Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Monday 29th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for meeting a number of Peers last week and listening to our views. Unfortunately, that has not alleviated my concerns about the impact the Bill will have on a significant number of people. Many people are already close to crisis point. They feel so beaten up by the changes that they are finding it hard to articulate. It is not that they do not care. They just do not have the energy left and are just trying to survive.

I welcome the changes in the permitted work rules, and congratulate the Government, as they have been needed for a long time. They could perhaps have been made before, but I am really glad that they have been fixed. I listened with interest to the noble Lord, Lord Young, on what it is technically right for us in this Chamber to do. We have to think about the effect the Bill will have on people outside this Chamber. I have received many emails on this subject from individuals worried about how these changes will push people further away from where we all want them to be.

My noble friend Lady Campbell of Surbiton made a compelling argument about the lack of proof about the incentive to get into work and about the contents of the White Paper. I should congratulate the DWP on our knowing so little about what is going to be in it, but it worries me greatly that we do not know what will be in it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, said, we are doing this the wrong way round. I understand that there is a need for us to save money, but I believe we can do it in a better way.

I have previously said in your Lordships’ House, and I will reiterate, that this change will affect disabled people in work as well as disabled people out of work. Disabled people in work will get less under universal credit. I thank the Minister for his letter, but perhaps we will disagree on the numbers that come out of it. To push these measures through, the Government are relying on the report by Reform, which is an ideological statement of the Government’s intent. I believe there are a number of flaws, especially around the erroneous contention that only 1% of claimants in the WRAG group end their ESA claims, as was raised many times in another place last week. The reality is that a simple check of the Government’s figures shows that more than 250,000 claimants in that group have ended their claims.

One of the many reasons that so few people ended up in work was that half the claimants were ex-incapacity benefit claimants and were too unwell for work. They have been through that assessment process. There is a great deal of difference between someone who is categorised as sick and will get better, say someone with a broken leg, and somebody who is categorised as sick with, say, Parkinson’s, where we do not know how quickly that condition will affect them. It almost feels as if we are putting the blame on disabled people, trying to fix them and not understanding the barriers that they face getting into work. Reducing the gap between those who are economically inactive through sickness and those who are unemployed throws away all recognition of those who are facing hardship through sickness and through no fault of their own.

I am sure the Minister will tell me that the answer is in the additional discretionary fund delivered through jobcentres. That sounds positive and it might be helpful to disabled people who are able to look for work, but we should remember that we are talking about an additional £15 million given to jobcentres to be used at their discretion with a range of clients, not just disabled people. Furthermore, this pales into insignificance when we think that the Government’s cut to ESA is taking £640 million out of disabled peoples’ pockets. It further introduces an additional round of bureaucracy, as claimants, many with mental health problems, will have to grapple with increasingly inaccessible local support networks, which will become a postcode lottery. It is thus likely to lead to claimants simply not applying for whatever help they may need because they just do not know that it exists.

I want to know what the support looks like. I was told by a special careers adviser that the best job I could ever get would be answering telephones and that I should not aim too high. That might have been 25 or 30 years ago, but right now disabled people are being told similar things. An adviser who works in a citizens advice centre told me that job coaches are telling people who are correctly in WRAG that they need to reapply when they do not have to. They are putting their support at risk, getting removed from WRAG, going to appeal and getting put back on WRAG. This is costing a huge amount of money and undermining everything that we are trying to achieve.

If job coaches right now do not understand the system, how are they going to be able to administer the discretionary fund? Reformers also claim that there is a financial advantage to being on sickness benefit. That suggests to me that they have no experience of what living on that amount of money if you are sick and/or disabled is actually like.

Universal credit is today a benefit that promises much but has yet to get off the starting blocks. No analysis at all has been provided showing how the lives of claimants with limited capability for work, or limited for work-related activity, will be enhanced by universal credit. It is hard for me to see how the Government taking £1,500 a year away from people who are profoundly limited in their capability for work will leave them better off under universal credit.

If you look at what others have said about universal credit, you see it reported that it is behind schedule, dogged by computer processing errors, poor communication with claimants and delays in fixing simple administrative problems. That is how it exists now. Noble Lords should remember that many of those people who are going to be affected will not be able to apply for PIP because of tightened criteria and will not be able to get support anywhere else. The decisions that we are taking today need to be clearly understood for the impact they are going to have on disabled people.

I agree that there is a lot of money wasted in the system through assessments and reassessments, and I have discussed that in the legal aid Bill. The appeals for ESA work capability assessment logged at HMRC have reached record levels; they are currently at 1.1 million, the highest for all benefits. We need to look at the system—that is essential—but right now disabled people are bearing the brunt of wastage in the system.

The amendment tabled by my noble friend is highly sensible. I urge the Minister to keep listening and think about the consequences that this will have on a significant number of people. I strongly support my noble friend in his endeavours.