Today, the Work and Pensions Select Committee heard from the Ministry of Justice about the process for appealing against DWP decisions following an Atos-administered WCA. The questioning covered numerous areas, many of which are already well-known and in the public domain, but one aspect in particular caught my eye.
One of the witnesses was a senior judge from the Tribunal Service, and his testimony was a breath of obfuscation-free air. He seemed to me to pour a big bucket of cold water all over the claim that the core WCA is rarely a reason for a tribunal to overturn a DWP decision on fitness for work so there's no reason to go looking there to find a way to reduce the number of appeals - they say it's all to do with 'new evidence' mysteriously appearing after the WCA.
His Honour said:
- The DWP only occasionally sends someone to attend tribunals in person
- The DWP asks for a full explanation of the tribunal's decision in less than 1% of hearings
- The Harrington 'drop down menu' plan foundered because the DWP's computer system could only cope with one simple selection, not the more nuanced views of the tribunal panel (he described this as a "fundamental flaw" in the system)
- In his view "you cannot place any value whatsoever on the drop down menu results"
- It was "almost a lottery" which reason you chose
- Since June 2013 the tribunals have supplied about 7000 free-text summaries to the DWP; it is up to the DWP to learn the lessons from this feedback
- Unless the DWP makes actual changes as a result of this latest feedback, the summarising process is "redundant".
