This consultation has now been submitted
About Spartacus
Spartacus is concerned about all aspects of welfare reform that affect disabled and sick people but we currently have a particular focus on the proposals for Personal Independence Payment, which under the Welfare Reform Bill is set to replace Disability Living Allowance for working age adults from 2013.It’s not just for people who are sick and disabled but for anyone who, like us, believes that welfare reform must be fair and responsible.If you want the latest news, sign up to ‘follow’ the site.
To start with, Spartacus was nothing; just a name Sue Marsh and Kaliya Franklin used, on 16 January 2012, to launch the Responsible Reform report, which analysed all 523 organisations’ responses to the government’s first consultation on reform of Disability Living Allowance. Before working with others to produce the report, Sue and Kaliya had been campaigning for 18 months against the portrayal by politicians and media of disabled and sick people as scroungers. They realised that if they didn’t fight, no-one would.
Political influence is key and Sue and Kaliya have achieved a great deal through careful working behind the scenes. But since the launch of the report, people have rallied like never before, many voices as one, with a clear aim:responsible welfare reform.
Three simple principles guide Sue, Kaliya and the wider Spartacus movement:
- We strive for accuracy, as this helps us to maintain credibility and therefore influence
- We support rather than criticise other groups and charities
- We try to fill the gaps left by other groups and charities
Spartacus Perspective: PIP Consultation
The Government’s consultation on the criteria for Personal Independence Payments (PIP), which will replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA) runs until 30 April 2012. As the new benefit is so different from DLA, it’s really important to publicize itandencourage as many as possibleto respond – not just claimants but people whomight support them like Occupational Therapists etc.
As the official consultation documents are difficult to read and understand, the Spartacus team have produced unofficial guides and advice to help as many people as possible to respond.
Responding is important for two reasons:
- The government have given assurances about taking responses into consideration so they get the criteria right. This is our big opportunity to avoid the dreadful mess ESA (Employment Support Allowance) has become
- If it becomes obvious that they haven’t we can then hold them to account and push them to honour the commitment.
To make sure we can do that please send us a copy of your response to the DWP – we won’t do anything with your responses except count them unless we have to. Let’s make sure the Government knows they’re being watched.
Suggestions for responding to the consultation
We recommend you work through the documents in the order suggested. To try to make things as easy as possible and, we hope, avoid anyone feeling overwhelmed, we have created one big document and also broken it down into bite-size chunks. It’s entirely up to you how you tackle it:
Please could you:
- Download either the full document or the separate sections – each bite-size chunk has everything you need to answer the questions it covers.
- Download the response form if you want to use ours.
- Work through the questions, using the response form to record your thoughts/answers. You don’t have to answer every question although it would be great if you can.
- Download the "how to guide” if you’re a bit stumped for ideas and not sure how to answer the questions.
- Email your completed response form, as an attachment, to the DWP – the email address is pip.assessment@dwp.gsi.gov.uk
- Once you’ve done that please send us a copy of your response to pipresponse@spartacusforum.org.uk In the body of your email, please could you type:"I give you permission to use the content of the attached response in communications with the DWP in relation to the PIP consultation, without revealing my name and contact details”
Check back here regularly for updates and to see how many responses have been sent.
Please find guides to responding to the consultation: -
Consultation downloads
Raising awareness – let’s hit 10,000 individual responses
There are bound to be lots of people who don’t have a clue what’s going on, not just people who get DLA but also professionals involved in people’s support, families and carers of people who get or should get DLA. Part of getting the consultation known about is creating our own Heineken effect – reaching the parts others can’t.
To do this we have created a few ideas and tools to use. Even if you’re scratching your head thinking, but I don’t know anyone, we’re sure you do. We’ve made a little ideas sheet to help you think about the kinds of things you could do:
- Tweet about it – look out for tweet ideas
- Post up links on your FB page or another forum you might be a member of eg ME awareness UK
- Put up a poster – you can download one we have created
- Talk to your GP, OT, Physio etc
- Ask to put up a poster in the places you might go church, support group, community centre, art group – basically anywhere you go where there might be other people who are affected
- Download the ideas guide to help you have a think
Please find posters and flyers: -
Awareness-raising downloads
DWP - Personal Independence Payment
From 2013 the Government is proposing to introduce a new benefit called Personal Independence Payment for eligible working age people aged 16 to 64 to replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA).
The intention is that Personal Independence Payment will focus support to those individuals who experience the greatest challenges to remaining independent and leading full, active and independent lives.
On this page:
The short address for this page is: www.dwp.gov.uk/pip
Consultations
On 26 March 2012 we published the third consultation on the Personal Independence Payment. This consultation is open until 30 June 2012.
DLA reform and Personal Independence Payment – completing the detailed design consultation
On 16 January 2012 we published the second consultation. This consultation is open until 30 April 2012.
Personal Independence Payment: assessment thresholds & consultation
On 4 April 2011 we published the Government’s response to the first consultation. This consultation is closed.
Disability Living Allowance reform – consultation and Government response
Background to Reform
Disability Living Allowance was introduced in 1992 and has not been fundamentally reviewed or reformed since. There is confusion about the purpose of the benefit, it is complex to claim and there is no systematic way of checking that awards remain correct.
