Mental Health: Access to Work Support Service
Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Thomas of Winchester
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to promote the Access to Work mental health support service.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, in this Shakespeare celebratory year, I have been reflecting on the mental health of some of his most colourful characters, and in particular the mental state of perhaps his most villainous king—Richard Ill. Here is part of what he says about his own appearance:
“I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them”.
Richard clearly could have done with the help of Access to Work mental health services in view of his very singular and ruthless method of accessing his particular vocation.
The House will be glad to know that that brings me to the purpose of this short debate on how the Government can promote this most laudable service, which seeks to help those with mental health conditions to remain in work, including self-employment, take up a job offer or start a work trial. But before leaving Richard Ill entirely, there is one more point which is relevant. The passage is, of course, from Richard’s opening soliloquy. Richard does not voice his self-loathing when others are present so no one knows about his deep distress. In keeping those destructive thoughts to himself, he has much in common with the vast majority of people with mental health problems today.
The Mental Health Foundation points out that Access to Work will really only succeed when the culture within organisations—whether office, factory, hospital, shop, school et cetera—is more open about, and less stigmatising of, people with mental health problems. This is backed up by a survey of 2,000 people across the UK by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. About half of respondents said that they would not feel confident disclosing unmanageable stress or mental health problems to their employer or manager, and less than half were satisfied at the way in which their employer supported employees with mental health problems.
The Access to Work scheme in general is not well enough known, although things have certainly improved in the past few years. It is run by the DWP through Jobcentre Plus, and provides practical advice and support—mainly at present to disabled people and their employers to help them overcome work-related obstacles. Although help for employees with mental health problems has been available for a few years now, it was only in January of this year that the Government awarded seven contracts to run this particular intervention throughout the country to Remploy Employment Services.
We know that mental health problems account for more non-manual workers being absent from work than any other cause, and the figure is even higher when those with a secondary mental health diagnosis are included. This is well covered in the booklet Models of Sickness and Disability, written by Waddell and Aylward, which looks at the whole picture of common health problems experienced by the working-age population. They say that if current trends continue, within a few years mental health problems will be the main cause of all long-term sickness absence, incapacity for work and ill-health retirement, and will cost the UK even more than the estimated £40 billion to £48 billion per annum that it already costs. We are not talking here about severe conditions such as schizophrenia, but mild to moderate conditions such as anxiety-related or depressive disorders and stress. The authors’ conclusions are stark. They say:
“There is therefore an urgent need to improve vocational rehabilitation interventions for mental health problems. Promising approaches include healthcare that incorporates a focus on return to work, workplaces that are accommodating and non-discriminating, and early intervention to support workers to stay in work and so prevent long-term sickness”.
That is exactly what Remploy’s vocational rehabilitation consultants—VRCs—are trained to do. The key question is: who knows about this service and how do they find out about it? It is entirely a self-referral service for employees, although employers can seek advice. The sort of interventions VRCs might suggest are time management, organisation, planning or communication. Perhaps an employee needs help in making an employer aware of an existing mental health condition and would welcome the intervention of a VRC to help with the disclosure conversation. If the employee consents, then the VRC might talk to the employer about how the condition could be managed without the employee having to take time off. We all know that the longer a person is off work, the harder it is for them ever to return. The sort of changes and workplace adjustments that might be suggested include a change to working hours, flexible working, changes to the work environment, the introduction of a workplace mentor or buddy, or even additional training.
So, are there any downsides to the whole programme? The Mental Health Foundation does not think that the scheme is nearly ambitious enough. The three-year contract will cost £4.8 million and is estimated to help up to 1,600 individuals per year. Mind also believes that the service has the potential to be so valuable that funding should increase and the scheme be much more widely promoted. It also takes the view, and is not alone in this, that assessments and agreement of funding should take place before someone secures a job, so that people can go to an interview with the Access to Work offer in place, and for packages of support to be portable.
I have been conducting my own extremely unscientific survey for a few months now and have discovered that some large firms with HR departments know about and appreciate the scheme, but many smaller employers, even if they have vaguely heard about the original Access to Work scheme, do not know about its application to mental health problems. This comment from a retailer in the north of England with 30 staff bears this view out. He says:
“We are aware of the scheme generally, but would never have considered using it to help someone with mental health problems”.
Another comment, from a firm of accountants with seven employees, was that:
“I would have thought we were too small to use the scheme”.
Here is another comment, from a builder with fewer than 10 employees:
“Wouldn’t a person’s doctor recommend it? Surely an employee would have to be diagnosed with a mental health problem to qualify for help”.
The answer, of course, is no. Here is another comment on a similar theme from a fleet hire company:
“If we did have someone diagnosed medically, I would expect the GP to advise the correct solution”.
That shows a touching faith in the medical profession, which is interesting in view of the report out only today from the LSE, fronted by the noble Lord, Lord Layard, which found that three-quarters of those with depression or anxiety conditions get no treatment. Another employer, with about 40 staff, said that he had never heard of Access to Work at all, and usually got his information about employment matters from ACAS. He wondered whether the scheme would have helped with an employee with an alcohol problem. Yes, it could have helped there.
Finally, I accept that there is a much wider debate to be had about the whole question of health at work, and another about services for those with mental health problems. I hope that the Access to Work scheme will become much better known and prove so successful that it will be able to expand with a much bigger budget in the years ahead. I look forward to the rest of the debate and to my noble friend’s reply.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, having spoken on this matter at all previous stages of the Bill, I would like to add a few words now. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for saying that he will look very carefully in future at the three care components. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for giving us the opportunity to allow him to say this in terms.
