Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Baroness Campbell of Surbiton and Lord Low of Dalston

Monday 7th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)]

My Lords, I echo my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson’s deep regret at the Government’s rejection of my noble friend Lord Low’s amendments—amendments that were carried in this House with a considerable majority, twice. In my view, our arguments were pretty indisputable, especially with regard to the absence of evidence that cutting severely disabled people’s employment support allowance would incentivise them to work. I think that, deep down, we all know that it is attitudinal and environmental discrimination that prevents this group from accessing employment. This will be borne out very soon in the evidence of the forthcoming Select Committee report on the Equality Act and disability, which is to be launched at the end of this month.

Last week, when I listened to the Government’s arguments in the other place in the debate on the Lords amendments, I have to say that words failed me, particularly when Members were told to separate the “issue” from the more important principle of Commons primacy. I find it very difficult when the niceties of parliamentary protocol trump the lives of disabled people. However, we are where we are, and I have to salvage what I can to protect those who will undoubtedly struggle significantly to make ends meet as a result of such a severe cut to their weekly income.

The Minister has generously—and I mean that—acknowledged the deep anxiety that I and expert disability organisations feel about this policy. He has made great efforts to assure me and them that they will be fully involved in the preparation of the White Paper. He also underlined his commitment to detailing in the annual report on full employment progress towards halving the disability employment gap. He said, “No ifs, no buts. We will do it”. In good faith, I therefore withdrew my amendment on additional reporting on disability.

The Minister is asking us to have faith again today, but I hope and pray that we do not look back on this day as the moment when we pushed some of the most severely disabled people in Britain over the edge. I will try not to let that happen and I will do what I can to become involved in the White Paper and the reporting, but, this time, please will the Minister involve disabled people centrally throughout that process?

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I might be permitted to say a word about the Commons rejection of my amendment. Despite the Minister’s best efforts to soften the impact of the £30 cut in the incomes of disabled people in the employment and support allowance WRAG, which I readily acknowledge, this is a black day for disabled people. The Commons has spoken decisively and we must bow to their wishes, but we do so under protest. Do not let anyone kid you that this is democracy in action. There is more to democracy than just being elected. Questions of representativeness, accessibility, openness and responsiveness all come into it as well. From these standpoints, this House, though unelected, is much more democratic. Organisations representing the needs of poor and dispossessed people find it much easier to get their point across and have it taken on board in the House of Lords than in the House of Commons, which is more politicised and subservient to the Whips—and the Whips were certainly working overtime last Wednesday night in the House of Commons, going round handing out bribes and blandishments like there was no tomorrow.

Last week, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, took me to task for quoting selectively from the Commons debate on our amendments, but I did so because the debate ran largely one way. Last Wednesday, the Minister had a bit more support, but some telling points were still made against the Government. Commenting on the Commons reason for refusing our amendments— that is,

“Because it would alter the financial arrangements made by the Commons, and the Commons do not offer any further Reason, trusting that this Reason may be deemed sufficient”—

Neil Gray, MP for Airdrie and Shotts, said:

“So the Commons did not offer ‘any further Reason’, which I found shocking. The Government could not come up with anything else to say—no empirical evidence, no logical argument, nothing socially responsible or of any consequence. It relied on a pseudo-constitutional technicality to explain the decision to remove £30 a week from the pockets of sick and disabled people on ESA WRAG … What message does that send from this Government to ESA recipients? It says, ‘We don’t need to justify why we are cutting your ESA, we just are. We just can and we just will. We trust that this reason may be deemed sufficient’”.

Helen Goodman, MP for Bishop Auckland, said:

“The Minister said that she was going to spend another £100 million on supporting these people. If her scheme was going to work, she would not need to cut this £30 from such people’s weekly income, because she would get the savings as they all moved into work. This is doomed to fail and the Minister knows it. If she was convinced that it was going to work, she would do the impact assessment, because she would be confident of the upshot. She is not doing so, and she is ignoring the very real impact that this will have on the health of the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens”.

From the Conservative Benches, Stephen McPartland, MP for Stevenage, said:

“I genuinely think we would not have been in this position if the White Paper had been brought forward already and we were not having to take on faith something we are not really sure is going to happen, who the Ministers will be, who will be in charge of the money, and how we are going to move forward for these disabled people”.

