New Welfare Minister Esther McVey has ‘chickened out’ of confronting the courts over Personal Independence Payments for people with Mental Health Problems. An announce Appeal of a Tribunal decision affecting thousands of PIP claimants will not now be pursued.
On 21st December, the High Court published its judgment in the judicial review of Regulation 2(4) of the Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) (Amendment) Regulations 2017 S.I. 2017/194. https://mind.org.uk/media/19875988/rf-vs-sswp-ors.pdf These new regulations were the Tories’ attempts to reverse the effect of a Benefit Tribunal judgment in a case known as ‘MH’ where the courts had had declared the DWP systems for judging PIP payments to people with Mental Health problems were unlawful.
Councillor Tony Dawson has fought scores of battles with and for Southport residents with disabilities over the past 20 years, including one Avondale Road resident who died while receiving no benefits at all for months. He says:
“This backing down is good news for thousands of people with mental health problems up and down the country, The assessment regime adopted by the private agencies making a fortune out of the sick and the disabled is ‘patchy’ to say the least and it is clear that the government’s intent was to deprive genuinely ill people from their due support.”
“Ms McVey has said that the government ‘will now take all steps necessary to implement the court’s judgment . . . in the best interests of claimants, working closely with disabled people and key stakeholders over the coming months.’ even though she insists that the court were wrong. We shall have to watch her carefully in the months to come to see whether there is any substance to that statement.”
“The Department for Work and Pensions now has to undertake an exercise of going through all affected PIP claims and all decisions made following the judgment in the case “MH” to identify anyone who may be entitled to additional payment as a result of the judgment. They will then have to write to those individuals affected, and make payments back-dated to the effective date for each individual claim.”
“Ms McVey has suffered a lot of hideous and totally-unacceptable personally-directed criticism and threats since her appointment. This has distracted people from the serious proper criticism which should be rightly be levelled at her – which is that she was previously an awful Minister in an awful ‘Work & Pensions’ Department which set out to do awful things to many thousands of vulnerable people. I only hope that this announcement shows a change of heart accompanying her ‘come back’.
“I am not holding out much hope, however. I think the government’s own lawyers have simply told them that they would lose again in the courts and they have simply ‘chickened’.”
“People with disabilities themselves crowd-funded the cash to support the successful judicial review in the High Court: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/wish/ . They are to be commended for not rolling over and allowing themselves to be kicked by the government. It is sad, though, that they had to go though all this stress unnecessarily. If Labour MPs had joined others in opposing the critical Tory regulation back in March of last year, the rule would not have been passed and thousands of people would have had the support which they have been due many months ago.”
Note: the original MH Upper Benefit Tribunal judgment is here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/585104b5e5274a13070000a6/CPIP_1347_2015-00.pdf. MH’s original PIP claim was made in 2015 and the initial decision supporting him was taken by the Upper Tribunal in November 2016.
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