Tag Archives: DLA
Disability benefits: Minister to clarify assessment regulations
Ministers are clarifying how mobility disability assessments are carried out following criticism of changes to Personal Independence Payments.
Those unable to walk more than 20m would automatically qualify, rather than the previous distance of 50m.
But peers said the new regulations should include the requirement that tasks be done “reliably, safely, repeatedly and in a timely manner”.
Welfare Minister Lord Freud said he was looking “very actively” at the issue.
Lord Freud came under fire over the new system of Personal Independence Payments, which replaces Disability Living Allowance, during question time in the Lords.
Ministers say the new benefit will be targeted at those who need it most.
Disabled fearful of income loss, campaigners say
Eight-in-10 people claim losing their disability living allowance (DLA) will drive them into isolation, a coalition of 90 disabled people’s groups says.
In a survey of more than 4,500 UK disabled people, the Hardest Hit campaign found nine in 10 fear the DLA loss will be bad for their health.
The DLA is to be replaced in 2013 by the personal independence payment.
The government said money was too often wasted on overpayments where people’s conditions have changed.
At Prime Minister’s Questions last week, David Cameron spoke of the plan to give more money to “severely disabled children” and a lower amount for less disabled people, which “showed the right values and the right approach”.
Royal Mail staff given access to confidential medical details
Benefits application forms are routinely opened and sorted by postal workers
Nina Lakhani
Saturday 08 September 2012
Confidential medical information from sick and disabled people applying for welfare benefits is opened and sorted by Royal Mail staff on behalf of the Government without the claimant’s knowledge or consent, The Independent can reveal.
Medical experts reacted angrily to the potential for breaches in confidentiality after it emerged that the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) routinely uses Royal Mail to process the thousands of benefits claims, including health data, it receives every day.
The revelations have prompted fresh concerns about the fact that the handling of sensitive personal information can be legally outsourced without the subject’s consent.