I hope that I may remind your Lordships what this is about. There are three care components in disability living allowance. Under universal credit, there are only two and children on the middle and lower rates of care will not get the higher additional rate. This will particularly affect children on the middle rate of care who do not need care all through the night. If they have more severe disabilities, they will get the higher rate. However, those who do not need significant care through the night can still be very severely disabled.
As noble Lords have said at all previous stages of the Bill, families with disabled children need all the help they can get. This is particularly true of families where there is a genetic likelihood of children inheriting a particular disease such as muscular dystrophy, which is the disease I have. In these families there is often more than one disabled child and, sadly, often only one parent. This is why many families with disabled children are disproportionately likely to live in poverty. Therefore, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for saying that he will look very carefully at these three care components and how they will fit into universal credit, because that is what we are talking about. I do not think that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, needs to press her amendment because the noble Lord has said that he will undertake to do what we want.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I am very glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas. Obviously, we all welcome the Minister’s commitment to undertake a review. It would have been very helpful if we had had this promise earlier in our discussions as it would have enabled us to shape much more thoroughly what might go into that review. However, what concerns me is that I still think the Minister missed the key point in his introductory comments. If I have misunderstood him, I would be grateful if he could correct my misunderstanding and make his position clear to the House.
The issue is not whether the right number of children is above the line in terms of severe disability, and where that line is drawn, as he seemed to suggest. That is not the issue, although the Minister seemed to suggest that it was. The issue is the fact that children who are deemed to have a lesser disability still have very substantial care needs. Indeed, their care needs may be more expensive than those of a bed-ridden child who may be more severely disabled but has less demanding care needs. We are concerned about the ratio of financial support for the less disabled child vis-à-vis that for the more disabled child. Therefore, it is not a question of whether more children should go into the higher rate category rather than the lower but of the relationship in financial terms between the lower rate and the higher rate given that the degree of disability does not translate into the need for extra financial support because of additional costs. That is the issue we wish the Minister to grasp, not whether the lines in the sand are drawn differently between groups of children but to recognise that the financial support for less severely disabled children should be pegged pretty closely to the rate for more severely disabled children because costs do not follow the level of disability.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Wilkins
My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment, which has been ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. The children we are talking about, those who will be affected by this reduction in benefit, are those who are profoundly deaf, who have Down’s syndrome and those with cerebral palsy, among many other conditions. The Government are focusing their resources on the most severely disabled, but the costs of bringing up a disabled child do not equate with the severity of the impairment. The care costs can be just as expensive, sometimes even more so, for bringing up a child who will qualify only for the future lower rate of addition under the Bill.
I grew up with my friend’s younger sister who was born with cerebral palsy. It was a family with four children. The whole family’s life was dominated by trips to London to visit her therapists, visits to hospital, visits to the swimming pool and so on, so that she could avoid contractures and had a chance to develop her full potential. Of course, we all had to go because there was no one to look after us at home. The cost must have been considerable. Then there were the costs of extra equipment, the constant wear on her clothes and so on. If Paula had qualified for the higher rate of care and needed night time attendance as well, it would have put a considerable strain on her family, but it would only marginally have increased the costs. Under this Bill, Paula’s benefits would have been halved, and her chances of developing to her full potential and living an independent life would have had no hope at all.
What about profoundly deaf children? Most do not need day and night care and so would not qualify for the higher rate. The National Deaf Children’s Society tells me that it was contacted by Laura, a single mother whose daughter was diagnosed as deaf soon after she was born. Laura had to give up her job as a nurse as she was the only person who was able to care for her child. She said to me that her life then spiralled out of control and she started getting into financial trouble. All she could think about was, “I have got to eat less and I have got to turn the heating down”, otherwise she simply would not be able to support her daughter. The NDCS helped her to apply for the current benefits, and now that the stress of not being in financial trouble has gone, she is finally able to concentrate on learning to communicate with her child, thus giving her the best possible start in life. But under this Bill Laura would lose up to £1,400 a year. That is £22,000 over her daughter’s childhood. The sum of £1,400 is the cost of heating your house for a year. Think of the danger and the misery that that will mean on a freezing cold day like today.
On Report, the Minister argued that he was working within a fixed financial envelope and that he just could not maintain the existing rates for disabled children if he was going to increase the rates for severely disabled adults. If ever there was an example of robbing poor Peter to pay poor Paul, this would be it. Surely the Chancellor is able to release his noble friend the Minister from this part of his restrictive envelope and find the money from the shoulders of people who would not notice the loss of £1,400 a year. We know that there are many of them; we read of them daily in our newspaper headlines.
Does the Prime Minister really wish to leave this as his legacy for disabled children—children with cerebral palsy? I urge your Lordships to support the amendment and send a message to the Commons to think again.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
I gather that we are being asked not to rehearse all the arguments. We have, anyway, heard very full arguments from the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Wilkins. I shall try instead to concentrate on the amendment.
No one likes cliff edges of any sort in the benefits system, and this amendment tries to make one edge less steep over time. The cliff edge that the Government are trying to eliminate in universal credit is the amount of disability additions received, by way of different gateways, by new claimant families for a moderately disabled child under 16 and a moderately disabled adult of 16 and over. The amendment’s cliff edge is different. It tries to address the difficult and sometimes rather artificial differences between the needs of a severely disabled child—whose family will get more money under the Bill—and those of a moderately disabled child and a much less disabled child, both of whose families will get much less money. I have great sympathy with the amendment because I believe that as many families as possible with even moderately disabled children should be helped, although I acknowledge that the amendment, narrowly drawn as it is, to some extent preserves the cliff edge between the disability needs of children and adults in universal credit which the Government are trying to eliminate.
