Personal Independence Payment: Mobility Criterion

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Peterborough]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, and thank her for bringing this Motion before the House. I have a simple point to make.

The tick-box approach is rarely the right one. People are individuals and wherever possible should be treated as such. While it is clear that the 20-metre rule is too restrictive, setting a replacement figure, whether the old one of 50 metres or some other, is still arbitrary and a matter of ticking boxes instead of treating people as people. The high number of successful appeals, whatever the reasons, shows that the 20-metre rule simply does not work.

If a distance has to be used to make this assessment, I would prefer, with the evidence, to return to the figure of 50 metres. But surely that is not the best way to make an assessment of the needs of a real person. We need a careful assessment by a professional, who already knows the claimant or who can take the time to get to know them, of what they really require in their context given the ups and downs of their condition, allowing for where they live, work, shop, take their recreation and meet their friends. This would mean a well-trained cadre of assessors allowed a reasonable degree of discretion and flexibility, and able to assess each claimant as an individual and allow to each the dignity and worth of a human being.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester has been a tireless advocate for disabled people, using her skills, knowledge and empathy to try to influence government’s attitude to disabled people, their independence and their well-being. However, the 20-metre rule has little to do either with well-being or independence; it is a crude measure to save money. Once again, the Treasury’s guns are trained on those of working age.

Ministers must know, when they reflect privately, that it is short-sighted in the extreme to take away from disabled people who are at an age where it is hoped they could get paid work the very thing that might help get them to and from work. The Motability scheme is well known and understood by its users, and hinges on providing their independence. The Access to Work scheme is a much more limited scheme than Motability and will never be considered a substitute by the people who matter in this—the end-users. What money is saved by snatching cars away from disabled people will almost certainly be lost again in reduced tax revenues as people slip away from employment through no fault of their own. The Government have said that they are sticking with 20 metres because there is “no consensus” around an alternative distance. Other government departments use 50 metres, so it is not that there is a lack of consensus but that the DWP refuses to join the consensus.

As a former local councillor, I know only too well the problems that used to be associated with blue badge parking discs. Yet when the regulations around eligibility and enforcement were tightened up by the coalition Government, the key criterion that they chose to maintain was that a person should be unable to walk more than 50 metres. The Minister must recognise the sense of having some symmetry in the rules about who has special parking rights because of their lack of mobility and who is entitled to some help with having a car in the first instance—also because of their lack of mobility. Do the Government seriously suppose that a person capable of walking only 25 metres, for example, can access public transport with ease? The suggestion beggars belief.

The 20-metre rule is an appalling change, which will be keenly felt in the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people whom it will affect. My noble friend has given the House a clear opportunity to send a strong message to the Government that they must think again. I hope that noble Lords on all sides of the House will make sure that that message is loud and clear.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, on securing this debate tonight. As others have said, she is tenacious on this issue. I have been on the receiving end of some of that at former times when I was a Minister, so I know it is for real. The issue that has been raised tonight was debated intensely when we considered the Welfare Reform Bill in 2012. The usual voices have been heard again tonight. We had an extensive debate around the nature of disability in the social and medical model and there were concerns that the approach to PIP would become very much a tick-box exercise. That has proved to be the case.

As other noble Lords said, the 50-metre threshold is used in the DLA and in ESA. The criteria are not necessarily directed in the same manner, but it is a tried and tested threshold. The Government at the time prayed in aid for the 20-metre rule that they had had discussions with people, eventually. If that is the Government’s justification, it is impossible for them now to argue against having urgent discussions with those same people to address the problems that are clearly emerging from the application of what has turned out to be a pernicious rule.

This Motion has our wholehearted support. My noble friend will reinforce that in a moment, but I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas: this is a real issue and she should stick at it.

Motability

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

The current rules we use for assessment allow people to buy their used Motability car if they so wish—but the rules of the scheme have been carefully set and assessed.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, are the Government confident that the four reliability criteria are being clearly explained to claimants by all health professionals in view of the high success rate of PIP appeals?

[Baroness Altmann]

The success rate of the appeals in PIP has much more to do with the fact that the appeal case hears far more evidence and the person who appeals has had time to put forward their arguments. The appeal would normally hear new and different evidence from that which has been placed before the assessor in the past.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment, which my noble friend Lady Campbell moved with great eloquence. After her speech, there is not really a lot that I can add but I will summarise the points that I want to make.

