Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab) (Urgent Question)]

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)]

Yesterday the Secretary of State provided the House with a written statement, and delivered a speech to Scope that included, among other announcements, an announcement about changes in the delivery of health and disability benefits.

We are making significant progress in improving people’s experiences of claiming disability benefits by working through the recommendations made by several independent reviews of personal independence payments and the employment support allowance, but we need to continue to make improvements in order to give better support to people with health conditions and disabilities. The written statement set out a number of additional measures that we will implement to make improvements, now and in the future, in support for disabled people and those with health conditions.

We will improve and simplify people’s experiences by no longer undertaking regular reviews of PIP awards for claimants at or above the state pension age unless they tell us that their needs have changed. We will also transform the delivery of assessment services. We have established a health transformation programme to undertake the significant task of combining the currently separate work capability assessment for ESA and universal credit and PIP assessment services in one unified, integrated service from 2021. We are extending the contract for the health and disability assessment service, which includes the delivery of the work capability assessment, and aligning it with the duration of the extended PIP contracts. That will allow for a safe and stable service now, and as we make the transition to the new integrated service.

The Department for Work and Pensions will also be testing how we can increase engagement and build a trusted and strong relationship between work coaches and people who are awaiting assessments for universal credit or who are found to have limited capability for work. The Minister for Employment will take that forward.

The health transformation programme will be co-designed with disabled people. The Secretary of State and I will engage regularly with disabled people, disabled people’s organisations and charities. All of us, whatever our age or need, want an equal chance to live a life of opportunity and fulfilment. We intend to support disabled people during all the phases of their lives, so that the pursuit of equality is a shared goal.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Thank you for granting the urgent question, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister for her response. I am, however, disappointed that the Secretary of State was not here to respond, and that the Minister has had to respond to an urgent question rather than making an oral statement, given the extensive scope of the proposals.

I welcome yesterday’s announcement that there would be no PIP reassessment for disabled people above the state pension age, but why are not all disabled people—particularly those with progressive conditions such as motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis and cancer—being exempted from repeat assessments? I have a constituent with terminal secondary breast cancer which has gone into her bones, and she has been refused PIP.

The launch of a transformation programme whereby PIP and WCA assessments will be integrated by 2021 is interesting, given that the Government have previously said that that could not be done. How exactly will the two assessments be merged? Who is involved? I am grateful that the Minister has said they will be co-designed with disabled people, but will she commit to supporting the principle of “nothing about you without you”? Will there be a pilot? If so, where and when, and what would be the sample size? Will there be an independent evaluation?

Who will provide the new service? There are real concerns about the profiteering enabled by this Government at the expense of disabled people. There are also worrying reports in various GP journals this week that the medical records of claimants will be made available to the DWP or their social security support will be denied. So I will be grateful if the Minister can confirm that this is not, and will not be, Government policy. Obviously there are huge issues around privacy and ethics.

There is also strong evidence of the physical and emotional harm that these assessments are having on disabled people, over and above their condition. What is being put in place before 2021 to improve the poor quality, validity and reliability of these assessments?

On UC and the role of job coaches in determining limited capability to work, the detail was most unclear in the written ministerial statement. Can the Minister expand on it and confirm that work coaches may start an assessment to determine a claimant’s capacity to work? Can she also confirm a shift in the Government’s approach to sanctions and expand on her Department’s approach to conditionality?

I welcome the review into the inadequacy of social security support for disabled people and more widely. Poverty is a political choice, and 4.2 million disabled people have been pushed into poverty as a result of the £5 billion in cuts since 2010. So what form will this review take and, again, who will be involved?

On the Government’s more ambitious targets to get disabled people into work, again the pendulum is swinging back. The Conservative general election pledge in 2015 was to halve the disability employment gap, but it is actually 4.4% lower than 2015. Then in 2017 there was a pledge about 1 million additional disabled people getting into work, but there was nothing about access to work.

Finally, what is the Minister going to do about the cultural changes needed in her Department to ensure that disabled people and other claimants do not feel demonised, even dehumanised, as happens all too often?

[Sarah Newton]

I fear I will test your patience, of Mr Speaker, if I try to answer all of those questions at once, but I will do my best.

I welcome the hon. Lady’s tone and her welcome for the measures we announced in the written ministerial statement. Clearly we have been listening very hard to Members across this Chamber and, most importantly, to disabled people themselves about the changes they would like to see, and that is what has driven the changes we are going to be making. I absolutely want to confirm that throughout the process—in fact this is how we work now—we engage fully with disabled people, enabling them to help us develop the services which are for them.

The hon. Lady touched on a few points about people being repeatedly reassessed. I remind her that we brought in the severe conditions criteria so that people who have reached the highest level of support on PIP will not be routinely reassessed; we have introduced a 10-year light touch review so that many people with the sorts of conditions and illnesses the hon. Lady described will not be undergoing further reassessments. We also have a special process for people who are terminally ill. I undertook research in the summer—and I have been delighted to work with the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) on the work she has been doing—looking again at how the special rules for people at the end of life are working. We have worked very closely with the medical profession, which I think was not often aware of the special processes that could so easily be put in place to enable people to get benefits within days. I will shortly be announcing new guidance which is the fruition of the work we have been doing over the last few months.

I want to remind everyone that in the transition from DLA to PIP many more people with mental health conditions are now receiving support, particularly at the highest levels. Concerns have also been raised about work coaches and their ability to work with people with disabilities and health conditions, and I want to reassure the House that all of our work coaches are receiving extensive training and will continue to do so. Over 10,000 work coaches have already received training in mental health services, so I believe that that personal relationship that we want all people claiming benefits to have with their work coach is a possibility and is happening the length and breadth of the country.

We are looking at conditionality and have taken up the recommendations given to us. When people with severe disabilities and health conditions apply for UC there is no conditionality; that conditionality will be switched off, and then as the relationship develops with the work coach, if and when they are prepared to take those steps to work, they will be fully supported by their work coach and other resources that they have available.

As would be expected, we listened to and worked with a range of stakeholders before the announcement to develop the new service. I can absolutely commit to the House that the co-design will be ongoing and there will be plenty of opportunities for everyone in the House to be involved in how we take that forward. But the simple ideal behind it is to reduce the number of assessments people have to take and reduce the amount of information they have to give to the Department. We have all heard in our surgeries each week particularly in terms of people in receipt of both ESA and PIP that they can be asked to complete a whole number of forms where they give us the same information, and are going to assessments where they give the same information. The whole aim of this is to reduce that and to simplify it, so that people give us the information once and we are able to make the best decision we can right from the outset.