Personal Independence Payments (Wales)

Lord Hain Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I apologise at the outset for having to leave immediately after I finish speaking, to undertake an official appointment relating to my duties as a former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I will not hear the Minister’s reply, but I will of course read it.

In the short time since personal independence payments have come into force, it has quickly become evident that the system is miserably failing people and leaving some of the most vulnerable in our communities in absolute desperation. My Neath constituency has one of the highest rates of take-up of the old disability living allowance, a legacy of the industrial heritage that once provided livelihoods for many of my constituents, but has now resulted in serious health problems—a heavy price to pay.

New applicants face a system of delay and despair. Many constituents have been waiting six months or longer, having had their face-to-face assessments and been told, frustratingly, that

“the report is in the final stages with a senior healthcare professional.”

For those six months they have been living off savings to help them to adapt to their conditions. The prospect of a backdated payment is of no comfort to them as they struggle with day-to-day tasks that many of us take for granted, while their families suffer under the stress and strain of caring for them.

In some of the cases processed by Capita, health care reports have not been up to standard and further information has been required. That involved going back to the assessor and requesting further information. In one case, a second face-to-face assessment was required, and in one astonishing instance it came to light in March 2014 that despite the assessment being carried out in November 2013, no assessment report had been prepared by the assessor. Those constituents’ misery and distress seems to have no end.

The protracted ordeal is just to get the assessment report from Capita to the Department for Work and Pensions. As the assessment reports start to trickle through to the Department, the emerging trend is of further delays in the final decision after the report has reached the Department. So after months of waiting with Capita, applicants face further delays, and that only adds to their misery.

I raised with Capita and the Department a case that encapsulates the ordeal. A constituent made his original application on 5 July 2013 after suffering a serious brain seizure, a stroke and several other seizures. He returned to work initially, but because of his mobility problems he could not continue. He underwent a home assessment on 15 October 2013, and made numerous calls to the Department for Work and Pensions to chase up the progress of his application. Every time, he was referred to Capita because the report had not been sent, but he was told that

“the report is in the final stages with a senior healthcare professional”.

One event epitomises his situation. He woke up one morning and asked his wife to leave him in bed as he was feeling unwell. Shortly after she left for work at 8 o’clock in the morning, he suffered a series of convulsions that lasted approximately 30 minutes. He had difficulty breathing and removing his continuous positive airway pressure mask, which he has to wear because of obstructive sleep apnoea and the danger of a stroke or heart attack. He was unable to get out of bed for the rest of the day until his wife came home at 4.30. He did not eat or drink all day and had to urinate into a bottle.

My constituent’s wife is caring for him but because he has no income from PIP she is at the point of utter exhaustion. The decision to award the benefit is vital to enable his wife to give him the proper care and supervision he needs. Until a decision is made, the couple cannot arrange that care, and their life is in limbo. In March, my constituent finally received his decision notice, only to be informed at the end of the month that a stop had been put on his payment—a decision that could not be explained when he phoned DWP. It has now been nine months and he has not received a payment. DWP’s decision notice states that he is owed a back payment of more than £5,000. He has been let down by Capita and the Department for Work and Pensions as his anguish goes on.

In another case, the application was made in June 2013. The report from Capita was eventually received by DWP on 13 February, but a decision has still not been made. The claimant told me:

“I have no confidence that the process will ever end, there is always one more stage, one more delay.”

That sentiment is felt by many who have lost faith, which is a dreadful stain on the Department for Work and Pensions, where I served as Secretary of State.

The excruciating stress and anxiety is hitting people seriously, including cancer sufferers and ex-servicemen with post traumatic stress disorder. Ministers should be ashamed of the system, which is punitive, nasty and causes abject despair to far too many people.

[Kevin Brennan]

To emphasise the dilemma facing our constituents, I should say that in a similar case in my constituency a women who suffered a stroke made an application in June 2013, and has just received the benefit. Her husband elected to reduce his hours at work as a result of which they lost the tax credits that they were entitled to, so they went into even deeper problems as a result of the unacceptable delays.

[Mr Hain]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I am not going to make personal attacks on Ministers because they probably believe they are doing a professional job, but I sometimes wonder whether they have any idea of what is happening on the ground as a result of their policies.

If the Atos debacle taught us anything, it is the importance of getting the decision right in the first place—in my constituency, the local welfare rights unit had an 80% success rate with its appeals against Atos’s decisions—but that should not mean waiting unacceptably long times such as six, seven or eight months for a decision that could dramatically affect somebody’s life and income. Action must be taken immediately to address this inexplicably lengthy and prolonged system that is causing misery and despair for applicants. The turnaround of applications must be drastically accelerated by both the assessment provider and the Department.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I completely agree with what my hon. Friend says, and that is exactly what our plans are; that is what we want to try to do, and I look forward to working with him on this project.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

How can the Government justify removing all phone lines to local jobcentres such as the one in Neath? How are people, especially disabled and sick people, supposed to cope with the fiendishly complex benefits system, or get into jobs, without personalised help and advice? Does the Minister not understand that the most vulnerable people often cannot get online, afford costly daily travel to jobcentres or hang on for ages on expensive 0845 lines?

[Mike Penning]

The 0845 numbers came in when the right hon. Gentleman was a Minister, and we are eradicating them now. Advisers are in place all the time. Most work is done online these days, but the advisers are there to help people, which is why we have been so successful in getting people into work.

