Disabled People: Independent Living

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support independent living for disabled people of working age.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, the Government believe that individuals should have the opportunity to work and realise the benefit of stable employment where they can, enabling them to live independently and fulfil their potential. We are therefore working to join up the health system, the welfare system and society more widely so that we focus on the strengths of people with disabilities or health conditions and what they can do.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

I very much welcome that reply. The most important thing is that the infrastructure—such as enough care support and accessible transport—is got right around the country. Disabled people must have enough support. I wonder whether the Minister’s department will now agree to conduct a cumulative impact assessment on current government policies, which shows their effect on disabled people. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has offered its support and this should be taken up.

Personal Independence Payment Regulations

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the original policy intentions were set out quite clearly during the passage of the legislation. The noble Lord will remember that far better than I do. That was then set out in the legislation—and in secondary legislation. However, as he is aware, the Upper Tribunal made it clear that there was, as I think it put it, a lack of clarity in the regulations as we set them out. That is what, I hope, we put right in the regulations we laid a week or so ago and which come into effect tomorrow.

The noble Lord asked whether there would be further consultations on that. Obviously, my honourable friend the Minister for Disabled People and others within the department will continue to keep an open dialogue with all those involved to make sure that our policy intentions are correctly applied and that these things are dealt with as clearly as possible.

The noble Lord also doubted whether there was the appropriate parity between mental and physical conditions. He alleged that there was a lack of parity, which we want to achieve. I believe that there is parity because we are looking not at the conditions but at the overall needs of individuals. In other words, it is not some specific complaint that the individual suffers from but how it affects how they get on with their lives. That applies equally—hence the parity—to those with mental and physical conditions.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, it is quite clear that more clarity is needed. Why do the Government not use the powers they already have to prevent the decisions of the Upper Tribunal from having immediate legal effect? I also know that the Government are appealing the decision from the Upper Tribunal. Why do they not wait for the result of that appeal? What about claimants whose claims are only half way through the process? What about those who have an existing award and whose condition has not changed in any way, who will be reassessed very soon? Are they to have that award taken away? In general, this committee is very supportive of the DWP and I urge the Government to use the powers they have to not bring these regulations into force until there has been proper consultation on them.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, there would be considerable financial implications in allowing the decision of the Upper Tribunal to stand. It would not be right or proper for the department to do that. For that reason, we brought forward the new regulations and they come into effect tomorrow. We then referred those to SSAC and we have received its comments on them. My honourable friend the Minister for Disabled People responded to SSAC and no doubt SSAC will want to make that letter available in due course. We believe that we have achieved parity with the new regulations—but, as I said, we are more than happy to continue consultations in the usual manner.

Personal Independence Payments

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, what the tribunal said was that there was some uncertainty in our regulations, despite the fact—I am sure the noble Baroness will remember this far better than I can, because I was not in this position at the time—that these matters were extensively debated during the passage of the Bill a year or so ago and agreed in Parliament. The tribunal said that there was uncertainty and we are trying to put that right.

The noble Baroness specifically referred to the example of people who are blind in comparison to those with psychological distress. That was a matter considered in one of the two cases that we are dealing with. Mental health conditions are more likely to fluctuate than conditions such as visual impairment or blindness, and people who cannot navigate due to a visual or cognitive impairment are more likely to have a higher level of need and therefore face higher costs. What we are seeking to do, quite simply, is amend the criteria to reinstate the distinction between those two groups, as was originally intended in the order. It is no more than that.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister said that this is quite simple. It is not quite simple. In both recent appeals, the Upper Tribunal considered the relevant PIP descriptors most carefully. Does the Minister accept that in the second case, which dealt with mobility, the judges took into account the Government’s own declaration that non-physical conditions, which surely must include “overwhelming psychological distress”, under descriptors 1.b. and 1.e. in the 2013 regulations, should be given the same recognition as physical ones? Why did the Government not consult disabled organisations before bringing in these amending regulations so that they could learn the true picture of what the changes would mean?

Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2017

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that helpful opening statement. I will make one or two comments on what he has said.

However, I will also spend a moment—if I do not impose too much on the Committee—talking about the process available to us as parliamentarians more generally to observe, be confident of, and have assurances about, how the annual social security spend is surviving some of the impositions arising from the Government’s more general fiscal rule—to save £12 billion during this Parliament. That is a significant sum. I absolutely acknowledge—and the Minister was right to explain this, under the terms of the order—that sensible provision has been made for our retired population. The pension rates, the triple lock—everything that he has explained—make perfect sense and sit well with the requirements of that part of our population that is past retirement age.