The Conservative Party manifesto set this ambitious aim to halve the disability employment gap by 2020. As we have heard from my noble friend Lady Campbell, this gap has been intractable over many years. It is quite structural and it will not be easy to reduce it substantially, let alone halve it. There is a real concern that, unless the Government actively measure, and are required to report regularly on, progress towards attaining this goal, it may not be achieved and a crucial opportunity to deliver on disability employment will be lost. This is a wonderful opportunity. The Government are much to be congratulated on setting this goal but it will take a lot of work to achieve it. Having targets specific to this objective and reporting regularly on them will be necessary if we are to monitor the progress desired and to take remedial action if required.

There are three other specific reasons why I think we should support the amendment. The first is simply consistency of approach. The Bill introduces reporting requirements on the Government’s pledges to achieve full employment and fund 3 million new apprenticeships but there is no similar reporting requirement on halving the disability employment gap. So simply from the point of view of consistency of approach, it would seem to make sense to have a specific reporting requirement for this objective as well.

Secondly, disability employment presents very specific problems which are not well understood across government, and that is part of the reason why the employment gap has proved so intractable over so many years. The DWP is getting on top of it but I do not think the same can be said of government departments generally. It would provide a departmental and cross-governmental focus on disability employment and reducing the disability employment gap, and help to embed this in the organisational culture, if there were specific reporting requirements in relation to this.

Thirdly, simply from the point of view of targeting support, introducing clear reporting on how many disabled people are in employment, separate from scrutiny of other employment statistics, will allow better analysis of how current support arrangements are working and help the Government to better target resources and support where they are most needed. It will also enable data to be disaggregated by such things as learning disabilities, autism, mental health problems, visual impairment, deafness and hearing problems—things such as are mentioned in the amendment.

On all these grounds—consistency of approach, providing an incentive for action across government and targeting support where it is most needed—my noble friend Lady Campbell has made a very strong case for the amendment, and I wholeheartedly support it.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, has said, in Committee, the Minister said that the amendment is not necessary because a report on progress will be included in the annual report on full employment. However, my concern is that although the Government are very good at proposing big ideas and related targets, they seldom back them up with clear and unambiguous plans as to how they will achieve them. Halving the disability employment gap is a prime example of this.

Amendment 1 will guarantee that the Government must report to Parliament on progress and sets out clearly the form that this reporting should take. It will enable proper public and parliamentary scrutiny, and will provide consistent and thorough data which will give the Government the information that they need to measure the impact and progress of their policies, year on year.

I know from a number of my disabled friends of the enormous barriers that they have to climb through in trying to find a job: being invited to interviews just to ensure that employers can tick a “disability” box; losing out, time and again, to candidates far less qualified than they are to do the job for which they are being interviewed; receiving rejection letters giving reasons for their rejection that simply do not add up; and the heartache of knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that the real reason they did not get the job is simply because they are disabled. This is all because employers, particularly SMEs, do not understand that somebody who is blind can be every bit as good as, if not better than—at IT, for example—somebody who is able to see properly. These employers running small companies have no idea of the specialist equipment that is available to disabled people. So although they are generally sympathetic, they are just not willing to take a step into the unknown by employing disabled people.

I am very grateful to the Minister that in his letter following Committee stage he answered the questions I had posed to him about the steps the Government were taking to support more disabled people into work. At the moment, the Bill is quite silent on that. I look forward to seeing what the White Paper will say on how the Government plan to improve support for disabled people. However, to significantly close the employment gap, we need to begin now and to raise the game of all government departments on meeting the target. This can be achieved only by giving the exercise a much higher priority.

At a time when so much is happening, a separate reporting amendment will provide cross-governmental focus on the laudable aim of halving the disability employment gap. Placing this requirement in the Bill will demonstrate the commitment the Government have made to improve the employment rate for disabled people. It will also clearly demonstrate to Parliament and the public the priority and importance that the Government place on this goal and ensure efforts to deliver it.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)]

My Lords, before I speak to Amendment 67 I apologise to the Minister for not being here at Second Reading. Unfortunately, it clashed with the hearing of the Select Committee on the Equality Act on disability provisions and I was very torn as where to go, so I ask him to forgive me for not being there at that time.

