Employment: Disabled People

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Touhig]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have for new initiatives to encourage business and industry to employ disabled people.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, a range of government initiatives are already supporting disabled people to start, stay and succeed in work. The Government are working to improve and better integrate resources for businesses, helping them to support and manage health and disability in the workplace. The Government are looking in detail at workforce participation, including discussions with business and industry, whose role is key to making the most of the talents of disabled people in the workforce.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his helpful Answer; I will follow up on some of the points that he just made. Just 5% of adults with a learning disability are in work. One way to change this is by offering more supported internships; the charity Hft tells me that this helps business better understand the benefits of employing someone with a learning disability. However, the problem is that supported internships are available to people only up to the age of 25. Will the Government consider extending this scheme to include learning-disabled people over the age of 25, which would enable many more to get into work?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I appreciate the noble Lord’s question and the work that he does in this area. I can assure him that the Government are committed to reducing the disability employment gap, including in relation to the young and interns. It is important that those who have a disability are given every chance to start on the path to a career. What I cannot do, I am afraid, is commit to the noble Lord’s point about extending the scheme beyond the age of 25, but I have noted it and will take it back to the department.

Disabled People: Impact from Policies and Spending Cuts

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

We certainly keep this under review. The noble Baroness will know that SSP is administered and paid entirely by employers, at a rate of £99.35 per week. Employers are required to pay it, but as I say, this matter is kept under constant review.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, we all know that the cost of living crisis and pressures on public services are affecting families across the country, but the impact on families with disabled children is particularly acute and often not well highlighted. What assessment have the Government made of the effect of their current spending plans on the level of support for disabled children and their parents?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I do not have any figures on disabled children but I can say that, in the year 2022-23, we will be spending around £65.7 billion on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions in Great Britain, including children. This is around 2.6% of GDP. Spending on the main disability benefits—PIP, DLA and attendance allowance—will be more than £7 billion higher in real terms than it was in 2010.

Covid-19: Youth Unemployment

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord that young people today face an unprecedented challenge in accessing the world of work, as well as the skills they need to help them succeed. We are working closely with DfE to clarify the relationship between skills and employment provision. The DWP and DfE have put guidance in place to ensure that young apprentices made redundant due to Covid-19 can continue their learning. I thank the noble Lord for raising the excellent work of the Fashion Retail Academy. There are many other sector work-based academies doing great work to help young people in these difficult times.

[Lord Touhig (Lab) [V]]

I declare an interest as a vice-president of the National Autistic Society. Just 15 in every 100 people with autism get a job, so good education is vitally important. Since the Covid outbreak, seven in 10 autistic children are having difficulty understanding or completing schoolwork and around half—half, my Lords—will see their academic progress suffer. Can the Minister say something about what the Government are doing to mitigate this, so that in the years ahead we do not see even fewer people with autism getting a job?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

The noble Lord is well-known and well-respected for his commitment to this particular difficulty that people face. I would like to assure the House that we are committed to helping everyone into work, including those who need extra and intensive support due to autism. In respect of educational input, I will speak to my noble friend Lady Berridge, and we will jointly come back to him to answer the specifics of that question. However, I can tell noble Lords this: we have recruited 150 employability coaches across Great Britain, and I have heard a number of success stories. These work coaches work particularly with vulnerable people. I can tell noble Lords that a youth employability coach in Dartford has supported a claimant with Asperger’s syndrome, helping him to secure an apprenticeship in tech support. We understand the challenge and we are on the case.

Disability Employment Gap

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Touhig]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made in reducing the disability employment gap.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the National Autistic Society.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)]

My Lords, the employment rate for disabled people stands at 53.2%, having increased by 9.8 percentage points over the past six years. The employment rate gap between disabled and non-disabled people has fallen by 5.6 percentage points over the same period.

