Personal Independence Payments

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Buscombe

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, is it not clear, in the light of this and other judgments, that the PIP descriptors in the field of mental health need substantial amendment? It sounds as if that is what the Government have in mind, and I am very pleased that the department is upholding the judgment as much as the rest of us. We really need a cool, hard look at all the descriptors, and for the Government to consult on them fully and come back with detailed amendments. We also need better-trained assessors and a genuine stage of mandatory reconsideration, instead of the rubber stamp that we all too often get now. There is a huge number of successful appeals and consequently an unacceptably long wait for a tribunal hearing.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I shall do my best to respond to the noble Baroness, who of course knows so much about this area. On waiting times, we are committed to processing PIP claims as quickly as possible while ensuring that we have all the evidence we need to make the right decisions. A key issue has been not having sufficient medical information in the first instance. We are working with the NHS to see what we can do to rectify that. In the last quarter, February to April 2019, 55,097 claims on average were processed each month. The average new claim or reassessment claim waits just six weeks for assessment. However, PIP is needs based and not condition based, and reviews are a key part of the benefit to ensure that the right support continues to be delivered.

In a nutshell, we believe that PIP is working so much better. There were originally some quite difficult issues around it. We are constantly working to improve the situation. That is why now have a mental health champion in each PIP assessment centre. We are making sure that there are experts behind each assessor. We have videos to help people understand what the process is so that they can feel comfortable about that engagement at the assessment centre. We also encourage people to come with a trusted third-party individual to support them through that often quite emotional process.

Yes, it is a complex process. We are committed to doing all we can. We will report back to the House with further information in relation to the Supreme Court’s decision, but we continue to spend more on supporting those with mental health issues—quite rightly.

Universal Credit Fraud

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Buscombe

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

It is entirely correct: 1% of all claims referred by staff are fraud claims. It is important to make it clear that we have trained our staff properly to investigate those claims when they are received, to make sure that the work coach can assess the claims and transfer them on to our fraud and investigation service.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, is it not very sad that certain claimants say that they are being penalised in cases of fraud? Can the Minister guarantee that this does not happen? Is it not the answer that, until the fraud is sorted out, loans must be made face to face with a JCP official? This matter would not then arise. Until it is sorted out, is that not the safest thing to do?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, where that is possibly the case, as the noble Baroness rightly said, it is important that we approach each and every case carefully on a case-by-case basis. Each case appears to be different. We do not intend to penalise people who have been duped by others; that is, those who have honestly received benefits incorrectly. We do all we can to support those people throughout the process, working closely with the CPS.

Housing: Pensions and Deposits

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Buscombe

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord that we must think carefully about how we encourage and support people to save for the long term and their retirement. That is why we are so pleased about the success of auto-enrolment. Our priority remains establishing long-term savings behaviour, so that people are enabled to save for greater security. Automatic enrolment has already reversed the decline in workplace pension savings seen in the decade prior to its introduction, and the number of first-time home buyers is at its highest level for 11 years.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, could the Minister clarify whether the average 35 year-old has put £35,000 into a pension pot, or whether the figure is much lower, as statistics showed a few years ago? It is very good news that we are not going to risk young people completely emptying their pension pots in a desperate attempt to get on to the housing ladder. Of course, this is another reason why more affordable housing is desperately needed.

Severe Disability Premium: Transfer to Universal Credit

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Buscombe

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, as I have already said, Ministers are considering the judgment in detail and will make a decision about their response in due course. When designing universal credit, it was important to provide a simpler system, and a conscious choice was made not to replicate every aspect of disability provision in the legacy system, which contains seven different disability payments. These are difficult to deliver and prone to error, and they can be confusing for claimants. Therefore, we are replacing those seven complex and overlapping disability benefits.

Under the legacy benefit system, 500,000 disabled people did not claim what they were entitled to. Therefore, in terms of families losing out, about £2.4 billion of benefits went unclaimed in the legacy system as a whole. We have now moved to a much fairer system. For example, the rate per month under UC for claimants determined as having limited capability for work and work-related activity is more than twice the amount payable through the equivalent support group component of ESA. Under universal credit, it is now £336.20 per month per household, compared with £167.05 per month through the equivalent ESA support group. This means that around 1 million disabled households will gain an average of £100 more per month on universal credit than on legacy benefits.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Answer. She said that the Government are considering their options and whether the regulations will have to be rewritten. What about the 10,000 people who are still waiting for the lump-sum payments that they were promised? They will have to wait much longer unless the Government separate the payment regulations from the rest of the managed migration pilot regulations so that the lump-sum payment can be made as soon as possible. Being disabled is very expensive and I expect that people have racked up quite a lot of debt because of this problem. Will the Government undertake a thorough process of evaluation of the effect of universal credit on disabled people?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I make it clear that current severe disability premium claimants will receive transitional protection as part of the managed migration process. We now have transitional payments in place for severe disability premium claimants who have moved on to universal credit. As the noble Baroness well knows, we are now spending over £50 billion a year on benefits to support disabled people and those with health conditions, which is over £4 billion more than in 2010. We continue to evaluate the impact of our policies on this system. As the lead Minister for research at the Department for Work and Pensions, I am very clear that we make it our business to evaluate all the policies that we put in place.

