I unexpectedly found myself wearing my 'tribunal suit' yesterday,
appropriately (if accidentally) accessorised with a ladder up the left
leg of my tights much as my fictional alter ego Sally Archer. I don't rep for the CAB
in my current role and it must be at least five years since I was last
at our local venue; I was stepping into the breach as a favour for
another organisation and, to be totally honest, grabbing an opportunity
to see a PIP appeal in action. Confidentiality demands that I share no
more details and anyway, I don't know the result, though I'm cautiously
optimistic.
I had wondered whether there might be a
Presenting Officer in attendance, since the rep who had asked me to help
out with this case had encountered one at another recent PIP appeal.
This was unusual as POs tend only to appear for especially contentious
cases, although there was a recent DWP announcement of extra funding to
provide them specifically for PIP appeals. Understandably, reaction
from the broader welfare rights lobby was hostile - this article from the excellent Dr Frances Ryan encapsulating the general sense of unfairness.
I'm
inclined to share this concern although, if these new Presenting
Officers adopted the ethos once prevalent in the role, they could be
more of a help than a hindrance to unrepresented appellants, denied
properly-trained advocates by cuts to Legal Aid and advice service
budgets. Although it suits my fictional stories to (minor spoiler) cast PO Tom
Appleby as one of the DWP 'good guys', it involved no great leap of the
imagination to do so. When I first started representing at
appeals in the later 1980s, POs weren't simply the DWP's man (or woman)
at the table. Their role was to be a 'friend of the Tribunal' and they
could - and often did - speak up for the appellant's case, or at least concede their own gracefully.
In
response to a comment I made on Dr Ryan's article that POs could be a
force for good but I feared the new intake might be cut from rather
different cloth than their predecessors, I was pleased to see the
following:
"I was a PO in the 80s and my training stressed that the role was one of amicus curiae.
I would review the papers for every case and if I was confident the law
had been applied incorrectly to the facts I would tell the tribunal so,
referring them to the appropriate law, including case law if necessary.
If there was time I would speak to the original decision maker and ask
them to revise their decision to save time. That's what POs were
supposed to do. I'd probably be sacked for it these days."
The writer's nom de plume xck33l gives
no clue as to his/her home town or gender but I couldn't help imagining
that these might be the words of a softly-spoken Yorkshireman with a flare for interior decoration.
If the new breed
of POs are to bring consistency and fairness to PIP hearings, it is
vital that they be allowed to exercise the freedom and integrity of the
old guard of POs and not be fettered by targets for tribunal 'wins'. On
those terms, it would actually be rather a good job for some of the
many benefits specialists thrown out of work by the loss of Legal Aid
- as long as they could stay one step ahead of the Social Justice
Ambassadors, of course!