[Lord Touhig]

I welcome, as I am sure the whole House does, the improvement the Minister just told us about, but there has been no increase whatever in the number of autistic people in work—for the last 10 years. Just 16 in every 100 people who are autistic are in full-time employment. Addressing the lack of understanding about autism across business and industry is key to trying to solve this problem. Will the Government establish an information hub, providing employers with support and information to improve recruitment of autistic people? Could I tempt her to be even more daring and perhaps consider creating an autism accreditation scheme so that participating companies get full recognition for the efforts they put in?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott]

The noble Lord makes very accurate and real points. I spoke to the National Autistic Society this morning. Some 16% of autistic adults are in work and 32% of them are in some kind of paid work, but the real statistic is that 77% of unemployed autistic adults want to work. The noble Lord rightly pointed out that we must get to that figure. The disability hub is a great idea. I will go back to the department with yet another idea—their eyes roll now when I walk in, but I will do it. I will not be put off by that. I can confirm that the Government are also working with the Supported Business Alliance and the British Association for Supported Employment to help them develop a new quality mark for supportive businesses and develop a long-term element of access to work to continue the support. However, there is no doubt that we have a lot more to do and I will take both those ideas back to the department.

Employment and Support Allowance

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, let me make it clear that we do not believe that this is attributable to staff reductions at the Department for Work and Pensions. We still have over 70,000 employees. We have also been working hard to do more since 2010. Since this Government came to power, we have spent £5.4 billion a year more than we were doing in 2010 to support people with disabilities. We continue to do so while upping our game and, yes, demanding more from our employees, who are working extremely hard. That is to ensure that we have the proper resource and the staff to make sure that we can review all these cases at pace. We have already started making payments—over £40 million in arrears so far—so we are doing everything we can to ensure that people get the support they are entitled to and at pace.

Based on my meetings with the Minister of State for Disability and our Permanent Secretary, who made a robust case for delivery by our department in front of the Public Accounts Committee last week, I can say that the department is working hard. Yes, we are doing more, so noble Lords could say we are a little stretched, but we are proud of what we are doing and delivering. We want to get this right. On passporting benefits over to UC, we are making sure that people will not lose out in what they are entitled to.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, in the part of Gwent where I was born, the letters “dwp” form a word. It is pronounced “dup” and means stupid or daft. Could that account for why the accounting officer at the Department for Work and Pensions says that he does not understand all the letters that his office sends to claimants? If the author of the letters does not understand them, how on earth are the claimants supposed to do so?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I hear noble Lords laughing but this is no laughing matter. I take great exception to the suggestion that I am working for anything that could be described as a dump. I am the lead Minister for the correspondence that goes out to claimants and we work through that correspondence with a fine-toothed comb to make sure it is in clear English, polite, responsive and on time. Since I have been in office, we have been at 100% in terms of our timing. We are doing everything we can to support so many people, particularly those with disabilities and health conditions, to improve and transform their lives. I therefore will not listen to the noble Lord talking about—

[Lord Touhig]

The department admitted it.

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, no, somebody in the department may have said something but, as far as I am concerned, I am proud to work for the Department for Work and Pensions.

Universal Credit

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will remember the comments made last week by my noble friend Lord Low of Dalston and myself about the impact of universal credit on people with disabilities and autism. I am sure she will be familiar with it because I have also tabled some Questions. Can we live in hope that there will now be something positive to benefit people with disabilities and autism, because we certainly have not heard anything in the Statement today?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I want to make sure that I say the right thing. All I can say is that we are spending over £50 billion on disability, which is a record, and expenditure is going up. We spend over £50 billion a year on benefits to support disabled people and we are proud of that. Spending on people with health conditions is up by more than £7 billion since 2010. As a share of GDP, this is the second highest in the G7.

Almost 3.5 million disabled people are now in employment, which is really fantastic. We want to help as many disabled people as possible into work. They want to work and to be part of the world that they inhabit—that has to be our ultimate goal. But the noble Lord is right: we closed our debate last week with the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, saying that this is a work in progress. I entirely agree with her. It is a work in progress and it will continue to be until rollout in 2022.

Disabled People: Access to Work Fund

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Touhig]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of the Access to Work fund and what plans they have to help people with disabilities into work.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Altmann) (Con)]

My Lords, last year Access to Work helped more than 35,000 disabled people to work, including almost 2,000 into self-employment. Disabled people and stakeholders consistently tell us of the effective support that Access to Work offers. A wide range of employment support programmes underpins our success. We are building on this by launching specialist employability support, expanding the Disability Confident campaign, extending work choice and expanding the use of our Access to Work mental-health support service.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, an Access to Work grant is a lifeline helping disabled people to find a job and stay in work, so I am sure I was not alone in being surprised last week when the Minister for Disabled People seemed almost to boast about the fact that his department had underspent the fund’s budget by £3 million last year. In those circumstances, will the Minister tell the House why the Government are cutting the grant that disabled people can receive under the fund and why they have failed to publicise the fact that the fund even exists? How will this help the Government to honour their pledge to cut the number of unemployed people by 50%?

