Comment on the Committee of Public Accounts report’s findings that companies carrying out health and disability assessments are ‘still failing to meet acceptable performance standards’ - Owen Smith

Owen Smith MP, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, commenting on the Committee of Public Accounts report’s findings that companies carrying out health and disability assessments are ‘still failing to meet acceptable performance standards’, said:

 “The evidence is now increasingly overwhelming that the Tories are badly letting down disabled people.  This report yet again highlights very serious concerns about the way assessments are carried out and the value they provide to taxpayers, which is why Labour continues to call for a complete overhaul of the process, with disabled people put at the centre of both the redesign and monitoring of a new system.  Yet the Tories have stubbornly opposed these proposals time and again. 

"Stephen Crabb has an opportunity to start turning the page on the Tories’ terrible record on policies impacting on disabled people. He urgently needs to grasp it and should start by listening to Labour and overhauling the assessments system and cancelling the damaging cuts to ESA that will take over £1,500 a year from nearly half a million disabled people.  If he fails to do so we can conclude that a change of management at the DWP will do nothing to alter the callous way of operating.”