With those words in mind, it is essential that the White Paper focuses on better back-to-work support for disabled people and better support for employers. Jo Cox, MP for Batley and Spen, said:

“If implemented, these cuts will surely also hinder the Government’s ambition to halve the disability employment gap. Instead, they will push many disabled people further into poverty and have a significant and harmful impact on the health and wellbeing of many people, including many in my constituency”.

Accordingly, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, that the Government must monitor how these cuts affect disabled people, both in and out of work, and gather evidence as to the impact on disabled people’s physical and mental health and their finances as well as their ability to move towards work, as called for in your Lordships’ amendment.

A little later on, Jo Cox said that,

“it is time to listen to Macmillan, Scope, Sense and Parkinson’s UK, to the many experts who have lined up”,

to oppose the cuts to ESA. Stephen Timms said:

“The judgment that the House has to make … is whether”,

to listen to Ministers or to the organisations representing disabled people. Your Lordships have listened to disabled people, but the House of Commons, which ultimately determines how things play out, has preferred to listen to the Government, who have not been able to give any convincing reason for their decision to cut £30 a week from the incomes of 500,000 disabled people. As I said, it is a black day for those 500,000 disabled people—and for disabled people in general because this action is emblematic of the way in which this Conservative Government have chosen to treat disabled people. As Helen Goodman said:

“The fact is that Ministers are looking for large savings at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable. That was not made clear in the general election campaign; then, the Prime Minister said that disabled people would be protected”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/3/16; cols. 1052-58.]

By this action, the Government have betrayed the trust of disabled people and they should not be surprised if they forfeit it for the rest of their time in office.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Campbell of Surbiton and Lord Low of Dalston

Friday 16th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I wish to make three brief points. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, has told us that disabled people are worried that disability will be equated with terminal illness and that they will be made the subject of “do not resuscitate” notices—indeed, that this happens or, at least, has happened in particular cases. Like all of us, I hugely respect the sincerity of the noble Baroness and appreciate the strength and eloquence of her advocacy, but I genuinely believe that the fears that she has expressed, that this Bill will make the situation worse for disabled people, are misplaced.

I say this for two reasons. First, it is very important that we should be clear that the disabled person has to ask before they can be offered the facilities of this Bill to end their life. Secondly, they need to make an act of conscious choice before they avail themselves of these facilities. With all the safeguards in the Bill, it will actually make the situation of disabled people better.

Thirdly, it is further argued that, in consequence of these fears, disabled people are strongly opposed to this legislation. However, in actual fact, a recent YouGov poll found that 79% of registered disabled people—that is nearly four-fifths, very much in line with the rest of the population—support assisted dying for adults of sound mind with a terminal illness. So, for all these reasons, with the greatest respect, I believe that the arguments that have been advanced on behalf of disabled people are misconceived.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, I feel urged to come in here after the noble Lord, Lord Low, with whom I have worked and whom I have known for many years. We have discussed this subject on numerous occasions, and noble Lords will imagine that we have had some quite heated discussions. I shall add a little bit of information to add clarification. The disability community is made up of people with terminal illnesses. Outside the House today, as noble Lords will know if they have gone out to talk to them, are people sitting in their wheelchairs with terminal conditions saying, “No, this is not about choice—this is not about me asking”. They have often been in situations when they have felt so low that they felt that they had no options; their social care and healthcare was bad and they wanted to die. They could have taken advantage of the Bill proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, because they have a terminal illness. There are at least six people outside these walls today in the freezing cold who have a terminal illness.

There are many people with terminal illnesses in the disability community, and those people have come together to demand that on this Bill we should slow down and think again. They have campaigned for choice and autonomy all their lives, and now they are saying, no, this is not about choice—and we have to listen to them. So please do not tell me that this is not about disabled people. It is very much about us because we are the people with experience of these issues. With the greatest respect, many people who are campaigning for this measure have not experienced these issues. They are people in control of their lives. They are people who fear becoming what they see us as. So I ask, please, that disabled people should be very much a central part of this debate. We have to listen to what they say, even if we do not like what they have to say.