I am delighted that Amendment 67 has the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and my noble friends Lord Low of Dalston and Lady Hollins. Amendment 67 would require the Secretary of State to report each year on the Government’s progress in meeting their commitments to halving the disability employment gap. My amendment is designed to ensure that this commitment has the prominence it needs if it is to come to fruition.

I was delighted and honoured to receive many invitations last month to speak on the 20th anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. One of the key objectives that drove our campaign at the time was to end discrimination faced by disabled people in the workplace. The Disability Discrimination Act made it unlawful to discriminate against disabled employees, which was a good start, but we all know that legislation alone cannot provide all the solutions—and it did not.

One need only glance at the statistics to see that disabled people are still facing significant challenges which prevent them pursuing interesting careers. At present, the employment rate for disabled people is 47.6%; for non-disabled people, it is 80.5%—a gap of over 30%, and it has been stuck at that level for more than a decade. The Government identified this gap as one of their election priorities and committed to halving it by the end of the term. That was a very bold commitment but one that I praised enormously.

The Minister for Disabled People in another place has put his weight behind the Disability Confident campaign to raise employers’ awareness of disabled people’s potential, in the hope that they will get the same opportunities as their non-disabled peers. It is a laudable aim but not quite as new as it purports to be. The Business Disability Forum has been promoting a similar campaign in great detail for years upon years. Nor is this a solution to the gap. It helps, of course, but it will not achieve the objective on its own. As many organisations working in the field have found, awareness-raising is important but it goes only so far—and not that far, I am afraid.

The disability employment gap illustrates the systemic and deep-seated inequality that disabled people in the workplace face. It is constantly there, whether the economy is booming or in recession. That is why the Government need to step up their oversight and target action where it is needed. It is not enough simply to count the employment numbers. It is the employment gap that needs to be measured in more detail. The Minister for Disabled People in the other place said that measuring progress towards full employment will include some—I repeat: some—reporting of the gap. That is of course welcome but, if change is to be driven across government, we need to have a proper reporting mechanism enshrined in law to incentivise all departments to scrutinise what goes on beyond the headline figure. Reporting against specific groups of disabled people will give the Government a greater understanding of how to tackle the complex reef of barriers to work. These are deeply ingrained at every stage of the path to employment, including further and higher education and apprenticeships, which I shall come to later.

Support for disabled people in other areas is crucial to their ability to work. It also needs factoring in when addressing the employment gap, as I shall briefly illustrate. In a recent research study carried out by the charity Scope, 79% of disabled users of social care said that support services are vital to help them to work, seek work, volunteer and study. The research further showed that fewer than half of disabled people now receive the support they need to live independently and access jobs.

Inadequate support for independent living is another massive barrier to the employment of disabled people. Without assistance to get out of bed, wash, dress, have breakfast and leave the house, it is nigh-on impossible to find and retain a job. The lack of work income has an impact on the independence of disabled people, and in the end creates a vicious circle. Therefore, reporting on the gap would help the Government to get a more accurate picture of what is behind these figures. It would enable them to plan a well-co-ordinated cross-departmental response to the long-term chronic unemployment cycle in which disabled people are caught.

In the recent spending review it was announced that more than £115 million would be invested in the joint health and work unit. A requirement to report annually to departments on progress towards halving the disability employment gap, in the detail set out in my amendment, would support the unit and provide a cross-departmental employment focus.

I look forward to the Minister’s response to my amendment. I hope he will appreciate that it is an enabling amendment that is intended to be helpful and to ensure that the Government continue to support disabled people in playing an active role in our country’s growing economy. It is time to move on from awareness raising.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 67 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, and in particular to support the right of disabled people to access employment. As the noble Baroness has just said, it is quite shameful that almost half the working age population of disabled people is without a job.

The Bill includes little detail on how the Government plan to halve the disability employment gap. Perhaps the Minister could kindly tell the House what practical and measurable steps they are taking to achieve the target and how they plan to involve disabled people themselves in formulating the plans.

Disabled people clearly know from personal experience the barriers they face to finding and staying in work; despite the best intentions of successive Governments, disabled people face major discrimination when trying to get work. Employer attitudes are a particular problem, not because employers do not care but because they often see disabled people as “risky hires”.

