A former Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) medical director has pledged to speak out about the government’s “fitness for work” test if he finds it is “not proper”, after he was ambushed by campaigners at a conference.
Professor Sir Mansel Aylward had been delivering a keynote speech on the controversial issue of the different “models” used by professionals to explain disability, to the International Forum on Disability Management in central London.
The biennial forum brings together delegates from across the world to discuss how to “manage” disability in the workplace, with those attending including employers, senior figures in the insurance industry, and government and union officials.
Sir Mansel is closely associated with the biopsychosocial (BPS) model, which campaigners say puts much of the blame for disability on the disabled person, rather than the social model explanation, which says disability is created by the barriers of attitude and environment disabled people face.
A small group of protesters delivered a copy of a letter written to the Guardian newspaper – signed by 420 disabled people, including many leading activists – to Sir Mansel, outside the hall where he had given his speech.
The letter claims the BPS model is “nothing short of a creation of the insurance industry”, and is being used to deny disabled people the support they need through the benefits system.
It also criticises the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) for organising the conference and lending “an aura of legitimacy” to the “pseudo-scientific approach” of the BPS model.
The protesters told Sir Mansel that the much-criticised work capability assessment (WCA) – used to test eligibility for out-of-work disability benefits, and introduced in 2008 – was based on the BPS model and had been heavily influenced by the insurance industry.
Sir Mansel admitted that the assessment was developed from the “all work test” he introduced himself in 1997 while at the DWP.
He surprised protesters by claiming that he could not comment on the WCA because he did “not know enough about it”, but pledged to “make myself aware based on what you have told me”.
He added: “I think I am a man of integrity. If I think the WCA is not proper I will speak out against it.”
Sir Mansel said he sympathised with the protesters, and himself now found the BPS model “unsatisfactory” and believed it “no longer addresses the real needs of disabled people and the exclusion of disabled people from society”.
He said the “social” element of the BPS model had been “neglected” and that he had a personal “distaste” for the medical model, which focuses on people’s impairments as the cause of their disability.