However, we must have some concerns whether proper provision that, arguably, is being made for those over retirement age, is also being made for those of working age. I want to focus on paragraph 4.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum. In the final sentence—this will come as no surprise to any of us—it is accepted that the main rates of benefit are frozen at their 2015-16 rates, under the 2016 Act. They were not part of the Secretary of State’s review. My opening question derives from the fact that I have been doing uprating statements for as long as anybody—since I first entered Parliament in 1983. They used to be very big occasions, because they were responsible for disbursing huge amounts of public money, and that is still the case. We are, however, getting to the position where I am no longer confident that the protection provided by Section 150 of the Social Security Administration Act is the assurance that it used to be.

As a policymaker, legislator and parliamentarian, I always had confidence that Secretaries of State for Social Security or Work and Pensions sat down once a year and thought carefully, on advice from the detailed research that Secretaries of State have available to them, about whether what was being proposed to Parliament was adequate for the purpose. I do not think we can say that any more, and if that is even halfway true, we as policymakers and the Opposition need to be looking at other ways, if we cannot get assurance from Section 150 of the 1992 Act, to discover what the Government are doing in the department and in their discussions with the Treasury to make proper provision for the rest of this Parliament. This is the only occasion that I can think of when we can do that, although I understand that under the strict terms of the order, I might be on the cusp of what is technically in order.

The plea I make to the Minister—he may not have an answer for this more general question—is that in his new role and as part of a new and very capable ministerial team within what is effectively a new Government taking a fresh look at responsibilities for social protection, he should reflect carefully on how he and his colleagues will be able for the rest of this Parliament to give me the assurance that is absent now that we have restricted consideration for annual review.

My second question relates to the change that we made some years ago, moving to the CPI from the RPI measure. It is significant, historical and very easy to miss. I notice that in its April 2015 data review, the Office for Budget Responsibility calculated that as a result of that single change there was reduction in spend of £5.2 billion a year by 2019-20. I do not expect the Minister to have this figure at his fingertips, but it is very important that for the rest of this Parliament we track the estimates made by the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Department for Work and Pensions of the cumulative results of that single change, which is so significant for all benefits. Monitoring that is part of the work we should be doing.

In the uprating statements for the rest of this Parliament, will the Minister be good enough to monitor exactly how the £12,000 million social security spending reduction is being effected in practice? Where is that money being saved? I know that it is an estimate. That has been made clear by the OBR, the IFS and others. We need to know the relative savings achieved from the freeze, the new two-child limit, the cuts to universal credit, the cuts to ESA and the reduced household benefit cap. If we do not have that information in debates of this kind for the rest of this Parliament, we will be at a significant disadvantage in trying to work out what lower-income households are facing.

I have one further point before I finish, but I shall be brief because I think I am pushing my luck slightly. The order does not contain any reference to working-age benefits. There is a real risk in using cash limits to set benefit upratings in future, but we are getting into a habit of doing that. We froze benefits on a cash basis in 2013-14, and we are doing so now. Two things happen with that. First, the Government are transferring the risk of inflation to benefit recipients, and I do not think that is fair because no one can truly judge what is going to happen to inflation. Colleagues may have more to say about that. Secondly, there is no way of knowing exactly where the saving will be if you rely on inflation. The Government are in a much safer position if they take decisions that can lead to calculations and assessments of what is expected in future.

I am no economist, but I do not think you need to be one to understand that inflation is increasing. The impact of that will bear down on working-age families, particularly those with children. The IFS and the Resolution Foundation have done some excellent work trying to point out the risks that we as a country will be running for the next three or four years. The Child Poverty Action Group reminded us in a recent leaflet that child benefit has risen since the 2010s to where we are now by something like 2%, whereas costs will have risen for the client group that CPAG seeks to represent by about 35% between 2010 and 2020. These are forecasts, and of course forecasts can be wrong, but they are frightening in what we may be facing, particularly for families with children in the lower income brackets.

My plea is that we look at this more carefully and that, if these uprating statements are less useful technically in looking at the totality of the benefit spend, the Minister in his new position goes back and discusses this with his departmental colleagues. He has vast resources, he has some very experienced, talented and clever research people in the department, and I am sure he can help them to ensure that we avoid some of the really regressive scenarios painted by some pressure groups, which know what they are talking about. If we do not, Parliament will find it more difficult in future to be confident that we know exactly what is happening and the disposition of what is an essential policy area for the safety-net provision for low-income families in the UK.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, I hesitate to intervene after the powerful speech from my noble friend Lord Kirkwood, but the DWP bus does not come along very often, so I fear I must take this very small chance to jump on it. The Explanatory Memorandum was actually very helpful, which has not always been the case with DWP statutory instruments. Often the DWP has not had many accolades for its Explanatory Memorandums being helpful, so I would like to say that this one was. At the very end of the memorandum, paragraph 11.2 says:

“Small businesses, like all employers, meet the costs of Statutory Sick Pay without reimbursement but are able to access the services of the Fit for Work Service, a free occupational health service funded by Government for employees absent from work through ill health for four weeks or more”.


