People with Disabilities: Access to Services
Lord Addington Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, follow that! The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, has set us a challenge by going across the entire panoply. That probably should be done, but we may need a debate about three times as long, or three different goes at it. Let us use this as our opening shot.
We have passed a law that we do not enact. Most people in this Chamber are veterans of various phases of this and its precursors. A good few years ago, I realised how long I had been here when it had been 20 years since we passed the initial DDA. I was one of the youngest people in the House then, so it was a great reminder of just how mortal I am. One theme has recurred again and again: we talk the talk without walking the walk.
The Government have reassured a certain group that they will have continued employment—those who make appeals to idiotic decisions by government, in this case for disability benefits, because there will be appeals to this. The Department of Health said that it would take care of mental health and that it would become as apparent as physical health, but has just said, “Oh no, there is far too much of it”. I cannot think of anything that would generate appeals and conflict more quickly. Congratulations—effectively, we have two departments at each other’s throats. All Governments have done this to an extent, and I hope that any new Government will be aware of this.
We also do not seem to have taken on board that many fixes can be made quite easily, because we are bound by convention. I must once again remind the House of my declared interests: I am dyslexic and president of the British Dyslexia Association, and I am chairman of Microlink, a disability access company. When chatting through what could be done, I felt one of the easiest things would be to look at communication. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has just given us a good example of physical communication for one priority group. There is no consistent approach.
For communication of ideas, the dyslexic will always go to English. We have reached a point where we are worrying about passing an English exam. This is ridiculous. For over two decades, I have used voice-operated technology. It used to be an add-on to a decent computer—it had to be decent to handle it—and it is now standard on our operating systems. Most people do not know it is there, but it is: all you have to do is press a couple of buttons, or voice call them into action, and have it read back. But we still have a system where people repeatedly say that you have to pass a written English exam to get into certain places.
I have been looking around this Chamber, and most of us are using an old, established assistive technology—a pair of glasses. You have taken a manufactured substance, changed the lens and stuck it on the end of your nose. That is okay, but using a computer is not. There is a certain degree of absurdity built into the responses here. We and government agencies are still saying, “You’ve got to pass certain tests in a certain way”, and not, “Can you communicate information? Can you pass it on so that somebody knows what you are saying?” No, you have to write it down. We all know how absurd that is.
Let us face it: in the modern world, nobody writes anything much with a pen, other than a couple of lines, after you have left school. You do it all on a computer. I have asked this many times and have not heard a reply against it. Does anybody care if you have word-processed by talking or tapping a keyboard? There might be some weirdos somewhere who think that this is the essence of life, but I hope they are not in this Chamber today. Will we start addressing the practical problems and say that it does not matter as long as you can communicate? We could do this very easily if the Government were to lead on it.
The implications might be biggest for those with dyslexia. We have already heard about autism, and I shudder to think what the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, who will follow me in this debate, would say about this, because the technology for those who have a visual impairment has been very well established for even longer than for those with dyslexia. Why do we not just ask: “Can you communicate properly?” Other groups would benefit from this as well, and this idiotic barrier to accessing training and information throughout the system would be removed. The Government have the capacity to say: “Yes, we will do this, and we will do it in the school system”. We can now say very easily, “You can learn through these methods”.
This is only in pockets: at university, it is perfectly accepted. If you suffered English GCSE and got through it at the fourth attempt, you are allowed to carry on. Even if you are very bad and do not stand any chance of getting through, you can get through. Only certain groups are affected. Are we going to start to remove this communication barrier for things such as training, accessing other types of activity, et cetera? Are we going to do this in a cohesive manner? Are we going to take a lead? This debate does not speak to one department: it speaks across government.
I hope that the Government will be in a position to give us a better steer. At the moment, we are creating artificial barriers that we can resolve easily. This is just one of them. Will the Government please give us some indication that they will do it? They have precedents and legal requirements saying that they should; they should say to people and employers that this communication problem does not matter. It is easily solved: all you have to do is press the button that is already on your computer and you will be able to work, with a bit of guidance about how it works. I am probably damaging Microlink’s client base here, but it is not rocket science. Making sure you do not get noise on the microphone is probably the first step, and then you have done it. It is as simple as making sure that you have a chair that does not give you backache—although people do not do that either.
Can the Minister say when the Government will start to intervene to tell people what is possible and that these things are easily solvable? If they do, they will remove a great deal of stress and some of the queues for benefits. That sort of positive action is long overdue. I hope that we will have a coherent attitude that gets through to people—not to those who dig around and wait in long queues for it, which is aggressively done.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I think that it will go a very long way. We are looking seriously at getting the information out quickly—the link with HMRC is incredibly important here. We already get real-time information from HMRC anyway. We are asking the same question: what more can we do to be sure that those who do not let us know, for whatever reason, will do so? We also must not forget that the vast majority do let us know. This is a very important point. I believe that there will be a Question in the House next week on this issue, which I will be willing and ready to answer.
The subject of work was raised in particular by my noble friend Lord Shinkwin. This Government will always protect the most vulnerable, but we must also do everything possible to support those who can to move into work. I echo the Prime Minister’s speech at the Centre for Social Justice on 19 April, which I attended:
“The role of the welfare state should never be merely to provide financial support … but to help people overcome whatever barriers they might face to living an independent, fulfilling life”.
That is why we are supporting thousands more disabled people to start, stay and succeed in work through our £2.5 billion back to work plan. That includes exploring reforms to the fit-note process through the call for evidence—another theme raised today—and rolling out WorkWell, to bring together local health and employment support. Questions were raised today about who is best placed to make health assessments for work. I do not intend to go further on that, but we may well receive some information through the conversation and the PIP consultation on that subject.
