Disability Benefits: Assessments

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Elliot Colburn]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady; she makes a good point. She has glimpsed a bit further into my speech, but if she is happy to bear with me I will certainly cover that point.

Without adding too much to the list of asks for the Minister, what does he think about giving a greater role to specialists who are more known to the claimant?

I want to move on to talk about the assessment process and the wider system. Often, claimants, faced with something with which they have previously had little or no contact, will talk about a sense of interrogation or mistrust between them and the assessor—I have heard those words from claimants many times. As I say, almost every conversation I have had with a constituent or one of the petition creators has been prefaced with a line about nervousness, stress or other emotions in the lead-up to the assessment, alongside any physical or mental difficulties that a claimant may have. All too often, perhaps unintentionally or unwittingly, they are left feeling like they are a case number rather than a person.

Let me bring up another example, which is also about a PIP claimant with mobility-based problems. They turned up for their assessment and the lift in the assessment centre was broken. Despite their mobility issues and fearing that if they were not able to attend there might be consequences, they attempted to climb the stairs. After a significant amount of time, they managed to arrive for their assessment, but it had caused them a great deal of pain and a lot of stress, and the fact that they were able to get up the stairs was then used against them in the report.

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I concur with the point that the hon. Member made about the sense of interrogation that many of our constituents feel when going through a process that can be very degrading. In the case of one of my constituents the assessor dropped a pen, and when my constituent bent down, picked it up and handed it to the assessor, that was used against them in their assessment. Such stories are not uncommon. We need urgent and radical reform to make sure that people are not treated like criminals for trying to seek help with their living costs.

[Elliot Colburn]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. Her point about her constituent is well made and chimes with what we have heard from the creators of the petitions.

To return to my example, the lift was broken and the PIP claimant had no option but to attempt the stairs. That case is echoed elsewhere, as the hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) has just described. The strongest arguments made by the petition creators, whom I met before today’s debate, were about how the assessments are conducted, the time taken to conduct them, where they are conducted and who they are conducted by. In a report on the PIP assessment process, Mind, the mental health charity, found that people felt the process tries to catch them out. I am sure the Minister will agree that if that is the perception, that needs to change; we need to listen to the claimants to figure out why that is.

We have seen some alternatives offered, which I am sure we will hear more about from colleagues from Scotland. I will not steal anything from their speeches, so I will move on.

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[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I thank the Petitions Committee for selecting today’s debate and the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for opening our discussion.

Probably like all MPs present, PIP and legacy disability benefits issues form a huge part of my constituency case load. I pay tribute to my casework team—Paula, Sean, Sarah and Leigh—for their help in supporting my constituents in Warrington North. Given all the cuts to citizens advice bureaux and other support, MPs’ offices increasingly pick up the pieces of a broken welfare and health system, so we can never give our teams enough credit for their diligence in helping us to help our most vulnerable constituents. My team all have an excellent track record when it comes to appeals in this subject area.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for multiple sclerosis, I will focus my remarks on the specificities of the experience of those with MS—first, for the sake of brevity, because colleagues have already made some of the general points far better than I would, and secondly, because the experience of those with MS seems to be overlooked in policy terms because it is too common to be considered a rare condition but too rare to be considered alongside more common illnesses. My remarks will nevertheless be relevant to the one in six people living with a neurological condition and to people with conditions that are functionally similar to MS.

As chair of the APPG for MS, before recess I chaired a joint meeting with the APPG for Parkinson’s and the APPG on Crohn’s and colitis, to discuss PIP. We heard how often people with fluctuating conditions are let down by the PIP system. In the UK, more than 130,000 people have multiple sclerosis. Living with MS is hard. Although no two people with MS are the same, there are numerous common symptoms that can significantly impact people’s lives, ranging from those that are more visible, such as problems with walking and moving around, to those that are less visible, such as pain, fatigue and cognitive issues.

Symptoms regularly fluctuate: one day, someone might be active and able to go about their daily business, but the next day it can feel impossible for them to get out of bed. Welfare support is therefore vital for many people with MS to manage their extra living costs, to help with the good days and the bad. The extra costs place a significant financial strain on disabled people, and PIP can help people to stay in work for longer, to participate fully in society and to retain their independence.

Ten years since its introduction, the PIP process still fails to adequately recognise the fluctuating nature of MS and other fluctuating conditions. It does not allow people with MS to properly communicate some of their less visible symptoms, which none the less can prove extremely debilitating. What is more, according to new evidence from the MS Society, which provides the secretariat for the APPG, it leaves people with MS feeling anxious, stressed and embarrassed.

