Disabled People: Access to Work Fund

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, Access to Work is not being cut. We are introducing a cap, which means that the resources available can support growing numbers of people. We are determined to reduce the disability employment gap by half and to spend more money on these programmes. It is a demand-led programme. The cap will ensure that we can reach far more people, and, indeed, we did just that over the past year.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

Does the Minister accept that when the bulk of personal independence payment reassessments start in October, when thousands may lose their Motability cards, the Access to Work scheme is likely to be overwhelmed by disabled people trying to get to work, particularly in rural areas?

Personal Independence Payment

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they intend to take in response to the High Court judgment in R (on the application of Ms C and Mr W) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and others [2015] EWHC 1607 (Admin) that long delays in Personal Independence Payments are unlawful.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

We are considering the terms of the judgment. We have achieved further reductions in average waiting times for an assessment, and they are now well within the Secretary of State’s target of 16 weeks.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that reply. I accept that waiting times have gone right down, but the judge’s comments were pretty scathing about the introduction of PIP before all the systems were fully in place, which, she said, led to the implementation being “inefficient”. Is he confident that the full rollout of PIP to the bulk of DLA recipients, currently scheduled for October, is entirely safe?

[Lord Freud]

The judge found significant shortfalls in the introduction, as the noble Baroness said, and we agreed at the time that that was simply unacceptable. Noble Lords will probably remember that at the peak of the backlogs we were looking at waiting times of 30 weeks. That was in June; we set a target of less than 16 weeks, and we have now gone down to seven. On that basis we are confident about the full rollout, although we will and are doing it on a safe and controlled basis.

Social Security (Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance) (Waiting Days) Amendment Regulations 2014

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Grand Committee

The SSAC concluded that, on the basis of the evidence to date, it was sceptical that the case had been made. I cannot speak for the committee, but despite the further evidence supplied as a result of its helpful report, I also remain sceptical.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lord Kirkwood for giving us a chance to talk about these regulations, and I really do not think he needs any lessons from my seminar about how to do these things. He is an old hand at regulations of all kinds, particularly DWP ones. I fear that I shall echo much of what he and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, have said, although I do have a few further points to add.

As we have heard, the main recommendation from the SSAC is that a robust analysis of the costs and benefits should be undertaken and published before the regulations are proceeded with and ESA claimants should be taken out of the new rule. I echo the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, first by pointing out that although the Government say that they have complied with the first recommendation, it is not what any of us would call robust. Their main contention is that the numbers adversely affected by this change are comparatively small, although they do admit that it is not possible to establish the numbers or levels of hardship for specific vulnerable groups—for example, those who are homeless or have mental health problems. I shall come back to that in a moment. They also admit that there will be financial difficulties for these groups. As we know, if 82% of JSA claimants and 74% of ESA claimants are not on HB and 50% of JSA claimants are paid monthly, this still leaves a large number of claimants who are receiving housing benefit, possibly passported from JSA, and who are not paid monthly. These people are often on low incomes, paid weekly and have no savings. For them an increase in waiting days will make a significant difference with knock-on effects elsewhere in the welfare system, and I do not think we hear nearly enough about knock-on effects.

I am particularly concerned about those on ESA, even though this will only be 40% of ESA claimants. The Government’s reason for not excluding them from this change in the waiting days is that they say there is no evidence that those on ESA are at a greater risk of financial hardship than those on JSA and they do not want to encourage claimants to try to move from JSA to ESA. This surely will impact disproportionately on many disabled people, who are less likely to be claiming ESA through having left work and thus will not have a final salary to fall back on. In any case, disabled people take longer to secure work and move off ESA. They are also likely to be on fixed budgets and have few savings, so for them this change simply means a loss of benefit. Their only comfort is that we are told they can apply for this short-term benefit advance. However, I am absolutely horrified by the Government’s statement that disabled people could use their disability living allowance, if they receive it, during a temporary disruption to other income. This tightens the screws still further on disabled people and should not have been put forward. DLA or PIP is designed to help living with a disability, not day-to-day living expenses.

