Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen]

My Lords, perhaps I may explain why I am briefly entering the Bill at this stage. I did not speak at Second Reading and was not planning to speak in the debates but I have chosen to speak today because I received a letter from an old school friend. He went to school with me when I attended Caistor Grammar School in Lincolnshire many years ago. This friend knows a lot about disability because he is himself disabled. In mid-life, he went into hospital to have what was expected to be a very straightforward operation but unfortunately came out having lost his sight. When Derek wrote to me, I took his letter very seriously and I wish to speak briefly on his behalf today.

My friend is very worried indeed about Clause 51, particularly about the one-year time-limit on contributory ESA, which we have heard a lot about this afternoon, and the replacement of the working-age disability living allowance. With regard to the limit on contributory ESA, he points out that it takes no account of the often very complex issues that disabled people need to address in preparing for and finding work. I understand that the Government have estimated that 94 per cent of those on ESA and in the work-related activity group would take over a year to find work. That would mean that by 2015-16 700,000 people would be affected and 280,000 could have lost their entire benefit payment. The new criteria focus on a much narrower range of support than DLA and appear to fail to recognise the barriers that prevent blind and partially sighted people being able to participate fully in society.

The Disability Benefits Consortium, which is a national coalition of more than 50 disability and welfare charities and other organisations committed to working towards a fair benefits system, also wishes to see Clause 51 removed from the Bill to ensure that disabled people continue to receive the critical financial support that they so deserve. The Disability Benefits Consortium included in its briefing a moving statement from a woman who has Parkinson’s disease. She says:

“I’ve worked all my life and paid for decades into the system on the understanding that there’ll be support if I need it. To be told that all of this support could have an arbitrary time limit is both unfair and stressful”.

I agree. Clause 51 is very flawed and this would be a better Bill if it were removed.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I am not replying on behalf of the Front Bench at this stage. My noble friend Lord McKenzie will no doubt do that after the Minister has spoken to his amendment. I am particularly pleased to rise after my noble friend Lady Gibson and want to comment on what the Lord, Lord German, said, although he is unfortunately not in his place at the moment. No doubt he can read my comments at a future moment.

Like my noble friend Lady Hollis, I very much support the amendment to which the noble Lord, Lord German, spoke. However, I should think he finds it rather easier to speak to it here today, in the Committee, than at the Lib Dem conference. I do not think it would answer the party’s desire to get rid of arbitrary time limits. It will, to some extent, help the very poorest but it does not address the fundamental issue that has been raised.

As my noble friend Lord McKenzie said in opening the debate, this will affect some 700,000 people. I should like to talk about just a few of these, particularly older women with breast cancer who have paid into the insurance system for their whole working lives. I quote in particular Dawn Sheldon, who wrote to me. She said:

“I am terminally ill with breast cancer which has spread to the lung. I am in receipt of benefits, without which, I would have no income whatsoever. Under the proposed reforms, I would have to find employment. My concerns are that although reasonably qualified, I’d be applying for jobs against other applicants with a clean bill of health and a long life expectancy who would be more attractive than my own CV”.

As has already been mentioned, in addition to being ill with the cancer itself, breast cancer sufferers take very strong medication, sometimes for up to five years, with very unpleasant side-effects. Dawn says that without benefits she probably would not be able to pay her mortgage and fears that she would become homeless.

Other breast cancer sufferers have also written to me. Similarly, having been on strong medication for 18 months, one woman feels that she would be a cripple if she carried on using it. Therefore, she asks what benefits she should have, and she might come off the medication. That is some indication of how dreadful some of the side-effects are for some people. Another woman writes that she has a lot of pain in her joints at night. She has an eight year-old, so she is taking whatever she can to be here for him. The consultant said that it is a balance—quality of live versus length of life. She says that when she takes her painkillers her boss can tell that she is not able to work as well as she does normally. However, she wants to be there to see her son grow up.

These women have asked me to plead with the Government not to reduce their benefits. They are pleased that their tumours have been removed but they are not fit and well; they are struggling to keep going. While they have not yet been diagnosed as being terminally ill, it would be wrong to think that they are able to return to work. They have a choice to make about whether to take drugs to live longer and see their children grow up but, with that medication, perhaps be even less fit for work. The question that they pose is: if you were a prospective employer, would you want to employ someone with a history of cancer or someone who had to take medication to the point that they could be ineffective in their work—at least, at certain times? These women feel that the new medical assessment is a “ploy”—their word—so that they can simply be told what the Government want to hear: that they are fit for work, disregarding the reports of qualified medical staff.