a person has a disability for the purpose of this Act if he has a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities””." The World Health Organisation defines disability as the restriction of ability that results from impairment. At the heart of this—whatever definition you use—the process is about understanding how the condition that a person finds himself in affects his functional ability to work or not to work or to progress towards work. The assessment of how it impacts on individuals is the key to this process.