Personal Independence Payments

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating that Answer. I remind the House that these regulations were rushed through after the tribunal specifically to deny the higher-rate mobility component of PIP to people who were claiming on grounds of psychological distress, affecting people with Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia or various other mental health conditions.

In the High Court judgment, Mr Justice Mostyn said that these new criteria were “blatantly discriminatory” against those with mental health impairments and that they “cannot be objectively justified”. Ministers should have known that. On 27 March this House voted for a regret Motion in my name objecting to these regulations precisely because they discriminate against people with mental health conditions. I then wrote to Damian Green, with the support of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Baronesses, Lady Browning and Lady Bakewell, asking him to conduct a review mandated by that Motion. He declined to do so, so we ended up in the High Court.

I am glad that Ministers are not appealing the decision, but it leaves many questions, of which I can ask only two. First, will there be an appeal process for PIP claimants who are not contacted by the department but who believe they should receive back payments? Secondly, will applicants be entitled to a reassessment if they were given only the standard rate of the PIP mobility component after the regulations came through, where the cause of the claim was “psychological distress”?

If Ministers had, once again, only listened to this House, this confusion and distress for claimants could have been avoided. I dearly hope they do so next time.

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I shall respond robustly to what the noble Baroness opposite has just said by making it absolutely clear that this Government have been far more generous in supporting people with mental health conditions than the previous Labour Government, who put off any changes to disability support, particularly in relation to mental health conditions, until after the general election of 2010, which by then was too late.

This is not a policy change. We are going back to the heart of the policy intent and relates to those in psychological distress. We have accepted the Stevenson/Farmer recommendations, which shows that we are committed to supporting claimants with disabilities. We are also working with a range of disability charities to implement the judgment in the best way. We will look at appeals, to which the noble Baroness opposite made reference, but we want to make sure that we get the process right. We have already spoken with the charity Mind on how we implement the judgment. The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work in another place talked only yesterday with a disability charity consortium to discuss the decision and to hear its views on implementation. We will reach out to claimants and look at every one of them.

To be clear, we are spending over £50 billion on disabilities. We are entirely committed to this issue—indeed, it is one of the Prime Minister’s top priorities. I can confirm that this was never a cost-saving measure. The judge in the case made references to cost saving but we do not agree with that. Indeed, we have focused on being more generous through the introduction of PIP and, as a result of the judgment, we will rightly become even more generous in supporting people with mental health conditions.