Disability Benefits Assessments

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chloe Smith)]

It is a pleasure to work under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) for creating this opportunity for debate on a very important subject. We all believe in a compassionate welfare system. We have heard welcome contributions from all parts of the United Kingdom, and there are many parties represented.

More than one in five people in the United Kingdom are disabled. That is more than 14 million people. As the Minister for Disabled People, it is my priority to ensure that disabled people and people with health conditions are supported to achieve their potential and participate fully in everyday life. We know that disabled people and people with health conditions face many challenges to living independently and realising their goals.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chloe Smith]

I will give way a few times, Sir Gary, but I will not have a great deal of time to cover everything in the debate if I do it too many times.

[Hywel Williams]

I thank the Minister for giving way. Very briefly, she will have heard about the inhumanity of the assessments system this afternoon, and she will know that Wales suffers acutely, in that we have the highest level of disability and poverty in the UK. She will also have heard about the new system being introduced in Scotland, which will bring in a humane system of assessments. Will she commit in the White Paper to considering the devolution of the administration of welfare benefits to the Welsh Government?

[Chloe Smith]

I do not think that is likely to be in the White Paper. The hon. Gentleman might have heard that it is not our intention to further devolve welfare to the Welsh Government. None the less, I look forward to more conversations on that with him and with colleagues in the Welsh Government. I take a great interest in devolution affairs in the Department and will be able to have those conversations, just as I do with colleagues in the Scottish Government. I note what SNP Members have said today, which I will come to shortly.

Last year we published the health and disability Green Paper—the main subject of today’s debate—and the national disability strategy, which set out a wide-ranging set of practical actions to improve the lives of disabled people and affirmed our commitment to put disabled people at the heart of policy making. Support for the British Sign Language Bill, which was debated last Friday, is the latest example of such action. The health and disability Green Paper explored what changes we can make to the system, for three reasons—so that we better enable independent living, improve employment outcomes and improve the experience of people using the DWP’s services.

Both the national strategy and the Green Paper were informed by the views of disabled people, who told us in enormous numbers about their experiences and their priorities for change. Although it is not the main subject of today’s debate, I can confirm that we are disappointed at the judgment on the UK disability survey and intend to appeal. Of course, the Chamber will be aware that the court dismissed the claimants’ claims that the Secretary of State had been subject to a duty to consult.

We remain focused on delivering the contents of the strategy, which is broad and important. Ensuring that everyone has the same opportunity for a fulfilling working life is a key part of levelling up the country, on which I am sure I agree with the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Stephen Timms]

As was said in the debate, the grounds on which the Government resisted that case was that they were not properly consulting people in the first place. That is surely a hopeless position for the Government to be in. They should consult people properly from the start.

[Chloe Smith]

We certainly do have confidence in our consultation and our listening. I will not go into further detail on the strategy because there is so much else that I want to respond to today.

We have made progress, including significant progress towards our commitment to see an additional 1 million more disabled people in work by 2027. As my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) explained, supported employment is very significant within that, but there is much more still to do, and I welcome the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that employers also need to rise and play their part in supporting disabled people or people with ill health in the workplace.

There is also more to do to improve people’s experiences of our services and to build their trust in the system. I have heard the comments made today, and that is why our aim in the Green Paper was to improve the experience of disabled people and people with health conditions by listening, learning and improving. We want to make our services easier to access and our processes simpler where we can. We want to make improvements that will help build people’s trust and explore ways to offer more and better support for the people who need it most.

Turning to the economy, which is important for the context of this debate, the last two years have been really tough. However, because of our focus on getting people into work, we had the highest level of employment that this country had ever seen when covid hit, and we have succeeded in supporting jobs and livelihoods throughout the pandemic. The economy continues to rebound. With around 1.2 million vacancies currently available, including in many sectors vital for our recovery, we want to get people into jobs that they can do right now. The jobs market presents huge opportunities for all jobseekers. I want to ensure that those opportunities and the world of work are accessible and inclusive for disabled people and those with health conditions.

The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) mentioned the Way to Work campaign. I can reassure her that for those who are unable to take up employment due to their health conditions or personal circumstances, we tailor their requirements to their capability and situation to ensure that all that we ask of them is realistic and achievable.

We understand the pressures that people are facing with the cost of living, and we will continue to listen to people’s concerns, as we have done throughout the pandemic. That is why we are providing support of around £12 billion this year and next to help families with the cost of living.

Many important points were made during the debate about the assessment system and the benefits system. The benefits system considers the impact that a health condition or disability has on an individual’s ability to work and carry out day-to-day activities. As all hon. Members know, decisions are based on an assessment of an individual’s functional ability, not their diagnosed health conditions. Claimants are of course encouraged at the outset of their claim to provide all evidence that is relevant to their case, including medical evidence supplied by their GP or other professionals such as support workers, carers or community mental health nurses. We recognise that attending a health assessment can be a stressful experience, which is why, whenever we are able to assess somebody solely on the available paper evidence, we do so.