From 2025, we will reform the work capability assessment to reflect new flexibilities in the labour market while maintaining protections for those with the most serious conditions. My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond and others raised the disability employment gap. The Government have an ambitious programme of initiatives to support disabled people and people with health conditions. The disability employment rate was 52.9% in the first quarter of 2024, compared to 81.7% for non-disabled people. For disabled people, that is an increase of 0.1 percentage points. The disability employment gap was 28.8 percentage points in the first quarter of 2024, a decrease of 0.6 percentage points on the year before.
We are also expanding access to mental health treatment, with nearly 400,000 additional places through NHS talking therapies, which I think the House will be well aware of. All this builds on existing support, such as Access to Work grants, our Disability Confident scheme and disability employment advisers in jobcentres.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Donaghy and Lady Hughes, asked what the Government are doing to help those in poverty. There is a long answer I could give, but the short answer, which I think I have given in the House before, is that we are committed to supporting people on lower incomes and expect to spend around £303 billion through the welfare system in Great Britain in 2024-25, including around £138 billion on people of working age and their children. These statistics cover 2022-23, a year when inflation averaged 10% and benefits were uprated by 3.1%, in line with the CPI.
On the disabled, the latest statistics show that the number of people in families where someone is disabled and in absolute poverty—which is our preferred measure—fell by 100,000 between 2021-22 and 2022-23. The proportion of people in families where someone is disabled and in absolute poverty after housing costs has decreased by two percentage points since 2019-20, and the number of people in such families has increased slightly due to an increase in the number of people in families where someone is disabled.
Briefly, on education, which I think was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and others, in the special educational needs and disability sector our improvement plan will establish a single national system so that children can achieve good outcomes. We have increased high-needs revenue funding for children and young people with complex needs to cover £10.5 billion this year, up 60% over the last five years. The Law Commission is also undertaking a review of disabled children’s social care legislation to help clarify the law and to ensure that families of disabled children receive the support that they need. I hope that this may help address the remarks from the noble Lord, Lord Addington.
I will go further on the question of what the Government are doing to achieve greater national equality in the support offered to children. Our improvement plan outlines our commitment to establish a single national SEND system with a proposal to deliver national standards. National standards will improve mainstream education by setting standards for early and accurate identification of SEND need, and they will include clarifying the types of support that should be available in mainstream settings and who is responsible for securing the support. Finally, national standards will create a more consistent SEND system. That may not provide the whole answer, but I hope that helps.
Lord Addington (LD)
Are we suggesting that there will be a consistent approach to those who are not taking on plans in the classroom? Much of the talk here is about the plan, which is incredibly expensive and slow, is appealed and then goes through. Will we get better support for those who have not had that official diagnosis? That is the real issue here.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I certainly always listen to the noble Lord. It will be for others to judge, but I very much hope so, and I take note of that.
Quickly on housing, which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and briefly by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, thanks to the Government’s actions more disabled people have the support that they need to be able to live independently and safely. The Government have more than doubled the funding for the disabled facilities grant, from £220 million in 2015-16 to £625 million in this financial year. Our Renters (Reform) Bill, abolishing no-fault evictions and creating a new ombudsman for the private rented sector, will give disabled tenants more security and confidence to hold landlords accountable for reasonable adjustments. The Government have also proposed to mandate that all new homes will be built to a higher accessibility standard, providing greater independence and safety at home—which again was raised.
Health and Disability Reform
Lord Addington Excerpts(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I gently correct the right reverend Prelate, or give my view, which is that the current PIP system has served a purpose; that is a fair comment to make. However, as I said earlier, after 10 years—it was our Government who brought in PIP—now is the time to review it. To put this in perspective and explain why we are doing it now, I say that since 2015 the proportion of the caseload receiving the highest rate of PIP has increased from 25% to 36%, and 7% of working-age people in England and Wales now claim PIP or DLA, which is forecast to rise to 10% by 2028-29. Going back to 2022-23, the Government spent £15.7 billion on extra costs for disability benefits for people of working age in England and Wales, and the OBR has forecast that the cost will rise to £29.8 billion in nominal terms by 2028-29. On the right reverend Prelate’s question, we believe that now is the right time to do something. In fact, not doing something would be highly negligent. It covers everybody at all levels. I know he referred particularly to those who are the most vulnerable, and he was quite right.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this Statement should fill us with joy, but anyone familiar with the history of this issue will actually be worried. The assessment has just got a hell of a lot more complicated. In the past, people have been told that they cannot get their benefits, whatever they are called, because they can walk 10 yards—except they could do it one day but not the next, and it was a nightmare. The Government have just made a quantum leap in the complexity of conditions that they are dealing with. That is good, but unless they back it up with better support to make the assessment then they are guaranteeing failure. There is no real argument about that; the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, hinted at it, and others will back me up,
I suggest that something the Minister could do to make the Government’s life easier is to start passporting the identification of problems such as education in earlier life. For instance, there are education, health and care plans, and the disabled students’ allowance. If we cannot passport those into the Department for Work and Pensions, we are going to waste a huge amount of time and effort. Most of these things will have been tested in the courts, or with an assessment. What are we doing there? When we are making new assessments, are we investing in proper identification? That has been a chronic problem in this area. I hope that by now the Government have realised that and put some sort of plan in place.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I encourage the noble Lord, with his knowledge and experience, to input into the consultation, as I suspect he probably will. He will know that the consultation is limited in scope to PIP, which is open only to claimants aged 16 and over. That is quite broad, but it is payable regardless of whether you are in work, education or, as he spoke about, training. We are keen to hear from people from all walks of life and backgrounds, and encourage everyone, including students, to respond to the consultation.
