Disability Benefits and Social Care

George Hollingbery Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I invite the hon. Gentleman to intervene on me again when I talk about Remploy in more detail—[Interruption.] No, Remploy forms an important part of our motion, and it is right that we should have an informed debate on the matter. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will let him have his say at that stage.

We believe that disability living allowance needs reform, and that an independent assessment is needed. We also believe, however, that the assessment should be designed first, and that the savings should be calculated afterwards. This Government have set an arbitrary, top-down financial cut, and they are now scrambling around trying to figure out what kind of assessment will deliver that cut. So little thought has gone into this that disabled people now face being tested for employment and support allowance, DLA and social care, as well as for a raft of other benefits. The testing alone will cost the taxpayer £710 million.

Surely we should be thinking harder about this. Surely we should be trying to determine what is the right assessment for DLA and ESA—which are different benefits—and asking how we can bring them together in a way that would be more convenient for disabled people and that would help them to secure the support that they need to live an independent life. Such a reform would save money. Indeed, when I was at the Treasury, my civil servants costed it and determined that it would save £350 million by 2015.

To this bleak picture we must, I am afraid, add more. Cuts to social care and to housing benefit will make the situation worse, £1 billion has now been cut from local council budgets for social care since this Government took office, and Ministers are still dragging their feet over long-term reform. Meanwhile, 1 million unpaid carers have given up work or reduced their hours, and four in 10 have fallen into debt, thanks to a system that does not work and is set to get worse.

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

I seem to recall that the Government announced some time ago that £3 billion would be transferred from national health service budgets to the social services sector each year. Is that correct, or is my recollection wrong?

[Mr Byrne]

The cut is from the Department for Communities and Local Government’s own figures. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the study published by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, he will see the reality of what is hitting social care services up and down the country and the vulnerable people they support.

The great tragedy of this story is that there might be some kind of explanation if this were all part of a grand master-plan to get disabled people back to work.

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[Mr Byrne]

Let me deal with my hon. Friend’s intervention by listing a series of practical measures and steps that I think that the Government could and should now take.

First, why do the Government not honour every letter of the Sayce report? Why do they not honour the recommendations of Liz Sayce that factories should have six months in which to develop a business plan and two years before a subsidy is withdrawn, that the viability of Remploy factories should be decided by an independent panel of business and enterprise experts—with trade union involvement—rather than by unilateral action from the DWP, and that expert entrepreneurial and business support should be provided to develop the businesses into independent enterprises? Each of those recommendations needs to be implemented.

Secondly—here I come to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas)—the full 90-day timetable for consultation should be re-started, given that the terms were radically changed halfway through the process.

Thirdly—this is relevant to the points that have been made about procurement—may I ask what steps the Secretary of State has taken to draw together local authorities, as well as central Government Departments, to ensure that any extra work that can be put in a Remploy factory is put in a Remploy factory? Surely we should be exhausting all those opportunities before we move on.

Fourthly, we should take a more flexible approach to each and every factory. The fact is that some factories will need more support in order to continue, while others will need less. And fifthly, we should review the subsidy per worker offered to Remploy workers, given that it may be different from the subsidy that is available under Work Choice.

If the Secretary of State is in any doubt about what these factories do, I will go and do a day’s work in a Remploy factory, and I hope that he will join me. I think that we should invite the Sunday Express as well, for good measure.

[George Hollingbery]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for being so generous with his time.

The subsidies involved in the two separate programmes, the Access to Work programme and the social model and Remploy, are not just different but wildly different. The average subsidy per person in Remploy is £25,000 a year, whereas the average subsidy in the support programme is £2,900 a year. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it would be much better for the money from Remploy to be redeployed in the Access to Work programme?

[Mr Byrne]

Where are the jobs that those people are going to go into? When factories are closing in constituencies where the average number of people chasing each job is twice the national average and the Work programme is failing disabled people, we have a problem that needs to be solved. We need practical steps to manage Remploy’s future.

Labour Members feel passionate about this subject. We are proud of the progress that we made for disabled people when we were in government. We appointed the first ever Minister for Disabled People, and we introduced the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Supporting People, the new deal for disabled people, new strategies for disabled children, Valuing People, and the Equality Act. Poverty in disabled households fell by a fifth in the last three years of our Government.

We succeeded because we believed in co-producing policy with disabled people. It is a disgrace that Kaliya Franklin, Sue Marsh and the authors of the Spartacus report had to use freedom of information requests to draw out of the Government that the DWP’s response to the DLA consultation was so misleading. It is also a disgrace that the Government have dropped from their business plan the goal of securing equality for disabled people. They should now set about changing course. They should begin by introducing a combined, cross-governmental assessment of the impact of their reforms. I congratulate Scope on producing a “starter for 10” this week.

Labour Members believe that rights should be made a reality for disabled people. We will campaign for that justice throughout this Parliament and beyond, and I hope that the House will express its support by backing our motion this afternoon.

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[Maria Miller]

If the hon. Lady lets me finish my reply to the last intervention, that would be helpful. We must ensure that across the board we recognise that for many people who are not in employment, mental health problems are the primary cause. We need much broader understanding of how to ensure that we help people with mental health problems to get into work, whether that is through the Work programme or the work capability assessment.

