Social Security (Disability Living Allowance, Attendance Allowance and Carer’s Allowance) (Amendment) Regulations 2013

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for giving us this opportunity to raise again the issue of PIP and the higher rate mobility component. This, of course, is the gateway to the Motability scheme which enables so many disabled people—including myself—to get about. I declare that interest.

I shall say a word about PIP in general, but turning to these regulations, I am pleased that Motability has stated that it aims to avoid recovering vehicles from hospital in-patients affected by this change. If the car has been adapted to suit the claimant’s condition, then it could be very expensive for a Motability car to be recovered and for the claimant to apply again when he or she comes out of hospital, and another Motability car has to be adapted in due course. Presumably the payment of the higher rate mobility component of DLA will continue to be paid if a person is in hospital for more than four weeks. Perhaps the Minister could tell me if that is the case.

Turning to other matters, I am very glad that the DWP is reopening the consultation which it failed to do on the final version of the PIP criteria. Even though the amending regulations should make the position clear, none of us who has taken part in these discussions has any confidence that the assessors will properly take the criteria in the amending regulations into account—even though they are mandatory. I hope that the new consultation will not be an empty exercise and that the DWP will take on board what disabled people say and change the original criteria if the consultation makes it clear that this should happen.

One matter which I am very disturbed about is the figure of 600,000 claimants that the Government say will disappear from their books once PIP is introduced. Where did the DWP get this figure from? Is it saying that these people are not disabled enough, or that they are now receiving DLA fraudulently? How closely is it in touch with the Department of Health, which might be able to enlighten it about improvements in treatments for many disabled people, meaning that they are likely to live longer with their disabilities?

The mantra we hear constantly is that PIP is to be targeted at those who need it most. However, although that sounds good and right, it is actually pretty meaningless because DLA and PIP are not to be means-tested. So one is left with a subjective judgment by a DWP decision-maker—heavily influenced by the assessor. Without targets, how will the decision-maker judge one person against another? Outside the Chamber, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said they would need the judgment of Solomon. Instead, they have the judgment of Atos. I know which I prefer.

Tonight we heard more from the noble Lord about the Atos contracts, so I shall not repeat those facts, which are very disturbing. In general, I supported the move to PIP, because of the inadequacy of the DLA form, but there are too many question marks over the whole process for me to have any confidence in it any more.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I want to make three brief points, but first declare an interest. Two members of my extended family have Motability cars and they are their lifeline. I shall make a point about statistics, one about appeals and finally a point about isolation. I shall try to be quick because we are pressed for time.

On statistics, as I recall when we were doing the Welfare Reform Bill, we were told that something like 600,000 of those getting the higher rate DLA mobility component would drop and about 200,000 of those on a lower rate would go up, leaving a net loss of 400,000 people on DLA mob. As understand it from our debates at the time, something like 27% of those people converted their DLA higher rate mob into a car. Therefore it means we are talking about the loss of potentially 180,000 Motability cars from disabled people who are dependent upon them. These are cars which in many cases have been extremely expensively adapted to them and therefore are of relatively little use for people following after, because they have been customised. This leaves the disabled person without any ability to afford alternative transport, because they too cannot afford those adaptations done by Motability. So on my first point about statistics, I think we are dealing with about 180,000 cars. If the Minister can correct me on this, I should be pleased to know, but it is a huge number.

Secondly, there are appeals. At the moment, between 40% and 50% of all appeals on DLA are successful. One reason is that there is often a considerable time between the DLA assessment and the appeal, by which point someone may have got worse or, possibly, better and, as a result, the evidence is contested. The problem is the length of time taken to hear the appeal. If it takes six months to hear an appeal against Atos, you lose your car after one month, you win your appeal, but then you have to wait for a new car with all the expensive adaptations while 180,000 cars are effectively on the scrapheap, that seems a foolish and unwise use of money.

--- Later in debate ---

I will now try to pick up some of the broader points that were raised on the general position and the introduction of PIP. As I have mentioned, clearly some Motability customers will not receive the enhanced rate of the Motability component of PIP once DLA reassessment begins later this year, and will lose their vehicle. We cannot reliably estimate at this stage how many people will be impacted as decisions on whether somebody takes a Motability lease are claimant-led rather than led by an assessment of their need. We are, however, working closely with Motability on that, and we will aim to get a bit of a better—

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

The Minister knows what the figures were in the past; why can he not project them forward? I am relying on memory now, of debates we had 18 months ago, but am I not right in thinking that he told us at the time that something like 29% of those in receipt of higher rate mobility turned it into a Motability vehicle. If that figure is correct, which I believe it to be, then he can surely extrapolate that to the numbers of gross losers coming down from high rate DLA mobility, which I understand, again relying on memory, was 600,000. Therefore, 29% of 600,000 brings me to my 180,000 figure. What is wrong with that figure?

[Lord Freud]

The reason that it is wrong is that we do not know that the Motability figure lines up at that same percentage into the mobility. That is the reason. As a rule of thumb, it is one way of going, but we actually do not know whether or not the kind of people who will maintain their higher rate mobility will be the ones with Motability. That is the issue.

One of the questions that the noble Baroness was particularly concerned about in this area was the heavily adapted cars, and I think she described it as the foolishness of moving a heavily adapted car back. I emphasise that only 2% of Motability cars are heavily adapted, so this is a much smaller problem; most are just standard cars.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I was a patron—or something or other—of Motability, and that is certainly not my experience. They may be standard cars but they have been adapted to make them comfortable. Even people who drove ordinary cars beforehand transferred to a Motability car in order to get the adaptations and so on which made it comfortable as well as possible for them to drive. Obviously I am in no position to argue with his 2% figure, but I suspect from my own experience that another 20%, 30% or 40% will be using a Motability car which, to some extent or other, has been personalised or tailored for their use.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I do not think we have time to debate what heavily adapted comprises. However, the figure for cars heavily adapted for a disabled person is 2%. Clearly, we all personalise cars to some extent. I can let the noble Baroness have some more information on that to the extent that I have it, but that is the figure that I have. I confirm that the noble Lord, Lord Sterling, is looking carefully at how Motability can help to mitigate the impact for those who may be affected by the move to PIP.