I wish also to make a point of clarification. There seems to be a misunderstanding among noble Lords that I think that terminal illness is about having a chest infection. If I thought that, I would think that I was dying at least three times a year. I am not talking about that. I am talking about life-threatening terminal situations, such as muscle deterioration in the throat, whereby you can no longer eat or drink. That is what I have. Part of the GMC’s guidance on terminal illness concerns that process. I refer also to muscle deterioration within the lungs so that you can no longer breathe. That is terminal. Muscle deterioration around the heart is terminal. COPD is terminal. People with these conditions are part of the disabled community. They are out there—go and talk to them. Answer the letters from disabled people who say that this is not about choice. Ask them why they are saying this. Do not make assumptions about them. This is why I felt that I had to intervene at this point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Low of Dalston]

If people with terminal illnesses do not wish to take advantage of the provisions of this legislation, what is there about it that forces or requires them to do so?

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, the answer to the noble Lord’s question is that they fear that they will take advantage of this legislation when they are at their lowest with no choice. The noble Lord, Lord Low, will understand as much as I do about terminal situations where you do not have choices. These people have said that they do not want this Bill because they know that they might take advantage of it.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Campbell of Surbiton and Lord Low of Dalston

Monday 22nd April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, it is with great sorrow that I find myself here at ping pong, seeking to reinstate Section 3 of the Equality Act 2006. I really do not do this lightly. I know that a challenge to the Government at this stage should be made only when it is absolutely necessary and all other routes have been exhausted. I had hoped that the Government would listen to the many and exceptionally well considered arguments made by all but two noble Lords on Report. I expected something more than a blanket no. That is why, having explained my reasons to the Minister last week, I have retabled the amendments that were overturned in the other place.

We have yet to hear of a single example of how the commission’s capacity to act as the guardian of equality and human rights in Britain will be improved by repealing the general duty in Section 3, a duty which gives a holistic direction to the commission based on principles of dignity, respect and fairness, and takes it to, but not beyond, legal enforcement in helping society change for the better. The Equality and Human Rights Commission itself has said that it now has sufficient focus and, in the absence of robust reasons for removing it, Section 3 should remain.

I ask your Lordships to recall where the duty came from and to consider where its repeal may take us in the future. Twenty years ago today, Stephen Lawrence was murdered by a group of young men for no reason other than the colour of his skin. The Metropolitan Police made a catalogue of errors in the investigation into his murder. Our criminal justice system failed Stephen Lawrence, and it failed his family in their quest for justice. It is a sad truth that it took this tragedy to create a moment of enlightenment. The inquiry, led by Sir William Macpherson, identified that racial discrimination could not be seen as the lone action of a few bad apples. It was part of the institutional culture of the Metropolitan Police.

That insight led to the sea-change in our approach to equality law and the structural support to promote and enforce it. The general duty embodies this shift in thinking. The role of the commission is not simply to seek compensation for those who experience discrimination. As Age UK has noted, it is to pursue cultural change to prevent such discrimination from occurring in the first place. This is not only about racial discrimination. It is about institutional discrimination and violations of human rights in all their guises and across society—for example, in parts of the NHS and our care system, as the EHRC demonstrated in its inquiry into older people’s treatment at home. It is also widespread in the criminal justice system and local authority practice, as the disability hate crime inquiry revealed. It is rife in the exploitation of migrant workers, exposed by the inquiry into the meat processing industry.

Ministers have argued that the general duty is symbolic and aspirational, as if this were enough to dismiss it out of hand. The general duty symbolises our commitment to preventing the kind of injustice faced by the Lawrence family, or the routine abuse of disabled young people in institutions because of indifference and cruelty. It aspires to a society founded on dignity, respect and equality—notoriously absent in these cases. However, contrary to what Ministers claim, the general duty is not, in fact, merely symbolic. Its repeal could have major implications for the commission’s role in monitoring equality and human rights. In the other place last week, the Minister told MPs:

“We are also changing the commission’s monitoring duty to ensure that it reports on its core functions, rather than on the state of society generally”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/4/13; col. 217.]

At present the commission is required to monitor Britain’s progress towards the aims of the general duty. In so doing it holds up a mirror to society, as it did in its seminal report, How fair is Britain?. As the Minister indicated, if the general duty is repealed, the monitoring duty will be fundamentally changed—it will be limited to holding up a mirror to itself and asking only, “How effective is the commission?”. This is why Amendment 35 relating to Section 3 and Amendment 36 relating to Section 12 of the Equality Act 2006 are inseparable and must be considered as one.

