Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

The amendment on which mine is the lead name also refers to the autistic spectrum. When the noble Baroness is in the Chamber with us, I always feel as though you are definitely on the end of the passing movement, as opposed to being the play-maker. The noble Baroness knows exactly what she is talking about. At my conference, someone who was talking in a meeting about autism said, “You must understand that autism is a three-dimensional spectrum”. Does that phrase not start to explain why the diversity of people and their reactions are incredibly difficult to understand and always will be? I wish I had thought of that expression myself. The great diversity of needs and different types of behaviour mean that you must have some specific training.

When I was approached to put down this amendment, I had a conversation with the NAS. I want to use it as an example of the fact that you always need a certain degree of knowledge to make this type of assessment. I remember that, in years gone by, when the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, spoke for the then Government, our exchanges on the subject of the initial interview process went on and on and developed almost into a ritual dance. “Can we have specific knowledge?”, we would ask the Government. “No, but we will give them lots of training”, they would reply. We have got better, because we always do, but it remains the case that unless you have someone who actually understands the condition which they are assessing and reporting on, they will make mistakes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has already pointed out that mistakes cost “blood and gold” for everybody concerned. You burn up time; you burn up money; you cause suffering. Getting more expertise into assessment, either by taking a better history, or by making sure you have the right person there at the right time, will make life a lot easier and will probably save money in the long term or, indeed, in the medium term. The Minister has been moving forward, although he is pushing water uphill with certain concerns here. I stress that I am looking for clarification on where he is moving to and his thoughts on where this expertise is going to be dragged in. If you have a problem, empower people to say that there is a problem and that someone who understands it needs to be brought in. If you can do that, you will take huge steps forward. You will not get it right all the time but you will get it right more often.

If the Minister can give us some encouragement and some firm guidelines about what is going to happen to encourage people to get it right—not just to get the numbers through—I will be a very much happier man at the end of this.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I do not intend to detain the House long, because Amendments 50B, 50C and 50D were debated at some length in Committee. I attempted to withdraw Amendment 50A yesterday, but the gremlins crept in and the only thing that has been withdrawn is my name—the amendment still appears on the Marshalled List.

With Amendment 50B, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, has once again made a very powerful case in support of the need for properly trained assessors. In particular, all assessors should have an understanding of and training in autism if they are to recognise and understand the complex cases they will have to deal with. It has been said a number of times—I make no apology for repeating it here, because it is important—that when you have seen one person with autism, you have seen one person with autism. This is why the training is so important. A knowledge of autism and possessing the right skills to assess the needs of an autistic person are essential in making any decision about the appropriate level of financial support that that person might need. I believe that the Minister accepts this point of view.

Following the Committee stage, a number of other noble Lords and I had a very useful meeting with the Minister and his colleague Maria Miller MP, and we are grateful for that opportunity to exchange views in a less formal situation. One point from that discussion, which was touched on today by the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, did concern me—the point about the qualifications of the person carrying out the initial assessment. One of the Minister’s officials told us at that meeting that the initial assessments would be carried out by an occupational therapist. Will this be the case? That seems a very narrow skill base from which to draw the expertise for any kind of wider assessment, and it leaves me, for one, with the impression that the assessment is aimed primarily at getting people into work and not at trying to understand and support them if they are not able to work. Such a situation would fly in the face of the well-argued case that assessors should have specific training in all mental, intellectual and cognitive disorders, as advocated by the amendment. I hope the Minister can allay my fears.

I turn to Amendments 50C and 50D, in my name and that of my noble friends Lady Healy of Primrose Hill and Lord Wigley. The amendments concern face-to-face assessment and would, if accepted, exempt certain categories of people from the process of continuous reassessment where sufficient medical and other expert evidence existed to demonstrate that their condition would not improve. I return again to my concerns about people with autism. Autism can be summed up in this way: autism is for life. Any reassessment must accept this fact before progress can be made. The Minister made it clear, at Second Reading and in Committee, that the Government did not believe that a face-to-face assessment would be the right course to follow in all cases.

At our meeting, both the Minister and his colleague, Maria Miller MP, gave a strong impression that the Government would support a tiered approach to assessment in such cases, as advocated by the National Autistic Society and others. In practice, this tiered approach would allow for written assessment from professionals to be considered and a decision to be made, on that basis, about whether a face-to-face assessment was appropriate or necessary. I will not test the patience of the House any longer. I look forward to the Minister’s response and hope he will have something positive to say about a tiered assessment.