The question is whether the formula in the amendment should be locked into the Bill, or whether everything should be left to regulations. My noble friend Lord German will address that shortly.
Baroness Browning
My Lords, I should like to talk directly to my noble friend the Minister about money, because we all understand the imperative to reduce the deficit and how, right the way through the Bill, trying to cut back has been part of the debate on almost every clause. However, this amendment seeks to attain proportionality between that higher and lower amount of addition made to universal credit for disabled children.
I come back to a question that we have raised in previous debates: what exactly do we mean by “disability light”, because that is really what we are talking about. These are still disabled children, in the same way as, in other parts of the Bill, they are still disabled adults. It might be presumed that it is somehow like comparing a light head cold with a really nasty bout of flu, but I say to my noble friend—I should have referred to my interests in the register—that it is not like that. For children with disabilities who will lose this huge sum of money and for their carers, particularly the parents, the impact will be great. We have already heard in your Lordships' House today about the impact on some—not all—families of caring for a disabled child, as well as on the relationship between the parents and—and this should never be forgotten—on other siblings. Usually there are other people in the family. They all share in the responsibility when they share a household with a disabled child.
I have spent many years dealing with casework for what must run into hundreds, if not thousands, of adults and children on the autistic spectrum. If this is about money, I hope my noble friend will take my word for it that although they might be considered as “disabled light” in childhood, a huge proportion of them will be the big bills to the public purse later on in adolescence and adulthood. Not only is the human cost of that tragic and avoidable—because most of it is avoidable, if it is properly planned and cared for—but there is the economic aspect. Just putting in the basics early enough, some of which are very low-budget items, can prevent the very big crisis-budget bills that inevitably come. I say “inevitably” quite deliberately, because that is what we know happens; it is well recorded. We have enough evidence of this right across the whole disability spectrum, particularly in some of those spectrums that I take a particular interest in, which are not immediately visible. They are the ones where there is no obvious physical disability but which none the less have a profound impact on the individual concerned. I do not want to overegg this, but Members of the House will have seen the headlines. We see these tragic cases where parents have a disabled child who is sometimes of school age but sometimes an adult dependent child; for those parents, childhood does not end at 18 or when they leave education, it goes on year after year. I can think of some pensioner parents with pensioner-age children still living at home and wondering what is going to happen to them. This is a lifetime commitment for parents.
I am quite sure that if my noble friend, and certainly the Treasury, have done the cost-benefit analysis that I asked for when we discussed DLA in the context of this Bill, they will find that this amendment, although not what the Government are proposing, will save the public purse over the medium to longer term. If we look at it in those crude terms—because that is what I feel they are—we will save a lot of pain and anguish. We will certainly save lives. At the end of the day, it will also save the Exchequer money in some part of the public sector where it will almost certainly have to be found in a hurry.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Turnberg
My Lords, in the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Layard, I would like to intervene briefly on his behalf. He spoke eloquently in Committee on this matter, and he is now busy saving the world in the economic forum in Davos, much to our dismay. I do not know exactly, but I have no doubt that he would want to point out that people with mental illness form a very high proportion of those who are out of work and seeking employment. They must be among the most difficult to place in work and among those we must strive harder to help. I recognise that the Government have put in place a system that aims to help with prime providers and so on but, as we have heard, this is of only modest benefit. It would be made so much more effective if, at the same time as being assessed for work and support allowance, claimants could be assessed medically for their mental illness and given the relevant treatment. A person whose mental illness is treated must be much more likely to get into work and to stay there. As the noble Lord, Lord Layard, pointed out in Committee, it makes no economic sense for the country, let alone for the people themselves, to leave them out of work because they are not gaining access to the relevant diagnosis and treatment that could make them fit for work. This is a marvellous opportunity when they are being assessed for work for them to be given the opportunity to get the treatment that would make them fit for it. I hope the Minister will look at this amendment as a valuable adjunct to the Bill and will accept it.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with this very practical amendment to a very real problem.
We heard a lot on Monday about taxpayers’ money, and particularly about how unfair it is for people on out-of-work benefits to be receiving more from the state for doing nothing than many of those who are in work, paying their taxes. However, we seem strangely passive about the problem of thousands of ESA claimants who are signed off work because of mental health disorders, thus costing the state millions of pounds, and who, as we have heard, are not required or even encouraged to seek treatment.
My noble friend the Minister sent us all a very interesting booklet entitled Models of Sickness and Disability Applied to Common Health Problems, written two years ago by Gordon Waddell and Mansel Aylward, a lot of which I have now read, he will be pleased to hear. We know that mental health problems now account for more than 40 per cent of long-term sickness absence, incapacity for work and ill-health retirement. We learn from the booklet that if current trends continue, within a few years they will be the majority; that the problem is mild to moderate conditions such as anxiety-related disorders, depressive disorders and stress; and, as we have just heard, that the cost of mental illness in the UK is estimated to be as high as £40 billion to £48 billion per annum, the greater part of which is due to sickness absence and long-term incapacity. Finally, we learn that about one-third of the working-age population have mental symptoms such as sleep problems or worries; one-sixth would meet the diagnostic criteria for a mental illness such as depression; but only about 6 per cent of the working-age population actually seek healthcare.
