Personal Independence Payments

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her statement and for the advance copy of it.

Last Thursday we had the written announcement of the closure of Remploy factories, with more than 800 redundancies. This Thursday we have a statement that is intended, according to the Government’s own estimates, to remove a disability benefit from more than 500,000 disabled people. Let me make it clear that we are in favour of an assessment for DLA, but the assessment needs to be the right one.

I shall deal first with a number of myths. There has indeed been an increase in the number of people claiming DLA. A significant number of those have protected DLA as they move into retirement. As the Minister knows, about 900,000 people currently receiving DLA fall into this category. However, the other factor that I thought she might have alluded to was that the lives of disabled people have changed dramatically since 1992, when the expectation for many of them was that they would move into residential care. Thankfully, that is not the current situation when most disabled people want to live, as far as possible, independent lives in their own community, and DLA has been crucial for many disabled people as they move into that environment of independence, choice and control over their own lives.

I listened carefully to the Minister’s statement. In the short time available to us, I have not been able to scrutinise carefully the detail of the new assessment criteria, but I shall make some initial remarks. I welcome some of the changes that the Government have made, including the broadening of approach and the mirroring of the DLA linking rules. I welcome too the fact that the Government have recognised that the initial proposal on the speed of the assessment was unrealistic, and there will now be a significantly slower reassessment process. Nevertheless, we are still looking at June 2013 as the vesting date for new cases and we have not yet properly scrutinised the new criteria, so although I welcome the change in the speed of the assessment, I think there are still some issues about the new cases coming on in June 2013.

We will apply stringent tests to the new PIP assessments. Let me ask the Minister some specific questions. Given that DLA support allows many people to travel to work, will the Government give a commitment that it will not be taken away from anyone who is in work? In other words, if they are currently on DLA and are currently in employment, will the Minister give a commitment that the financial integrity of disabled people who go to work will not be undermined?

The Government are protecting under-16s and those over the age of 65, so how does the Minister’s claim that she is maintaining the overall budget square with that protection at each end of the age spectrum? If one looks at the demography, one clearly sees that there is a disproportionate impact on working-age disabled people. The Minister makes great play of the fact that the budget will remain the same, but I want to remind her of the comments made by her predecessor and other Members on the Front Bench, including the Secretary of State, that greater support would be given to those with the most severe disability. I wonder how that marries with the fact that the rates for the new PIP will be exactly the same as the current rates for DLA. That seems to be a conundrum.

The new criteria must not push people into social care or into the NHS. What discussions has the Minister had with the Department for Communities and Local Government, local government and the NHS to consider the impact as 500,000 people—over a longer period, admittedly—lose benefit?

May I also ask the Minister what the impact on carers will be? I think that there was a little confusion in her answers about carers on Monday, so I want to give her another opportunity. Carers UK estimates that 10,000 people who currently receive carers allowance could lose it as a result of the changes. Has she made any estimate?

I appreciate that this is a short statement so I will give a shortish response but I say once again to the Minister and to the Secretary of State that there is a whole raft of welfare reform changes that are impacting on the lives of disabled people. The Government have the facility and capacity, with hundreds of thousands of civil servants, so why do they not undertake a cumulative impact assessment of the effect of their changes on disabled people?

[Esther McVey]

I welcome the right hon. Lady’s words and her acknowledgment of the listening and consultation that we have done and the changes that we have made. I cannot give the assurances that she would like on PIP, as those were not the case for people of working age under DLA. What we can say is that everybody will be viewed as an individual when it comes to assessing their needs and that more people will get the higher awards—nearly 25% of those on PIP will be on the highest awards. As for carers, one thing we all agree on is that they do an incredible job. We will support them as best we can. I can also announce today that the links for carers that were in place under DLA will also be in place under PIP.

The Opposition never conducted a cumulative impact assessment when they were in government, and for good reason. I understand that it would be impossible to measure the impact of such large reforms and changes, particularly as they will not be in place until 2017 and the case load is dynamic. Even the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that it would be nearly impossible to do that. As I have said, I am delighted that we have listened to the disability groups, taken on board what they have said and made the changes they asked for.