Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I shall be brief because we have had some very full and powerful speeches from people who are intimately involved and who have specialist knowledge in this field. Like others, as I am sure my noble friends will go on to say, I would prefer not to see this clause in the Bill at all. I very much support the whole range of amendments that have been tabled.

However, I want to add my particular support to Amendment 75A. This is something that many of us referred to at Second Reading. It is the amendment that, leaving aside the issue of the disabled person, most protects the position of the other partner in the relationship, and it is therefore consistent with universal credit. In my view, it is the amendment that, if the Minister seeks to retain consistency with universal credit, he will do his best to support. Basically, we are again running the sort of arguments that we were having over second incomes and disregards, where the question was, “What is the return to work?”, and the Minister told us that he could not afford to run a disregard, even though the costs of childcare might eat up the earnings.

Here, we have the same problem in an even more aggravated form because here, above all, we need if we possibly can to keep the working partner attached to the labour market. We know that if somebody needs to care for more than about 20 hours a week, they probably cannot combine that with anything other than a part-time job. The ingenuity of the Lib Dem amendment is that it allows for something like 24 hours a week at minimum wage or thereabouts, which is pretty much at the tipping point where somebody leaves a full-time labour market and can manage only part-time work in order to make a generous and graceful contribution to caring responsibilities.

If the Minister cannot accept the push of this amendment—I will not say “understand” because I know that he understands it perfectly well—he will be saying to a woman in this position, who may be the working partner: “We are going to make it so unattractive for you to stay in the labour market and work that you, who may very well be tired because of your caring responsibilities, may have financial pressures and may yourself have minor complaints, will want to come out”. It would be infinitely better for her poverty, her health, her connections to the labour market, her sense of self-esteem and her social gregariousness to have a wider life that we should do our absolute damnedest to support her in the labour market—even if on only a part-time basis—and ensure that she kept that money. That is not a huge sum but it would lift her, as a parent, out of poverty and keep her in the labour market. If her partner’s condition deteriorated, we might be very glad that she had that earnings capacity behind her. If he died, we should be very glad that she had remained attached to the labour market and could, after a period of grieving, re-enter it. If he got well, and we would expect to attach conditionality to her, we would be very glad that she had remained attached to the labour market. On all possible outcomes of their partnership, it is in our public interest—the Government’s included—that we keep her attached to the labour market.

I feel very strongly that we have real problems with couples’ earnings. We have seen that before in amendments moved by my noble friend Lady Lister. Here, it seems even more damaging if we go down the parsimonious route of trying to peel off every pound that the woman earns against the partner’s benefit income. I hope very much not only that the Minister will take this away and think about it but, if he is unable to move, that the Lib Dems, who have come up with a decent and ingenious amendment addressing a very real problem—though it is not sufficient to deal with all the problems that disabled people face on the ESA, which need other amendments—will not retreat from the courage of their convictions and will pursue this through.

[Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen]

My Lords, perhaps I may explain why I am briefly entering the Bill at this stage. I did not speak at Second Reading and was not planning to speak in the debates but I have chosen to speak today because I received a letter from an old school friend. He went to school with me when I attended Caistor Grammar School in Lincolnshire many years ago. This friend knows a lot about disability because he is himself disabled. In mid-life, he went into hospital to have what was expected to be a very straightforward operation but unfortunately came out having lost his sight. When Derek wrote to me, I took his letter very seriously and I wish to speak briefly on his behalf today.

My friend is very worried indeed about Clause 51, particularly about the one-year time-limit on contributory ESA, which we have heard a lot about this afternoon, and the replacement of the working-age disability living allowance. With regard to the limit on contributory ESA, he points out that it takes no account of the often very complex issues that disabled people need to address in preparing for and finding work. I understand that the Government have estimated that 94 per cent of those on ESA and in the work-related activity group would take over a year to find work. That would mean that by 2015-16 700,000 people would be affected and 280,000 could have lost their entire benefit payment. The new criteria focus on a much narrower range of support than DLA and appear to fail to recognise the barriers that prevent blind and partially sighted people being able to participate fully in society.

The Disability Benefits Consortium, which is a national coalition of more than 50 disability and welfare charities and other organisations committed to working towards a fair benefits system, also wishes to see Clause 51 removed from the Bill to ensure that disabled people continue to receive the critical financial support that they so deserve. The Disability Benefits Consortium included in its briefing a moving statement from a woman who has Parkinson’s disease. She says:

“I’ve worked all my life and paid for decades into the system on the understanding that there’ll be support if I need it. To be told that all of this support could have an arbitrary time limit is both unfair and stressful”.

I agree. Clause 51 is very flawed and this would be a better Bill if it were removed.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I am not replying on behalf of the Front Bench at this stage. My noble friend Lord McKenzie will no doubt do that after the Minister has spoken to his amendment. I am particularly pleased to rise after my noble friend Lady Gibson and want to comment on what the Lord, Lord German, said, although he is unfortunately not in his place at the moment. No doubt he can read my comments at a future moment.

Like my noble friend Lady Hollis, I very much support the amendment to which the noble Lord, Lord German, spoke. However, I should think he finds it rather easier to speak to it here today, in the Committee, than at the Lib Dem conference. I do not think it would answer the party’s desire to get rid of arbitrary time limits. It will, to some extent, help the very poorest but it does not address the fundamental issue that has been raised.

As my noble friend Lord McKenzie said in opening the debate, this will affect some 700,000 people. I should like to talk about just a few of these, particularly older women with breast cancer who have paid into the insurance system for their whole working lives. I quote in particular Dawn Sheldon, who wrote to me. She said:

“I am terminally ill with breast cancer which has spread to the lung. I am in receipt of benefits, without which, I would have no income whatsoever. Under the proposed reforms, I would have to find employment. My concerns are that although reasonably qualified, I’d be applying for jobs against other applicants with a clean bill of health and a long life expectancy who would be more attractive than my own CV”.

As has already been mentioned, in addition to being ill with the cancer itself, breast cancer sufferers take very strong medication, sometimes for up to five years, with very unpleasant side-effects. Dawn says that without benefits she probably would not be able to pay her mortgage and fears that she would become homeless.

Other breast cancer sufferers have also written to me. Similarly, having been on strong medication for 18 months, one woman feels that she would be a cripple if she carried on using it. Therefore, she asks what benefits she should have, and she might come off the medication. That is some indication of how dreadful some of the side-effects are for some people. Another woman writes that she has a lot of pain in her joints at night. She has an eight year-old, so she is taking whatever she can to be here for him. The consultant said that it is a balance—quality of live versus length of life. She says that when she takes her painkillers her boss can tell that she is not able to work as well as she does normally. However, she wants to be there to see her son grow up.

These women have asked me to plead with the Government not to reduce their benefits. They are pleased that their tumours have been removed but they are not fit and well; they are struggling to keep going. While they have not yet been diagnosed as being terminally ill, it would be wrong to think that they are able to return to work. They have a choice to make about whether to take drugs to live longer and see their children grow up but, with that medication, perhaps be even less fit for work. The question that they pose is: if you were a prospective employer, would you want to employ someone with a history of cancer or someone who had to take medication to the point that they could be ineffective in their work—at least, at certain times? These women feel that the new medical assessment is a “ploy”—their word—so that they can simply be told what the Government want to hear: that they are fit for work, disregarding the reports of qualified medical staff.