Employment and Support Allowance Payments

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Buscombe

Monday 25th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

First, my Lords, I repeat that these errors should never have happened, and the department is working extremely hard to make sure that the wrongs that have been done are put right at pace. I want to make it clear that we did not do nothing, as it were, for six years; we started work on this back in 2013. We are working hard with increased support to make sure that we get this right but we want to do it with care. It is very unfortunate that an estimated 20,000 people have deceased since this work began but we are working extremely hard to identify the families.

On passported benefits, I am able to say to the noble Baroness that we are engaging with a number of authorities that are responsible for passported benefits to raise awareness of the ESA underpayment exercise and the potential issues arising from it. This will enable departments across government to understand the impacts on the passported benefits they administer. However, the department does not hold information on what people may or may not have claimed.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, from the Lib Dem Benches, I thank the Minister for making this important Statement. The issue of passported benefits is extremely important. I wonder how the department has learned from this mistake so that it does not slip up on migrating claimants from ESA to universal credit. Will she use the upcoming managed migration pilot to consider alternatives to the hard stop, so that vulnerable claimants do not have their benefits cut off if they do not make a universal credit application on time?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, let me make it very clear that those with complex needs will not suffer from a hard stop during the managed migration process. As I have said to your Lordships in previous debates, we are working hard to ensure that we work with stakeholders to pilot the whole scheme of managed migration. On the noble Baroness’s very good question about lessons learned, the key point is that through these errors in migrating people from incapacity benefit to ESA, we have learned that the big mistake made was that we did not make contact with individual claimants. We thought it was great to have an automatic transfer, but the issue was that we did not have all the right, real-time, up-to-date information on claimants. Therefore, some of those who were eligible did not receive these payments.

Employment and Support Allowance

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Buscombe

Thursday 18th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank my noble friend for his question. I agree that it is not sufficient for the medium and long term just to say that we are talking to other departments. We are looking to see how, when we move to universal credit, we can ensure through managed migration that nobody loses out and that, where possible, all the benefits that can be passported are passported. However, we have to accept that we are dealing with a really complex system and with millions of people. It is right to put this in the context of ESA: we are dealing with 2.3 million working-age people and, up to now, we have spent £54 billion on benefits for these people with disability and health conditions. That is over 6% of all government spending. We have to do this in a way that is sensible and practical and as careful as possible. That is why we are also now employing 400 people in addition to the 400 we have already in order to sort out this particular mistake.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I might ask about communications. Will all the JCP offices be able to tell people that they do not have to take any action themselves to get compensation for what has happened? Sometimes people have asked JCP officers whether they need to fill in the form and have been told that they do. Obviously, there is a bit of mis- information flying round. Will the department keep JCP office staff up to date with how they should carry on?

[Baroness Buscombe]

The noble Baroness is right to raise this point. The core communication hub is at Oldham and it is working hard to send out letters with phone numbers to absolutely everybody, so that people can be in touch by phone. We are constantly training our work coaches in all job centres to make it absolutely clear that this is something we are prioritising and have to sort out. It is up to us to do it; it is not for claimants or others to have to make that move. We are in touch with people who think they might be within this group and we urge them to be in touch with us on the numbers we are sending them by letter.

Personal Independence Payment

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Buscombe

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to improve Personal Independence Payment assessments in the light of the number of successful appeals.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Buscombe) (Con)]

Of the 3.5 million decisions made since the personal independence payment was introduced, 9% of all decisions have been appealed and 4% of all decisions have been successfully appealed. We are committed to making further improvements to the quality of decision-making and have now deployed 150 presenting officers across PIP and ESA to provide valuable insight into why decisions are overturned at tribunal.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Maybe that takes us slightly further on, but she will know that the chairman of Scope, who is appealing his own PIP decision, has drawn our attention to the 71% of successful, but expensive, PIP appeals in the first three months of this year. The figure goes up and up. This tallies with the experience of Muscular Dystrophy UK, which reports a huge increase in PIP cases, with many claimants left in real financial hardship, such are the delays in the system. What practical, concrete steps is the department taking to improve the quality of assessments right now?

