Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform (Disabled People)

Fiona O'Donnell Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Fiona O’Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak in this debate, because I have to apologise to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and to the Minister for Employment for the fact that, because of a long-standing engagement, I will not be here for the closing speeches. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) on her maiden speech, which I was so pleased to be in the Chamber to hear.

I thank East Lothian council’s welfare rights team for their support. I also thank the two citizens advice bureaux in my constituency, in Haddington and Musselburgh, which always wait until the last minute before they finally come to me to pick up the pieces from the mess that this Government have made of welfare reform.

We have heard calls for maturity in this debate, but I am afraid that I get a little emotional talking about this issue having had a Thursday and a Friday like I did in my constituency, when several people came to see me about their ability to access work. I saw Allison and Graeme, deaf constituents who were possibly not going to be able to continue in their employment because of what this Government are doing with the interpreters they need to be able to access work. I saw a woman who had been on ESA for a year who, having made an application to go into the support group, has now had a letter saying that her ESA is going to stop next month. She does not know what she is going to live on. I saw a woman who had had a heart attack, who was turned down for a PIP, and now has to go back to work full-time long before her doctor feels that she should be doing so.

I have written to the Minister about the case of Mr and Mrs O’Connor, and we have finally had a response. I do not know if that is because I intervened. I never like to think that my intervention gets someone more than the treatment they are entitled to, but Mr and Mrs O’Connor really deserve help. Mr O’Connor has T-cell lymphoma cancer. He has had his spleen removed. He has diabetes, neuropathy in his hands and his feet, kidney problems, heart failure, and severe back pain that requires pain relief injections. He needs help with all his self-care, and his mobility is extremely limited because he uses two walking crutches and a wheelchair when outside. He applied for a PIP in February this year. I would like the Minister to explain—I promise I will check the transcript of the debate—why people are not getting acknowledgements when they lodge a claim for a PIP, because they are then left wondering whether the claim is being looked at.

Indeed, in Mr O’Connor’s case, despite the PIP2 form having been sent in March, it was not until this month—October—that Atos called to say it had looked at the paperwork. When I wrote to the Minister’s predecessor in February, I was told that the Department was on a learning curve, but it must be going around in circles because the situation has not changed since then. These are people whose lives are already incredibly difficult, but this Government are pushing them to the point where their lives are unbearable. That is simply not good enough.

The Minister spoke about the extra money going into the Access to Work programme. There has been a pause because the Department did not understand the impact the situation would have on deaf people who need interpreters. I hope the Minister will update the House on how that work is going.

There has been praise for the new assessment system, but one thing we did better than this Government was to make awards for life. The father of two daughters who have cerebellar ataxia and whose conditions are never going to improve—his family live with that loss and that pain every day—has to fill out a form every two years repeating everything his daughters cannot and never will be able to do. How does the Minister think that that improves the quality of his life or that of his daughters? I would like an answer to that question.

I know that some Conservative Members thought it was political opportunism to refer to Lord Freud’s remarks, but the position that we all claim to hold—namely, that every life is of equal worth and value—underpins what the minimum wage was about. As the mother of a daughter with cerebral palsy and epilepsy, the thing I found so offensive about Lord Freud’s remarks was his use of the word “worth.”

I have compassion. Perhaps I will make some dreadful mistakes during my time in this House, but I pledge that if I ever do anything on that scale I will have the humility and self-awareness to resign.