Here I want to mention another reason the department ought to be very careful before implementing this particular policy as it applies to ESA claimants. It was on the news at lunchtime that there is evidence that the DWP has carried out 60 reviews into suicides linked to benefit cuts in the past three years. This very serious matter has been uncovered by John Pring of the Disability News Service and I think we ought to hear more about this in the coming weeks. As for this amazing statement in the original impact assessment that changing from three to seven waiting days will not impact on local authorities or charities, I want to reiterate what the noble Baroness said about food banks. I suppose the Government tick a box without really thinking about it when they say that this will not impact on charities, because nothing could be further from the truth. Of course more people will turn to charities such as the Salvation Army.

Altogether I find the Government’s rationale for this change pretty thin. They say that they want to encourage claimants to look harder for work but claimants have to do this anyway. They do not appear to know how this change will work with UC or how it will impact on housing benefit. We are told that the savings generated by this change will be ploughed back into labour market measures to improve the English language skills of claimants. That is one thing I very much approve of. My noble friend said that I never say anything nice to him on these sorts of occasions. Well, here is one tiny crumb of comfort. If the money is spent improving free English language teaching, I shall be very pleased. The other thing it is supposed to do is to provide more resources to support lone parents to return to employment. I echo the point made by the noble Baroness that we would like to hear more detail about these measures.

It may be very tempting for the Government to say that their aim with this policy is further to weaken the culture of dependency because that is a popular message—we have to be honest about that. However, they must make sure that in so doing they do not cause considerable hardship to many thousands of people, with knock-on effects they have not even tried to factor in. The party opposite flirted with this policy some years ago but changed its mind and did not implement it in the end. I hope that the same will be true of this policy.

Disabled People: Mobility Benefits

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I emphasise that we are looking to create a thorough assessment under PIP that is balanced and also looks after some of the gaps in DLA, particularly concerning people with mental health problems, who have not done as well under DLA as they should do under PIP. With regard to the concerns about the transition, we are working with Motability to put together a package of £2,000 per person for those who move off the enhanced DLA but not into PIP so that they can purchase a second-hand car at the appropriate time.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

Will my noble friend tell me why his department took no notice of the responses to the 11th-hour consultation on the key moving-about descriptor in the PIP assessment? This descriptor enables a claimant to have enough points for the enhanced rate of mobility, which opens the door to the Motability car. Responses to the consultation were overwhelmingly against what the Government have proposed. I wonder why they bothered to have the consultation if they are not going to take any notice of it.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I emphasise that a lot of attention was paid to that consultation, as to all consultations. The issue that the department had to deal with was whether there was a better suggestion for drawing a line and, in practice, we could not find one within the consultation responses. I remind noble Lords that, as a result of activity in this Chamber, we toughened up the definition with,

“reliably, safely, repeatedly and in a timely manner”,

locked into how it operates.

Social Security (Disability Living Allowance, Attendance Allowance and Carer’s Allowance) (Amendment) Regulations 2013

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for giving us this opportunity to raise again the issue of PIP and the higher rate mobility component. This, of course, is the gateway to the Motability scheme which enables so many disabled people—including myself—to get about. I declare that interest.

I shall say a word about PIP in general, but turning to these regulations, I am pleased that Motability has stated that it aims to avoid recovering vehicles from hospital in-patients affected by this change. If the car has been adapted to suit the claimant’s condition, then it could be very expensive for a Motability car to be recovered and for the claimant to apply again when he or she comes out of hospital, and another Motability car has to be adapted in due course. Presumably the payment of the higher rate mobility component of DLA will continue to be paid if a person is in hospital for more than four weeks. Perhaps the Minister could tell me if that is the case.