No wonder those who have made more of a study of these statistics than I have have tabled this amendment. However, the jury still seems to be out, according to page 39 of the booklet, on exactly which treatments improve work outcomes, although there is strong evidence that various medical and psychological treatments for anxiety and depression can improve symptoms, clinical outcomes and quality of life. Waddell and Aylward conclude that there is an urgent need to improve vocational rehabilitation interventions for common mental health problems, and that promising approaches include healthcare that incorporates a focus on returning to work, workplaces that are accommodating and non-discriminating, and early intervention to support workers to stay in work and so prevent long-term incapacity.
We now also have the report Health at Work: An Independent Review of Sickness Absence, by Dame Carol Black and David Frost, published in November last year. They mainly focus on those in work who might well be off sick without the right interventions, and make the point that people with health conditions too often do not receive appropriate early support to remain in work, especially those with common mental health conditions.
I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, will not divide on this amendment at this hour but perhaps he will instead seek a meeting with the Minister to discuss how to take forward this important matter, perhaps together with Dame Carol Black and Professor Waddell. I can quite understand why it is tempting to put something prescriptive into the Bill, but I do not believe this would be the right way forward.
Lord Winston
My Lords, I, too, also promised the noble Lord, Lord Layard, that I would chip in briefly on this amendment. As has been said, he is in a very different place—and I think they are probably all mad there anyway in Davos.
This is actually a very serious issue and I feel very deeply about it. It is a very good example of where there needs to be some joined-up thinking between what happens with welfare and the Health and Social Care Bill. This is one of the concerns that we have: more and more people with various mental disturbances—and of course it is a vast range of disease, much of which will probably not be helped by conventional treatment—becoming a particular problem in the workplace.
I support this amendment on the basis that a great deal can be done for mentally ill people, particularly those with anxiety disorders who are not necessarily severely incapacitated. The right support in the community—particularly, living in the community—is of immense importance. There would be a good chance of saving money for the Government if attention is paid to this area. I do not think that we would wish to press this amendment today but it still requires support even at Report stage.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I will speak briefly in support of Amendment 60A. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, has probably not had a chance to see the latest impact assessment, which hit our e-mail accounts only a few hours before this debate. There is now a section in it about carers and I would like to add to what she said. The assessment said that 5,000 carers are expected to be affected by the cap. It is a small number but it is 5,000 too many, in my view. The mean reduction in benefit as a result of the cap is £87 a week; the median is £65 a week. That is a lot of money for carers to lose. Can the Minister tell us what behavioural change the Government are looking for among carers?
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
I have a more specific question about disability living allowance and I think this may be the right place to ask it. If someone living in a high-cost rental area on local housing allowance has a serious accident or is diagnosed with a serious long-term condition, perhaps next March, and is placed in the ESA work-related activity group, they might apply for disability living allowance. They might have had a stroke that was not bad enough to take them out of the jobs market for a very long term but that would require them to take a long period of recovery, and they might have been quite badly affected. This person will have to be assessed and then wait for a qualifying period of three months. If during those three months the person in the household falls foul of the benefit cap, will they be penalised immediately or will their application for DLA be taken into account, which of course will then exempt them from the cap? This is an important matter which we have not heard anything about. It might be part of the transitional arrangements that we hope we will hear about, but I would hate that person, with all their difficulties, to have to think about having to look for another place to live when they are trying to recover from quite a serious illness.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, Amendment 60A seeks to protect carers from the impact of the benefit cap in cases in which they are not living with the person for whom they care. On the last day on which we debated the Bill, the Minister told us of the value that the Government place on carers and their work. However, the Bill is drafted in such a way that this work will be valued only when the carer lives with the person for whom they care and thus excluded from the benefit cap by virtue of that person’s eligibility for DLA or PIP. Carers who are not part of the DLA claimant’s household, as we have heard, will be subject to the benefit cap. They are therefore likely to lose their carer’s allowance, suggesting that the Government place no value on their care.
As we have heard, the latest impact assessment estimates that 5,000 carers will be affected by the cap—that is the number provided by my noble friend Lady Lister—and yet not only does such care save the taxpayer thousands of pounds but the carer will be almost unable to work—or at least full time—by virtue of their caring. So they may face the choice of ending their care role in order to live. This is not theoretical. One in six carers has made the difficult decision to give up work to care, leading to an average loss of £11,000 a year. Many such families struggle to make ends meet as they cope with both a drop in income and the increased costs of caring—for example, through buying extra support and equipment and travelling to hospital and doctors’ appointments.
The impact of the cap will be to make this struggle significantly more difficult. Carers affected could lose £87 a week. Indeed, it may mean that some carers are faced with a tough choice between giving up caring—imposing significant costs on health and social care services—or taking a significant financial hit.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions told the BBC on Friday that people were “not suffering” as a result of his welfare reforms. Perhaps he would like to reconsider whether carers are likely to suffer if the amendment is not passed.
The Secretary of State might also consider the case of some of our service personnel. War widows are excluded—quite rightly—from the benefit cap, but should a mother helping to look after her son, injured in Kabul or Iraq, and claiming carer’s allowance for this, still be subject to the cap? Is that fair? I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Amendment 61, which relates to temporary accommodation, was to a degree dealt with in the first amendment we discussed today. It was a component of that broader amendment. We certainly support the amendment. I took it from what the Minister said in response to that general debate that something was afoot to address this issue but, without having had the chance to read Hansard yet, it was not totally clear what. Perhaps he will take the opportunity of saying it again, expanding, promising to write or whichever of those options he feels appropriate. It sounded as though there was a recognition of the need to address the issue that has been raised by the amendment. I certainly support the fact that there should be a move to address this and I look forward to receiving further information.
