Whitewash: Government’s response to the consultation on Disability Living Allowance reform..

The Government’s response to the consultation on Disability Living Allowance reform has been published today, at long last. It is grossly unjust that the consultation itself closed after the Welfare Reform Bill was published, so that the consultation played no part in shaping the Bill, but it is probably not illegal.

The consultation response is a hefty document, and it seems that there were 5505 responses in total, including the joint submission by Carer Watch and The Broken of Britain to which hundreds of you contributed. Sadly, if predictably, this outpouring seems to have made very little difference to the Government's rhetoric. Annex 1 lists the actions suggested in responses and the Government's "next steps". These steps seem to involve "listening", "[recognising that] disabled people are experts in their own lives", "[continuing] to to work with disabled people", and plenty of buzzwords but very little in the way of detail.

The response begins with an empty foreword by Maria Miller, the Minister of Disabled People, who seems to think that the more often she repeats her message on the need for DLA reform, the likelier it is to become true. On the need for reform, the Government simply repeats the same cas that was demolished by The Broken of Britain in December. The information was included in our consultation submission, but the Government ignored it and repeated the same flawed case.

The disturbing thing is that this isn't all they have ignored. The question-by-question detail on consultation submission seems to suggest that the Government cherry-picked the responses that supported their "commitment" to reform, and ignored the rest. For example, the Government's response to the consultation submissions suggests that they "agree that Personal Independence Payment should remain a non-means-tested, non-taxable benefit that is paid to disabled people whether they are in or out of work." However, as means-testing was not proposed initially, whe spend space telling us what we already know?

On the design of the benefit, the Government response runs for only half a page. Two quotes are shared: one supporting reform, and one refusing to comment without detail. Surely there were other responses? The Broken of Britain raised the point that simplifying the benefit by reducing the number of rates would mean that PIP was less able to adapt to circumstance, as more rates meant a greater number of combinations that could adapt to the claimant's need. However, the Government says that most organisations are happy, and repeats its rhetoric on "simplification".

On issues where opinion was split down the middle, or slightly opposed to the Government's proposal, such as on extending the qualifying period and automatic entitlement, the Government listened to what people said. And then responded by saying they'd stick to their original proposals. The same thing can be noted in the Government response on face-to-face assessment - faced with the arguments, they resorted to saying that "we believe that, for the great majority of people, a face-to-face consultation between the individual and a trained independent assessor will play a key role in creating a fairer, objective and more transparent assessment for Personal Independence Payment than that which currently exists under DLA."

And on issues where there was strong feeling against the Government's proposals, such as on the consideration of aids and adaptations in PIP assessment? Again, they will do what they had originally planned because "we wish to target support to those disabled people who are least able to participate and to live independently". When the Government makes policy because they "believe" or "wish" something, what is the point of consultation? Whither evidence-based policy?

That must then be the initial conclusion: this consultation response is a whitewash, from beginning to end. A detailed breakdown and analysis of the response will appear on the blog very soon.