I fully empathise and sympathise with the article about Andrew McDonald (Top former civil servant lambasts ‘hostile’ disability benefits system, 6 October) and recognise the scenario all too well. It is almost impossible to get a fair and accurate personal independence payment (Pip) assessment under the current system.

I volunteer as an advocate for people on the autistic spectrum, helping them with their employment and support allowance (ESA) and Pip applications, writing mandatory reconsiderations and attending tribunals. The whole assessment procedure is indeed “a hostile environment” and “crude and unprofessional”.

The process is demeaning, dehumanising, grossly unfair, flawed and uncaring. Plus, it is a serious waste of public money.

The “health professionals” often have little or no expertise in the medical condition or disability being assessed. This is certainly true for my clients with autism. References to “illness”, for example, are common. Yet these brief informal observations, coupled with disingenuous superficial “mental health” screenings, seem salient in the decisions – often in direct contradiction to the completed form and medical evidence.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) insists on evidence. I have repeatedly asked it, on behalf of my clients, to identify what proof could be supplied for such descriptors as cooking a meal, wearing appropriate clothing or washing and bathing without prompting, other than testimony on the form. When the claimant’s – or advocate’s – written statement is discounted, the implication is that the claimant is lying. Nobody would choose to be disabled and suffer this humiliating process.

Ann Moore

Stocksfield, Northumberland

• Andrew McDonald is right to broadcast his dire experience of the administration of Pip by the DWP via its outsourcing to private contractors Atos and Capita.

He criticises the assessment system as a hostile environment and notes that “if you are on a low income the sudden decision to stop Pip is a really serious blow”. We have sent to the UN special rapporteur on human rights and extreme poverty a statement of just how very low that income is for the unemployed after Pip is stopped. The outgoing single adult jobseeker’s allowance of £73.10 a week equates to the incoming universal credit of £317 a month. Prof Jonathan Bradshaw of York University shows it has been losing value since 1979. Increases have been frozen since 2011. Without Pip 270 councils out of 326 since April 2013 enforce a proportion of council tax, and since then JSA also has to pay rent because housing benefit was cut. It is effectively worthless.

Rev Paul Nicolson

Taxpayers Against Poverty

• At the Conservative party conference Theresa May promised to remember all those who died in the first world war, and the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, saluted the courage of today’s British military forces (.

But in the real world the betrayal of this nation’s disabled war pensioners hasn’t yet made the headlines. All severely disabled war pensioners who were disabled prior to the introduction of the armed forces compensation scheme in 2005 knew that the government acknowledged their service to the nation. They were awarded a military disability pension plus access to a Motability car, provided via the disability living allowance (DLA), as promised for life to every profoundly disabled veteran in receipt of a war pension. With access to a Motability car, these disabled veterans had guaranteed personal transport, which was often adapted to meet their physical limitations and used for daily transport to work for those still capable of earning a living.

But the coalition government decided that 80,000 profoundly disabled working-age war pensioners were to lose DLA, which was replaced by the discredited Pip, and the years of military service to the nation by working-age war pensioners were inexplicably disregarded. Only war pensioners over retirement age were permitted to retain DLA.

Since DLA was gradually stopped and former claimants were invited to claim Pip, many disabled working-age war pensioners have lost their Motability vehicle because they failed to secure access to Pip, which is the new access to a Motability vehicle. Many lost their jobs because they could no longer get to work.

We now have the unacceptable situation of a Conservative government showing gratitude for the sacrifices of British military forces who died 100 years ago while at the same time,the DWP disregards the sacrifice of 80,000 working-age disabled war pensioners and reduces many of them to being prisoners in their own homes.

All disabled war pensioners were disabled in the service of this nation, and all profoundly disabled war pensioners should have been entitled to retain access to the promised DLA for life, instead of 80,000 of them being forced to succumb to the Pip assessment, which many fail due entirely to the limitations of that flawed assessment.

Mo Stewart

Disabled war pensioner (WRAF), Wisbech, Cambridgeshire

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