Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Addington and Baroness Wilkins

Monday 14th November 2011 Grand Committee

[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.