Earlier this summer, the MS Society surveyed more than 3,500 people living with the condition about their experiences with PIP, and it will publish a report next month. The preliminary findings show that almost three in five people—57.5%—said that they were unable to accurately explain their condition and how it affects their daily life; more than 61% disagreed that their assessor considered their hidden symptoms, such as pain, fatigue and cognitive difficulties; and of those who saw their report, 61% said that it did not give an accurate reflection of their MS and half said that it contained factual errors.

The health and disability White Paper takes appropriate steps to fix some of the problems, such as by committing to improving training for assessors, but significant additional changes need to be made to the disability benefits system so that it is fit for purpose in 2023. I will focus my remarks on three key areas: the use of informal, including covert, observations, which colleagues have picked up on; the PIP 20-metre and 50% rules; and repeat assessments as they relate to people experiencing multiple sclerosis.

On informal observations, assessors too often make decisions based on how people look during their assessment. For example, at the meeting to which I referred earlier, Bethen, Neil and Julia, who all live with MS, shared their experiences. Bethen saw in her report that she was awarded nothing because she was “holding a bag” in her assessment. That was despite tripping over during the assessment and displaying obvious evidence of struggling with mobility. Neil’s report came back stating that he

“navigated the test centre well”.

Julia’s report marked her as being able to prepare her own food, on the basis of being able to cut up a banana herself.

PIP guidance states that assessors should

“balance informal observations with evidence from professionals who may have observed the claimant more regularly.”

That clearly is not happening. Guidance is not being correctly applied by assessors, or enforced by the DWP. People who have seen their assessment report say that informal observations are given more weight than the medical evidence. In fact, only 22% of people with MS said that their report referenced evidence gathered from their healthcare professional. Another person with MS told the MS Society that

“no one was reading about the information presented to them by medical experts and effectively accused me of lying.”

Informal observations must be backed up by evidence from the claimant or, if an informal observation is given more weight than evidence to make an assessment about someone’s ability to do a particular activity, the reason for doing so should be fully justified in the assessment report. Additionally, assessors should inform people with MS that they are subject to those informal observations.

PIP guidance should be changed to say that the reliability criteria should be applied, which could be through follow-up questions if someone is observed to be doing something that contradicts the evidence provided. I ask the Minister, in his remarks, to provide assurances on what the Department will to do improve the enforcement of the guidance by his Department.

My second point relates to the PIP 20-metre rule. The rule means that someone who can walk one step more than 20 metres is ineligible for the highest rate of mobility support. How a person functions under clinical testing and in their natural environment can clearly be different. Twenty metres represents a snapshot of someone’s day. That does not take into account the impact that MS symptoms such as fatigue can have for days or weeks after people attend their assessment. Symptoms can also affect people differently from day to day.

Another example of how the PIP system is stacked against people with multiple sclerosis and other fluctuating conditions is the 50% rule, which is a rigid and arbitrary test that requires symptoms to affect someone for more than half of a given period in order to count towards a PIP claim. I join the MS Society and Parkinson’s UK in calling for the Government to scrap the PIP 20-metre rule and to work with experts to come up with an appropriate alternative that considers conditions that fluctuate, or relapse and remit, and that have hidden symptoms. The 50% rule should be more flexible so as to cover and consider the frequency, severity and impact of all symptoms over time.

Finally, the White Paper commits to the introduction of a severe disability group for progressive conditions that have no cure, which I welcome. Over one third of those who described their MS as being at an advanced stage received an award length of two to five years and 5% received an award length of two years. MS is a progressive, lifelong condition for which there is no cure, and it is just wrong that those who have already been deemed eligible for maximum support on PIP have to go through the stress and turmoil of applying for PIP again. I would appreciate the Minister outlining when the DWP intends to set out which conditions will be covered as part of the severe disability group. Will that include multiple sclerosis?

To summarise, I am sure that the Minister agrees that disabled people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, but surely he can see that the PIP assessment process demonstrates an antiquated and outdated understanding of what disability is, based on a narrow definition of disability. That needs to be brought into the 21st century once and for all. The PIP process and criteria should accurately reflect the impact of living with MS, including mobility, fluctuation and hidden symptoms, with a move away from arbitrary measures towards a more flexible approach.

Members in this room will have heard regularly from constituents who have been treated with contempt by the system, with two thirds of people with MS saying that their experience of the PIP process had a negative impact on their health, and two in five saying that that experience made them feel embarrassed. I hope that it is us who are embarrassed by those statistics. I hope the Minister will listen to the experience of those with MS and bring forward changes such as those that I have set out today. I would welcome the opportunity to meet the Minister and the MS Society to thrash out some of these issues in greater detail.

