Welfare: Personal Independence Payment

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, autism is, as the noble Lord points out, a really difficult area for people. It is difficult to understand and see sometimes, but we have a comprehensive training set-up for ATOS and Capita, which will be conducting the assessment. Clearly, each of those people will need to be approved by the DWP. Autism is among a group of quite difficult things to assess, and I personally take his point about its importance. The Government take his point and we will make sure that, when we give the approvals for that, it is one of the issues that is dealt with absolutely properly.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, I am very disappointed that this issue did not come to the Floor of the House for proper debate. At the very least, the change to 20 metres should have been clearly stated in the consultation documents. The lack of consultation with disabled people and all supporting evidence from experts in disability access as to what distance enables practical mobility and participation mean that there is a real risk that this issue will be open to judicial review. Is the Minister willing to take that risk?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the change was made because there was great concern among disability organisations about the previous draft. The concern was that only people in wheelchairs would qualify for the higher rate—that was picked up by Parkinson’s UK, the Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Disability Benefits Consortium and the National AIDS Trust, among others. That is why the change was made. I admit that I would have preferred there to have been more consultation on the 20 metres, but there is no effective change in the number of people receiving higher-rate mobility allowance because of this change. I hope that noble Lords will accept my assurances on this. That change has made it clearer and simpler to operate this measure; it has not changed the numbers affected. Before we start reassessing people in 2015, we will have had a full independent review which will have gone through this issue, among others, by the end of 2014.