Personal Independence Payments

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement to the House. I want to concentrate on the judgment on the mobility component of PIP. Despite what the newspapers may have reported, the tribunal ruling does not mean that anyone with mental health problems can get the higher rate of PIP. What it does mean is that assessors cannot arbitrarily ignore all mental health problems when working out whether someone is entitled to the higher rate of PIP to deal with the higher costs that they face. Despite the Minister’s comments, MIND has pointed out that the Explanatory Memorandum for the original Act said that the higher rate was right if someone’s mobility was,

“severely limited by the person’s physical or mental condition”.

If these regulations go through, it seems that someone who is blind and needs help to plan or navigate a journey could get the higher rate of PIP but someone who, for example, has autism or early-onset dementia and could not manage to plan or navigate a journey without help would not be able to get the higher rate of PIP. My question is very simple: how does that sit with the Government’s commitment to parity of esteem between physical and mental health and to the Prime Minister’s promise to tackle the stigma associated with mental health problems?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, what the tribunal said was that there was some uncertainty in our regulations, despite the fact—I am sure the noble Baroness will remember this far better than I can, because I was not in this position at the time—that these matters were extensively debated during the passage of the Bill a year or so ago and agreed in Parliament. The tribunal said that there was uncertainty and we are trying to put that right.

The noble Baroness specifically referred to the example of people who are blind in comparison to those with psychological distress. That was a matter considered in one of the two cases that we are dealing with. Mental health conditions are more likely to fluctuate than conditions such as visual impairment or blindness, and people who cannot navigate due to a visual or cognitive impairment are more likely to have a higher level of need and therefore face higher costs. What we are seeking to do, quite simply, is amend the criteria to reinstate the distinction between those two groups, as was originally intended in the order. It is no more than that.