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[Tom Pursglove]

The right hon. Member will be aware that the Government have set out that there will be transitional cash protection. There was the statistical release that we undertook to make available, which has now been published. We are carefully working through what the reform model means, and how individuals can best be supported to ensure that we unlock the potential to work where that is right and appropriate for people. As I say, it is important that the transitional protection be in place as we move to the new system.

There was a question about timescales for reform. We will seek to legislate for the reform in the next Parliament; we will then roll it out in a safe, stable way, and bring about the change incrementally and gradually, area by area, to ensure that we get this right. These are live discussions as we workshop and work through specific aspects of the reforms.

I am conscious that the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee raised quite a lot of questions; I will answer as many of them as I can. If there is anything that I miss, I will gladly follow up with the Committee.

[Charlotte Nichols]

The Minister speaks about reforms and live, ongoing discussions. Can he confirm that he is having conversations with Treasury colleagues about not just the eligibility criteria for the reforms and support, but their adequacy? To use MS as an example again, the average cost of having MS is an additional £337 a month. Can the Minister confirm that the issue is not just eligibility, but the adequacy of the support to meet the additional costs faced by disabled people with various conditions?

[Tom Pursglove]

There is ongoing work to review the cost of living payments that the Government have made available in the current climate. I anticipate that the results will come forward over the autumn and inform future decisions that we make. We continue to have conversations with the Treasury about the support that we provide. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will take his annual uprating decisions over the coming months as well, so we should be able to provide assurance in due course on where we go from here on the uprating or otherwise of benefits, taking into account the circumstances, as appropriate, in a thorough-going fashion.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), touched on means-testing for the personal independence payment, or changes to eligibility for PIP. I can confirm that there are no plans for that. I want to be very clear about that.

I will finish on a point that I made earlier. The UC health top-up will be passported via eligibility for any element of PIP. That reduces the number of assessments that people need to undergo and streamlines the process for claimants entitled to both benefits. I recognise that the work capability assessment is quite a point of difference between our Front Benchers. I was not a Member of this House when it was introduced, but I well remember debates on the work capability assessment in years gone by; we have moved on considerably since. There has been a lot of positive reform and improvement to the work capability assessment, but we think it is right to scrap it; we do not think it is right that people should have to prove that they are unfit for work to access the support that they seek.

Labour Market Activity

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I think the main point—I do not know the specific example to which the hon. Gentleman refers—is that under UC the whole driving principle is that work always pays. As someone gets into work, the benefit is tapered away, but none the less work always pays. That is why we are looking, in part at least, at these very low levels of unemployment and very high levels of paid employment.

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State says that work always pays, so why is the clawback rate for universal credit so high? The effective rate of tax for every pound someone earns when on universal credit is about 73%—far beyond what any of us pay in here, and we are in the top 5% of earners in this country. Why does he think it is fair that someone on universal credit should be paying an effective rate that is so high, given the clawback?

[Mel Stride]

It is true that at certain levels of income, marginal tax rates are very high. To improve that situation, we have reduced the taper from 63% to 55%. I would like us to go still further, and if we had the finances we would almost reduce it altogether, but that is not the reality of where we are. None the less, a substantive point remains that people are always better off under UC if they are in work, within the UC benefit environment.

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[Mel Stride]

If the hon. Lady would drop me a line about the point she raises, I would be very happy to raise that specifically and to consider it myself as well.

Could I turn to economic inactivity, and to disability and sickness? This Government have been acting, and we will come forward with further measures very shortly, which I am sure will be of interest to the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth). For example, our Work and Health programme has now been extended to September 2024, bringing an extra 100,000 people into support. We have rolled out health adjustment passports to facilitate more structured conversations between those seeking work, those seeking to employ them and employees in jobcentres. We have been co-locating employment advisers alongside therapists in NHS talking therapies. For those with autism, which is often a very considerable barrier to employment, we have funded no less than 28 different initiatives across local authorities.

[Charlotte Nichols]

I am very interested in what the Secretary of State says about the links between poor mental health and economic inactivity, but one thing I find particularly surprising in this context is the fact that the Government—the Home Office in particular—are specifically blocking research into new therapies and new medicines. Would he perhaps have a word with the Home Office, and get it to reschedule the drugs that we could be looking at for curing people with such conditions?