The Minister went on to say that changing the monitoring duty,

“will also enable the EHRC to gain the respect hon. Members want it to have as our equality body and national human rights institution”.—[Official Report, 16/4/13; Commons, col. 217.]

This suggests a dangerous misunderstanding by the Government of the requirements of European Union law and the United Nations standards on the status and mandate of national human rights institutions. The likely effect of these proposals would be to prevent the commission, and therefore the UK, from complying with the requirement for equality and human rights bodies independently to monitor the national situation.

This could have very serious consequences. In the light of the Government’s package of reforms the international accreditation committee for national human rights institutions has announced that it will re-examine the commission’s status next month. I do not need to spell out to my noble friends the impact on the UK’s moral authority abroad if, as a direct consequence of these reforms, the commission were to lose its present A-accredited status. Such a development would no doubt be seized on by countries such as Zimbabwe and Iran. At a time when the UK is seeking a seat on the Human Rights Council that is not a risk we should be taking. I am sure noble Lords would agree that we must practise what we preach and lead by example.

The commission’s role as an agent of change matters to millions of people in this country, whether they are an elderly person in hospital, a woman fleeing a violent partner or a black teenager and his friend waiting for a bus. In a civilised society such as ours people in these vulnerable situations should feel confident that our institutions will accord them dignified and fair treatment as equal citizens. Justice is poorly served if our commitment to equality and human rights extends only to offering compensation after an event. For many, it is simply too late.

Today, of all days, we should remember why we put these measures in place and not be so foolish as to believe that it could never happen again. That is why, for the second time, I feel we must send these urgent messages to the other place that the general duty and the duty to monitor its aims must be taken very seriously and must stay. I beg to move.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I was sorry not to be here for Report stage of the Bill but I have read the debate carefully. It left no room for doubt as to the strength of support right across your Lordships’ House for retaining Section 3. In addition to the powerful and principled advocacy of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and others, I attach particular importance to the comprehensive demolition of the Government’s case in legal terms by my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd of Berwick.

Your Lordships will be pleased to hear that I do not propose to go over again all the substantive arguments again, which have been so comprehensively crawled over in Committee and on Report, about the value of duties that cannot be enforced in a court, for example, whether there is a place for the declaratory in legislation, the value of a unifying link between equality and other fundamental human rights—I was rather surprised that the Minister sought to deny that one in her wind-up—the fact that there is nothing in Section 3 that suggests or implies that the commission is to be solely or uniquely responsible for encouraging and supporting the goal of an equal society, the negative message sent by removing the general duty and so on. I think that these arguments have been comprehensively won.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Campbell of Surbiton and Lord Low of Dalston

Monday 14th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment. In fact, it was down in my name, but when I saw how many amendments I was going to put down I thought I was being too greedy. My question to the Minister is very short. Has he had discussions with those in the Department of Health responsible for the prevention agenda with regard to closing the basic rate? It will have a massive impact on the prevention agenda, which is very much about giving a little bit of support and keeping people independent for a lot longer with a lot less cost for healthcare and social care services.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, my name is on the amendment. I will very briefly make clear my support for it. Most of the things that I intended to say have been said, but I will underscore them. My first point is very much the same as that of the noble Lord, Lord Newton. The proposal to eliminate the lowest rate of DLA care when introducing the daily living component of PIP at only two levels is one of the principal causes of the fear and apprehension on the part of disabled people that we talked about when discussing the earlier amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell. As we heard, we are not talking about a small number of people but 652,000, or nearly three-quarters of a million. That is a substantial consideration of which the Government should be mindful.

My other point, which I do not think anybody has made, is that the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, allows the Government room in regulations to reduce the number of disabled people receiving the lowest rate of the care component while still ensuring that some of those who currently access this level of help will not be cut adrift at a stroke from support when the new benefit is introduced. Now I come to think of it, this point is the same as that made by the noble Lord, Lord Newton; it is about transition and flexibility. If the Government, for cost considerations or for any other reason, feel it imperative to push ahead in this direction, I urge them to give serious thought to the question of phasing out and showing flexibility on the precise number who will be cut adrift from the benefit at a stroke. If we need to lose some people, perhaps consideration can be given to articulating the benefit in such a way that not all 652,000 people are affected at once.