Turning to other matters, I am very glad that the DWP is reopening the consultation which it failed to do on the final version of the PIP criteria. Even though the amending regulations should make the position clear, none of us who has taken part in these discussions has any confidence that the assessors will properly take the criteria in the amending regulations into account—even though they are mandatory. I hope that the new consultation will not be an empty exercise and that the DWP will take on board what disabled people say and change the original criteria if the consultation makes it clear that this should happen.

One matter which I am very disturbed about is the figure of 600,000 claimants that the Government say will disappear from their books once PIP is introduced. Where did the DWP get this figure from? Is it saying that these people are not disabled enough, or that they are now receiving DLA fraudulently? How closely is it in touch with the Department of Health, which might be able to enlighten it about improvements in treatments for many disabled people, meaning that they are likely to live longer with their disabilities?

The mantra we hear constantly is that PIP is to be targeted at those who need it most. However, although that sounds good and right, it is actually pretty meaningless because DLA and PIP are not to be means-tested. So one is left with a subjective judgment by a DWP decision-maker—heavily influenced by the assessor. Without targets, how will the decision-maker judge one person against another? Outside the Chamber, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said they would need the judgment of Solomon. Instead, they have the judgment of Atos. I know which I prefer.

Tonight we heard more from the noble Lord about the Atos contracts, so I shall not repeat those facts, which are very disturbing. In general, I supported the move to PIP, because of the inadequacy of the DLA form, but there are too many question marks over the whole process for me to have any confidence in it any more.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I want to make three brief points, but first declare an interest. Two members of my extended family have Motability cars and they are their lifeline. I shall make a point about statistics, one about appeals and finally a point about isolation. I shall try to be quick because we are pressed for time.

On statistics, as I recall when we were doing the Welfare Reform Bill, we were told that something like 600,000 of those getting the higher rate DLA mobility component would drop and about 200,000 of those on a lower rate would go up, leaving a net loss of 400,000 people on DLA mob. As understand it from our debates at the time, something like 27% of those people converted their DLA higher rate mob into a car. Therefore it means we are talking about the loss of potentially 180,000 Motability cars from disabled people who are dependent upon them. These are cars which in many cases have been extremely expensively adapted to them and therefore are of relatively little use for people following after, because they have been customised. This leaves the disabled person without any ability to afford alternative transport, because they too cannot afford those adaptations done by Motability. So on my first point about statistics, I think we are dealing with about 180,000 cars. If the Minister can correct me on this, I should be pleased to know, but it is a huge number.

Secondly, there are appeals. At the moment, between 40% and 50% of all appeals on DLA are successful. One reason is that there is often a considerable time between the DLA assessment and the appeal, by which point someone may have got worse or, possibly, better and, as a result, the evidence is contested. The problem is the length of time taken to hear the appeal. If it takes six months to hear an appeal against Atos, you lose your car after one month, you win your appeal, but then you have to wait for a new car with all the expensive adaptations while 180,000 cars are effectively on the scrapheap, that seems a foolish and unwise use of money.

Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) Regulations 2013

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Lords Chamber

Whatever we do with this Motion tonight, the House will approve these regulations, and whatever our misgivings, we have to wish them well because they will impact on the lives of many. However, we will be rigorous in following the progress of DLA/PIP to ensure that they deliver what is promised as well as in pursuing the cause of those who are excluded. I beg to move.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, this has been a long journey, with many bumps and scrapes along the way. We are grateful to my noble friend and his team for listening to many representations on the whole issue of replacing DLA with the new territory of PIP—I declare an interest in that I receive DLA— and I am very pleased that the timetable for PIP’s implementation is being slowed down to ensure that it is got right. We all know that the DWP is determined to reduce the number of people eligible for PIP, but I am not going to talk about the numbers, because I am not sure anyone can really forecast with any accuracy how many people will be found to be eligible and how many ineligible. However, I would ask my noble friend whether the DWP has taken fully into account all those disabled people, like me, who receive DLA and who are now well over pension age and still going. The last thing anyone wants is for disabled people whose way of life depends on being eligible for the higher rate of mobility allowance, which opens the gate for a Motability vehicle, suddenly to have that gate slammed shut by a rigid new PIP ruling.

