Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Hollins

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, local health charities and services are also very concerned about the impact of time-limiting ESA. They are well aware of how difficult it is for people with severe and enduring mental illness to obtain and to sustain employment, especially at a time of deficit. My postbag is full of angry letters. One correspondent wrote to say that her brother took his own life largely due to difficulties in his working environment. She wrote:

“I personally have only ever managed a very chequered career due to living with complex mental health conditions and welcome any effort on the part of our Government to encourage a mental-health friendly workplace and specialist schemes to support people with mental health conditions into work, but”—

and here is the rub—

“on a voluntary basis because I am deeply concerned that any system built on a backdrop of conditionality, sanctions and time limits will prove to be totally counterproductive, leading to fear, anger and disengagement”.

I could speak at great length about some of the many issues that have been raised with me and I support this amendment.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, the time-limiting of ESA is one of the most emotive issues in the Bill, as we have heard. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, people affected by severe illness in their working lives who have paid national insurance for many years expect to be protected by the state.

As I said in Grand Committee, by bringing in this change in policy, the Government are acting like a private insurance company that changes the rules when a person makes a claim. However, as we know, the comforting words “national insurance” are really a myth, as many are about to find out when those in the WRAG who have been receiving ESA for a year by this April will have their money stopped immediately. Of course, some will go straight on to income-based ESA, but according to the impact assessment, about 40 per cent will find their income dropping by a staggering £90 a week if they have modest savings or a partner earning only about £148 a week.

The key question is whether it is fair to cut the benefits of those too ill to work, in this time of austerity, when the highest spending department in Whitehall has to take its share of deep cuts in expenditure. As we know, the change to universal credit, which we discussed at the beginning of the Bill, is going to be very expensive initially before savings will be made. Presumably the Treasury demanded this measure as a quid pro quo for finding the money to pay for universal credit.

What troubles many people, and certainly troubled the Lib Dem conference last year, is the arbitrary nature of the one-year cut-off. As we have heard, the DWP’s own figures show that 94 per cent of longer-term claimants were on ESA for more than a year. The many briefings that we have all received tell us that most people with severe but not necessarily rapidly deteriorating conditions struggle to be well enough after a year. I welcome the Government’s amendment, which would mean that those with deteriorating conditions will have a reassessment with a view to them migrating from the WRAG to the support group after a year.

What about the others? Will everyone be entitled to ask for a reassessment at the end of the year or only those with deteriorating conditions? For example, what about people who have had quite severe strokes? Their condition may not be deteriorating but they may be a very long way from the jobs market although that will be their eventual destination. If reassessments are to be allowed, at what point will people be asked to be reassessed? If it is too near the one-year cut-off point, I can envisage such a backlog that it may be many months before the reassessment is carried out.

Is the answer Amendment 38 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, to allow two years in the WRAG instead of one—another arbitrary time limit? I understand that this would be prohibitively expensive. The figure of £1 billion over the next few years has been mentioned. If this amendment is successful, the House of Commons will almost certainly claim financial privilege, which will mean that this House cannot even debate it again. A vote for Amendment 38 might lead to ping-pong, if it were to be won, but only to ping, not to pong. It would therefore be a merely Pyrrhic victory as the amendment would not go any further.

The work capability assessment is at the heart of this debate, and Professor Harrington’s reviews of it are most welcome and instructive. He advises patience, saying that the changes he has asked for and which the Government have accepted are taking time to bed down. I quite understand that, which is why I am so opposed to what I still wish to call the retrospective nature of this part of the Bill, even if strictly speaking it is not retrospective as it is not actually clawing money back from people. However, stopping someone’s claim the minute the ink is dry on the statute book, having warned them in a round robin letter, is pretty sharp practice. The Government maintain that people have been given enough notice of the April 2012 cut-off date because they could have read about the proposal in the small print of the comprehensive spending review in October 2010. How incredible is that?

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Hollins

Monday 14th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with this amendment. I shall get my interest out of the way at the outset of this Committee stage as I, too, receive DLA. I shall be very brief. It is almost as though the Government want to airbrush the word “disability” out of the picture. I cannot think why, except that they want to signal a change of approach. It is this very fact that is making disabled people so worried that they may not qualify for the new benefit. Can my noble friend say why the words “personal independence payments” were used and whether it is too late to change things? This is not something I would die in a ditch over because there are so many other things in the Bill that may be in that category, but not having the word “disability” in the name is a terrible mistake, so I support this amendment.

[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, I, too, have an interest to declare because, as a family carer, I have two adult disabled children who are both in receipt of disability living allowance. I have spent many unhappy hours trying to get my mind around what the various benefits they receive are and how to complete the various assessments they have been sent.

The purpose has to be reflected in the name in order to help people like me when I am trying to help my son or daughter make sense of what benefits they might be entitled to. I wonder whether there is an element of misguided political correctness in the change of the name. Terminology can be a barrier.