Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Morgan of Drefelin

Wednesday 16th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, I support the amendment that was powerfully moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. I shall also speak to my Amendment 86A, which enables an eligible person to receive PIP after three months rather than six. The balancing corollary of that amendment is my next amendment, Amendment 86B, which changes the length of time that a person's condition is estimated to last from six to nine months, so the envelope of time in these amendments is not being stretched beyond a year. It is just being differently configured, which fulfils the Government’s desire to align PIP with the definition of long-term disability in the Equality Act.

I gather that another simplification which the Government want is to align the waiting time for PIP with attendance allowance. They have cited the approval of several organisations for this change, but is my noble friend really telling us that these organisations would rather people waited for six months for PIP just for the sake of this alignment? This is certainly not my experience.

The reason my amendment seeks to keep the qualifying period to three months is very simple: some conditions of a long-term nature may have a sudden onset; some may not have such a sudden onset but might be able to be diagnosed only several weeks after the onset of symptoms. People with rheumatoid arthritis, for example, which affects about 400,000 people in the UK, are often only given an official diagnosis after six weeks of certain specified symptoms. I mention that disease specifically because arthritis in general forms 18 per cent of the DLA case load; it is at the very top of the list.

Next on the list are mental health conditions at 17 per cent. For anyone suffering from a severe mental health condition, applying for DLA would not be the first thing they think of, and waiting for six months, when PIP comes in, to help with care is a very long time.

There are then those diseases which may have a devastating impact on people immediately, such as a severe stroke or heart attack, a serious accident, amputation or an unexpected diagnosis of cancer which demands challenging treatment straightaway. We may hear a little more about that from the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan. People with any of these conditions may need the extra help which PIP could give comparatively quickly to stop them from falling into debt as they manage their condition with all its ramifications.

This is even more important in these days when local authorities are so overstretched financially that they are becoming reluctant to carry out more than minimal adaptations to people’s homes, let alone provide adequate help with caring. Those affected may need to buy for themselves various mobility aids, safety devices and other equipment, or perhaps set up a home alarm system. Their homes may need extra heating; they may have increased laundry requirements; they may need special diets; and they may have to rely on expensive taxis to get to hospital appointments and for other purposes. If the social model of disability means anything at all, then a disabled person is likely to have to rely on taxis if they want to go out and about, particularly during the winter.

Turning to those conditions which are not sudden onset such as my own—adult onset muscular dystrophy—it would be foolish for someone to try to get PIP too early while they are still able to manage their impairments relatively easily because they will almost certainly fail the assessment. On the other hand, if they know that they will have to wait, whatever happens, for six months before receiving any extra resources, they may decide they should at least start the process, particularly if they are beginning to fall into debt with managing their condition.

So when should they start the claim? I understand from what the Minister for Disabled People said in the Public Bill Committee in the Commons that the qualifying period for PIP starts at the point where someone is first entitled to it regardless of whether a claim has been received, and that even a lengthy spell in hospital can be part of the waiting period. That may be a helpful message for someone who has had a stroke or a bad fall, but it is not always possible to know exactly when a person might qualify.

At present, the waiting time for DLA is three months. By changing it to six months, the Government have said that this is not about saving money but about the right benefit going to the right people, or words to that effect. Presumably, by doubling the waiting time, they believe that three months is too short a time to be able to assess someone’s condition. They are possibly thinking that someone who has suffered, for example, quite a severe stroke might apply straightaway for PIP but, after six months, might be much better and able to manage the impairments they still have. However, looking at the case load for DLA, only 3 per cent of claimants have stroke-related conditions. This is presumably because the majority of stroke patients are past retirement age and thus past qualifying for the first time for DLA.

If PIP is to be an in-work as well as an out-of-work benefit, which it is, surely it is better to allow a person to claim the benefit after three months, not six, as it is likely to help them get back to work and to participate once again in society more quickly, for example by travelling to work by taxi or by taking a cab to the station.

The table of conditions that people who claim DLA are diagnosed with is very illuminating. People with both osteo- and rheumatoid arthritis, which as I said come top of the list, are very unlikely to get better after three months. Those with stroke-related conditions and malignant diseases are each just 3 per cent of the total. It is not as though a large number of DLA claimants with these conditions are trying to claim after their condition has improved. In fact, the table shows that the Government’s argument about a person’s condition not being stable after three months does not really stack up. I read from the table that most people almost certainly do not apply for DLA at present until they really feel they have to.

To sum up, six months is a long time to wait for extra resources if a person has had a diagnosis of a long-term severe condition. The Minister in another place talked about a person’s condition settling down. However, for many of us our conditions never settle down—they go on progressing. If the Government are implacably opposed to retaining the three-month waiting time for PIP, maybe they would agree to, say, an assessment on the papers after a year so that a person’s entitlement can be looked at properly again. I think this will come up later on.

If the Government insist on the six-month waiting time for all applicants, I fear it will be understood to be about saving money in the short term in the hope that people will be put off from applying. I am encouraged to hear that my noble friend and his fellow Ministers are still listening and I hope this means they are hearing all the arguments for changing the qualifying period back from six months to three.