Disability Benefits

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, this is a very interesting issue. We have been reading closely Macmillan’s evidence to us, and what is set out is not what Macmillan is actually asking for. Many of the oncologists whose evidence was taken say that it is important for many patients to stay in work. One stated that it may be inappropriate for some patients and that it risks stigmatising chemo patients, but that some people on long-term maintenance treatments may have little or no upset and be quite able to work. We are taking that evidence and looking closely at how we apply it. We will have more people with cancer in the support group because many undergoing oral chemotherapy need to be in it. However, we are not taking a blanket view and we do not want to stigmatise cancer patients.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, will my noble friend give an assurance that when the initial assessment is made, someone with real expertise in the disability or group of disabilities advises on whether the benefit should be paid?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, yes, one of the things we are keen to ensure is that there are people with expertise on whom those making the assessments can rely. Professor Harrington addressed that in his first review. For that reason, we had mental health champions in particular in each of the offices undertaking this work.

Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2011 Grand Committee

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I, too, support these amendments. I think particularly of people with fluctuating conditions which eventually become so bad that they are housebound, bedridden and almost unable to get out, and of the 25 per cent of people suffering from ME who are in this state. I should say that I am the chairman of Forward-ME. Every day I get letters from people who are terrified of what is going to happen when the PIP is brought in. However, I am grateful to the Minister and to the Deputy Chief Medical Officer at the Department for Work and Pensions for specifically asking for people with ME to be part of the pilot programme for the PIP. But the feedback I am getting is that the people who are examining them have no understanding at all of their illness. We are talking about a personal independence payment, which is the idea the examiners have in their mind, against a disability payment. However, these are severely disabled people—we have heard some very moving speeches from my noble friends and from the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins—who cannot even get out of their houses. They must have help with their laundry, cleaning and shopping—with everything. To call it a personal independence payment does not help them, I fear, so I strongly support this amendment.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I apologise that this is the first time I have spoken on the Bill. Something is occurring here which I have been aware of ever since the Government, of which I am a supporter, came to power. It is a fact that people are worried about what is going on when reading some of the language being used. Much of this anxiety is caused by things like getting rid of regulations, although I suspect that many of them were useless. The disability movement has in effect had a defence in depth of regulation. We have stuck extra regulations on which have given us a sense of security. I must remind the Committee that I am a dyslexic and therefore a disabled person, but not one who I think would be covered under the regulations here. That provides another example of how complicated the world is that we are stepping into. No two people who have spoken in the debate have the same problems.

In effect, the challenge the Minister faces today is to start to calm down these fears. If PIP is going to come in, what is required is a huge campaign to explain what it actually means. On reading the Bill, I do not think we have much to worry about, but the fear that there might be something there that does huge damage. Underclaiming is historically the biggest problem in this area. It means that we end up with on-costs in health, for instance, because people do not claim the right benefits. It is something that has had to be dealt with for a long time. If the Minister can start the process of dialogue, he will be doing himself a favour.

Would changing the words do anything? I suspect not, even if it made us feel better. I suspect that many of the problems we have in this area exist because we have done one or two too many things in Parliament, and, as I have said on other occasions, I take my share of the blame for that. But giving clarification of what is actually going on will help, and this would be a good place to start that process.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I support the amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton. I listened with particular interest to the analysis of the media representation of people who are disabled made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins. What she said reminded me of the terrible force of envy. Perhaps it is not recognised enough, but envy is an enormously powerful motivator in human societies. To my mind, it seems to originate in early childhood. When new younger siblings arrive as babies into families, sometimes they are harmed by their older siblings who feel deeply envious of the intruder coming in. Envy can also arise out of feelings of competition between the love of the child for the mother and the father coming in. What I am suggesting is that these feelings of envy are laid down in us very early in our lives, and they can easily be stirred up again in adulthood. It is therefore an extremely important issue. Indeed, in an organisation one will often see those in one part of it seeking to starve those in another because they do not want to see that other part getting more than they get. In a family, the parent must send out clear signals to the child that they are still important and wanted, but that there is a new arrival to whom they have to give more attention for a while. Likewise, those in authority in society have to send out a signal to the wider society that some people need additional support and on some occasions resources, and that is the way it is. It worries me that signals appear to have been sent out indicating that a particular group is being over-favoured. That is quite wrong, and therefore this change of name might be important in that respect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I regard this as one of the most important amendments we are considering because of the importance of the message it carries. If we were alive then, most of us remember where we were when President Kennedy was shot, or when 9/11 occurred. I remember exactly where I was when I first came across the social definition of disability. I was in Sweden, it was 30 years ago this year, and it was the International Year of Disabled Persons. I was in the process of trying to get a disabled person’s Act on to the statute book in the House of Commons. With the support of a number of people here, we were successful. In fact, the noble Lord, Lord Low, gave me a considerable amount of help outside the Chamber at the time.

