Social Welfare Law

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the debate tonight. It is a privilege to speak after the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough. I congratulate him on his fine maiden speech; he has chosen an interesting debate to start his career here. As these things work out, it is perhaps perfect timing. Over the weekend I started a hashtag, which was very complimentary on social media, entitled “Bishops”. I am not sure if I am the first to do this, but I will be adding to it happily later tonight after his fine maiden speech. I warmly welcome the right reverend Prelate to your Lordships’ House and look forward to his many future contributions.

After spending a significant amount of time working on the Welfare Reform Bill and because of the consequences of that, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, I am grateful for what my noble friend Lord Low has done in this area and congratulate him on his commission’s work. On 21 January 2014 the New Law Journal stated that the Low Commission shines,

“much-needed light on the impact of the LASPO cuts on those largely poor and vulnerable people who up until nine months ago had legal aid as some kind of safety net”.

I do not think that anyone would have said that the system was perfect, but for disabled people it offered considerable help and support. That safety net is disappearing.

My noble friend’s work has not just shone a light on the system within which we are now operating, but has shown how real people are affected by legislation. I accept that when we are debating Bills it is hard to know how every person will be affected, but we are now starting to see it. My noble friend has provided some realistic and sensible proposals. He has not looked back to what some might call the halcyon days of legal aid, but importantly has looked forward. I hope that the Minister will look favourably at the suggestions that have been made. The Law Centres Network is just one organisation that has called for the recommendations to be implemented.

In the past two years we have seen what I believe are some of the biggest changes to the welfare system since its inception. Disabled people have been repeatedly affected by the changes, and not just in one area but in several. They are complex changes at that. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Freud, explaining to me during the Welfare Reform Bill that the new system around universal credit would be simpler, but it is by no means simple. While I have been disappointed that in this area there has been a continued failure to conduct a cumulative impact assessment, I understand why there has not been one. It would have made uncomfortable reading about how some of the most vulnerable people in our society are being treated. I accept that we are in tough economic times and agree that there was a need for looking at doing things in a different way.

One of the consequences of LASPO on disabled people, which has been raised with me by Unity Law, is that it has shifted the costs of civil litigation in respect of personal injury cases to the defendant company and done away with recoverable insurance premiums for claimants as a result. Because Equality Act cases do not include a claim for personal injury, but rather compensation for injury to feelings, and a request for reasonable adjustments, these cases are not cost-shifted and the insurance premium is needed to protect disabled people against the costs of losing.

I have met Chris Fry from Unity Law several times. He believes that if cost shifting applied to Equality Act discrimination claims, the legal aid budget would stretch further, because there would be no liability to third-party costs in failed cases. I realise that I am talking to many lawyers, and not for the first time do I regret studying only politics at university and not law. At this stage I will not go into further detail, but there are some really positive things that we can do in this area to mitigate some of the challenges that we are facing.

We are where we are, but the legislation has fundamentally changed how disabled people are able to access justice. Access to advice is important. As Citizens Advice describes it:

“Impartial advice is a fundamental ingredient to a healthy democracy”.

I know that Citizens Advice has offered me invaluable advice, but it has also worked with a significant number of people who have approached me for help and support. In the past year or so the largest number of e-mails that I have received have been from members of the public on this issue. The vast majority have been from disabled people asking for help in steering their way through the complicated system; I do not know whether this is perhaps because I am disabled or because I talk in this area. They are just not sure where else they can turn. Changes have occurred at local levels to advice services and those changes are not the same in every area. The number of people asking for help within this incredibly pressurised system is worryingly rising. One of the most recent cases to come to me has been from a deaf man who has repeatedly received letters directing him to a phone number. Obviously that is just not possible.

During our time debating LASPO, I spoke several times on the telephone gateway and repeatedly said that, while signposting people to a phone number may work for some, it would not work for all. I have also been contacted by someone with autism, who even more worryingly has said that he has absolutely no one around him to help him make this essential phone call, and he did not know where to turn. I was his last resort. He has tried to write letters, but received no response. He told me that he went to his local advice centre and was informed that the waiting list for an appointment was several weeks. Cases are being pushed to services that were previously stretched but are now more so.

In the area of appeals and tribunals, there is much work to be done to ensure that we have better decision-making in the first place. That sounds terribly easy, but I know that it is not. Reading through some of the social media streams this week, I hope that there will not be a regime for charging individuals for benefits appeals. I wonder whether the Minister would like to comment on this. If this were to be the case, it could be seen as yet another way of penalising disabled people.

The support that disabled people get is crucial. Within my noble friend’s report, I very much liked the proposals to embed information in GP surgeries or the places where people are every single day. I thought that was simple but brilliant. Educating young people as to their rights is something that should be on the curriculum right away, along with good sports provision—but that is another matter. The idea of a phone number and simple website is also an excellent idea to act as a triage. We perhaps still need to do more to ensure that disabled people have adequate access to the internet, but that is an aside. Whatever we do, I believe that we have a duty to provide adequate guidance, assistance and support to everyone, and I commend the work of my noble friend.