Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Hollins Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Hollins
“71ZJ Non-recoverable overpayments
The Secretary of State may not recover any amount of any benefits paid in error by officials when the claimants could not reasonably be expected to know they where being overpaid.””
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, the House will wish to know, in connection with this amendment, that I am an appointee for my disabled son's benefits.
The amendment is designed to maintain the legislative position that prevents the state recovering overpayments where the mistake is entirely the fault of officials and where the claimant could not reasonably have been expected to realise that they were being overpaid. This protection has been on the statute book for over three decades, yet it stands to be removed by this Bill. This is of great concern to churches and charities that understand the impact of sudden, unexpected and, in many cases, unaffordable debt.
During Grand Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, emphasised the importance of this protection remaining enshrined in primary legislation rather than being in a code of practice. Unfortunately, despite the Minister’s assurances that the Government's draft code of practice, What happens if you are overpaid Universal Credit, Jobseeker's Allowance or Employment and Support Allowance, would,
“lead to considered, consistent decision making”,—[Official Report, 23/11/11; cols. GC 467-68.]
it appears incomplete and worryingly inadequate to protect claimants. Nor is there any duty in the Bill requiring officials to comply with the code of practice. Those representing welfare claimants against whom an overpayment recovery is being enforced could prevent costly litigation if they could point to a statutory duty to follow procedure, but the statutory duty is not there.
The opening section of the code of practice encourages claimants to check their award notices and to inform the relevant authority if anything is wrong, missing or incomplete, but even the most incisive individuals may face real difficulties in identifying whether officials have made an error or an omission—perhaps especially the 20 per cent of adults who are estimated to struggle with literacy or numeracy. The principle of expecting those in receipt of benefits to check their notices is, of course, neither new nor unreasonable in itself, but under the proposed changes the consequences of failing to recognise the state’s mistakes will become excessively severe. Will the Minister clarify what extra support people will be provided with in analysing their award notices, particularly in cases where they face barriers in literacy or numeracy or where English is their second language?
The second area of concern I wish to raise relates to the section in the code of practice “If you disagree with the overpayment decision”. Claimants are instructed that they have a period of one month from the day that an overpayment notice is dated in which they may challenge it. This may seem an adequate time on paper, but it takes no account of the reality facing many people at home. Let us take a single mother of four young children who is attending a college course to improve her chance of getting a job receiving an overpayment notification and being threatened with her benefits being stopped. She is balancing an education with raising a young family, and one month in which to challenge the decision would not be long at all. If you add literacy problems, waiting times for advice services and even time lost through postage, there is a very realistic prospect that claimants simply will not be able to respond in time. Will the Minister reconsider what appears to be an inadequate time limit? Will he also outline what provisions will be put in place for those who do not respond within the prescribed time because of any matter out of their control, such as hospitalisation?
In the section of the code “Paying back an overpayment”, claimants are informed that overpayments may be recovered through deductions from their benefits, direct debit, another regular payment method, a lump sum or through the courts. Crucially, it does not mention that an overpayment may be recovered through deductions from earnings, as outlined in the Bill, nor is there any mention of the additional administrative costs that could be imposed in such cases, an aspect that has been of particular concern to organisations such as the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, which works on the front line with vulnerable debtors. Will the Minister clarify why these powers are not outlined in the code of practice and confirm that they will be conveyed in full to those in receipt of benefits so that those facing the recovery of overpayments in such a manner can fully understand the process and the implications?
Suitable safeguards must be put in place to ensure that the burden of official errors does not fall upon some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society. Profound anxiety has been expressed by a number of faith groups, including the five major Christian denominations that are backing this amendment. Noble Lords may have seen a recent letter to the Times by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Southwark, who underscored these concerns.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I am not sure that I am in a position to give assurance on precise figures and percentages. I am giving a general assurance that that factor will be looked at as part of the financial hardship consideration.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his detailed and careful reply, which contained a number of reassurances. Many of the reforms proposed in the Bill are primarily about changing behaviour rather than reducing expenditure. On the issue of overpayments, it is difficult to argue that the changes to the procedures for repayment fall into the former category. The primary motivations, I understand, are ones of principle and finance.
Until we can be sure that when things go wrong the individual judgment of officials does not subject claimants who have been overpaid to undue punishments, we need clear safeguards. The Minister has tried to reassure the House that those safeguards will be in place. I am reassured by his comments that recovery will not cause hardship and by his reminding us that the DWP would be open to challenge or to judicial review. With great power comes great responsibility, and many Members may believe, like me, that when the DWP alone is at fault the DWP alone should take the hit, and that this ought to be clear in legislation.
However, I am reassured by the Minister’s comments and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Hollins Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Stoneham of Droxford
My Lords, I have a lot of sympathy for the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Best. It is largely about the transitional arrangements, on which we are still working towards having more information. It would be helpful if the Government could spell out exactly how they are going to deal with the problem of the flow after April 2013—because everyone will have a year’s transition. If they become unemployed after April 2013, they will in certain circumstances be hit by the cap. I think that there is some sympathy in the House for people who have not had a history of benefit dependency. We are not trying to achieve behavioural change with them. How are we going to help them back into work when they are suddenly faced with high housing costs and a cap being imposed on them?
In our debate on children, insufficient attention was given to the fact that one of the biggest problems is the differential in housing costs between certain areas. Fortunately, those who have the highest housing costs will normally be in areas where they are likely to get a job quickly, rather than in areas where housing costs are lower. Even so, it takes much longer to get a job these days, particularly in this market, than it has in the past. People need some help with that transition.
We need more information from the Government on the transitional arrangements, which we on our Benches are concerned remain imprecise. This particular issue highlights that.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 60A, which is perhaps slightly oddly grouped with the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lord Best. The amendment would prevent carer’s benefit claimants being subject to the proposed household benefit cap by exempting households including a carer’s allowance claimant and carers in receipt of the carer premium in universal credit.
There can be no doubt about the contribution made by carers in unpaid care—indeed, there was considerable discussion about this at a previous stage of the Bill and last week. Their contribution has been valued at some £119 billion by Carers UK and is of immeasurable value to the people they care for. Peers from all sides of the House have recognised this contribution with personal accounts of experiences of caring and moving stories from families struggling in what are often very difficult circumstances.
Carers’ contribution and the challenges they face set them apart as particularly deserving of support from the benefits system and as clear candidates for exemption from a cap which the Government have said is designed to penalise individuals who are failing to play a full part in society.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Hollins Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Hollins
“Carer’s allowance
In section 70 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (invalid care allowance), for subsection (2) substitute—“(2) In this section, “severely disabled person” means a person in respect of whom there is payable either—
(a) an attendance allowance;(b) a disability living allowance by virtue of entitlement to the care component at the middle or higher rate; or(c) a personal independence payment by virtue of entitlement to a rate of the daily living component which will be prescribed in regulations, or such other payment out of public funds on account of his need for attendance as may be prescribed.””
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, the amendments would place the new arrangements announced by the Minister in Committee in the Bill to reflect existing provision for carer’s allowance passporting in primary legislation. In the discussions around the Bill, Peers, including the Minister, have demonstrated their understanding and appreciation of the huge contribution made by the 6.4 million carers in the UK, often at considerable personal sacrifice.