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Lady is tempting me to plunge into the Department of Health. I certainly hear what she has to say, but let me make a general point about mental health. The most important thing—and, to be fair, the right hon. Member for Leicester South made this point—is that we intervene at the point in the health journey that is as close to the labour market as possible and that we do so as early as possible. What we know is that the longer we allow those conditions to develop and persist, the more difficult it becomes to bring those individuals back into the workforce. That is very much at the heart of the approach I am taking in the work I am carrying out at the moment.

We are also providing more support to those who are waiting in the work capability assessment queue, promoting Disability Confident among employers and promoting Access to Work with disability employment advisers up and down the country. All of that has led to 1 million more disabled people in work since 2017, meeting our 1 million target five years early.

Looking to the future, the White Paper probably contains lots of ideas on health and disability that the right hon. Member for Leicester South has pre-empted and pre-judged—perhaps he has come to similar conclusions to those that we have already come to but are unable to speak about at the moment—so he should be a little patient.

On those in early retirement, who have increased significantly in recent times, we have taken action: with a £20 million fund we substantially increased the number of one-on-one sessions in jobcentres; we focused on skills, rolling out 50-plus champions across jobcentres up and down the country; our midlife guarantee ensured that those in that age group are confident in seeking work, understand their potential skills gaps and, critically, have looked closely at finances so that they know whether they can survive comfortably through to the end of their lives or perhaps would benefit from taking on some work. I will have more to say about the over-50s in time.

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[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, of which I am a member, took evidence on supporting people into work only last week. A few issues stand out, which I want to raise. We need to address people’s opportunity to work, their ability to work, and their prospects for work. For all the hand-wringing about the challenges of getting over-50s into employment, the barriers are widely known. Caring responsibilities dominate the lives of many people who simply do not have the option to take up a full-time job or longer hours. Indeed, many people in their 50s are caregivers in both directions: to their children or grandchildren, and to older relatives.

Only the Government can address this issue by finally tackling the two areas they have so long claimed to have answers for: childcare and social care. A number of right hon. and hon. Members have forcefully made the case for tackling those areas today, but the Government have not yet acted, despite 13 years in office. With one in four adults experiencing mental illness, long-term mental health conditions and chronic pain conditions keep far too many people from reaching their potential. They are burnt out and, in many cases, unable to contribute.

There is so much more we can do to support people and give them the tools to overcome their health challenges, such as the exciting international research into the potential benefits that psilocybin can bring to people suffering mental ill health, including treatment-resistant depression. We are stuck behind the curve, and I call once again for the Government and the Minister to make representations to the Home Office to that effect—to reschedule psilocybin, so that our universities and scientists can bring the UK to the forefront of this research that can offer hope of ending people’s enduring misery. Similarly, much chronic physical pain may be addressed through cannabinoids, and it is in the power of Ministers to make those more available in order to improve the conditions of people’s lives and enable them back into work.

But what jobs are available for people to begin, move into, or return to work in? One in six new jobs are in the hospitality sector, which offers flexible opportunities and is welcoming for marginalised groups, including former prisoners and people with learning disabilities. However, that sector has struggled to return to pre-pandemic levels, and soaring energy bills remain a terrifying prospect, not least for our pubs. Without a sector deal for hospitality to maintain those businesses and the millions of jobs within them—without people having the ability to take those jobs up—all these debates about increasing the workforce will be hollow. I call on the Government to address those three challenges, and to look at what they can do to restore the union learning grant, so that we can actually have lifelong learning in this country again.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the shadow Minister.

State Pension Triple Lock

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

We all know that this is an alarming time for our constituents, as we face a winter of soaring energy, food and necessities costs, but it is even more so for pensioners on a fixed income. In the past few weeks, we have heard Tory Ministers giving their out-of-touch solutions for the cost of living crisis: “Get a new job,” or, “Work more hours”. That is patronising and unhelpful advice for desperate people of working age, but it is even less helpful for the elderly.

The number of pensioners in poverty has risen by almost half a million in the last decade, and now the Conservatives will not even commit to maintaining the pensions triple lock. They have already broken and back-tracked on so many of their 2019 promises that they have no mandate for what they are doing, but I warn them that if they abandon this commitment as well, the pressure for a general election will be unstoppable. With rising prices, hits to private pensions and the crisis in the NHS and social care, pensioners face a triple whammy if the triple lock is lost.

