Benefits and Work: Huge new ESA guide plus Your future under the coalition
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From Steve Donnison Benefits and Work
14 May 2010
Dear Subscriber,
This is the first ever Benefits and Work newsletter written without a Labour government in power.
In our blog we take a first look at the new secretary of state for work and pensions, Iain Duncan Smith: What future for claimants under coalition rule?
Unlike most of his predecessors in the job, IDS already knows a lot about benefits and has some radical ideas about how the system should be changed – unfortunately, these include the abolition of DLA. Whether he manages to persuade the coalition that his personal preferences should become government policy remains to be seen.
We’ve also taken a look at the first joint statement on benefits by the Tories and LibDems which concentrates, unsurprisingly, on getting claimants into paid employment: Coalition publishes first benefits statement
HUGE NEW ESA GUIDE
In the members area, we’ve published a major new employment and support allowance resource to add to the detailed, step-by-step guides already available on the site: Major new ESA resource to download
The 100+ page guide has been provided by Mark Perlic, freelance trainer and Senior Welfare Rights Officer at Wolverhampton City Council’s Welfare Rights Service. Members will be aware of the excellent guide to DLA caselaw which Mark provided us with back in February of this year.
The new guide is an extremely comprehensive training pack Mark has been using for ESA training days. It covers many of the areas that we don’t, such as:
national insurance contribution conditions;
calculating ESA awards;
ESA in youth;
ESA and other benefits;
case law relating to substantial risk
We’ve also updated all our own ESA guides and published the most recent copy of the ESA Handbook produced by the DWP. We’re leaving the old version on the site so that people can compare the two. If you spot any material changes please email us, preferably with page references.
DECISION MAKERS EXCHANGES
As well as the ESA Handbook, we’ve also obtained copies of the confidential monthly DLA Decision Makers Exchanges from July to December 2009: Confidential decision makers DLA documents published
The editions cover a wide range of issues, including:
whether claiming carers allowance for another person may sometimes be incompatible with a person’s claim for DLA or AA;
why it is never appropriate for decision makers to refer to a “simple” main meal when considering the lower rate of the care component of DLA.
THE FUTURE
At the moment we have many unanswered questions about what life for claimants will be like under the coalition.
Will further compulsion be aimed at ESA claimants as well as JSA claimants?
Will the harsher ESA test approved by Yvette Cooper also get the go-ahead from her successor?
Will the first steps towards scrapping the entire benefits system and starting afresh be taken, as Iain Duncan Smith hopes?
Whatever the answers, you can count on discovering the truth, rather than spin, here at Benefits and Work.
Good luck,
Steve Donnison
(c) 2010 Steve Donnison. You are welcome to reproduce this newsletter on your website or blog, provided you do so in full.
and from 17 May:
Apologies – we are now back online
17 May 2010
Dear Subscriber,
Unfortunately, when we sent the newsletter out on Friday, the site crashed beneath the weight of people all trying to download our new employment and support allowance guide at once.
We finally got the site up and running only to have it crash again for different reasons.
However, we think – hope – we’ve fixed it now. And because we received so many emails from people saying they couldn’t get any of the links to work, we decided the best solution was to reissue Friday’s newsletter, which you’ll find below.
For those of you who did, finally, manage to get the links in the last newsletter to function, we’ve got three new items for you to read.
The first is the news that a doctors union has warned GPs that they should not try to prevent patients from recording consultations, if they so wish: GPs can’t stop patients recording consultations
The second is the claim that the Youreable forum, which closed before Christmas, is set to reopen: Youreable to rise from the dead
And, finally, we have some cheery feedback from members, like this:
“I have subscribed to Benefits and work for the last 18 months and have just been awarded higher rate mobility and higher rate care. This is beyond my wildest dreams and is all down to the information you provide on your website. It is the best money that I have ever spent.”
Good luck,
Steve Donnison
meagenda.wordpress.com 