Health and Disability Reform
Caroline Nokes Excerpts(5 days, 7 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mel Stride
I thank the hon. Lady for her response and the gracious manner in which she accepted my apology, which is much appreciated.
The hon. Lady said that she cannot be expected to comment on the PIP proposals, but I remind her that the work capability assessment proposals went through a consultation, and we still do not know where the Labour party stands on those. We have spoken about fit note reforms, we are setting up WorkWell, and in the autumn we will trial some of those fit note possibilities. We do not know where the Labour party stands at all on those matters.
One would have thought that given the central role that PIP plays in the welfare system in our society and country, the Labour party would have some kind of view on that benefit. But we hear precisely nothing on that matter because the Labour party has no plan. The consequence of that will be that, as under previous Labour Governments, the welfare bill will continue to spiral out of control. That will fall to hard-working families up and down the country to pay, by way of higher taxation.
The hon. Lady asked about the abolition of the work capability assessment, which, as she said, is set out in the White Paper. Those measures will not be due to come into effect until 2026. We will take into account the conclusions that may be drawn as a result of this consultation when we consider that matter. She raised numerous other questions, many of which are included in the consultation. I am sure that she will actively take part in the consultation as we work towards the answers to those questions.
I was rather surprised that the hon. Lady raised the NHS. This party is spending more on the national health service than at any time in its history, with a 13% real-terms increase in spending over the last couple of years, 21,000 additional nurses and 7,000 more doctors in the last 12 months alone, and from next year £2.4 billion additional spend on mental health services, to which she referred. That is on top of the additional £4.7 billion that the Chancellor previously set aside for more mental health treatments and, at the last fiscal event, 400,000 additional talking therapies within the national health service.
The hon. Lady concluded by referring to Harold Wilson’s comments on unemployment. I simply refer her to the fact that under every single Labour Government in the history of this country, unemployment has been higher at the end of their term of office than at the beginning.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
A constituent who has cerebral palsy has been in touch with me this afternoon to outline how he currently uses PIP. It gives him the freedom to live independently and work full time, as he uses it to buy mobility aides such as hoists and wheelchairs. His concern is that any changes to PIP might push those costs on to the NHS and reduce his flexibility to choose what to spend the money on and when. He does not want to be pushed into a cycle of renewal that may be too rapid and therefore cost the NHS more money. What reassurance can my right hon. Friend give that this consultation will enable those sorts of concerns to be highlighted and that, in the long term, it will give more choice and not restrict my constituent’s freedom?
Mel Stride
I thank my right hon. Friend very much indeed for that question and for raising the issue of her constituent. The reassurance I can give her is that we are aiming for the best outcomes. There will be a number of ways in which those best outcomes may be achieved—that is the purpose of the consultation—but it is reasonable to at least explore the issue of whether cash transfer payments are always the right solution, particularly given the growth in mental health conditions we have seen in recent times. The final point I would make is that we are absolutely interested in examples of situations where people have lifelong regressive illnesses from which, unfortunately, they are not going to recover, and to ask whether, under those circumstances, it is right to require them to go through re-assessments.
Women’s State Pension Age
Caroline Nokes Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mel Stride
I thank the hon. Lady for her response, not least on the apparent points of agreement between us. We accept that there are strong feelings about these complex issues, and she is right to say that they must be given serious consideration and that we should listen respectfully to all those affected. She asks when the Government will return to the House with a further update, and I can assure her that there will be no undue delay.
The hon. Lady made a slightly political point about the 2011 Act, and I gently remind her that the ombudsman’s report focuses on the period between 2005 and 2007, when her party was in government.
The hon. Lady asked a series of questions about various assessments based on the findings in the report. Of course, that goes to the heart of my response, which is—and I think she agrees with this—that we should look closely at the report in order to make those assessments.
On the hon. Lady’s specific point about notice of changes to state pension age, it has always been the position that that should be adequate. Indeed, in the last review that I undertook of it, there was a delay in the decision to increase the state pension age to 68 into the next Parliament. Among other reasons, that was to allow for just that point to be addressed.
What is particularly important now is that we will fully engage with Parliament, as we did with the ombudsman. On the hon. Lady’s point about the ombudsman, its chief executive stated on Sky News on Thursday, the day the report was published:
“The Government, the DWP, completely co-operated with our report, with our investigation, and over the period of time we have been working they have provided us with the evidence that we asked for.”
That is our record in this particular matter, but may I once again assure the House that the Government will continue to engage fully and constructively with Parliament, as we have done with the ombudsman?
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s comments and his emphasis that this is a complex matter—of course it is. However, the WASPI women have been waiting five years for the outcome of the ombudsman’s report. In his report and subsequent to it, when he wrote to various Select Committee Chairs from across the House, he gently encouraged us to keep a weather eye on how quickly the Government come forward with a solution. I recognise that this is an interim update, but I gently press my right hon. Friend: the WASPI women have been waiting five years for the ombudsman and they will not want to wait for a Select Committee inquiry into this report in order to see action from the Government.
