ACC has no record of advising then-minister how many claimants should be back at work

Wednesday, 12 March 2025

ACC says it has no record it can find advising its ex-minister Andrew Bayly that 12,000 people who had been receiving ACC for more than a year should be back at work.

The state-owned insurer said it had provided no formal advice on the number of long-term claimants who could return to work.

Bayly resigned his ministerial portfolios last month, following a complaint that he had placed his hand on a staffer’s arm during what he described as an animated discussion.

During his brief, one-month stint as the minister responsible for ACC, Bayly stated that about half of the people who had been receiving ACC compensation for more than a year — about 12,000 claimants — “literally should be back at work”.

If correct, that would imply that the deficit-burned ACC could be paying out hundreds of millions of dollars unnecessarily.

Asked to confirm he meant those people were ready to go back to work, Bayly confirmed at the time that was his understanding based on what he had been told by ACC, clarifying the number could be 10,000 or 13,000 but was a substantial share of long-term claimants.

The number of people receiving ACC for more than a year has roughly doubled since 2014.

ACC deputy chief executive Michael Frampton has told the The Post that of the approximately 24,000 clients in its long-term claims pool, it was “proactively engaging with about 15,000 clients to support their return to work or independence”.

But responding to an Official Information Act request, the insurer said it “did not provide the minister with formal advice on the number of long-term claimants who could return to work”.

The insurer said Bayly attended several meetings with its board, leadership, and client-facing staff to learn about the organisation and the work ACC had underway to address current performance challenges.

But it declined an OIA request for copies or records of any advice given by its board or executive that it thought could have resulted in Bayly forming his stated views, saying that information “does not exist or, despite our best efforts, cannot be found”.

A spokesperson for Bayly said on Tuesday that a common theme in his discussions with ACC was its deteriorating case management performance which had led to growth in the long-term claims pool.

“The view that Mr Bayly received from everyone he spoke to, including ACC officials, was that due to a decision by ACC to move away from one-to-one case management, the long terms claim pool had increased to unsustainable levels and that a significant portion of these people shouldn’t be receiving weekly compensation and should be expected to return to work.

“In various discussions ACC officials estimated that number to be between 10,000 to 13,000,” she said.

Hazel Armstrong, a lawyer who specialises in ACC claims, said all the people in the long-term claims pool would have an incapacity of some sort and a medical certificate, as otherwise they wouldn’t be receiving ACC.

The grey area would be whether some might be capable of returning to work in an area outside of their chosen profession, she suggested.

There was a now rarely used mechanism by which ACC could force claimants to attempt to do that, but that was “brutal”, she said.

In practice that usually meant pushing people into unemployment and onto social security as there were no incentives for employers to take on people with disabilities, she said.

Labour ACC spokesperson Rachel Boyack said the Government had been “caught red-handed” making misleading claims about the number of people on ACC who are ready to return to work.

“The new ACC Minister Scott Simpson must step up where his predecessor failed and correct these baseless claims.

“He needs to reassure New Zealanders that they’re not planning to stop thousands of injured and recovering New Zealanders from receiving the ACC support they are entitled to,” she said.