It is of course important that the benefits system is fair to both benefit recipients and taxpayers. We think that our health assessments are a fair and robust approach to managing the gateway to benefits, with our decisions based on evidence and objective criteria.

[Marsha De Cordova]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chloe Smith]

I want to acknowledge a point that has been made by a number of hon. Members before I give way to the hon. Lady who secured the debate. That is the point about transparency, which was raised by the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) and others today. Transparency is a key principle in our Green Paper, and will be very important going forward.

[Marsha De Cordova]

I thank the Minister for giving way. She has spoken a lot about the assessment process. Given the overwhelming evidence that everybody has shared, surely she must agree with all of us that the system is flawed, is broken and needs overhauling.

[Chloe Smith]

We are talking about a Green Paper. The point of a Green Paper is to improve the system, so we should continue the debate that we are having.

We are committed to ensuring that people get a good service from our assessment providers. On training, all assessors are of course subject to ongoing quality checks and an audit process, so they all have access to specific training and guidance on a wide range of clinical conditions. To the Labour Members who want us to end the use of private providers, I simply confirm that we intend to continue to use providers.

I now turn to some of the statistics that have been used in the debate.

[Marion Fellows]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chloe Smith]

I am terribly sorry, but I now need to make progress to cover as many of the points that have been raised as I can.

Since October 2013, 3.2 million completed work capability assessments for ESA have taken place. Just 3% of those have gone on to complete an appeal against a fit-for-work decision, and 2% have been overturned at a tribunal hearing. Since PIP was introduced, 4.6 million initial decisions following an assessment have been made; 9% have been appealed and 5% overturned at a tribunal hearing. It is important to set that broader context around appeals and tribunals.

Although we know that most people who claim health and disability benefits have a positive experience—indeed, people themselves tell us that—we recognise that that is not always the case, and we are working hard to improve the assessment system for our claimants. We are committed to assessing people as quickly as possible, so that they get the benefits to which they are entitled. As several hon. Members have rightly said, we want to get backlogs down. Managing journey times for claimants is a priority for the Department. That is why we are using a blend of phone, video and face-to-face assessments to support customers and deliver a more efficient and user-centred service. We are increasing case manager and assessment provider health professional resource, and we are prioritising new claims.

I will briefly touch on the very sad points made by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald). He asked me to look at some specific cases; he will appreciate that there are boundaries to my powers to do so, but I can tell him that of course we want to do all we can to ensure that people get the right support as quickly as possible. We also have processes in the Department for identifying possible improvements from serious cases to prevent such things happening in the future. Of course, it is incredibly sad and tragic whenever any person dies, and I convey my condolences to his constituent’s family.

During the pandemic, we introduced a series of easements to help disabled people and people with health conditions to access our services. We made changes to ESA to help people who had covid, or had been advised to self-isolate, to access the benefit more quickly.

I will move on to some of the key points in the Green Paper and provide some updates to the House. We announced our intention to replace the current six-month eligibility rule for the special rules for terminal illness with a 12-month end-of-life approach. That is extremely important and there will be more details before the House soon on various parts of that implementation.

Our health transformation programme is integrating the services that deliver personal independence payment assessments and work capability assessments into a single service supported by a single digital platform. I note the example provided by the hon. Member for Battersea of a constituent who felt that they had had a particularly disjointed service from those two. We recognise the need to go further and rightly, therefore, consulted on several initiatives in the Green Paper to change the application and assessment process for the better, guided by the three priorities that I already mentioned.

We announced our intention to test a service that provides support for the most in need to help them to navigate the benefits system and other Government services. We will be setting out more detail in the White Paper. I note the points made by the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) about severe disability. We announced our plans to test a new severe disability group for those with severe and lifelong conditions. Again, in the White Paper, I will be able to provide further details of the work on that.

The Green Paper also looked at how we might separate the assessment for financial support from employment considerations, encouraging people to take up employment support, leading to better employment and independent living outcomes. Again, we will be beginning various tests of an employment and health discussion over the next couple of months regarding that.

We received more than 4,500 responses to the Green Paper proposals. We are very grateful to all those who fed in their views. Listening to disabled people is critical. We are now analysing the responses, along with the views expressed to us by people who attended one of the more than 40 consultation events that took place over that period. That included the first meeting with our newly founded ethnic minority forum, where we heard from people from ethnic minority backgrounds about their real lived experiences of the benefits system. As I say, we will be able to bring forward a great number of updates in the White Paper later this year. I continue to work closely with disabled people, disabled people’s organisations and many of the charities also mentioned today. There are several areas of work where I hope to co-produce the outcomes with them.

I reiterate my and the Government’s commitment to improving the lives of disabled people. I am proud of the progress we have made so far. We have put forward some important reforms to go further and build trust and to ensure that disabled people have every opportunity and support that is needed.