Disability Benefits and Social Care

Lord Sharma Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is talking about the cuts; perhaps he will tell us how he would reform the budget. I believe that the Government’s reforms are very sensible. Will he also tell us how many Remploy factories were shut down while Labour was in power?

[Mr Byrne]

I invite the hon. Gentleman to intervene on me again when I talk about Remploy in more detail—[Interruption.] No, Remploy forms an important part of our motion, and it is right that we should have an informed debate on the matter. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will let him have his say at that stage.

We believe that disability living allowance needs reform, and that an independent assessment is needed. We also believe, however, that the assessment should be designed first, and that the savings should be calculated afterwards. This Government have set an arbitrary, top-down financial cut, and they are now scrambling around trying to figure out what kind of assessment will deliver that cut. So little thought has gone into this that disabled people now face being tested for employment and support allowance, DLA and social care, as well as for a raft of other benefits. The testing alone will cost the taxpayer £710 million.

Surely we should be thinking harder about this. Surely we should be trying to determine what is the right assessment for DLA and ESA—which are different benefits—and asking how we can bring them together in a way that would be more convenient for disabled people and that would help them to secure the support that they need to live an independent life. Such a reform would save money. Indeed, when I was at the Treasury, my civil servants costed it and determined that it would save £350 million by 2015.

To this bleak picture we must, I am afraid, add more. Cuts to social care and to housing benefit will make the situation worse, £1 billion has now been cut from local council budgets for social care since this Government took office, and Ministers are still dragging their feet over long-term reform. Meanwhile, 1 million unpaid carers have given up work or reduced their hours, and four in 10 have fallen into debt, thanks to a system that does not work and is set to get worse.