Disability Benefits and Social Care

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, we need to make some progress in this debate or many hon. Members will not be able to contribute to it.

We are also reforming the disability living allowance, on which, again, the Opposition have failed to give any answers. Labour Members say they want reform, but the reality is that they have voted against reform every step of the way. As far back as 2005, the Labour Government found out that £600 million of DLA was being paid out in overpayments, yet they failed to do anything about it. In 2007, they found out that the independent living fund needed serious reform, but again they did nothing about it.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady will know that—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I would ask the right hon. Lady to speak from the Dispatch Box.

[Mrs McGuire]

The hon. Lady knows full well that when the independent living fund was running into difficulty we established an investigation into it, we reformed the fund and we had Sheffield Hallam university carry out an independent review. She does not need advice from her Secretary of State on that one.

[Maria Miller]

The right hon. Lady is obviously a little sensitive on that point, perhaps because the fund was about to run out of money when we took over. We had absolutely no choice at all about the action we took and perhaps Labour Members should take a little more of the responsibility. They lost control of the situation for some of the most vulnerable groups in society and they must stand up and be accountable account for that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Poulter]

I am not making that mistake at all. The point is that the previous Government’s benefits system put people in a category in which they were characterised as not fit for work, often for the long term. But it is important that somebody who has a mental health problem, or who has an intermittent or a lapsing physical illness such as multiple sclerosis, can, if they are able to, work. People with mental health problems—there is very good medical evidence to support this—often benefit from engaging in work. It improves their mental health and is an important part of their recovery.

[Mrs McGuire]

Will the hon. Gentleman therefore accept that DLA acted as a facilitator for some of those people to whom he refers and who needed to get into work? It met some of their extra costs, and, to echo my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), I think that he is confusing two different benefits. I hope that he will consider the exact point that he is making.

[Dr Poulter]

The point I am making is that the benefits system, which was complicated, wrote off a certain group of people. There were laudable aims, because it is right, for example, to give additional support to people with mental health problems, but an important part of their recovery also involves engaging in the workplace, often on a part-time basis and then, if suitable to that person, by moving on to more permanent employment. The previous system did not, however, help enough people with mental health problems to engage properly with the workplace. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) earlier represented the position of Mind, which has historically taken that position, in agreement with the comments that I have just made.

On support for, and reform of, the care system, my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) said in an intervention that the Government are providing an additional £3.8 billion to the NHS to support better integration with social care. The key to improving and supplying better support for carers, and for other people who look after the long-term disabled, is to ensure that the NHS and social care services are better integrated.

We inherited from the previous Government a system of silo working, with the NHS traditionally working in one of them. For example, the payment-by-results system in many hospitals reinforces the fact that not enough attention is paid to the discharge of people with illness, or to the prevention of people becoming unwell in the first place, and what we need to move away from in the NHS, for financial and human reasons, is a crisis management service that fails to invest in proper preventive care. This Government have already put an additional £400 million into talking therapies, which will help to support people with mental health problems.

The £3.8 billion investment in the NHS to provide such integrated working with local social services will provide the support that carers need on the ground to make sure that many people with mental health problems and physical disabilities get the preventive care that they need. It will also provide an important link in making sure that the frail elderly and people with dementia are no longer inappropriately rushed into hospital but are better cared for and better looked after in the community, and that their carers get the care and support that they need, which keeps carers and patients well.

For all those reasons, the Government have a very strong programme that will deal with several of the problems that this country faces as a result of an over-complex benefits system. Their reform of the benefits system will help people with mental health problems and the long-term disabled to engage with the workplace, which is good for their mental health and their recovery. The reformed system will also ensure that the important role that carers play in health care and in social care is properly recognised and properly funded.

It is only under this Government that there has been a genuine approach to integrating health care. It is only through the establishment, through the health care reforms, of health and wellbeing boards that there will for the first time be a genuine joining up of social care, housing care and NHS care at a local level which will allow carers and the disabled, and everybody who is in need of a better and more joined-up community-based care, to be put together in the right way. Those are the very good principles behind the reforms to the health care and benefits systems, and I am proud to support the Government today.

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[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

I am delighted to welcome the contributions to this afternoon’s debate of my hon. Friends the Members for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran), for Islwyn (Chris Evans), for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) who just spoke so powerfully, for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) and for Westminster North (Ms Buck). They all made their contributions in their own distinctive ways. We have covered some of the areas identified in the motion.

I kick off by talking about the social care crisis, identified by the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) and highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North. I hope that we are now at a point in discussion where we can reach a cross-party consensus on social care. Both those Members identified the major difficulties. I think we should remember that it was my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition who invited the Government to come into those cross-party discussions, having had a pretty bruising experience prior to the last general election when we thought we might have had a basis for moving forward. I certainly welcome the fact that we are treating this issue with the seriousness and urgency that it deserves. However, my image of the contribution of the hon. Gentleman is that he goes around working out how much people’s bottoms and legs can be insured for. He is not normally prone to humour, but I thought that was a bit of light-heartedness on his part.

