Housing Benefit (Amendment) Regulations 2012
Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I refer to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s comments at paragraph 13, in which it is pointed out, rightly, that the reduction will apply to,
“the total eligible rent for the dwelling, including any eligible service charges”.
Can the Minister confirm which service charge items will be eligible for universal credit? In consultation, these were different from those covered by the current housing benefit regulations, which provide a list of items that are not eligible. Will the revised regulations prescribe the range of eligible service charges and, in practice, reduce the numbers that may previously have existed? In particular, will the Minister clarify which service charges will be included in the definition of,
“services necessary to maintain the fabric of the accommodation”?
Specifically, will the maintenance of fire safety equipment, lifts, door entry schemes and other communal services be deemed necessary to maintain the fabric of the building and therefore be eligible?
Further, will the service charge currently associated with a furnished tenancy be eligible for housing benefit, as it is now? Finally, on concierge services, which include portering, security, caretaking, CCTV coverage and the cleaning of communal areas, will the service charges for these continue to be eligible? I hope they will because, if they become optional, many tenants will not be able to afford to pay and there will be reduced standards, impacting negatively on communal facilities and health and safety.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am concerned about the potentially disproportionate effect these regulations could have on disabled people. It is my understanding that all disabled tenants other than those who need constant overnight care will lose a percentage of their rent if they have more bedrooms than they need. The DWP equality impact assessment, which was updated last June, clearly shows the disproportionate effect that the size criterion measure will have on disabled tenants. Based on the Equality Act 2010 definitions of disability, some 420,000 of the total 660,000 households affected contain a family member with a disability, which makes the housing benefit regulations very much a disability issue, and one that is of great concern to a huge number of people. There is the discretionary housing payments fund for 35,000 tenants with homes adapted for wheelchair access, but that is a small mitigation in terms of the 420,000 tenants who are potentially affected. I feel strongly that long-established definitions of disability do not depend merely on the presence of adaptations or on the outward appearance of a functional disability. I am very concerned that disabled people will struggle with these measures.
Lord Freud
My Lords, an enormous number of issues have been raised and I will do my best to deal with them. I know that this is an area of great concern to noble Lords. That was made clear during the process of what is now the Welfare Reform Act 2012, and I remind noble Lords that there were some government defeats on underoccupancy, which were reversed in the Commons. That is where we stand as the second Chamber when considering these regulations. However, as I say, I will do my best to answer the questions put to me as rapidly as I possibly can—in a fairly random order, if noble Lords will allow me.
I shall pick up some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. Under the Localism Act 2011 there will be fewer tenancies for life, so both private sector and social sector tenants are less likely to have absolute security. On the assessment of the impact of the overall changes, noble Lords will be aware that we have produced impact assessments for each of them. It has been extraordinarily difficult to combine them because one is not sure on which basis assessments should be made, given all the other changes that are going on. However, people affected by more than one change have the DHP fund available to them. I should point out that when the fund is taken in its entirety, we are now looking at a very substantial amount of money. Next year, for instance, the full DHP pot will be running at £165 million, plus the localised social welfare fund will move over, which I think will be another £178 million. So a lot of money that is not ring-fenced for particular things is going to local authorities, so that they can look at the problems in their area to try to provide the appropriate support.
Sport
Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I agree with what the noble Lord has outlined as being part of the success of the Games this summer. I was very proud that my noble friend Lord Coe was at the Labour Party conference last week to pay tribute to Dame Tessa Jowell for everything she did as a Minister to ensure that we succeeded in getting the Games. He made the point very clearly that to build on the success of the Games—and as I said in my previous Answer this is not just about sport, although sport is hugely important and we need to build on it—we must continue that bipartisan and cross-party approach to make sure that we take all the available benefits.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, given the huge number who have been inspired by the extraordinary Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer, could the Minister explain how good access for disabled children to PE in schools and mainstream clubs can be ensured? This is not just about continuing to develop an elite pathway—in which I declare an interest—but about changing the whole culture towards healthier lifestyles.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I would like to pay particular tribute to the noble Baroness for all the vital work she did in commentating on the Paralympics—I know she also did so on the Olympics—and helping to ensure that the rest of us properly understood what was being achieved.
It is not just disabled people who are inspired by what was achieved at the Paralympics: the rest of us were, too. We need to build on the success of the Olympics by ensuring that all stages of the sporting strategy, which has been covered in great detail in a ministerial Statement which is available in the Printed Paper Office today, integrate disabled sport at all levels. I was particularly pleased to learn that when Sport England confirms its next round of investment in national governing bodies in December, it will require, for the first time, delivery of specific targets for participation of disabled people.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Sherlock
My Lords, I shall say just a brief word. Barristers always say that you should never ask a question in open court unless you know what the answer will be. I fear that Ministers often take a similar attitude to research: do not ask a question unless you know what the answer will be and you know that you will like it. I commend the Minister, because I have had the impression throughout the passage of the Bill that he is not that kind of Minister but is genuinely interested in information. Because of that, I hope that he will feel able to give a generous response to the encouragement of many Members of the House to look for information.
I have two things for the Minister to think about. One is to follow up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, which is that if the Minister is right and rents change as a result, we will all be interested to learn that. If they do not, we will have learnt something about the market. If that is the case, that creates a question rather than just answering one: what is happening with the state of the housing market and what other levers are available to the state? It would be extraordinarily helpful to the country as a whole if the Minister would use his position in government to commend that set of questions to his colleagues, rather than stopping at that point.
My second point is in response to the comments made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, which concerned the broader effects, particularly on families with children. Many noble Lords will be aware that when the United States engaged in significant welfare reform, one fear expressed at the time was that many people would simply disappear from the system altogether. Research was undertaken and that proved to be the case. I have expressed concern at different points during the Bill's passage about what happens to vulnerable children, in particular, and, more broadly, to vulnerable families. Perhaps the Minister can take this opportunity to reassure the House that the Government will do all that they can to track what is happening to individuals so that they do not fall out of the notice of the authorities.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, briefly, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Best, on his determination with the amendment and offer him my support. I will not repeat the words of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, but he is absolutely right when he talks about reassurance. It is so unfortunate at this stage of the Bill that many people who may find themselves in really difficult situations, perhaps through being in the wrong place, will be extremely disappointed that we cannot take this further. As we have read in the press yet again today, many disabled people are being portrayed as benefit scroungers. That causes me great concern as we make some of these changes. The review is vital if we are to ensure that our worst fears are not realised.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, we support the Motion proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and I, like others, thank him for the persistence, diligence, precision and passion with which he has pursued this subject from the start of our proceedings. I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, who said that this is no way to go about tackling issues of underoccupation; a much broader, more sophisticated approach is needed. It is a pity that we are stuck at this stage with, basically, having to live with what is in the Bill, subject to the review.
We have been told again that the amendment that we sent to the other place is an infringement of its financial privilege. It disdainfully clings to that financial privilege, which it could waive, without regard to the consequences for hundreds of thousands of households who will bear the financial burden of these cuts, in the same dismissive way that the Prime Minister today announced that the Bill would complete its parliamentary passage before noble Lords had even convened to consider it further. They brush aside our amendment, with its protection for families, notwithstanding that for some there are no smaller properties for them to move to; regardless of the fact that, for some, their disability involves them in additional costs which will be more difficult for them to meet and given their housing benefit reductions; and ignoring that many do not have a route to work to mitigate loss of benefit. The noble Lord, Lord Best, was absolutely right not to water down the amendment further and try to pick and choose which of those categories of individual is more deserving of escaping this iniquitous provision than the others.
Throughout the various stages of the Bill, we have sought to press on the Government the innate unfairness of the provisions concerning underoccupation. As we have heard, the arguments advanced have variously included the following. There is the appropriateness of adopting the CLG definition of underoccupation—a measure which provides sensible flexibility for households as family arrangements wax and wane, health conditions change, and young children grow older. There is the acceptance that only if there is suitable alternative smaller accommodation should families be expected to move, notwithstanding that that may be totally disruptive to their lives, and that meeting a housing benefit shortfall by getting a job or working more hours should not be insisted on where claimants are simply not able to work.
The losses in housing benefit a week, whether of £12, £13 or £14, cannot be borne without driving more households closer to or into poverty. Most are not sitting on substantial savings to cushion the loss of benefit; if they were, they would be ineligible for housing benefit in the first place. Moving to the private sector is likely to lead to increases in housing benefit costs for the Government rather than reductions. Taking in lodgers to contribute to the housing benefit shortfall will simply not be possible or desirable in many family circumstances. It is a false economy to force disabled people to move from a property which has been substantially adapted. To make it more difficult for those involved in foster caring makes no sense on many levels.
Your Lordships have supported those arguments, but they have been rejected by the Government in Committee, at Report and, now, at ping-pong. The only acknowledgement of the havoc, despair and poverty they will create is a £30 million annual top-up to discretionary housing benefit. Even that, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Best, is funded by an increase in the housing benefit reductions for all.
The Government know full well that these clauses will not solve the problem of underoccupation of social housing. They cynically do not want to solve it, otherwise their intended savings will simply not materialise. The offer they make is to move further afield, away from your community, support network, friends and jobs—not a sensible proposition, as we heard from my noble friend Lady Lister—to take a lodger, to use your savings or to earn more money. That is essentially a bogus offer, because most will simply not be able to take it up.
If we cannot persuade the Government, the least we can do is to have arrangements which will confront them with the consequences of what they implement. That is why we support the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best, which requires an independent review of the consequences of Clauses 11 and 68. Of course, it will not be just that review which explains what is going on. Local authorities, councillors, MPs, and voluntary and community organisations—and, indeed, the courts—will get the blast from this in little over a year from now, as the cuts begin to bite.
We do not deny the need to tackle the deficit, nor that that means some hard choices, but it is genuinely difficult to understand why this contribution is sought in this way to this extent from this group of people. The alleged cost of our previous amendment, £100 million, is, when we think about it, just 20 per cent of one company’s tax avoidance schemes.
However, that is what both partners in government have chosen to do, and we have not been able to persuade them otherwise. We hope that an independent review will reinforce the points that we have made and still persuade the Government to a different view. If the review concludes otherwise, we can have no complaint.
This is not the end of the matter; it remains work in progress; but this debate marks the conclusion of our deliberations on the Bill, a Bill that we have been able to improve in some respects, but which, in too many ways, imposes unacceptable burdens on the most vulnerable. They are entitled to better from their Government.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts(14 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, is unfortunately unwell today. Currently, she is watching the Report stage of the Welfare Reform Bill from her hospital bed. She has asked that Amendment 50ZE is not moved and I would ask your Lordships’ House to agree to this request. I am sure that your Lordships’ House would also want to send best wishes to the noble Baroness for a speedy return to the Chamber.
“( ) A person is entitled to the daily living component at the basic rate if—
(a) the person’s ability to carry out daily living activities is limited by the person’s physical or mental condition; and(b) the person meets the required period condition.”
