Working-Age Disabled People

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Westminster Hall

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

Thank you, Mr Amess. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, and I look forward to welcoming the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) when she becomes a full member of the Work and Pensions Committee.

This is not a partisan point, but for clarification I should say that the Opposition support genuine reform when there are clear issues. We have never said that we do not. The issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), the Chair of the Committee, is that the reforms are cuts. That is an important point to have made. There are practical issues that we need to address, but fundamentally, the evidence supplied to us independently indicates that the reforms are cuts.

[Anne Marie Morris]

rose—

[Jane Ellison]

rose—

[Debbie Abrahams]

I give way to the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris).

[Anne Marie Morris]

The hon. Lady is very generous. As I understand it, when we look at the figures in terms of the reduced amount available in future—the 20% cut, as she would describe it—and the assessment for the old DLA, which took account of expected changes, there is no difference. I am not sure, therefore, that the talk about cuts is correct. It is more about recognising that the current system does not work, because people who need the support do not get it, and the people who do not need it, do. The cuts are really about trying to rebalance that.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I should also have said that I have to leave soon. I apologise because I will not be taking any more interventions, but I am happy to answer that question. What the Chancellor said in the emergency Budget in June 2010 was clear:

“It is right that people who are disabled are helped to lead a life of dignity. We will continue to support them, and we will not reduce the rate at which this benefit is paid. However, three times as many people claim it today than when it was introduced 18 years ago, and the costs have quadrupled in real terms to more than £11 billion a year, making it one of the largest items of Government spending.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 173.]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South said, there will be a 20% reduction in the number of people who are able to have a disability-related benefit awarded to them, and significant savings, again, can be identified within the Government’s impact assessment.

I want to unpick what the Chancellor said in that statement. He was, and is, saying that even if the prevalence of people with disabilities has grown by three times—there was a very unpleasant undertone implying that it had not—sorry, folks, it is just not sustainable. That is the key message that has been coming through, as my hon. Friend made clear. The impact assessment on the personal independence payment was, again, telling. It said:

“The new benefit will help to ensure that expenditure on DLA is sustainable and resources focused on those most in need of additional support.”

It goes on to assert that although there is an association between low income and poor health, there is limited evidence that providing money will improve health, which is correct. However, it continued:

“It is possible that the policy could have positive impacts on health if it leads to more disabled people moving into work.”

That, too, is very telling. First, the evidence was deflated or inflated, depending on what it said, to support the policy to get rid of DLA and replace it with PIP. The evidence was clearly manipulated and the lack of a comprehensive evidence base is shameful; my hon. Friend referred to that. There is real concern that the policy is being railroaded through. As we have discussed, there are a number of independent disabled people who are able to work. That is absolutely fantastic, but there are also some very vulnerable disabled people. The benefit should take them into account as much as it does those who are independent.

Secondly, the impact assessment makes an association with the positive impacts of work on health—which again, there are—when DLA has always been about helping contribute to the extra costs of being disabled. It is not an out-of-work benefit, so that relates to shifting the mindset of what the change is about. That is so important. The allowance has always been about supporting people with disabilities to lead as normal a life as possible.

For the record, the evidence on the trends in disability reflects our industrial heritage. The regions with heavy industries and occupations that did people’s health no favours have the highest rates of disability and ill health. There are diseases such as coal miners’ pneumoconiosis, asbestosis and silicosis. Of course, many of those diseases have long latencies, and there are industrial accidents that Members will be familiar with. Most work is good for people’s health, but not all, and there is strong evidence about that.

As I have said, we can agree—there is consensus across the House—that the DLA system, as it stands, is flawed. For example, a clear system for reviewing some awards is needed, but we should not restrict the access to support to overcome the barriers to day-to-day living that a person with a disability faces. That is what we need to address.

As I said before, the Government’s own estimates predict that more than 500,000 people will not receive this support. As many expert witnesses in the Select Committee’s inquiry concluded, cutting DLA is nothing more than a cost-cutting exercise. It is part of the wider erosion of the welfare state. As has been said, public buy-in is achieved by changing our view of what welfare is about. Unfortunately, the Government have a willing accomplice in the media to help them to do that.

I am really disappointed. We have talked about the role of the media. We have done a number of reports highlighting the importance of the media’s role and of responsible press releases and statements. However, this morning on the “Today” programme, the Secretary of State was talking as though people who are claiming benefits are a drain on society. It was a very inaccurate portrayal of benefit recipients. It was an attempt once again to suggest that the majority are workshy scroungers when the facts are that most people on benefits are in work and most are net contributors to the Treasury. That was not being reported; it was as though people were really abusing the system. There have been a number of such reports, and that has to change.

In addition to the reporting and the way in which attitudes to welfare are being changed, a system is being created in which people on higher incomes see themselves as separate to or outside the welfare state. We are not in post-war Britain. At that time, there was buy-in to the welfare state by everyone. Everyone saw themselves as contributing to and gaining from it. We were literally all in it together.

The final issue—this happened in the US under Reagan—is the putting in place of policies whose implications are unclear. Little has been done to assess the impact on the people they will affect. We have talked about the shameful impact assessment. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South talked about the lack of information available on the implications of this benefit change.

Despite a detailed, evidence-based inquiry by the Select Committee, the Government have rejected our recommendations out of hand. They seem determined to press on with what they are doing. I really have concerns about that. My hon. Friend mentioned the case in which a coroner reported that a suicide could be directly attributed to the pressure that was felt by someone with mental illness as a result of having to go through the work capability assessment. Is this really the type of society that we want to live in? I ask that question because I have—

[Jane Ellison]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Debbie Abrahams]

I will not. I am sorry, but I have only a few minutes and then I have to make a school visit.

I appreciate that I am talking about work capability assessments, but we have seen from the evidence that there is a link with the process that is to be adopted.

I want to touch briefly on the issues that have been mentioned in depth by colleagues. I have already talked about access to benefits being restricted. The application process is made as complicated and bureaucratic as possible, so that people already on DLA have to opt in rather than migrate across—the so-called “brown envelope syndrome”.

The assessment process is another issue because of the criteria used. They have little clinical relevance. It is a case of trying to set a very high minimum bar. I know, because I have met their representatives, that the royal colleges and the British Medical Association are really concerned that the criteria have not been developed in conjunction with them; they are often punitive and meaningless.

Similarly, there is an issue about assessors not being qualified in the conditions that they are assessing. That is an absolute nonsense. In addition, little attention is paid to the medical reports submitted in the assessment process. As an aside, I think that it is rather bizarre that Atos was contracted to undertake PIP assessments after such a poor performance on the WCA, but in Scotland it is sub-contracting the undertaking of the assessments to the NHS. What is going on? If this is about saving money, surely that is not the way to do it. In addition, there is little reassurance that someone will not be subjected to myriad assessments, potentially exacerbating their existing condition.

[Jim Sheridan in the Chair]

On the point about evidence, I have said this already but it is inexcusable that we do not have a comprehensive impact assessment that is able to predict—there are methods by which this can be done; I have used them myself—what the impacts will be, not just on claimants but on other services and on society as a whole. We should be doing that. I welcome the new Minister, but I hope that she will reflect on the recommendations that we have made and reconsider this change, in light of the huge concerns about its implementation.