I shall just say a word about what my Motability car means to me. It not only transports me about but takes all my aids too, which I could not carry around in any other way. A look inside my boot would tell the story. My real fear is that those who do the utmost to help themselves may find that their determination counts against them in being eligible for the enhanced mobility rate. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said about Access to Work. That is fine, and I know more money has been put into it, but it only helps people to a certain extent in getting to and from work, and it does not help all those people who live in rural or semi-rural places who need to get to hospital appointments, see friends and go to the shops—all those things that Access to Work simply cannot do.

We can only take my noble friend’s word for it that far too many people became eligible for DLA, as a whole, because of the vagueness of the application form and the stretching effect of case law. I take my noble friend’s word for it that descriptor E in activity 12—the “moving around” section of the PIP form—was changed at the last minute to make it clearer, rather than to disadvantage whole rafts of people. I am glad that my noble friend has clarified that further this evening. We all know that suddenly introducing 20 metres as the cut-off point for those walking, aided or unaided, to receive enough points for the enhanced mobility payment terrified huge numbers of disabled people, especially as the crucial qualifying words were only to be in guidance. I am particularly pleased that my noble friend and his colleagues listened to our pleas to embed the relevant words in regulations.

That has now been done, but I know, as the noble Lord said just now, that there is still acute worry among disabled people that “20 metres” is still there in descriptor E. Perhaps I can say how I understand the situation, in order to try to dispel some of the fog which is still around this vital descriptor, which unlocks the door to a Motability vehicle. The words that are now to be in the amending regulations—

“safely … to an acceptable standard … repeatedly … and in a reasonable time period”—

will apply to all the descriptors. That is why the Minister in another place, and my noble friend tonight, have said that people who could walk up to 50 metres might now be on either standard or higher-mobility DLA and that this will also be the case with PIP—that those who can walk up to 50 metres might qualify for either the enhanced or the standard rate. In another place, the Minister said:

“In seeking to clarify that, we have said that those who can only manage 20 metres will automatically get the enhanced rate. However, using the test of ‘safely, reliably, repeatedly and in a timely manner’, those people who can only manage up to 50 metres could also get an enhanced mobility rate”.—[Official Report, Commons, Eleventh Delegated Legislation Committee, 5/2/13; cols. 17-18.]

So it is not the case that the only people who will get the enhanced rate of PIP are those who cannot walk more than 20 metres. I hope my noble friend will confirm this. Of course, the words the Minister used in another place have now been superseded in the new draft regulations, which I warmly welcome.

Universal Credit Regulations 2013

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, like my noble friend, I thank the Minister and the Box for the papers and seminars that we have found so helpful. I congratulate my noble friend on her powerful scrutiny of some very extensive regulations that effectively took 17 days in Committee to debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Freud, admitted that the regulations assume economic rationality. As a result, they are heavy on sanctions—in my view, appallingly heavy sanctions in Regulation 102 lasting for up to three years—believing that they can sanction people into the behaviour they want. However, as abundant research shows—I am sure that the Minister is familiar with it—and as the Trussell food bank network confirms, most people do not know why they have been sanctioned. It is as though it has happened to them. They live chaotic and confusing lives, to the intense irritation of the benefits staff. The CAB says that the claimant does not understand the responsibilities and the adviser does not understand the claimant. The personalised claimant commitment will, we hope, introduce an essential flexibility and headspace into the regulations, but I fear that the very clarity produces a yes/no, either/or approach to regulations and guidance that is not reflected in real life. Some of these issues have been raised by the noble Lord, Lord German.

The second issue is that we face major delivery problems, an issue perhaps associated with transitional arrangements. I want UC to work. I fear that on delivery we will be heading for a train crash. At one and the same time, the Minister is rightly introducing a new benefit architecture that will, however, confuse most people with its new rules, new conditionality, new sanctions, new tapers and new backdating rules and that has most benefits in, but some, from DLA to council tax benefit, out. That is the first thing that is happening.

