Professor Paul Gregg, one of the people who designed employment and support allowance (ESA), has warned that the work capability assessment (WCA), the medical test for ESA is ‘a complete mess' and ‘badly malfunctioning'
Professor Gregg told the Guardian newspaper that the WCA had been a failure:
"In the first trial, the system did not work. We need to trial the new, proposed, reformed system to check and prove that it works and avoids the serious stress and misclassification of people that we have already seen, before we start implementing it on a large and vulnerable population," he said. "The test so far has caused a huge amount of anguish to the people who have gone through it. We need to have something that is working accurately before we apply it nationally.
"We shouldn't roll this out until we have something that is working."
His calls for the new harsher test not to be inflicted on claimants, including incapacity benefit claimants, have clearly not been listened to, however. The new tests is still scheduled to apply from March 28th and the first 1,000 letters to current IB claimants informing them that they are about to be assessed for ESA went out this Monday.