I take note of the noble Lord’s point about passporting. I know about EHC plans from my previous brief. It is important that the student diaspora and those who represent it also input to the conversation.
As I said, we believe there may be better ways of supporting people in living independent and fulfilling lives. This could mean financial support being better targeted at people, including students, who have specific extra costs, but it could involve improved support of other kinds, such as for physical as well as mental health, leading to better outcomes.
Love Matters (Archbishops’ Commission on Families and Households Report)
Lord Addington Excerpts(8 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, a debate like this is an odd one: by going through it, you suddenly realise the great reach of the Church of England. It is a big institution. It has done many things which are good and one or two things that you might disagree with, but you cannot deny its reach and power. Also, I feel that any report that gives a greater number of recommendations to itself to change than government probably deserves some attention from everybody. It has not said that its own house is correct—that gets it a hearing, at least from me, when it comes to the process.
On the emphasis on family, anybody who has done anything in the many fields in which the Church is involved knows it as a delivery structure or campaigning organisation. This report is mainly about children. I enjoyed the thrust of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and the counter and parry by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. That was one of the little things I enjoyed in this debate. Fair enough: age was not mentioned, but it had been mentioned somewhere else.
I was talking about family and children. Children who have problems and get through them usually have a family behind them. They have an immediate support structure, which knows what is going on, recognises it and campaigns.
It is now time to declare my interests. I am president of the British Dyslexia Association and I am dyslexic. I am chairman of an assistive technology company. My experience of dealing with a group that struggles with the education system—the thing that gives them the building blocks to access other bits of life—is solidly wrapped up in the principle, and the rather black-humoured joke that I have used too often but is still relevant, that to be a successful disabled child, you need to choose your parents carefully. Once you have that support structure, you stand a chance in the future.
I have another aside on the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, about when we put gay marriage through the House. I was slightly disappointed by that process, because she managed it so well. I was expecting a good fight, but we did not really get one, so well done to her. I think my noble friend Lady Featherstone, who initiated that legislation in the Commons, feels the same way: “Oh, it’s gone through no problem”. It was a masterstroke of strategy. To use a rugby analogy, we had very good ball in space and used it well, so congratulations. I will explain that later; do not worry.
I return to the point that any family unit, no matter how it is constructed, is needed to support the child. When you do not get that interest and support, because the family is not functioning, it becomes massively difficult. We heard about the prison population. Most people in prisons are educational failures. I do not know the figures. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop—I need to get this right; I am sorry, I do not know whether the word is a “flock” or “pack” of bishops, but there are many. A “coven” was suggested from behind me, but that must be wrong. Anyway, every person with problems probably has not had a family who can do something for them.
What is needed here, and the Government talk about this and dance around the edges, is someone who can intervene early enough to support that family, parent or group, take it on and be successful. However, even with the best will in the world, some heads of families or carers are unable to do that, very often because they lack educational attainment and an understanding of the system, or because they are so stressed by other problems—poverty and bad housing—that they are not in a position to dig and find out. The day-to-day realities of keeping a roof over your head or putting enough food on the table overwhelm people. These things go together.
The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, has of course slipped out the minute I try to refer to him. He pointed out that, historically, people may not have been given what they are entitled to. The amount of unclaimed benefit has always astounded me, and it is usually because people do not know that they can get it or feel guilty about taking it. Let us face it: we do not give much away easily. If it is there, it is for a recognised reason. Making sure that it is attainable will help the family and give them the background to create.
The second thing I would like to do—to go totally towards my own end of the sandpit when it comes to education, namely special educational needs—is make sure that it is not the parents’ job to get a diagnosis, or to campaign to get a plan, and that it is the school’s job to do more. You do that by making sure there is better awareness, and the capacity to handle different learning patterns caused by conditions such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD and autism, within the mainstream school—because they are there. We have 80% non-recognition of dyslexia in certain age groups—that is just one condition. They usually hunt in packs, by the way; ADHD often accompanies dyslexia and autism, and the rest.
Often, we are not talking about those people with the most obvious need; we are talking about the person who is failing consistently, or just failing, or just passing, or passing with such a huge effort of extra concentration that they will not maintain it for very long but will jump out early. I am due to host a meeting of the British dyslexia police association, which has dozens of examples of people who have gone through exactly that journey. That is our police force; think how many did not make it—basically, their client base. If we are going to do this, we must look at the structure and the help; we must make sure that this group, who are basically the failures, get alternative provision within education.
The Government recently said they accept that virtually everybody in this growing group—which has grown over the years, and I will give noble Lords my 30-minute diatribe on why academisation was not any good at some other point—has a special educational need, most of them unidentified. They must now have extra capacity to identify.
If you are going to allow families to have their best option, and get the best results out of them, do not expect them all to be wonderful tiger parents. Allow them to be an ordinary parent doing their best job. Make sure that the rest of the system comes in and helps. If you expect people to be wonderful, occasionally the lucky and the brilliant will get through, but that is the definition of a failed system. Can the Minister give some hint as to how a better integrated policy for taking this bit of pressure off parents will be developed? How are we going to make sure that you do not have to find a £600 assessment, and pay for it yourself, to get a child identified for the right help?
I have already gone on slightly longer than I had hoped to, so I will finish on this. A recent piece of work from the LSE, by Dr Tammy Campbell, points out that, in more deprived areas, more people are identified as having educational problems but far fewer as having specific problems. With all of the conditions I have talked about, you do not need to work harder; you need to work smarter, because your brain is not accepting information in the way others do, thus it cannot give it out. Dyslexia, autism, dyspraxia and ADHD—all of them—share this. They are not the same, but they are all there. What development has been taken to take this strain off families and carers? It ties in with everything else and is part of the picture.