In recent weeks, I have been alarmed listening to the experiences of my elderly constituents, who, during my regular doorstep surgeries around Warrington North, have reported to me that not only are they not turning the heating on, as they are frightened of the cost, but that their estates have been going dark early in the evenings, as even keeping the lights on is becoming too expensive for too many. That is not just in the central six wards of Warrington, which have historically faced higher levels of deprivation, but even in our ostensibly more affluent areas, such as Rixton-with-Glazebrook, Culcheth, Woolston and Croft, where incomes and rates of home ownership are higher, and which we would not typically associate with fuel or food poverty. That pain and anxiety is being felt right across the board by our elderly residents in Warrington.

I want to draw the House’s attention in particular to the mineworkers’ pension scheme and the report published last year by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, on which I serve. We noted that the 1994 scheme’s sharing agreement allows the Government to keep 50% of any surplus from miners’ pensions. Since then, the Government have received over £4.4 billion from the scheme without contributing a penny, while former miners receive an average pension of only £84 a week, leaving them dependent on the maintenance of the state pension. This is intolerable. We made a clear cross-party recommendation that the scheme should be reviewed and the £1.2 billion reserve fund be given back to pensioners immediately. No progress has been made in the past year. I urge the Minister to get this done. Retirees in coalfield areas such as mine deserve better, and righting this wrong will be a huge boost at a most needed time.

As one of the younger Members of this House, I can report that many of my generation despair of ever receiving a state pension worth the name. They may think that this is a debate that does not affect them and is just another example of the Government taking from the young and poor to give to the elderly and wealthy, but they are wrong. If we do not fight for pensions to be protected and maintained now, we really will not have a worthwhile income in retirement tomorrow. The real-terms impact of a cut now affects future retirees even further—in cumulative lost interest in every future year—than the impact on pensioners today. I want to see social security for old age for people like me, born in the 1990s, and younger, not see it wither away now. This is even more vital as house prices have prevented many young people from stepping on to the housing ladder, so we will be carrying debts and mortgages to an older age. The way we challenge generational unfairness is by doing more to tax accumulated wealth, particularly wealth that is hoarded rather than invested.

The whole country knows that this Conservative Government have crashed the economy. They know that the Government are desperately looking for soft targets to make cuts, but there are not any more after a decade of failed austerity. The Government cannot be allowed to use this as an excuse to desert their triple lock promises as well. Old and young, we will be watching closely to see how Conservative MPs vote today on this basic issue of generational fairness and giving people the reassurance they need at this difficult time.

Social Justice and Fairness Commission

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Ms Bardell. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) on securing this debate, which has clearly been an opportunity for the Scottish National party to put their case on the record. I cannot blame constituents in Scotland—or in England, Wales or Northern Ireland—who are appalled at the Conservative Government’s failures over our social security system and employment law and want something better. That is perfectly understandable, and we agree with them, as I will set out. That does not mean, however, that we accept the SNP’s desire to break up the United Kingdom to achieve the changes needed.

The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) said that the Scottish people’s aspiration is for a fairer, more equal and empathetic country, but that aspiration is shared across the UK. Labour opposed the Government’s plans to end the universal credit uplift, slashing £20 a week from the people who need it most and undermining demand in the economy. Everybody recognises the hurt that that will do to struggling families just as we enter the economic uncertainty of the post-furlough era. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation states that the withdrawal of the uplift will risk bringing 700,000 more people, including 300,000 more children, into poverty. It could also bring 500,000 more people into deep poverty.

Rather than cutting that lifeline, the Government should recognise that that uplift was an implicit recognition that universal credit was too low to begin with. They failed to give proper support to legacy benefits, income-based jobseekers allowance, income-related employment and support allowance, income support and child tax credit. Those should have been uplifted all along. It was discriminatory and unfair not to do that, and after stalling for so long, the Government now intend to have parity for all at the inadequate level.

Labour would keep the uplift and extend it to legacy benefits until a new, fairer system can be put in place. The delays to scrapping the rule of certifying that a terminally ill claimant has less than six months to live caused indecent anguish to too many people. Marie Curie and the Motor Neurone Disease Association estimate that about 7,000 people may have died while waiting for a decision on their benefits claim—utterly appalling. We have called for the benefits cap to be scrapped, for free school meals to be extended over holiday periods, and for personal independence payments and work capability assessments to be replaced with a personalised, holistic assessment process.

In short, we believe that the Tories are letting down the public, particularly those most in need, with their mismanagement of the social security system and demonisation of those who need to claim from it, a majority of whom, let us not forget, are in work. However, the SNP’s Social Justice and Fairness Commission, which suggests a land of milk and honey in a separated Scotland, seems not to recognise the choices that the SNP has made with the devolved powers that it already has. Labour is the party of devolution. In 2016, we helped to ensure that social security was devolved to the Scottish Parliament, but it has treated it like a hot potato.