Can the Minister tell the Committee whether that service is being taken up? Small businesses are not always good at knowing what the law is, and I know that many of them have never heard of the access to work service for the employment of disabled people. That is very important if the Government want to halve the disability unemployment rate. I would like an update on the fit for work service, which I know was designed by Dame Carol Black, and I would be happy for the Minister to write to me.

--- Later in debate ---

Lastly, I turn to the questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas. First, I thank her for her praise for the Explanatory Memorandum. It is a rare experience to have one praised. I will not take the credit for myself but will certainly pass it back to those in the department who are responsible for drafting it. In my naive way, very many years ago when I first came here, I always thought that Explanatory Memorandums were what they said and made life simpler in understanding an order. I have come to realise that that is not necessarily the case, but it is nice to have that praise on this occasion. Secondly, she asked me a detailed question on statutory sick pay. She may remember—I certainly do; it is ingrained on my heart—the Statutory Sick Pay Act 1991, or it may have been 1992, I forget which. To that extent, I once had great knowledge about SSP. I tried to find the paragraph she was referring to in either the Explanatory Memorandum or the order, but I am not sure I found it.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

It was on the back page.

[Lord Henley]

I will have to write to the noble Baroness to assure her on that point.

I appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, would prefer a greater and longer debate on freezing benefits. As I said, I do not think that this is either the time or the place.

Brexit: Disabled People

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, this is a timely debate. Thanks to my noble friend Lady Scott, we have heard forcefully this afternoon some of the real worries about Brexit both from disabled people themselves—I am one—and others. Perhaps the main one concerns what will happen to the thousands of personal assistants from the EU who give top-quality care to severely disabled people if there is no free movement. Who knew, before the referendum, that Brexit might mean that all the EU directives, which have made life so much better for disabled people travelling throughout Europe, for example, or even accessing public sector websites, might have to be negotiated all over again? Or will they? Who knows?

There is now a terrible uncertainty about what will happen in the future. Will we have reciprocity for all the working people from the EU who are settled in this country to stay after Brexit? This is perhaps the greatest worry for many disabled people, as they are now used to the high standards and attitudes of many EU care workers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, has said. I must straightaway ask the Minister whether he thinks there is any chance of an exemption from the restriction on the free movement of labour for staff in social care and NHS services. I repeat my noble friend’s question about whether there are any disabled people on the NHS Europe transition team.

The word “reciprocity” is very important in the field of social security as well as care. There has been a long-standing provision in EU law to co-ordinate social security schemes for people moving within the EU and EEA. This is a very important protection for disabled people who may want to reside in other EU or EEA member states. These co-ordination rules, such as allowing a person’s contributions paid in one country to count towards entitlement to benefit in another country, or allowing certain benefits to be taken abroad with them, are there to support free movement. What will happen in the future? What about those people who have lived and worked in more than one member state and paid national insurance in those countries?

At present, a person who moves from one member state to another has access to benefits in the host country if they are economically active or can support themselves. Working EU and EEA migrants are entitled to in-work benefits on the same basis as nationals of the host country, but this could all change. Will the Minister say which department is in charge of these negotiations? If there is no certainty for many months, quite a lot of disabled UK nationals living abroad are likely to return to the UK, where they may well need care services and quite possibly supported housing, thus adding to the strain that services are experiencing.

I turn briefly to the great repeal Bill, which, as we know, will annul the European Communities Act 1972 and transpose EU law into domestic law. The difficulty will come when the Government decide which laws will be scrapped altogether. The wretched Red Tape Challenge does not give us any confidence, as the report of the Equality Act 2010 and Disability Committee makes clear. This is about regulations being burdensome; it does not seem to matter that their disappearance might make life more burdensome for disabled people. So we are particularly concerned about hard-won rights in the fields of, for example, product design, air and rail travel, employment, building accessibility, public sector website accessibility and many others. Can the Minister assure us that disabled people will be in the forefront of negotiations on any matter that affects them directly?