Despite its rather low level, carer’s allowance is a vital benefit which provides an essential independent income for families providing care. As a result, it is crucial that the prominence of carer’s allowance is maintained, as now, in primary legislation, preserving the strength and importance of these crucial rights for carers. Amendment 54D would establish this crucial link between carer’s allowance and personal independence payment in the Bill but allow the Government to prescribe the rates in regulations. However, the clear preference of Carers UK and other charities—I agree with them—is for the maintenance of the strength of existing rights by also setting out the rates in primary legislation.
Amendment 54E would establish the passporting link and that both rates of the daily living component would act as gateways, fully reflecting existing provision for disability living allowance and the details announced by the Minister in December. I remind the House that in December the Minister said:
“It has always been our intention that personal independence payment will provide a gateway through to receipt of carer’s allowance in the way that DLA currently does”.
The briefing paper went on to say:
“It is our intention that both rates of the daily living component will be used as a criterion in connection with entitlement to carer’s allowance”.
Carers UK hopes that the Minister will feel able to support the amendment, to cement in primary legislation this announcement made before Christmas and to send out the clear message that the Government do indeed value carers and that their rights and entitlements are valued correspondingly in primary legislation. Having made such a positive announcement, I can see no reason why the Government would not wish to establish these details in the Bill.
In addition to establishing the provisions announced by the Minister in the Bill, the amendment also provides the opportunity to express ongoing additional concerns about the impact of the personal independence payment reforms on carers, which were not addressed by the announcement around passporting. Carers UK and other organisations are still deeply concerned that the 20 per cent reduction in spending on these benefits as the personal independence payment is introduced will lead to the loss of carer’s allowance for a number of carers, on top of substantial numbers of disabled people losing their benefits.
Having looked at the consultation issued yesterday and other documents which I have received, I cannot see an assessment of the impact on carers of the changes. I may have missed it. We know from the statistics the impact on the relevant groups of disabled people—those in receipt of middle or higher rates of the care component of DLA, the gateways to carer’s allowance—and that these groups will be reduced by 80,000. Many, of course, will not have carers, but it is likely that some of those 80,000 will have someone currently in receipt of carer’s allowance caring for them, and when the disabled person loses his or her benefit the carer will lose eligibility for carer’s allowance.
I understand everything that has been said about the emphasis being on supporting people with greater need and that some people may receive more and that some people currently receiving the lower rate may move into the new standard rate, but concern has been expressed. So, if there has been no impact assessment, is the Minister now able to inform the House how many carers are likely to be affected by these changes? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the two amendments. I beg to move.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, my name is also on this amendment and I fully support what my noble friend Lady Hollins has said. As we have heard, there are approximately 6.5 million carers. Of course, we all need to remind ourselves just how important they are and how much money they save the state in the work that they do on behalf of their families and, indeed, friends, because quite a number of carers are not necessarily directly related. Perhaps the Minister would agree that that is a very good reason for putting this proposal in the Bill. It would certainly reassure all those who, as has been said, do so much for the nation in terms of finance and for individuals with whom they have personal caring relationships.
I hope that it will be possible for the Minister to accept this amendment. Otherwise, perhaps he will give us an assurance on the questions that have been asked. That would be helpful and useful. I look forward to hearing his reply.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to place on record the value that this Government place on carers and their work. Although times are difficult, I have managed to redesign the universal credit so that we are ameliorating the £100 cliff edge, as carers do some earning, that they dislike so much. I hope that that is a token, even in these difficult times, of how much we value carers.
The second thing I would like to mention is more than a token. I was really pleased to be able to announce before Report that both elements of PIP will be a gateway for the receipt of carer’s allowance. I am grateful for the very detailed and knowledgeable debate that we had on this matter. We have had a lot of very thoughtful and clever representations from groups such as Carers UK, which we have taken very seriously indeed. I know that our announcement has been very warmly welcomed by various groups.
There is some concern about how the decision is to be enacted. That is clearly what is driving the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. I want to give an absolute assurance on this. We will use the powers under Clause 90 of the Bill to make the necessary change. We will bring forward, in due course, the appropriate secondary legislation to amend Section 70 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 and put the position beyond doubt by making clear that people will be able to access carer’s allowance from both rates of the daily living component of the PIP. That is how we are planning to lock that position down, and it is a commitment that I make here and now to carers in this country. We have listened to the concerns from Peers and the carers’ lobby.
The noble Baroness asked how many carers would be affected. We expect to undertake an impact analysis as we get to regulations. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, spoke about large numbers being affected. That is a slightly brusque assumption given that carers currently on the lowest rate would not anyway be passported. We are talking about the top two rates. The assumption of a 20 per cent cut in that budget does not marry up. It is not a cut on where we are today; it is a cut on where we would be at the end of this Parliament. We have to await the impact analysis before we can know the real figures.
On the basis of the reassurances that I have provided, I hope that the noble Baroness will not press her amendments.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, I am indeed reassured to hear the Minister’s response, in particular that an impact analysis will be done as the regulations are prepared. I accept the Minister’s assurance that the passporting arrangements will be locked down. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Rix. I suspect that, after days of assessing the increased cost implications of the amendments already discussed, there will be a genuine expression of relief on the Minister’s face at proposals that will almost certainly reduce overall costs and the administrative burden on the department. I have already declared my personal family interest—I have two disabled adult children—and my professional experience of working with people with severe learning disabilities and autism over 30 years.
I should point out that an annual or short-term assessment would almost certainly be a waste of time and money. This is true not just for people with learning disabilities, but would be true for people with other conditions such as some 69,000 with multiple sclerosis who are currently in receipt of disability living allowance and, on a smaller scale, those with motor neurone disease. After an initial assessment by experts confirming the diagnosis and the degree of severity, it is surely better to leave things as they are but to respond, on the application of carers or the individual themselves, to any deterioration in their condition. That is then the time for further examination, when it may well be found that the person may need greater support.
It is also important to recognise that annual reviews may only increase the anxiety of those undergoing them and will do nothing for their morale. I think with horror of the time—currently scheduled for 2014—when my son will be due for an assessment. I hope I will have the opportunity to go with him and that I will actually know about it. It is not that there would be any intention that I would not know, but rather because he cannot read and his supporters do not always realise the importance of involving me in certain aspects of his support. I hope to be with him when that review is done, but I also know how challenging it would be for him to be reassessed. For quite a lot of people, this constant reassessment would be costly in more ways than you can imagine. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s measured reply to these very modest and cost-saving proposals.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
In quite a lot of the publicity run in some newspapers preceding today’s debates, there has been—how can I put it—synthetic outrage about the number of DLA awards that have been made for life, as though they are somehow fraudulent, negligent or erroneous, thus apparently besmirching the entitlement of the holder of that lifetime award to it as of right, as though they have somehow manipulated or cheated the system and that the previous Administration has colluded with them at the taxpayer’s expense. That publicity has been extremely ugly and extremely unfair. Whether or not the Minister feels able to accept the amendments—and I hope he does—I hope he will accept that some conditions, on which the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, spoke so eloquently and movingly and of which two other Peers in your Lordships’ House have had intimate experience, do not change except for the worse and for which a lifetime award is a decent, sensible and cost-effective way of proceeding. Could he therefore ask his press hounds to lay off those people who have had them in the past and who ought, in all decency, to go on to enjoy them in the future?
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Hollins Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Wilkins
My Lords, I support the amendment, which seeks to ensure that the assessment for the new entitlement is fit for purpose and fulfils the Government’s commitment to the social model of disability. As has already been noted, DLA occupies a unique space in the welfare benefits system as it recognises that disabled people face a plethora of extra, often prohibitive, costs as a result of living in our society with a condition or impairment.