We are putting disabled people at the heart of the development of Personal Independence Payment. This includes:
working with disabled people and their organisations as we develop the new claims and assessment processes
seeking feedback on our proposals for the draft assessment criteria, which consider an individual’s circumstances and the impact of their health condition or impairment on their everyday life.
The proposals for Personal Independence Payment are included in the Welfare Reform Act 2012.
What the change means
Disability Living Allowance will end for everyone of working age (16 to 64 on the day Personal Independence Payment is introduced) even if they have an indefinite period award.
Everyone of working age who gets Disability Living Allowance will be asked by letter if they want to claim Personal Independence Payment.
Personal Independence Payment may be more or less than their Disability Living Allowance or not awarded at all. This could affect other benefits they may be entitled to.
Those not found to be entitled to Personal Independence Payment will be informed and their Disability Living Allowance will stop. They may be able to claim other benefits. They cannot continue to receive Disability Living Allowance as an alternative.
There are no current plans to replace Disability Living Allowance with Personal Independence Payment for children under 16 and people over the age of 65 who are already receiving Disability Living Allowance.
Frequently asked questions
· Personal Independence Payment frequently asked questions (126KB) (Updated 16 March 2012)
Miller holds firm on disability reform
While disabled campaigners may be proud of recent successes in the battle over welfare reform, Maria Miller tells Sunil Peck that what she’s doing is right
Disability Now Magazine - March 2012
The minister for disabled people Maria Miller has said that a U-turn on plans to abolish DLA [Disability Living Allowance] was always unlikely.
"There is widespread support for a fundamental reform of DLA," she told Disability Now. "I don’t think there is any question that most disability organisations think that reform is needed. The approach that we’ve taken from the start with this reform has been that of co-production.”
The Government wants to cut expenditure on DLA by 20 per cent. Its own figure is that there is a 0.5 per cent fraud rate But it’s clear, according to Maria Miller, that DLA is out of date and not fit to support the needs of disabled people in the 21st century.
"DLA has been poorly managed over the last ten years. We’ve got a situation where there is over £600 million going out in over-payments and equally as worrying, around £190 million in under-payments, so we can’t be convinced that the money that is there is getting to people who need it most. The system needs an overhaul and we don’t have systematic checks in place to make sure that this is picked up when people’s conditions change. These are some of the fundamental problems with DLA. We want to make sure that we have a benefit that’s there to support disabled people.”
Despite Miller’s insistence that there is widespread support for the abolition of DLA, the Responsible Reform report, researched and written by disabled people, and published as the Spartacus report in January, has obtained evidence that its authors say justifies accusations that the Government misled the public and parliament over the extent of support for abolishing the benefit.
Unsurprisingly, Miller is dismissive of the report. "It’s important to listen to any sensible arguments that are put forward. My concern is that it was a selective analysis of 500 of the five and a half thousand responses that we received for the DLA consultation. I was saddened to see that little regard had been paid to our approach of co-production and the fact that we had worked closely with many disability organisations.”
In recent weeks, while the Welfare Reform Bill has been going through parliament, websites, radio phone-ins and news bulletins have featured disabled people who say that the loss of DLA will thrust them further into poverty. So is Miller disturbed by the prospect of disabled people’s lives being devastated?
"People who need help with extra costs will continue to get that help under the Personal Independence Payments (PIPs). DLA is about the extra costs of being a disabled person; it’s not about topping up their loss of income. There are many other ways the Government supports disabled people in the benefits system. We spend £40 billion of public money every year supporting disabled people, and through our reforms such as the Universal Credit we will be making the situation much more straightforward, particularly for disabled people who do want to get into work but perhaps for a limited number of hours.”
Eligibility for the PIPs will be determined by medical assessments. That method of determining disabled people’s eligibility for support with the Work Capability Assessments has already led to chaos, with people wrongly assessed and the high cost of the appeals system.
"It’s not possible to say that we’re not going to undertake a thorough and proper assessment of an individual’s needs because it’s a difficult process. We acknowledge it’s going to be a difficult process but we’ve learnt a great deal from the work that has been done to make the Work Capability Assessments work better for people who are looking to get into employment.”
What about the long-held suspicions among disabled people that the Department for Work and Pensions has been feeding stories about disability benefit cheats to the media with the aim of winning public support for harsh benefit cuts?
"I am very clear, that is not something that I would be involved in at all. It’s the system that has trapped people in a spiral of welfare dependency. I know that disabled people want to live independently. That’s what I’m here to help make sure that the welfare system and other parts of government is delivering. We have a system that, because it’s long overdue for reform, is easily brought into disrepute by the media reporting on cases where the system is being used in a way that it shouldn’t be.”
Some activists have threatened to stay away from future government consultations because they say that the Government ignored their views in the DLA consultation. If Miller thinks she has a job on her hands to win them over, she’s not saying so.
"What has been good about this process is that there’s clear demonstrable evidence that the Government has listened to the thoughts and concerns of disabled people. Whether it’s the fact that we’ve now said that we’ll continue to have DLA and PIPs available for people in residential care homes to apply for, whether it’s the fact that we’ve changed the qualifying period from six months to three months, whether it’s the fact that we’ve put in place two independent reviews and a third if required, I think all of this is clear evidence that consultation is important and that we are listening to disabled people and their concerns.”
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