We very much support Amendment 60 and a period of grace. We would have been happy to support 52 weeks, but if 26 weeks is what the noble Lord, Lord Best, is pressing for, we would certainly support that should he wish to press the matter.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, that there are two things here. There are issues around transition. I see that the Lib Dem Benches are placing great faith in what might flow from transition and the offers that might come. However, I think that is different from an ongoing period of grace. The purpose of this, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, and my noble friend Lady Drake have enunciated, is to help people who fall out of work and to allow them a period of adjustment or a period of grace before the cap hits. There might be a transitional component to that, but this needs to be something of a permanent feature of the arrangements to make sense.
I suppose that six months corresponds with the contributory JSA period. My noble friend Lady Drake may be more up to date than I am on the data. It used to be 50 per cent back in work in three months and 75 per cent in six months. The data may have moved on. Certainly, given the unemployment figures that are around, I think even the longer period suggested by my noble friend must be somewhat difficult. The arguments in favour of a period of grace seem to be overwhelming. For someone to have to cope with all the traumas of losing their job and at the same time have to face changes in accommodation and moving to a new area, which could be a direct consequence of the cap, would be unforgivable. I hope that the Minister can say something positive on that as well.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, that was a most moving contribution from the noble Baroness. I think we were all very touched by it. I declare an interest at this point, as I receive DLA.
There is a real fear among so many disabled people who have contacted us that the migration to PIP is going to be like a horrid game of musical chairs, because they all know that the Government want a 20 per cent cut, wherever that comes. They all think that when the music stops, they will be the one without a chair. They also know that DLA, for all its faults, has the lowest incidence of fraud, and many of them say they feel demonised in the press for being scroungers. Would it not be nice if some of the screaming headlines in tabloid newspapers were about the way in which many people receiving DLA are able to live independently, contributing hugely to society in many different ways, rather than the other way around?
On the low level of DLA fraud, we have to acknowledge that my noble friend, coming to this whole subject with a fresh eye, reckons not that the wrong people are claiming the benefit but perhaps that the net has so small a mesh that it tends to pick up everyone who has any level of disability rather than picking up only those with the greatest need. Therefore, his argument goes, you do not have to resort to fraud in order to get DLA; it is so loosely drawn that almost anyone can get it if they know how to fill in a long and complex form in the right way. Taxpayers are entitled at this point to ask why medical reports are looked at in only around half the cases, which I for one find quite inexplicable, but we will come to that in our debate on a later amendment.
However, it is the phrase
“those with the greatest need”
that is most worrying. It could mean many things and is most closely associated with those who are entitled to means-tested benefits, which we know is not the case for PIP, and long may this last. Among the arguments that the Minister deployed when he rejected this amendment in Grand Committee were that it was too widely drawn; would be too expensive; would lead to too long an assessment, which would be too intrusive; and too complex. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, countered this by saying that the proposed points-based tick box descriptors approach will not capture enough information about the barriers and costs faced by disabled people on a daily basis. Both are right, which is why this issue is so difficult. It would be almost impossible to translate this amendment into a points-based assessment in a meaningful way, although in an ideal world that is exactly what is required.
I wonder whether there is any way in which the sense of this admirable amendment, or elements of it, could somehow be incorporated into the assessment process. I shall be most interested in my noble friend’s reply.
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 Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, the importance of this amendment, and of collecting evidence from a person’s healthcare professionals, cannot be overstated. Some of us are shocked that not all medical reports are looked at presently under DLA; I think only around half are.
Turning to the assessments, I, too, was very interested in the finding by Citizens Advice that welfare rights workers report that the WCAs often present a distorted picture of what a claimant has said. In case noble Lords have forgotten that report, it said that 37 clients were asked to examine their reports and establish how accurately they reflected what they had said and done in their assessments. Sixteen were found to be very inaccurate. We know from experience that if you hear two people speaking to each other and one of them tells you afterwards what they said all over again, it often does not match your recollection of what they said at all. I note that in relation to PIP we are told:
“Individuals or professionals who support the customer on a regular basis will be able to provide evidence to support their claim”.
Who will ask these people to provide evidence? Will it be written evidence? If it is not from a healthcare professional, who else might it be from? The finding of Citizens Advice in connection with the WCA alarms me a great deal about the quality of some of the Atos healthcare professionals who are currently carrying out the assessments. I fervently hope that those doing the PIP assessments will be of a higher calibre altogether.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I support Amendment 50ZR, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and to which I have added my name. The noble Baroness has made the case comprehensively so I will be brief. She referred to the alarming error rate in benefits decisions. At the same time, I am aware that steps are being taken to improve the accuracy of those decisions.
Here I want to make sure that we do not forget the particular problems of people with learning difficulties and mental health problems, who may not adequately convey their limitations in a face-to-face assessment. These groups have to spend their lives concealing their symptoms. They are embarrassed by them, and the last thing they want to do is to spell them out. They are acutely aware of the stigma associated with those symptoms. The Government are ensuring that claimants can take someone along to their assessment. There is no doubt that that will help and in some cases lead to appropriate outcomes. However, for many having a companion simply will not be enough. The companion cannot conduct the interview and the pressure on these individuals to conceal their problems is very difficult to overcome in these one-off assessment interviews.