Mel Stride
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s question. Let me reassure her, as I have just reassured the House, that there will be no undue delay in our approach to this matter. We engaged fully with the ombudsman— that included more than 1,000 pages of evidence and a full commentary in respect of the previous interim report that it published. This report is more than 100 pages in length and it is very detailed, so it is only right that we do, in an appropriate manner, give it the due attention that it deserves.
Child Maintenance Service
Caroline Nokes Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
As ever, Sir Charles, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), on securing this important debate.
The former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), has made the point that when constituents come to our surgeries to discuss their Child Maintenance Service concerns, cases and complaints, it is almost invariably a very distressing meeting. I will not rehearse every case that has been brought to me, but I will highlight some issues that I have encountered recently.
A man was in tears because he simply could not get the Child Maintenance Service to adequately explain the arrears on his account. On the phone, he would be told that he owed nothing, but days later he would get a letter telling him he was several thousand pounds in arrears. A deduction from earnings order would then be attached to his employer, the Ministry of Defence. It became very difficult for him professionally, because he was not allowed to be in debt, yet whenever he spoke to the service on the phone, he was told that he was not in debt. There are complexities and confusions that still prevail within the system.
Another issue that I would like to highlight is the flip of that. There are several live cases that I keep raising with the Child Maintenance Service involving 17, 18 and 19-year-old children who are no longer in college, but whose parent is still in receipt of child benefit. The paying parent is still being asked to make contributions, yet they can produce evidence from the colleges to show that those young people are no longer attending. The parent with care is claiming that the child is still in full-time education, but the child is not. They are effectively fraudulently claiming child benefit, as a result of which the paying parent is still expected to pay their child maintenance contributions. They are not averse to supporting their children; they are just trying to make the point that this is a young person who is no longer in education. When they raise that with the CMS, the CMS takes it at face value when the parent with care says, “Yes, yes, yes—they are still attending college.” It is hugely problematic.
I think there are times in this place when we should confess our sins. Previously, for 12 months of my life, I was the Minister with responsibility for the Child Maintenance Service—a Commons Minister. I pay tribute to the Minister here today, who I know is going to do an admirable job in responding to us, but I want him to take a very strong message back to the DWP: there remains a great deal of unhappiness about how the system is or is not working.
During my time at the DWP, I was desperate to have the power to remove passports from non-paying parents. Several successive Ministers—my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) and my hon. Friends the Members for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) and for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), the latter of whom eventually delivered on that power—all followed in my footsteps to make the point that taking a driving licence away from a non-paying parent hampers their ability to go out to work. Taking their passport hampers their ability to take their new partner on a weekend to Paris. I know which would be more likely to be effective in my mind.
In the intervening years, we have taken only a handful of passports from non-paying parents. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie), who has done so much good work on this, passed me a note that told me it was seven in 2022. It is just not good enough. If we are to have powers in place, like the curfews suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) or those advocated for by my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart), they have to be used. We have to make the point to non-paying parents that powers exist and they are going to be used robustly. If they do not cough up for their children, they will suffer the consequences. I regret that I still do not think we are getting that message across adequately.
Finally, I have veered away from the many times when I have accompanied constituents to tribunals and sat with them while their cases were heard by telephone; I have always sought to support them. I recently had a really concerning response from the DWP about a constituent who had sought a deduction from earnings order for a parent who had not paid for years for their children. The DWP responded that it could not grant a DEO because it was not confident of the non-paying parent’s address. We know that the DWP has the powers to look at HMRC records and that it can see where someone is employed, yet it was not confident of the individual’s address.
That sends a very clear message: if anyone wishes to be a non-paying parent, then they can just disappear. If they ensure that their partner cannot trace their address, the DWP will back off. To be quite frank, we should never be in a situation where the DWP backs off. Parents have a duty to support their children and I urge the Minister to take the message back that we must redouble efforts to ensure that non-paying parents are compliant.
Disability Action Plan
Caroline Nokes Excerpts(2 months, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
I call the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
I am sure that as an ambassador for the Special Olympics, my constituent the great Lawrie McMenemy will welcome the announcement that my hon. Friend has just made. Specifically, she has announced 32 practical actions across 14 separate areas. That gives an idea of the scale of the challenge when it comes to co-ordination and accountability. There are disability champions across every Government Department, and of course there is the disability unit in the Cabinet Office. How will she make sure that the challenge of co-ordination is successfully met, so that my constituents and each Member in this House will know who to turn to, and who to hold accountable, if those 32 practical actions are not delivered?
Mims Davies
I thank my right hon. Friend for her point about the Special Olympics. When I was Sports Minister, I had the honour of meeting her constituent. I share his passion for a very important movement. It is potentially life changing, which is why I am delighted that it is in this plan.
My right hon. Friend asks about the evidence and data around the disability action plan. The plan is there to improve the quality of Government health data, and to increase insight into the needs and barriers that affect disabled people’s daily lives. Ultimately, we will evaluate the impact of these policies and services, and we will use data, when they are available, to monitor and assess the outcomes of the plan. We will start work on developing more comprehensive evaluation. I know that, through her role as the Chair of the Select Committee, she will absolutely measure me and my role in this. I assure her, the House and all those watching that the plan is absolutely about learning, and delivering on this challenge.
