Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton Excerpts

Thursday 6th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, I would also like to support Lord MacKenzie’s amendment and add something to this particular area. Can I ask the Minister to reflect on what happens when a disability assessment process, or an assessment process regarding a disabled person, is not properly developed and constructed in co-production with those who understand in detail what it is to live as a disabled person; that is, disabled people themselves? I know I am getting a bit of a reputation for banging on about involving disabled people in the issues that concern us. However, I understand from the disability charities and NGOs that I have consulted, as well as from the countless disabled individuals who have written to me over the past few months, that the universal credit assessment process, with particular reference to the work capability assessment process, is still deeply flawed due partly to disabled people’s lack of involvement.

This morning, I telephoned the chief executive of the Royal Association for Disability Rights, Liz Sayce. Many of you will know her because recently she conducted the Government’s disability employment support services review. She is very assiduous and capable. With a worrying example, she demonstrated where we are in danger of going wrong with one of the universal credit assessment processes, the work capability assessment. She told me about a woman who lives in the north-west and has end-stage multiple sclerosis. She can now move only one eyelid and murmur inaudible words. She was telephoned at home by Atos. They told her husband that she needed to attend a work capability assessment. When he explained that this was not possible, they said that they must speak to her on the telephone and read out a statement. When her husband explained that she could not speak, they asked him to hold the telephone so that they could read it out to her, so he put the speaker phone on. They said:

“This assessment is necessary and mandatory. If it does not go ahead, there will be consequences”.

The woman, of course, found this very distressing and scary. They continued, refusing to take into consideration that the woman was not able to be interviewed. They were working from a script in which there is no flexibility and no requirement on assessors to apply themselves to real-life situations or to take a different approach to different disabilities or health conditions.

This example, and I know that there are others, shows that the Government must develop a different approach to the universal credit assessment process. I know Professor Harrington has attempted to make this happen in his work; I have met him myself. He listens and he is a good man. He tries to understand and this is reflected in some of his recommendations, but the whole process has not been intelligently and systematically co-produced in any substantive way with disabled people and disabled experts. We have done it. It was and is being done through the Government’s Right to Control programme. Can we not do the same with this? The assessment process must not be driven by a script. It must allow for sensitivity and assessor judgment—personal judgment—as to when it is appropriate to change their behaviour and respond to a disabled person’s condition and situation. Can the Minister assure us that a more co-productive and intelligent approach to all the assessment processes for universal credit will happen, and happen more effectively?

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I shall speak very briefly in support of my noble friend’s amendment for two reasons. First, I was rather appalled by statements from the Prime Minister that the Government were for the first time tackling the issue of people who should be, but currently were not, in work. Really, that comes into the category of Boris-type statements, which are an imaginative reconstruction of events that did not occur. All parties—I am sure that I also speak for the Cross Benches on this—agree that we want to seek to help people into work, and we have been doing it.

When we came into Government in 1997, we had found that, particularly during the 1980s, thousands of people with some mild disability had been moved off unemployment benefit into what was then invalidity benefit, the precursor for incapacity benefit, in order to massage the unemployment figures. On behalf of the previous Government I took Bills to your Lordships’ House that brought in proposals for the New Deal for all sorts of claimant groups. It was never a problem, as it had never been a problem of trying to help the unemployed into work. They are always anxious and keen to do so. The problem has always been those who, for too long, have been economically inactive and marginalised from the labour market.

It is for that reason that I and my noble friend Lord McKenzie continued to follow these policies when he came into the department: to ensure that new deals into work for disabled people, lone parents and for the over-50s were brought in to help people who for some time had been at some distance from the labour market. I am delighted that, insofar as the decent supportive activity of the previous Government may be pursued by the current Administration, we should welcome it. Some horror stories are now coming through about Atos, and we should be joining our disabled colleagues in protesting about that deforming of what should be a decent policy.

Secondly, my noble friend’s amendment says that it is about supporting work for those who can provide security for those who cannot. I would like to spend a second to almost verbally amend it. Help into work those who can, provide security for those who cannot and support those who care; because those who care are left out of the equation. I do not doubt that the Minister’s intentions are as decent as those of any Member around the table in the Committee. However, one of our concerns is that of the 6 million carers, about 400,000 to 500,000 receive carers allowance, which is a passported benefit from what is currently the disability living allowance based on hours worked and the level of care needed.

We are still awaiting what will happen to PIP and the number of disabled people currently on DLA who will receive the higher or lower element of PIP and whether the carers benefit will be passported from the higher rate or from both rates. Until that happens, not just disabled people, but thousands of carers are worried, anxious and distraught that they may lose the carer’s benefit that they currently enjoy. I know that the Minister is engaged with this issue and I am not pretending it is a simple one, but I would be very grateful if he would, acknowledge first, the work done by the previous Administration in bringing those who are economically inactive back into the labour market, and secondly, that we all share a concern for the position of carers and if he could give us some idea as to when we will know what their situation is.