The Minister with responsibility for disabled people paints a picture that, frankly, bears no relation to the reality of the lives of disabled people and their families and carers. When I heard her contribution, I wondered which world she was living in. She is a quiet and impressive speaker, although she showed today that she can sometimes be provoked. She somehow gives the impression that it will be all right on the night and that tens of thousands of people out there can be expected to say, “Well, that’s fine, Minister for Disabled People. We know that we are suffering”—as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington identified—“but we do not know what is in front of us; we have been vilified in the press, not just by media reporters, but by some ill-considered briefings from some politicians.”

The words of the Minister do not chime with the reality of what people are feeling out there. Over the past couple of years disabled people have been undermined and their confidence shattered, and they are living in a climate of fear. There has been an increase in hate crime. According to a recent report by the university of Glasgow for Inclusion London, the amount of negative reporting of disability in the print media has increased dramatically. People out there who are not claiming disability benefits now think that everyone who is claiming a disability benefit is a skiver. I hope that one day the Secretary of State will rebut the comments that are being made in some tabloid newspapers.

Let me dispel one or two of the myths that have been perpetrated here today. One is that lifetime and indefinite awards will never see the light of day again. In fact the lifetime award was replaced in 2000, because we recognised that it conveyed a mixed message. There has also been a dodgy use of statistics on all sorts of disability benefits, particularly by the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). He said that 75% of incapacity benefit claimants were fit for work, but when the position was examined properly, the figure proved to be as low as 37%.

An image or background has been created to justify a welfare reform programme that is flawed, at least in its implementation. We talk in general terms about disabled people and those who receive disability living allowance, but hundreds of thousands of people who have arthritis, learning disabilities or psychosis rely on the additional cost payment provided by DLA for their everyday lives.

Let me deal very briefly with Remploy, which has already been dealt with extensively today. Yes, we had to wrestle with some of the difficulties—I am certainly not going to run away from that—but the Minister gave only part of the picture. Any Member who was in the House before the last modernisation programme for Remploy knows that we engaged in an extensive and lengthy consultation. All Members of Parliament had all the figures in front of them from the moment that we embarked on that modernisation programme. What we did not do was organise a 90-day consultation involving people who were already feeling vulnerable because of all the other stuff that was going on around them, and embark on a factory programme without building elements of support into it.

Particularly important is the cumulative impact, which has not been addressed today. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said in its report:

“Given the breadth of the current reforms, the Government should publish a unified assessment of the likely cumulative impact of the proposals”.

The Government replied:

“The ability to undertake cumulative analysis is limited because of the complexity of the modelling required”.

So a Government who have tens of thousands of civil servants in the DWP are telling disabled people that, despite all that expertise, they cannot put together a cumulative assessment of what is happening to their lives. I think that it is to the shame of the Secretary of State that he is not prepared to put the big picture out there in front of people. The Joint Committee also said that we were in danger of breaching our commitment under the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities by posing a threat to their right to independent living.

Let me put a very brief cumulative impact assessment before the House. The DWP’s own analysis concluded that the benefit cap would have a disproportionate impact on households containing a disabled person, which were

“more likely to be affected”.

The Prime Minister has always dodged and weaved on this, but the reality is that the sum will be reduced by half under the new universal credit. The “Counting the Costs 2012” report by Contact a Family found that it costs three times more to raise a disabled child, and 73% of its respondents said they believe welfare reform will make them poorer. Mencap says 32% of local authorities have cut day care services in the past three years. The cumulative effect is growing. Some 57% of people with a learning disability currently receive no services at all, despite being known to their social care departments. Disability Rights UK has highlighted how losing DLA will impact on disabled people’s opportunities to get a job.

[Matthew Hancock]

The right hon. Lady talks about the need to see the big picture. Will she therefore correct something the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) said in his opening speech? He said unemployment is rising, when today’s figures show a fall in unemployment and a rise in employment, and that should be welcomed.

[Mrs McGuire]

I know the hon. Gentleman from our days serving together on the Public Accounts Committee, so I know how good he is with figures, and how he can bandy them around. The reality is that £9 billion more will be needed to pay for unemployment benefit. That is the real statistic.

[Matthew Hancock]

indicated dissent.

[Mrs McGuire]

That is the real statistic. We in this House bandy figures around, but the reality is that we are talking about people who are finding themselves—day after day, week after week, month after month—being unable to get a job. That is the reality: 2.5 million unemployed.

[Ian Lavery]

In my constituency, and in the north-east region, unemployment has increased again, yet the Minister with responsibility for employment did not even turn up to a Westminster Hall debate today to respond to the comments of MPs from the north-east whose constituencies face serious problems. That is a total disgrace.

[Mrs McGuire]

And that is the issue this Government need to attend to. We have a crisis in social care. The directors of adult social care services have identified in excess of £1 billion of cuts to social care budgets.

What in this motion do the Government disagree with? It recognises there should be reform of DLA. It raises concerns about the WCA. It recognises the role of carers. It promotes independence, choice and control for disabled people. It asks the Department to restore, in writing, its commitment to equality for disabled people. It calls for a full cumulative impact assessment of the effect of what is happening on the lives of disabled people. It asks for reform of the WCA descriptors.

I always think it is faintly amusing that when we talk about disabled people in this House, Cabinet Ministers often find more time to talk among themselves—as some of them are doing now on the Treasury Bench—than to listen to the debate. I hope the Minister replying to this debate will recognise that this is a sensible motion that is looking for consensus, and that he will respond in keeping with that spirit of consensus.