Universal Credit

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, I well remember the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, on the Autism Bill of 2009. In it, he said:

“The approach presaged in the Welfare Reform Bill would allow us to find the very considerable resources necessary to transform the lives of those adults with autism. It would do so despite the very difficult times that we are facing, when the economic pressures on spending will inevitably be severe”.—[Official Report, 10/7/09; col. 892.]

Universal credit was welcomed, as others have said, with its mission agreed across all parties to simplify the payment of benefits, and to create work incentives and earnings progression. The noble Lord played a key role in keeping universal credit on the road when there were rumours that it was about to be scrapped. But the Treasury, which is not getting a good press this afternoon, is outside anyone’s control, it seems. It has done its best to dilute universal credit so much that its mission may have to be completely reset if it is to be anything more than a vehicle to rationalise the payment of benefits.

So, is UC beginning to transform the lives of those with autism and other vulnerable adults, particularly those with learning difficulties or disabilities? I asked the National Autistic Society and my colleagues in Sutton, south-west London, who have embraced the full digital rollout of UC, to answer this question. The answer, I fear, is not looking good. Vulnerable adults who have to make a new claim for UC and who have not yet been through the work capability assessment will have an interview at the jobcentre with a work coach. Unfortunately, work coaches are not trained to deal with people with autism or learning difficulties. I am told they work from a script, mostly with no variation from it.

So what about support for vulnerable adults, particularly the tailored support we were promised? Luckily, in Sutton the local authority is stepping in— at the moment—to avert a real crisis, but this will not happen in many local authority areas around the country as there is no funding to support it. Would the DWP consider allocating more resources to local authorities for claimant advocates to tide them over this transitional period when full digital rollout takes place, so that thousands of vulnerable adults are not plunged into confusion and debt? The other problems include delays in payment, and alternative payment arrangements for housing costs, which are for a set period, suddenly ending, leaving many claimants confused.

When UC is working as it was originally designed to, it is a fitting legacy for the noble Lord, and we can only hope the current problems will not last. I wish him very well in the future.

Work Capability Assessments

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

We relaunched Disability Confident last week and have had a very strong early response to it, with 2,500 employers signing up. Nissan is clearly a major employer in the north-east, and is making a significant investment that represents 7,000 jobs directly and many more in the supply chain. We will be talking to Nissan at the appropriate time on Disability Confident but it was not one of the topics that was discussed between the company and the Business Secretary.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

In the very welcome Green Paper, the number of extra staff who will be needed to carry through its laudable aims is striking. How will the Minister’s department ensure that there are enough trained work coaches, disability employment advisers, occupational health and Jobcentre Plus work psychologists and others to roll out this programme?

[Lord Freud]

We do not yet have a formalised programme. We are in the middle of a consultation, as the noble Baroness knows. We will take the results of the consultation very seriously, come to the appropriate conclusions and develop the policies and the means of implementation.

Improving Lives: Green Paper

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My right honourable friend in the other place, the Secretary of State, took some pleasure in quoting James Purnell from 2008 about the objectives here, illustrating that they are the same. We must acknowledge the continuity there has been in this difficult area and, in particular, give thanks to Dame Carol Black, who I have worked with now for many years and who has done an extraordinary job in trying to get these two networks together. We are building on many years of work but, like everyone else, I acknowledge that it is hard pounding—it takes a long time to get this right.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement and I completely understand that PIP is not part of this Green Paper, but the Minister’s department will have to work hard to restore people’s faith in the DWP’s consultation process because it comprehensively ignored the PIP mobility consultation, when more than 1,000 people said that we should not have what was subsequently put into law. I hope the Minister will agree to listen to the voices in the consultation process before there is legislation in this area.

[Lord Freud]

I know that the noble Baroness has very strong feelings about this. At her urging, I did make significant changes to the mobility measure. We did not have a clean measure before. We now have a precise measure with the 20 metres but we have it on the basis defined—safely, securely and regularly—which is something that she wanted, and have made it a much more measurable part of the PIP process. More people are receiving the top rate of PIP than receiving it were under DLA.

Unemployment: Disabled People

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

We made a comprehensive response to that interesting report from the Select Committee—but on the fundamental point that the noble Baroness makes, we all have to acknowledge that this is not easy to achieve. Getting more people with disabilities into work is a complicated thing to do, and through the Green Paper we are looking to combine very big and complicated organisations in the shape of the health and welfare systems and employers. You have to do it across all three to have a hope of bridging this gap.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

Up to 600 disabled people a week are losing their Motability cars because of the harsh PIP reassessment test. Does the Minister not agree that, as many of them are of working age, this will not contribute to halving the disability employment gap?