[George Hollingbery]

rose—

[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[Maria Miller]

I will give way to my hon. Friend, then to the hon. Lady, then I really must move on.

[George Hollingbery]

The Minister might be about to come on to the subject of carers—I imagine that she might wind up on that point—but will she confirm two points? Will she confirm first that households in receipt of DLA, and therefore afterwards PIP, will not be subject to the benefits cap and, secondly, that carer’s allowance will be awarded outwith universal credit?

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend is right to pick up on those details, because such details make a real difference to family life.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

I wish to speak briefly about four issues, the first of which is Remploy. Only 46% of disabled people are in employment, compared with 76% of non-disabled people, so there is a huge problem that must be addressed, but I think we have to ask ourselves whether an organisation that employs 2,800 people, compared with the 40,000 currently looked after by Access to Work, is the right answer to the question being asked. Furthermore, Remploy’s latest report, for 2010-11, shows that the DWP spent £68.3 million supporting Remploy that year, which equates to £25,000 a head, as I mentioned earlier, and that is £5 million more than in 2009-10, and more than 20% of the total budget available to help disabled people back into work. With the average cost of an Access to Work award at £2,900, as I also mentioned earlier, surely this differential is not sustainable.

We have already heard that Labour announced the closure of 29 Remploy facilities in 2008. I think it knew then, as I think it knows now, that this model is essentially unsustainable. The real issue is that money is much better spent on access to employment and the social model, as has been recommended by not only the Sayce review but many mainstream disability groups. We have to acknowledge that a scheme designed to help disabled ex-servicemen after the second world war is no longer fit for purpose in the modern environment.

What is so surprising about the motion is that it does not seem to recognise that the Government are simply continuing work that the previous Administration put in train, in addition to protecting the £320 million budget for specialist disability employment support.

Turning briefly to the work capability assessment, again we need to recognise some facts. WCA was introduced in 2007 as part of the Welfare Reform Act 2007 under John Hutton. It was then implemented over the following four years by three further Secretaries of State: the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain), James Purnell and, finally, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). In fact, in the previous nine years there had been eight different Secretaries of States for Work and Pensions, which does not suggest the greatest grip on the portfolio. None of those four Secretaries of State since WCA was introduced sought to change it. There were internal reviews in November 2007 and October 2009, but the Government did not implement them, although the current Government have done so.

Professor Harrington has been commissioned to advise on changing WCA. I am going to quote from the foreword to his second review, published in November last year:

“Even without Incapacity Benefit reassessment, the changes I proposed to the WCA system would have presented a big challenge… DWP rapidly adopted my proposals as policy and DWP Operations set about the necessary changes with energy and commitment. Atos, who are contracted to DWP for their part of the WCA, fulfilled their contractual requirements.

I have seen these improvements in the day-to-day running of both DWP Operations and Atos. This has taken time and some observers have told me that they have seen no change. I advise patience. The process of improvement is happening, but is not yet in evidence everywhere. It will take time to have the desired impact and the year three Review will closely monitor the impact of the changes and ensure there is continuing progress in improving the assessment.”

It is a clear, long-term commitment to making WCA work, and the observations from within say it is the right process. Again, we see that the Government are carrying on with a programme introduced by the previous Government and succeeding in improving the outcomes from it.

What about the replacement of disability living allowance with the personal independence payment? DLA was introduced 20 years ago and the world has changed enormously since. A great deal of credit has to go to the Opposition for some of those changes. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 secured rights for disabled people, which were strengthened greatly by the Equality Act 2010 and a good deal of legislation and effort from the Opposition when they were in office. However, much has been changed in the past 20 years, including attitudes. The materials, machines and many other facilities available to disabled people have improved markedly, but DLA has not changed, and undoubtedly that is a mistake. It needs to change.

There is no objective way of assessing entitlement, no systematic reviews and there are significant over and under-payments. More than 70% of the DLA caseload has an indefinite award. PIP will be fairer and more objective, will deliver more consistent benefits and will be sustainable for the future. Support will be focused on those with the greatest need and a higher proportion of individuals will receive the highest rates under PIP than under DLA. It is odd that even the motion before us recognises that change to DLA is required, so what exactly are we supposed to be debating? I am increasingly puzzled.

Finally, I will say a word or two on carers. I acknowledge the enormous contribution that they make to our society. They are an absolutely vital part of the machinery that keeps this country ticking, and the Government recognise that. As I mentioned in an intervention, carer’s allowance will remain outside the assessment of universal credit. There will also be a carers element within universal credit which will not require the carer to be entitled to carer’s allowance. That is a welcome change. The Government have said that any carer who has regular and substantial caring responsibilities will be entitled to the extra carer amount.

The Labour party has not opposed the change to universal credit or, as far as I know, suggested any changes to the measures that apply to carers within it, so once again I find myself somewhat puzzled by the words of the motion. I am afraid that as I sit and sum all this up in my mind, I reach one inescapable conclusion: the motion is not so much something to be debated but a press release in search of an audience.