Improving Lives: Green Paper

Debate between Lord Blunkett and Lord Freud

Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

It is clear that many people who happen to have a disability have immense talents and valuable skills, which employers should want to tap; they will miss out if they do not. We already offer some support—for instance, Access to Work—and we are increasing that spending. The consultation will ask employers what they need from government to help them recruit and train disabled people.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, it would be unfair to use the old joke, “This is déjà vu all over again”, because this is a welcome initiative. I have just two quick points to make. The Minister knows a great deal about this. Perhaps he will accept that trashing the past rather than learning from it is not helpful. This is not an entirely new era. In 2005, as he well knows, the Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions jointly appointed Professor Carol Black. All the things that came out in the report he has mentioned flowed from that initiative. While it takes a great deal of time to implement good policy, as we are all painfully aware, there has been a great deal of it; for instance, the Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion has 2,500 employers already engaged. A new business leaders’ group is not required. What is required is to build on what is there, to build on the experience of the pathways and the talking therapies, and to ensure that what we all say—and we do all say it—about joined-up policy is put into practice.

[Lord Freud]

My right honourable friend in the other place, the Secretary of State, took some pleasure in quoting James Purnell from 2008 about the objectives here, illustrating that they are the same. We must acknowledge the continuity there has been in this difficult area and, in particular, give thanks to Dame Carol Black, who I have worked with now for many years and who has done an extraordinary job in trying to get these two networks together. We are building on many years of work but, like everyone else, I acknowledge that it is hard pounding—it takes a long time to get this right.

Housing: Under-occupancy

Debate between Lord Blunkett and Lord Freud

Monday 17th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, the problem with the previous question is that the bedroom tax does not apply to the retired. It is actually the retired—well represented in your Lordships’ House—who have more accommodation available than younger people bringing up families, where their home should be their castle. Does the Minister concur that, if we were looking in that area, it would be an incentive to older people to downsize, not younger people with families?

[Lord Freud]

The policy is clearly directed at people who have a spare room. These tend not to be people with families; in many cases, they are empty nesters. They would be a typical group—people who have had a larger place but some of the people living in it have then moved on and they now have spare rooms. There is a point in time at which one should address the issue to get the downsizing. This policy looks to make sure that that time is during working age and not later.

Employment: Job Creation

Debate between Lord Blunkett and Lord Freud

Thursday 17th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister reflect on the paradox that if more people are being assessed more rigorously as being eligible and fit for work, even with disabilities—he and I agree on that—there is a certain irony in using the increase in the volume cost of the personal independence payment as a reason for taking away that PIP from those who have been judged to be so disabled that they are entitled to additional support, some of which will eventually enable them to take work? Is it not therefore a completely cost-ineffective means of dealing with the challenge of increased PIP to reduce the number of people who are eligible for it?

[Lord Freud]

We carried out a survey of a representative sample of about 400 people, with, I think, 95% accuracy. We found that the vast bulk of people in the categories that we are talking about did not have extra costs apart from the aids and appliances they were using. Some of those aids and appliances were, for instance, a bed. We found that extra costs were not applied to these particular measures.