Oral Answers to Questions
Caroline Nokes Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mims Davies
I thank the hon. Member for his point. I, too, pressed the previous Minister on this matter, and I shall be pressing myself going forward. In fact, we met and fed in work involving Thriiver in my constituency, and we have been working with stakeholders, partners and employer organisations to make sure this link is joined up. We are determined that Access to Work will continue to be fit for purpose, and that we will deliver a modern and efficient digital service. Our new online portal is part of that. I think it is key to hear the experiences and to link up with other Departments.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
I welcome my hon. Friend to her new expanded role in the Department for Work and Pensions. The last time I raised Access to Work with her, it was about a particular blockage in my constituency, and I thank her for resolving that. She will know as well as I do that one of the biggest challenges for young disabled people is the transition into work. What reassurance can she give me that she is prioritising the applications of young people, so that when they move into their first job, that is not impeded by too slow a reaction from Access to Work?
Mims Davies
I thank my right hon. Friend, and I hope I am the Minister for getting things done in this brief, as I have been in all my other briefs in my almost five years at the DWP. I will be leaning very much into those details. I will be very clear with the House that the focus on youth transitions is really important for the sector and for the individual people we are talking about. I agree with my right hon. Friend, and I will be looking into that in the new year.
British Sign Language Bill
Caroline Nokes Excerpts(2 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
Please be assured, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I am going to take my lead from the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown), but first I must pay tribute to the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper), who has done such incredible work getting the Bill to this point, and to my hon. Friend the Minister. She may have been pleased to send the letter yesterday informing us all that the Government were going to support the Bill, but that is nothing compared with the relief with which we all received it. Perhaps that means we are making much jollier and friendlier contributions than might otherwise have been the case.
As Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, through the course of 2020 I listened to a great deal of evidence from people with disabilities about their access to services during the pandemic. I pay huge tribute to those people who came forward with their stories of the challenges that they had had receiving information as BSL users. We got testimony from the RNID, among others, about whole families who had not been able to understand the rules of lockdown and how they impacted them. It is critical that, moving forward, we make sure that access to Government information is available for all those with disabilities, but on this occasion I want particularly to focus on those with a reliance on BSL as their first language.
It was not until a constituent of mine came to see me in 2019 to talk about an app he had developed that translated websites into BSL, which was being used by Lloyds Bank, among others, that it dawned on me that in many cases BSL users were not able to read written English to the same standard that we in this House might be able to. He was brilliant at explaining to me that perhaps their access to medical information was restricted and, as the hon. Member for West Lancashire explained, their ability to communicate with their children’s schools or interact with services such as the Department for Work and Pensions was limited because they could not read as well as they needed to in order to understand.
I made a plea to the Minister’s predecessor that a similar system could be considered for gov.uk, with BSL overlaid on its many hundreds of thousands of pages to make the information there more accessible to BSL users. I do not intend to detain the House for long today, but I want to thank my right hon. Friend the Minister and all those who have supported the Bill—all those charities that have come forward to us with information—and to say, “Please, let us not impede it any further. As we heard earlier, we have waited too long. Let’s crack on now.”
Supporting Single Parents into Work
Caroline Nokes Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Caroline Nokes (in the Chair)
Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when not speaking, which is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Members are also expected by the House to have a covid lateral flow test twice a week if coming on to the estate, which can be done at the testing centre in the House or at home. Please do give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room.
I will call Dr Rupa Huq to move the motion and I will then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up. We have had an indication, however, that Stella Creasy would like to speak and I am happy to call her for a short speech.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of supporting single parents into work.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. The full effects of covid are not yet all known, and the pandemic is not over, but this debate will examine some of the key concepts around employment, such as furlough, universal credit, 30 hours and flexibility, in relation to single-parent families. The pandemic and lockdowns in the last two years have been hard for everyone, but for the UK’s 1.8 million single parents, who work and care solo, some of the pre-existing financial, practical and emotional pressures have been exacerbated.
The Government like to trumpet their jobs miracle. It is true that at the start of the pandemic, 69% of single-parent families were in work, but many of those jobs were in sectors such as hospitality, high street retail and travel, which were hard hit by the pandemic. Single parents were more likely to work part time to combine caring and working on their own.
Dr Huq
The hon. Lady makes a good point. One sad by-product of the pandemic is the rise in domestic abuse, with people locked up at home more. Yes, those organisations need proper domestic awareness training and to be sympathetic; they tend to have very much a “computer says no” mentality. In the civil service—the Minister’s officials might know about this—job sharing is incentivised, and there is even a register of jobs. Perhaps we could universalise that across all workplaces.
I have not had time to go into the mental health issues that we have seen post pandemic, or rocketing food bank use. Pre-pandemic, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, found that 14.2 million of our fellow citizens are in extreme poverty. Who knows where that is now? With safety nets such as furlough and the £20 uplift now gone, single parents and their children are more vulnerable than ever to being pushed into poverty. Gingerbread estimates that 1.1 million single parents will be hit by the loss of the uplift, losing £1 billion over the next 12 months. Remember: the Government used to champion the just about managing. They need to do so again.