The definition was put to me in these terms, which I still carry in my mind. Handicap is the relationship between a disabled person and his or her physical, social or psychological environment. By medical intervention, we may or may not be able to do something about the basic disability, but our ability to amend and adjust the environment can prevent disability becoming a handicap. In those terms, it is glaringly clear where responsibility lies to minimise the degree of handicap that people, for various unfortunate reasons, whether accidental or congenital, have to face as the consequence of disability. It is the responsibility of any Government in any civilised country to have that at the core of their approach to disability politics.

I am not certain of the extent to which the words in the amendment will change the thrust of policy, but I am certain that the commitment to this approach must be central. If we have that commitment at the heart of our thinking, other decisions in this Committee and in later stages will work out for the benefit of disabled people.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, the social model is something that anybody who has been involved in disability for any length of time has been searching to get hold of and use more correctly. I remember that when we did the Disability Discrimination Act, we had a variety of people coming in to see the committee, and it became my role in that committee to ask for a workable definition, which I failed to get from those groups at the time. We have moved on and are getting better. This is a step forward. We are building an agreement here, and I look forward to what the Minister says about it. This is something on which we might be able to admit that there is a continuation of government policy over various Governments. There has been a continuation of agreement on this over many subjects among the parties and across all political barriers. Implementation may change slightly over the years, but growth and consensus have been built up.

It will be very interesting to know how the Minister sees this approach being built into a variety of other subjects later on in the amendments on this part of the Bill, because that will allow us to assess how deep the thinking has been. It is very easy to say, “Of course we’ll do that”, and it has been done. We have all fought many smaller battles on disability over the years because somebody has said, “Oh no, that’s the way we do it”. One of the most recent ones I have been involved in, which I hope is coming to a happy outcome, is, “Oh, you’ve got to be able to spell to an acceptable standard to become an apprentice”. I have bored many people in this House with that over the past few months. They did not quite take on board that the use of language can be through various means. The electronic devices in front of you mean that you can transfer written meaning—text to voice, voice to text and back again—in various ways and have been able to do so for well over a decade. The people who have got involved in this—the people who were writing legislation at that point—were just out of touch with the reality and the perception of those other people who do not share the mainstream. They were interacting with one aspect.

If we can get a definition of how that is coming in, not so much for this amendment but to throw into a couple of others, we will all be a little happier. If you have a wonderful, magical definition that we can put into a Bill, I will cheer.

[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, I, too, strongly support this group of amendments, which were so comprehensively introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton. I, too, read with great interest the Scope paper The Future of PIP, to which she referred. I strongly urge the Government to take forward the paper’s recommendations and to consider seriously the merits of this group of amendments, which would ensure that the assessment used to determine eligibility for PIP adopted the social model of disability.

I am somewhat bemused by the contribution by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. For many years there has been a very good description of a social model. I am proud to say that we first discussed the issue on “Link” in 1975. The progenitor of the social model of disability was on the very first programme. I hope that thinking has progressed since then.

[Lord Addington]

I did not say that there was no definition; I said that it was not presented to the committee in a way that we felt we could use in legislation. That is the process. One may have an idea that is solid and makes sense, but getting it into workable legislation is something very different.

[Baroness Wilkins]

I thank the noble Lord for that explanation. As the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, said, it is the Government's stated aim that the new system should be underpinned by the social model. Ministers have insisted that the assessment process should recognise the disabling barriers that stand in the way of full and equal citizenship for people who need support to go about their daily lives. The Minister for Disabled People recently stated:

“Our vision is clear: we want to remove barriers to create opportunities for disabled people to be able to fulfil their potential and be fully participating members of society”.