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, the amendment is designed to complement broader plans for social care and links to the Dilnot review of care funding. The Dilnot review examined care costs and how best to manage our demographic change. It concluded that universal disability benefits for people of all ages should continue as now. Dilnot was referring to DLA. The rationale for his recommendation was that DLA helps many disabled people avoid formal social services. It acts as a form of low-level needs management. However, Government plans include abolishing the low-rate care DLA payments of £19.55 per week, which 652,000 disabled people aged 16 to 64 currently receive.
Despite ignoring the Dilnot recommendation, the DWP has not provided a cost-benefit analysis of what this abolition could mean for care services. Charities and individual disabled people have, however, indicated that reduced access to DLA will increase dependency on social care services funded by councils. About one in eight of the disabled people who completed a Disability Alliance survey suggested they would be more likely to need a council-funded care home placement as, without DLA, families would no longer be able to manage needs. This leaves councils funding a much more expensive service. The lack of information being provided on this issue, despite the clear recommendation of the Dilnot review, can leave us with no choice but to assume it has not yet been fully analysed.
The Minister has suggested that providing a basic level of help is unaffordable, but we must also take into account the further costs of the two million medical notes from the NHS which disabled people who are forced to undergo the new assessment process will have to provide. This is not a cost-free policy. What about the analysis of the cost of potentially avoidable NHS use following the abolition of low-rate care payments? Disability and ill health do not just disappear, and the costs and needs of disabled people will be exacerbated. I suspect that there is an unfortunate silo approach being operated. Disabled people will suffer first and then their families, followed quickly by the NHS and councils.
The DWP has been pressed on these issues since plans emerged in 2010. It is unacceptable that these legitimate questions on the policy costs remain unanswered. I also believe the amendment is essential to help mitigate the risks of the current government proposals to disabled people, their families, the NHS and councils.
Figures published just yesterday suggest that of the 652,000 disabled people receiving low-rate care, about a quarter of a million may be able to access daily living payments under PIP. The statistics suggest an increase of 166,000 in the numbers receiving enhanced daily living payments, compared to DLA high-rate care, and an increase of 89,000 in standard daily living payments, compared to middle-rate care DLA. However, this means that 400,000 disabled people will lose support.
My amendment aims to secure basic support for just some of those 400,000 disabled people. The amendment will not simply carry over the same people and the same rules. I realise that the Government need to ensure a new approach. The amendment allows them to retain the right to establish the level of basic need at which disabled people would be entitled to support, as well as levels of payments. The DWP has not yet published the payment levels that disabled people can expect under PIP, but it could examine different payment levels. I beg to move.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I have two answers to that question. The first is that people who need the support because of a disability may happen to be on the lower rate of DLA today but that does not mean that they will not be entitled to the standard rate in the future. My noble friend gave an example of people who are really dependent on that funding. I would expect in those circumstances that it would continue. Indeed, I would regard PIP to be a failure if it did not do that. Secondly, we will be monitoring that really closely. As I have discussed, later this evening I will present an amendment to make sure that we properly monitor what happens in this area and make sure that PIP does what it should be doing, which is to stop people ending up in the situation that my noble friend is so concerned about.
I must point out that if we move to a three-tier system on the daily living component, the implications are that the caseload would be larger—possibly larger than that under DLA—and spending would increase rather than decrease against the original and revised forecast under the personal independence payment. We cannot possibly quantify such expenditure implications, mainly because we have not yet set the rates at which benefit is paid, but the implications are there. I want the House to be under no illusions that they would be anything but significant.
Before I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendments, I would like to confirm that the Government see Amendments 50ZGH and 50ZJA as directly consequential upon Amendment 50ZGB. On that note, I beg the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. I have to say that I am disappointed. I am also concerned and gravely worried for a huge number of disabled people. The tiny spark I take out of his comment is that he says he is listening. That is positive. However, there are lots of ways in which spending will increase if we push disabled people into poverty or do not give them the right support they need. We will be making massive, long-term mistakes for the rest of those disabled people’s lives. It is not a small number of people. It could be up to 500,000 disabled people—half a million disabled people could be affected by this.
I am keen to keep pressing the Minister to ensure that the outcomes of disabled people losing the lower rate of care will be monitored throughout the rollout of the PIP assessment because, whatever way you look at the maths, there will be people who lose out. It is a big mistake to see this as a deadweight expenditure. You only have to look at our postboxes or e-mail inboxes —in the past two days, I have had nearly 600 emails from different disabled people saying they are terrified of the changes that are going to happen.
It is really important that the assessment process properly records whether losing DLA has a negative impact on the health of disabled people or their ability to work. We have a long way to go on this. Very reluctantly, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, the issue of the social model of disability was discussed at some great length in Committee and the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, spoke very eloquently on it. Despite the Government’s commitment to the social model of disability, their other commitment on this issue—to provide an objective assessment—works in opposition to this aim.
The idea of an objective assessment is to ensure that people with the same functionality receive the same level of PIP. This looks only at the person’s functionality, and not at the barriers faced by that person within society. A benefit which was based on the social model of disability would look at the barriers that individuals face, not just at their functionality. Despite their stated intention to bring in a more active and enabling benefit that supports disabled people to overcome the barriers they face to lead full and independent lives, it actually takes less account of the individual barriers people face—because different people face different barriers.
The DLA has been criticised and no one would argue that it could not be improved on. However, DLA takes into account to some extent an individual's circumstances and uses—again to some extent—the social model of disability. It is claimed that, by making the criteria simpler, PIP will use the social model. However, it seems to rely much more on the medical model and appears to be going backwards in terms of taking into account someone's costs in surmounting their barriers. The charity Scope has made it clear that it considers that the Government are introducing a tick-box style medical assessment that will not help them achieve the aims they have set out to achieve.
The stated aim is to provide a more active and enabling benefit that supports disabled people to overcome the barriers they face to leading a full and independent life, yet nowhere in the assessment process is there any space for looking at the barriers that an individual faces. Disabled people face a multitude of barriers to participation and independence, many of which come as a direct result of social, practical and environmental factors. Making the test more objective and simpler will inevitably lead to a greater focus on the medical model, which will work against the stated aims and purpose.
Richard Hawkes, chief executive of the disability charity Scope, said:
“We recognise that Disability Living Allowance needs reforming and we fully support the government's ambitions to create a more active and enabling benefit. However, we are concerned that the new assessment the government is planning to use is flawed because it doesn't take into consideration all the barriers that disabled people face in daily life. Without understanding the extent of barriers people face, the government has no hope to overcome them and genuinely enable people to take part in daily life”.
At a time of limited resources, it is crucial to ensure that support is targeted as effectively and accurately as possible. This will not happen using the proposed assessment. To ensure effective targeting, the assessment process for PIP claimants must accurately measure the extra costs that individuals incur, based on an understanding of the variables that affect those costs. I beg to move.
Baroness Browning
My Lords, this is the first time I have contributed on Report. I declare my interest as vice-president of the National Autistic Society, patron of Research Autism and as the named carer of an autistic adult man in receipt of DLA. I am concerned about this part of the Bill and support the amendment and the detail with which it outlines what I believe are shortcomings, despite my noble friend's best efforts to identify how the assessment will affect people on the autistic spectrum.
In 1990, the House of Commons sent to this Chamber the Autism Bill, which became an Act of Parliament. It was passed as a result of a Private Member's Bill introduced by the right honourable Cheryl Gillan MP. It was supported by all parties in both Houses and was enacted in 2010 by the coalition Government. I tabled a Question for Written Answer just before Christmas asking whether the Welfare Reform Bill that is before us was compliant with the Autism Act. It is worth remembering that no other Act of Parliament has been passed that is specific to a condition. Certain medical conditions are mentioned in other Acts, but the reason for both Houses agreeing to pass the Autism Act, which is now on the statute book, was that autism is different. I make no apology—I know I bang on about it quite a lot—for drawing the attention of the House to the fact that an Act of Parliament was needed because autism is so different.
There are many aspects to the Bill, including the amendment we are now debating, which have a specific read-across to the autistic spectrum. Some years ago in another place I introduced the first debate in Parliament on Asperger's syndrome. It was not well understood then. It is far better understood now, which is a great relief to me and many others. Even so, parents and people with Asperger’s syndrome still struggle to get access to services, benefits and independent living, and to take their place in society as they would wish. The Autism Act was passed in recognition of that. I have to say to my noble friend that I was very disappointed when the reply to my Question for Written Answer in relation to this piece of legislation said that this was a matter for the relevant services by local authorities and NHS bodies and was not the subject matter of the Welfare Reform Bill.
Under the Autism Act, there is now a statutory responsibility on health and social services to implement the autism strategy which will require them to work with partners; for example, local authority housing departments. The Health Minister will be in a strong position to call to account local authorities and health authorities that do not implement this strategy. I know it is not the subject of this clause but if you are going to say that people under 35 will have restrictions placed on them as to where and with whom they live, that is a total contravention of what local authorities are being asked to do to implement the Autism Act. Equally, in the assessments for people on the autism spectrum, Asperger’s syndrome is not “autism-lite”.
Some years ago the National Autistic Society produced a report on autism called Ignored or Ineligible?. It is a 10 year-old report but sadly a lot of it is still relevant today, especially for those trying to get support for people on the autism spectrum, particularly those at the end of the spectrum who are more able—people with higher than average IQs. The anomaly about this condition is that you can have people with Masters degrees who cannot cope with some of the day-to-day detail of looking after themselves. The House has put on the statute book the Autism Act because autism is so different. The amendment before us picks up on some of those defects in the assessment.
I had time to read the case study—unfortunately it was number 13—in the information that my noble friend published yesterday, which related to a young man with autism and how his assessment had been carried out. Yes, he scored highly and one would take a lot of comfort from that. But I want to bring my noble friend back to the situation of what is sometimes regarded as quirky behaviour—sometimes threatening or challenging behaviour—but in the main non-threatening behaviour; odd behaviour, yes, with the inability to do certain things sometimes but able to do much more difficult things at other times. It is a very strange and complex condition. Therefore, in an assessment process, it is absolutely essential that people are viewed as individuals in the way in which their condition affects their day-to-day lives, whether it is their medical condition, the way they live socially or their housing conditions. It is that sort of complex condition. It is sometimes associated with other things such as learning disabilities and/or mental health issues as well, which makes it much more specialised in terms of understanding the behaviour that is presented.
