Employment Minister Chris Grayling writes:
Not long ago I sat down with a woman who'd been off work for more than a decade suffering from depression. She had been through a work capability assessment and found to be capable of doing some form of work, so was referred to one of our Work Programme providers to give her the help and support she needed to do so.
She freely admitted to me she had found going through the process unbelievably difficult and on her first day on the Work Programme she'd been almost hysterical.
She simply hadn't believed she could possibly return to work, but a month later she was doing a day a week volunteering in a local charity shop and had started to apply for part-time jobs. Now she sees how her life has been changed for the better.
That's the change that too many people don't see and understand when they attack our reforms of the incapacity benefit system. We're dealing with a large number of people who don't believe they can ever work again and have lost the hope they may do so – people who were simply written off in the past.
Of course not everyone is able to work – in many cases people are simply too unwell and that's why they are rightly entitled to unconditional employment and support allowance. And far from the draconian picture some seek to paint, we've actually made changes which mean more people now end up in this support group.
But many more people are able to do more, or will in the future if they're given the right help and support. It's true they may not be able to return to the type of work they once did, but that doesn't mean they're not capable of doing something different and should be consigned to life on benefits.
Every voluntary sector group I meet tells me they want to get more people with health problems and disabilities into the workplace, and we can't do that without some form of assessment. We've been making a considerable number of changes to the work capability assessment to improve the process and make it a more human experience – claimants now get telephone calls to explain the process, there's more opportunity for people to submit evidence from specialists, we've introduced a new stage so decisions can be reconsidered at Jobcentre Plus level before going to formal appeal.
Over the coming months and years we'll continue to do everything we can to make more improvements. We've accepted every recommendation put to us by Professor Malcolm Harrington, the independent expert who has been reviewing the process for us. When his third review is complete we'll ask someone to carry out further reviews with a fresh pair of eyes – something we agreed with Prof Harrington months ago, an inconvenient fact to those who claim we've either removed him from his post or forced him to stand down.
However many improvements we make, the process will never be perfect. Not every decision made will be the right one. That's why people have the right to appeal. But I want to be absolutely clear on one issue – whatever the claims and misinformation, there are no targets for saving money or finding people fit for work. This whole process is about saving lives, not money, and the latest official statistics showed 26% of new employment and support allowance claimants were put into the support group.
I know the process can be incredibly difficult for people to go through, but those who are capable of working are not left on their own. This whole process couldn't happen if we hadn't put the Work Programme in place, the biggest welfare-to-work scheme the country has ever seen and which gives tailored support to prepare people for the world of work so they're not simply thrown in at the deep end.
In the end, the choice we have is whether to leave two million people to spend the rest of their lives on benefits or whether to identify those who can do more with their lives and give them the help they need to find their way back to work – something we know is better for their health and wellbeing. My view is unashamedly that we must not write people off.
Would sitting at home really have been a better solution for the woman I met? I don't accept it would – and I don't think she would either.