I welcome the amended draft regulations that were published by the Government on Friday. They take into account some of the criticisms of the earlier draft. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, said, this is only a start. There is still concern about whether the Government will be able to identify the needs of a broad range of people, including those who need to make greater use of utilities or who incur additional transport costs. The amendments will assist the Government's recognition of the need for the assessment process to recognise the impact of disabling barriers. They will reassure disabled people and their organisations that they have been listened to, and they will provide the clear principle on which the Government say they want the new assessment to be based.

DLA and its replacement, PIP—DCLP as we will now call it—were created in recognition of the fact that it is highly costly to live as a disabled person in today's society. It is not just impairment or illness that create costs but the environmental, economic and attitudinal barriers that often accompany such experiences. The Counting the Cost report by Scope and Demos clearly demonstrated that factors such as the suitability of housing, the accessibility of local transport links and whether an individual has already received other forms of support from friends and family will all contribute to their extra costs. Therefore, it is imperative that these factors are considered when designing the assessment for PIP or DCLP. Otherwise, as the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, eloquently outlined, many disabled people across the country will fail to receive the most appropriate levels of support, and the new assessment process will not be fit for the Government's stated purpose.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord German]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 86ZZZX in my name. I hope that I am pushing at an open door on this matter. The amendment asks for a suitable person to be informed about and to accompany people to their face-to-face or telephone interviews. I note that page 10 of the explanatory notes that we received from DWP on Friday states that while DWP is still developing the second draft of the assessment criteria, it is able to be clear on a few points. One of the bullet points is that individuals will be able to bring another person, such as a family member, friend, carer or advocate, with them to the face-to-face consultation where they would find that helpful.

That is very welcome, but behind a simple bullet point there lies a number of other questions. The most important is whether the person who is accompanying the person being assessed is able to be an active member of the assessment exercise. That is largely because in the WCA assessment exercise, anyone who accompanies the person being assessed is not allowed to take an active part or to communicate. There are some concerns. We are told that the reason is because the assessors say that the accompanying person could give a false impression of the claimant’s needs. It is good that it looks likely that an explicit right to bring someone along will be built into the regulations, but we need to be clear. People with some conditions, such as autism, mental illness, deafness or many other forms of disability, have communication problems. People with those conditions might not be able to communicate their needs, particularly given the level of anxiety in an assessment of this sort. For many people, it will be the first time that they have been assessed or had a face-to-face interview—I will come some to other forms of assessment in a moment.

Having someone there to support you is helpful, but the person, whether they are a family member, a carer, an advocate or whoever, must have the ability to intervene to give a clear account of the claimant’s situation. In my view, an advocate means someone who can give voice to the feelings of the person being assessed. The worry that I am hoping the Minister can put to one side is that carers might be able to attend the meetings but not be able to speak because they might interfere with the assessment process. In reality, they will give a clearer account of the claimant’s issues. There is some history on this matter. People have been present but have been unable to speak for part of the assessment process. I suppose I am asking the Minister to explain the relationship in the communication criteria which are being assessed and whether someone will be able to speak for a person who is being assessed in that area. I do not know quite how that will play out. The second area of communication problems could be if the assessment is being done on the telephone. There are circumstances when the assessment exercise can be carried out by telephone, and we understand that officials at DWP have said that that can mean that an accompanying person can engage in the same way as at a face-to-face interview.

In conclusion, is this meant to be a real open process where the advocate, the friend, the family member or the carer is able to take a full part in that process to ensure that the communication exercise is done in the most appropriate and holistic manner and that the anxiety levels are reduced?

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, my amendment in this group follows a similar vein but is slightly more specific—unusually for someone who usually prefers a broad brush. It is inspired by the National Autistic Society. Here it is asking for specialist knowledge to be available when somebody is assessed—specifically those in the spectrum that contains autism and Asperger’s syndrome.

Why is this a good example? It was put to me at my party conference at a fringe meeting by somebody whose name I have forgotten—and I apologise to them for that—that autism is not only a spectrum but a three-dimensional one where everything interacts differently. It is incredibly difficult for somebody who is not an expert to take part and assess what is going on and work out how these interactions occur and interact with the outside world.

As we are at the stage of probing amendments, I use that as probably the best example but there are very few packages of disability that do not have elements of that. Degenerative and varying conditions are an obvious example where we are asking a hell of a lot of an assessor who is not specifically trained in that area to get it right. This is not a new subject. Anybody who has been around this knows this has happened for a long, long time and it seems to be something that anybody who is on the Treasury Bench has a problem with.

