Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Lord McKenzie of Luton Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I also support the intention behind the amendment. I declare an interest as a vice-patron of Motability, while two members of my extended family—though not my immediate family—enjoy the use of Motability cars.

A number of us at first welcomed and were appreciative of the amount of consultation that the department engaged in concerning the new regulations for PIP, only to learn that, at the very last moment and without consultation, the Government had made two amendments, one of which was to withdraw the magic words “safely”, “reliably” and so on, while the other allegedly clarified what was meant by “virtually unable to walk” by confining it, as of right, to a territory of 20 metres, as opposed to the original territory of 20 to 50 metres that had informed previous decisions.

The Government, rightly and sensibly, moved on the first of these amendments and reinstated the test for the higher-rate DLA mobility component by introducing the key words “reliably”, “regularly”, “accessible” and so on, but failed to move on the second on the issue of 20 to 50 metres, assuring us that it made no difference in practice. When they were pressed on the statistics, however, the “no difference in practice” turned out to be a very real difference. Although the noble Lord, Lord Freud, suggested that of the 1 million, 600,000 would retain it and 400,000 would lose it, that was not the complete figure because 200,000 people who are currently on the lower-rate mobility allowance—needing psychological supervision and so on—would move up into the higher group, so there was a net loss of 400,000 but a gross loss of 600,000 people in higher-rate DLA who would now lose it, although to some extent that would be compensated for by the further 200,000 coming in from the lower group. Still, the gross figure is something like 600,000.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I am delighted to acknowledge that I am drawing on the Oxford Economics report that came out in December 2010, which is full of very valuable figures on this. We know from that report that about 28% of people on higher-rate DLA turn that mobility component into a Motability car. There are currently around 543,000 people driving a Motability car on the basis of three-year leases, and around 185,000 new cars are bought each year by Motability. It is the largest purchaser of new cars in the country, accounting for about 10% of them. This will have serious ramifications for jobs and the car industry, which Motability does so much to support.

However, I am not even going to argue about that. I am arguing on behalf of what Motability does for people’s independence. I remember being struck many years ago, back in the late 1990s when I first met the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, by what she said about the Independent Living Foundation. She said, and for me this was a mind-changing moment, that the ILF, which gave people what we now call personal budgets—generous, or at least adequately generous, sums of money to enable them to employ their own carers and so on—put that disabled person at the centre of the care system, not as a recipient at the end of that system, so that people could determine what time they went to bed and so on. The same is true of a Motability car; it puts the person who is enabled to drive it at the centre of their mobility, not dependent on the charity, good will, altruism, convenience and so on of other people. Of those people who have a Motability car, something like 76% of them drive it themselves, so it becomes their means of movement. The result of that is that it frees not only them to be mobile but their informal carer as well, because without that transport they are totally dependent on someone else to take them to places where they need to go. As one person quoted in the Oxford Economics study said, if they are housebound—that is, without that car—it makes their informal carers housebound too. Removing the car locks two parties into immobility.

The report goes on to show us how effective the Motability car has been in enlarging the horizons of people’s lives. It shows that, for example, most of the recipients had cars in the past that they could no longer use by virtue of their arthritis or their heart problems. Whereas before their disability two-thirds of the recipients of cars were in work, subsequently only 16% were able to hold down paid employment. The Motability car helped 12,500 of them get a job and 56,000 to keep their job. It was crucial for those who needed specially adapted cars that they could not provide for themselves or for people in rural areas, such as my county of Norfolk where, frankly, public transport is non-existent and a complete myth. That car took some of them—16%—to work; it took younger ones into education and training, allowing them, in due course, to get work; it took them to their medical appointments, the shops, their children’s schools and to see their families. It allowed them, as one of them said, to access life. This is what the Government are apparently proposing to take away.

We all accept that people’s disability needs can diminish over time, or may increase over time, but for the most part, those who have reached the threshold of higher-rate DLA continue to have very real and substantial mobility problems wherever that line is to be drawn, whether at 20 metres or 50 metres. Therefore, like the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I urge the Government before Report to hold discussions with the noble Lords, Lord Sterling and Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and come up with a way forward on this. We have to have a transitional period—a period of grace—on this, either to the end of the lease or for a two-year period, whichever comes last, which would, at the very least, allow adequate time for the appeals procedure to go through without people losing a car in the mean time and then having to go through the routine that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, described to regain it.

We had a similar discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Freud, about adapted houses. At one stage, if people were underoccupying a house that had had £20,000 spent on adapting it, they were to move from there, go somewhere smaller and have all the adaptation put in again, but good sense prevailed. The Minister agreed that where such money had been invested it was wise for those people to be allowed to stay. That argument makes sense for the home, and it makes sense for the agency of mobility which is the Motability car. That transitional period of grace, whether it is to the end of the lease or for a two-year period, whichever comes last, would prevent the awful situation of cars being taken back in and piled up in scrapyards because nobody would want that supply of used cars on the market when there will not be the purchasing power to buy them. We would not see Ford and the rest of them finding that they suddenly had closed order books, and we would not see people losing their cars, appealing, regaining them and having to go through all the trauma of these arrangements.

At the very least, there is a huge moral, legal, practical and economic obligation on the Government to provide a way forward to allow that transitional period—that period of grace—to allow those who feel that they should keep their car to appeal and, I hope, to retain it and to allow those whom it is deemed must lose their car time to adapt. Without it, I warn the Minister that she has seen nothing yet.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I shall start by setting out our position. We certainly support the thrust of this amendment and the intention behind it. We certainly support the concept that there needs to be consultation between the Secretary of State and Motability. The precise formulation of proposed new subsection (2) of the amendment needs careful consideration of the idea of benefits being on an individual basis rather than more generally, but I do not think that particularly concerns the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I think the idea is to press the Government to come forward with some transitional arrangements.

We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, a comprehensive and passionate argument in favour of the amendment. Indeed, he has been assiduous in following this issue and has been leading on it now for some months. It is probably fair to say that, in all the discussion, the to-ing and fro-ing and all the consultation that was undertaken on the move from DLA to PIP, this did not originally have the prominence that it should have had. The efforts now to ensure that it is properly focused on are very important.