The APPG’s point is that all families matter. That is why we champion single-parent families. We heard from Adrian Chiles, Robert Peston and Shappi Khorsandi, and we would love one day to welcome that well-known opposition politician and son of a single parent, Marcus Rashford, to our APPG. We live in hope. We want to show that it is not always only the man from the Ministry who should make policy; some things get flagged as anomalies, but the single mum at the school gates often knows best. As we steer out of this pandemic, although the Government go on about the plan for jobs, they need to address the 1.8 million single parents—a quarter of all households. That really would be levelling up.
David Rutley
The point of raising the case studies was to show that there are tailored, local approaches that are working and are based on local circumstances. The situation in Merseyside is different from that in rural Lincolnshire, so we need to find ways that work in those different communities. However, I am sure that this is a subject to which we can return.
In the few minutes that remain, I would like to highlight the fact that the Government are considering carefully the recommendations of Baroness McGregor-Smith’s in-work progression commission. We will respond formally to the commission’s report in the coming months. We are doing a lot more to help with skills and, particularly through the national skills fund, to make sure that we can provide opportunities for all generations of adults who have previously been left behind.
Many hon. Members discussed childcare. I will not spill the beans on the childhood experiences of the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), but he makes an important point. We must find ways to help lone-parent families. The childcare situation has improved dramatically since his day—and thank goodness for that. Childcare is available through universal credit, and free childcare is available through the Department for Education. The flexible support fund can also be used to provide for childcare up front—as we know, most childcare is paid for in arrears. There is support available.
We are also doing a lot of work to support the consultation by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on flexible working, which is another issue that hon. Members have raised. That consultation is important. The Scottish Government have their approach to flexible working, which we recognise, but we need to do more to look at part-time work, job sharing and other flexible working arrangements, which have become a norm for those who have been able to work from home during the pandemic—not everybody. We need to look at the responses to that consultation, and see what we can do to create more options for single parents, which is a really important priority.
I welcome today’s debate and thank the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton for her contributions. I hope that she can see that we are making significant strides in helping more people.
Caroline Nokes (in the Chair)
Order. The sitting is suspended until 2.30 pm.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).
Covronavirus, Disability and Access to Services
Caroline Nokes Excerpts(3 years ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Fourth Report of the Women and Equalities Committee, “Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report”, HC 1050.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham, and I thank my colleagues on the Committee for their work on both the inquiry and the report. I am pleased to see the hon. Members for Jarrow (Kate Osborne), for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) and for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) participating in the debate.
With your indulgence, Sir Graham, I would like to highlight that some of the issues we will discuss concern children with special educational needs, and when it comes to autistic spectrum disorders, there was one Member of this House who championed the issue, spoke in pretty much every debate on the subject, and chaired the all-party parliamentary group on autism. Cheryl Gillan is already much missed in this place, not least by me today. I know that she was a real expert and spoke with passion and knowledge in debates such as the one we are having today. I am sure she would have been present to put on record her thoughts about access to services for children with autistic spectrum disorders.
Relevant to this debate is our interim report, published in September last year, which was intended to inform the first six-monthly review of the Coronavirus Act 2020 temporary provisions. I will start by drawing attention to an important outstanding issue in this context—one that has not received a great deal of attention. The temporary provisions included unused provisions that relaxed requirements for sectioning under the Mental Health Act 1983, provisions that curtailed or restricted hard-won rights of disabled people to get the care and support that they needed in their everyday lives—the so-called Care Act 2014 easements—and a power to modify duties under the Children and Families Act 2014 in relation to assessment and provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
We welcomed the Government’s decision last year to repeal the unused Mental Health Act 1983 provisions. We very much welcome the recent decision to remove the Care Act 2014 easement provisions, and we look forward to this happening as swiftly as possible. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work will chase that up with the Minister for Care at the Department for Health and Social Care. Although the easements were not widely used, their availability in statute exacerbated a perception, which has existed among disabled people right from the outset of this crisis, that their rights are somehow seen as less important than other people’s.
The outstanding issue from our interim report is that one of the temporary provisions affecting young disabled people remains in place. The power to modify education, health and care plan duties was used by way of national notices issued by the Secretary of State for Education in May, June and July. The power remains available in the Coronavirus Act. My view is that this power must be removed.
We are in a very different place in the pandemic. As the Minister for Children and Families acknowledged in a recent letter to me, there is much less need for the additional flexibilities, yet the power is being retained, for the time being, as a contingency. The Government have said they will act to remove temporary provisions as soon as they are no longer necessary. They have done so in relation to the mental health and social care provisions. It is an important matter of principle: the Government must not hold on to emergency powers a moment longer than they absolutely need to. Removing the power to modify duties in relation to children’s and young people’s education, health and care needs would send a clear message to children and their families that the Government fully support their right to receive the provision they need. I see no reasonable justification for keeping the Secretary of State’s power to modify duties in statute any longer.
Over the last year, my Committee’s work has emphasised the unequal impacts of the pandemic on three groups of people with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010; women, groups of black and minority ethnic people, and disabled people—the subject of the debate today, who have received, sadly, relatively little attention. Yet the adverse effects on disabled people have been starkly disproportionate, including tragically high death rates. The chance of dying from covid was more than three times greater for someone with a disability than for someone who was not disabled. The chance of dying for a person with a learning disability was probably more than six times greater than that of the general population. A young person aged between 18 and 34 with a learning disability was some 30 times more likely to die than a young non-disabled person.