[Lord Freud]

I want to make it absolutely clear: PIP is a better benefit than the DLA it replaces. More people are receiving the top rates of PIP than they are of DLA: 24% in PIP and 15% in DLA. We have other ways of supporting people who are in work and who have some element of disability but are not eligible for PIP, and we are looking very hard at building up the Access to Work system, and to increasing the numbers who can take advantage of it.

Fit for Work Scheme

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Luce, has done us all a service by highlighting this little-known scheme which was launched two years ago. The aim of the scheme is admirable and should help both the employee by facilitating a return to work and the employee’s GP by preventing them having to write out yet more sick notes. At this point, I shall say how nice it is to have a different cast of characters speaking about DWP matters. I am sure the noble Lord agrees that it is very good when more people engage with DWP matters.

One only has to look at press comment about the scheme to see where some of the problems lie. When it was introduced, press headlines made it sound like a mandatory scheme, which it is not, to force sick employees back to work. I fear that a lot of damage has been done within the past decade by press comment ramping up the “shirkers and scroungers” mentality, thus tending to make those quite legitimately on sick benefits feel like frauds. The very title of this scheme—Fit for Work—sounds so like yet another assessment while a person is off sick that it is little wonder that some people may be getting the wrong end of the stick. Perhaps the scheme should be renamed and relaunched. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Luce, that more positive and better publicity is certainly needed, not least because the number of referrals is well below what was expected.

The first problem is that the scheme is not known about nearly enough by employers and employees. The second problem is whether four weeks is too long an absence before a business can request help from the scheme. I gather that GPs can refer both earlier and later. Four weeks might be too long for employers, considering that the scheme is not mandatory. Perhaps there could be some flexibility.

Looking at the scheme itself, I understand it is to complement existing occupational health provision, where it exists, but we know that it exists only in large firms. We have heard about some of them. It will not exist in small businesses, where the bulk of employment lies. Small businesses are unlikely to know about the scheme. For that reason, I hope it will become much better known.

If the scheme is taken up, a telephone assessment will be undertaken by an occupational therapist—an OT—in the first instance who will prepare a return-to-work plan. Having taken advice from some OTs working in central London hospitals who have experience of treating those with long-term neuro or neuromuscular problems, I shall share their comments, which seem to me to be sensible and practical. The first thing they say is that OTs with a nursing or medical background often give general advice on what a person can or cannot do without giving more creative advice about how a person might adapt their usual way of going about things. In other words, a more specialised OT might know from experience how to find a way around a difficulty. Perhaps specialised advice should be sought by some of the more general OTs.

My advisers also wonder what medical notes the Fit for Work scheme advisers have access to. If the answer is that they do not have access to such notes, then is an employee with complex needs going to be well served? Another problem is the telephone assessment. A lot of people do not like talking about confidential medical matters on the telephone. I know that face-to-face assessments are possible for those with complex conditions, but the travelling time to these assessments might be as much as 90 minutes. I wonder whether that will be having an impact on the take-up of this scheme and whether home visits are possible.

Then there is the problem of disclosure. A lot of employees, especially those with long-term conditions, will be very cautious about talking with a stranger about medical matters that might be shared with an employer. This last point is also one which is likely to apply to those with a mental health problem. The workplace mental health support service run by Remploy, which was set up to help those in work with a range of mild to moderate mental health problems, is slowly becoming more accessible and better known, and is, of course, part of access to work. Perhaps the Minister will tell us how this service fits into the scheme.

That brings me to the difficult question of the quality of assessors. My OT advisers are much too polite to make trenchant comments, but even they doubt whether there are enough well-trained, experienced OTs throughout the country to ensure enough consistency in assessments and advice. Are we spreading the available pool of OTs too thinly? Are more being trained for these and all the other assessments? If these problems I have mentioned could all be addressed, then I am sure the scheme would be much more successful.

As I have a minute more, I shall quickly make a point about chronic pain. It is a huge problem for a lot of people. It is reported to affect around 8 million adults. It is also reported that chronic back pain alone costs the country about £10 billion per annum. There is anecdotal evidence that the right degree of physical exercise can be beneficial. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, the Minister and I have talked before about the benefits of hydrotherapy for people with all kinds of severe musculoskeletal problems. Sadly, there is a terrible lack of hydrotherapy provision round the country, and hospital pools are closing for lack of money to maintain and staff them adequately. Considering that warm water exercise is beneficial for so many conditions, I wish the Government would give it their backing. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.