We should all warmly welcome the Government’s repeated commitment to the social model of disability, for which, as many of your Lordships know, disabled people have fought long and hard. At the heart of the social model is the recognition that it is our society, not just their bodies, that disables people with health conditions and impairments. However, I fear that the proposed assessment for the new entitlement does not reflect this commitment. Despite the Government’s assurances in Grand Committee, the Minister admitted that the proposed test,
“is not a full social model assessment; it is not intended to be”.—[Official Report, 14/11/11; col. GC 199.]
I ask the Minister in his response to clarify to the House and disabled people why such a commitment was ever made in the first place.
The second draft of the PIP assessment criteria includes some small improvements from the first. However, it does not go nearly far enough. By assuming that a medical assessment will capture social and environmental barriers to independence, the Government risk homogenising the diverse difficulties that disabled people face in their everyday lives. The new threshold document makes many mentions of extra costs and barriers, but only a few of these will be captured by an assessment that looks exclusively at impairment.
It is with this in mind that I support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. The assessment for the new entitlement must consider the real social, practical and environmental barriers faced by disabled people with impairments living in our society. I, along with disability charities such as Scope, disabled people’s organisations and disabled people across the country, voice great concern that the Government are reneging on their commitment to the social model of disability. Doing so would undo decades of campaigning for and progress towards a better and more equal society.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for her honest and enlightening contribution. I speak as a doctor and as a mother; I have two adult children who are in receipt of disability living allowance.
I wish to talk about the medical approach to disability. As a doctor, I have often been accused of being very “medical model”, usually by disabled people. The medical model to disability is reductionist. Many doctors and other health professionals do not understand the social model; they do not understand the social, practical and environmental barriers that people with physical and mental impairments face. I support the amendment, but it would require skilled and sensitive assessments to be available and they would need to be delivered by people who understand the social model.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of this amendment and Amendment 50B. I spoke at length in Committee in support of the requirement for the decision-maker to collect evidence from the claimant’s own health professional, and I do not intend to repeat myself. However, I should like to make a specific point about the requirement in Amendment 50B that,
“persons approved by the Secretary of State to undertake assessments have specific training in all mental, intellectual and cognitive disorders”.
This is because it is necessary to state that specialist skills are required in assessing someone with autism, learning disability or mental illness, and I know that it is intended that such expertise should be provided. However, most medical doctors do not have these skills. Indeed, Professor Steve Field, when writing about the NHS Future Forum in connection with the Health and Social Care Bill, pointed out in his most recent papers that it is of some sadness and regret that most doctors do not have training in these specialties, particularly those relating to learning disability and autism.
The other point I should make is that in psychiatry these are also specialist skills and not all psychiatrists have them. All will be good at assessing mental illness, but not all will have expertise in assessing people with learning disability or autism. That requires additional or different specialist training. I wish just to draw that to the Minister’s attention.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, these amendments would improve the assessment process for the new PIP and allay the fears of many people with disabilities that the poor experience of the ESA assessments, where around 40 per cent have been successfully appealed, is not replicated under the new benefits system.
Amendment 50B relates to the training of those undertaking face-to-face assessments to ensure that they have knowledge of mental, intellectual and cognitive disorders, clear guidance about when to access more specialist advice, and a guarantee that such advice will be available. In Committee, we received some encouragement from the Minister who stated:
“Assessors will be required to have a broad training in disability analysis as well as training on specific impairments … we intend to ensure that they have sufficient training in mental, intellectual and cognitive impairments … and will stipulate this in our contracts”.—[Official Report, 16/11/11; col. GC 263.]
Perhaps the Minister could let us know what budget has been set aside for such training.
Amendments 50C and 50D would exempt certain people from a face-to-face assessment where sufficient evidence is available via other means. This would actually save money for the Government. I hope that the Treasury is listening. Implementing face-to-face assessments was to have cost about £675 million. The amendments would reduce the costs by removing from the process claimants for whom a face-to-face assessment is clearly unnecessary. This would help those with lifelong or degenerative conditions, for whom a face-to-face assessment could be stressful. For example, about half those with MS or Parkinson’s are receiving the highest level of DLA. Putting them through an expensive and stressful face-to-face test seems unnecessary.
Again, we received some assurance in Committee. The Minister stated that,
“where there is already sufficient evidence on which to make a decision … we completely agree … a face-to-face consultation should not be required”.
I hope that the flexibility would be there for that. However, he also argued that other than for those with a terminal illness,
“we do not agree that there should be different rules or processes for different groups of people … on the basis of impairment type”.—[Official Report, 16/11/11; col. GC 261.]
Yet, if the Minister is prepared to accept that those with a terminal illness should not be subject to unnecessary assessment, surely the same argument could be applied to those with degenerative conditions where there is no hope of improvement. We look forward to any assurances the Minister can give that unnecessary face-to-face assessments will not be necessary.
If he is not persuaded by me, perhaps he will be persuaded by someone of his own political background—the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. I have never quoted from one of his speeches before. He writes:
“Evidence from the individuals GP and/or a consultant will provide an accurate assessment of need. It would be difficult for a healthcare professional in a one-off meeting to elicit a comprehensive response about the daily reality for each claimant. Face-to-face meetings … could prove … inappropriate for an individual who may have difficulty with social contacts, such as those with autism, or for those with an intellectual or mental health disability”.
This brings me to the first amendment in this group which would ensure that the assessment process always takes account of evidence from the claimant’s old healthcare professional. It builds on the experience of the work capability assessment for ESA and is to help the Government to avoid history repeating itself. Unfortunately, in this case, it would be as tragedy not farce. The problem with the current proposals is that they put the onus on the claimant to collect the medical evidence and also to have the knowledge that would be helpful to provide this. As we have seen with ESA assessments, it is exactly this that often leads to unnecessary duplication as a case is assessed and then reassessed in the light of the evidence from the GP or professional. The initial failure to consider such evidence has contributed to the very high and expensive success rates.
In Committee the Minister argued that while medical evidence could be of use, he felt that it was not necessary to gather evidence in every case. He said:
“In some cases what the claimant has already told us … will be sufficient. In other cases, information … might be likely to add only limited value”.—[Official Report, 16/11/11; col. GC 261.]
Surely it would be better to err on the side of caution, given the widespread inaccuracy of the ESA assessments and the need to ensure that the personal independence payments do not follow the same route. Medical evidence is bound to assist the decision-maker in far more cases than those in which it proves unnecessary.
This is a modest amendment. It seeks to ensure that the introduction of personal independence payments proceeds smoothly and more importantly to ensure that the right benefit is paid to the right people. I hope the Minister will accept this. Certainly it would have our full support.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Hollins Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I understand that short speeches are the order of the day so that we may make progress. I shall therefore try to make a short one. I put my name to this amendment because I feel very strongly that the proposal to time limit contributory ESA to one year is one of the most retrograde features of the Bill. At Second Reading, I identified as many as five things wrong with the Government’s position. I will not repeat all those here but I will refer to a sixth, which I did not quite crystallise at Second Reading. The matter was gone into in great detail in Committee, although I was unable to be present. However, I have carefully read the debate twice, most recently through the long watches of last night as I travelled back from Bangkok on an overnight flight with an active two year-old for company.
