What's got me riled is a story doing the rounds of various social media disability rights and anti cuts groups (several of which I support) which has recently been published in the Mirror. Headlined "Humiliated blind woman asked by ATOS benefits assessor: 'How many fingers am I holding up?' " it describes a fairly typical Work Capability Assessment - typical in that the probably under-trained and inappropriately qualified assessor stuck to a standard script rather than tailoring the assessment to the obvious impairment of the claimant. Discourteous, humiliating and arguably in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act. Maddening - but that's not what's making me seethe.
My problem is with the alleged quote from the subject of the story. According to the Mirror:
'Natasha said: "There are so many people receiving benefits that they don't really deserve, people who don't want to work. And yet people like me who have genuine disabilities, many much worse than mine, are being forced to do humiliating tests like this. Benefits Street is being filmed a couple of miles away in Stockton and programmes like that give people the impression benefits are being handed out to everyone. I listened to the first series and there was someone on there with 11 kids who didn't seem to want to work. And yet I'm told I have to find a job based on tests I am still struggling to understand."'
Natasha may very well have said just that. People naturally lash out when they're angry. My former clients often did - so often, that there were times I could have hurled someone's appeal papers at them for being so damned self-righteous. It's what we're all told: it's what Benefits Street exists to tell us. But the Daily Mirror proports to be a left-wing, or at least a Labour, newspaper. I don't expect the same old, same old. I expect proper analysis and truth. If this is a journalistic licence version of what she said, shame on them. Even if it is what was said verbatim, I fail to see how it helps the story to incite ill-feeling towards other benefit claimants who are already frequent victims of hate crime.
Proper analysis of this story wouldn't be asking readers to vote on whether Natasha should be reassessed either. You could reassess Natasha a dozen times and, if you followed the regulations, you'd get the same result. Seriously. 'Atos' are not the problem here. Yes, their assessor was clumsy, insensitive and sceptical, but a paragon of good practice would also have to give 9 points because, since April 2011, that is the law. I know this, because I wrote a minor character with an identical degree of visual impairment and mobility into Limited Capabilty to make that very point (Linda Jenkins - ebook Episode 2). She got 9 points from one of the 'good' assessors at my fictional assessment centre; there were no solid grounds for her to appeal.
Unless the actual Work Capability Assessment is changed - or scrapped - the real Natasha's and Linda's will keep being found fit for work. Arguably, they are - the DWP itself had a blind Secretary of State in 2005! But they are also quite obviously of 'limited capability for work' in any meaningful sense of the phrase since many roles and professions would be precluded by thier disability and many others by the unsuitability of too many workplaces and inflexibility of too many employers. Benefit entitlement should surely reflect this.
Finally, I'm not at all sure where the Mirror got their numbers from, but I sincerely hope they haven't gone away without telling Natasha about PIP (if she isn't already getting DLA - high rate mobility, low rate care?) and that in fact her JSA wouldn't be a basic £72.40 at all, but should include a disability premium of over £30 a week.
Sorry - does that count as a spoiler?
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