One of my friends, who has an excellent degree, exceptional IT skills and is very personable, has spent 10 years trying to get work without success. The fact that he is blind has been a major problem, largely because employers have absolutely no idea what specialist equipment is available that would allow him to play a full part in the workplace. He tells stories of explaining to employers that he can type because there is a special programme. It is not that employers do not care; they do not know. It is therefore essential to find ways to educate employers about the specialist employment support that is available to disabled people. Although I am sure that the large employers understand what systems are available, I have spoken to about 50 SMEs and the vast majority have little or no idea of how disabled people operate and the huge contribution they could make to their business.

In the latest spending review the Government announced plans for a new work and health programme to provide specialist support for claimants with health conditions or disabilities and those who have been unemployed for more than two years. Can the Minister confirm that the programme will be similar to the Work Choice model and say whether it will respond directly to the specific barriers to work that disabled people experience?

Access to Work is a vital scheme that enables many disabled people to stay and progress in work. The Government also announced in the spending review a real-terms increase in spending on Access to Work. This is extremely welcome, but it can only make a difference if employers and disabled people know that it exists. This is not the case all the time. The investment also comes with a great opportunity to improve Access to Work itself. Will the Minister, for example, consider an approach which delivers Access to Work through a single personal budget for employment support that is available both before and during employment? Disabled people tell me that this could make a huge difference, because it would guarantee prospective employers that any adjustments a disabled person needed would follow the person and would already be in place. It would take away the concern that they would not be able to provide what was needed.

If reporting requirements are included in the Bill, it will provide a departmental and cross-government focus on these laudable goals and ensure that achieving them is embedded in the organisational culture. It will also ensure that successive Governments remain committed to delivering the changes in policy, practice and, more particularly, public attitudes that mean that disabled people can find the employment they want and so desperately need.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, in introducing his amendment, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said quite early on that he wanted to put the proposal on hold until the Government could demonstrate that it would work. I think, therefore, that the problem with Amendment 50 is that it simply asking for the Secretary of State’s best guess or estimate. I suggest that we cannot demonstrate that it will work until it is implemented in practice.

The Government have already given an assessment of the policy change. In his Budget speech, the Chancellor said that ESA,

“was supposed to end some of the perverse incentives in the old incapacity benefit, but instead it has introduced new ones. One of those is that those who are placed in the work-related activity group receive more money a week than those on jobseeker’s allowance, but get nothing like the help to find suitable employment. The number of JSA claimants has fallen by 700,000 since 2010, while the number of incapacity benefits claimants has fallen by just 90,000. That is despite 61% of claimants on the ESA WRAG benefit saying that they want to work”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/15; col. 333.]

I simply say as someone with a little bit of experience of politics that, if that is the judgment that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has already made, I cannot see any assessment by the Secretary of State coming to radically different conclusions. Also, even if the Government employed 20 experts, I think we would end up with 40 different opinions of how it might work in practice. I believe that the policy is right in principle but it is crucial to make sure that it works in practice.

As far as saving money is concerned, I would simply say the following, although it may not be popular in all quarters. When I see, participate in and indeed benefit from some of the extraordinary medical improvements that are being made daily, I cannot understand why expenditure on disability benefits has risen so much—by £2 billion in the last Parliament. I cannot believe that as a country we are becoming more disabled, but maybe we are.

It is clear—and everyone agrees—that most people who are disabled want to work if they can. We have to ensure that they are correctly assessed and given the right incentives and help, and that employers are constantly reminded of their responsibilities. Despite some criticisms of the WCA, I think that it has been getting a little better under each Government. I know nothing about cancer or mental health but I have some experience of progressive illnesses, where one can move from being fit to work and able to do practically anything to having limited capacity for work or work-related activity, to being completely unfit for work.

Let us take as examples Parkinson’s disease and MS. I have been pretty lucky. Some people go downhill very quickly but there are huge variations, and we cannot have a policy of one case fits all. Some people may be able to walk okay but are hit by terrible fatigue, rendering them unfit to work, although they otherwise seem physically capable.

I had to retire as an MP in 2010 because I no longer had the stamina to do the phenomenal 80-plus hours a week which MPs have to do and are expected to do, as well as completing a phenomenal amount of travelling. Even though I got round all the flooded areas of Cumbria in 2005, I would not have managed it last weekend because I do not have the energy for that now. Of course, I accept that parliamentarians are not a very good test group for people in the country; nevertheless, there are tens of thousands of people who can work in some way but need to drop down a gear or two and do lesser work than they did in the past. Those in the WRAG must not be left to fester until they move inexorably on to the support group. Of course, there are many tens of thousands with a disability who have limited capacity but will not progress to the unfit-to-work-at-all category.