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, Access to Work is not being cut. We are introducing a cap, which means that the resources available can support growing numbers of people. We are determined to reduce the disability employment gap by half and to spend more money on these programmes. It is a demand-led programme. The cap will ensure that we can reach far more people, and, indeed, we did just that over the past year.

Personal Independence Payments

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Touhig]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many people are awaiting assessment for personal independence payments.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

I am pleased to update the House that the average claimant is waiting 14 weeks for an assessment. This is within the 16-week target set by the Secretary of State. In any high-volume business, we would always expect to have a significant number of cases moving through the system at any one time.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, anyone making an application for a PIP assessment today will have time for 16 return journeys to the moon or 35 flights around the world before they will get their assessment. In fact, they would be back in Britain a week before their assessment was due. The timeframe announced by the Minister is simply not acceptable. However, when this was debated in the Commons in January, a number of Members of Parliament said that when they intervened the process was reduced considerably. Is the system so broken that the best way to get a short and quick interview for a PIP assessment is to involve a Member of Parliament? What does he say to his own independent reviewer, Paul Gray, who said that the delays were doing a disservice to disabled people and their families?

[Lord Freud]

The backlogs that we suffered earlier have been reduced very substantially. The 14-week wait I referred to is down from 30 weeks in June 2014. We are now putting through 52,000 cases a month.

Housing Benefit (Transitional Provisions) (Amendment) Regulations 2014

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, this Motion relates to an order brought forward by the Government to address a loophole that they have belatedly discovered in enacting what they call the social sector size criteria and everybody else calls the bedroom tax. The loophole means that people claiming housing benefit continuously for the same home since 1 January 1996 are exempt from the bedroom tax. It emerged recently, as noble Lords may remember from the discussion on a recent Urgent Question, that the group may be even wider as it may affect some people who have inherited this protection from a former tenant who enjoyed it.

People covered by this exemption have unlawfully had their housing benefit cut. When this matter was discussed in the other place, a number of examples of people affected were given. For example, there was a widower in Staffordshire suffering from mental health problems who had to find an extra £14 a week to stay in his home. There was a 56 year-old women from Rotherham with health-related problems who paid over £700 in additional rent, which we now know was unlawful. In Greater Manchester, a woman who cares for her granddaughter paid £200 extra in rent as a result of the bedroom tax, fell into arrears and was threatened with eviction from the home she has lived in for 26 years. Incidentally, Grandparents Plus notes that kinship carers like her are more likely to be affected by the bedroom tax, because they are older and more likely to have spare rooms, technically, because their children have grown up and moved on.

These people and many others like them are now due a rebate but, rather than apologise for the distress that they have been caused, the Government now want to apply the bedroom tax again to these people and thousands like them. Because local authorities in most cases do not have electronic records which go back to 1996, they are finding themselves having to waste time and money trawling through paper files looking for affected cases. Meanwhile, the Government have brought forward this order to close the loophole, despite having no idea how many people are affected by it.

The Opposition have tried very hard to find out how many people are affected by asking Ministers. On 13 January, the Employment Minister, Esther McVey, gave a Written Answer in the other place. She said simply:

“This information is not available”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/1/14; col. 449W.]

On the same day, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions told the other place that,

“the number is likely to be between 3,000 and 5,000”.—[ Official Report, Commons, 13/1/14; col. 577.]

The very next day, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, told this House that,

“the numbers involved in this anomaly are small and the amounts are modest”.—[Official Report, 14/1/14; col. 106.]

However, early reports coming from the ground suggested that the numbers could be rather higher than that. Therefore, under the Freedom of Information Act, the Opposition asked local authorities how many people they believed would be affected. The resulting figures already show that over 23,000 are likely to be affected, even though a third of councils have still to reply and many said that they could not give complete answers because they could not include housing association tenants. Not only is this a mess, but the Government seem to have no idea how many people are caught up in the mess.