Then, on top of that, come the cuts. Some benefits, such as HB, will be cut because of the bedroom tax. Claimants will think that it is DWP error and will go frantic trying to correct it. Thirdly, in the past they will have received their benefits weekly or fortnightly, but now it will be monthly in arrears. As nearly half of those in the bottom two quintiles are in work paid weekly, many will not cope and debt will grow.

Fourthly, for the first time, they will find their housing benefit paid to them and not to their landlord. Inevitably, on a monthly basis, it will be raided before the month is out to meet other bills. The DWP’s demonstration projects show that 40% of tenants will find it difficult, and a quarter will need substantial, long-term support. The chief executive of Wakefield, one of the pilot areas, is reported to have said that people are now ceasing to pay their rent at all. That is from a pilot area where tenants have had considerable support. It is worth reminding ourselves that this demonstration project showed that 40% of tenants were in debt, already excluding rent arrears. Over 90% had no savings as a buffer. Over a third had sought help from the CAB.

Fifthly, these arrangements come as a single electronic payment, paid probably to him, leaving her and the children potentially vulnerable, when claimants have been used the past to separate flows of benefit, particularly to the one with children, and to a cash economy for food. And all the claims are online, although 30% of the poorest have no access to IT at all. Citizens Advice, which would have helped them, has lost nearly half its grant thanks to coalition Government cuts. Claiming benefits online would certainly terrify me. However, in exceptional cases, there will be face-to-face support. Will the Minister tell us what percentage of people he expects to take up that proposal? As these tenants do not have and cannot afford a word processor at home, their benefit claims cannot be interactive. They go to a community centre and fill in their forms online with the help of someone present, and then they go home. And then what? How do they get any interactive dialogue going should there be any query over, or error in, their submission? How will DWP manage this?

I greatly welcome the local support service, but the obvious hard questions are how many centres there will be, how many claimants there will be and how much new money there will be. Or is it another slice off the HB under-occupancy test for someone else? It cannot be left to district managers to decide, as is proposed. As it is, my housing association will be employing and paying new staff out of tenants’ rents to provide the self-same welfare advice that, hitherto, trained CAB volunteers offered for free.

The delivery of any one of these seven major changes to benefits would need careful implementation. To bring in all seven at the same time seems like folly. I think that we are setting up UC to fail, and causing much misery in the process—and that is before the IT plays up and falls over.

UC is for the benefit of claimants. I fear that most of the delivery changes which I have listed will destabilise it and are for the benefit of the department, making UC harder for claimants to embrace and understand. I have been through ambitious change programmes, but nothing as ambitious as this. I beg the Minister to sequence these seven changes properly—to introduce them incrementally on an agreed timeline so as to take people with him. Yes, claimants will come across in manageable cohorts; that is entirely right. However, once in UC, they face all these seven delivery changes simultaneously. Those changes need to be phased in, as well as the claimants themselves.

I beg the Minister to consider, even at this late stage, a transitional year for claimants to be able to opt for fortnightly payments, split payments within couples and direct housing benefit payment to their landlord, while the claimants get their heads around UC and learn to work IT—itself a big enough challenge over the course of a year. At the very least, we should ensure that those who are treated as exceptional or vulnerable for the purposes of housing benefit payment are passported to the exceptional payment grounds within UC and vice versa. What estimate has the Minister made of the percentage of people who will be protected in this way under the heading of “exceptional or vulnerable”?

Finally, the regulations that worry me most are sanctions, hardship and housing. First, as regards sanctions and Regulation 102, if you are economically rational, as the Minister surely is, you also surely reward people who become compliant. You reward them for good behaviour. With three-year sanctions, what is the point of the claimant changing his behaviour if nothing happens as a result and he continues to be sanctioned? What message does the Minister think he is sending? The concession on holding down a job for six months is empty in this situation. Will the Minister at least follow the SSAC recommendation that when a claimant has complied, the sanction should be suspended? That is the message to get across. It then can be reimposed if the claimant breaches his conditionality subsequently. Otherwise, I expect this to be judicially reviewed. Will the Minister also ensure that when one person in a couple—for these purposes, I will assume that it is a male—is sanctioned, the payment is automatically switched to the main carer to protect the children?

