Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform (Disabled People)

Anne Begg Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

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

It is a great pleasure to follow the new Member, my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), and I add my congratulations to her on her maiden speech.

Let me make clear how many disabled people across the whole of the United Kingdom are feeling just now: they are feeling beleaguered; they are feeling that they are being asked to pay for the mistakes of the bankers and bear the brunt of the austerity measures. Regardless of whether Members on the Government Benches believe that themselves, they must understand that many disabled people are feeling that. They feel that a lot of the Government’s welfare reforms are less about reform and more about saving money, and because of that particular atmosphere many of them are feeling that somehow everything that is being done with regard to welfare reform is landing on their doorstep. I therefore make the plea I have made umpteen times before: because we do not know the full impact these reforms have had on disabled people, will the Government carry out a cumulative impact assessment?

We have asked for that time and again. It would at least begin to quantify for individual families the money they are losing as a result of these reforms. At the moment, there is mention of them losing £2 here or £8 there or that they are experiencing a few extra difficulties in accessing funds or support. Unless we actually look at how each of these changes is impacting on each individual family, we are never truly going to understand why they feel the way they do and the consequences of that.

It is not just the changes to the obvious benefits that affect disabled people. There are changes to benefits that are aimed particularly at them: the changes from incapacity benefit to ESA, and the move from DLA to personal independence payments and Access to Work, which the Minister mentioned. As he said, he will be appearing in front of my Committee tomorrow morning. Those benefits are obviously targeted at disabled people, but there are others, including jobseeker’s allowance, that are aimed at those who have gone through the work capability assessment and been found fit for work even though they have major health problems. Those people find themselves on jobseeker’s allowance. There is also housing benefit, and we have all heard about the bedroom tax. All these arrangements disproportionately affect disabled people. In jobcentres, there are not enough disability employment advisers. My Select Committee found out that there was one for every 600 claimants, but I understand that the figure is nearer to 900. The Work programme is not delivering as it should for disabled people.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. The right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young) mentioned one of my predecessors, Alf Morris, who introduced the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. That Act was described as the Magna Carta of legislation for disabled people. It was the first piece of legislation in any nation anywhere in the world to recognise the rights of disabled people. We on this side of the Chamber are angry because we feel that that disability agenda is being set back by this Government’s policies. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is what is happening?

[Dame Anne Begg]

I do, and that is certainly how many disabled people feel. One of Alf Morris’s great achievements was the Motability scheme. He used to joke that the only organisation that had more vehicles than that scheme was the Chinese red army. I benefited from having a Motability car when I was a student—I was among the first to get one—so I understand from a personal point of view how important those changes were and how long and hard the fight has been to persuade the people that disabled people deserve opportunities, support and help.

One of the main ways in which disabled people are helped into work is through the Work Choice programme. It is the only specialist disability employment programme in existence, and it sits outside the Work programme. One would expect the people on the Work Choice programme to be in receipt of disability benefits, but that is not necessarily the case. I have visited the two Work Choice providers in Aberdeen, and almost all the people there are on jobseeker’s allowance. Yes, they have disabilities or ill health problems, but they are not the most severely disabled people. That is one of the problems: the very programme that was meant to help those with the most profound disabilities is helping those who are less disabled—albeit successfully; the Minister quoted the results.

The opportunities for supported employment or sheltered employment, both of which Government Members have put forward as answers to the problem, have decreased. We have not yet seen the redeployment of the Remploy money into helping people into supported or sheltered employment. The crux of this debate is the fact that there is still a need for such support to allow those with the most profound disabilities to get into work.

Another big problem, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), relates to people with progressive illnesses being stuck in the work-related activity group. My Select Committee looked into the workings of the employment and support allowance and the work capability assessment, and we found that the work-related activity group had become the default destination for everyone, and that the system was therefore not working as efficiently as it should. People who are neither too ill nor too well, who are disabled but not too disabled, or who are on a trajectory towards either getting better or getting worse will not qualify for jobseeker’s allowance at one end of the spectrum or for the ESA support group at the other. Those people will end up in the work-related activity group. That includes people with progressive illnesses, who face conditionality and even sanctioning. That illustrates an element of the design of the ESA that is fundamentally wrong.

The crux of the matter is that the Government have tried to implement too much welfare reform too quickly. They have forgotten the lesson that these matters are incredibly complicated. There are always unintended consequences, and it always takes far longer than anyone anticipates to implement the changes. That is why disabled people are feeling so aggrieved: they feel that no one is listening.