Welfare Reform (Sick and Disabled People)

Anne Begg Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

Members have brought forward example after example like that one. We are simply looking for some compassion and logic in the governance of the system. The Government have ignored that, tragically.

Many people report that, as a result of sanctions, they are dependent on doorstep loans and are using credit cards for everyday items. Some people have fallen into long-term debt. Some Members met a representative of Disability UK on Monday. He described all this as a route into destitution for many people.

Disabled people who are on ESA are placed on the Work programme and offered support from Work Choice. The latest figures on the success rate of the Work programme in finding employment for disabled people show that only 5.3% of them secured employment. That is a 95% failure rate. Work Choice is meant to assist those with complex needs, but it has helped only 58 people since 2011. The forced closure of the Remploy factories under this Government has taken away the opportunity of sheltered work for many thousands of disabled people.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

I visited my local Work Choice provider the other week. I was amazed to discover that everyone who was there to participate was on jobseeker’s allowance. They were not on a disability benefit, even though they had disabilities. I did not think that that was what Work Choice was meant to be about.

[John McDonnell]

That is exactly what is reported by constituency Member after constituency Member after their visits. I am concerned about time, so I will press on and take no further interventions, if Members do not mind.

Let me turn to the personal independence payment. Some 3.2 million disabled people receive disability living allowance. DLA is not a work benefit; it is meant to help with the additional costs caused by disability. It allows disabled people to get by and to overcome some of the restrictions that are forced upon them by their disability. From April 2013, DLA was supposed to be replaced gradually by PIP. I urge Members to read today’s National Audit Office report that assesses the roll-out. It states:

“Backlogs have developed at each stage of the claimant process. Both the Department and assessment providers have processed fewer claims than they expected”.

It states that by October,

“the Department had made only 16% of the number of decisions it expected, over 166,000 people had started new claims for Personal Independence Payment and 92,000 claims had been transferred to the assessment provider and not yet returned to the Department”.

Who is the assessment provider? After the WCA debacle, it is hard to believe that the Government allowed Atos to share the contract with Capita.

The report goes on to say:

“Claimants face delays, and the Department is not able to tell them how long they are likely to wait, potentially creating distress and financial difficulties.”

It states:

“Citizens Advice has found that claimants are concerned about paying for their care, covering housing costs and having enough money to pay for necessities such as heating, electricity and food.”

The Demos-Scope study calculates that 600,000 people will be impacted by the introduction of PIP, with a total loss of £2.6 billion.

Among the many eligibility changes, there have been changes to the eligibility for the mobility component. That means that 148,000 people will lose out on that additional benefit. It also potentially denies access to a Motability vehicle, and we know today that many people are having their Motability cars removed. The irony is that, as a result, they cannot get to work.

Disabled people are especially vulnerable to other benefit changes, and they will be disproportionately hit by the bedroom tax. Some 72% of affected households include someone with a disability or major health problem, and 420,000 disabled people will lose on average £14 a week in housing benefit. One in three disabled people is refused the discretionary housing payment. Shockingly, local councils have rejected applications from disabled people living in adapted properties who are unable to downsize. Last week, it was also revealed that the £347 million local welfare assistance fund to local councils had quietly been cut by the Government.

The Welfare Reform Act 2012 also changed the uprating of benefits basis from the retail prices index to the consumer prices index, costing some families receiving DLA and the carer’s allowance £80 a week. It has been estimated that 142,500 disabled people will be hit by the benefit cap, costing £2 billion. Universal credit looms over all of this. Research by the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux estimates that 116,000 disabled people could lose £40 a week; that 230,000 severely disabled people who live alone or with only a young carer will get between £28 and £58 less a week; and that 100,000 disabled children will lose £28 a week.

What do all these figures add up to? Although the Government have refused to undertake a cumulative assessment of the effect of all the benefit changes on disabled people, others have done so. The Demos-Scope study calculated that disabled people will lose £28.3 billion by 2018. Dr Simon Bamber concludes that disabled people in poverty, who make up 4% of the population, will bear 13% of the cuts and lose £4,660 a year. People using social care who make up 3% of the population will also bear 13% of the cuts, and lose £6,409 a year.

In conclusion, what do these changes mean in reality? They mean poverty for many. They mean not enough income for someone to heat their home adequately—there are nearly 1 million disabled people now in fuel poverty. They mean someone choosing not to eat so that their children can do so, and their feeling shamed and humiliated by having to rely on the generosity of others and support from the food bank. I urge people to look at the website, Calum’s List. For some it is all too much and they become another in a coroner’s report whose suicide is associated with the loss of benefits. Many of the disabled people I have met say the same thing. They tell me they feel hounded by the media, by politicians and by this Government, just for being disabled and claiming the benefits they are entitled to receive.