Finally, I want to comment on employers and their responsibility. I support the work of the Disability Confident campaign but we have to educate and pressure employers more. I do not think that employers are institutionally prejudiced against disabled people but they are a bit afraid—they are not quite sure what to do. The same could be said of many of your Lordships. When those of us in wheelchairs approach a door, most noble Lords want to jump and help to open it for us, but then they are slightly afraid. Will we get stroppy that they have tried to help us, because we want to be independent and do it ourselves? It is also a bit like men opening a door for a lady. Is it a nice gentlemanly gesture or is it some sexist put-down?

Employers are in a similar position. They want to help but they do not quite understand disability. They are afraid that there may be a drop in efficiency in the business or that their other employees will complain that they are “carrying” the disabled people. They are afraid that they may be more subject to industrial relations disputes or be taken to a tribunal if they have not tweaked the facilities in exactly the right way. They know that there is a wide range of disabilities but they think, “We’ll put in a wheelchair ramp and we might be able to employ someone who’s deaf, though we’re not sure we can employ someone who is blind or partially sighted”. It is much easier to find an excuse not to employ disabled people. I believe that we can do a huge amount more to educate employers that it is a safe risk to take and that people are capable of doing certain things—not every task in the company, but certain things.

I conclude by setting an example. I have a little bee in my bonnet about Parliament. We in this House are protected by the most wonderful doorkeepers, who will throw themselves in front of a speeding bullet to save our lives. However, there are guys and women coming back from Afghanistan with no arms or legs. When we see them running and winning marathons, it is clear that they are as fit as fiddles. We should employ some of those people in this House as well—perhaps as doorkeepers and in other capacities—because, if we in Parliament do not set an example and show that you can take on people who are apparently severely disabled but can do either a full-time or a part-time job, then we cannot harangue employers that they are failing in their responsibilities.

Without going into all the details of the work incentives and the £30 reduction—those have been given by the experts on all sides who have spoken today—I simply say that I think we can get the incentives right. If we can achieve the end result of making employers recruit more disabled people, then this policy is worth testing in the medium term.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, reading the text of Clauses 13 and 14, as with so much legislation, does little to reveal the huge impact that this change is likely to have, but the impact is going to be very severe for disabled people. The argument that cutting benefits for disabled people will incentivise them to work is, frankly, insulting. As many other noble Lords have said, disabled people want to work if they can. People with progressive illnesses would love to feel remission and resume their careers, and people struck down with serious illnesses or mental ill-health would give almost anything to be well again.

That is why it is so iniquitous to claim that this cut in support will somehow incentivise a return to employment. Surely it would be more honest for the Government simply to say, “If £73.10 a week is enough for people on jobseeker’s allowance, it’s enough for people on employment and support allowance with limited work capabilities”. But that is not correct.

First, if you are fit and healthy, unemployment is expected to be short-term, although for many sometimes it is not. For the majority it is possible to scrimp by on subsistence living for a few weeks or months while looking for a job, but if you are not fit for work and have a debilitating long-term condition, then it could, sadly, be years and years before you get back into work, if at all. Scraping by without buying clothes or replacing worn-out household items becomes increasingly difficult, as does dealing with increased prices. The further impact on physical and mental well-being is extraordinary and depressing for many people.

There are also costs associated with being sick or disabled: the costs of travelling to medical appointments, of extra heating, of specialised diets and of mobility aids—all the things that are required because of your illness or disability. These extra costs significantly impact on disabled people’s savings, which makes managing on low incomes for very long periods incredibly difficult.

Finally, there are the huge barriers faced by disabled people who try to find work once the Government have assessed them as able to return to work or to enter the workforce. The vast majority of employers, whether meaning to or not, look at disabled people and see only a problem. They seldom see the opportunity to benefit from their determination and talent. The Government have recognised this problem with their commitment to tackle the disability employment gap. Sadly, in Clauses 13 and 14 that commitment has been translated into a snatch-and-grab raid against sick and disabled people, who need support to find work when they can, not the threat of no food on the table if they cannot.

