Simon
Senior Member
- Messages
- 3,789
- Location
- Monmouth, UK
From the MEA website
This is depressing: looks like the Government are trying to make the test even harder by the back door, and going in the face of advice from the Fluctuating Conditions Group set up by the Govt's own indepenedent adviser.
The early day motion at least gives us some small chance to block this change.
Commons’ motion to annul the Employment and Support Allowance regulations | 21 January 2013
by Tony Britton on January 24, 2013
Caroline Lucas (Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion) has tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) 947, to ask that the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) amendments be annulled.
So far, the EDM has the support of eight other Opposition MPs.
The amendments made to the ESA mean that claimants can only score on either the physical descriptor for a physical illness or the mental descriptor for a mental illness. The Government has produced a document explaining the amendments to the regulations.
Please contact your local MP if you would like them to sign the EDM.
MEA medical adviser, Dr Charles Shepherd, commented: “The new regulations are going to make it almost impossible for people with ME/CFS (physical disease) to score points in the mental health descriptors in relation to cognitive dysfunction. The only way they will now be able to do this is through having a separate mental health diagnosis (ie depression) as well
“This is the complete opposite to what the Fluctuating Conditions Group set up by the Government’s independent adviser on the Work Capability Assessment (Professor Malcolm Harrington), of which the Countess of Mar’s Forward ME Group is part, have recommended and is now being tested by the an Evidence-Based Review set up by the Department for Work and Pensions.”
This is depressing: looks like the Government are trying to make the test even harder by the back door, and going in the face of advice from the Fluctuating Conditions Group set up by the Govt's own indepenedent adviser.
The early day motion at least gives us some small chance to block this change.
Commons’ motion to annul the Employment and Support Allowance regulations | 21 January 2013
by Tony Britton on January 24, 2013
Caroline Lucas (Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion) has tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) 947, to ask that the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) amendments be annulled.
So far, the EDM has the support of eight other Opposition MPs.
The amendments made to the ESA mean that claimants can only score on either the physical descriptor for a physical illness or the mental descriptor for a mental illness. The Government has produced a document explaining the amendments to the regulations.
Please contact your local MP if you would like them to sign the EDM.
MEA medical adviser, Dr Charles Shepherd, commented: “The new regulations are going to make it almost impossible for people with ME/CFS (physical disease) to score points in the mental health descriptors in relation to cognitive dysfunction. The only way they will now be able to do this is through having a separate mental health diagnosis (ie depression) as well
“This is the complete opposite to what the Fluctuating Conditions Group set up by the Government’s independent adviser on the Work Capability Assessment (Professor Malcolm Harrington), of which the Countess of Mar’s Forward ME Group is part, have recommended and is now being tested by the an Evidence-Based Review set up by the Department for Work and Pensions.”