There are also people for whom the very idea of one of these assessments is completely unacceptable. The obvious example is of people with agoraphobia, for whom just going out of the house can present real problems, as can getting on a bus or whatever it is. It is a real problem for this particular group. These people would benefit massively from having a psychiatric assessment at the start of the process, which would eliminate the need for them to go through all the distress of having to do something that they find completely intolerable. It is very fashionable to knock medical assessments but, having worked in mental health for a quarter of a century, in my experience psychiatric assessments are bio-psycho-social assessments. I think that was the term that the Minister used. They do look at the biological, the social, the genetic and every other aspect of someone’s functioning.
Also, any self-respecting psychiatrist will not do an assessment in a single sitting. They expect to assess someone over a period of time. They will bring in the views of social workers, nurses and others who have seen someone over a period. There is no way that a one-to-one assessment by someone who may be a nurse but not a psychiatric nurse—even if they call in someone who might be a psychiatric nurse but does not know the patient—can meet the need to make sure that someone is properly assessed, gets the benefits to which they are entitled and does not get benefits to which they are not entitled. It works both ways. This is an important issue.
Other examples include people with a psychosis whose symptoms are not controlled by medication. Many people’s symptoms are controlled but some people’s, tragically, are not. Those people should be able to have a medical—a bio-psycho-social—assessment and, on the basis of that assessment showing that such a person may not be able to function at all, it should be sufficient. I would have thought that the Government would accept that view.
There are physical diagnoses to which the same sort of arguments would apply. For example, those undergoing treatment for cancer, who again have uncontrolled and uncontrollable symptoms, would fall into this category. I referred to this group in connection with an earlier set of amendments. An early medical certificate for those people would avoid enormous distress and the gross injustice of requiring them to do things that none of us would wish them to do if we saw them face-to-face.
I understand the issue of medical fees, which has been referred to. GPs will not tolerate an inundation of requests for medical assessments without a fee. One of my daughters is a GP. I discussed it with her and she was not impressed by the idea. I am also aware that the Government have introduced an important new element in that the claimant can seek a report from their favoured clinician, who could be anybody—it might not be a doctor. This is helpful but it raises the issue, which has already been raised, of a two-tier system. Some people may be able to afford such a thing; others may not. It is a great step forward and I wish to acknowledge that, but it does not detract from the importance of this amendment. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
“(d) shall not take into account aids, appliances or adaptations used by the person.”
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, we had quite a debate about the use of aids, appliances and adaptations in Grand Committee, at the end of which I found myself more confused than ever about how the PIP assessment was going to take them into account. I have already declared one interest; I feel that I should declare another in having most of the aids and appliances known to mankind in my house.
My purpose in tabling the amendment is not so that we can have another debate about the detailed use of all kinds of aids—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Brougham and Vaux)
Order. I ask Members of the House to leave quietly, because otherwise the Chairman cannot hear the speech.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, I am not going to have another debate here and now about the detail of all kinds of aids and appliances, but I want to signal my concern about the question and to ask the Minister whether he would consider hosting a meeting for interested Peers on this topic, together with the relevant officials from his department.
I quite appreciate that those who have been working on the second draft criteria for PIP have tried to do their best to incorporate the views of many organisations and people, including disabled people, but we must not forget that the Government want to cut the bill for DLA by bringing in PIP, which may mean that some of those who currently receive DLA will not receive PIP. If so, it is very important to make sure that some people do not fall through the net because their particular needs have not been met.
We have to keep in our minds at all times the purpose of PIP, which is to help a person to carry out daily living activities and mobility activities if that person is limited or severely limited by their physical or mental condition. The Minister has repeatedly made it clear—we heard it just now—that the Government are looking not just at the medical model of disability but at the biopsychosocial model, which tries to include part of the social model. The responses of disabled people and organisations to the first draft criteria were instructive. Many were keen to point out that taking the use of aids and appliances into account does not necessarily remove a barrier to participation. Those of us who have mobility problems can all testify that there are still a lot of buildings such as restaurants, shops and even hotels which are not accessible, as well as dropped kerbs which are positively dangerous and public transport which is not suitable. The mobility descriptors are, in my view, worryingly minimal, and here again the responses to the “Moving Around” section were useful. While moving outside, for example, no account is to be taken of the gradient or texture of the ground, or the weather, and there was no box for whether the physical support of another person was needed for those with poor balance.
I turn now to a very basic issue—managing toilet needs or incontinence. One response was that toilet needs outside the home should be considered. Most disabled people can manage in their own homes, many with aids, but going out is a different matter, as we heard from the noble Countess, Lady Mar, who is not in her place at the moment. This has not been included but it may make all the difference to whether someone can participate in society. If that is the criterion for receiving PIP, why is there no suitable box for it? Or perhaps there is and I have not been able to find it.
Before ending, I should like to raise one matter that has concerned me for some time but about which I may not have to worry—that is, the difference between using an aid or appliance for work capability and using the same aid or appliance for ordinary living purposes. For example, we know that a person in a manual wheelchair is no longer classified as having limited capability for work simply because of their use of a manual wheelchair, so they will not automatically get ESA rather than JSA. Although I am not happy with that state of affairs, that is the situation at the moment. However, if that person applies for PIP under the new regime, knowing that PIP will be an in-work as well as an out-of-work benefit, and because they might need extra help with daily living activities, then I can see no good reason why they should not receive it. Therefore, I hope that whether a person has “passed” or “failed” the work capability assessment will not be taken into account when they are being assessed for PIP. I think that this is why the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, thought that she might be ineligible for PIP.
I understand that the aim for PIP is to take account of aids and appliances which are actively used by individuals and those which could reasonably be expected to be used to reduce barriers to participation. If the Government expect a person to buy and maintain aids, the least they can do is to help to pay for them.