SNP Ministers twice asked the Department for Work and Pensions to delay the devolution of the benefits in 2016 and in 2018. Now full devolution of the benefits has been pushed back further, to 2025. Why should people have to wait for a supposedly kinder and better system that they deserve now? Considering that the proportion of Scottish pensioners stuck in persistent poverty has increased under the SNP and is now higher than levels elsewhere in the UK, and that more than one in four of Scotland’s children are officially recognised as living in poverty, it should be a priority—not a fantasy to put off for some other day.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I have been really enjoying the hon. Lady’s contribution. I appreciated that we would have some areas of common ground and some differences, but in all this it would be helpful to hear from her whether she appreciates that the report deals with the here and now as well as the future, that it is important for Governments to aspire, and put action in place, to make things better for populations, and that it is for people in Scotland to determine what their future should be, rather than this place.

[Charlotte Nichols]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She refers to the commission’s report being on decisions to be taken in the here and now, but as I outlined, the Scottish Government have been offered those powers and chosen not to use them. They could be making things better for people in Scotland in the here and now, despite the fact that they are still waiting for further devolution from the UK Government, which my party and the hon. Lady’s can agree is an utterly inadequate Government in all parts of the UK.

What about the small policies that have a big impact? Scottish Labour has repeatedly called on the SNP to mitigate the two-child benefit limit, but it has refused. It would cost just £69 million, or 0.2% of the Scottish Government’s total 2019 budget spending. It is a toxic policy that has hit some of Scotland’s most vulnerable families the hardest, and it is inexplicable that the SNP has not sought to scrap it.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I agree with the hon. Lady about the policy and all that it stands for, but perhaps she is missing the point. This is an issue for this Parliament. If we look at it in conjunction with all the action that the Scottish Parliament and Government take to support children, and to make Scotland the best place for children to grow up, that would be a more sensible approach than expecting the Scottish Parliament to be simply a Parliament of mitigation. People in Scotland deserve better than that.

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[Charlotte Nichols]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and refer her to my previous answer: we both agree that this is an utterly inadequate Government in all parts of the UK, but that does not mean that the Scottish Government could not be doing more to mitigate the effects of the UK Government, as has taken place with regional devolution in other parts of England. Why has the SNP chosen instead to talk up the findings of the Social Justice and Fairness Commission—a commission made up of SNP politicians? Presumably because it is easier to condemn than to construct with the powers available, and certainly easier to make utopian promises about the future.

We know that the SNP’s economic forecasts do not stack up. The London School of Economics reports that the combination of separation and Brexit would reduce Scotland’s income per capita by between 6.3% and 8.7% in the long run, equivalent to a loss of income of between £2,000 and £2,800 per person every year. The SNP’s blueprint for independence, the Sustainable Growth Commission, proposes a five-to-10-year timeframe to cut Scotland’s deficit to 3%, meaning that a separate Scotland would face many years of austerity. If that happened, it would be cutting social security, not extending it.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for being kind enough to give way on one more occasion. I am enjoying our ability to have this debate, but may I point out to her that all the things that she has said are predicated on this place being in charge of Scotland and most of the levers of power? In an independent Scotland, Scotland will be in charge of all the levers of power, and it is inconceivable that we will run things the way this place runs things. The real issue is that Scotland cannot afford not to be independent.

[Charlotte Nichols]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, again, and echo her remark about enjoying a debate that, from the call list at least, seemed as though it would not be as lively as it has been. I thank her for that. As I said earlier in my speech, the economic forecasts that relate to the future of Scotland are the basis on which I made those remarks.

About 350,000 people in Scotland earn less than the real living wage. They deserve a better system than the one that the Tories trap them in and they deserve the genuine action that the SNP has refused them. The Labour party offers a better, fairer and more credible system than either of them—and I am really pleased to see the hon. Member for Glasgow East enjoying my speech and agreeing with me so strongly!

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[Will Quince]

On this particular issue, the hon. Lady and I will have to agree to disagree. The policy is based on the principle of fairness.

[Charlotte Nichols]

Will the Minister give way?

[Will Quince]

Let me finish answering first. Even if we park the fact that it would cost around £2 billion a year to reverse the policy decision, it is based on fairness, because the idea is that those who are in receipt of benefits should have to make the same life choices—

[Will Quince]

The hon. Lady is conflating two issues. She is conflating the two-child policy, in and of itself, which is a matter of fairness—it is about putting those who are in receipt of benefits in the same position as those who are not, when it comes to facing life choices—with what she refers to as the rape clause, which I refer to as the non-consensual sex exemption. That is exactly why we have that exemption in place.