At the moment there is still some truth in the stereotype that dyslexia, for instance, is a middle-class disease. Little Johnny, who is a complete swine in the classroom—we can use stronger language if we like—has got ADHD if he is middle class but, if he comes from a more traditional working-class background or a non-exam-passing one, he is just a swine. The girl who does not get recognised because her coping strategy is to disappear in the middle of the class does not get any help at all. What are the Government doing to make sure that the entire sector is better at recognising this group? Writing off 20% of our population in the educational process under normal circumstances is surely something that should have gone a long time ago.
Health and Disability White Paper
Lord Addington Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
It will be, but, as I mentioned to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, we have a number of matters to work through, which is why I have said that it will take time. Sanctions are part of this: for example, in November 2022, the universal credit sanction rate was 6.51%. Sanctions underpin conditionality and are a key part of a fair and effective welfare system, so it is right that a system is in place to encourage claimants to take reasonable steps to prepare for and move into work. We need to keep our eye on this.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this is an odd White Paper because it misses out a whole chunk of the system: the link between education and benefits. The Government have just produced a paper that says they are going to do much better at identifying special educational needs. Here, I should remind the House of my interests. Reference is made on page 12 to all the neurodiverse groups. You would expect these to manifest in the education process. How are they going to go through? Are the Government requiring an education and healthcare plan? Will there be some other form of identification? How is this to be done? This is a long-standing problem that means assessors and lawyers make money. Can the Government tell me how they will disappoint these groups?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
The noble Lord is right that this is another area we need to focus on, particularly those with neurodiversity issues or, indeed, autism. We have made progress in seeing more disabled people in employment but, as he will know, progress is not even. Groups such as autistic people are still showing very low employment rates—for example, only around 26% of working-age autistic people are in employment—so there is much work to do. This will be a factor in what we look at over the next few months and years as part of these new initiatives.
Employment: Disabled People
Lord Addington Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
We have a disability action plan, but it is separate from the noble Baroness’s point about the national disability strategy. We are disappointed by, and strongly disagree with, the High Court’s finding that that strategy was unlawful; as the noble Baroness may know, the Secretary of State has been granted permission to appeal the court’s declaration. In order to ensure compliance with the court’s declaration, we are obliged to pause a limited number of policies referred to in the strategy or directly connected with it, which is a disappointment.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interests in this field as set out in the register. What are the Government doing to make sure that businesses, particularly small ones, know that, if they employ a disabled people, they have somebody who is less likely to take time off work and less likely to change jobs frequently—both those things are proven—than a non-disabled person? This sort of information would certainly help to break down perceptual barriers.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
Indeed, and this is very much a matter for Jobcentre Plus. Further training is being given to job coaches in jobcentres. It is very important that those with health conditions or disabilities receive the support and advice that they need to move into or to stay in employment.
Supporting Disadvantaged Families
Lord Addington Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
Of course we agree completely that children cannot protect themselves, and we must all do our part to protect them. Local government’s role is important, and we urge all partners in the communities that work with their local authorities, and the community groups with which they have relationships, to work together to identify those they know who really need this support. I undertake to write to the noble Baroness, as she requests, about the term “vulnerable”. As for those with no recourse to public funds, local authorities can, and already do, use their judgment to assess what support they may lawfully give to each person on an individual basis, taking into account their needs and circumstances. That includes providing a basic safety net option to individuals regardless of their immigration status, if there is a genuine care need that does not arise solely from destitution—for example, if there are community care needs or serious health problems—and there is a risk to a child’s well-being.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, it is odd when we talk about child poverty as though it has happened with the pandemic. Food poverty during the holidays has been with us for a long time. In that context, it is only fair to ask what the Government’s long-terms plans are. They must have seen this coming for a long time. What are they going to do to make sure that the whole of the school holidays—not just six weeks—are covered? Will they make sure that in future they have a coherent plan to ensure that children get through the whole period with enough nourishment, so that they are not in a state of low nutrition, meaning that they cannot learn for a few weeks when they get back to school? Marcus Rashford did a wonderful job. It is appalling that the Government had to be told by him what to do and that they did not listen to their own Back-Benchers.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
On a long-term plan, the only commitment that I can make today on behalf of the Government is the one in the announcement. That is the straight answer on that point. I note the noble Lord’s observations in the latter part of his contribution and just say that we have listened to Marcus Rashford and others, piloted the initiative, and responded accordingly.
Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill
Lord Addington ExcerptsTuesday 27th October 2020
(3 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Act 2020 View all Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 136-I Marshalled list for Committee - (22 Oct 2020)
Lord Addington
(a) the difference between the general level of earnings at the beginning of the period under review and the general level of earnings at the end of that period,(b) the difference between the general level of prices at the beginning of the period under review and the general level of prices at the end of that period, or(c) 2.5%,whichever is the greater.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would probe whether the relevant benefits for the tax year 2020-21 should be up-rated in line with the “triple lock” of the higher of increases in prices, increases in earnings or 2.5%.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this is nothing more than a probing amendment to clarify the Government’s thinking. There is a commitment that the Government will uprate pensions and other benefits in line with practice. However, the economic situation may not trigger that increase via the triple lock and so we do not know what will happen. Without it being stated that that will automatically be in place through the triple lock, we do not know quite what the Government’s intentions are for this year. And what happens next year? What is going on? Some information on the Government’s ongoing intentions would help here.
