‘Surprising’ Improvement in Degenerative And Terminal Conditions – PIP’s Hostile Environment

We recieved this from Benefits and Work. 

One of the UK’s most senior former civil servants  disclosed that he was warned to keep his disability secret for fear it would end his career. Andrew McDonald, the founding chief executive of Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), which oversees MPs’ expenses, said colleagues warned him against being open about his diagnosis with Parkinson's disease. Mr McDonald, who also has prostate cancer, was speaking after taking over as chairman of Scope, one of the UK’s biggest disability charitie

In the words of Benefits and Work. 

It won’t come as news to you that the PIP assessment system is a ‘hostile’ one.

Or that assessors can find massive improvements in degenerative conditions that really only ever stay the same or deteriorate.

But when previously powerful people are on the receiving end of such unfairness, it can come as an enormous shock to them.

Andrew McDonald was head of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority until ill health forced him to retire in 2014. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and incurable prostate cancer.

McDonald was awarded PIP with 11 points for daily living in 2015 and received the same score on review in 2017.

In March of this year, however, a further review awarded him only 2 points, in spite of the fact that his Parkinson’s has continued to deteriorate. It can now take him up to 90 minutes just to get dressed.

True to form, the DWP upheld the decision at mandatory reconsideration stage.

They argued that whilst it was ‘surprising’ that the assessment had revealed McDonald’s Parkinson’s had improved, it was now up to him to prove it hadn’t.

McDonald told the Guardian:

“I was shocked by the way this was being administered against the interests of some of the most disadvantaged people in the country . . . the system as a whole does create the impression of it being a hostile environment and one where two of the foes are complexity and the sense that it is not a level playing field.”

The only real difference between McDonald and other claimants is that his outrageously unfair treatment made the national news, whereas most people are persecuted in silence.

Courtesy of Benefits & Work.

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