We should not be surprised. The bedroom tax was a bad policy in the first place, incompetently executed, with the heaviest price being paid by the poorest and most vulnerable. More than 500,000 households have been hit. Two-thirds of those affected are disabled. Of those affected, 35,000 disabled people have had their homes specially adapted with, for example, wheelchair ramps, wider doors, stair lifts or accessible bathrooms. If they are forced to move, it is estimated that the cost of repeating those adaptations in new properties could reach £234 million.

Some 60,000 of those affected by the bedroom tax are carers. More than 200,000 families with children are affected. On average, people are paying an extra £14 a week—the equivalent of losing all of your child benefit for the second child. Most depressingly, so many of the problems predicted by noble Lords from all Benches during the passage of the Welfare Reform Act have come to pass. According to the National Housing Federation, on average two-thirds of tenants affected by the bedroom tax are currently in arrears; of those, three-quarters have seen their arrears increase since the bedroom tax came in. Of those tenants hit by the bedroom tax who are in arrears because they cannot make up the shortfall, 40% have been issued with a notice seeking possession.

The impact on landlords is also huge. Nearly three in five housing associations say that they have been affected by the bedroom tax either a great deal or a fair amount. That hides huge regional problems, as I know only too well. About 90% of housing associations operating mainly in the north-east and 80% in the north-west report that they have been significantly affected.

What a mess, and for what? What has been achieved by all this chaos and misery? Has the bedroom tax achieved its aims? Ministers have not been able to explain whether the policy is supposed to reduce overcrowding or to save money; it cannot do both. If tenants stay put and accept a cut in their benefits, the state saves money but no houses are freed up. If tenants are forced to move, no money is saved. The costings assumed that people would not move. During the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill, when the matter was voted on in this House on Report on 14 December 2011, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, explained the Government’s position, saying:

“The introduction of size criteria into the social rented sector from April 2013 is essential to reduce housing benefit expenditure”.—[Official Report, 14/12/11; col. 1300.]

So it was indeed about savings. The Minister explained that it would save around £500 million per annum.

I wonder whether those savings really are materialising as Ministers had hoped. Last Friday, Esther McVey was asked on a BBC Radio 5 Live programme how much money the Government had saved through this policy. She began by saying:

“It was never all about saving money”.

The interviewer interrupted just to ask how much it would save. She came back to the question. The interviewer asked her repeatedly whether there would be savings and how much they would be but could not get an answer.

There is now a real risk that the bedroom tax will end up costing more than it saves. Research from the University of York suggests that the policy could save significantly less than the DWP predicted. The National Housing Federation has said that the savings claimed by the Government are “highly questionable”, partly because those forced to move to the private rented sector will end up costing more in housing benefits. Housing associations say that tens of millions of pounds are likely to be lost through the build-up of arrears. I ask the Minister today to tell the House precisely how much of that £500 million savings per annum has been realised in the first year of the bedroom tax. After taking into account the cost of discretionary housing payments, the cost to local authorities and social housing providers and the payment of higher housing benefits to those who had to move, what is the net saving to the public purse? If it was not about saving money, as Esther McVey has said, what was it about?

The Government have since changed tack and claimed that it is about tackling overcrowding or dealing with the waiting lists. They say that people need to be pushed to move out if they have spare rooms so that others can have their houses. At various times, noble Lords from all Benches have pointed out that, in fact, many of these are not spare rooms, and, even if they were, there were nowhere near enough spare smaller properties available in the areas hit by the bedroom tax. Now we know what has happened. A recent BBC investigation showed that, after the first year, just 6% of tenants have moved.

This entire episode should shame this Government. Half a million people have been affected, most of them disabled, losing an average £14 a week from their already meagre incomes. Instead of bringing forward an order to make the bedroom tax apply to up to 40,000 more households, the Government should announce today that they will scrap this unfair, cruel and unpopular tax. I beg to move.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Sherlock for securing this debate. Of all the Government’s reforms to welfare, it is hard to find another more cruel, more callous and more mean-spirited than the bedroom tax. The policy was dreamt up by people who have no need for housing benefit themselves and probably do not even know anybody who depends on it. While it may make sense in theory, in practice it is having a devastating effect on the lives of vulnerable people. Additionally, the very ideas and theory behind the policy are, I believe, wicked and wrong. Ministers have stressed that the policy is designed to fix a broken system of housing benefit and encourage behavioural change among recipients of housing benefit. This is sheer nonsense. The system is broken, though not because of the behaviour of those who use it; the cause is the housing stock itself. In England, there are 180,000 tenants underoccupying two-bedroom homes but only 85,000 smaller homes available.