In the middle of the coronavirus crisis, we sometimes forget that there will probably be a world afterwards. I am not sure whether this is being glass-half-full on this occasion, but are we committed to the triple-lock or something like it? We should look at this issue, or at least pay half an eye to it, because of generational fairness, which is the idea floating at the back of this debate. This Government, and others, I hope, must ask: are we going to continue to make sure that the basic pension is enough to live on and will be a little more than it is now in the future? That might encourage people to buy in.
I look forward to the Minister’s reply and thank her for pointing out before I rose to my feet, with her devastating and scything charm, the slight change to my explanatory statement, in which I originally got the wrong year. I seek the Government’s thinking on this. It is an opportunity for the Minister to provide clarity on the process that will apply if the economic situation does not respond in line with the legislation. I beg to move.
Baroness Altmann (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for his explanation of the amendment and echo his request for some clarity from my noble friend the Minister. Is she able to give us an idea of the Government’s thinking on the future uprating of pensions?
Clause 1, before proposed subsection (2A), relates to the basic pension and the standard minimum guarantee. At the moment, the triple lock does not apply to the standard minimum guarantee and pension credit. Were the amendment to be inserted, it would ensure that the poorest pensioners, who are normally those we might wish to protect the most, would get the benefit of the full triple lock. The overall issue on which I should like clarification from my noble friend is whether she can give us an idea of the Government’s thinking on the 2.5% element of the triple lock. Is that likely to continue in the light of what is happening in the rest of the economy? If so, is there any thinking within the department on ensuring that the pension credit is also uprated by the full 2.5%?
I congratulate my noble friend on pointing out what I was going to mention about the relevant 2021-22 tax year. The thrust of this probing amendment is of interest to the Committee and I look forward to her response.
Lord Addington (LD)
I thank the Minister for her reply. I take it that the intention is to continue as we are for the moment. We will hold the Government to this. It is also quite clear from this short debate that changes to benefits should be brought in at the same time, as they work together under the current system.
It might have been a little optimistic to expect some sort of long-term vision from the Minister in this House at this point, but we must bear this in mind in our discussions. We have not really covered the generational fairness point. Unless we get young people to buy in because they think they have something to look forward to, there will be trouble. The stroppy youth of today is the deciding voter in a few years’ time. I hope that we can draw more of this out in the debate on this Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans [V]
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 3, and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, for her work on it. I have previously spoken about the importance of the Government fulfilling their promise to deliver the triple lock to pensioners, so I support the general thrust of the Bill. However, it is important that a considered approach to uprating is taken that analyses the benefits of this policy. After all, pensioners, like the rest of the population, represent a very diverse range of income levels.
Covid-19 has shaken the economic standing of much of the working population—a fate that pensioners have largely been shielded from. The taxation of future generations to pay for current pensions must be balanced with assessments that clearly outline the effectiveness of this policy. The reality is we do not have unlimited economic resources at our disposal, and trade-offs are required. I do see dangers in uprating the entire pensions scheme by 2.5%, without the necessary impact assessments, at a time when unemployment and working household debt are rising. Reviewing both the cost and relative success of this policy in determining not only whether it reduces existing levels of pensioner poverty but whether the relationship between pensioner and working household incomes throughout a given period might lend itself, in the future, to a much more targeted approach to uprating.
I expect the report’s assessment of existing levels of pensioner poverty will be reflective in assessing the efficacy of blanket uprating policies and whether considered and targeted increase in social security and relief would better account for uncertainties such as the Covid-19 crisis, which has had a disproportionate economic effect on the working-age population. Of course, pensioners need to be adequately looked after. Until a review on whether the 2.5% minimum uprating delivers intergenerational fairness, it is right that the House approves these measures.
Finally, on intergenerational fairness, which was mentioned at Second Reading, I once again call on the Government to extend April’s universal credit increase and extend this lifeline that so many across the country are relying on.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I have only a little to add to what has been said. If you do not know how severe a problem is, you cannot do much about it. Having something that looks into the problems of pension policy is a very sensible idea. The Minister will undoubtedly say, “We are—we are doing X, Y and Z” and give us a list, but the fact is that the non-claiming of benefits is something that bedevils our system. By necessity, it is a bureaucratic system, and even if you make the bureaucracy as manageable as possible, it is still there. People who think, “Well, I should not be asking for something else”—something that the pensioner population seems to get an A grade in—means that we have poverty that leads to other problems.
The reason we have given people these back-ups is because they need them: they make their lives better and mean they are not as big a drain on the National Health Service or emergency care going in to support them. It is actually in the general public’s interest to make sure that people are not living in poverty: it leads to problems, to costs and to knock-ons; it makes our lives less pleasant. So, I hope that when the Minister replies, she will give us some idea of how the Government are trying to find this information, because it is needed. To make the system work well, it is needed across the board. If we do not have enough information about issues, we cannot address them. The idea of having some solid knowledge to base future planning on cannot be a bad thing.
Baroness Janke (LD) [V]
My Lords, I too support the amendments in this group. I think they have a lot in common. The triple lock has done a great job in restoring value to the state pension, which is hugely important given that so many people are dependent on the state pension and have no other pension at all. The intention behind the amendment in my name is to have a detailed assessment of how effectively the triple lock is tackling poverty.
If we think about older pensioners particularly, and the pension credits debate, those I have been in touch with are very shamed at having to apply for means tests. Applying for benefit has a stigma for them, so I am not completely supportive of the idea of targeting in this respect. I personally believe that there are ways of ensuring that wealthier pensioners pay more, and support those who have less, other than by targeting pensioners in need and putting them through processes that they find distasteful and disturbing and give them great anxiety.
