Welfare Reform Bill

It is interesting to reflect that, when he was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Alan Johnson described the current PCA as the most stringent gateway into incapacity benefit in the world. Whether he was right or wrong, the current PCA is stringent, and I understand that the new test with the new descriptors will be even more stringent. In broad terms, the mental health assessment has been improved, but the physical assessment has been significantly tightened. Lower-scoring descriptors have been removed, which could potentially exclude people with significant but lower-level impairments from receiving the benefit. Indeed, an early small-scale trial found that more than half of those who currently pass the PCA because of a physical impairment would fail the revised tests. That would impact in a number of ways. When current recipients of incapacity benefit are migrated to the new benefit, many could end up failing the new PCA and being taken off the benefit altogether, despite their circumstances not having changed. People with lower-level physical impairments, who might benefit most from some of the support programmes available through ESA, might end up failing the revised PCA and being excluded from the support programmes. The only benefit available to them would presumably be the jobseekers’ allowance.