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, this is a very important debate. I support the idea of keeping the qualifying period for PIP at three months. I also hope this debate will look at the idea of the prospective period moving from six to nine months if the Minister sees that as an appropriate practical way of dealing with the Government’s intention to align the qualification period for PIP with the Equality Act, as I understand it.

I, like many, am extremely concerned that the proposals here will have a devastating impact on disabled people, especially those with sudden-onset conditions such as cancer. Cancer patients often see sudden changes in their household income combined with significant cost escalation on diagnosis. This can make cancer patients particularly vulnerable to financial difficulties and in need of immediate financial support.

Why do people with sudden-onset conditions need support immediately? We know that cancer treatment and its debilitating effects can often begin very quickly after diagnosis, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, has already explained. The associated support needs arising from that treatment are often immediate and, importantly, the first six months can be the period when extra costs are at their greatest as people try to adjust their outgoings to their reduced income. Research by Macmillan found that 80 per cent of cancer patients who experienced increased costs reported that they were greatest in the first six months.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Morgan of Drefelin

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, I have the second amendment in this group, Amendment 71N. It is a big and complicated group. I have also put my name to Amendments 73, 74 and 75. I am not going to say too much about those because the noble Lord, Lord Patel, is going to introduce them in some detail. I support his opposition to clause stand part, and I am sure that we will come to discuss that more generally.

Many people who are placed in the work-related activity group have a deteriorating condition—say, Parkinson’s disease. Some people with motor neurone disease or some forms of cancer have been told that they have only two or three years to live, so it is possible to be in the work-related activity group and still have a very limited prognosis. The purpose of this amendment is to allow certain groups to be exempt from time-limiting of contributory employment and support allowance. This is a probing amendment in many ways, but I would prefer there to be no time-limiting at all, to be clear. If we do have time-limiting, this amendment is intended to safeguard support for people who have had to give up work due to a degenerative condition or terminal illness—for example, Parkinson’s disease, motor neurone disease or cancer. This measure will affect people with a degenerative condition who qualify for the work-related activity group but whose benefit expires before their condition deteriorates, to the extent that they would be eligible for the support group. It will also affect people with a terminal prognosis of over six months who will qualify for ESA under exceptional circumstances.

The Government had originally promised those whose contributory ESA claim had ended at 365 days as their condition deteriorated that, if they qualified for the support group on either functional or terminal illness grounds, they would become eligible again for ESA. This commitment was made in response to a question from Dame Anne Begg MP by Chris Grayling MP. However, there are currently no provisions in the Bill that will allow for someone to restart a contributory claim after their 365 days have expired. Many people with degenerative conditions or a terminal prognosis of more than six months will find themselves without support in the final stages of their illness if they have savings or a partner in work, and therefore cannot seek support from means-tested benefits. People with a degenerative condition will face the impossible predicament of trying to remain in work for as long as possible in order to ensure that they enter the support group within a year of beginning their claim, or having to stop work and focus on managing their condition and thus risk seeing their benefit run out after one year. What a position that we contemplate these people being in.

I use the example of a person with Parkinson’s disease that was lent to me by the Parkinson’s UK charity. It described the following client. He had worked until the symptoms of his condition became too severe for him to continue. He explained that although he had good days, he had bad days. He would only have good days if he carefully conserved his energy. He said,

“but I’m better when I’m not doing anything. It sounds like a skiver’s charter but what it means is that the energy or concentration reserves needed to do simple physical or mental tasks are quite low so any difficulty encountered quickly drains those reserves and I get into a sort of ‘closing down state’. My thoughts slow down. My movements slow down. My breathing gets laboured. I want to sleep. I find it hard to swallow properly. I get headaches and experience a feeling of desperation”.

This proposal promises to create a two-tier system. The rules around national insurance contributions are extremely complicated. I do not claim to be an expert in any way, so it is hard to present a hard-and-fast case, but one scenario that might occur is that someone whose condition deteriorates to the extent that they are eligible for the support group on day 365 of their claim receives indefinite support, while someone who becomes eligible on day 366 gets nothing. What action is the Minister taking to ensure that the Government honour their commitment that those who become eligible for the support group after their 365 days’ claim has expired can receive support through contributory ESA?

I understand that there are exceptional circumstances which are catered for in legislation, in the Employment and Support Allowance Regulations 2008. Someone with a life-threatening condition who would not meet the normal criteria for ESA can qualify under exceptional circumstances and be placed in the work-related activity group. The example given in the guidance for healthcare professionals carrying out the assessment is someone with motor neurone disease. As I have said, we know that the average life expectancy post-diagnosis for someone with motor neurone disease is one to four years. A 62 year-old client of a citizens advice bureau in the south-east had worked all his life, until he became too ill to carry on. He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and experienced chronic fatigue and reduced mobility. He applied for ESA and was placed in the work-related activity group. What does the Minister intend to do to ensure that people in that situation, who qualify for ESA under these exceptional circumstances, do not lose out as time-limiting is introduced?