The issue of pension credits has been raised and yesterday’s Oral Question from the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, certainly contributed to that debate. If a detailed analysis were done before consideration of uprating policies, this could include the inadequacy of any take-up campaign and ensure a proper monitoring process to see what is happening. Also, on the points made about pensioners in poverty, particularly women, this is an area that needs to be looked at separately. Many women—older pensioners in particular—have very little pension entitlement. The new pension has, to some extent, addressed the fact that many women have spent a great deal of time doing the caring within the family. This needs to be looked at more closely, particularly when, with increasing divorce rates, very many divorce settlements do not address the fact that the woman has contributed to her husband’s pension over the years. I would very much welcome the opportunity for a detailed analysis of the impact of the triple lock, with particular reference to poverty and its effects on women. In so saying, I support both these amendments.
Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill
Lord Addington ExcerptsTuesday 13th October 2020
(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this is a short Bill: I count 29 lines in it. I have looked through all the other literature provided to brief on it, all of which is considerably longer than the Bill. It is undoubtedly an important piece of legislation and, as a temporary measure, it probably is acceptable to everybody, because we are dealing with unusual circumstances. However, what happens if the temporary measures continue? It is quite possible, if we look in a glass-half-empty way, that the economy could be severely interrupted for a long time. It would be nice to know the Government’s thinking on this. Will we be dependent on something going well in the future or will we have to do this again if something goes badly? It is a technical point. I appreciate that nobody wants that to happen, but it is something that we should hear about at this time.
We could have put into this Bill something that suggested that the norm would come back. It has been tried in the Commons and it might be interesting to look at that again. The 2.5% increase means that many pensioners have an easier time. Pensioners with good incomes are not so vulnerable in other aspects of life, which removes some other costs, usually to the health service and other interventions. I hope that we can have some commitment, not only in this debate but during the passage of the Bill, on how this is going to be raised. There is no long-term benefit in having pensioners reduced to levels of poverty and needing other forms of intervention to maintain their status.
I now come to one of the more pleasant bits and welcome the maiden speakers. I do not envy the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, having to follow the noble Lord, Lord Field, on this subject. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, will be able to shake us up a bit as well, but the noble Lord, Lord Field, has something of a reputation here and we wait with bated breath for what he is going to say. However, I am sure that, if anybody can match him, it is the noble Baroness.
I hope that we will be able to get ideas about the ongoing thinking behind this. We also need to bear in mind, if a long-term strategy is agreed, all those who have not been able to put money into pensions during this interruption. This is the backstop. This is the thing that says that you will have some benefit. Most of those who have had the biggest interruption to their savings plans and patterns will be at the lower end of economic reward.
It will be interesting to get the Government’s long-term thinking on this. Are we dealing with this as a one-off blip or could it happen again and again? That possibly is there, even if none of us wants it to be. Having said that, I have no other objections and I hope that the Minister will be able to give us assurances that will make us feel a bit more comfortable about the passage of this unusual Bill.
Disabled People
Lord Addington Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
I congratulate my noble friend on raising this topic. It has been a long time since we had a debate that looked at disability in the round. I also congratulate the House because we have not turned it into a competition of suffering between various forms of disability, saying, “Oh, my problems are so much worse”, or complaining about, “The intensity here, the numbers there”, and so on. That can happen, and we have all been pulled into it on various occasions.
One thing that comes out is that we have travelled a long way, but we have done it in a very messy way. What we do in Parliament is have a nice, big, sexy debate about legislation, then we put down the regulation, the politicians forget about the regulation and it is done badly. What tends to happen is that you have gaps between intention and implementation. Then we get dragged back to it when something goes wrong.
What this often leads to is that we have a right that is not fulfilled because people are not trained or are not informed about the possibilities, and then we have a degree of conflict and missed opportunity. I suggest that, in the case of disability, we have a way out, which is becoming apparent and will, if we choose it, deal with some of these problems. It is in the form of assistive technology. It is now time for me to declare my interests. I am dyslexic, I am president of the British Dyslexia Association and I am chairman of Microlink, which is probably the biggest company in Europe dealing with assistive technology and puts packages together to help people.
What I have found in my use of technology is that, 20 years after I first talked to a computer and it produced a text, people are still surprised by it. I am further appalled that the people installing the standard operating systems on all the computers we are given in this House do not know that quite an impressive set of assistive technology is built into them. I know because I have just had this conversation with them. They are not alone. I have further discovered that the House of Commons DWP Committee has just had a nice big report come out looking into exactly the same thing and stating exactly the same thing. We are not using what is there because half the people do not know it is available.
The waste of human potential and everything that goes on incumbent in that is ridiculous. People do not know that, with a little training, you have a little button or app that you can tap into on a computer that will do things such as read text back to you, allow voice input, allow coloured screens and allow good screen readers. Indeed, some people actually challenged the technology that those who are partially sighted use, or so I was told today when talking to an expert in the field. I am afraid that one goes to the Mac, but let us not mess about with it.
You have these things that people do not understand. The main skills required in modern jobs are often those where you have to communicate through a computer and do your job through it. Ways for other groups to get into and at that information and transport it through are available. What are the Government doing to make sure that everybody knows it is there? What are they doing in education that might suggest that the best way to communicate a text in answer will not always be with a pen and paper?
It is one of the absurdities of our world that when senior civil servants have to take exams they have to be taught how to write with a pen and paper again to take the exam. What becomes normal in, and beneficial to, the whole of society would become beneficial to large numbers of the disabled community. It is taking that cultural step of what is readily and easily available and making it work and go through.
