Disabled People: Mobility Benefits

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we have had a very thorough consultation on this. I cannot bring to mind right now the exact level of consultation with the transport department. I will need to write to the noble Baroness with that information.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister realises just how worried disabled people are. The whole transition to PIP has been in chaos. The Atos work capability assessment is a disaster, the bedroom tax is hitting them, disabled kids have had their benefits cut, and 100,000 people have signed a petition demanding a cumulative impact assessment of the Government’s changes. Is the Minister proud of the Government’s record?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are handling an extraordinarily difficult economic and financial position. As noble Lords are of course aware, we have had a decline in GDP of 7.2% from its peak in 2008-09. That is more or less the same level as what happened in the 1930s. Handling that decline has been enormously difficult and one of the most interesting things about the way we have handled it generally is that, unlike every other developed country, we have spread the inevitable difficulties across the whole economy, rather than, as elsewhere, the poor being hit far worse than the rich. That has not happened in the adjustment that we have made in this country.