I do not want to focus on my own situation but, as I am sure noble Lords can imagine, as a mum I am pretty worried. I want to take this opportunity to say on behalf of other mums—if I do not say it, who is going to say it for them?—that when you have a child who is born with a lifelong disability and you know they are going to die with that disability, as a parent your relationship with that child is very different from your relationship with other children you may have. When they are little children, you agonise about things like education. As they get older, life skills and whether they can cope for themselves become far more important to you than whether they ever got a GCSE. As they and you get older, your waking moments are haunted by how they will cope when you are no longer there to support and help them. I think that most parents of disabled children—whatever the nature of their disability —would understand that. Therefore, when you feel after many years that you have them in what I would describe as a stable situation—and how important, particularly for autism, stability is—it is so worrying when you suddenly look into the future and find that actually it is not stable at all. It is not stable for you—as you are growing older with goodness knows how many years left—and you see that it is not stable for them.
I have every respect for the amount of time my noble friend has put into autism. I am totally in favour of what he is trying to do to get more autistic people into work, because there are many who could work if they were given the right support and back-up to do it. I fully support that. But Asperger’s syndrome and those people on one end of the spectrum of autistic spectrum disorders are not “autism-lite”. I mentioned the report Ignored or Ineligible?. It showed that for people between 20 and 30 the suicide rate was 8 per cent. The reason it was 8 per cent was that the people on that spectrum try like mad to be part of society and try to be like everybody else. However, there comes a point at which, for many of them, they give up that struggle. I am very concerned that if they are not assessed as individuals, with all the quirkiness and strangeness of this very complex condition, we will go back to people on the more able end of the autistic spectrum being either ignored or ineligible, with all that that means. That is why I support the amendment tonight.
Lord Freud
This is about doing the right thing for people and focusing money on them; it is not about playing silly games—by which I mean that we are not playing silly games here and we are determined to get this right. We are consulting widely and know that we have the right approach with the model that we are using. I understand the noble Baroness’s position, but we do not think that the Bill should specify that the assessment should consider social and environmental factors. That approach would be inappropriate and unworkable, because we need the assessment to be straightforward, objective and consistent. We would lose £1.4 billion of savings. For that combination of reasons, these amendments are not acceptable to the Government. Just for the avoidance of any doubt whatever, I confirm that the Government see Amendments 50ZJ to 50ZQ and Amendments 51A and 52A as directly consequential upon Amendment 50ZH. On that basis, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
I thank the Minister for his response. It is nice to know that, even for a short time, I might hold a record in your Lordships’ Chamber for tabling the priciest amendments. I also thank the noble Baronesses who have brought much personal and moving experience to this debate.
I apologise to your Lordships; in introducing the amendment, I did not declare that I am a recipient of DLA, although I am fairly unlikely to be on PIP. I realise that to many the social model turns into a philosophical debate but I felt that it was important to raise it again, as—
Lord Freud
My Lords, I feel that I should interrupt. I think that when the noble Baroness looks at the PIP assessment, she will find that she is on PIP—without doing an assessment myself.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
I thank the Minister and accept that I did not just go through an assessment process.
I feel that it is important to raise this issue again as a gentle reminder that the social model is written by disabled people using their experience. The noble Countess, Lady Mar, made the important point that you cannot fit disabled people into boxes. I tend to think that we are a little more like Venn diagrams. It is obvious to me that if the Minister were truly committed to helping disabled people, the full social model would be used. I recognise that there is a balance between costs and how far we want to go to help disabled people.
I share the Minister’s view on autism but I would like to widen the issue and hope that we will take all disabled people’s experiences into account. I look forward to seeing the refined process that he mentioned.
There is one point on which I agree with the Minister: the biopsycho model is interesting. However, that is as far as I can go. If we looked at the definition of “interesting”, he and I would probably differ considerably. Perhaps we could save that exciting debate for another time. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, there is a great deal of evidence that decisions are frequently inaccurate when made on the basis of reports from face-to-face assessments on their own without being informed by evidence from the claimants and healthcare professionals. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that in all cases, as a part of the decision-making process to decide eligibility to PIP, evidence is collected by the DWP from the claimants’ own healthcare and other care professionals. If sufficient evidence is collected to decide entitlement to PIP, it should not be necessary to have a face-to-face assessment.
There have been ongoing problems with the assessments for ESA. Recent figures published by DWP show that nearly one-third—29 per cent—of those in the work-related group were originally found fit for work and had to appeal to be placed in the right group. Even more worrying, a staggering 60 per cent of those who won their appeal had been awarded no points at all in their initial face-to-face assessment, and at least 15 points are needed to be awarded ESA. These are not borderline decisions.
Why are so many decisions going wrong? The assessment reports frequently contain a partial or inaccurate account of what the claimant has said. The reports done by the healthcare professional are meant to record accurately what the claimant says about the effect of their condition. The second half of the report is where, on the basis of what the claimant has said and their observations, the healthcare professional comes to their own decision about the level of the claimant’s functionality. However, welfare rights workers have consistently reported over the years that many of the reports contain a partial or inaccurate account of what the claimant has consistently reported is the impact of their impairment on their everyday life. Regular feedback from welfare rights workers, who are dealing with these reports every day, is that although there have been some improvements, such as in the reconsideration process, there are still considerable problems with the accuracy of these reports. It has not been solved and will not be while relying on these assessments on their own.
The healthcare professional doing the assessment sees the claimant for only a relatively short time on one day, which may well be a good day. They are unlikely to be a specialist in the condition and know the likely effects or how they vary, and will not have access to all the medical records and the tests that have been done establishing the level of seriousness of that condition. DWP and Atos now recognise the value of medical evidence from the claimants’ own doctors—this is a really valid point—which was acknowledged by Dr Crawford, clinical director of Atos, in evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee. Healthcare professionals working for Atos also acknowledged that when a sample group was interviewed in a survey for DWP.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I hope that I have made it absolutely clear that if we write into the Bill that it must be the GP, who may not be the right person, we are stuck. If you give us the flexibility, we are not stuck and in those circumstances we will go to the person’s home to do the assessment, or take someone else's piece of paper on the tiered approach.
What we are planning will be better for people suffering from ME and other illnesses because we will be able to respond. I think that the market will change. My noble friend Lord Kirkwood said that there is not an adequate market in this area. Occupational health and support for people of working age is a Cinderella service. We will be building that. As things change, we can move the assessment. If you tie it up, we will be locked in to 1948 as the years go by. The only difference between us on this, I think, is how mandatory and prescriptive we want to be, and it would be most unusual to put it in the Bill.
Let me cover the technicalities. The Government consider that Amendment 50D is directly consequential on Amendment 50C; the others are separate, so I ask noble Lords not to press them to a vote and the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I thank the Minister and everyone else who has taken part in the debate this afternoon. On a point of clarification to the noble Countess, Lady Mar, although the wording of the amendment was “relevant healthcare professionals”, in her speech she mentioned doctors; it is much wider than that.
The amendment is a fundamental cornerstone of what is necessary in the move to PIP. I recognise that the Minister has moved a long way. I am still not comfortable with some part of his statement on the broad training for professionals. You do not know what you do not know. It is very difficult to instil that knowledge in people. I would like to know an awful lot more about the detail of how that training and education will take place.
There has been broad support around the House for my amendment, and I am grateful to noble Lords for that, but considering that the Minister has moved further than perhaps I expected, there is an awful lot to think about in what he has said. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament an independent review of the plans for implementation of the assessments under section 79 before the provisions are brought into effect, and such plans must in particular provide for—
(a) a trial period before any assessment process is implemented fully for new applicants and those transferring from DLA;(b) disabled persons organisations to be involved in formulating the assessment process.”
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, the purpose of the amendment is to ensure that there is an independent report on the plans for both the PIP assessment and its implementation before implementation starts, and a trial period before it is implemented in full.
We have spent much time today debating why disability benefits matter so much, but perhaps I may briefly point out that nearly one-quarter of individuals in families with at least one disabled member live in relative income poverty, and over 50 per cent of working-age disabled adults are not in paid employment. One-third of working age disabled people are estimated to live in poverty.
There is huge concern about the effect of DLA reform. The thresholds for the new benefit were announced only yesterday. The modelling suggests that the second draft will produce a 2015-16 caseload of 1.7 million people receiving PIP. Without introducing the new benefit, we would expect the number of 16 to 64 year-olds claiming DLA in 2015-16 to be 2.2 million. That is a reduction of half a million people who will not receive any help with the cost of disability, who would have been receiving DLA.
Just last week an analysis of organisations’ responses to the original government consultation on DLA reform highlighted the amount of concern about the proposed changes. The extent of this concern was not clear from the DWP response to the consultation. Scope, in its report, The Future of PIP: A Social Model Based Approach, says:
“We remain very concerned that this decision is based purely on budgetary targets, rather than on robust evidence as to how the benefit is used and by whom”.
I just do not believe that there has been time to analyse who will lose out. The Disability Benefits Consortium stated:
“We are very concerned that there has not been due consideration of the impact this reform will have both on those who lose all their entitlement and those who are left with a reduced award following reassessment”.
The thresholds were published only yesterday, but without those thresholds it is impossible to look in detail at who will lose out. Without them, it is almost impossible to have an informed debate about this part of the Bill. The few examples in the consultation document, while helpful, cannot possible address this properly.
Why do we need an independent review and trial period? Some early analysis has suggested that one of the groups who might lose out are those with mental health conditions, who currently receive the lower rate of mobility. Many people with a mental health condition find it impossible to use public transport. They frequently use their DLA to pay for taxis. If they are unable to get out, it is likely to make them more socially excluded, and push them further from the job market. This is just one possible unintended consequence.
There needs to be careful scrutiny of who will be affected by these changes. Many more groups will emerge in the months and years ahead, together with some unintended consequences. I have a real concern that it could lead to a deterioration of people’s health. Will it impact on the social care budgets? There are so many more things to consider in this. For such a major change as this, it is important to be much clearer on what the changes will be.
There is concern not just about the test or the thresholds but about the way that the benefit is assessed, and this is a much greater change than the move from IB to ESA. An independent report on the plans for both the PIP assessment and its implementation, before the implementation starts, would provide an appropriate level of scrutiny, given the huge impact this reform will have on disabled people.
The trial of the IB reassessment process in Burnley and Aberdeen threw up a number of important lessons which the DWP learnt from and implemented in the full rollout. It is so important that there is a trial of PIP in a similar way before the full rollout to either new or existing claimants. I beg to move.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I declare my interest in these debates as a recipient of DLA. This amendment is every bit as important as those we passed last week. Noble Lords will know from their postbag that people are looking to us to ameliorate the worst excesses of this Welfare Reform Bill. Although the Bill has some very sensible and progressive things at its core, in the shape of universal credit, nevertheless it goes too far for most people’s consciences in the way that it takes vital support away from some of the most needy in our society, in ways that have been movingly illustrated—far more eloquently than I could—in earlier debates.
Let me be clear about what the amendment does and does not do. It does not entail the Bill being paused, as happened with the Health and Social Care Bill, and as it has been portrayed outside. It merely states that the new assessment regime should not be commenced until Parliament can be given the benefit of an independent review—a common enough procedure regarding the introduction of particular statutory provisions.
