Personal Independence Payment: Mobility Criterion

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, has tabled this debate. I also congratulate her on her persistence. I declare an interest in that I am a recipient of DLA and am eagerly awaiting the call for my PIP reassessment. It will be very interesting to experience it for myself. I do not have a Motability car, but in the early years of learning to drive I did. For me, it made a massive difference to what I was able to do. Because of my condition I can only drive an automatic car. The cost of hand controls is now around £1,000 and the cost of insurance would have made any other way of being mobile totally prohibitive.

I am very sorry that my noble friend Lady Campbell of Surbiton is not able to be here tonight because of the lateness of the hour. She asked that I ask the Minister about how people with hidden impairments would be affected, particularly those with haemophilia. One day they can walk but, if they have a bleed, they may have to use a wheelchair; so for them, this arbitrary 20 metres makes a significant difference to how they are able to live their lives.

We are starting to see a significant impact from the Government’s Welfare Reform Bill, and it is affecting a huge number of people. I believe that the 20-metre guideline is an arbitrary number—where does 20 metres get you? It is barely the distance from one wall of the Chamber to the other. How can we reasonably expect people who can walk only 20 metres not to require some sort of assistance?

I live in the north-east of England, where public transport is not particularly accessible. If I did not have a car, I would not be able to take my daughter to school or to work. As a wheelchair user, the knock-on effect is significant. For me to come to London, I have to use a train. As a wheelchair user, I am meant to book a train journey 24 hours in advance. This week, I was not able to, and so the only way that I could get on the train was to get out of my chair, crawl on board and pull my chair on to the train, and do the same at the other end. The impact on disabled people if they are not able to drive is quite significant.

I have a number of concerns, and not just around the 20-metre rule but around the process of assessment. My inbox is consistently full of emails from people with issues relating to the assessment process, and I have three examples that I would like to give. One person had their car taken away, and in the documents that they received back to go to tribunal it said that because they did not look undernourished, were able to communicate and could arrange for the payment of bills, they were not eligible for the enhanced rate. However, removing the car while the process is going on is very short-sighted. That person was unable to carry on working. This individual is now going through the process of applying to the Access to Work programme, which is apparently willing to pay £32 a day for a taxi to take them back and forth to work. That seems ludicrous. We are just talking about money coming from different budgets rather than the total sum. It must make greater sense to allow the person to keep the car until the full process has been gone through.

Another person who spoke to me is someone with cerebral palsy who is a wheelchair user. In the assessment process, it was written down that they could stand for an hour and no mention was made of the 20 metres. However, they were not even asked that question in the assessment process.

My final example is a woman who, on her first assessment, had a home visit and then a medical with a doctor. As her condition deteriorated, she asked for the mobility section to be reassessed. She was informed that the only way in which this was possible was to go through a full reassessment—there was no other option, so she had to agree to it. However, the full reassessment was 20 minutes with a medical professional at a walk-in centre; no home assessment was considered or took place. In the second assessment, her points changed quite drastically, but the real difficulty was that she was told that the mobility criterion had changed and that she had lost points. They assessed the wrong side of her body. She is a hemiplegic. In the assessment process, they said that there was nothing wrong with her left side—that was because she is hemiplegic on her right side. It seems crazy that the assessment process is doing this to individuals. A number of people say that it is very stressful and painful—they worry about it—but if they cannot even have assurance that the assessment is being carried out properly, what are we doing?

Will Her Majesty’s Government look at the failings in the assessment process? It is ludicrous that so many people are rejected only for the decision to be overturned on appeal. How much money is being spent on mandatory reconsiderations and tribunals for the award to be given in the end? It seems to be a total waste of money. Finally, I ask the Minister to talk with Disability Rights UK and the Disability Benefits Consortium to prevent the current criterion assessment process costing us all far more money in the long run than we are trying to save.