I sincerely hope that the Government will reconsider this proposal, which would have the most severe consequences for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, I want to talk about the review of ESA, which I was involved in, along with my noble friends Lord Low and Lady Meacher. As they have said, the review found no evidence to back up the assertion that the £30-a-week component is acting as a disincentive for sick and disabled people to work. The barriers to work for disabled people are long-standing and far more complex than that, involving myriad reasons.

It its response, Parkinson’s UK gave an excellent example of how the disincentive argument falls down:

“Given that Parkinson’s is a progressive condition, it is not possible to ‘incentivise’ someone to look for work, or to return to work more quickly by cutting their ESA support. Parkinson’s UK is particularly concerned that the impact assessment for Clause 13 of the Bill suggests that someone could ‘by working around 4-5 hours a week at National Living Wage, recoup the notional loss of the WRAG component’. This is not a realistic possibility for anyone with a progressive condition who has already been acknowledged as too unwell to work”.

The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, made some interesting points about employing disabled people in this House. I suggest that we go a little further. I would like more disabled people to work for the Department for Work and Pensions, and to work on WCA and PIP assessments. Who better to assess who can and cannot do something than a disabled person with such a condition?

The work capability assessment is an important part of this debate. Although the review did not set out to look at it specifically, a huge number of respondents wrote to tell us about it—the horrific experience they had had and the fear, stress and anxiety the process had caused. Between December 2014 and June 2015, 53% of everyone who had appealed their ESA fit-for-work decision had it reversed, which tells us a huge amount about the accuracy of the assessment. I am certain that many would agree with me. Indeed, the Work and Pensions Select Committee has recommended that the Government,

“undertake a fundamental redesign of the ESA end-to-end process”.

Getting the assessment right and ensuring that disabled people are offered the right support to help them take steps towards work is fundamental.

Many respondents told us that the proposed £30-a-week cut would hinder their ability to undertake work-related activity, training, work placements and volunteering, as well as to get to and from work-focused interviews or indeed job interviews. Transport is often inaccessible for disabled people, particularly those with mobility difficulties or who, like me, are wheelchair users. A survey carried out by Leonard Cheshire found that 59% of respondents had been refused access to public transport because of their disability. I estimate that at least once a month I am refused access to public transport. I declare that I am a member of the board of Transport for London, and although it is great that all buses have ramps, only one wheelchair per bus is allowed, and only one wheelchair per train carriage—by which I mean there is one wheelchair space in standard class and one in first class. If that space is taken, I cannot get on the train. Only one in 10 Tube stations on the Central line is accessible, and even the Jubilee line, which is more modern, still has many problems with access.

I should be delighted to take the Minister on one of my journeys round London. As much as I do not like non-disabled people using wheelchairs, because it does not give them the true lived experience, it might be interesting for the Minister to try it to see how much longer it takes me to get round London, to get to work and to just live my life.

Some 64% of disabled people have to cancel or miss appointments because of public transport not being accessible; 75% said they found using public transport “quite difficult” or “very difficult”. The solution might be taxis, but they can be expensive, and often more so for disabled people. Just last week, three taxi drivers on Parliament Square drove past me instead of picking me up. According to Scope, two in three wheelchair users say they have been overcharged for taxi or private hire vehicle use because of their wheelchairs. DLA and PIP may go some way to offsetting this—but so does the £30 a week of the WRAG component. It is there to recognise the fact that it can take disabled people longer to secure work. Indeed, 10% of unemployed disabled people have been unemployed for five years or more, compared with just 3% of the non-disabled population. It also goes some way to reflecting the fact that it is more expensive to travel to training and work experience placements, as well as to job interviews.

Many respondents highlighted the negative impact such a cut would have on health and well-being. It was highlighted specifically by mental health charities and respondents with mental health difficulties, who talked about the mounting stress and anxiety that comes from being pushed into, or deeper into, poverty. Macmillan Cancer Support talked about cancer patients who, in many cases, have to cut back on food and heating in order to make ends meet. The MS Society suggested that people might have to cut back on medication and prescriptions, as well as specialist equipment. This would undoubtedly move them further from the workplace, but also presents a very serious threat to their health.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, the Government's pledge to halve the rate of unemployment for disabled people is very welcome, but I question whether their proposals will deliver that promise. The Bill requires the Secretary of State to report back to Parliament on progress towards full employment, apprenticeships and work with so-called troubled families, but there is no mention of reporting back about progress on halving the disability employment gap. Why? What of the action the Bill proposes to support disabled people into work?

