Views over the rights and wrongs of capital punishment are mixed, but there is far greater consensus over the fact that the two risks of error are not even-sided – killing someone wrongly, albeit inadvertently wrongly, is totally unacceptable and if the consequence is that occasionally a guilty person slips through the net, so be it.
So why is this view not mirrored with the Work Capability Assessment (#WCA) when it is well known that erroneous fit-for-work (FFW) decisions have been at least a contributing factor in the deaths of well over 1,000 people?
Not once have successive Governments even undertaken a risk analysis (or so they tell us) to consider the consequences of a wrong FFW assessments, the only legitimate basis for which would be that they could demonstrate the risk was genuinely non-existent.
They may have been unbelievably naive at the outset, but cannot fall back on this excuse after 4 years. They know of course that such an analysis would have to be published and they would be vilified for ignoring the results, so better not to do one at all. This in turn can only mean that they do not care, that the end justifies the means and that the collateral damage along the way, however severe, is the price “one” has to pay. NO Government has this remit, no matter how well mandated & democratic it claims to be.
If the Goverment thinks this is an unfair summary of their position, they simply need to perform the risk analysis. There is no arguement for not doing so.
The whole ESA, WCA, DWP, JCPlus, Atos Healthcare debacle. You couldn't make it up! As with other parts of the public sector, you don't know what really goes on until you see it first hand.