Our inquiry heard evidence about decisions and policies that might have contributed to those tragic statistics, such as a relative slowness to protect people in a range of social care settings, and a lack of clear and accessible information for disabled people. That is why we called for a discrete independent inquiry into the causes, including the decisions made by Government. The response, “Now is not the time,” will inevitably start to wear thin. The Government should commit to an independent inquiry, including into what led to disabled people feeling the brunt of the pandemic, and they should set out a timetable not just for its start but for its completion. They should do so now.
A major theme in our full report was the Government’s consultation and communications with disabled people during the pandemic. We heard that disabled people felt excluded and ignored. Witnesses pointed out that effective consultation with disabled people could have made it possible to avoid some of the problems that they faced early in the pandemic, such as a lack of accessible food shopping. Disability charities told us that the Government were talking to them, but in broadcast mode—not listening and not resolving problems effectively. When the Government did communicate with disabled people, their communications were not always psychologically informed, and too often they exacerbated disabled people’s already heightened anxieties. There was confusing guidance on shielding, and it was sometimes poorly thought through and poorly timed—for example, a text message sent at the weekend before important changes to guidance were issued on the Monday.
I want to see evidence that the Government have learned from what happened. Right from the outset, from the Prime Minister’s letter to the nation in March explaining the need to stay at home, communications have not been fully accessible. There were no accessible versions of that letter for several days. I know that a great deal of work is going on in the Cabinet Office to provide the shopping list of accessible communications asks put forward by disability charities last year; but the Government could and should go further and faster. I find it utterly incomprehensible, for example, that the Government have still not arranged in-person British Sign Language interpretation of their televised covid briefings. I raised that issue with the Prime Minister at the Liaison Committee in January, and the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) raised it again very effectively at Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday. On neither occasion was a proper response forthcoming. The reasons relied on in written responses—that there is not enough space in Downing Street, or that there is not enough time to make arrangements—are weak. Surely the Government could have found space during the recent media suite refit. I am unsurprised that campaigners have resorted to judicial review, but I am surprised that the Government have not sought to resolve the issues swiftly and simply by finding both the space and the inclination to include a BSL interpreter.
Practices in health and social care added to disabled people’s perceptions that their lives were less valued than others. The guidelines issued by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence on the use of the clinical frailty scale in making decisions about who should receive critical care if NHS resources had been overwhelmed were potentially discriminatory against disabled people. We heard from disabled people that, while they accepted that the guidelines were swiftly amended, it left a very bad taste.
Extremely concerning issues about the inappropriate use of “do not attempt resuscitation” notices, or DNARs, have been much more prolonged. The Government asked the Care Quality Commission to investigate in October last year, and last month the CQC found that that hundreds of inappropriate DNARs had been applied. These issues demonstrate a deeply worrying lack of concern for the rights of some groups of disabled people.
We all understand the pressures that people were under early in the pandemic, but more than 10 years on from the Equality Act 2010, it is shocking that disabled people’s rights were not properly considered in the formulation of policies and practices in health and social care. That is why we recommended a robust response to prevent such mistakes being repeated. We called on the Government to allow the Equality and Human Rights Commission to issue a statutory code of practice on the public sector equality duty, to provide greater legal certainty about the actions that public authorities must take to prevent discrimination. Greater certainty would provide more effective protection, so the Government’s dismissal of our recommendation is extremely disappointing. Their argument that the status quo is sufficient flies in the face of recent experience. If there is not a statutory code of practice, how will the Government prevent these issues from arising in future public health crises? Again, we have to learn from experience.
The pandemic has very clearly emphasised and exacerbated known systemic problems affecting disabled people. We know that the SEND system is facing a crisis. The aims of the Children and Families Act reforms have never been consistently achieved. Services for children with SEND are too often inadequate. In too many places, the integrated education, health and care services envisaged in the 2014 Act have never materialised.
I speak as a member of the Bill Committee that way back in 2012 or 2013 scrutinised the Bill that became that Act. We spoke endlessly in our debates about parents having to fight to get their children the services they need. However, parents are still struggling in an overly bureaucratic system and the evidence that they gave us through our inquiry was that they are still using the word “fight” when describing their attempt to get their children’s needs assessed and provided for. The Government acknowledged that in announcing their SEND review, but that was in September 2019, more than 18 months ago. The experience of children with SEND and their families during the pandemic must provide the impetus to sort these problems out. We called for the review outcome to be published in the first quarter of this year, but we are still waiting. The Government’s response to our report acknowledges the importance of these issues. The Government say they need more time to get the reforms right. Of course time is needed to grapple with the complex issues in the SEND system, but if much more time elapses people will start to question whether SEND is the priority that it ought to be.
The same is true of the review of adult social care. There is no doubt that the devastating experience of the pandemic in social care settings was exacerbated by systemic issues of funding, of workforce—including pay and staff turnover—and a lack of proper integration with NHS services. That is why we were disappointed in the spending review settlement for social care and disappointed that there was nothing on social care in the Budget. We only know that the Government intend to bring forward their proposals for social care later this year. That needs to happen sooner rather than later.