The previous Government did. The issue was raised on numerous occasions and indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and I got into a little dance about this at one point. It was a case of her saying, “We are going to give them lots of training”, then me saying, “Are you going to give them the ability to go and get a real expert in individual cases?” and her saying, “But we will give them lots of training”. The noble Baroness was a very thorough and professional Minister. I think her attitudes might have slightly changed but as she is not here we will wait for another occasion.

You need expertise to get things right and to try to get away from the number of times assessments are challenged and the results overturned. People may say that 60 per cent of assessments are not being overturned—40 per cent are. Calling in expertise will probably save money in the long term. It will cut down stress. I do not know what benefit that would be to the administration of the system if things were not automatically challenged but calling in the right people at the right time is what we are calling for here. I hope the Minister will be able to give us a positive response because if we carry on as we are at the moment we are simply going to cause more grief and waste money.

Remploy

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 5th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morgan]

My Lords—

[Lord Addington]

My Lords—

[Lord McNally]

The noble Lord has given way. There is plenty of time.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my declaration of interests. Can the Minister give us some idea how successful Remploy has been in making sure that people who work in its factories find jobs in the outside world, as this is probably the ultimate test of how good it is? If he can give us an assurance in that regard, many of these problems will be seen in the correct light.

[Lord Freud]

Yes, my Lords, I have the up-to-date data for the voluntary redundancy programme which took place in 2008. Of the people who chose to look for re-employment, there was a 90 per cent success rate in getting them jobs.

Autism: Personal Independence Payments

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, there is no intention of steamrollering people. In fact, one of the things about the personal independence payment is that it is designed to be far more effectively focused at the people who need support, particularly those with learning disabilities and so on. I can absolutely assure noble Lords right around the House that during the process of this Bill I will listen very carefully to people and that good ideas will be gratefully received.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, can the Minister give us an assurance that when we go through any form of assessment or process, a great effort is made to get the right information about the individual conditional set of problems? Much of the historical problem here is the fact that if a person did not fit the particular slot or the interviewer did not have enough information, they did not have the freedom—or were not encouraged—to go and find out the best answer.

[Lord Freud]

My noble friend makes the very good point that there has been continual disappointment in that area of assessment. We are beginning to learn how to do that better. Professor Harrington, in the context of a different assessment—the WCA—is pointing us in the right direction in getting information and support for people when they are being assessed.

Disabled People: User-led Organisations

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, when I saw on the Order Paper the subject we are debating today and put my name down for it, I immediately thought of one thing: that it is sensible that user groups,—the people who suffer from disabilities—should be heard first. This is for selfish reasons for everyone else because, if you get a good idea of what the problems are, you stand a chance of taking the right action to address them quickly and concisely and thus save the costs involved in getting it wrong. Mistakes can, in certain cases, result in legal activity and often mean that the benefits and medical services have to pick up the pieces further down the line. Wear and tear on carers is another consideration. It is trying to get an understanding of where most mistakes in the system tend to be made. It is safe to say that there is good will from everyone involved, but people often make decisions and try to implement them but do not quite understand how to do so. They then find themselves in a corner and without the right amount of communication to be able to back off when they have made mistakes.

This is a Treasury Bench problem, no matter who is in government. The previous Government did their best to try on occasions. Sometimes they got it wrong, sometimes they got it right. I do not think at any point they were looking to get it wrong. We who have been giving advice in Parliament, through the contact we have with outside groups, have been able to reassess what is going on. Occasionally fashions in ideas may change but mainly it is based on practicality. That way we avoid those “does he take sugar?” mistakes. That way we try to get the correct information to those who are in power and making those decisions. User-led organisations are often a very good way of addressing these problems. They are not a magic bullet—in my own world of dyslexia, I have often met people who say, “We will do everything”. I am afraid dyslexics do not make terribly good secretaries of groups or good managers of diaries. People must make sure that they learn to ask for help; there have been occasions when they have failed by not being prepared to ask for enough help. If you experience problems, you will know when to ask for outside help and when to do something. We are talking about people with disabilities and once again—I have said it dozens of times and I will say it again—if any dyslexic says to me, “I am differently abled, not disabled”, I hand him an insurance form to fill out quickly and under pressure. When he has failed at that I say, “This is why we have legislation, this is why we have a framework, this is why we do the stuff we do. You are going to have to try to access support and help”. If we are going to fulfil our agenda of getting people into jobs, we must make sure people know how to give the correct assistance at the right time. We must talk to those who understand the problems to find out the correct way to make a change.

