Disability Allowance

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend, who has added substantially to the quality of debate in the House on these matters, asks the kind of question that people are asking, including, I am sure, people in his constituency. I know that he will always tell it like it is.

I was dealing with organisations of and for disabled people, and so I turn to Mencap:

“Mencap believes the government have misunderstood how disabled people use this important benefit. Without this vital lifeline, many disabled people in care will lose much of their independence, be unable to take part in many community activities and have fewer opportunities to meet with friends and family. Mencap is concerned that by removing this benefit many disabled people who live in residential care…will be unable to lead fulfilling and independent lives.”

Sense says:

“The Government’s initial justification for this decision, was that the situation of people in residential care homes is the same as those in hospital. This is a totally incorrect assessment; residential care settings are individuals’ homes and they should expect to be able to access their families and local communities. Yet Sense’s experience as a provider of residential services to deafblind people is that in the vast majority of cases, local authorities will take the DLA mobility component into account when deciding on funding levels.”

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern that, when local authority budgets and the voluntary sector organisations that provide transport services for disabled people are under pressure, this is the worst possible time for the mobility component of the DLA to be withdrawn? Doing so will increase the institutionalisation and isolation of disabled people, instead of promoting their integration and inclusion in communities.

[Mr Clarke]

If I may say so, that is an excellent point. The plain and simple fact is that we all know in our hearts that our local authorities are under tremendous pressure. We know that they are facing cuts and difficult decisions, and unfortunately, in too many cases the result is that provision of social services and disability care does not always get the priority needed and required. There is not a shred of evidence from the local government organisations in England—or no doubt from Northern Ireland, and certainly none from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities—that local authorities will be in a position to pick up the bill if the Government remove the money from those living in residential care. We are facing a crisis, both for local government and for disabled people.

Finally, there are many relevant organisations to which I could refer, and I apologise to those I have not mentioned this morning due to time constraints. I want to end with Parkinson’s UK:

“The Government compares this decision with the removal of the mobility component from hospital inpatients. But the two situations are very different. Hospital stays tend to be relatively short, and patients are often not in a position to make good use of the benefit. By contrast, many people live long and active lives in residential care homes.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon]

If the hon. Lady is patient, she will hear the answer later in my remarks.

To preserve spending on other front-line services, the Government then announced that they would have to go even further in tackling the extremely large welfare bill. One way in which they are doing that is by ending the mobility component of DLA from 2012-13 to claimants who have been in a residential care home for more than 28 days, which will affect about 58,000 claimants. The Treasury says that that will save £60 million in 2012 and that the figure will rise to £135 million by the end of the Parliament. I appreciate, however, that the Government have confirmed that affected residents will retain an underlying entitlement to the benefit, and that payments will start again if they leave the care home. I also understand that the measure will not be introduced until October 2012. Local authorities will have a legal obligation to provide mobility services for residents from their social care funding.

[Dr Whiteford]

I come back to the point that I made to the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke): local authorities face the same squeeze in their budgets as everybody else. I know from my constituency that there are some great voluntary services supporting wheelchair users and people with severe mobility problems who live in care homes or in their own homes, but who do not have access to transport. However, those charities are terribly strapped financially because of a lack of giving and the problems with trust funds. There is nothing to pick up the slack. Why should disabled people be on the front line? Why should they be punished for financial mistakes that were not of their making?

[Robert Halfon]

I thank the hon. Lady, but I do not agree that all care homes would be unable to afford to provide mobility equipment if there was a statutory requirement. I have a further response to what she says, but I will come to it later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Yet again, we have an example of how not to do welfare reform—if indeed that is the intent. The Government have attempted to pray in aid the fact that the Opposition had said that they were willing to consider reforming DLA. However, I thought that that meant looking at the benefit in the round, examining how it operates, and assessing what needs to change and what can be done better. I did not think that it was about picking out one brick without looking at the way in which the whole benefit operates. From my perspective—and, I am certain, that of my whole party—that was what we meant when we suggested that we were open to considering changes in DLA.

We are considering something that was clearly proposed as a saving—or a cut. It is about reaching that £18 billion figure, which was why it was announced in the comprehensive spending review rather than as a part of welfare reform. Having decided to do that—ex post facto—all sorts of things are then presented as to why it might be done, why something could be done better and why there may be money somewhere else.

A similar thing happened during the proceedings of the Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Public Bill Committee, of which I was a member. Having decided to make a series of reductions, a number of reasons were suddenly conjured out of the air, and then a whole host of ideas was proposed to find the money to make up for some of the cuts, but those ideas were not costed or fully thought through. The Government were not even able to say whether those proposals would cost more than the savings that were being suggested.

As someone who comes from Scotland, I want to know what consultation has gone on with the Scottish Government. What consultation has been carried out with local authorities in Scotland? I can assure the Minister that, over the past three years, my local authority has already seen substantial reductions in the money going into social care. I have several constituents whose direct payments, which they were receiving from the local authority, have been cut substantially. In some cases, “substantially” means halved. Such cuts have largely come about because of the financial constraints under which the council has found itself. Yes, the cuts have been dressed up in terms of my constituents’ personal needs, but as their needs and capacities have not changed at all, it is clear that this is really about making savings. I am not confident that my local authority has the resource to put this in as a substitute for removing DLA when it is already making so many cuts, and that is before the even further reductions in local authority spending that are coming our way in Scotland and elsewhere.

Moreover, it is important to consult. The Government should not make a decision and then wait for people to react. I heard the Secretary of State for Health talking on Radio 4 this morning about the importance of consultation over public health matters. He was discussing whether to implement the regulation on tobacco and the display of tobacco. He said that it was very important to consult, but if it is so important to consult even on something that has already been passed and subjected to consultation, why is it not important properly to consult the users, care homes, local authorities and the devolved Administrations that are all involved in this change? If it was then felt that there was a need to consider the way in which the benefit is provided and that was better for it to come down the local authority route, so be it, but I do not think that that is why we have got to this position.

[Dr Whiteford]

The mobility component of the DLA is one of the few parts of the benefit system to which personalisation already applies. Does the hon. Lady not agree that the Government’s proposals will take away that aspect of the personalisation agenda at the very time they are talking about promoting it?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I certainly agree and, as I have said, I have seen some of that personalised agenda being placed at risk in other ways over recent months, which is a substantial concern, especially to the recipients of this component.

I think that we have an opportunity to look again at the proposal and to get it right, if it is genuinely thought to be necessary to fund this scheme differently. However, if it is being seriously suggested that this change can be made—it involves a substantial sum for an individual, but the collective cost of any substitution will be very substantial for a local authority—and if the Government will ensure that it is made, I would ask whether there is a costing of how much will be involved in monitoring the change, in checking that it is made and in managing that whole process, when in fact the system appears to be working well.