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

Baroness Thomas of Winchester 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.