There are positives in the Government’s response and I do not denigrate the hard work that is undeniably going on in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in relation to disabled people’s access to food and in the Cabinet Office on accessible communications; and the work that the Disability Unit is putting into the national strategy for disabled people. The Government have opportunities in the national strategy, the social care review and their SEND review to understand the particular problems faced by disabled people, their carers and their families in the pandemic, to understand the part they have played in those problems, and to start putting things right and restoring trust. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister in his response to make it clear that the Government will grasp those opportunities and do so in a timely fashion.
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Justin Tomlinson)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I, too, want to put on record my personal tribute to Cheryl Gillan—a sad loss. No parliamentarian did more to champion the rights and opportunities of those with autism, and it was a great pleasure for me as the Minister for Disabled People to meet and work with her, and respond to her comprehensive, proactive and constructive letters, asks and challenges. With my ministerial hat on, I would say that her greatest legacy is how much she achieved for those who were reliant on having that strong voice in Parliament.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) who not only spoke passionately in the debate but has, through her excellent chairmanship of the Women and Equalities Committee, held the Government and the whole of Parliament to account on a number of serious issues. She is a formidable parliamentarian, and is held in the highest regard among colleagues. Frankly, it is staggering that she is not in the Cabinet helping to lead the challenges that are often raised, and on which we must keep a laser focus.
The unprecedented challenges of covid have impacted all, including disabled people, as has been highlighted by the important report by the Women and Equalities Committee. In my role as the Minister for Disabled People I welcome the opportunity to talk through the measures that the Government have put in place for disabled people throughout the pandemic, and how we are responding to those serious recommendations. My involvement in my cross-Government capacity, and that of the Disability Unit for which I am responsible, is to influence and shape Government policies, sharing our subject matter expertise, data, and knowledge of lived experiences and connecting relevant stakeholders with colleagues across Government to reach the best outcomes for disabled people.
Before I turn to the specific points raised by my right hon. Friend and the report, I would like to say how proud I am of the roll-out of the vaccination programme, which was an absolutely key issue and ask of the disability stakeholders that I regularly meet with. The Government are now offering vaccines to all those aged over 45, those on the learning disability register or clinically extremely vulnerable people, and health and social care staff. I am very pleased that my own Department has linked with NHS services in England to share data on over 600,000 carers, allowing the NHS to invite those carers to book an appointment for a vaccine. This is a huge achievement, and makes a significant impact on the lives of disabled people as they navigate this pandemic. This is a good example of cross-Government work.
Turning to the specific points raised, from the very start of the pandemic, we have ensured that the views of disabled people and their families and carers have been taken into account when considering how best to support disabled people and link through to the relevant Ministers, Departments and agencies. Casting our minds back to the beginning of the pandemic, there was real concern about access to food and medicine, as a number of the people who have spoken in this debate have highlighted. In normal circumstances, Governments would typically take 12 to 18 months to develop policies, engaging, consulting and piloting before implementing new legislation. However, with the challenges of covid, that time was simply not available.
Therefore, by connecting key stakeholders with real lived experience, we were able to help relevant Ministers and Departments develop responses quickly. For example, we linked stakeholders including Disability Rights UK, Scope, Sense, Leonard Cheshire and the RNIB with the Minister for farming, fishing and food, my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), and her officials to engage through the food vulnerability stakeholder group. Within days, they were able to resolve this potentially serious issue, as the Committee report highlights. This is an example of best practice. Several speakers raised the challenge faced by those who did not get included in the clinically extremely vulnerable list, but an additional scheme was organised through 305 local authorities, Age UK, Mind, Scope and RNIB, which were able to then make referrals for priority online shopping slots. Again, these important changes were vital.
More widely, to identify potential issues and areas of real lived experiences, we have an extensive programme of engagement. I regularly meet with the Disability Charities Consortium, which includes Scope, Leonard Cheshire, Disability Rights UK, the National Autistic Society, Mind, Mencap, Sense, RNIB, RNID and the Business Disability Forum. That includes being joined by relevant ministerial colleagues to discuss aspects of the pandemic’s impact on disabled people. During covid-19, this forum’s work has included meetings with the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi); the Minister for Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately); and the Minister for Civil Society. It has been a real opportunity to share their expertise and help shape the urgent new policies that are needed to support those who are most vulnerable in society.
Furthermore, the Cabinet Office covid-19 taskforce considers disproportionately impacted groups, including disabled people, through policy development to tackle the pandemic. They do this through close working with the Equalities Hub and, within it, the Disability Unit, co-ordinating with other Government Departments and wider stakeholders to ensure a holistic approach to policy implications and delivery. In addition, we have regular stakeholder engagement through our regional network, which includes disabled people, carers, and crucially those with real lived experiences.
Turning to accessibility, I reaffirm that it is vital that public information on covid-19 is accessible to all, and we have made key strides in this area. These are things I was challenged on during my stakeholder engagement, and I happily raise these across Government. The Government are committed to providing both key covid-related guidance and communications in alternative formats, including large print, easy read, British Sign Language and audio. Most recently, this has covered ensuring that national restrictions, vaccination testing and the Government’s road map are accessible. We have now established BSL interpretation at the No. 10 press conference via the BBC News channel and iPlayer, available on all TV packages as part of Freeview. Accessible information is also available on the Government’s social media channels.