In any case, the argument emerges most starkly if one sticks to its bald outlines, which have to do with the basic unfairness of the proposal. This was incisively encapsulated by the Disability Benefits Consortium in the words of a woman with Parkinson’s disease. She said,
“There’s no guarantee that I’ll find a job in 12 months. It could take me much longer”.
At this point, one might interpolate, “especially in current economic conditions”.
She continued,
“I’ve worked all my life and paid for decades into the system on the understanding that there will be support if I need it. To be told that all this support could have an arbitrary time limit is both unfair and stressful”.
There are two aspects to this unfairness besides the one which I have just interpolated. First, the condition of sick and disabled people in the WRAG is such that their likelihood of being able to get into work within a year is remote in the extreme, especially in present conditions. As my noble friend Lord Patel has told us, the Government’s figures show that 94 per cent of people in the WRAG need support for longer than a year and a DWP research report entitled Routes onto Employment and Support Allowance, which was published last September, revealed that, despite its name, after 18 months, only 9 per cent of claimants who had previously been out of work on incapacity benefit had found work and still only 25 per cent of those who had entered ESA from work had found new employment. In these circumstances, as the lady quoted by the Disability Benefits Consortium said, to limit ESA to just one year is both arbitrary and unfair. It is in no way evidence-based and is simply cost-driven. The DWP estimates that by 2015-16, 700,000 people will lose their entitlement, of which 280,000 will lose it entirely, which will mean a loss of £94.25 a week.
The second unfairness resides in the breach of the contributory principle that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, was so concerned about in Committee; that is, the breach of faith of citizens who have paid their national insurance contributions perhaps for 30 or 40 years in the belief that the support would be there if needed. A correspondent who wrote to me said:
“I believe it is totally wrong that people who have worked and paid tax plus national insurance for many years—36 in my case—should have their entitlement to state support time limited in this manner. It seems that the state is breaking its side of the contract at a time when people are most vulnerable”.
The Minister dismissed this in Committee. He said that national insurance contributions were to cover a wide range of contingencies, including the state pension and the NHS. He argued that a year was a reasonable amount of support to give someone when they got into difficulty. In a letter dated 10 January 2012 addressed to Cross-Bench Peers, to which my noble friend Lord Patel has referred, the Minister said that it strikes a reasonable balance between the needs of sick and disabled people claiming benefit and those who have to contribute towards the cost. But you might as well say that it was enough to give someone a pension for, say, three years to help them with the adjustment to retirement, after which they are on their own. Perhaps that will come to be the Government’s position: who knows? Anything is possible. Who would have thought that we would be reducing ESA support for which people have been contributing all their working lives to just one year?
Finally, I come to my sixth point, which I failed to develop at Second Reading. Ministers are constantly pointing to the unprecedented amount of support that they are putting in place to help people back or in to work. Only last night a statement was read out on the radio from a DWP spokesperson, which said:
“We are absolutely committed to supporting more disabled people into work. That is why this Government has protected the budget for specialist disability employment services. Aside from our disability employment advisers, we also have specialist teams at Jobcentre Plus who actively work with businesses to encourage them to interview disabled people with the right skills. Work Choice is expected to support more disabled people into employment each year than any of its predecessor government programmes”.
As regards specialist teams, Ministers have little idea of the reality. No Minister could go on the programme and this statement was read out in response to a blind woman—an able person with a lifetime of successful, professional employment, who had been made redundant last May. She told a woeful tale of the poor advice and lack of support that she had received. She received none of the interviews or training that had been promised. She is very eager to find a new job but few, if any, openings have been drawn to her attention. Despite repeated requests, no information has been provided in an accessible form. Her adviser seemed to have had little training. I know the woman concerned and on one occasion she told me that she felt she could do the adviser’s job better than the adviser.
The Work Programme is not working. In these circumstances it is not only unfair but downright cruel to time-limit contributory ESA to one year. At present it is unlimited. To reduce the level of support to just one year at a stroke is draconian in the extreme. I would drop Clause 51 entirely but I am a realist and recognise that, to have any prospect of success, compromise will be necessary. The amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Patel is surely the least one could make to ameliorate the draconian nature of the Government’s proposal. I very much hope, too, that in the light of their conference’s decision to oppose the time-limiting of contributory ESA last September, Liberal Democrat colleagues will search their consciences and also give my noble friend’s amendment their support.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, local health charities and services are also very concerned about the impact of time-limiting ESA. They are well aware of how difficult it is for people with severe and enduring mental illness to obtain and to sustain employment, especially at a time of deficit. My postbag is full of angry letters. One correspondent wrote to say that her brother took his own life largely due to difficulties in his working environment. She wrote:
“I personally have only ever managed a very chequered career due to living with complex mental health conditions and welcome any effort on the part of our Government to encourage a mental-health friendly workplace and specialist schemes to support people with mental health conditions into work, but”—
and here is the rub—
“on a voluntary basis because I am deeply concerned that any system built on a backdrop of conditionality, sanctions and time limits will prove to be totally counterproductive, leading to fear, anger and disengagement”.
I could speak at great length about some of the many issues that have been raised with me and I support this amendment.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, the time-limiting of ESA is one of the most emotive issues in the Bill, as we have heard. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, people affected by severe illness in their working lives who have paid national insurance for many years expect to be protected by the state.
As I said in Grand Committee, by bringing in this change in policy, the Government are acting like a private insurance company that changes the rules when a person makes a claim. However, as we know, the comforting words “national insurance” are really a myth, as many are about to find out when those in the WRAG who have been receiving ESA for a year by this April will have their money stopped immediately. Of course, some will go straight on to income-based ESA, but according to the impact assessment, about 40 per cent will find their income dropping by a staggering £90 a week if they have modest savings or a partner earning only about £148 a week.
The key question is whether it is fair to cut the benefits of those too ill to work, in this time of austerity, when the highest spending department in Whitehall has to take its share of deep cuts in expenditure. As we know, the change to universal credit, which we discussed at the beginning of the Bill, is going to be very expensive initially before savings will be made. Presumably the Treasury demanded this measure as a quid pro quo for finding the money to pay for universal credit.
What troubles many people, and certainly troubled the Lib Dem conference last year, is the arbitrary nature of the one-year cut-off. As we have heard, the DWP’s own figures show that 94 per cent of longer-term claimants were on ESA for more than a year. The many briefings that we have all received tell us that most people with severe but not necessarily rapidly deteriorating conditions struggle to be well enough after a year. I welcome the Government’s amendment, which would mean that those with deteriorating conditions will have a reassessment with a view to them migrating from the WRAG to the support group after a year.
What about the others? Will everyone be entitled to ask for a reassessment at the end of the year or only those with deteriorating conditions? For example, what about people who have had quite severe strokes? Their condition may not be deteriorating but they may be a very long way from the jobs market although that will be their eventual destination. If reassessments are to be allowed, at what point will people be asked to be reassessed? If it is too near the one-year cut-off point, I can envisage such a backlog that it may be many months before the reassessment is carried out.
Is the answer Amendment 38 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, to allow two years in the WRAG instead of one—another arbitrary time limit? I understand that this would be prohibitively expensive. The figure of £1 billion over the next few years has been mentioned. If this amendment is successful, the House of Commons will almost certainly claim financial privilege, which will mean that this House cannot even debate it again. A vote for Amendment 38 might lead to ping-pong, if it were to be won, but only to ping, not to pong. It would therefore be a merely Pyrrhic victory as the amendment would not go any further.