The case studies that the Minister promised us I found extremely valuable, but they also beg a few questions. For example, the phrase “Needs to use an aid or appliance to bathe” means using a shower seat to take a shower, but what about those who can use a shower only if there are suitably placed grab-handles and the shower has the lowest step possible, or if the person has a wet room but has to use, say, a walker while using the shower?
In view of the very late appearance of the PIP thresholds and the case studies, I hope that the Minister will agree to an early meeting between concerned Peers and the relevant officials at the DWP to talk in more detail about how aids, appliances and adaptations are going to be used in the assessment. I beg to move.
Lord Freud
My Lords, a fundamental principle of PIP is that support should be targeted at those who are most affected. I reassure my noble friend Lady Thomas that we will not be penalising people who use aids and appliances.
We know that many disabled people have a greater level of participation because of the help provided by aids, appliances and adaptations. If we were to disregard entirely the use of such aids, we would penalise individuals whose health condition or impairment could not be helped through their use. In those circumstances, the needs of those individuals would seem less of a priority, even though their levels of participation might be lower. Therefore, there is a balance to be struck here. I would be the first to admit that the use of aids, appliances and adaptations do not of themselves eliminate needs, barriers or costs. We accept and understand that, and that is why we are applying points in the assessment when such aids are in use. The number of points will vary depending on the aids in question and the levels of need.
With regard to the daily living component, the entitlement thresholds have been set at such a level that an individual who requires aids to carry out a number of activities may receive the component at the standard rate. I am pleased to reconfirm to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, that with the mobility component, individuals who use aids and appliances to move short distances can receive the standard rate, while someone who needs to use a wheelchair to do so—whether it is a manual or an electric one—will receive the enhanced rate. In that sense, it is a different assessment and it does things differently from the WCA for ESA. The valuable point has been made tonight that people do not understand that, so clearly we need to put across information about it.
As I informed noble Lords in Committee, the approach that we wish to adopt for PIP is the same in this area as that currently used within DLA. We take into account aids that are currently used by individuals as well as those which might reasonably be expected to be used. Let me be precise—I mean those that are easily and cheaply available. We will not, for example, say that an individual’s needs would not be present if they simply bought themselves a wheelchair, a stairlift, or a walk-in shower. That would not be reasonable, and we will have guidance available to make sure that claimants are treated consistently.
I will, however, be delighted to host a meeting with my noble friend, and any group she wishes to bring. Clearly, there is a big consultation exercise going on in precisely this area. I know this is an area in which she has great interest, and I will be very pleased to host that meeting. I urge her to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for agreeing to such a meeting, and for clarifying that there is a great difference between the assessment for the work capability assessment and PIP. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, never have I minded less about changing my original speech so extensively, because the Government have conceded on the qualifying period for PIP being brought back to three months from six months. I am grateful to the Minister for listening to the concerns expressed by many disabled people and the organisations that support them about the hardship that such a long qualifying period could cause. The reasons for changing the time back to three months are compelling, particularly in relation to those who have sudden onset conditions or a serious accident, and there is now no need to rehearse the arguments yet again. I beg to move.
Welfare Reform Bill
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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?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I shall be very brief and respond, if I may, to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, who over the years has been a doughty champion for disabled people. However, I have never before heard her make a speech based on the sole proposition that because the House of Commons might reject an amendment, it should not be moved in this House. That is not a sound base for policy, as the noble Baroness will accept. That does not mean to say that at Third Reading there may not be compromise or fallback amendments and so on, but this House has never walked away from its proper duty to scrutinise because it feels that the other place may not accept what we are doing. I hope that the noble Baroness will not run up that sort of argument again.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, I shall respond to that. What I said was that noble Lords may think that we will go into ping-pong: that the House of Commons will say one thing and we can come back to the debate and have a dialogue. That does not happen with financial privilege. There are many new Peers in the House who will not realise that financial privilege is imposed by the Commons, which it may be—it may not, but it probably will be because this is going to cost around £1 billion over the next few years. People outside will be given a false sense that we have done something and scored a great victory by defeating the Government and so everything will be all right. No, it will not be. That is what worries me. This is not like ordinary ping-pong; it is quite different.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, almost everything passed in this House has financial implications. The House of Commons is entitled to and regularly will dismiss every amendment passed in this House under financial privilege. There is nothing new in that. We do indeed then go into ping-pong because this House will offer an alternative amendment for the House of Commons to consider. Should we reach that situation, some of the fallback amendments mentioned by the noble Baroness could then be considered.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, I shall leap straight in on the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on the assessment phase. What I was really alluding to was the upcoming sickness absence review, which is an important review of how we treat sickness absence. One of the things it has looked at is the interrelationship between sickness absence periods and the ESA regime. Basically the review sees no real reason for the assessment phase. As we look at this we must ask: are we structuring ESA and sickness absence so that it is a vulnerable or difficult process? I am sympathetic to my noble friend when he says that there might be a way through this. I want noble Lords to be aware that huge weaknesses have been found. We are pushing people through a process that puts them in limbo for a long period of 92 days or more. The sickness absence review states that that is deeply unsatisfactory, and I suspect that a lot of noble Lords in this Chamber who understand the system also believe that. In that area, I am not sure that this is genuinely the direction in which I want to go because I am not sure that it is something we want to maintain.