It may be said that it is pointless to pass such an amendment, and that the Commons will only reverse it. However, there are two reasons for passing it, notwithstanding that. First, it sends a strong signal to the Government that they cannot be too cavalier in the way that they drive the juggernaut of reform over those who are weakest and most defenceless in our community. Secondly, as we have seen in the last week, it ensures that they cannot do this below the radar of public attention.
I support the amendment from my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson because I think that this is all being rushed through far too quickly to meet Treasury targets, before it is ready. The latest consultation draft of the assessment criteria reached us only yesterday, as we have heard, which has left little time to carry out the necessary analysis, but enough to see that it is still very much work in progress. For instance, just one day before we were due to discuss the Government’s plans for the future of DLA, the number of disabled people likely to lose help through the new assessment process was revised upwards to 500,000, as we have heard.
When the proposals were first announced in the June 2010 Budget we were told that a 20 per cent reduction in case load was likely. At that time this represented 360,000 disabled people, so the figure for the total of losers from the Government’s proposal has risen by 140,000, to which we should probably add the 80,000 care home residents who will no longer lose their mobility payments.
The Treasury’s target saving of 20 per cent was always arbitrary, being cost-driven rather than evidence-based. The Government themselves admit that the level of fraud is very low with DLA, at only 0.5 per cent. There are even suggestions that the increased figure for losers which we heard of yesterday will not achieve the Treasury’s target, either. At all events, the DWP is giving the impression of making it up as it goes along, all in an effort to satisfy its Treasury masters.
Disabled people do not have confidence in this process, which all serves to underline the fundamental unfairness of taking needed support away from the most vulnerable simply to meet Treasury targets. Confidence is not enhanced by the experience disabled people have had of the work capability assessment for out-of-work benefits. This was trialled on new claimants and regionally piloted for 18 months before national implementation, and has been the subject of two independent reviews, yet still gives rise to considerable difficulty, with 40 per cent of appeals upheld. This is a massive waste of money. We need to be sure that we have got the system right for the personal independence payment before it is introduced. So far, the DWP has tested the proposed assessment for PIP on fewer than 1,000 people. A sample of fewer than 1,000 is simply not enough to get a proper handle on the complexity of the issues that will arise when the full DLA caseload of 2.2 million people is put through the reassessment process; it is not like saying whether you vote Labour or Conservative.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I do not want to debate where alternative cuts would be found by the Opposition if they were in government and needing to balance the budget. All I can tell you is that the effect of the amendments that the Opposition have supported comes to that figure. It is amazing how, given an amendment here and an amendment there, pretty soon you are talking serious billions. I am afraid that this is another amendment which involves a serious amount of money and, for that reason, it is not acceptable to the Government. I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
I thank the Minister for some of the reassurances that he has offered tonight. He has, once again, moved further than I expected, although it would have been wonderful to have heard some of it a little earlier. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, for his consistent honesty and for what he has done for DLA. Unfortunately, I am genuinely sorry that I do not agree with him tonight because we have to get this right.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, talked about confidence and, even with what the Minister has said today, there is such a lack of confidence among disabled people about where we are going with this that I am really concerned.
The Minister referred to costs, which are important, and huge financial sums are involved here. I would like to talk about cost—the social cost of what we are doing to the lives of disabled people. A number of disability organisations—I shall not go into how many—have contacted me and are telling me that we are not in the right place; disabled people are telling me that we are not in the right place; and my personal belief and conscience tell me that we are not in the right place. I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts(14 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I rise to support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and to look specifically at the removal of the severe disability premium and the effect that it will have on young carers who are looking after a lone parent who is disabled or two parents who are both disabled.
The severe disability premium is really important in supporting young carers. Children who are still in full-time education cannot claim carer’s allowance, but many play an invaluable role in supporting disabled parents. However, if there is no other adult in the household, and no one claiming carer’s allowance, the family can benefit from the extra financial help offered by the SDP.
The abolition of the SDP will cost families with a young carer up to £55.30 per week, which is £2,876 per year. This cost could be equivalent to 20 per cent of household income after housing costs. The Department for Work and Pensions estimates that around 25,000 lone parents are in receipt of severe disability premium. That is 25,000 families with a disabled adult, in receipt of the mid or high-rate care component of DLA, but with no adult either in the household or receiving carer’s allowance to look after them, and with children in the household.
Many of these children are likely to be doing a substantial amount of caring for the parent, but this measure could force them to have to take on additional caring and household responsibilities because the family just cannot afford to pay for help. This is likely to put additional pressures on their children to make up for this loss of additional care. This is happening at a time when support services for young carers are being cut back, according to a recent survey by Action for Children. The charity surveyed 23 of its young carer projects between May and June this year. Findings reveal that almost half of services questioned reported a rise in the number of children on waiting lists and had seen an increase in the needs of young carers.
The Children’s Society, which works with young carers, gave the following example of the pressure that some of these children face and why they should not be pushed into even tighter financial circumstances. Kelly’s mum, Jenny, became ill about 10 years ago when she was only eight years old. An aggressive illness hospitalised Jenny, and has since entirely paralysed her down one side. After staying with relatives for several months while her mum was in hospital, Kelly was able to move back in to live with her mum from the age of nine. Since then she has cared for her mum non-stop. She makes meals and does the washing and cleaning. She said early on that she could only make simple dinners such as scrambled eggs on toast, but she has learnt quickly, and she has had to. She does not do it alone; she has a rota of professional carers who come to help out day to day, but they cannot do everything, and they do not stay overnight.
About three years ago, the year before Kelly was due to sit her GCSEs, Jenny became extremely ill for a while. Kelly had to get up around four times a night to help her out. Naturally, she was exhausted, dragging herself to bed as soon as she got in from school. Jenny currently receives the severe disability premium, meaning that she and Kelly are just one of 25,000 families with a disabled single parent. They will presumably be covered by transitional protection, unless Jenny’s reassessment for ESA from IB is viewed as a change of circumstances. It would be useful if the Minister would be able to clarify that. However, families who find themselves in a similar position after the measure is brought in are likely to be left £55 a week worse off as a result of losing this premium.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, we should be grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Grey-Thompson, for introducing this important issue on which we have all received representations. Quite a lot of numbers have been bandied around with particular reference to benefits, and I will be interested in the Minister’s response. As I understand it, in the current system the severe disability premium is paid to people, whether in or out of work, who receive at least middle-rate care, live on their own and do not have a carer. It is payable only as a means-tested benefit so it supports those with a severe disability who have a low income and face many extra costs as a result of living alone.
Alongside that is the disability element of the working tax credit, so under the present system someone who is entitled to DLA or has recently been receiving a long-term sickness benefit would be entitled to the disability element of working tax credit if they worked for at least 16 hours a week. That is where we start from. As we have heard, though, the proposed support for adults in the universal credit depends upon the gateway of the WCA. This is what will drive the new arrangements. The briefing that we have had says that only those with a level of impairment sufficient to be found not fit for work will receive any extra help. I am not totally clear whether in that context “not fit for work” means someone who would only be going to the support group or someone who was going to the WRAG as well. I think the Minister is shaking his head, or rather he is nodding to say that only those in the support group would receive that.
That creates the difficulties that have been spoken about. The changes would mean that someone who could self-propel a wheelchair 50 metres or was registered blind but could undertake a journey unaccompanied could be found fit for work or, presumably, for work-related activity. Of course no one would want to claim that such individuals could not be encouraged to work if they wanted to, but that does not mean that they do not face considerable disadvantage and cost compared with someone with no impairment. So if they are out of work but found fit for work they face the same conditionality as everyone else, but if they are in work, because the gateway for extra support within the universal credit is the WCA, someone who is found fit for work will receive no extra support in work. The juxtaposition of the present and the future is concerning.
I am sure that the Minister will have seen the briefing that we have had. It says that the following are some of the ways in which different groups will be affected. Those who are terminally ill or who develop a severe level of impairment and live on their own could be disadvantaged to a significant degree—by something like £50 a week. Someone who is entitled to a middle rate of the care component but found fit for work—for example, someone who is severely visually impaired—will in many cases be found fit for work. However, if they are living on their own and doing some work, they are likely to have considerable extra costs that are not met by the DLA or by PIP when it comes along. Currently, most would be entitled to at least the middle rate of the DLA care component and therefore the SDP.
Under the current system, a severely visually impaired person in the work-related activity group and living on their own earning £100 a week will be left with a disposable income of £188 a week plus their DLA, after housing costs are paid. Under the universal credit, the same person will be left with a disposable income of less than £100 a week plus whatever PIP is payable after housing costs. There are plenty of other examples and we have heard some of them today from the noble Baronesses. These sorts of disparities are quite disturbing. The Minister might say that these are quite specific and narrow examples of the full spectrum of people who are affected by this, but a serious issue has been raised here and we need to understand fully how people are being protected in comparison with the current system under the new world of the universal credit.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts(14 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
“(ba) any amount of support for disabled children included under section 10 should be no less than the amount that was provided under the benefits and tax credits system prior to the introduction of the universal credit,”
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, this amendment would ensure that the disability additions for children provided under the universal credit are not cut compared with the disability additions provided through the current benefits and tax credits system. Families with children who have a disability are likely to have much higher costs than other families. I would briefly like to explain the current system. Disability living allowance is there to make a contribution to those costs. In addition, the means-tested system has also offered extra support to these families to help with these costs. Families with children who are judged to have the highest needs and receive the highest rate of the care component have an extra £76 added to their child tax credit to help with those costs. Families with children receiving any rate of DLA, except the highest rate of the care component, have an extra £54 added to their child tax credit to help with those costs.
The Government have announced that the disability elements of the child tax credit will be replaced with a disability addition and higher addition within the universal credit. However, all those who receive the higher addition will receive only half of the current rate. If the child is in receipt of the higher rate of the care component of DLA, the family will receive the higher disability addition, worth £77. Children who are registered blind will also now qualify for this higher addition. This means that those families who have a child eligible for the higher addition will receive £1.50 a week more than current claimants. However, households with disabled children who are not entitled to the higher rate and who claim benefit after the measure is brought in will receive only the disability addition worth about £27, which is about £27 less than the current rate.
As can be seen, the disability addition halves the level of support provided under the current system, so most families with a disabled child will lose around £1,400 a year. I have a number of concerns regarding which families will be affected by this. Only families of children in receipt of the higher rate of care component of DLA and severely visually impaired children will receive the higher addition. All other families of disabled children receiving DLA will receive the reduced level of support. In order to receive the middle rate of the care component of DLA, children have to need help frequently throughout the day or through the night. Those care needs have to be substantially in excess of the average care needs of a child the same age. To receive the higher rate of the care component, the child has to have frequent needs through the day and the night. Many children with a very significant level of impairment such as children with Down's syndrome or children who are profoundly deaf are likely to be in receipt of the middle rate of the care component as there is no reason why they would be likely to have substantial care needs in excess of other children at night. They will thus only be entitled to the lower addition.