Secondly, I should like to make a few comments on hardship and Regulation 116. The guidance is really helpful and very worrying. I believe that there are three problems. At the moment, you are automatically entitled to hardship payments if you are vulnerable—for example, if you have children—but you will not be entitled in future. All expenditure is to be scrutinised to see if the family is truly and deeply in hardship. Should they return the TV? What about smokers, Christmas presents, or train fares to attend granny’s funeral? None of those is covered in the four basic criteria of health, housing, hygiene, food and so on that the Minister has put into regulations and guidance.

Iain Duncan Smith, I think, believes that poverty is primarily a moral failing. Like the Victorians, he is insisting that the poor must always live in the light and display their income and behaviour for scrutiny by their betters; that is, young, local office staff with often little experience of difficult lives. The intrusiveness of it all appals me. What is worse is that the hardship handouts will be, as far as I know for the first time ever, clawed back. A hardship handout now is a loan and not a reduced benefit entitlement secured for the vulnerable. Paying it back will in future cut the UC a claimant gets and will further increase debt, which is one of the major problems that all claimants will face.

Most disgraceful of all is that under Regulation 116 (1)(b), households get hardship payments for the vulnerable only if they have met compliance conditions. So why are we still sanctioning them? Why do they need to claim hardship payments at all? We have never made hardship payments conditional in this way, nor should we. Hardship payments meet needs—above all, those of children. They are a safety net. Instead, in these regulations, they are being treated as another lever to make sanctions and compliance bite. It is ugly and indecent. Are we going to refuse hardship payments to a lone parent where she and the decision-maker disagree about her availability for work given the age and vulnerability of her children? That is the sort of example that my noble friend Lady Sherlock described so effectively. The lone parent is sanctioned and is not compliant. She is refused hardship money. I hope and expect that this will also be judicially reviewed.

Finally, on housing benefit and Schedule 4, we now find that the bedroom tax may affect one-third of working-age tenants. They will be fined—because they cannot move—£14 a week for accepting the home which was offered to them in good faith a decade previously, which is where they have brought up their family. As a result, unable to pay that £14—they have no savings—they will go into debt, arrears, be evicted, bed and breakfasted, children traumatised. Then they will be rehoused, either in the private sector at higher housing benefit costs or back again in the same size accommodation that they left, since that is all that we have. This is simply because the DWP and the coalition have so decided. The issue of overcrowding, which the noble Lord sometimes quotes, is, as my noble friend said, utterly irrelevant because they are in different places.

So why are the Government appealing the Court of Appeal judgment in the Burnip case, which allowed disabled children to have their own bedroom? A decent coalition Government would not fight on. If they lose, as I fervently hope—we will not know until December—what estimate have they made of the numbers who will then be protected? What are the implications for middle-aged couples, whose ill-health requires separate bedrooms, or do we need to judicially review that as well? Will the Minister tell us what level of disability aids and adaptions have to be fitted into a property and at what approximate cost before the Government accept that it makes no sense for the household to move and to refit another, but smaller, property in its place? Housing bodies need to know to make sensible forecasts. Foster carers have been mentioned and I am sure that the Minister will respond.

Turning to another issue, following bereavement the Minister is allowing only three months’ grace if someone is required to move house. I think that I am resilient, but I could not have coped with finding a house, packing up and moving within three months of my bereavement. I was wiped out. The distress of a forced, speedy move from the home built together is like being bereaved twice over. SSAC called for 12 months’ grace, not three months. Will the Minister, in all decency and compassion, please agree?

