Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, we have a mighty task on our hands. I apologise for not staying for the marathon of this debate and I thank the House, and especially the Minister, for letting me go home to bed early.

None of us are in any doubt that the welfare system is in need of reform, but we must do it with care. We have to do it with wisdom and, more importantly, reliable information—people’s human rights depend on it. It is my greatest hope that this noble House will do its very best to scrutinise and amend the Bill away from ill considered political demands and media pressure.

The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, has definitely demonstrated his desire to create a welfare system that enables all kinds of people to live with dignity and make their contributions to society. I believe that he wants a fairer, simplified system, which motivates more disabled people to take paid work and be active citizens. I am grateful that he has fought hard to taper benefits and to negotiate with the Treasury not to reduce the budget, especially that for access to work. Unfortunately, I fear he might have been less successful in his work on DLA, which is the area of the Bill that I will concentrate on today and in even more detail in Committee.

I should declare an interest as a DLA recipient. During the past 30 years, DLA, which in the olden days was called attendance allowance and mobility allowance, has enabled me to pass many milestones. Without it I would not have attended university. I used it to pay the cleaner to get me up in the morning and to put me to bed at night. That was the only allowance I had. I used it to get a job and to stop living with my parents—in short, to live independently. Along with millions of other disabled people, I will be affected by this Bill. The allowance was given to me for life and I am about to have my assessments again—I already have 25 other assessments. That is something to look forward to.

If disabled people are to be independent and take on responsibilities like work, they must be given an equal playing field. Equality legislation alone will not provide this. Providing financial support to disabled people to be equal citizens has been a fundamental principle demanded from successive Governments over my lifespan. It has lifted us from being passive recipients of care and welfare to independent people with life opportunities. It is a cultural shift that has resulted in fulfilling relationships, education, work and greater happiness for millions of British citizens.

Something must be desperately wrong to cause these same citizens to write so many letters and e-mails to Members of this House, begging us—yes, begging us—to reconsider the proposed replacing of DLA with personal independence payments. We reform to make people's lives better. So are they right to feel so scared? To be honest, I still do not know. There is so little detail regarding this reform.

Last week, I joined colleagues on the Joint Committee on Human Rights for a visit to Essex Coalition of Disabled People. The visit was part of our inquiry into independent living for disabled people, which will provide a good measure for this reform.

At this point, Baroness Grey-Thompson continued the speech for Baroness Campbell of Surbiton.

ECDP is a large, regional, disabled membership organisation, a centre for independent living. It has a remarkable record of involving and listening to large numbers of disabled people. It tailors its services to respond to the needs, wishes and experiences of those disabled people. One if its members, Hazel, was able to give the JCHR insight into the fears produced by the changes proposed in this Bill.

Hazel described her life as funded by a fragile construction of different benefits, a personal budget and voluntary support. She believes she is in danger of losing her higher rate DLA under the new proposals. She told us, “My life is like a house of straws. Once you remove one tiny straw, the house collapses. It's taken me years to feel independent and in control, to feel like an able-bodied person, to be human. If I lose out from the changes, I will stand to lose everything. Where's the sense in that?” All Hazel wants is for her human rights to be respected. Does PIP do this?

Let us start with the term “personal independence payment”. What does this mean? Can the Minister tell me whether his Government see independence as a medical barrier for assessment or a socioeconomic barrier? From what I have gleaned so far, the PIP assessment is largely a functional assessment of one's medical condition. It bears little relation to what many disabled people need to live independently, and largely ignores higher costs of living.

Physical or mental capability has only a small bearing on whether a disabled person is dependent or independent. For independent living to be a reality, a person needs choice and control in their life. Disabled people make choices about how to spend their DLA, demonstrating maximum control over their lives and thus becoming independent. For instance, the mobility component is not just about physically getting from A to B. The money might be used to pay for travel insurance, which can be astronomically more expensive for disabled people than for the non-disabled traveller, thereby inhibiting their mobility. Who on these Benches paid £1,500 for travel insurance to go on holiday this year? I did. That is the average extra cost that people with severe respiratory impairments must meet to go abroad. Assessing functionality can never determine economic inequality.

I ask the Minister to reconsider comments that he made during the 11 May debate on the new PIP assessment. He said that a person climbing Mount Kenya on prosthetic limbs should not be treated as disabled, for they are doing something that many of us cannot do. That is an extreme example, but it can be understood in two entirely different ways. I am sure that it was intended as a compliment and an acknowledgement of personal achievement. However, it tells us nothing about the additional costs of disability that people living with amputations must meet. Some amputees experience periods of excruciating phantom pain during which they are unable to work. Others experience extra costs in the form of transportation and housing adaptations. I am not sure whether the Minister believes that one can cease to be disabled by physical prowess alone.

Many consider appointment to this House to be evidence of accomplishment. Is that sufficient for the Minister to determine that I, too, am not disabled and therefore do not need DLA? Of course not—but that is what the assessment is in danger of leading us to. I do not wish to embarrass the Minister, but I will assure him that DLA has been, and continues to be, vital in enabling me to live independently and work towards my goals. Personal achievement must never be a yardstick against which we measure entitlement.

At this point, Baroness Campbell of Surbiton resumed.

From my mailbag, it is obvious that many disabled people expect to lose their independence. Do the Government believe that returning disabled people to levels of dependence last seen 30 years ago makes good economic sense? Disability Alliance and other notable organisations in the Disability Benefits Consortium have clearly demonstrated the knock-on costs to the Treasury in the form of increased health bills and a drop in revenue from those who will fall out of work. Will the Minister tell the House who is working on the cost-benefit analysis of the proposed changes? Where is their modelling? I ask him not to answer me by directing me to existing impact assessments. It is not there: they tell us nothing about this. Perhaps the impact assessments discussed in the Minister's opening remarks might address this. I am not confident, but I look forward to seeing them.

DLA reform, including the review, has not been co-produced with experts such as the National Centre for Independent Living. The Government have elected to revert to old forms of consultation, merely inviting contributions from such organisations rather than working together. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, expanded on this. I ask the Minister to read again the Government's independent living strategy. Disabled people know better than anyone the solutions to overcoming barriers to independent living and providing a good assessment framework. I ask the Minister to consider re-establishing the DLA/PIP advisory group that was sacrificed during the bonfire of the quangos. Noble Lords will remember the Government's disability rights task force that developed the most successful and significant disability legislation of this century: namely, the Disability Discrimination Act. Without the structure of co-production, I fear that we will be locked into arguments rather than shared solutions.

As I have run over my time, I will finish by saying that the term “personal independence payments” is disingenuous and should be discarded. It is obvious from the PIP proposals so far that the Government know very little about independent living. “Disability living allowance” describes the benefit well. It is about living. Let us keep the title—and keep living.