Lord Freud
That is the envelope in which we are operating. If I could find £200 million more to add to that envelope then I could do it, but we are not in that position. As noble Lords know, we have put a lot of money into the universal credit. The overall gross figure going into people’s pockets—the poorest people in the country—every year once we get universal credit in is £4 billion a year. Of that £2 billion is net extra; £2 billion is through a more efficient system. That is the money we have found; that is the overall envelope that we are operating in. I do not have any more money, and there are some very difficult choices.
The question is this: does the noble Baroness want to maintain the rates for moderately disabled children at the expense of raising the limits for severely disabled people? That is really the juggle that we have to do. As I have said, this is not easy; these are difficult judgments. It has been very difficult to get to this position, and that is the decision that we think is best for people who we really want to help. We want to focus our support on the most severely disabled people regardless of their age; to simplify and to align the extra payments for disabled people; and to smooth the transition into adulthood. That is fundamentally the reason why I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate on this vital amendment. The restructuring of support for disabled adults and children is taking money from disabled children who need it. The Government say that it is not a money-saving measure and that its main aim is to simplify the system and to give more to adults with the severest levels of impairment. However, the simplification is superficial and fails to give more to those with the greatest needs. I think that we should remember the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, who quoted Dame Philippa on the need to move away from categorising people based on severity of impairment.
Additionally, this measure is going to cause significant hardship to families with disabled children, who are already disproportionately likely to be living in poverty. It will make the situation much worse for those who are likely to have higher costs—those in the very group of adults whom this measure is meant to help. I believe that the Government’s proposals will undermine their own prevention agenda. There is no reason why an adapted form of the current levels of financial support could not be introduced into universal credit, with extra help being given to the support group when new moneys allow. It would not cost anything and would mean that families with disabled children were not among the biggest losers under the new system.
We have often heard it said that the devil is in the detail, and I agree, but I believe that the Minister is also making grand assumptions about the ability of parents of disabled children to work. We have heard much about the transition but this is about the new children who will be coming into the system. I believe that the measures that the Government are proposing will push more children into residential care.
I thank the Minister for asking me whom I would be most likely to support. That is not a question that I would like to answer on my own, and I therefore wish to test the opinion of the House.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions on this group of amendments and the Minister for his comments. I feel that I am not knocking at a completely shut door. However, I still believe that those who should be allowed to be consulted should be made more explicit in the Bill. I also accept that, in some cases, collecting additional evidence from the claimant’s medical practitioner may be unnecessary as the decision may be clear-cut. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, for highlighting the fact that information should be used, not just collected. That has given me plenty of food for thought on my future wording.
There has been strong support for the use of the best evidence possible so that we can arrive at the right decision for the disabled people concerned and be effective in the use of public money. To not take medical evidence into account or use appropriate support advocacy, as mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord German, would be a false economy. However, we are still missing something.
As regards the financial cost and the cost in time of an appeals process—not to mention the stress that that will cause to the great number of people who will have to go through it and the fact that it could block up the system—I would much rather the money go into people’s pockets than into the process. On the testing process, it does not matter whether you ask 20 or 200 questions, if the claimant is not able to give the best answer or the right answer, or the answers are not correctly linked together in the process, you will not get to the right decision and will be left in a situation where there is a huge number of appeals. I am not asking for more money to be spent; only that it is spent in the right place.
The Minister referred to the correct training for assessors to ensure that they reach the right standard. That is incredibly important. However, I am not convinced that we are yet in the right place; there is still much work to be done. I shall return to this issue at a later stage. However, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
I suspected it might not be. For people with fluctuating conditions, where there is a likelihood of their going back on repeated occasions, perhaps one could sort out within a particular group individuals who would benefit from having regular contact with the same person. In the spirit of co-production, some individuals who are going to be assessed on a repeated basis may perhaps like to choose the person they deal with. However, as I say, I do not know how it works in practice at the moment so this may be by the by.
On listening to this debate, the question of the supervision which takes place in the social care arena seems to be pertinent. I am grateful to the Minister for making it possible for a social worker to visit the officials working on this and to discuss matters of supervision. In social care it is very important for front-line staff to receive quality supervision on a regular basis for three purposes: first, to check that they are doing the right job; secondly, to check that they are receiving the right continual professional development; and, thirdly, to ensure that they are not responding inappropriately to the clients.
On the third purpose, we all come to life with our experiences, and some assessors may find it difficult to work with particular clients who rub them up the wrong way. They need to be able to go to their supervisor and say, “Look, I feel really uncomfortable working with this person. I am not sure it is actually anything to do with them. Can you help me to sort this out?” They need a sounding board, if you like. That is one aspect.
On the continuing professional development side, this is a training aspect to check that they are continually building on their understanding of, let us say, autism. They will start from a point of ignorance but, in the course of years of experience, they will learn more and more. They are helped to do so and their supervisor ensures that they get the opportunities for that learning and enrichment. It is a draining job and the people doing it need to be recognised, supported and enriched. I have covered those three points but, as I say, I am not sure it is pertinent.
The proposal for a trial arrangement might allow an opportunity for us to find the most effective kind of supervision we can afford to provide and where there are opportunities to build continuity of relationship with clients.
I have an amendment later in the Bill which relates to how one manages the system and the culture in this area. If the people at the very top of some of these organisations had experience of social care—if one could be confident that there was a senior social worker at the top of the Jobcentre Plus arrangements, or whatever—they would have the necessary insight and the understanding to help people on the front line who will need a system of this kind to assist them in working with vulnerable adults. In that way, even with limited resources, the best outcomes could be achieved in the circumstances.
However, I will come to that amendment later. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, and this amendment is also in my name. It is vital to ensure that the new framework is right, and this amendment gives me some comfort in what is a very difficult time for a huge number of disabled people. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, mentioned time. That time is required.
If someone has a health condition that is likely to improve, or a newly acquired impairment to which they are likely to adapt, no one would argue that the costs might not change over time and that there should not be a reassessment. For example, the costs of someone who is a lower leg amputee will be very different in the first 18 months or two years after the amputation from what they may be 20 years later when they have adapted to it. However, when someone has a health condition or impairment that is unlikely to change and the costs are likely to remain the same, it does not make sense to keep sending them for more face-to-face assessments. For people in this situation it should be enough to confirm with the claimant’s healthcare professionals that their condition is unchanged. I feel very strongly about this because the following claimant told the MS Society how she feels about the prospect of face-to-face assessments. Many like her find this process very strange given that so much is known about the condition, including that it will only get worse and not better. When such claimants have to talk to a stranger about some very intimate details of their life it can have a devastating effect on them. The claimant said:
“I am already dreading the day when I have to sit in front of someone and explain myself to them … When I am already seeing a neurologist and a whole team of people who help me to try and live as best I can with MS … This is just not fair in my eyes. … Shame on the people who have come up with these changes which once again affect real people who have no choice but to try and live with this illness”.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I wish to speak briefly in support of the hobby horse of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, which we should take seriously. I was struck by what she said about how a trial period in which disabled people’s organisations were involved could do a lot to restore confidence in the system. I am sure that I am not the only noble Lord who has been struck by the e-mails, letters and faxes that I have received, which demonstrate that that confidence is at rock bottom. There has been a catastrophic loss of confidence. The noble Baroness is offering the Government perhaps not an olive branch, because that suggests that a war is going on, but an opportunity—I suggest that the Government would do well to grasp it—to listen to what is being said, accept this amendment with its trial period and involve disabled people’s organisations. That could go a long way to restore confidence in this system.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
My Lords, I am also extremely supportive of this amendment. It is a government misuse of the social model to withdraw support by saying that if you have a decent wheelchair-adapted house and car your disability goes away. That was quoted to me by a DWP civil servant as a social model assessment. That is exactly why I tabled an amendment on social model assessment—so that we can teach assessors what the social model really means.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, is absolutely right. If I were assessed today, I would probably be taken off DLA. I have my wheelchair, my adapted house, my car and some personal assistance. However the cost of maintaining that is absolutely phenomenal. My disability has gone away; it is away today. I feel equal to all who are here but tonight it might be different. Therefore, I am absolutely in favour of placing this in the Bill. It is a perverse incentive to account for aids by means-testing. It means that people might stop using their electric wheelchairs and adapted cars to get the benefit. They might hide them in the garage or swimming pool. Apparently people put their cars there to hide them from the taxman. As noble Lords can see, I am very supportive of this amendment.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I also support the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester. When I first looked at this area, I found it quite confusing and some of it not very simple to understand. Some aids and adaptations are taken into account for the assessment. For example, for the mobility component, any aid that the person can use to assist them in walking is taken into account. However, someone who can self-propel a wheelchair will qualify because they are still unable, or virtually unable, to walk.
I declare an interest as a wheelchair user and someone who spends considerable time making sure that I can get the right aids and equipment for me to live as normal a life as possible. As the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, has said, you try to get as much independence as possible. For me, it is about getting a small chair that means I can fit into every lift in this building, which is a challenge when they are all built into the various chimney stacks; and one that is light enough to push for more than 50 metres, which does not get you very far in your Lordships’ House on the very expensive carpet that we have here. I also need to get it in and out of my car. I spend a lot of time making sure that equipment is right for me but I could easily buy a chair with wheels that are 16 inches in diameter, rather than 11 inches, and that weighs 30 kilos instead of four and a half. That would change my impairment considerably but I want to be as independent as possible. Those aids and adaptations make my life easier but they do not stop the patronising attitude that is out there. They do not stop the barriers.
I also want to encourage disabled people to be as fit and healthy as possible but we could be in a situation where we prevent people exercising and doing physical activity because they are penalised for doing so. Again, in my case, I spend several hundred pounds on the right cushion to sit on to ensure that I do not get a pressure sore. A cushion cover for that cushion is around £120. This costs the National Health Service considerably more than it would if I sat on a piece of old, tatty foam. However, if I sit on a piece of old, tatty foam, I might be in a better position to be considered for DLA in the future. It is the same with adaptable housing, and lifts and ramps. We are getting into a very difficult situation here, where the things that should be making disabled people’s lives easier, to enable them to contribute, will actually encourage them to think about things in a very different way.
It is very important we get this right. We do not want to push disabled people back into their houses, or ghettoise them. We are in a real danger of doing that if we do not find the right balance, and make sure that disabled people have access to the right equipment to enable them to live as independent lives as possible, and to contribute towards society.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, it is with a degree of trepidation that I rise to speak, having just heard those contributions. This issue presents a real conundrum. There is an argument that asks, if the social model is to identify the broader challenges to living that confront disabled people, is it unreasonable to take account of provisions and innovations of aids and appliances that society has developed to help people in their daily living? However, it is easy to state that; as the contributions we have just heard made clear, there is a question of what that will mean in practice.