Having said all that—and here endeth the sermon—I say to the Government, “What are we doing to make sure you drag in this pool of expertise to make the job of Government easier?”. That is the big question. If we are not to continue with the previous model, how else do we do it? The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, spoke about sub-contracting and feeding into smaller groups as one way forward. Making sure that people who apply for these support jobs actually have contact with disabled people, and that it is seen as a benefit, would be a very sensible way forward. Thus, you may be able to combine the best of both worlds. Cats and skinning come to mind here, but it is making sure we get the correct information in. Those groups with outside experience will always have at least a very useful perspective on how to do this. We should also study how this will get through to the interface.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, has had experience of this and I would be interested to hear what his take is from his own experience in office, when we had to deal with similar problems. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Freud, will not think me presumptuous by saying this is one occasion when you should listen to your political opponent because he has experienced it for quite a long time and indeed I bored him for a quite a long time on these and similar subjects. How can we encourage that interface? How will we make sure that we work properly to drag in the information? If we do not, we will make costly mistakes that will sometimes end in litigation and will always end in on-costs further down the line. How can we encourage people—and this is the big challenge to operators—to say, “I do not know the answer, can I go and get somebody who does?”. I find this is one of the most difficult parts of dealing with any government official, encouraging them to say, “I do not know, I will find out, let us figure out something else”. This is something that is very difficult to do by diktat. It is almost counterintuitive but it is vital to make sure it works properly. If the Minister can say something on this subject I will be eternally grateful.

Disabled People: Employment

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the Remploy business plan was designed by Remploy management. It has failed to achieve its targets because, in retrospect, it was wildly overambitious to expect that public procurement could go up by 130 per cent. The cost of subsidising a disabled person in a Remploy job has now reached £23,000 a year, compared with the success of Remploy employment services in putting a person into an independent job for a one-off cost of £3,400.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, will my noble friend expand on the work of Remploy employment services? Getting people with disabilities into jobs in the mainstream is surely the way forward. What guarantee is there of support for such schemes, which are in line with what most of us have been working towards for a long time.

[Lord Freud]

Yes, my Lords, the success of Remploy’s employment services is little less than extraordinary. It has now put some 24,000 people into jobs. In 2009-10 there were more than 10,000 people. It looks to get about 18,000 people into jobs this year and its target for 2012-13 is 30,000.

Disabled People

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 27th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, when dealing with groups such as RADAR, will my noble friend bear in mind that, good as they are, they will never be able to cover the whole spectrum and government must always try to drag in such expertise as they can from across all the groups and then they must co-ordinate advice, because without advice we will pass more laws and achieve very little?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that excellent point. Clearly, we make an enormous effort to see people right across the disability lobby, not just RADAR. RADAR is part of various groups. It is important that we consult. The House will be familiar with the motto “Nothing About Us Without Us”. We take that obligation very seriously.

Disabled People: UN Convention

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we have four reservations on this convention, and there are two ways of looking at that. A large number of countries have signed—145 of them, and 87 have ratified. We have taken this convention with great seriousness and looked through the implications of applying it, rather than looking at it as a purely aspirational matter. Of those four reservations, we are working extremely hard to ensure that we can remove two.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, when we are dealing with disability matters we tend to pass a lot of legislation, then have to go back and pass legislation again on the same subject. Have the Government decided whether we have the legislative framework to enact the United Nations convention? If we do not, when will it be in place? May we know as soon as possible?

[Lord Freud]

The United Nations convention is not a matter of law in this country or in Europe. It is a convention that holds us to account on our performance, and on which we report back to the UN. We will do that in July.

Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970: 40th Anniversary

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I spoke in the debate 10 years ago to celebrate this Act which allowed me to go through the state school system as a dyslexic person. I do not know how many other noble Lords in this Chamber have been directly touched in that way—I suspect that that is the case for many of those who have spoken, if not all. This Act changed the world and it is clear, from listening to those noble Lords who were there at the time, that it scared the living daylights out of everyone who was having their world changed.

Any veteran of these debates, when looking at the issue—I have a little more than two decades-worth—would say, “Wait a minute; we had to discuss that again and again”. As noble Lords have said, people do not like having their lives changed. They say, “We don’t have to do that; it is awfully difficult; oh, you mean there is a reasonableness test; we have better lawyers than you”. I am afraid that such sentiments run through all the debates on this legislation. People in both Houses of Parliament take on these issues, listen to those outside, often have personal experience, enact legislation and then what we are doing is whittled back by those outside who do not want to change. All parties and none have been on both sides of that process. It is a matter of how much better we have become at blocking it off. It is like an ebb and flow. We have gone a long way, but there are always little defeats and there is slowness in implementation.

