Cruel Assessment Regime Snatches Mobility Scooters : MORNING STAR

Tens of thousands lose vital support thanks to arbitrary PIP rules

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THOUSANDS of disabled people have had their adapted cars and scooters snatched away from them after being put through cruel benefit assessments, charity Motability reveals today.

MPs and campaigners are demanding action after 51,000 people had their Motability vehicles withdrawn following a personal independence payment (PIP) assessment.

The figure represents almost half — 45 per cent — of all cases reassessed under PIP since it launched in 2013.

One mother with multiple sclerosis (MS) was left without her Motability car for nearly a year based on nothing more than a PIP assessor tickling her hand with a feather.

Sam Adams, 41, was denied the higher rate of PIP when she was reassessed last year despite having collapsed in the past after losing all the strength in her legs.

She recalled how her assessor decided that she could walk the required distance despite not having seen her move.

Ms Adams said: “How she came to that conclusion when she’s not seen me walk, she’s not seen me walk up and down stairs — all she did was tickle my hand with a feather.

“What conclusions she was coming to from tickling my hand with a feather I’ll never know.”

Ms Adams was forced to fight her case through a tribunal to overturn the decision and won.

She hopes to have her Motability car back by the end of April.

Ms Adams is one of more than 3,000 people, out of the 51,000 affected, who have successfully overturned their PIP assessment, forcing the government to put them back on the Motability scheme.

The situation has drawn cross-party fury.

Labour’s former work and pensions minister Angela Eagle warned that in the worst cases people are having the ability to live their life taken away, leaving some housebound.

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