Moving on from that, let me set out some of the technicalities of the assessment phase. It usually ends after 13 weeks unless by that point there has not yet been a WCA determination. If a WCA has not been carried out by the 14th week, the assessment phase ends when a determination about limited capability for work has been made. So if the claimant’s assessment phase lasts longer than 13 weeks and they are found to have limited capability for work or work-related activity, the payment of additional components is then backdated. That is the existing system, which I am not that happy with. The effect would be to exclude it in terms of counting to the 365 days, or at least the 730 days depending on where we are, but in practice it does not always happen within 13 weeks and we have a lot of disparity of treatment. Even if we were to stay with the regime, it would be a pretty messy system.
I know that noble Lords hate me when I go through figures, but let me give some—I shall do my best because these figures have been running around. Purely on this basis, there is a cost of an extra £430 million cumulative to 2016-17 over the five-year period. I shall try to make a quick off-the-cuff assessment of how much extra it is when we look at it on top of the two years, and it is not actually a hugely different sum. It is £200 million on the SR period and £400 million on the total period of five years. I know that noble Lords feel that hundreds of millions are easily obtainable, but it is not an insignificant amount of money.
Moving on to Amendment 40B, the effect of this amendment would be that for existing ESA claimants, the one-year time limit would be calculated from the date the clause is commenced, and none of the time already spent on ESA would count towards the 365-day total entitlement. I want to have a word about retrospection. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, used the word slightly freely and in fact slightly aggressively. I was upset but not ashamed. I can understand that noble Lords are unhappy that we are taking account of days before the clause is brought into account, but this is about the question of whether noble Lords feel that this is the right approach; it is not about retrospection. Retrospection involves interfering with a claimant’s past entitlement and we are not doing that with this measure.
It is worth explaining what retrospection of time limiting would involve if we were to do it, which we will not. It would involve interfering with past entitlement to ESA. An example would be: at the date we commence the time-limiting provisions, if a claimant who had been receiving contributory ESA in the WRAG for 18 months, it would be retrospective if we demanded repayment of the extra six months of benefit he had already received because that would interfere with the claimant’s past entitlement. We absolutely are not doing anything which is retrospective in that sense. We are redefining the terms on which claimants are entitled to ESA in the future.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, perhaps I may make a small point. Were claimants who were receiving ESA last April told by the benefits office or whoever pays their benefit that it might be subject to this one-year cut-off? I ask this because the Government had already announced it in their comprehensive spending review. Were claimants warned then? I know that they were sent a letter in September saying that their claim was likely to end this April if it had started in the previous April. However, were they warned in April 2011?
Lord Freud
My Lords, it was a reasonably well publicised announcement by the Chancellor. There was no formal process of warning afterwards. That process began, as my noble friend points out, in September. How much warning people had is an issue, but the essential fact is that we are redefining the terms for entitlement to ESA. That happens quite a lot. Examples of future changes to entitlement include, among others, changing the descriptors to the work capability assessment.
I understand noble Lords having concerns about the fairness of the measure. Again, fairness is a matter of achieving a balance in our policy, so that as many claimants as possible who are in the WRAG are entitled to ESA for the same period.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked for figures. We expect that, by April 2012, around 100,000 people will have been receiving contributory ESA and been members of the WRAG for more than 12 months. If the amendment were accepted, we would have another substantial decrease in our savings forecast and a real problem.
Amendment 41A would enable claimants to start a fresh 365-day period if they moved from the support group back to the WRAG—I am not sure whether we are now talking about 365 days or 730 days, so let us leave that on one side for a minute. In practice, for those claimants moving between the two groups regularly—it is funny how, when things are encouraged financially, regularity seems to increase—the amendment would be likely to mean that they would be able to remain on contributory ESA indefinitely.
We have always made it clear that, when addressing claimants in the WRAG, our aim is for as many people as possible to receive contributory ESA for the same period. This will be a period of 365 days on our original formulation and at least 730 days on the basis of the amendment that passed. Restarting that period each time a claimant moved from the support group to the WRAG would lead to inconsistent periods on benefit for claimants.
I accept the amendment that has just gone through, but, on the basis of the period—whether one year or at least 730 days—we do not think that we need to make any of these additional changes, particularly given their high cost in the current fiscal climate. I urge noble Lords not to press these three amendments. We do not consider them consequential upon each other.
Welfare Reform Bill
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Baroness Wilkins
My Lords, the Joint Committee on Human Rights has just published its legislative scrutiny of the Welfare Reform Bill in its 21st report of the Session. I quote from its recommendations:
“The National Housing Federation estimates that about 108,000 tenants in social rented properties adapted specifically for their needs are likely to be affected by the introduction of the size criteria to restrict housing benefit. If such tenants were forced to move into properties unsuited to their needs this might risk breaching their Article 8 rights to respect for private or family life as well as being potentially discriminatory.
The Government has indicated that it is prepared to look at exemptions for individuals who are disabled, where their homes have been subject to extensive adaptations. However, this would not address the disruption to patterns of caring and support networks which can be vital”.
The JCHR concludes:
“We recommend allowing some additional discretion to exempt disabled people facing exceptional hardship from the under-occupation provisions”.
I hope that the Minister will not only agree to the amendment but also agree to the JCHR’s recommendations.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, I have a question for my noble friend about the disabled facilities grant, which I gather is rising to £180 million in the current fiscal year. However, as we know, this grant is not ring-fenced, although it is still a mandatory grant. I find that a slightly odd concept. I just want to make sure that this grant is quite separate from the discretionary housing payment. What redress will a citizen have if the local authority is being rather mean with the mandatory disabled facilities grant? I have not quite got my head round that matter. It may be entirely a matter for the local authority but I wonder whether my noble friend can help me regarding the disabled facilities grant in particular.