Remploy

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend is correct. They have to be effective—that is what everybody wants—but the answer is more complex than that, because they have to be tailor-made and we have to look at the individual. So, yes, they must be efficient, but first and foremost they must be effective, caring and tailored to the individual.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

But is not the truth that amid all the Minister’s spin and management-speak, she is strangling Remploy to death, and there is no prospect of the most vulnerable disabled workers in their 50s who work there all the time getting jobs in mainstream employment? By the way, her description of the 2008 programme is a total travesty. There was a £550 million subsidy for that, which she has cut savagely, and there was a programme for getting people into mainstream work, too. Also, she has given no guarantees, despite my asking the Secretary of State, and nor has the preferred bidder, who is based in Yorkshire, that the Neath Port Talbot site at Baglan will remain open. Can she give a guarantee on that now?

[Esther McVey]

I have a couple of points to make to the right hon. Gentleman. There was no spin in what I said; those were the numbers, and he is more than welcome to verify them. As for his comment about strangling, that is incorrect, too. I would say “liberating”. That is why some of the factories that closed have reopened and we are supporting them as best we can. If I were him, I would claim no credit for spending £555 million in 2008 on a modernisation process that went nowhere, or for estimates for contracts in the public sector that were grossly exaggerated—by 130%—and which never came to pass. Ours are real, they have been justified, they are monitored by an expert panel and KPMG is involved as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

As a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, my hon. Friend speaks knowledgeably about this issue. When the employment and support allowance was introduced under the previous Government, a third of those with a mental health condition received it. As a consequence of the reforms we have introduced, that number has now gone up to 43%.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware of the representations that I have made to the Secretary of State about a constituent of mine who has been suffering from mental illness for 13 years? Three months before his Atos test, he tried to commit suicide. Nevertheless, he was immediately refused a continuation of his benefit and was put into the limited liability group. Does the Minister not realise that there are some horrendous cases of punitive action being taken against people who are completely innocent in this respect? That constituent was without any visible means of income, and I had to refer him to the food bank in order to prevent him from starving. Is the Minister proud of such consequences of his policies?

[Mr Hoban]

I remind the right hon. Gentleman that he was in the Government who introduced the work capability assessment and the employment and support allowance. I have set out the improvements that we have made to the system that we inherited from the previous Government, which was not working. We are continuing to make reforms, and that is demonstrated by the fact that the proportion of people claiming employment and support allowance has tripled under this Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am interested in that point—it is one that the hon. Gentleman’s late right hon. Friend, Malcolm Wicks, used to raise regularly—and we are always interested in looking at ideas on it. Our proposal is that the state pension age would be more automatically linked to the general improvement in longevity that has applied across the social scale. He is right that there remain significant differences, but a rising tide—as it were—is lifting all boats.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

4. What assessment he has made of the effect of changes to housing benefit rules on married disabled people living in specially adapted two-bedroom properties.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

When developing the social sector size criteria policy, we considered the impacts on disabled people, as set out in our impact assessment. We have added a further £30 million a year to the discretionary housing payments fund from 2013-14 aimed specifically at those in adapted accommodation and foster carers.

[Mr Hain]

Why will the Government not withdraw the housing benefit changes, which are having a devastating impact on disabled people, including my constituents, Mr and Mrs Harris of Seven Sisters, Neath, about whom I have written to the Secretary of State? They live in an adapted property. Mrs Harris cannot sleep at night, Mr Harris is a full-time carer for her and they need two bedrooms, but the draconian and oppressive changes the Government are implementing mean that there is funding for only one bedroom. There is a shortage of one-bedroom properties in Neath and they cannot afford the extra rent. It is time the Government withdrew these policies. Do they not understand that the changes will have a massive impact on the most vulnerable people in our society? The Secretary of State started off with the seemingly sincere motive of tackling poverty, but he has ended up by punitively and callously hitting the most vulnerable.

[Esther McVey]

That is not the case. An impact assessment has been done and £30 million of discretionary funds have been put in place for exactly the people the right hon. Gentleman is talking about. We have to do this in the round. There are a million spare rooms in the country and millions of people on waiting lists and in overcrowded homes, and we have to find properties for them, too. The case that he mentions, however, is precisely the sort the discretionary fund will be for.

Specialist Disability Employment

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend takes a great interest in the area and will be pleased to know that we are doing more to market Access to Work to people who have learning disabilities or mental health problems. Access to Work is an excellent scheme, but even more people with mental health problems need to participate in it, and we have an active marketing programme behind achieving that.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

Has the hon. Lady any idea how arrogant and out of touch she sounds this afternoon? This is a shameless betrayal of thousands of disabled workers who have been in sheltered employment—not segregated employment, but sheltered employment—all their lives and will never find jobs when there are no jobs to be had in areas such as mine, where 10 people are chasing every job vacancy. How can she so cynically misrepresent the modernisation plan that I announced at the end of 2007—£555 million, dependent on Government-supported procurement and public sector-backed job opportunities? None of that has been put in place. It has not failed; it has not been allowed to succeed by this out-of-touch Government.

[Maria Miller]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for coming in for today’s statement and for being able to participate in the statement process, because he more than anybody knows the very real dilemma that was faced under the previous Administration with Remploy, and I pay tribute to the work that he did to try to give Remploy an opportunity to get back on its feet. He will know that there are more than 12,000 disabled people in his constituency, and the Neath furniture factory will continue through the summer process, which I am sure he welcomes. I hope that he would want to ensure that more of those 12,000 people receive the sort of support that I know he feels can work.