Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Lord McKenzie of Luton

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and I have amendments in this group. Our noble friend Lady Meacher has spoken most eloquently to the specific problems for these age groups. This is Report stage, and we are well aware that there has already been much debate about young people who have to transition between children’s services and those for adults. However, I remind the Minister that, coming from a medical background, we have tabled our amendment because of the specific problems for those who fall ill suddenly or who are severely ill. As they transition for all their care in the medical sense, they transition also for all their life events and social interactions. They struggle to move to a degree of independent adulthood and are faced with a whole range of problems that those who are more settled either in the security of childhood or, later on, in an adult framework might not encounter so acutely. For that reason, we ask the Government to allow them to be considered separately should it be appropriate.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, we have strong sympathy with these amendments, spoken to so effectively by the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Finlay. We had a bit of a canter around this issue in Committee, focusing particularly on 16 to 24 year-olds. I took from that debate, and the Minister may take the opportunity to confirm or deny it, that there is potentially scope within the Bill for a regulation not to require 16 year-olds inevitably to move towards PIP. If that is not the case, it is important that we clarify it, because it impacts on how we approach the amendment.

A number of questions have been posed which I should like to emphasise. The first is whether the Minister contends that the PIP assessment as currently constructed is fit. Does he believe that it would be appropriate for most 16 year-olds? The assertion is that it is not. Another issue is the extent to which there is alignment of ages for a range of things—the UN convention certainly, but care generally and education and training. Would it not be better if that alignment were brought into effect also for the purposes of the PIP and the DLA cut-off?

When somebody aged 15 is about to become 16, that is the point at which things change on the DLA journey and we move into a somewhat different regime. If somebody reaches that once PIP is up and running, do they inevitably have to apply and go through the PIP process at that point, or is there an opportunity for them to remain within DLA or perhaps migrate at a subsequent point? Otherwise, there is a real risk that these young people will the first to test the new PIP arrangements. What is the technical position there? Does somebody who wishes to make their first claim after the age of 16 have the route only to PIP and not to DLA? Would somebody currently claiming DLA necessarily be denied the opportunity to continue with that until, perhaps, the migration plan has run its course? I thought part of the noble Lord’s response to our Committee debates was that you could deal with this in part by the way people in the DLA system migrated towards PIP. One way of dealing with some of the issues that have been very validly raised in this amendment would be to use that flexibility, if it exists. If not, it seems doubly important to lock into the 18 year-old cut-off point, which is being pressed.