The biggest barrier to overcoming the disability employment gap is employer attitudes. Most disabled people lose out on a job because of the way employers perceive their disability. Employers may sign up to the guaranteed interview scheme for disabled people, and I recognise that the public sector leads the way on this, but real-life experience suggests that this is all too often a tick-box exercise that simply raises false hope.

Take the example of a young man I know who is blind. He left university with an excellent degree. His interpersonal skills and his writing ability are second to none, and he has excellent computer skills, yet he has spent much of the last 12 years searching for paid employment. He could paper the walls with the rejection letters he has received in that time. His experience in interviews has left him convinced that even the most enlightened employers see disabled applicants as simply too risky. The Bill does nothing to tackle the discrimination that people like him face when looking for work.

The second barrier to work for disabled people is inadequate support to help them find work. The Work Programme has a very poor record of supporting disabled people to find work, and the feedback that I have received from disabled people suggests that disability advisers at jobcentres—if available at all—are less than good. The majority of employers are small enterprises, which will not necessarily have practical adaptions such as disabled toilets or lifts, which are essential for people with disabilities. Employers who employ disabled people therefore need to be certain that specialist support and accurate practical advice are available from government, easy to access and professionally delivered. A poor experience will simply reinforce employment prejudices against disabled people. Without a coherent, consistent and locally tailored service to support disabled people into and in work, Ministers will fail to make real progress in cutting the disability employment gap.

Not only does the Bill not do enough to tackle the barriers that disabled people face in finding work, it does nothing to fix the woeful record of the work capability assessment. The failure of the assessment has been bought home to me by the experiences of a close friend. Injured in a motoring collision, my friend Ann has endured years and years of successive operations and chronic back pain. Her pain clinic judged her unable to stand for more than three minutes at a time, yet, despite that, she was classified by the government system as fit for work until her consultant was so concerned that he waded in and helped to get her reassessed.

While doing nothing to confront the frequently inaccurate assessments, the Bill does address those who are considered unfit to work now but who may be fit to work at some time in the future—the work-related activity group. For the sick and disabled people in this group, Ministers plan a £30 a week cut in the employment and support allowance, claiming that this will incentivise them to find work. If the Government’s tough, not to say harsh, assessment regime has judged them unfit to work, what do Ministers expect the £30 a week cut to do? Do they think it will act as some kind of miracle cure for their illness or disability?

The language of the Bill, and that used by Minsters, in talking about incentivising disabled people to work is patronising in the extreme. Disabled people want to work; disabled people do not need to be incentivised. What disabled people need is for government, and society as a whole, to work at removing the barriers placed in their way—barriers that hundreds of thousands of disabled people who are in work overcome every day, often with Herculean effort, energy and patience.

The Bill as drafted will move disabled people further away from the workplace and act as a disincentive for people in the work-related activity group. In addition, it does not answer the fundamental question: what do the Government plan to do to educate non-disabled employers and recruiters about employing disabled people? I look forward to addressing these issues further in Committee.

Human Trafficking

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Baroness Doocey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many children have been referred to the National Referral Mechanism for victims of trafficking since it was launched in 2009.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, the national referral mechanism is a multi-agency framework designed to make it easier for organisations involved in a human trafficking case to co-operate, share information about potential victims and facilitate their access to tailored support. Between 1 April 2009 and 31 December 2012, 939 children were referred to this system by a range of front-line agencies.

[Baroness Doocey]

I thank the Minister for that response. Will she join me in welcoming the steps that Eurostar is taking to improve measures to prevent child trafficking at St Pancras International station? Will she ensure that the UK Border Agency co-operates more fully with both Eurostar and the British Transport Police and does nothing to hinder any of these initiatives?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, human trafficking of adults and, especially, children is one of the vilest crimes. I congratulate my noble friend on her tireless efforts in this area. I most definitely welcome the steps being taken by Eurostar to improve prevention via St Pancras and will of course ensure that the UK Border Agency and the UK Border Force continue to work closely with all parties trying to prevent this crime. Indeed, UKBA is committed to developing its practices in support of victims. I can announce to the House today that from 1 April the UKBA team that handles trafficking decisions will be exclusively dedicated to that task and will not combine its work in this area with any other.