The work capability assessment is at the heart of this debate, and Professor Harrington’s reviews of it are most welcome and instructive. He advises patience, saying that the changes he has asked for and which the Government have accepted are taking time to bed down. I quite understand that, which is why I am so opposed to what I still wish to call the retrospective nature of this part of the Bill, even if strictly speaking it is not retrospective as it is not actually clawing money back from people. However, stopping someone’s claim the minute the ink is dry on the statute book, having warned them in a round robin letter, is pretty sharp practice. The Government maintain that people have been given enough notice of the April 2012 cut-off date because they could have read about the proposal in the small print of the comprehensive spending review in October 2010. How incredible is that?
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Hollins Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Hollins
“Criminal injuries compensation
For the purpose of this Part, a claimant in receipt of criminal injuries compensation, whether or not this is held in trust, will not have this amount included in the prescribed capital sum in section 3.”
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, in speaking to the two amendments in this group, I want to mention a personal interest in the issue that I shall be talking about, as some years ago a member of my family was affected by it.
As noble Lords know, the capital of a claimant is taken into account when assessing the level of benefit to be received. If the amount of capital is greater than a prescribed amount—I think it is currently £16,000—then the person’s benefits are adjusted accordingly. There are several exceptions to what is counted as capital and these include any funds held in trust. This is clearly outlined in the 2009 Housing Benefit/Council Tax Benefit Guidance Manual, which states that certain types of capital should be disregarded in full, including the value of any funds held in trust and the value of the right to receive any payment under that trust following payments made to the claimant as a result of a personal injury, such as vaccine damage payments or criminal injury compensation. The value of these funds is not taken into account when calculating the capital of the claimant. Therefore, any payment made into the trust as a result of a personal injury, such as criminal injuries compensation, will not count when the claimant’s benefits are considered.
These amendments seek to apply the principle that claimants who have received criminal injuries compensation should not lose benefits, regardless of the form in which it is received or kept. A year later, the 2010 Housing Benefit/Council Tax Benefit Guidance Manual states that officials should treat lump sum compensation payments as capital. Examples given include lump payments, such as those made by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. However, the manual then reminds officials to disregard the value of any compensation payment for personal injury which is held in trust. I believe that criminal injury compensation payments should not be considered as capital at all when assessing the levels of benefit, regardless of whether this is a £1,000 payment for 12 weeks of blurred vision or the maximum of £500,000 which is paid out for injuries leading to indefinite loss of earnings. Recipients of larger sums are likely to put this into a trust, but recipients of smaller sums are not. They may intend to use it for a holiday—some recompense for the injury that they suffered. One of the purposes of criminal injury compensation is to give recipients the opportunity to improve their quality of life after their trauma.
These amendments would benefit some victims of crime, particularly people with mental health problems or learning difficulties. Not only are they more likely to be in receipt of benefits, they are also more susceptible to being victims of crime. The benefits that they receive are provided to cover essential costs, and any payments made as criminal injuries compensation are made in recognition of pain and suffering that the victim has gone through and perhaps for the purpose of making up any lost earnings.
The idea that the benefits that the person is receiving and the criminal injuries compensation provide for two distinct purposes is very important. It is for this reason that allowing one to influence the level of the other would be unfair. The Minister may consider that Clause 5 would have been a better place for these amendments. I hope that he will accept these amendments or undertake to bring them back at Third Reading in a more appropriate form. I hope he will reassure me that these simple amendments would be acceptable. I beg to move.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I strongly support the amendment. I had the privilege many years ago of being responsible for vaccine damage payments within the department and always tried to make a distinction between payments that were in lieu of earnings, which tended to be of the incapacity benefit sort, and payments which were a lump sum. Sometimes there was a structured payment of capital over a period of time as compensation for suffering and injury as opposed to an earnings replacement. We always excluded that second element from coming within the debiting of benefit. That distinction has been well drawn by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins.
I hope that the Minister can respect the ethics as well as the long history of making a distinction between getting an income replacement benefit—ESA, for example—and getting an element of compensation for damages, for suffering, for pain and so on. In my understanding that has always been protected and has not been debited against your rent. Otherwise it is not worth anything to you at all. That was never the intention of the law. I hope that the Minister can support the proposals of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins.
Lord Freud
My Lords, Amendments 32A and 34A seek to use primary legislation to exclude criminal injuries compensation from the capital test for universal credit. The existing benefit system does not have a specific disregard for criminal injuries compensation. However, such payments will usually fall under the rules governing personal injury payments where they relate to physical or psychological injuries suffered by the claimant. As indicated in the illustrative draft regulations on capital and income, shared with noble Lords in September, we intend to replicate these personal injury payment provisions in the universal credit regulations. I hope that that answers the question of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie.
Personal injury payments are disregarded in the current benefit system for a period of 52 weeks from the date that they are paid. Even after that period, remaining capital will continue to be disregarded if it is placed in a trust, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, indicated. This rule allows us to distinguish the personal injuries payment from other savings. If the payment is not separated by placing it into a trust, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify the source of the capital as time goes by. Ultimately, any capital test must consider the balance in a claimant’s account, and over time it becomes impossible to say whether it is from one source or another unless it is held in a different form. That is the reason for the way that this is structured.
The current arrangements are long-standing, and we are not aware of significant practical problems with their use. In any case, the details of capital disregards are a matter we will address in the universal credit regulations. If there are particular problems, we will have a further opportunity to consider them when drafting regulations, and I will bear in mind the points the noble Baroness has made.
In answer to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, I agree that the compensation recovery scheme does not apply to criminal injuries compensation.
I hope I have made clear why the Government cannot support Amendments 32A and 34A. I hope the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hollins
Given the lateness of the hour, I will withdraw my amendment. I will study very carefully what the Minister said to make sure that I understand it. I think what he is basically saying is that it should be possible to protect that capital for 52 weeks, and I understand the point, but it is a little bit more complicated than that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Hollins Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Hollins
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 103ZA, which is in my name. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for speaking about it earlier and also to the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, and my noble friend Lady Meacher for their support. This Bill gives considerable discretion to jobcentre officials over many decisions and this amendment is about an area of their discretion that has been limited since the Supplementary Benefits Act 1976. Members of the other place have now proposed that this limit to their discretion should be removed. The provision of the 1976 Act was repeated in Clause 71 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, in which the Secretary of State has to prove that a claimant must have either misrepresented or failed to disclose a material fact in order to recover an overpayment, thus protecting claimants from the recovery of payments arising entirely out of official error. Previously there was no provision for the recovery of administrative costs either, which the current Bill could also change.
Think about a claimant who has a letter from officials telling him that he is entitled to universal credit, which is paid to the landlord in rent. However, six months later, officials tell him that they have made a mistake and ask him to repay several thousand pounds—money that has already gone to the landlord, either direct from the local authority or from the claimant. The issue that then has to be discussed with the claimant is whether he or she could have known it was an error. If it can be proved that the claimant could not reasonably have known that it was, then the state has to bear the cost of the state’s mistakes. It is difficult to understand why such a reasonable and just law should be repealed.
This amendment is proposed by Caritas Social Action Network and the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust and I am grateful to them for their detailed briefings. It is also supported by more than 20 NGOs, including organisations from five different Christian denominations, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, AdviceUK, Community Links, Derbyshire Unemployed Workers’ Centres, Mind, Money Advice Trust, the National Housing Federation, Save the Children, Shelter and the United Kingdom Public Health Association. All of them, in one way or another, are working for the poorest citizens of the United Kingdom.