[Charlotte Nichols]

I am interested in how a policy that, as the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire said, affects only a very small number of people can be unsustainable. We know that all money put into early years represents a saving over a child’s lifetime, particularly for those children who are in the sharpest financial straits because of their family circumstances. Those are, of course, no fault of the child, so how can this be a matter of fairness?

To pick up on the point about the rape clause—non-consensual sex is rape—how can it possibly be fair that at a time when we have a conviction rate of less than 1.6%, women are being asked to re-traumatise themselves, not only through the justice system, but in accessing the support that their families need?

[Will Quince]

Again, on this particular policy, we are not going to agree. It is one of many issues on which the hon. Member for Warrington North and the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire will not agree with me, and I understand that. They say, “It is not very much money. It is a very small policy—it is £2 billion here.” If I add up in my head the cost of the policies that the hon. Ladies have said over the past half hour that they would like to bring in, it comes to more than £15 billion, plus inflation at the consumer prices index rate, every year for ever more. We should bear in mind that we already spend around £100 billion a year on benefits supporting working-age people. This is probably a debate for another day. I think that the position is very much one of fairness, but I have no doubt that the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire will continue to champion this cause and campaign on the matter.

Our full focus must be on recovering from the challenges that the covid pandemic has created. We have protected all the jobs we could through the furlough scheme, and we are now pivoting towards getting people back into work and progressing in work through our plan for jobs. We are also focusing on ensuring that our children can catch up on their missed education and giving young people the right opportunities to get a foot in the labour market.

It is absolutely right that as the country begins to recover from the effects of the pandemic, we ensure that the welfare state continues to support the most disadvantaged in our society. As we have done throughout the past 16 months, we will continue to assess how best to target taxpayers’ money on support for the most vulnerable families beyond the pandemic.

Covronavirus, Disability and Access to Services

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Thursday 15th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Graham. May I begin by thanking the Women and Equalities Committee for its invaluable work in writing this incredibly important and serious report? The right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), who is the Chair of the Committee, made a number of vital points in her opening address, which I hope the Minister will respond to fully. I thank the Labour Members of the Committee, including my hon. Friends the Members for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) and for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson), for their robust contributions both to the report and to this debate. I join them in thanking the individuals and organisations that contributed evidence to the inquiry so that the Committee could provide the focus and consideration that the Government have failed to give to the lived experience of disabled people in this country.

The whole country has looked to the Government for action to keep us safe, and they have a particular obligation to protect the most vulnerable, who have been especially exposed to the virus. My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) highlighted that the virus has exacerbated existing inequalities. Although the past year has been difficult, depressing and frightening for us all, disabled people have suffered even more than the rest. I join her in paying tribute to the work of Inclusion London, which I have also met recently, in highlighting the multiple injustices that disabled people have faced during this pandemic.

As the report states, the Office for National Statistics found in September that almost 60% of deaths with coronavirus were of disabled people, even though they make up only around 16% of the country’s population. In November, Public Health England estimated that the death rate with coronavirus of people with learning disabilities might be more than 6.3 times higher than that of the general population. The report clearly sets out a number of areas where disabled people were unfortunately let down by a Government who should have done better to protect them. Instead, they were failed. The report sets out how too often they were an afterthought throughout the pandemic.

On the provision of food, 60% of disabled people struggled to access essential supplies in the early months of the pandemic, but the report notes that the Government’s definition of “clinically extremely vulnerable”—those medically shielding—“was an inappropriate proxy” for disabled people who needed help accessing food. That influenced the policies of the supermarkets, as the British Retail Consortium made it clear that it had been directed by the Government to prioritise the clinically extremely vulnerable group for online deliveries. We all know that demand for delivery slots increased vastly, and many disabled people who were not considered clinically extremely vulnerable had to rely on community volunteers. We thank everyone who stepped up to assist in that way, but it is not the standard of support that disabled people deserve.

The report calls for a Government assessment of the effectiveness of using the clinically extremely vulnerable definition for food provision, and we would welcome that assessment as well, because, in the words of the report, the definition

“may have contributed to some supermarkets overlooking their legal obligations to make reasonable adjustments for the broader population of disabled people”.

The report quotes the evidence of Fazilet Hadi of Disability Rights UK, who said that

“tens of thousands of other…disabled people felt that, for various reasons, maybe not medical, they could not go out either. It may have been that they were blind or had learning disabilities and felt social distancing would have been difficult. […] it might have been because they could not stand in queues for a long time. There are a whole host of reasons.”