A significant further improvement, following the Committee’s report, is that the Cabinet Office now has a senior lead for accessible communications as part of the national resilience communications hub, who meets with a group of disability charities on a monthly basis. The group is briefed on the latest covid-19 guidance, including accessible versions, and works to ensure that communications to disabled people continue to be accessible and timely. Most recently, we held bespoke briefing sessions with the disability communications working group on 25 March, explaining the road map and communications activity, enabling charities to brief their audiences, prepare and share accessible communications through their network. I have personally pushed hard for that and I thank the Women and Equalities Committee for its support on the need for this vital additional layer of support.
Turning to health and social care, as we have seen, the covid-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the NHS and social care systems. Recognising the challenges in care settings, the Department of Health and Social Care made £546 million available in its adult social care winter plan, including money for vital infection control measures to ensure that disabled people getting social care and support are kept as safe as possible. The Government has also made £4.6 billion available to local authorities to address pressures on local services, including adult social care. Furthermore, the Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention announced £500 million for mental health recovery, of which £31 million will be used to support learning disability and autism services, alongside an additional £3.6 million announced by the Minister for Care for disability voluntary sector organisations to provide practical support to disabled people to mitigate the impacts of covid-19.
I know many disabled people and their families have raised concerns about easements to the Care Act, which were introduced as a temporary measure to help local authorities continue to meet the most urgent and acute needs in the face of covid-19, when local authorities were experiencing extraordinary pressures. The measure was used sparingly and has now ended. In response to concerns about the use of “do not resuscitate” decisions and the clinical frailty scale, the Government recognised the issues and guidance was changed strongly and quickly.
It is important to recognise the particular challenges the covid-19 outbreak has had on families of children with disabilities or serious illnesses. Supporting vulnerable children is a priority for this Government and has been central to our response throughout the pandemic. Turning to the work done by the Minister for Children and Families, the Government provided £40.8 million for the family fund in 2020-21, which supported more than 90,000 low-income families who are raising children who are disabled or seriously ill.
I know there are concerns about the legal duties to provide support to children and young people with education, health and care plans. The Secretary of State for Education has not used this power since July last year and has made it clear that he would need a compelling reason before doing so again.
Caroline Nokes
I thank the Minister for giving way on the point about the Secretary of State for Education’s powers. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made it clear that he would require a compelling reason to use them, but he has not used them, he does not plan to use them and there is much less need to use them. Will my hon. Friend indicate whether there might be a timescale for when they are going to go?
Justin Tomlinson
That is a fair challenge. I do not have the answer, but I will certainly make sure that the Secretary of State for Education gives a clear response to that question.
While the covid-19 pandemic has unavoidably delayed the completion of the special educational needs and disabilities review, the Secretary of State for Education is clear that it remains a key priority for this Government. It is vital that we deliver on our promises to children and young people and the DFE intends to publish proposals for consultation in the coming months.
Several speakers talked about the importance of disability employment. I am incredibly proud, as the Minister for Disabled People, to have presided over record disability employment. In normal times, when I have the pleasure of travelling around the country on visits, when I talk to young disabled people and say, “If you were the Minister, what would be the single thing that you would want to see?” the answer is nearly always, “I just want to have the same opportunities that my friends have for work and career progression.” I have never lost sight of that. I speak as somebody who has employed and benefited from employing disabled people, both prior to being an MP and as an MP. We have faced unprecedented challenges, but we have not lessened our ambition to have a million more disabled people in work by 2027. I want to reiterate that that has not changed.
During covid, we have made changes to the support provided. We have recently announced over 300 more disability employment advisers, taking the figure to over 1,000. We continue to review our Work and Health programme. All of the plan for jobs is fully inclusive, and we have made changes to schemes such as Access to Work, where we now provide support within the workplace. We will keep that beyond covid-19, which will perhaps open up opportunities for more people who have not been able to access work opportunities up to now. I am proud that we have reached 20,000 employers signed up to Disability Confident. The equivalent of 11.2 million employees are now represented by businesses in the Disability Confident scheme, sharing best practice about helping disabled people into work, to progress in work and be retained in work. That is very much a priority for me and the Department.
While there will undoubtedly be opportunities to learn from our covid-19 response in the longer term, the overall picture is that the Government have moved fast and flexibly to provide support for disabled people in these unprecedented times. The importance of cross-Government work linked to and supported by those with real lived experiences is absolutely clear, as it allows us to move faster and more flexibly to provide support to those most in need, including those with disabilities.
To ensure that that notion is embedded at the heart of the Government, we now have ministerial disability champions in every Department, with whom I meet regularly, with the full authority of the Prime Minister. They are genuinely enthused, engaged and determined to play their part on behalf of their respective Departments. In our forthcoming ambitious national strategy for disabled people, we will demonstrate the very real and vital focus on cross-Government work to remove barriers and create a fully inclusive society as we return to normality.