I have one final housing point. At the moment, households where an unemployed person under 25 years old lives at home getting £56 a week JSA do not incur non-dependant adult deductions. In future, they will lose £68 a month, the same as those on higher benefits or in work. That seems grossly unfair. If he is economically rational, as no doubt he is, he will increase the HB bill by finding separate accommodation of his own and leaving home.

We have more regulations to come in October and, I am sure, amending regulations of regulations. We are already starting to see them. We also have negative regulations, some of which I am sure we shall pray against. However, we cannot amend these regulations. Will the Minister at least attend to some of the concerns being expressed all around this House in regulations that we have yet to examine?

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

I have one small point to raise under these regulations, which I expect the House will welcome. Before I do that, whatever we think of the detail of these regulations I pay tribute to the Minister and his staff in the DWP, who have worked absolutely non-stop to get out these regulations and all the guidance. We might complain about having so many piles of paper, but somebody has had to prepare them. It has been a tremendous effort, so I thank him very much.

Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that the one matter I address in these regulations is a success story. It is possibly the end of a long road leading to the better treatment of all those service users and carers who are involved in helping to improve health and social care services. This is about having their expenses disregarded for benefits.

There is one matter to ask my noble friend about: the word “consult”. When service users and carers report their involvement to Jobcentre Plus, they are likely to do so by using the terms that are used by the health and social care organisation that has asked for their help rather than the term “consult”, which is used by the DWP in these regulations. We were told that the lawyers insisted on this word. In order to avoid misunderstandings in Jobcentre Plus offices, it would be helpful to explain that service user and carer consultation may be described as “involvement” or “participation” and “co-production” by the Department of Health. Other health and social care organisations also use the expressions “experts by experience” and “acting together”. Will my noble friend ensure that the guidance for Jobcentre Plus staff will include an explanation about the terminology likely to be used? This will prevent a great deal of misunderstanding and I am sure will reap dividends.

Welfare: Personal Independence Payment

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I recognise the strength of feeling around retaining those words, and we are very actively looking at how to put them into the regulations in a way that works legally. I am planning to update Peers next week, on 31 January, on exactly where we have got to. We are looking to incorporate them in regulations and have a device for doing it in that way.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, I am encouraged by my noble friend’s words. I am not an expert in anything much at all in this House but I am an expert in not being able to walk very well. I have form in this area because I have been through the DWP tribunal system, so this is one area that I know something about. Does my noble friend accept that if these words are not made statutory in some way or another, the number of appeals will rocket so much, and there will be such a period of uncertainty in so many ways for so many people, that it is not worth not putting in these words?

[Lord Freud]

My noble friend is, as always, much too modest about all her other capabilities. We are looking at this very actively and have clocked that there is great concern. It is not—and was not—our intention for people to be concerned about this particular area, and I hope that I will have a definitive approach to present to Peers in a week’s time, in plenty of time for the debate on the regulations, which will happen on 13 February.

Personal Independence Payment

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

On the noble Baroness’s key question, clearly there will be an appeals system, as there is for the WCA. The reason behind the 40% success rate for those who go to appeal—and that figure is roughly right—is usually that there is new information, either oral or written, which was not originally available. On that basis, I do not think it is fair to say that the original WCA and Atos were at fault. Clearly that is not an appropriate charge if one is looking at a different set of information. The real question is whether all the relevant information can be made available at an early stage. We are looking to make sure that there is not additional information which would mean a claimant going to appeal, as that is expensive. The question is whether we can ascertain that earlier in order to truncate the process.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord and his department for listening so extensively to arguments about the needs of disabled people. I am particularly pleased to find that there is a broadening of the definition of people who need to use aids and appliances. At one stage, it looked as though people who used aids and appliances would be thought to be okay and that they would not need any extra resources. Perhaps I may ask a question following on from the one posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, rather than continuing with the Minister’s theme. It concerns the treatment of medical reports. I am rather shocked to find that only a very small proportion of medical reports seem to be read, particularly at the first stage. Will the medical report of every claimant be sought and read by assessors; or will it still be the case that only a proportion of them are read; or will it be left to a decision-maker in the DWP to read them? I am particularly pleased that these regulations are not set in stone yet. Am I right in saying that they are still in draft?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, on my noble friend’s question about the medical reports, my understanding is that all information which is relevant is brought to the assessments, and that indeed people—supporters or family—can be brought forward to make the case and provide evidence. Again, I am not sure about the extent to which the fine detail of this issue is yet locked down. We are going through the details, and indeed on Monday we can start to discuss some of the fine points. The regulations have been laid in draft to be looked at by the various committees—the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and so on—and I think that that is the stage of the process that we are at. The noble Baroness is looking puzzled. If I am wrong on that, I shall make sure that that is corrected.