The equality impact assessment accompanying the proposal to limit payment of employment and support allowance to people in the work-related activity group partly justifies that measure on the basis that ESA is a “temporary benefit”. This ignores the reality that it is impractical to expect someone with a terminal prognosis to return to work. We are seeing people with a terminal prognosis being put in a work-related activity group, which is being classified as a temporary benefit. If ESA is a temporary benefit, what action is the Minister planning to take to support those for whom a return to work is not an option?

I, like many here, find these clauses desperately unfair to some of the most vulnerable people in our society. I oppose time-limiting for 12 months for ESA, which appears to me to be completely arbitrary. It is not appropriate that we should be looking at this implementation retrospectively. The assessment period should not count towards any time-limiting and it is not appropriate that people coming out of the support group, if they only have a month left of their time-limiting, should be expected to find work in a month. This is an extremely important debate and I hope very much that the Minister will be able to come back fully with answers to my questions.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, at this stage, I am not going to go into all the arguments about the time-limiting of ESA to one year. My noble friend Lord German will address the main issues in a short while. I shall speak to my Amendment 72A to my noble friend the Minister’s Amendment 72, the purpose of which is to question the whole business of the retrospective nature of this provision. Under this part of the new clause, the clock has already started ticking for existing claimants, regarding their entitlement to contribution-based ESA in the work-related activity group rather than in the support group, who have been receiving the benefit for 12 months or more. For them, their claim will stop as soon as the Bill becomes law, which is estimated to be April of next year. By starting the clock well before Parliament has made its decision on the Bill, the Government seem to be acting like a private insurance company that changes the rules of someone’s policy after they have made the claim.

However, this does not seem to have been the plan in October last year. If one looks at the Spending Review 2010’s policy costings, published in October last year, on page 6—it is repeated in the Library briefing pack on the Bill—it is stated at the first bullet point that,

“for existing contributory ESA customers, the time limit will apply at the point they reach one year including the assessment phase. Those with a claim duration of one year or more when legislation comes into effect will have their benefit time-limited immediately and will have at least 12 months to prepare for the change”.

Perhaps the Minister can throw some light on why and when the Government changed their minds and decided to make this provision retrospective—thus allowing hardly any time at all for some claimants to prepare for change. Just to be clear, someone whose claim started in April this year may find by the time the Bill becomes law in April next year that their claim will cease immediately.

Parliament has always deplored retrospective legislation. In 2009, the Constitution Committee of your Lordships' House, in its report on the Banking Bill, drew attention to the need for there to be,

“a compelling reason in the public interest for a departure from the general principle that retrospective legislation is undesirable”.

At least the letter to claimants that was sent out recently by the DWP is headed:

“Possible changes to your ESA”,

and states that the changes the Government want to make have not yet been approved by Parliament. The letter continues by providing the ramifications of the change. I gather that many claimants who have received such a letter are telling citizens advice bureaux up and down the country that they do not know what this letter means for them, and that they are very worried by it. They have good cause to be worried. Not only are the Government breaking the understanding that national insurance contributions—perhaps paid for years and years—protected a person against the loss of employment on health grounds, but many claimants, as we have heard, are likely to be left with only their partner’s extremely modest income, which may push them out of eligibility under the means-tested ESA.

I turn back to the policy costings document of October 2010. Under the heading, “Uncertainty”, we read that the migration from IB to ESA was the cause of particular uncertainty. We now know that a high proportion of IB claimants are being found to be fit for work as a result of the migration to ESA, in spite of appeals. I therefore ask my noble friend whether the Government can now start to quantify savings that might be made on the ESA bill, in spite of an increasing JSA bill—given high unemployment—and whether they will consider reverting to their original plan and drop the retrospective nature of this clause.

We all know of the need for the Government to cut public spending by an eye-watering amount as soon as possible. The Government’s argument may be that JSA is time-limited, so why not ESA? However, in my view, a claimant’s health is a much more emotive subject for their employment—or lack of it—and being ill can be a very expensive business. Using retrospection in this way, when it directly affects someone’s income in an unforeseeable way, seems to be thoroughly bad practice. Is it really good governance to cut massive corners by bringing in this policy in such haste?

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Thomas of Winchester and Baroness Morgan of Drefelin

Tuesday 4th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, I would like to add a brief word. I hope that the Committee does not mind if I do not rise to my feet, as it would take rather a long time. I, too, am disturbed by what the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, has said, but I think that the people who have done the work in this Room have done a terrific job and I commend them. They have worked extremely hard to make the Room as comfortable as they possibly could, and they have done a much better job than a lot of us thought they would be able to do. I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, was not consulted but they have done a good job in making the Room comfortable.

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, it is important that we in this Room remember that we are being observed by the world outside. How we respond to the needs of disabled Members of our House reflects more widely the respect that we show to disabled people in our society. Getting this Committee right is important, not just for noble Lords who wish to participate but for building confidence among communities outside this House that they are being taken seriously and that their concerns have been raised and heard within this House too. I am sure that the Minister is well aware of that. I know that there have been concerns about the way that we are conducting this Committee, and we are doing that in public, rightly so.