What the War on Welfare campaigners are demanding today is the truth. They want a cumulative impact assessment of all welfare changes, so that the truth of their plight can be revealed. They believe—perhaps naively—that if the truth is told, no decent society would allow its most vulnerable members to be treated in this way. That is why I supported the petition and tabled the motion before the House, and why I will be pressing it to a vote.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

I too, pay tribute to the WOW campaigners not only for securing more than 100,000 signatures to the petition, but for securing today’s debate. If anything could be said to illustrate the effectiveness of social media in opening up the lives of disabled people and allowing them to connect with other people throughout the country, it is an event such as this, inspired by the ability to connect with others who may be experiencing similar trials and tribulations—in this instance, at the hands of the Department for Work and Pensions.

The Government say that they are not picking on disabled people and those with severe health problems. Let us look at the evidence. The main benefits that are paid to people with disabilities and health problems are ESA, benefits paid following work capability assessments, and the new personal independence payment which will replace the disability living allowance. Every one of those benefits is currently undergoing enormous changes and reforms, initiated by the Welfare Reform Act 2012.

We know that those reforms are not going well. Only this week, we learnt that the work capability reassessments had been suspended, and that Atos, the company delivering them, wants to end its contract. We are hearing rumours that a face-to-face work capability assessment in the home is taking up to six months to arrange. We know that those who are lucky enough to receive ESA, if they are in the work-related activity group and claiming the contributory element, will receive the benefit for only a year.

Also, as has been mentioned, the people who are in the contributory ESA group are the ones who have worked all their lives—who have paid their national insurance and who thought they were paying into an insurance scheme that would look after them if the worst came to the worst and they were not able to work any more. Interestingly therefore, it is not just those who come from the poorest backgrounds, and whose whole families have perhaps depended on benefits, who are suffering under this Government—although that group most definitely is—but it is also people who thought they had done the right thing. It is people who have done what previous Governments asked and have worked and contributed and have done as well as they could.

The National Audit Office report published today shows that the roll-out of PIP seems to be in chaos as well. There are huge backlogs, and there are constituents of mine who have been waiting for over six months to get a determination after they have had their face-to-face interview.

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful point. These delays in PIP payments in particular are causing so much stress. Does she share my horror that, for example, in Brighton some front-line services have been doing their own surveys of how long people have been waiting, and the advice centre in Brighton and Hove found that only three of 60 clients—fewer than 5%—have actually been assessed? Does she agree that that causes massive uncertainty and stress?

[Dame Anne Begg]

Yes, and it is particularly difficult for people who have quite progressive diseases. For those with terminal illnesses, there is an attempt to get payments out quite quickly, but even then it takes longer than normal. I have a constituent who has very aggressive multiple sclerosis who is desperate for this help but who cannot get it because he does not fall under the special measures category.

The benefits I have mentioned are those that everybody knows are specifically for disabled people and people with health problems, but there are other benefits, too, and other changes to benefits that fall disproportionately on that group. Which single group is hardest hit by the changes to housing benefit and local housing allowance? It is disabled people and those with health problems. Which single group is hardest hit by the bedroom tax? Surprise, surprise, it is disabled people and those with health problems. Which group is hardest hit by the removal of the full council tax relief? Again, it is disabled people and people with health problems. That is because all these changes fall on people of working age, and the people of working age who are most likely to be on these benefits are people who cannot work because of a disability or a health problem.

Who is the hardest hit by the overall benefits cap? The Government said it would not be disabled people, and it probably is not them, but it is their carers, particularly if they are family carers. Who is hardest hit by the social care cuts that mean that local authorities are not able to provide the social care that people need? Of course, it is disabled people and those with health problems. If universal credit ever comes in, severe disablement premium goes, which was paid to people who are single and living alone.

Because it is not just the obvious benefits that go to disabled people that are being cut or are in chaos or not working, but all these other benefits and changes that are also affecting people who have a disability and their families, there is an absolute need for a cumulative impact assessment. I have been calling for a cumulative impact assessment for a number of years now and that is because no one knows precisely the full force of everything that may be falling on individual families and individual households. Unless we do that cumulative impact assessment, we will never know, and in the meantime those families and households are struggling to make ends meet, falling into debt and having to make the choice between eating and heating. They are having to make choices we should not have to make in 21st century Britain. That is why I am very happy to support this debate this afternoon.