People usually panic. They say that everything will be terribly expensive. They say: “We can’t do anything; the world will change”. I remember a discussion about wheelchair access within schools. It was said: “How on earth could we possibly have a lift that brings a wheelchair from one floor of a school to another? It would be used only three times a day and not at all in some weeks”. Then you say: “If you buy one that cannot move heavy piles of books and avoid back strain, you really are very dumb”. You carry on in that vein and keep going. You approach the fact that people panic and do not want to change.

Another example is the attitude of organisations. The education issue is the first in which I became involved and is regularly raised. People say: “You mean that our class may have to stop or start five minutes early to get somebody who can’t move very fast into the classroom?”. So no one is allowed to get sick in your classroom, use a loo or occasionally turn up late. They are not supposed to but they do, so you adapt and carry on. I think that this type of thing underpins most of this debate. There is always that fear of the unknown and an unwillingness to change.

The noble Lord, Lord Corbett, described the Trojan horse incident using a wheelchair, getting people to react after a lot of necessary legislation had been introduced. It just goes to show how dumb people are. We have to ask what would happen if the person who wanted to buy the suit went to the shop to buy it. The person in the shop might say, “What do you mean?”, to which the answer would be, “They are going to spend money in your shop. They’re going to give you profits”. The person in the shop would reply, “I hadn’t thought of that”, and would then try to get the idea into his head.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds put his finger on many of the driving forces in relation to children, including the fact that a child from a middle-class background does much better out of the system than anyone else. After he had finished his speech, I said in an aside to the right reverend Prelate that I thought the best combination was a lawyer and a journalist. People really do not like tangling with those two, and education systems, shops and local authorities have now learnt to back off.

I turn to the bailiwick of the noble Lord, Lord Freud. The real test lies with people whose backgrounds mean that they do not have that degree of access to the media or legal process at their fingertips. This is nothing new and there is a great deal of consensus about it, but it can lead to those nasty arguments that often break out within parties—we all agree on what should happen but we disagree slightly on how it should come about. It is one of those arguments where there is very little room for manoeuvre, so we tend to go for the eyes and throat.

We also know that huge costs are involved in not dealing with situations at an early stage. My own unlooked-for area of specialisation is dyslexia. We know that there are a lot of dyslexics in prison, but why is that? The answer is that if you fail in the education system and cannot fill in forms to get jobs or money outside, then crime is an option. If you do not come from a middle-class background, you do not have the necessary push or support.

We also know—indeed, today we are agreeing quite a lot with the Bishops’ Benches—that mental health problems tend to occur in the groups that do not have support. As the right reverend Prelate pointed out—and there is no point in denying it— certain people in these groups are more liable to have problems. The fact is that if you have something to be depressed about, you can become depressed more easily. If the education or benefits systems do not pick up the costs of helping these people, then the problems, which can be short term, will often multiply. This issue also relates to aspects of the health service and Prison Service.

With the current Government, there is one bright spot in this process, and it goes back to an initial part of the legislation. I refer to assessments in education. This does not relate directly to the Minister’s department but I think that the idea of departmentalising the whole issue is nonsense. As with many problems in politics, you must look across departments. If all children are assessed to find out whether they have special educational needs, I think that autism and dyslexia will probably come top of the poll, but early identification of other needs will not hurt. Furthermore, even if it is obvious that children have a problem, the fact that it is recorded in the system will help. Can we ensure that this attitude towards carrying out skilled assessments is carried on throughout the whole system? Steps have been taken and, although matters may be better than they were before, they are not good enough yet. I do not directly criticise the Government’s intention, but this will probably not be finished in the lifetime of anyone listening today.

We must carry on. We must ensure that we have a greater understanding of people who have missed an initial opportunity for educational support. Showing an adult who has failed or who has not received support how they can survive would be a realistic step. People can succeed. Intelligent people who are active, lucky and have the right parents and an inspirational teacher can succeed. Ultimately, we will have overcome this problem when someone who is not exceptional or does not have the right parents or a bit of luck by birth or by circumstances succeeds. Although we seem to be closer than we were 40 years ago, we still have a long way to go.