They are all concerned that overpayments of universal credit and council tax that claimants could not reasonably be expected to notice would be left to build up over time into significant cumulative debts that the state could then recover through court action or reductions in benefits. Such debt recovery would jeopardise basic living costs, housing security, payment of utilities bills and nutrition, and risk damaging mental health.
An additional concern relates to the announcement by the Minister for Employment in another place that the standard allowance of the universal credit will be £67.50 a week for a single adult. The Joseph Rowntree minimum income food standard is £46.31 a week for a healthy diet. The sum of £67.50 will not cover the weekly cost of all essential items for an adult, let alone the additional repayment of overpayments, debts or arrears.
The burden could be further increased, for example, through the state additionally recovering the costs that it incurs when making recoveries through the courts, or through employers recovering administrative costs that they incur when instructed to reduce a claimant’s wages in order to offset a benefit overpayment. In both of these circumstances, people may end up with debts larger than the sum they were originally overpaid by—a seemingly illogical and unjust situation.
Another concern is that it seems possible that the DWP would be able to recover the overpayment from landlords, or from anyone who happens to be living with a claimant who is a beneficiary of the benefit concerned. The recovery of large blameless overpayments will have a devastating effect, not just on the claimant but on all other members of the household, which might include children, a pregnant woman or a disabled person who has particular additional nutritional and health needs.
It is inevitable that a new IT system for the delivery of welfare will create errors that are the fault of the employer entering information, officials at HMRC or the jobcentre. This is most likely when pilots are being run to test the system. The poorest citizens and their families should not have to pay the debts arising from any faulty consequences of the Government’s reforms.
As well as these immediate and potentially devastating impacts, such significant financial burdens all too often result in mental health difficulties or exacerbate existing ones—a link consistently highlighted by prominent institutions such as the Government Office for Science or charities such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Mind. Numerous reports have drawn attention to the direct correlation between large debts and family breakdown, illustrating the further dangers of subjecting those dependent on benefits to unexpected reclaims. Clearly such consequences would be utterly at odds with the Government’s intentions with this Bill.
Assurances have been given in the other place that officials will exercise common sense and considered decision-making, so as not to cause undue hardship. But the removal of the existing safeguard in primary legislation will mean that each case is ultimately based on the discretion of different officials, and would leave absolutely no guarantee that decisions will err on the side of protecting vulnerable people. This could lead to expensive litigation, if advice and legal aid could be found, which could have been avoided had the prohibition remained in place. However, it is more likely that the vulnerable claimant will pay, because of the lack of advice and legal aid, all of which has been cut. Then the claimants will suffer the stress of unmanageable debt and an increased risk of mental health problems and family breakdown.
It should be emphasised that the proposed amendment would not affect recoverability when overpayments result from the misrepresentation or withholding of relevant facts by a claimant, thus providing no respite for those seeking to defraud the system. Rather, it seeks to maintain three decades of protection—rightly afforded, in my view, to benefit claimants—from human error or technical fault by departments, landlords or local authorities, and any future errors as the result of the new IT system.
I urge the Minister to give this amendment serious consideration, to reinforce an existing provision that protects those whose health and welfare will be further compromised without it.
Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 103ZA. I will be brief. It may appear overly generous on the part of a cash-strapped Government already making severe cuts in benefits and public services not to demand repayments. However, in the interests of natural and administrative justice it cannot be right to request repayment when every penny is already allocated to get a family through the week—and now to be the month. Benefits are about to be cut and will no longer keep pace with inflation. Housing, energy, food and travel costs are all rising at frightening speed. With the best will in the world, I cannot comprehend how a family which is already struggling can be asked to pay back more than its members are currently being paid either in wages or benefits or both. Many charities and churches have raised the alarm over this element of the Bill. I strongly urge the Government to reconsider such a course. It may seem small in the overall picture of state spending but would be enormous for a family on an already modest income.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Hollins Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Donaghy
My Lords, Amendment 99ZC is by way of an interval in the big picture, but I hope that noble Lords will not go out and get an ice-cream while I am speaking.
This is a probing amendment to ensure that industrial injuries disablement benefit is not counted towards the benefit cap. At present, industrial injuries will be among the benefits that count towards total benefit income for benefit cap purposes. The Government have indicated that the constant attendance allowance under the industrial injuries scheme will be exempted in the same way as disability living allowance, and I shall say a little more about constant attendance allowance later.
Benefits under the industrial injuries scheme are different in character from the rest of the benefits system. Whereas other benefits are designed to prevent or ameliorate poverty, to help people to cope with extra costs or to substitute for lost income, the industrial injuries scheme is a system of no-fault compensation. In November last year, the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council wrote to the Minister to argue that IIDB should not count towards the cap for just this reason.
Employers and unions both support the industrial injuries scheme, which eliminates the need for an adversarial approach to compensating for a large number of injuries and diseases that are agreed to be a risk to employment. Damages won through civil litigation are a closer parallel to the industrial injuries scheme than disability or other benefits. Including damages awarded by the courts in the total that is subject to the cap would plainly be unfair, but industrial injuries disablement benefit is also a form of compensation and including it is just as unfair. Payments under the vaccine damages payment scheme are not to count towards the cap but they, too, are a form of compensation.
On 10 November in this Committee, my noble friend Lady Hayter took the opportunity to raise a number of questions and she put the issue very well. She said,
“it seems that to include these payments, which are compensation for injuries at work, within a calculation of the total support that a family could receive from the state would be somewhat unfair. It would mean that for a young person living with their family, any such support would be taken away from the total family entitlement, which would effectively turn the benefit into a means-tested benefit”.
The Minister replied:
“We can discuss that entire area when we look at the whole range of benefits”. —[Official Report, 10/11/11; col.112.]
Well, my Lords, the time is now.
The Government have put forward three reasons for introducing the benefit cap. All these reasons are weak when one looks at the industrial injuries disablement benefit. The Government have said that they are introducing the benefit cap partly to reduce benefit expenditure but IIDB accounts for a very small amount of social security expenditure. It stood at 0.58 per cent of DWP annually managed expenditure in 2010-11. However, IIDB will account for an even smaller proportion of benefit cap savings, most of which will affect large, younger families, especially those in receipt of housing benefit. Claimants of benefits from the industrial injuries scheme tend to be older—50.9 per cent of expenditure is on people who are over pension age—and will therefore count for significantly less than the 0.58 per cent. It is unlikely that counting IIDB towards the benefit cap would save as much as £1 million a year, but I appreciate that I am really talking about an issue of principle here and not just expenditure.
The Government’s equality impact assessment also indicated that a further purpose is to improve working incentives for those on benefits. It must be emphasised that IIDB does not create a work disincentive. Half of all spending on it is accounted for by pensioners, and working-age claimants can continue to receive the benefit if they stay in work or find work.
Ministers have given great prominence to the argument that it is not fair for a workless family to receive more in benefits than an average family would receive in wages. In last year’s spending review, the Treasury listed the benefit cap under the heading of “Fairness … Reducing the deficit fairly while protecting the vulnerable”. However, a working family, one of whose members has suffered an industrial disease or injury, would not be in a worse position than a workless family. They would have the same right to IIDB.