That is why Labour agrees with the report that the Government need to adopt a social model of disability that recognises the challenges of lived experience that go beyond medical impairments to consideration of how we remove societal barriers.

The Government’s response to the report does not address that issue, even though it was the subject of a specific recommendation. Will the Minister explain why the Government did not recognise this issue sooner and urge supermarkets to use definitions other than “clinically extremely vulnerable”? When the NICE guidelines for critical care put too much emphasis on the clinical frailty scale, a revised set was published four days later. Why could the Government not make adjustments as they saw the real world impacts of their decisions?

I have discussed a number of the impacts on people with learning disabilities before, such as in a debate in December. At that time, the Minister for Social Care assured me that the blanket “do not resuscitate” orders were unacceptable and had been stopped, that the CQC was reviewing them and that an updated framework required GPs to review all such decisions for people with learning disabilities, to make sure that they are appropriate. My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) was absolutely right to highlight the horror it has caused disabled people and their families to learn that they may not receive the care that they deserve and should be able to expect in their time of greatest need.

The CQC has since reported, saying that

“poor record keeping and lack of audits meant that we could not always be assured that…decisions…were being made on individual assessments. Once…decisions were in place, it varied whether providers and local systems reviewed them.”

The CQC also said that of the 508 decisions put in place during the pandemic that had not been agreed in discussion with the person, their relative or carer, around a third— 180 out of 508—were still in place by mid-December. Is the Minister confident that all of these decisions have now been properly reviewed?

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside powerfully raised the crisis in social care and its impact on disabled people, alongside the harmful easements in the restrictions under the Coronavirus Act that affect the quality of care that they can expect to receive and the impact on their dignity. The report highlights the Government’s initial focus on the health service at the expense of social care, and the lack of personal protective equipment provision. That speaks to the Government’s ongoing neglect, as spending on adult social care has fallen in real terms by 2.1% since 2010-11, despite an increase in demand. Adult social care needs both funding and reform.

My hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow spoke at length about the impact on children with special educational needs or disabilities during the pandemic. On SEND, the report sets out how many children and young people received little or no support for three months, and it stresses the importance of the Government’s SEND review. I hope that the Minister can tell us in his response what scope the review will have to consider the focus on SEND in mainstream schools, including funding arrangements, and when the review is expected to be published.

Across all of these areas, the report says that

“we have been disappointed…with the Government’s attention to equality issues.”

It will not come as a surprise to those of us who see Ministers’ attitudes to equalities as just another opportunity to wage their tired and divisive “war on woke”, but this is where we see the real world impact.

The report states that, because of the need to restore disabled people’s confidence that their needs are given equal consideration, the Government

“should consent to the Equality and Human Rights Commission issuing a statutory Code of Practice on the Public Sector Equality Duty.”

Labour supports that call.

One issue not mentioned in the report, but which has a massive impact on disabled people, is the Government’s failure to uplift legacy social security benefits, even in line with the temporary £20 increase in universal credit. They have failed to support more than 1.9 million disabled people who have faced increased costs as a result of the pandemic, such as to pay for PPE for their carers. That once again exposes the fact that the Government’s priorities do not include the most vulnerable. There is some unintentional comedy in the report, about consultation:

“Ministers described a very positive, inclusive approach with open lines of communication.”

Most witnesses had a different perspective.

All of us understand and, indeed, sympathise about the difficulties of setting up new rules and systems in a hurry at the beginning of the pandemic, but Ministers should learn from mistakes and not deny reality. Something that has been raised in the debate by several hon. Members, and repeatedly with the Government over months, is the question why they—and not least the Prime Minister—have been so resistant to having British Sign Language interpreters at the briefings. The report makes it clear that that has been alienating and dangerous for deaf people, and people with hearing difficulties.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn rightly raised the question of other barriers that deaf people face, including the lack of provision of clear face coverings in public sector settings, which made communication extremely difficult for those who rely on lip-reading. My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead also raised important issues about the adverse effects in connection with accessibility of public transport—something that the shadow Women and Equalities and Transport teams have raised with the Government—particularly for such things as pre-booked passenger assistance.

The lack of progress in those areas says much about how the needs of disabled people have been overlooked or neglected during the crisis. The Select Committee report calls for a separate independent inquiry on the impact on disabled people, once the situation is stable, as I hope it now is. I look forward to the findings of that inquiry, so that disabled people cannot be overlooked again. I look forward to the Minister setting out a timeline for the beginning and conclusion of the inquiry. We cannot accept more delay while the needs of our disabled constituents continue to be unmet by the Government.