My work with Microlink has taught me one other thing: when it comes to supporting people with disabilities in the workplace, the first thing not to do is make a line manager in any organisation who has a budget for something else allocate some of that for disability. That is according to all our biggest clients, including Lloyds and Barclays. You put it in a central place, take it out and get the support. That way, the person gets the help they need. In commercial activity, this cuts down on job vacancies and people leaving. Unless the Government can take this example and make easily available what is readily available, they will not get the benefit out of this.
I hope we will look at this in the round. If we do not, we will waste huge amounts of resources when we have the resource readily available.
Improving Lives: The Future of Work, Health and Disability
Lord Addington Excerpts(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and for advance sight of it.
I am sure that we all share the same ambition: to become the kind of society where all people, including people with a disability, can have the opportunity to fulfil their potential. For most that will mean the chance to take on meaningful work, but any strategy to support that aim must also be set alongside a commitment to give adequate support so that those who cannot provide for themselves through work can be assured of being able to live in comfort and dignity. I will briefly do three things: welcome the parts of the strategy which are going in the right direction, flag up concerns, and then ask the Minister some questions at the end.
I welcome the focus on disability employment, and some of the steps announced today will undoubtedly be helpful. I welcome the ongoing commitment to work with employers, and in particular the commitment to work directly with disabled people who experience barriers to work, to identify solutions. They are of course by far the best-placed people to understand what those barriers are. I welcome the attention given to what public sector employers and the Civil Service can do, and I encourage Ministers to go even further in that direction in leading the way. I am glad that Ministers are considering carefully the recommendations of both the Stevenson/Farmer review and the Taylor review, and I look forward to hearing more about those in due course. I also welcome the attempt to link up both sectors and different parts of society in trying to address the problem. In the end, only a cross-departmental approach and a cross-sectoral approach will make a difference.
However, there are some significant problems with the document published today, or at least the context for it. First, I could not find in my first reading enough detail to allow us to assess whether the Government are putting enough resources behind this strategy to make a difference. Secondly, I am a bit worried about the timescale, which seems to have been pushed quite a long way back. The Government’s previous commitment was to halve the disability employment gap by 2020. Their new commitment is about getting more disabled people into work within 10 years. We are seeing the results of that, as far as I can understand the timeline; perhaps the Minister can help me. There is a timeline for what will happen, but some of the hardest actions here have no hard deadlines; for example, the commitment to engage in further reform of the work capability assessment; the response to the Taylor recommendations on SSP and the right to return after absence; and the Stevenson/Farmer proposals on extending certification of fit notes. I hope that I am misreading it, but it looks as if most of those are in the section headed “Future actions”, which could be run until 2027. That simply will not be soon enough. I very much hope that it will not be the case.
Thirdly, I am concerned that in some areas the actions do not deal with the core problem. The most obvious of those is the work capability assessment. The Government consulted on a proposal to split parts of the assessment but there was not unanimous support for that from respondents. In fact, there is now a widespread view that the WCA simply is not fit for purpose. Leonard Cheshire said in response:
“We’ve consistently highlighted that work capability assessments are not fit for purpose and the system needs a complete overhaul”.
Precisely. That is a widespread view, and I am afraid that what is being done today will not address that fundamental problem.
I am also concerned that there is nothing about the impact of social security reform on the ability of sick and disabled people to prepare for work, to get jobs and to keep them. In fact, there have been repeated cuts in support for disabled people, of which only the most recent was the decision not to bring across into universal credit the severe disability premium, which was worth £3,200 a year for a single person. The Government have always refused to conduct a cumulative impact assessment. One of the problems with that is that they do not know what the consequences have been for disabled people of their decision repeatedly to cut or to change the social security system. If there is a strategy on the one hand to support people getting jobs, but a completely independent approach to social security, which is Treasury-driven and keeps cutting the benefits that help people to manage work, inevitably the two are not sitting together. So I do not think that the Government have been able to look at this whole position in the round.
I would like to ask the Minister some questions. First, how much extra money is being announced today other than that scored previously to support the moving of disabled people into work? Secondly, can the Minister be more precise on timings? When will the Government consult on reform to SSP and on legislating to extend the authorisation of fit notes? Thirdly, what is there in this strategy to support disabled people who are not either in jobs or on disability benefits like ESA? I think, for example, of the issue raised by Mencap of the hundreds of thousands of people with mild or moderate learning disabilities, who do not get any help from either ESA or social services but are struggling to get work.
Will the Government commit to a fundamental overhaul of the WCA at some point during the lifetime of this strategy? I would like to see it done straight away, but I would be grateful if they could at least commit that that will happen. Finally, what work is being undertaken to test the processes for applying for universal credit to ensure that they are suitable for all disabled people before the system is rolled out any further? If that does not work, any attempts to help people to apply for jobs will fail if they cannot get the support they need to be able to maintain them when they get there.
We all want to see disabled people supported into work. However, for this to become a reality, the Government need to put their money behind their promises and push themselves to be ever more ambitious. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is also time that I declared a few interests that are relevant here: I am president of the British Dyslexia Association and chairman of a company called Microlink PC. That is important because Microlink provides assistive technology and designs support for those who are disabled and in work or education, starting with education.
As I went through this document and scanned the original one it became clear that we have hit the buffers, the point at which a great idea hits the practicalities and starts to fracture in terms of what can be done. My own disability—and the one that the group that I work for is concerned with—is regarded as an education disability. In fact, we are the biggest disability group, as those in the neurodiverse group make up 15% of the population. Very little in this document refers to this group. Our problems relate not to accessing buildings but to accessing systems involving, for example, computers or paperwork. This document does not really seem to have got hold of that. It has missed a group. It has also missed a group when it comes to access problems when dealing with, for example, form-filling and work and pensions support. Therefore, when the noble Baroness talks about assistive technology, will she make sure that every single government website is accessible through the assistive technology of voice recognition? If she cannot answer that, she has effectively already broken the terms of the Equality Act for this group.