The Government have not said a great deal about why it should count towards the cap. The Minister has made a distinction between recipients of disability living allowance and IIDB claimants. People do not get industrial injuries benefit to meet extra costs, which can be dealt with by an award of DLA if necessary, and the Minister has used this difference to justify excluding DLA but not IIDB. This argument is not a sufficient rebuttal because it fails to address the point that I made about the nature of the industrial injuries scheme. Furthermore, if having extra costs were to be the reason for excluding the benefit, how would we explain the decision to exclude retirement pension and pension credit?
Informally, officials sometimes argue that excluding IIDB would open the floodgates for a long list of special cases, which would complicate the benefit cap. I hope that tidiness is never the deciding factor in matters like this and that simplicity is not a sufficient reason for proceeding with an unfair change.
The Government’s decision to exclude constant attendance allowance is of course welcome. It is worth remembering, however, that this is one of the industrial injury scheme benefits abolished by the previous Conservative Government and there are now comparatively few claimants. In fact, the cost of the constant attendance allowance is just 1 per cent of the industrial injuries scheme. I hope that the Government will agree with me that the industrial injuries disablement benefit should not be counted towards the benefit cap.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, Amendment 99A calls for a new exemption from the benefit cap for households in which a resident claims carers’ allowance and for carers in receipt of the additional amount in universal credit for those with caring responsibilities. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Meacher, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, who have added their names to the amendment.
Why is it wrong to cap carers’ benefits? Carers UK and the Disability Benefits Consortium, representing more than 50 disability charities, are concerned that, as it stands, a cap could be devastating for some carers. It would also send out an extremely negative message about how the Government value family care and risk the perverse outcomes of disincentivising family care and potentially making caring for older or disabled relatives financially untenable for some families.
Carers make a huge contribution to society, estimated this year by Carers UK and the University of Leeds to be £119 billion each year. From the Minister’s response to an earlier amendment, we know how much the Government value that contribution. However, that only emphasises the fundamental unfairness of including carers’ allowance within this cap. This is perhaps best illustrated by the justification given by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions when he introduced the Bill in the Commons, stating that the benefit cap was,
“a matter of fairness, so that those who are working hard and paying their taxes do not feel that someone else will benefit more by not playing a full part in society”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/3/11; col. 922.]
If this cap is designed to be fair to individuals who are working hard and playing a full part in society, then it cannot be right that it applies to carers.
In order to receive their benefit, carers must be caring for a minimum of 35 hours a week—the equivalent of a full working week. Many care around the clock, with NHS Information Centre figures showing that a fifth of carers are caring for more than 50 hours a week. It would not be possible to say that these individuals are not working hard. Nor could it be said that they are not contributing to society, as they represent so many of the social values that the Government are working to promote in this Bill and beyond—strong families and communities, and taking personal responsibility. Indeed, such carers are not required to seek work and conditionality does not apply to them.
However, there are some inconsistencies in the existing proposals. While the Government have stated that the exemption for DLA protects families affected by disability, this is not the case for all such families. A lot depends on the definition of the word “household”. The DLA exemption protects households that include a DLA claimant, but what is considered to be a household in universal credit includes children under 18 and partners but not adult children or other adult relatives. Therefore, while carers looking after disabled partners and disabled young children would be exempt from the cap, those caring for adult disabled children or elderly parents or disabled siblings would not be exempt. Families caring for disabled children under 18 would therefore be exempt from the cap, but those caring for adult disabled children would be subject to it because the DLA claimant, as an adult, would no longer be considered to live in the same benefits household, even if they were living together.
Let me give an example of a family who would be affected. Imagine a single father with three sons, the eldest of whom is 19, has learning disabilities and a variety of other health conditions. The father has two other children of school age. While his eldest son receives DLA and he himself gets carers’ allowance for supporting him full-time, the father’s benefits, including child benefit and housing benefit, would be capped because his adult son would not be considered to be in the same benefits household as his father, despite living with him. The financial impact of the cap could be significant. With local housing allowance and council tax benefit totalling £305.22, income support £42.95, child tax credit £108.75, child benefit £33.70 and carers’ allowance £55.55, he would be in receipt of £546.17 a week. A cap of the level announced by the Government would result in a loss of £46 a week or £184 a month.
Such a drop in income could force carers such as this father to stop caring and instead turn to social services to provide full-time care for his son because he feels that he has no choice but to look for paid work rather than be a full time carer—a distressing situation for the family and ultimately far more costly to the state. According to Carers UK, to which I am grateful to for providing me with an excellent briefing for today, carers giving up work in order to care lose an average of £11,000 a year.
This kind of situation is neither logical nor fair. The best way to ensure that the carer’s contribution is better recognised and rewarded, and that carers are not penalised for taking on caring responsibilities, would be to give carers exemption from this cap. I ask the Minister: why is carers’ allowance included in the benefit cap when the Government’s intention is to protect those affected by disability? Or is it simply a mistake?
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Hollins Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Hollins
“Carer’s allowance
In section 70 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (invalid care allowance), for subsection (2) substitute— “(2) In this section, “severely disabled person” means a person in respect of whom there is payable either an attendance allowance; a disability living allowance by virtue of entitlement to the care component at the middle or higher rate; or a personal independence payment by virtue of entitlement to the daily living component at the standard or enhanced rate or such other payment out of public funds on account of his need for attendance as may be prescribed.””
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, the purpose of this amendment is to seek clarity from the Government about future eligibility for carers’ allowance. I know that there has been earlier discussion about passporting with respect to carers’ allowance and I apologise if there has been any discussion of it today. Unfortunately, I have had to attend to amendments on the Health and Social Care Bill and I have not been able to listen to earlier parts of the debate today.
Of the 6 million carers in the UK, 72 per cent of them are financially worse off because of their decision to become carers. The high living costs that illness and disability bring, coupled with the loss of earnings, result in a heavy financial burden on most carers. More than half said that they were in debt as a result of caring and two- thirds said that they used their own income to pay for the care of the person they looked after. Given that the unpaid work they do contributes an estimated £119 billion to the United Kingdom, we ought to do more to help carers.
If I might give the Committee an example, Tony gave up work to care for his wife Laura, who is partially blind and has memory problems following a car accident. They have two young children. Laura needs Tony to be there to help her to wash, dress and use the toilet and she struggles to prepare food on her own. Tony would love to go back to work but does not wish to leave Laura on her own during the day. Tony claims carers’ allowance and Laura receives the middle-rate care component of disability living allowance. The family has had support from social services cut, because their council has just raised its eligibility criteria to critical and Laura has been assessed as having only substantial needs, not critical needs. If, following assessment for the new PIP, Laura received the standard rate of the PIP daily living component, and if this did not provide a gateway to carers’ allowance for Tony, the family would stand to lose more than £55 a week, or £222 a month. Tony would have lost his only income and would be forced to claim jobseeker’s allowance, even though he knows he cannot work because of the care and support his family need.
Under the current system, eligibility for carers’ allowance is established through the middle or higher rate care components of the disability living allowance. The transfer from disability living allowance will see these three rates—lower, middle and higher—replaced by only two under the personal independence payment. Although we know that PIP will be used as the gateway for carers’ allowance, the Welfare Reform Bill currently does not make clear how claimants currently claiming through DLA will be categorised. It is disappointing at this late stage of the Bill’s progress that such information remains unavailable.