Benefit Cap (Housing Benefit) Regulations 2012

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Grand Committee

I know that I have not dealt with the fine detail, as my colleagues and other noble Lords have, but I thought that that was right. I have no illusions about this place. I accept that this is a revising Chamber. I accept that we do not have a democratic right—except maybe in some circumstances, as the Conservatives did during our 13 years—to defeat the Government and that we should think very carefully before we do so. On the other hand, I would not be able to face up to myself when looking in the mirror, or face many of the people I know, if I did not demonstrate my opposition to these proposals.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, I have a very simple question for my noble friend. I think that he probably gave us the answer during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill, but I am afraid that I have forgotten what it was. Those in receipt of disability living allowance are going to be exempt from the cap. What about those who have appealed against their initial assessment? I declare an interest because, while I have never been on benefits, I have appealed against a decision, which I won, so I feel for those who may not have been successful the first time in their assessment but who have then appealed. There can be a few months between these two events and it would seem very unfortunate if someone or their family was forced to move only to find that they had won an appeal at the tribunal, with all the upheavals that that would amount to. Can my noble friend tell me about that situation?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, as I would have expected, we have had a very knowledgeable debate, and a lot of very learned views, which I always listen to very closely, have been put forward. Clearly, I am also aware of the concerns that have been voiced in expressing the anxieties of a number of external organisations and stakeholders, some of which were referred to today. I will try to deal with as many of the questions as I possibly can, although there were a lot of them.

Let me start with support and exempt accommodation. That needs to be looked at in two periods. As I said, once universal credit comes in we are looking to keep the housing costs outside universal credit. I am looking to make some long-term arrangements for people in exempt accommodation. I am particularly concerned about people in refuges and, clearly, in hostels. I acknowledge absolutely the issue of support and exempt accommodation, which needs some quite sophisticated work. Meanwhile, we are writing very specific guidance, as these are the people for whom DHPs really are designed to prevent some effects that we do not want to see.

On temporary accommodation, a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, that is again an area where we will use DHP. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Best, did some sums, but clearly this will be a huge incentive to move people very quickly to something much more permanent rather than staying for the full year in temporary accommodation, which, as he rightly said, is very expensive. Under universal credit, there are likely to be changes. We are looking at how we deal with temporary accommodation—especially the division between the management costs to which he referred and the actual housing payment element. We are out to consultation on that area and there will be more developments.

On the mental health issue that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, raised, those who have been assessed as being in the support group under ESA will be exempt, as will those receiving DLA and, later, PIP, so they will not be affected. The reason that PIP is not specifically mentioned in the regulations is that the PIP regulations have not yet been laid, so they will be consequential.

We do not have any information about other types of income that those households have—to answer a question asked by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. Where they do not have any other income, a claim for DHP can be made. I have already detailed the funds available.

Several noble Lords asked about stories of local authorities sending people all over the country. I remind noble Lords that it has always been the case that London boroughs have sent people out of borough and, in some cases, many miles away. The reason is that people come from all over the country to London boroughs; it is not always appropriate to house them in those boroughs and they are sent out. There is an important distinction to be made between local people and those who arrive with a homeless obligation in a particular borough. It is important because new regulations come into force later this week, on 9 November.