[Baroness Buscombe]

I am pleased to say to the noble Baroness that appeals actually reduced by 9% in the last quarter, April to June of this year. We are doing a great deal to try to ensure that we get the decision right the first time. To that end, we have changed the guidance to ensure that those on the highest awards, with needs that will not change or will deteriorate, get an ongoing award; we have made changes to the PIP assessment guide; we have restructured our decision letters to make them easier to understand; we have introduced mental health champions to support assessors who undergo specific training to emphasise the functional effects of mental health conditions; we have launched a series of videos outlining the claim process in a simple and clear way; and, to help to improve trust in the assessment process, we are considering options to video record PIP assessments. We are designing a live-testing pilot, due to begin later this year. I assure all noble Lords that my honourable friend in another place, the Minister for Disability, is constantly looking at ways to improve.

Bereavement Benefits

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Buscombe

Monday 11th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, my noble friend asked a Question about bereavement support payment and I have the greatest sympathy with people in this situation. However, we are talking about a system that was set up over 90 years ago to support women following World War I who would never be expected to work again and support their family, and who had no other means of support. This change restores fairness to the system by focusing on the 19-month period after a loved one dies. Unlike its predecessor, it applies to both men and women. It is not taxed and is not taken into account for income-related benefits to support children when in need, thus helping those on low incomes the most.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, how will Brexit affect the payment of this benefit to eligible EU nationals living here and British people living in the EU?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, Brexit will have no effect on this.

Personal Independence Payment

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Buscombe

Monday 4th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, it gives me pleasure to respond to the noble Baroness. First, let me make it clear that, in our amendments to the regulations in March 2017, we were responding not to an error in the policy or in the PIP system but to a lack of clarity. The March 2017 amendments clarify the department’s position going forward, and further litigation is therefore unnecessary. The Secretary of State made it clear when she first arrived at the department that she wanted to withdraw these appeals on the basis that she wanted to provide these claimants with certainty. I want to be clear that this Urgent Question relates to the withdrawal of two appeals on 18 May and is about two specific cases. Therefore, there is no question about how many other cases it is concerned with and over what period.

On legal advice, we always confer and consult with lawyers to ensure that we are, to the best of our ability, making the right decisions on the regulations. We are clear in our minds that the regulations as they stand are lawful.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, presumably the department had advice before it brought in the descriptors that have been found not to be right, so I am not sure whether the legal advice is worth the paper it is written on. Can the Minister tell us whether there was any consultation on the amended regulations? After all, there are many rare and ultra-rare conditions. The people who needed watching over at night may be just two people from a cohort of many who need that kind of support when they are taking therapy. Will the Minister tell me about the consultation?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I can confirm that the PIP assessment criteria were extensively consulted on prior to their introduction and were developed in collaboration with disabled people and independent specialists. The 2017 amending regulations did not represent a policy change. They were introduced to restore the original policy intent and to clarify the distinction between the needs of claimants who require assistance to manage therapy and those who require assistance for medication or in monitoring a health condition under daily living activity 3.

For the benefit of all noble Lords, let me explain that what we are talking about is, unlike DLA, a very personalised system of support. It is not based on condition; it is based on need. The important point is that it focuses on managing the condition at one end of the scale and actually requiring extensive therapy at the other end of the scale within the particular 3b criteria that have to be followed. Each case has to be considered on its individual merits. That is one of the flexible and important aspects of PIP. Of course, the outcome of that is that many more people are receiving the highest rate of award under PIP than under DLA.

Benefit Cap: Child and Family Well-being

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Buscombe

Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I respond to the noble Countess by saying that many women, however young their children are, want to work. We are encouraging jobcentre staff to help people to find work that fits around their caring responsibilities. We are also giving those people extra discretionary housing payments. I add that those who are not working at all are still in receipt of what amounts to a gross salary outside London of £23,000 a year and in London £29,000 a year.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that many local authorities are now having to pick up the pieces of this policy, particularly in high rent areas, where two and three-child families are now being hit? Discretionary housing payments are supposed to be only a temporary sticking plaster, not the complete answer.

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, we welcomed recent external research on the benefit cap, working with local authorities. We are finding that there is a positive employment impact from the lower benefit cap, even at such an early stage in a child’s life. This supports our evidence that the cap is increasing work incentives for previously workless households.