In conclusion, I thank all the staff and volunteers across the country working on the frontline, and in particular those supporting people with disabilities, as we navigate these challenges. I thank again my right hon. Friend and her Committee for their fantastic ongoing work, the Committee’s important report and the recommendations it made. The Government and I personally take them very seriously, and we are acting on them.
Caroline Nokes
I put on record my thanks to all hon. Members who contributed to the debate. I recognise that lots of Government Departments are very much in the frame here, whether it be the DHSC, the DWP, the DFE or, indeed, DEFRA, and my hon. Friend the Minister has not done a bad job of answering for all of them. However, what has been singularly lacking is the provision to him by those Departments of dates. When might we see an independent inquiry? When might we see the SEND review from the DFE? When might we see measures to integrate health and social care effectively from the DHSC? I ask him in particular to take back to fellow Ministers the message we heard repeatedly from colleagues about social care, the lack of attention on it, and the impact that has had on the lived experience of way too many disabled people up and down the country in every single one of our constituencies.
As my hon. Friend the Minister said, the pandemic gave the Government an unprecedented challenge, and in many instances there was really good cross-Government working to rise to the challenge. What Members need now is some sort of assurance that lessons have been learned and will continue to be learned because, should another public health crisis like covid hit us in future, we cannot afford to have disabled people pushed to the back of the queue, have their needs forgotten and feel, as too many of those who spoke to us of their lived experiences said, forgotten, marginalised and as if they did not matter. I urge him to ensure that that sensation is not left with them.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Fourth Report of the Women and Equalities Committee, “Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services: full Report”, HC 1050.
Covid-19: Child Maintenance Service
Caroline Nokes Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con) [V]
I congratulate the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) on securing this important debate, and I thank the Minister for taking time earlier today to speak to me about some of the cases that are of concern to me in my constituency.
Once upon a time, I was the Minister with responsibility for the CMS, and my worry is that our debate will degenerate into an attack on the hard-working staff. I know from my own experience how diligent they are—sometimes in the most difficult of circumstances, trying to track down parents who refuse to pay and investigating those very difficult cases where people deliberately hide their income. I think there is a special place in hell for those who go out of their way to disguise income to prevent their former partner from being able to feed their children, or to buy school shoes or a new winter coat.
From the work that has been done by Gingerbread and others, I am conscious that single parents have been hit very hard during this pandemic, and we know that 80% of them are women. As Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, I am extremely interested in how well the CMS has coped with the many cases in which income has varied over the course of the pandemic. Of course, that means that variations will have to be efficient and quick. As parents come off furlough, it is possible for their income to go up as well as down.
We know that the strain on families during the pandemic has increased. I thank the Minister for the work that he is doing with victims of domestic abuse, and I thank my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister for the priority that he has given to that. It is important to reflect on the fact that not all domestic abuse is physical. Some of it is financial, and I have heard numerous times from constituents over the last nine months about the financial abuse they have suffered at the hands of ex-partners, and how the CMS has been drawn into that as variation after variation is requested and income is disguised. I have been privy to the emails from parents threatening, “Unless you agree to this figure, I will just keep asking for a variation so you get nothing.”
I also heard this morning from a constituent who has been forced to contact her former partner’s employer herself, because the CMS has not been in a position to chase up the direct deduction from earnings order that she was entitled to. She feels very strongly, and she is right, that she should not be the one who has to chase it up. If the CMS has a deduction from earnings order in place, it should be contacting the employer when the money has not gone through.
Finally, I would like to raise the case of my constituent Stuart McAuliffe, whose issues with the CMS long predate the pandemic but have been exacerbated by it. Some of that is about the fact that CMS staff did not have access to records at the beginning of the pandemic, but for years he has been asking for a breakdown of the amount that he owes in arrears—the charges that he believes were wrongly levied as part of a collect and pay arrangement, when he had been on direct pay and had been paying regularly. He feels very strongly that he should never have been moved to collect and pay, and that those charges have been accrued wrongly.
My constituent has asked for a schedule of payments, but he has been told that that information is not available. Surely, it must be available. Anybody who is involved with the CMS should be entitled to look at a breakdown of what they have paid, what arrears there may be and what charges may be on their account. The only information that he gets from the CMS is that it cannot provide him with that detail. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister if he will look at the case personally so that my constituent can finally get some resolution.
I think it is crucial that we recognise that the CMS is working in incredibly difficult times, and that it has many challenges in front of it. However, it is critical that paying parents and parents with care are given the support that they need at this difficult time. As the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw said, no child should be going without and no child should be suffering because of the CMS.
Oral Answers to Questions
Caroline Nokes Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mims Davies
Place-based support and understanding is really important in devolving down and making changes on the ground. There is a great opportunity in the coming changes to the European social fund, in the shared prosperity fund and in the ability to work with local enterprise partnerships and local mayors, because young people may have fantastic employers around them, but never know that those opportunities exist.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Ind)
I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments about the national living wage and young people. On what evidence has she based the decision not to extend that down to 18, or is she perhaps considering providing the national living wage to those who are younger but still able to provide a great deal to employers in the workplace?
Mims Davies
My right hon. Friend knows that, if it were up to me, I would love to extend the national living wage down to 18, but sadly this is down to the Treasury; I will question the relevant Ministers accordingly.