The Catholic charity Caritas Diocese of Salford has been working with Michelle. She has three children and lives in a three-bedroom home. Originally she cared for her brother, who has now moved into supported accommodation. Her 13 year-old daughter now uses the so-called spare room. Michelle is trying for a home swap, looking for a two-bedroom home, but nothing is available. The £12 she loses each week means that she now regularly resorts to food banks. This is the reality of the bedroom tax. The only economy left for families to make is on food. When that cannot be done, they have to resort to food banks. In Merseyside, social landlords have referred 553 tenants to food banks.

The cost of the bedroom tax is horrific, but the attitude that it displays towards social housing is also wrong. No longer can people regard where they live as their homes. Housing benefit and social housing appear to be something that the Government begrudgingly provide. My local newspaper, the South Wales Argus, recently reported the story of Kevin Reeve, who has occupied the family home for 50 years and cared for his mother and father, who have both now sadly passed away. He is now underoccupying, losing between £35 and £45 a month and has been forced into trying to move.

The local housing association, Bron Afon, has catalogued the effects of this tax on the local community. It discovered that one person affected is a former solider suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. He lives with his daughter, who is hoping to go to university. They already underoccupy by one room. They are already cutting down on heating their home and eating. His daughter is now questioning whether she should go to university. He is resigned to trying to move. His current home is the one in which he raised his children, the home that he shared with his wife, who, sadly, has now died. He is proud of that home, and we should be proud of him, a veteran who has served our country. Is this the way we repay our servicemen?

The bedroom tax is another example of the chaos, confusion and poor implementation of chronically ill conceived policies by the Department for Work and Pensions. It is clear that this policy is unjustly penalising vulnerable people for something beyond their control. It is causing immense hardship and devastating people’s lives. It shows complete callousness towards those who rely on housing benefit. Many good people who rely on housing benefit feel that they live not in prosperity Britain but in poverty Britain, thanks to this Conservative and Liberal Democrat Government. Those responsible for this policy should hang their heads in shame.

[Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)]

My Lords, I should first declare my interest as chair of the National Housing Federation, which represents the housing associations across England.

I will speak briefly, on a personal basis, to say that I cannot support the Government’s policy on this. I believe it was misjudged in the first place and we are rapidly seeing the proof in the pudding. I cannot support something that deprives people of money that, by any standards, they need—the Government do not give people more in benefit than they need to live on—when they have no option to move somewhere else because of the shortage of smaller homes. That is quite apart from the fact that to describe these rooms as surplus to need is in many cases simply wrong, and even if they are surplus today, they are often not surplus tomorrow. Therefore, for example, a family with young children will have to have those children live in a room together, but after a year they might need to live apart.

This simply does not make sense. I very much regret that the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, on this, were not passed, because that would have secured the Government some of what they wished but given a much fairer deal to individuals; for example by not removing the money if a reasonable alternative has not been offered to them.

However, the most fundamental reason—the proof of the pudding—is that this is not a saving to government any more than it frees up rooms. That is because of the huge cost to housing associations of having to work with individuals to help them, and the cost of the work and the money that the Government have had to put in to support individuals. It has removed capacity from the social housing sector to provide more homes. All of the money lost—and, frankly, the arrears that are being built up—will never be gained back from people who have no ability to pay it. That simply undermines the capacity to solve the very housing problem which the policy was theoretically meant to address but has failed to do.

Although my instincts are those of a team player, and my track record over a substantial period of time shows that to be the case, this is not something on which I can support my noble friends.

Benefits: Sanctions

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Jobcentre Plus advisers are well trained to look after their clients. One of the most difficult areas for them is always mental health, and that is something that we are looking to push further forward. We are introducing a mental health toolkit along the lines of that given to prime providers in the Work Programme.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

People with special educational needs and physical disabilities are particularly badly hit by these sanctions. Will the Minister respond to the question put to him by my noble friend Lady Lister? Will he come to the House and report regularly on the impact on people with these difficulties?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I said earlier that I hope that we will be announcing the context of the review that my colleague Esther McVey is looking to produce. When I have that information, I will, of course, bring it to this House.