Universal Credit

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Buscombe

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for his intervention. While we are very proud of the fact that we are getting more people into work, one issue that we really must tackle and which we have been thinking about—hence our response—is the need now to focus our efforts on in-work progression. That is why the Government have allocated additional funding of more than £8 million over four years to run a suite of tests and trials inside and outside government to support the development of evidence about what works to help people progress in work—we have already had ministerial meetings to discuss this—including those who are insecure at work and women returning to the labour market. The Social Security Advisory Committee at the Department for Work and Pensions—which is entirely independent of us—has just published a report on this which is extremely helpful in terms of our thinking. We need to complement record-high employment and record-low inactivity with a labour market that increases living standards, with economic security for everyone across the country. That is why the right reverend Prelate is completely right; we have to focus on that.

With regard to debt, when someone goes on to universal credit, they will have a work coach, with personalised support and assistance. There are noble Lords across the House who have been very involved, as I have, with the passage of the single financial guidance body Bill which, at its heart, is all about financial capability. This is extremely important in complementing our work and progression of universal credit. It is about education from an early age, helping people to manage, signposting people who are in difficulty to really good support. At the moment, support comes from three different bodies, but one purpose of the Bill is to bring them into one single financial guidance body that everyone can have access to for free advice, debt support, guidance and further signposting of what might help them. I am rather proud that we have seen that through your Lordships’ House. Through its passage—I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson—we have also sought to clarify our commitment to introducing a debt respite scheme with breathing space, which I am confident will help thousands of people who are in debt and in difficulty. Again, this Government are very proud of that and we wish the passage of that Bill well in another place.

I know that I am taking up time but, briefly with regard to universal support, we have invested £200 million in universal support and all claimants can access help with managing their finances when they come on to UC through those different channels.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, why are people being sanctioned so unfairly, as reported in the debates last week in both Houses, or does the Minister think those reports are being exaggerated? Is it because the people did not let the Jobcentre Plus office know that they were, say, in hospital, or that a bus had broken down? Supposing they do not have a mobile phone—are all UC claimants given a phone number to ring if they are unavoidably stopped from getting to an appointment at the jobcentre?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, in response to the noble Baroness, I have to say that, on sanctions, we believe it is right that there is a system in place to reinforce conditionality and to support and encourage claimants to do everything they can to move into or towards work or to improve their earnings. Imposing a sanction is not something that we do lightly. Claimants are given every opportunity to explain why they failed to meet their agreed conditionality requirements before a decision is made.

Based on last year’s data, each month, on average, fewer than 1% of ESA claimants in the work-related activity group had a sanction in place and fewer than 4% of UC claimants had a sanction in place. We are still quality-assuring the data for JSA but, in August, the DWP published a new sanctions statistics release with a revised methodology showing how many people were undergoing a sanction. This development is part of DWP’s commitment to the PAC to improve its published statistics and to be absolutely clear about what we are doing. The important thing is that we do not impose sanctions lightly; there has to be a tangible issue at hand.

Work Capability Assessment

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Buscombe

Monday 9th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to reform the Work Capability Assessment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Buscombe) (Con)]

My Lords, we consulted on work capability assessment reform in the Improving Lives Green Paper and have committed in our manifesto to building more personalised and tailored employment support to help disabled claimants and those with health conditions to return to work where appropriate. We continuously seek to improve the WCA, including recently stopping reassessments for claimants with the most severe and lifelong health conditions and disabilities. We will set out further plans in due course.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

I am grateful for that Answer and am glad that there is some progress. However, does the Minister agree that the WCA is particularly bad at assessing whether people with more than one impairment—constant pain, for example—are capable of doing jobs in the real world of work and not just theoretical jobs? Will she undertake to ensure that the assessment will be underpinned by rigorous research into the kinds of jobs that people with limited capability for work could do? Also, will she ensure that any new legislation in this area is piloted first?

[Baroness Buscombe]

The noble Baroness will know that this is the fifth review of the work capability assessment since it was introduced in 2008. It is important to continually reassess and review the way the assessment is carried out. That is why since April, when we rolled out the new PSP—the personal support package for people with health conditions, which may include having one or more conditions—we have recruited 300 new disability employment advisers and 200 community partners, as well as introducing peer support job clubs in 71 jobcentres. We have allocated £15 million to the flexible support fund, made changes to the permitted work rules and have almost completed the rollout of the health and work conversation. This is in line with our ambition to provide a support system that can be tailored to individuals’ needs.