We could recognise that the use of aids and appliances will not always remove the barriers that people face; we have certainly heard that explained. We should also recognise that not everyone will have access to aids and appliances, or indeed adaptations, which could enhance their quality of life. There is a conundrum that is recognised in the November 2011 Explanatory Note. If account is taken only of aids and appliances that people have and—other things being equal—that produces a low award, there is a potential disincentive to acquire those very aids and appliances that will improve people’s lives.
As I understand, what is currently proposed—as the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, identified, this mirrors the current DLA formulation—is that the assessment will take account of aids and appliances that are normally used and can reasonably be expected to be worn or used. This seems to penalise those who have not yet acquired those aids and appliances. They will have a zero or low award, and not have the money to acquire the facilities. I wonder if it would not be a more reasonable approach, if there is to be some recognition of aids and appliances in the assessment, to take account of what people have initially, with some acknowledgement that, at a reassessment at some stage in the future, you might add those that people might be reasonably expected to use. At least that way, there is a transition.
We know that some aids can be differentiated from others on the basis that in themselves they do not overcome all the issues of mobility. Attaching higher scores for these circumstances—although we do not know what the tariff will be—does not seem unreasonable. The more I have thought about this, and the more contributions I have heard, the more difficult an issue I think it is.
Lord Freud
This is the Catch-22 that a number of noble Lords have pointed out today and in the past, whereby denying oneself an obvious aid is used as a method or device to maintain a higher level of PIP. Clearly, we want to discourage that because we want people to maximise their opportunities in life. The noble Lord referred to a period in which to obtain an aid. However, that drives straight down the other path of starting to multiply the number of reassessments, which we do not want to do. There is a balance to be struck here but most people are able to get aids and appliances. They may not get the four-and-a-half kilo device of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. That is half the weight of my bike.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, if I might interject, one of the issues is the cost of aids and equipment. You can buy a fairly okay wheelchair for £250. You can buy a semi-custom fit chair for about £3,500 and you can probably spend £6,000 on a chair. However, some aids and adaptations are very difficult to get, such as a stair lift, which costs £2,500. I tried to get one fitted in my house when I was pregnant but no company in the country would fit a stair lift in my house as the stair lift was not insured to carry two people, and as a pregnant woman I counted as two people. However, there were companies that were prepared to put one in for someone who wanted to carry their dog up the stairs. A through-the-floor lift costs £18,000. If you live in the south-east of England, moving to a bungalow is just not an option because it is so expensive. There are all these costs that keep adding up, and it is very difficult for disabled people even to think about getting the right equipment because of the huge cost.
Lord Freud
Clearly, one has to be absolutely sympathetic to this point. As we all know, levels of equipment can vary hugely. However, the point on this particular issue is that we will look at only readily available, cheap aids and appliances, which can be reasonably used. That will be the definition and it is the definition used today in DLA, so we are effectively porting that approach over. I think I have already asked for the amendment to be withdrawn.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, in Amendment 86A, and I believe she has covered the amendment very clearly. I also find the qualifying period worrying. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, has said, the first months are often the period when extra costs are at their greatest, and just as people are trying to adjust their outgoings, they are also adjusting to the impairment or illness.
I do not believe that it is the case that they will be able to receive support elsewhere. Social care support may be available, but that is means-tested and has its own application and assessment process, which we have debated quite a lot this afternoon. Support from the NHS can be very limited and not immediate and I do not think we should assume that appropriate help is that easy to find.
In Committee in another place, the Minister for Disabled People stated that this proposal was not being driven by the need to make significant savings, so why are we making this change? It has been argued that, for example, in the case of someone who has had a stroke, it may not be clear at three months what their long-term needs may be, and that may also be true at six months. However, their costs are likely to be very high during these initial stages. While no one, me included, wants to see repeated assessments, we have heard a lot about giving help to those who most need it. In the initial months following diagnosis we should look at the qualifying period as detailed in the amendment because those are the people who will need immediate help.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I support the amendments which seek to revert to the existing qualifying period of three months. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, said that six months is a long time to wait for extra resources, and we have heard from a number of noble Lords about the significant additional costs which can be incurred during this period.
However, there is a further twist in the tale—the benefit cap—which we will be discussing next week. PIP exempts people from the benefit cap but, of course, if you cannot qualify for PIP for six months then you would not only have to wait for additional resources but could find that your own resources are being significantly depleted during this period. This is very worrying. Can the Minister say whether any estimate has been made of the number of people who may be caught in this way? I suspect that it is not a large number, but one person is one person too many. It could be potentially very frightening for people to find that they might have to face this horrible benefit cap.
I hope that the Minister will accept the amendment. If not, and the six-month period goes ahead, a perhaps minimalist way of addressing the question—although it does not really address it—is that someone who qualifies after six months should have the money backdated to cover what they lost through the benefit cap.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
I beg to move Amendment 86DZA standing in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins. The noble Baroness apologises, but she is unable to be present as she has an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill in the Chamber.
This amendment is designed to ensure that disabled people receiving the new benefit—whether it is the personal independence payment or DLCA—before pensionable age are able to continue accessing support after they reach that age. I declare an interest in that I am a recipient of DLA.
This amendment would maintain the requirement that disabled people meet eligibility criteria, but would offer a significant reassurance to disabled people that their support will not diminish with age. Sir Bert Massie, as cited in Monday’s debate, has suggested that disabled people, “Join us or die”, given that the incidence of impairments and experience of health conditions increase with age, and that more than half of disabled people develop their impairment or health condition in adult life.
The older we get, the more we need support with the higher cost of living, and with the health conditions and/or impairments that life brings. DLA currently provides vital support to 845,000 disabled people over pensionable age in meeting their higher essential costs of living. This support offers a significant lifeline, and was planned for in the original legislation when DLA was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Newton, and others, in the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992. That Act specifically refers to the age limit not applying to a DLA award made before someone attains the upper age limit. However, the Welfare Reform Bill does not make the same guarantee for the new benefit.
Clause 81 allows for regulations to be made to allow for exemptions, and the Explanatory Notes to the Bill indicate that allowing PIP to continue to be received after someone reaches pension age could be such an exemption. This would be welcomed, but leaves a gap in clarity which needs urgently to be addressed. I am aware that the Government believe that this issue should be covered by regulations. This was not the case in the original 1992 legislation, and I am unconvinced that it should be the case now.
My concern is due in part to the Public Bill Committee stage in the other place, where the Minister for Disabled People stated that the Government wanted entitlement to be addressed in regulations, to allow for flexibility. Such flexibility could include altering this entitlement in the future, and denying support to disabled people reaching pensionable age. It would offer a significant boost in confidence for many disabled people to receive reassurance during the passage of the Bill that their support will not be withdrawn at pensionable age.
Disability Alliance, and many other charities, are being approached regularly by disabled people worried about what the current plan will mean when they reach pensionable age, and whether support will end. Readers of Disability Now will also have seen this issue raised by other concerned disabled people and their families. This amendment would clarify the position and put many minds at rest.
The Dilnot Commission highlighted the pivotal role that DLA plays in preventing high-level needs escalating. This is a particularly important issue for people who are in receipt of the mobility component of DLA, as there is no equivalent to this under attendance allowance—the current disability benefit available to people who seek help after they pass pensionable age. Receiving DLA helps disabled people manage health, and prevents some avoidable NHS costs occurring. Receiving help after pensionable age could also help disabled people avoid entering council-funded residential care homes at all or prematurely. Therefore, this amendment potentially offers further financial savings in the long term, but requires the Government to work collectively and not allow a DWP silo approach to ignore the NHS and local government costs of not permitting an entitlement to be carried over to pensionable age.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his comments, especially around what happens when those currently on PIP reach pensionable age. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, raised further crucial issues regarding clarity in relation to people over 65 who currently receive DLA. If the amendment is too wide, as the Minister suggested, I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, would be very happy to meet with the Bill team before Report to determine the correct words to put down. As the noble Baroness is still discussing the Health and Social Care Bill in the Chamber, she will need time to consider the Minister’s comments. I am sure that she will return to this at a later stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Wilkins
My Lords, I could not agree more strongly with these amendments. As ever, my noble friend Lady Campbell has nailed the issue and then hit it firmly on the head. The title of the Government’s proposed replacement benefit to disability living allowance is vague, confusing and misleading. As my noble friend Lady Campbell points out, it does not even mention disability. No doubt this is intentional, and sadly this Government have taught us to be fully justified in our cynicism. By removing any indication of PIP being a disability costs allowance the Government can manipulate entitlement to the benefit to their heart’s content.
I should declare my interest as someone who has received DLA and its predecessor benefits since the mid-1960s. Should I now expect screaming Daily Mail headlines spelling out the shocking amount this must total over the years? Of course, they will completely fail to mention that it was only this benefit that enabled me to be mobile, educated and employed, and so become a contributing taxpayer for the whole of my career. Now more than ever this week’s shocking press headlines vilifying disabled people as scroungers could not teach us more clearly that it is essential that the press and public know what this benefit is for; that they are given no excuse for the misinformation; and that the name spells out clearly what is in the tin. It is a disability living costs allowance.
The Minister has emphasised throughout this Committee stage that the Government’s whole purpose with this Bill is to change the country’s culture in people’s attitude to work. It remains to be seen whether they will succeed. I hope that they do. But sadly, what this Government have succeeded in doing is changing the public’s attitude to disabled people. It has become totally acceptable to depict disabled people as scroungers defrauding the benefits system. The Secretary of State, Iain Duncan Smith, was quoted as saying on 11 November in the Daily Mail:
“At the moment hundreds of millions of pounds are paid out in disability benefits to people who have simply filled out a form. The vast majority are getting the benefit for life without regular checks to see if they are still eligible”.
He finished that sentence by saying,
“or if their condition has worsened and they need increased support”.
Of course, concern for those who are missing out was not the lead story.
Will the Minister say when we are going to see the Government move to rebut any of these wildly inaccurate press reports which are helping to stoke disability hate crime? The Government’s acceptance of this group of amendments would be a welcome indication of their intent and I feel sure that my noble friend Lady Campbell has made the Minister very aware of the importance of this issue.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Campbell of Surbiton has very ably described the purpose of this amendment. I, too, declare an interest in that I am in receipt of DLA. Like my noble friend Lady Wilkins, it has helped me in terms of education and working throughout my life.
When I was doing my own research on what the title PIP meant, the most common response was, “Isn’t that something linked to pensions—a personal investment plan?”. The title should more accurately reflect what the benefit is and why support is required. Obviously, a name change on its own will not solve the issue but anything that clarifies why the benefit is necessary can only be helpful. Many disabled people are very frightened, partly by what will happen to their benefit but also about the change in the way in which they are viewed by society. It is not just in the recent media coverage over the weekend.