Many families rely on DLA to cover basic living costs, additional care and support, transport, aids and adaptations, as has been extensively debated here. To put this help at risk because of a lack of clarity is unforgivable. I hope that the amendment will give us an opportunity to scrutinise this area of the Bill, particularly in regard to carers’ allowance and its relationship to personal independence payments.
Were it to be decided that entitlement to carers’ allowance would be established only through the enhanced rate of personal independence payment, it would be reasonable to assume that thousands of carers would no longer be eligible for carers’ allowance. It is likely that the Government’s proposed cut of 20 per cent to the budget for DLA will have an impact on claimants of carers’ allowance because the benefits received by the person they care for will be affected, and setting the eligibility rate at enhanced only will amplify the effect.
It is therefore of great importance to ensure that those who are on the middle or higher-rate care components at present continue to receive benefits, regardless of how they will be classified under the new system. We cannot allow thousands of carers to lose their benefits because of these changes. We owe it to carers not only to clarify what is currently unclear but to guarantee that those receiving benefits at the moment will not have them taken away under the new classification—a kind of double whammy.
A statement from the Government confirming which of the daily living component levels will passport to carers’ allowance would be welcome, and a commitment to ensuring that both levels of the PIP daily living component will act as gateways to carers’ allowance eligibility even more so. I beg to move.
Lord Freud
My Lords, perhaps I might again interpose slightly out of order in the interests of clarity. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, for tabling the amendment and for making some valid points. I revert to my opening comments today on the timing of the information. We aim to get more information on the passporting arrangements from PIP to carers’ allowance prior to the start of the Report stage, which I hope will satisfy the request. I should add that we are sympathetic to the position of carers—which I hope is recognisable code—and the Government recognise the important role that people with caring responsibilities have in our society. We are continuing to listen very carefully to the contributions that we receive.
I cannot at this stage add anything further. I therefore urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment, which clearly we will be able to consider in more detail in a little while.
Lord Freud
My Lords, as I have tried to explain, we will introduce PIP from the bottom up. We will try to find the people who need the money and there will be winners and losers in that process. In particular, the PIP process is far more understanding of mental health issues. I do not think looking at absolute numbers undermines the principles of how you create the universal credit. It does not undermine our considerations of the principles of the universal credit but we need to understand the impact of PIP and the carers’ allowance in relation to it. We shall have that information in time and debate it in great depth. I am committing to providing those figures at the right time. It is not a trivial but a hard commitment. The timing has been produced under pressure from the Committee and I hope that it is accepted in the spirit with which it has been obtained.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, I know that the Minister is genuinely concerned about carers and I take some comfort from the code carefully contained in his earlier response. Carers UK and other groups representing carers are concerned, but they are also very aware and advocate for a better deal for carers. For a long time carers have not had enough financial and other support and it is important that someone should speak up for them in this respect.
I look forward with great interest to further developments. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Hollins Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with this amendment. I shall get my interest out of the way at the outset of this Committee stage as I, too, receive DLA. I shall be very brief. It is almost as though the Government want to airbrush the word “disability” out of the picture. I cannot think why, except that they want to signal a change of approach. It is this very fact that is making disabled people so worried that they may not qualify for the new benefit. Can my noble friend say why the words “personal independence payments” were used and whether it is too late to change things? This is not something I would die in a ditch over because there are so many other things in the Bill that may be in that category, but not having the word “disability” in the name is a terrible mistake, so I support this amendment.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, I, too, have an interest to declare because, as a family carer, I have two adult disabled children who are both in receipt of disability living allowance. I have spent many unhappy hours trying to get my mind around what the various benefits they receive are and how to complete the various assessments they have been sent.
The purpose has to be reflected in the name in order to help people like me when I am trying to help my son or daughter make sense of what benefits they might be entitled to. I wonder whether there is an element of misguided political correctness in the change of the name. Terminology can be a barrier.
Lord Freud
My Lords, clearly an enormous amount of work has been done on this within both government and consumer organisations. When we refine the criteria—which is the process that we are going through—we look at all those aspects to ensure that we focus the money on where it will have most effect in supporting people to live independent lives.
On the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, on how we will assess people, the version of criteria that we published on Friday looked at a range of key, everyday activities. The main question is to look at what support an individual needs. It is much more holistic than the test described by my noble friend Lord Newton of how to boil a kettle. Our testing results through the summer demonstrated that our approach is both reliable and valid. On the question raised on the cost of getting evidence from GPs, we are discussing PIP plans with the Department of Health but have not yet made any estimate of the specific costs of obtaining evidence from GPs. However, evidence gathering will be a critical part of PIP and we recognise that disabled people will want to present information from a wide range of sources, not just GPs. We will ensure that they are able to do this.
Let me pick up the point made by the noble Baroness on the 652,000 so-called losers. That assumes that all the people currently receiving the lowest rate of DLA care would receive nothing under the PIP. We have not yet completed the detailed assessment of the impact of our changes on the current DLA caseload, and will do that on Report. It is likely that we will see significant movement in the new benefit. I suspect that some people will receive more support because of the improved assessment; some will receive broadly the same; some will receive less; and some will leave benefit altogether. The most important thing is that these results should accurately reflect the level of need of the individuals concerned so that the money will go where it is most needed. From what we have seen so far, the draft assessment is working to achieve this.
In the proposed criteria we have demonstrated that we have not simply removed the lowest rate of DLA. The concepts of needing assistance and how individuals prepare food, as described by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, are very much part of the criteria. We are aiming to ensure that passports to provisions elsewhere, such as vehicle excise duty exemption and the blue badge scheme, continue. Where necessary, we are working with other government departments and the devolved Administrations to ensure that the new PIP arrangements match closely their arrangements to ensure continued support for disabled people. It is our intention that the personal independence payment will provide part of the gateway for receipt of carer’s allowance in the way that DLA currently does. I have dealt with the timing issue.
In conclusion, let me assure the noble Baroness that our proposals to move to a two-tier daily living component is not about reducing support or cutting costs. It is a principled move that will help us deliver a benefit that will focus on those least able to participate. It will do that in a way that will make it fairer, clearer for everyone to understand, simpler to administer, and affordable and sustainable into the future. The Government have spent a considerable time developing and consulting on the provisions that the noble Baroness wishes to amend. Our view is that they are the right way to progress our aims. I therefore cannot support the amendment and I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw it.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, the second draft of the assessment regulations is very interesting but it does not help in the consideration of what we are talking about. It does not tell us the threshold, so we cannot assess how many points you would need in order to reach a level of having a limited ability to carry out daily living activities and so on. Will the Minister explain how we could use these to judge what he has just been talking about?
Lord Newton of Braintree
In an attempt to stop the Minister having to pop up and down, I think that I am right in saying that he has not responded to my concern about the effects of this proposal. Whatever the figures turn out to be, there appear to be some “losers”. What are the effects of this? What steps will be taken to protect or to provide transitional measures? We are talking about sums of money that are significant to people who have not got very much. We have to keep that in mind all the time. The Minister has obviously had his ears bashed enough and no one thinks that we will press the amendment, but we hope that he will think about it.
On carers, I listened with mounting horror to the fact that we shall not know what the effects will be by the time we return to this. If among those 652,000 so-called losers, or whatever number it is, there are a number who also lose carer’s allowance, we are talking about a number of households which will lose serious amounts of money in relation to their income. We need to know what is happening in order to make a judgment about these proposals. I do not expect the Minister to say anything else but he needs to know that this former Secretary of State recognises some concerns.