To carry on in that vein, we all know that each group considers the problems they have to be the most serious, but other groups will emphasise the importance of other activities. However, one important question is: are people being maintained in work? Access to work—it is one thing that I can give a rousing cheer to—is probably the best kept secret. It is the most underused thing in the Government’s arsenal. Expanding that to support for maintaining people in work and allowing them to expand or change their roles will encourage people to stay on.
We have also been talking about mental health. A person with a disability generally suffers more stress, and stress can trigger or create mental health problems. Are we making sure that people are maintained and supported in jobs and allowed to expand their roles? Once again, I am not absolutely sure about that. There is a great deal of emphasis on getting people into work but not on maintaining them in work and giving them a career into the future. I would like to know where the emphasis is there.
So we seem to be missing a large group—dyslexics, dyspraxics and dyscalculics—and, to a lesser extent, those with high-functioning autism. They do not seem to have been referenced here, probably because, to be perfectly honest, they are a lower priority in the Department of Health. How will we access these groups? How will we make sure that individual support is available and that people can get the right support? Nearly 20 years ago when the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, was the Minister in charge in this area, I had a ritual dance with her when we talked about the interview. Are the Government going to allow the person who conducts the interview to call in an expert? The interviewer will be awfully well trained but will an expert be brought in? If not, things will go wrong. Unless the noble Baroness can give me an assurance that some expertise will be structured in, the problems will continue. Expertise is needed to deal with the individual cocktail of needs in individual cases. Unless we can start to address these questions, we will continue to fail in this area.
Baroness Buscombe
I thank the noble Baroness opposite for her support thus far in terms of the overall response to the Command Paper, and I will do my best to reply to the many questions that she and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, have raised.
I want to make it clear that I welcome the noble Baroness’s constructive contribution. It is important to say that this is a programme aimed at helping people into work and to stay in work. I say immediately to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that we will not ignore any group of people or any individuals. That is the purpose of bringing together, to the best of our ability, work, welfare and social interaction. This is a holistic approach which, I think all noble Lords will agree, we have been looking for and waiting for for years. We are very proud that we will be able to focus on work, health and disability as one. We say that work enables every person to be economically independent. It boosts their confidence and gives them more choices and opportunities to fulfil other ambitions in life.
The noble Baroness was very clear in her question about the finances. This is about more than just the over £50 billion that we are spending on those with disabilities or health conditions. As announced in SR15, we are increasing investment in employment support for people with disabilities or health conditions in real terms over this spending review period. This includes building the evidence base for what does and does not work, investing in Access to Work and rolling out a personal support package of tailored employment support initiatives. We have committed to invest £330 million of funding over four years in support for people with limited capability for work as part of the personal support package. Last year, we spent £104 million on the demand-led Access to Work scheme, up from £97 million in 2015-16. The number of people who had Access to Work support last year rose 8% to over 25,000. In addition, further customers received payments for support agreed in previous years.
We are investing up to £115 million of funding to develop new models of support to help people into work when they are managing a long-term health condition or disability. We will be providing an extra £15 million a year in 2017-18 and 2018-19 for our flexible support fund so that local managers can buy services, including mentoring, and better engage the third sector—which is a very important part of this holistic approach—in their community to help disabled people and those with health conditions.
With regard to the work capability assessment, it is important to say that in our manifesto we committed to legislate to give unemployed disabled people and people with health conditions personalised and tailored employment support. We heard broad support for WCA reform proposed in the Green Paper but there was no consensus on what the right model of WCA reform would look like. We know that we need to get reform right and will therefore focus on working with external stakeholders in testing new approaches to build on our evidence base for longer-term legislative change. This will require primary legislation, but noble Lords are all too aware of the constraints that there will be in that regard in the near future. In the meantime, we are delivering on our commitment to personalised and tailored employment support with the introduction of our new personal support package. We are also committed to continuing to improve the WCA. Recent reform included stopping reassessments for people on ESA and UC with the most severe lifelong conditions.
We want to reform statutory sick pay so that it supports more flexible working, which can help people remain in or return to work if they are unwell. With regard to disability employment, we have added 300 additional disability employment advisers and have begun introducing 200 new community partners. We absolutely accept what the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said about the importance of having work coaches with the right expertise and skills, and that is something on which we are very much focusing.
In terms of UC, we are also focusing our efforts and thoughts on in-work progression, which is very important. This is not about helping people into work and then leaving them there; it is about prevention, getting people into work and helping them to remain in work. That is one reason why it is very important that we have this very strong, joined-up approach with our colleagues in the NHS, asking how we can manage mental health, for example, in the short to medium term as well as in the long term. Of course, the Farmer/Stevenson review is an enormous encouragement to us. As noble Lords will know, we have already accepted all its recommendations.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked about assistive technology, and he was absolutely right to do so. One individual who has particular difficulties said, “Without assistive technology such as voice recognition and the help of Access to Work in providing me with a support worker, I would not be able to compete in the job market and therefore would not be in employment”. His name is Tom and he sustained a serious neck injury in 2007. He is now using this brilliant technology and is thriving in work. We want all employers to reach the standards of the best and that is why we will work with them.
I hope that I have begun to answer some of the many questions noble Lords have asked. I reiterate that there are now around 600,000 more disabled people in work since 2014. We are making progress and this Command Paper will contribute to that.