There has been a worrying change in how disability is reported in the media. The Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research in the media unit at Glasgow University has recently published a report, Bad News for Disabled People. It compared the coverage of five papers in 2005-06 and 2010-11 and found that there had been a decrease in stories presenting disabled people in a positive way and an increase in stories concentrating on benefit fraud. The focus groups in the same study all claimed that levels of fraud were much higher than they are in reality with some suggesting that up to 70 per cent of claimants were fraudulent. Participants justified these claims by reference to articles that they had read in newspapers. One of my concerns with the current name is that it possibly suggests that disabled people are getting a lot more money than they will actually receive. I also believe that there is an ongoing misconception over the purpose of DLA that we need to correct.
The DWP has highlighted in a press release the length of time many disabled people have received DLA as if people somehow do not need the benefit after a certain time. Again, this leads people to misunderstand the purpose of the benefit. Many people with congenital conditions, like myself, will continue to have higher costs of living throughout their lives. Of course, there need to be reviews as circumstances can change, but the fact that some people continue to qualify for these benefits in the long term is not on its own a signal that the system has gone wrong. A colleague frequently says to me that language is the dress of thought. Disability cost allowance is the right name to use.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I give my support to this amendment—the first in a long series that we are due to consider on this part of the Bill which deals with the personal independence payment. Like the noble Baronesses who have already spoken, I declare my interest as a recipient of disability living allowance since its inception in 1992. I hope that that can be taken as read throughout the rest of the amendments as we speak to them.
The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, has made a very full case. What has emerged is the iconic significance of DLA to disabled people. It was an enlightened measure introduced by a previous Conservative Government, when, as the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, told us, the noble Lord, Lord Newton, was Secretary of State—and, if I am not mistaken, Sir Nicholas Scott was Minister for Disabled People. It corrected many anomalies, as the quotation of Sir Bert Massie by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, reminded us.
Blind people were particularly grateful for the introduction of DLA. They had campaigned for many years for recognition of the extra costs attributable to blindness, but they were never officially acknowledged until the introduction of DLA. There were still anomalies; blind people were only eligible to apply for the mobility component at the lower rate—an anomaly that was only removed with the passage of the Welfare Reform Act 2009. That reform was supported by the Conservative Party at the time. I very much hope that blind people will not find that that hard-fought gain is snatched from their grasp—just as it has been won—with the implementation of personal independence payments. That would surely leave a legacy of bitterness that the Government would find hard to overcome.
This brings us back to the iconic significance of DLA. For many people it is not only the means but the symbol of their independence. As we have heard, much apprehension has been caused among disabled people by the changes the Government are making to the benefit system. People are fearful that their independence will be undermined with the change from DLA to PIP, or personal independence payment.
As Ministers probably recognise, the Government have a gap in confidence to overcome as regards the reforms where disabled people are concerned. They may well feel, on reflection, that retaining the name, which has such significance for disabled people, would be a small price to pay for the changes that they wish to make to the benefit. As the noble Baroness has said, names are important, and many disabled people obviously feel that we would lose this one at our peril. I hope, after due consideration, the Minister will take the same view.
“(A1) A person is entitled to the daily living component at the basic rate if—
(a) the person’s ability to carry out daily living activities is limited by the person’s physical or mental condition; and(b) the person meets the required period condition.”
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I will speak to the amendments tabled in my name in this grouping. These amendments identify what I believe to be a significant weakness in the current approach. When DLA was introduced it was to help with disabled people’s high living costs and to ensure that those who could not access alternative help were supported, as well as to maximise disabled people’s independence. However, since DLA was introduced, most councils have restricted access to care services. Around 80 per cent of local authorities in England now provide support only to people with needs assessed as being “critical” or “substantial”. People with low or moderate needs have been prevented from receiving support through care rationing. But the Government’s plans to end DLA and introduce PIP would abolish entirely the low-rate care DLA and deny help to many disabled people and their families least able to receive any kind of alternative support. The amendments have been proposed to ensure that some disabled people who need basic, but not a great deal of, support are still able to access help under the new benefit. I declare an interest in the level of support being targeted for total abolition.
We need to be aware of those who are at the greatest risk of losing help if the proposals progress as drafted. The amendments would secure some basic support for disabled people and would make a substantial difference between being cut off from support and receiving a little help towards high living costs. It would also ensure that some disabled people were able to manage health conditions and thus prevent the overuse of more expensive NHS treatments or inpatient care. I wonder if the Minister could say whether the Department of Health has provided costs for how it expects to see increases in NHS usage rise for this group of people.
The current support helps people manage health conditions and helps towards some of the costs of, for example, higher heating bills for people with conditions that require consistent home temperatures. To lose DLA would undermine the ability to manage and therefore enforce use of the NHS or reliance on formal care services.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, I picked up two points in the course of this debate. First, I think the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, indicated that she thought there were 655,000 potential losers from this. Is that right?
Lord Newton of Braintree
I got it nearly right, but it is still quite a lot of people. In that case, my question to the Minister is: what steps does he expect to take—it may be that this is already clear and I just do not know—to protect people who are already receiving DLA at the point of transition? We are talking about sums of money that, although not large to many of those in this Room, can be very large indeed to some of the people who are receiving them. One of the things that I always had in mind—I think at one stage my then Cabinet colleagues occasionally referred to it as “Newton’s law”—is that not giving somebody something is quite different from taking away from somebody something they already have. I would like to hear my noble friend’s comments on that.
The other thing is also, in a sense, a question directed to the Minister, although it may also have occurred to the noble Baronesses and others who are interested in this. It is the reference in the Bill and in this amendment, which follows the Bill, to a person’s ability to,
“carry out daily living activities”,
being limited by,
“the person’s physical or mental condition”.
I would like to say a word or two about how that is to be done. In my day, which some in the Room will remember, we had a benefit called the housewives non-contributory invalidity pension, which entailed a lot of tests, that were regarded as demeaning and humiliating in the extreme, about whether somebody could boil a kettle or take a tin off a shelf. I think there were others, to judge from the reaction of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, who will remember them. I would not want to get back into that. Indeed, I got rid of it. I hope that we may have a word that there will be a more civilised way of assessing the ability to carry out daily living activities than is revealed on the surface of the Bill.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I will pick up the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. I have no figures on how many people may or may not lose, mainly because we have not yet locked down the thresholds. However, I assure her that this is a bottom-up exercise based on assessing people's real needs. We are working at it that way round rather than working to a budget. That is what some of the testing we did over the summer was about.
The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, asked about the work we have done on some passported benefits. We had detailed discussions with colleagues in the Department for Transport about passporting disabled people to the blue badge scheme. We will include key outcomes from the discussions in the updated impact assessment that we will publish in time for Report.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions this afternoon. I took over the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, and I am responding as such. I absolutely understand the need to prioritise the money that is available, and the fact that choices have to be made. I understand that the Government want to support those most in need. I, too, want that. However, the people currently seen to be not in greatest need will become those in need because they will not be able to carry out the daily tasks that DLA enables them to do. We may be storing up trouble for later. I look forward to seeing the more detailed information that is required to understand what the new landscape may be; and I look forward to having many more weekends taken up with reading.
I agree wholeheartedly with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on the difficulty of assessments, and with those of the noble Lord, Lord Newton, on transition. The barriers are still significant to those who may not be considered so disabled in the wider context of disability.
I think of this in terms of sport—and specifically athletics, which I know well. If life as a disabled person is a race and the finish line is full integration into society where DLA is not required, disabled people are not at the start of the 100 metres but spread out at different points along the marathon course. Many disabled people are still in the warm-up area and a few were left on the bus. Of course, this should not stop our attempts to remove barriers, but we should be very careful about the choices that we make. I have concerns that we are simply pushing this issue into other areas and I look forward to continuing the discussion with the Minister, especially around the projection figures of the Department for Work and Pensions, of which I take a slightly different view. I will come back to this at a later stage. At the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I was rather surprised to see that the amendment was felt to be needed. I had thought that the past 30 years would have made such an amendment redundant. Some time back, for just a few months and for reasons that I am ashamed to admit, I was in a wheelchair. Looking back, it is hard to say whether the difficulties I had were due to social or medical factors. What I am sure about is that an impairment easily becomes a disability if the environment is not supportive of that individual. That seems to make the difference.
What puzzled me until the noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned it was that we had not referred to the DDA. The whole point of the DDA was to set the medical impairment in a context which, through social, practical, emotional and moral reasons, did not serve to bar the person from full involvement in their lives. What we asked with the DDA was that employers and providers of goods and services should be required to make “reasonable” adjustments. This seemed a perfectly intelligent balance between the costs for small businesses and the rights of individuals not to face artificially induced and constructed barriers to their full social inclusion.
I remember going around the city and looking at our historic buildings, which we had been told by various people could not be made accessible for disabled people. On the contrary, the brilliant architect John Goldsmith, who was then over at the old DoE and was himself disabled, showed how we could ensure full access to buildings from museums to 18th century chapels for disabled people in wheelchairs and the like. In the process, mothers with buggies, pensioners loaded down with bags and a whole swathe of the community found that they had added access on the back of what we were doing nominally for disabled people. We opened up some of the most beautiful buildings of the City to perhaps a third of its population who had found barriers in their way. Without needing to get into a debate about social and medical because I cannot follow down those paths, I say to the Minister that I just do not see how you can separate the one from the other, because they interlock whether they be transport, housing, public access to buildings or whatever. Unless you have both sides of that equation, an impairment will continue to remain a disability—unnecessarily so—for far too many people.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I rise very briefly to support this amendment as my name is on it. Others have explained very clearly the need for these amendments. More specifically, I rise to support the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. The social model was a lifeline to me. My parents brought me up to believe that having an impairment was not my fault. I became a wheelchair user at the age of seven—some 35 years ago. I was brought up in the social model before there was even a name for it, but I also grew up in a world where there were loads of people who almost delighted in giving me the long list of things that I never could, or even should, do, such as go to the cinema, stay in a mainstream school, go to university, go to a sports club, or even, more recently, get married and have a baby. The social model outlines very clearly how disabled people can play their part in society. We should not take this for granted because it would be too easy to forget what the social model is.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, these amendments are about encompassing the social model in the Bill. We support them. I have come to this issue somewhat later than some noble Lords here such as the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, my noble friend Lady Wilkins and others. I found the Scope document, which has been referred to, particularly helpful not only because it laid out a route to a different process of assessment, but because it took the assessment and criteria in the DWP’s document and tried to point out in practical terms why they may not have encompassed these wider issues. I say to the Minister, as others have said, that this should not be a difficulty for the Government because they have on the record their commitment to the social model. It is in Hansard for 30 November 2010. I think it was the Minister, Maria Miller. It is clearly on the record and not a matter of dispute.
