Benefit appeals are on the rise….
‘Chaos is looming’
The Ministry of Justice figures exhibits all the signs of impending chaos with a staggering 813,500 tribunal cases in total; an increase on the previous year when the number had already exceeded three quarters of a million appeal cases.
The number of Employment & Support Allowance appeal receipts is of particular concern, in the year 2011/2012 a total of 181,000 appeals were received by the Tribunals. In the first six months of 2012/2013 the figure has shot up to 133,700 indicating that these appeals alone are well on track to exceed a quarter of a million by year end.
42% of DWP decisions in ESA cases are wrong!
By comparison with the second quarter of 2009/2010 when Employment & Support Allowance (ESA) appeal receipts stood at 29,000 – the same quarter in 2012/2013 has zoomed up to 73,700 – an increase of 44,700. Of the 53,200 ESA cases cleared at an appeal hearing 22,500 (42%) were found in favour of the claimant. These figures highlight ongoing problems with the standards of decision – making following Atos ‘Work Capability Assessments’ – the DWP is still making an unacceptably large number of incorrect decisions.
Total number of benefit appeals now on track to exceed 600,000 by the end of the year!
The total number of benefit appeal cases for 2012/2013 has already reached a wholly unacceptable figure of 308,200 meaning that if the trend continues, and there is every sign it will, the total number of benefit appeals alone will have reached well over 600,000 by the end of the year.
Cases outstanding (all) – 813,800 - chaos!
The total number of benefit appeal case ‘outstanding’ in 2008/2009 was 53,200 in the second quarter and has now more than trebled to 158,700 in the second quarter of 2012/2013. A comparison with the figures for 2007/2008 when the figure stood at 347,100 shows the numbers have increased to a colossal 813,800 in 2012/2013. the number of employment tribunal cases outstanding as of the second quarter stands at 570,200, benefit cases stand at 158,700 in 2012/2013 and immigration & asylum cases at 41,000 – this is absolute chaos!
Exceeding the warnings given by the judiciary….
In a report issued in February 2012 provided by the Tribunal president the judiciary gave the following breakdown of benefit appeal cases in the first – tier Tribunal and made the following predictions for increases in the appeal load:
Annual Intake of SSCS Appeals
2008-09 – 242,800
2009-10 – 339,200
2010-11 – 418,500
(forecast)
2011-12 – 421,609
2012-13 – 483,400
2013-14 – 576,700
2014-15 – 644,000
These latest figures show we are well on track to break past the 483,400 forecast for 2012/2013 and exceed the figure given for 2013/2014.
The full effect of welfare reform changes has yet to hit the fan, the bedroom tax, more ESA cases, JSA sanctions (standing at 700,000), Disability Living Allowance giving way to Personal Independence Payments are all in the line up and will undoubtedly lead to the Tribunal president’s forecast being considerably exceeded.
Government and the DWP has to stop pretending that there is not a perfect storm brewing here, mandatory revision before appeal is only keeping the dispute out of the public’s attention in a pretence that the people who create the problems will somehow fix it. The DWP is assessing twice as many ESA claimants as it needs to just to claim double its dubious ‘results’. In reality the vast majority of those who flow off ESA and incapacity benefits are flowing straight back on to them shortly afterwards – government has no other credible explanation as to why after assessing over 2.8 million claimants between 2008 and 2012 the claimant count has barely reduced by little more than 70,000 – it’s derisory and half that achieved by way of reductions under the older incapacity benefits regime.
The fact is that we were seeing much better reductions under the older incapacity benefits. Government is using severely disabled claimants to manipulate its figures by its recycling of what can only be the same claimants. It stands to reason that if vast numbers were really being ‘found fit for work’ the Jobseeker’s Allowance claimant count would have rocketed up to an embarrassingly high level which this government simply cannot afford to show.
After coming off ESA claimants are being re-directed back on to it by Jobcentres who can clearly see these claimants are no where near ready for the labour markets.
Government’s mismanagement of the ESA reassessment programme:
There’s any number of statistical charts on here which you can muse over all day long.
In doing so just apply the logic:
(1) We start with 2.6 million on the sick in 2008
(2) Various claims are made by the DWP/media of 75%, 50% and more recently 33% being found ‘fit for work’
(3) In 2012 we have 488,000 claimants waiting to be assessed
(4) In 2012 we have a Jobseeker’s Allowance queue that’s hardly grown
(5) By 2012 – 2.7 million have been subjected to Work Capability Assessments
(6) By 2012 – 3.8 million is the total number ‘case loaded’ through ESA
(7) By 2012 we are on track to break all previous appeal records with more hidden from view at the DWP
(8) In 2012 there are twice as many claiming on the sick as there were in 2006
(9) By 2012 the claimant count for those on the sick has trickled down by a mere 70K, still leaving us with….
Around 2.6 million ‘on the sick’?
(10) This wretched scheme is rapidly emerging as an absolute farce which is being used as a vehicle to keep the long term sick numbers down; thus keeping them from the long term ‘economically inactive’ count used by the ONS to work out the numbers said to unemployed.
They have engineered themselves a clever way of marshalling the unemployment figure to one which is more ‘commensurate’ with the chancellor’s increasingly doubtful claims that we are ‘on the way’ to economic growth.
With everlasting thanks to the brilliant Nick-
Twitter: @Mylegalforum
See more from Nick at http://ilegal.org.uk/ and below
See ESA Customer’s journey to nowhere
See the ‘journey in to work’
See a discrepancy uncovered
See unemployment is ‘falling’See turning back the long term incapacity clock to zero
