Welfare Reform Bill

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, we have all been very moved by the speeches made by our disabled colleagues, particularly that made by my noble friend Lady Campbell, who put it so beautifully clearly. Perhaps one of the reasons is that quite a number of our colleagues in your Lordships’ House are getting older and are beginning to have some form of disability, which makes one a little more aware of the needs. I do not know whether this form of words is necessary but the more that I have listened to the fact that the word “disability” is missing from the description, the more worried I am, not least when you hear how the press is reacting and the effect that that may have.

On listening to noble Lords, I clearly recognised the detailed areas of their special needs. That was useful knowledge on which to play the rest of our approach to this Bill. I hope that the Minister will take back to his colleagues the sort of reasoning that has taken place during this debate. His colleagues are probably engaged in goodness only knows how many other debates around Parliament, but if they had been able to be here I hope that they would have been at least as moved as I was and would have changed their approach. I hope that he will be persuasive in getting them to do just that.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I, too, support these amendments. I think particularly of people with fluctuating conditions which eventually become so bad that they are housebound, bedridden and almost unable to get out, and of the 25 per cent of people suffering from ME who are in this state. I should say that I am the chairman of Forward-ME. Every day I get letters from people who are terrified of what is going to happen when the PIP is brought in. However, I am grateful to the Minister and to the Deputy Chief Medical Officer at the Department for Work and Pensions for specifically asking for people with ME to be part of the pilot programme for the PIP. But the feedback I am getting is that the people who are examining them have no understanding at all of their illness. We are talking about a personal independence payment, which is the idea the examiners have in their mind, against a disability payment. However, these are severely disabled people—we have heard some very moving speeches from my noble friends and from the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins—who cannot even get out of their houses. They must have help with their laundry, cleaning and shopping—with everything. To call it a personal independence payment does not help them, I fear, so I strongly support this amendment.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I apologise that this is the first time I have spoken on the Bill. Something is occurring here which I have been aware of ever since the Government, of which I am a supporter, came to power. It is a fact that people are worried about what is going on when reading some of the language being used. Much of this anxiety is caused by things like getting rid of regulations, although I suspect that many of them were useless. The disability movement has in effect had a defence in depth of regulation. We have stuck extra regulations on which have given us a sense of security. I must remind the Committee that I am a dyslexic and therefore a disabled person, but not one who I think would be covered under the regulations here. That provides another example of how complicated the world is that we are stepping into. No two people who have spoken in the debate have the same problems.

In effect, the challenge the Minister faces today is to start to calm down these fears. If PIP is going to come in, what is required is a huge campaign to explain what it actually means. On reading the Bill, I do not think we have much to worry about, but the fear that there might be something there that does huge damage. Underclaiming is historically the biggest problem in this area. It means that we end up with on-costs in health, for instance, because people do not claim the right benefits. It is something that has had to be dealt with for a long time. If the Minister can start the process of dialogue, he will be doing himself a favour.

Would changing the words do anything? I suspect not, even if it made us feel better. I suspect that many of the problems we have in this area exist because we have done one or two too many things in Parliament, and, as I have said on other occasions, I take my share of the blame for that. But giving clarification of what is actually going on will help, and this would be a good place to start that process.

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[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am very sympathetic to that point. The trouble is that when I and my colleagues—and, I am sure, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and the opposite side of the Chamber when it was in power—try to make positive stories, it is terribly hard to get any coverage at all. That is the trouble. The press is very hard to use in this way. I could use some emollient language here. I am genuinely concerned at the difficulties that we have as a department in getting a balanced view. Journalists tend to write unbalanced stories. I am conscious of and very concerned about that. I take it and I will try to get some counterspin, if you like, working. I think you are absolutely right that we are in danger of seeing the position of disabled people undermined by the media coverage and it behoves us to try to get that rebalanced. I accept the commission, if that is what it is, and will try to do something about it.

[The Countess of Mar]

Perhaps the Minister can put out some publicity about the very few people who claim this benefit fraudulently—it is less than 1 per cent, I believe.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the real trouble with the benefit is that it has been so loosely applied that it is impossible to take it fraudulently. I exaggerate slightly to make the point but that is the reason. The last time it was looked at in detail—I think it was 2004-05; I am plucking figures slightly from memory—I think there were overpayments of around £630 million and underpayments of around £250 million or £270 million. I am ahead of my team. It was around that figure. It was not because people were being fraudulent, it was just because it was no longer the right rate and you could not tell whether it had not been the right rate the day before or the day after. Fraud is not the issue with the DLA. The issue is the looseness of its application.

[The Countess of Mar]

The press go to town on people who are living in nice bungalows in Spain on their DLA. Yet, the very fact that it is loose is not the fault of the people who have been claiming the benefit but those who are administering it.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I cannot agree more. It has not been properly delivered. It has not been a proper gateway. It needs a new benefit and that is what we are trying to introduce.

Let me just get those figures correctly for you— it is £600 million overpayment and £190 million underpayment. I, like the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, am as concerned about the underpayment as the overpayment.

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[Lord Wigley]

If the Minister accepts the figure for those who will lose relatively small sums that are of critical importance to them, and if the services that they have been able to purchase or the benefits in their life that they have been able to obtain by virtue of having that money now have to be found through some other means, has some assessment been made of the additional cost that may be going elsewhere in order to ensure that they do not lose out on aspects of their lives that are critical for their day-to-day existence?

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Newton, put his finger on the button in his first comments. It is people’s fear of what is going to happen when they have a medical examination. Many of them have already had experience of DWP medicals, and from the correspondence I have had they are extremely distressed about what is going to happen to them in the future. It may be that they are dramatising, in which case we would be very pleased to have our minds put at rest, but on the other hand, if we are making this 20 per cent cut in expenses, they are bound to be frightened because these are people at the bottom who are going to be chopped off, and they do not understand how the process in going to happen.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment. In fact, it was down in my name, but when I saw how many amendments I was going to put down I thought I was being too greedy. My question to the Minister is very short. Has he had discussions with those in the Department of Health responsible for the prevention agenda with regard to closing the basic rate? It will have a massive impact on the prevention agenda, which is very much about giving a little bit of support and keeping people independent for a lot longer with a lot less cost for healthcare and social care services.