Indeed, the DLA consultation paper referred to the social model in the following terms:
“The social model of disability says that disability is created by barriers in society. These barriers generally fall into three categories: the environment—including inaccessible buildings and services…people’s attitudes—stereotyping, discrimination and prejudice…organisations—inflexible policies, practices and procedures”.
Of course, the model argues that these barriers can be changed or removed. We accept that dealing with these barriers is not just a matter for a DLA or PIP or whatever it is called, but the consequences of these barriers need to be taken into account in assessing entitlement. I ask the Minister how the approach to PIP is reflected in the social model of disability and how the Government would counter criticisms that their approach is still driven by the medical model which concentrated on the inability to undertake activities due to a physical, mental or cognitive impairment.
Paragraph 4.9 on page 29 of the explanatory notes to the second draft of the assessment criteria says,
“Furthermore, we remain concerned that taking greater account of issues such as housing, access to transport, informal support and utilities would make the assessment more subjective and lead to inconsistent outcomes for individuals. Many of these issues will be dependent on local circumstances and availability of services, meaning that results might differ depending on location across the country”.
Of course we understand the difficulty that taking account of a wider range of factors would involve an expanded and different process. However, any process that involves a points-based approach will have a degree of subjectivity to it.
The Minister will be aware of proposals from Scope, which other noble Lords have mentioned, that recommend the trial of a more extensive process that has co-operation with the claimant at its heart. I will not run through the detail except perhaps to comment on the last bit of the process as it sees it, which is the production of a local support plan to capture the evidence and information brought up over the course of the assessment process in order to help highlight where in the individual’s life the barriers and the needs tend to arise. This could help the claimant to identify particular areas in which PIP might provide valuable support in meeting disability costs, but would not take the form of an outcome-based agreement binding the individual to use their PIP for specific purposes. Do the Government have any plans to test this approach, together with input from disability groups? We acknowledge that a good deal of work, thought and engagement has gone into updating the assessment criteria, and this has also been recognised by the Disability Benefits Consortium, but inevitably questions arise about the rules of engagement going forward, what further consultation will be taking place, and particularly about why the Government are confident that the current proposals will take account of the full range of barriers and costs that disabled people face. I think that that is a particular bone of contention that may have been eased by the current document, but that has certainly not been fully answered. That is why it is important to have these issues in the Bill.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, the purpose of the amendment is to ensure that in all cases, as part of the decision-making process to decide eligibility for PIP, evidence is collected by the DWP from the claimant's healthcare professionals. A great deal of evidence suggests that decisions are frequently inaccurate when made on the basis of reports from face-to-face assessments alone, without being informed by evidence from the claimant's healthcare professionals.
There are lessons to be learnt from the current face-to-face assessments. Evidence shows that when face-to-face assessments are carried out for the WCA, inaccurate results frequently occur. Recent figures published by the DWP demonstrate that 29 per cent of claimants who are in the work-related activity group were placed in it only after a reconsideration or appeal, after they had originally been found fit for work on the basis of the WCA. The deciding factor in tribunals overturning decisions is frequently medical evidence from the claimant's doctor or healthcare professional.
A recent small study by Citizens Advice asked claimants to check the accuracy of the report of what they had said during their assessment. It asked claimants to take part in the study before they had been to the assessment to ensure that the claimants were not just taking part because they had had a poor assessment. Thirty-seven claimants took part in the study. Sixteen of the 37 reports were judged to have a very substantial level of inaccuracy. These claimants were not angry because they have been found fit for work. In fact, nine of the 16 had been placed in the work-related group and would not have seen their report if it had not been for the study. Eleven of the 37 reports were judged to have a medium level of inaccuracy and 10 were felt to be an accurate reflection of what happened at the assessment.
The following case is one of the 16 cases judged to be inaccurate enough to affect a decision for ESA—or, if the claimant were found not fit for work, a decision for DLA. The client had a serious mental health condition as a result of a series of traumatic circumstances. He felt that there was little interest in what he said and he reported a number of factual errors. For example, the report stated that the results of an MRI scan and an ECG were normal. The ECG should have been EG and the client had explained that he had not yet had the results. There were also significant omissions and distortions in what the client is recorded as having said, and false assumptions made as a result. There are other examples in this case study.
The medical evidence sent in by the adviser when the client appealed clearly backed the client's view of the assessment, as the decision was changed on reconsideration without the need to go to a tribunal. The DWP and Atos now recognise the value of medical evidence from the claimant's doctors. The value of this evidence as part of the assessment process was acknowledged by Dr Crawford, the clinical director at Atos, in evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee on 18 May 2011. HCPs working for Atos also acknowledged this when a sample group were interviewed in a survey by the DWP. The DWP now encourages claimants to send in medical evidence for the WCA.
The onus should not be placed on claimants to collect this evidence. Claimants are often charged for medical reports. While advertisers are sometimes able to negotiate with a doctor to drop the charge when a claimant goes to a tribunal, doctors who charge will clearly not make this concession in the case of every claim. The charge is often £30 or £35, and sometimes more. Someone living on the basic ESA of £67 a week cannot afford this amount. It must be the responsibility of the DWP to collect the evidence that is needed for an accurate assessment. It is vital that the assessment process for PIP includes a requirement for the decision-maker to collect evidence from the claimant's healthcare professionals as a core part of the decision-making process. Without this requirement, there is a danger that there will be a two-tier system, with the poorest and most vulnerable claimants unable to afford to pay for evidence, and as a result at risk of receiving a less reliable decision. I beg to move.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I, too, support this amendment and I, too, wish to speak about the assessment process. A number of people have contacted me just on this amendment alone—around 45 at the last count, and the figure is increasing daily. They want to express their concerns in this area and they are using very strong words. People are telling me every single day that they are terrified by the process they are being asked to go through. I accept that it is a difficult process. We demand that through the system we should grade impairment, which is a necessary part of the process, and we try to put people in boxes. However, disability and impairment affect people in such different ways. The process expects yes and no answers and that is almost impossible when we are considering a static condition, let alone fluctuating ones. Many people writing to me say that there is little room to give medical evidence or provide supplementary data and that every step of the process feels very confrontational. It is essential that the test is appropriate for disabled people.
I am also concerned about the number of people who tell me that the facilities used for the assessments are simply not accessible. One example is the Croydon assessment centre; it has a lift for wheelchair users but wheelchair users are not allowed to use the lift due to health and safety reasons. To enter the centre, you have to navigate 46 steps. If you cannot do that, the nearest centre is a 14-mile round trip away, which is very challenging for a number of people.
I have also received a number of e-mails saying that there is a yo-yo process going on. One ex-serviceman was assessed in 2003 as being 30 per cent disabled and yo-yoed eight times in the next five years or so between being 30 per cent and 70 per cent disabled. These various reassessments and appeals were carried out at significant expense to the public purse and distress to the individual. When he questioned the process, this man was told by the assessor that he was moved back and forth so many times because they did not really understand trauma.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, has said, disabled people are constantly being labelled in the media as benefit scroungers. The rise in the amount of hate crime is a real concern. Could the Minister reassure disabled people who are feeling vulnerable and afraid, who see no light at the end of the tunnel and no improvement in the process? They want to work and be part of society but they feel themselves to be victims of what is happening.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I support this amendment. As has been stated, the WCA is about deciding whether a claimant has limited capability, either for work or work-related activity. As the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said, there is no definition in the Bill, nor indeed in regulation, about what is meant by “work”. This is particularly important for those with fluctuating conditions, who are, at different times, both fit for work and incapable of work within the same month. We already know that, apart from any assessment, people with unpredictable fluctuations find it difficult to obtain employment or to keep it. This is partly because of their previous work records, partly if any of these fluctuations occurred during a probation period, and partly if they are honest and open with a potential employer.
It goes without saying that we support the principle of helping all those who are able to work to do so, but I am concerned about the apparent drop-off in the number of new customers helped by the Access to Work scheme, which has gone down to 13,240 compared with 16,520 in the previous year—a fall of nearly a quarter. It would be interesting to know what is thought to be the reason behind that, because it is an important way of helping people into work.
The really important word in this amendment is “sustainable”. Sustainable employment is defined as 15 or 16 hours a week and on a basis probably of 26 weeks. This amendment is particularly important, as the Government are proposing that regulations about defining capability for work or work-related activity are to be subject only to negative resolution procedure and thus with no opportunity for debate.
We have had a note which states that the Government’s intention is that regulations made under subsection (3) will set out the detailed circumstances and descriptors used to determine limited capability for work and limited capability for work-related activity. These regulations will be based on the Employment and Support Allowance Regulations 2008 and the subsequent amendments contained in the Employment and Support Allowance (Limited Capability for Work and Limited Capability for Work-related Activity) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 and any other changes to the ESA provisions before the introduction of UC in 2013.
We understand that the Government are undertaking further work to develop a supplement to the assessment to accurately identify individuals with enduring health conditions that limit their long-term ability to fully provide for themselves through work. However, regulations under Clause 41, which are also subject to the negative resolution procedure, will define the meaning of “work”. Given that this is another area where we remain unclear of the Government’s plan, it will be particularly important to have assurances about how people with fluctuating conditions are to be protected.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Newton of Braintree
There are too many hurdles in the amendment. In legal terms, although I am not a lawyer, it would be impossible to have guaranteed and predictable access to,
“high quality flexible and affordable childcare”,
because the parents could say that it was not acceptable. Indeed, the child could say that it was not acceptable. It is not a sensible construct, as I am sure any legal mind would advise. The noble Baroness may not agree, but that is certainly the view I would take if I was advising the Minister.
However, coming back to the noble Earl, the childcare issue is an important one, as we have recognised throughout the proceedings on this Bill. It could be crucial to whether it is sensible or reasonable to expect some people, be they single parents or others, to take up work. So we need a clear policy on this, even if in my view this amendment does not give it to us. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some encouragement on that front.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I would like to speak up for working parents because I am a working mother, and as noble Lords may have noticed I have brought my daughter to work with me. The amendment goes some way towards addressing some of the challenges that working parents face. It is absolutely my choice that I work 300 miles away from where I live, and it is the choice that my family and I have made. But trying to find flexible, affordable and appropriate childcare is really difficult. I am not sure whether that makes me a good or a bad mother, but I think that bringing my daughter along to a Lords Grand Committee is better than leaving her in childcare for a week. However, for people in more challenging financial positions, it is a real challenge.
I agree that it is better if parents are working, and I think that I am a better mother because I work. I think also that my daughter would probably say that it is not acceptable to be dragged along to a sitting of this Grand Committee and that she might prefer to be somewhere else. The wording of the amendment might not be quite correct, but it is important that we get these exceptions right. It is bad enough that as a mother you feel guilty for everything that you do anyway. You are accused of abandoning your child, not being a good mother and all those other things, when you are trying to do a good job. So it is important to get this right so that children can benefit from it—then parents and the family will benefit from it as well.
Baroness Drake
I was not going to come in on this amendment, but I feel moved to do so—