Personal Independence Payment: Regulations

Debate between Karl Turner and Stephen Timms

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) on securing this debate and on the important case she made from the Dispatch Box.

I wish to challenge some of the assertions the Secretary of State has made in commenting on the changes in the regulations since they were announced. I have no doubt that his comments were made in good faith, but I think they were incorrect. In particular, the changes do not restore the original intention of the benefit. The Secretary of State suggested that the changes are not a cut, but they obviously are, and they affect a substantial number of people. The equality analysis produced by the Department tells us that of the current case load, 143,000 people would have had their mobility award reduced to zero had it been made under the new regulations, and that a further 21,000 would have had their payment reduced. This is not, therefore, a minor or insignificant cut; it is a substantial cut that will affect a large number of people.

Table 6 in the equality assessment is titled, “Conditions most likely affected by reversing effect of UT”—upper tribunal—“judgment on mobility activity 1”, and the list includes schizophrenia, learning disability, autism, cognitive disorder due to stroke, dementia and post-traumatic stress disorder. According to the Government, those are the people most affected.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend clearly knows something about the new regulations, and I do, too. The reality is that those with psychological illness cannot now qualify for enhanced mobility payments because activity 11e attracts only a maximum of 10 points. Twelve points are needed to allow mobility payments, so this is clearly a cut and the Government should just fess up.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is right.

I wish to say a little more about the precise content of the regulations. The Secretary of State told us at the beginning of the process that nobody would have their current benefit cut; I think Ministers now accept that that statement was incorrect. Regulation 2(4) states:

“In the table in Part 3 (mobility activities), in relation to activity 1 (planning and following journeys), in descriptors c, d and f, for ‘Cannot’ substitute ‘For reasons other than psychological distress, cannot’.”

The changes explicitly carve out people who cannot plan and follow a journey because of psychological distress.

The Secretary of State has said not to worry, because people with cognitive impairments can still qualify for the highest rate of the mobility component. That may well be the case, but that is a different group of people. The changes explicitly carve out people whose mobility impairment arises from psychological distress. Was that the original intention? On 7 February 2012, the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller)—if I remember rightly, she was the predecessor but two of the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson)—said in a written answer that

“when considering entitlement to both rates of the mobility component we will take into account ability to plan and follow a journey, in addition to physical ability to get around. Importantly, PIP is designed to assess barriers individuals face, not make a judgment based on their impairment type.”—[Official Report, 7 February 2012; Vol. 540, c. 232W.]

That is a clear statement of the original intent of this benefit. If the Secretary of State has been advised that the original intention was something different, he simply needs to check the record.

The changes in the regulations are different from the original intention. They introduce an explicit judgment based on impairment type; the original intention was to have no such distinction. The regulations introduce a distinction that was not in the benefit’s original intention. They say that someone is in if they struggle to plan and follow a journey, but if their problem is because of psychological distress, they are out. It is an explicit judgment, it is explicitly contingent, and it carves out a large group of people with mental health problems.