Personal Independence Payments

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing the debate. She has been assiduous in highlighting the impact of Government policies on disabled people, including the introduction of the personal independence payment. The debate is timely given last month’s publication of Paul Gray’s independent report.

My own experiences with the introduction of PIP have not been happy. Some months after the new system was first introduced, a number of constituents got in touch with me regarding the interminable delays that they were experiencing in accessing the support to which they were entitled. All those people had been waiting more than six months for an assessment by the time they got in touch with me; some had been waiting more than nine months and in one case a person took more than a year to get PIP.

The impact that that was having on those people and their day-to-day lives is worth restating. The people making the claims were all living with long-term disabilities or health problems. For all of them, their ability to work, socialise or participate in day-to-day activities was affected to some extent. For some, their conditions prevented them from working altogether, or even from going out without considerable support from families or friends.

A six to nine-month delay in dealing with those people’s PIP application caused not only unnecessary stress, uncertainty and anxiety, but real financial hardship for some and serious cash-flow problems for others. In some cases, the delays also put a financial strain on relatives, who felt that they had to step in with money to pay additional costs associated with the loved one’s disability. In other words, the inordinate and unacceptable delays in the process actually reduced the personal independence of the claimants.

I am conscious that we, as MPs, only see those cases brought to us. I wonder to what extent what we see in our constituencies is the tip of the iceberg. How many more people affected by the policies are also experiencing similar levels of delay, but have not come to an MP to move the process forward? I pressed Ministers on such issues at the time, and steps have since been taken to deal with the backlog, but I noted that Paul Gray said in his review:

“Whilst steps to resolve delays and backlogs are clearly necessary they are not of themselves sufficient and there are other underlying issues to address.”

The debate today is an opportunity to address some of those underlying issues.

I have read the report, and Gray makes various observations about PIP and a number of recommendations, mostly related to the application process. Given that today is the first opportunity that we have had to debate PIP since the publication of the report, I am looking forward—like the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead—to what the Minister has to say. I think it is fair to point out that the independent review is pretty critical of claimants’ experiences of claiming PIP, aside from the delays, and has made a range of practical suggestions about how the journey could be improved.

I also note that Gray draws attention to the need to understand better how the process is working for people with mental health problems and for people with learning disabilities. There have been serious shortcomings in the work capability assessment which, like the PIP assessment, is made on the basis of functional impact on people with such types of disability. I have had extensive dialogue with Ministers on that in connection with the WCA, so the fact that concerns flagged in the report are similar for PIP makes me wonder whether the type of assessments are suitable for those claimants. Paul Gray points out that such assessments are “not a precise science”—there is a lot of subjectivity in the process—and that that inevitably disadvantages folk whose conditions are less visible, which fluctuate, or which people find hard to communicate. Some of the recommendations that he makes about exploring how there might be greater input of information and evidence from clinicians mirror the kind of suggestions that health care advocacy groups have been making in relation to the WCA, so I hope that the Government will listen, take that on board and look closely at how improvements might be made for the claimants.

One of the issues that the independent review explicitly does not address in detail is that of the contractual arrangements, which have been a matter of wider public concern and merit some scrutiny. I am conscious that responsibility for PIP is one of the policy areas that the Smith commission has recommended be devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Draft proposals are due to be published later this week, and I await them with great anticipation. Given the serious problems with implementation of PIP so far, I would welcome the opportunity to improve the policy in the Scottish context and to make the changes necessary to deliver a workable system that supports disabled people to live dignified, independent lives.

Honest and rigorous evaluation of the existing scheme is therefore essential. I heartily support the recommendations in Paul Gray’s report on better, more detailed and more robust evaluation of the PIP implementation to date. Gray highlights the lack of evidence available and how that inhibited his ability to conduct the independent review. That is all the more important as we are looking to devise a new and improved policy approach, so we need the evidence for what has been problematic in the PIP arrangements.

The Government have not covered themselves in glory as far as the implementation of PIP is concerned. It has been beset by problems, but as a replacement benefit for the disability living allowance PIP is important, enabling people with serious disabilities and health conditions to participate in society, to get around, to get to work, to go shopping and to socialise with friends—activities that able-bodied people take for granted. The benefit promotes independence and counters some of the disadvantages faced by disabled people. The Government need to do an awful lot more to make it work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I will certainly make sure that the meetings I have with the Minister are helpful. The hon. Members for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) and for Edinburgh North and Leith mentioned the Smith commission, which is relevant to the conversations in Northern Ireland and in Scotland. It may not be far in the future, but I cannot anticipate the Government’s comprehensive response to the report published by the Smith commission, for which hon. Members will have to wait patiently a little longer. It is worth saying that we have to be careful, because Ministers have to follow current legislation. All that has been announced in the Smith commission report is what will happen in the future. The Government have made commitments, but no legislation has yet been introduced. When legislation is introduced, the Scottish Government will have to decide what they will do, and our conversation today makes it clear that we will have to think about operational delivery. Ministers have to proceed on the basis of the current law.

[Dr Whiteford]

The point I was trying to make was that in looking forward—obviously, we do not know what is in the proposals—the Government’s evaluation of the current policy is important to inform any future decisions made elsewhere.

[Mr Harper]

I take that point, and Paul Gray’s review will partly inform that. If there are lessons to be learned about implementation when the proposals are published and changes are made, I am sure that officials in my Department and Ministers in the UK Government will want to work in partnership with Ministers and officials in the Scottish Government to ensure that things proceed smoothly. We will publish the response to the Smith commission in the not-too-distant future. As Members have said, a commitment has been made to do so by 25 January. I want to put on record that we will proceed on the basis of existing law.

The hon. Member for Foyle mentioned children. There are no plans to extend PIP to children; we have always said that we wanted to see how PIP for adults worked. If a decision was made to extend PIP to children—I emphasise that there are no plans to do so—it would be subject to consultation and to the affirmative procedure in Parliament, so both Houses would have to be involved in that decision. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that primary legislation would not be required, but parliamentary procedures would have to be followed.

On the question of the transition from DLA for young people, which the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston mentioned, people cannot claim PIP until their 16th birthday, but we contact people in advance to enable them to prepare and, as she said, to see whether the child needs an appointee to help them through the process. She asked some specific questions, following up on her earlier written question. I will look at the Hansard report of the debate and, if she is content for me to do so, I will write to her and place a copy of the reply in the Library, which I hope will help colleagues.

In summary, I have made it clear that delays, which several hon. Members have touched on, are unacceptable. The Department and providers have been working hard to deal with them. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead mentioned that I will be giving evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee next week—I am looking forward to that, as is she—on a number of issues, including PIP. I will be happy to explain the progress that we have made. We will publish properly verified statistics to make sure that that is an informed discussion.

We have welcomed the Gray review. I have said a little about some of the areas in which we are already working on it, and we will publish a full response. I think I have answered seven of the nine questions asked by the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead—we will cover the two that I did not answer in our full response to Paul Gray’s review, which we will deliver in due course. I think I have touched on all the questions that hon. Members have asked. The debate has been helpful, and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for securing it.