Personal Independence Payments (Wales)

Debate between Hywel Williams and Mike Penning

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I congratulate the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) on a fine, eloquent and valuable speech.

Well, here we are again. Some hon. Members will recall our PIP debate with the now former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport when she was the Minister responsible for disability issues. We discussed the mobility needs of people in residential care, and eventually she performed a U-turn—eventually.

I like this Minister and think that he is sincere and conscientious. We can trust that he will take full account of the debate and make timely changes. We are here because of delays in dealing with our constituents’ cases, and we know about the concerns of the National Audit Office and the Work and Pensions Committee. Our particular concern is Wales, where there are higher levels of disability and long-term illness. I have had cases, but I will not go into them, because we have heard sufficient detail about how bad the situation is. I will, however, ask a number of questions. I have had a response from Capita, although it is not completely satisfactory. I worry about our constituents who do not think of going to see their MP, because there must be many of those—proportionately more than actually come through our doors.

As has been mentioned, there are delays. People are told that they will be paid from the date of their claim, but the problem is that people have current needs, and jam tomorrow, even if it is delivered, is no use. Where there are delays, are claimants given timely information about how long their cases will take? Knowing how long the case will take would at least be some comfort. It is a grim question, but I have also been looking for figures on how many claimants in Wales have died waiting for their claim. It would be useful to have the data sets as soon as possible, although I know that we are in the early stages, and I have had access to some of the management information. Too often, we have data sets for the UK in general, but we are concerned with Wales and it would be useful to have those data sets broken down as far as our country is concerned.

Another issue for Wales is rurality, which makes PIP particularly important for people’s mobility needs. There is a practical question of the travel time for people who are assessed in centres, or the extra travel time taken by Capita staff who have to go to remote locations in rural areas. Atos has chosen a slightly different emphasis from Capita, by doing more assessments in centres rather than home visits. Will the Department eventually conduct a compare and contrast exercise on Atos’s and Capita’s handling of the matter?

I had an interesting discussion with Dr Duckworth, the managing director for PIP at Capita, on the radio this morning. He reported, as we have heard, that Capita now thinks that face-to-face interviews take two hours rather than one. Will the Minister tell us, perhaps in writing, how the planning process worked and how such an alarming underestimate was reached? Any planning process must be somewhat speculative, but if one hour was planned for and the outturn is two hours, it seems to me to be a gross underestimate.

I understand that Capita is recruiting more staff, and I heard the other day that staff from the Department for Work and Pensions are helping out. That is good; in such a situation, it is all hands to the pump. However, are there additional costs, and who pays them? Given that the contract is with a private organisation, what penalties are being imposed on Capita? Has the Minister made any assessment of its willingness, or otherwise, to continue with the work? We saw what happened with Atos, which pulled out of a different sort of assessment because of the difficulties that it faced.

Furthermore, I understand that Capita is conducting more paper-based assessments. Initially, Capita planned to do 70% of assessments face to face, and then we heard that the figure was 99%, but I understand now that, to hurry matters along, some paper-based assessments are being made. That is where we came in when we discussed PIP in the first place. One of the unsatisfactory aspects of disability living allowance was that it was too often a paper-based exercise, which produced variable outcomes, to say the least. PIP was sold on the basis that it would involve a quality, individual, face-to-face assessment, that there would be reviews and that the system would be better all around, but I worry that we may be going back to where we started.

I referred earlier to the need for data sets. It would be useful if the Minister gave us a snapshot of claimant numbers in Wales—perhaps not now, because he may not have the figures to hand—and the number of claims outstanding. Usefully, the Department produced a document entitled “Personal Independence Payment: Management Information” in February 2014, which some hon. Members may have seen. The results for the UK are interesting and rather startling. I do not know whether the figures are still current, because they were published in February and we are now in April. I see from one of the tables that in December 2013, there were 229,700 new PIP claims, and 43,800 new claim decisions were made in respect of all new PIP claims. That is, as far as I can see, a rate of about 20%.

[Mike Penning]

Perhaps I can help the Chamber. We estimate that 233,000 claims have been made, of which 50% have now been decided. Of the terminally ill, 99% have been concluded, which is still not high enough.

[Hywel Williams]

I am glad to hear that that is the rate. Of course, with people who are terminally ill, we want to see a rate of 100%. I also had a look at the figures from the PIP reassessment and impact report from December 2012, which gives a forecast for March 2014 of 87,000 reassessments, with 180,000 reassessments in the March 2012 strategy. Perhaps the Minister can give us further information.

A particular issue in Wales is assessment through the medium of Welsh. I put a question to the Department some time ago, and was told that the assessments would follow the Department’s Welsh language scheme.

Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

Debate between Hywel Williams and Mike Penning

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) and all the other hon. Members who have spoken most eloquently about this terrible disease in support of the proposal made by the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), which my party and I support. The hon. Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) said that it seemed unlikely that he would be so concerned about mesothelioma, given that he represents a rural area, and the same applies to me; what does mesothelioma mean to us in rural Arfon?

In the early 1960s, a Ferodo factory was established just outside my home town of Caernarfon. The slate industry was dying at the time, and many slate workers were affected with the dust disease that led to the 1979 Act to which I referred earlier in an intervention. At the time, people believed in economic planning and the plan was to establish a large factory in the constituency to mop up the unemployment arising subsequent to the closure of the slate industry. Ironically, the factory was that of the Ferodo firm, which then used asbestos in the production of brake linings, leading to cases of mesothelioma in my constituency.

I will be brief because the arguments have been very well made this afternoon by a variety of hon. Members on both sides of the House, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) for her interesting and well-informed speech. As has been said, the scheme is being set up for individuals who have not only been diagnosed with a terminal illness, but who have been suffering the misfortune of being unable to trace their employer’s insurers. It is plainly unjust that these claimants should automatically lose a significant percentage of the compensation that is rightly theirs through no fault of their own. The industry has argued that mesothelioma claimants should be encouraged to look at all other avenues before making a claim under the scheme. At a meeting I had some months ago with insurers, that point was made most strongly.

[Mike Penning]

It is the Government who are saying that a victim must do everything they possibly can to ensure they get a claim against an insurance company before they approach the scheme, because the scheme is a fund of last resort.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Hywel Williams and Mike Penning

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

1. What plans he has for the future of the independent living fund.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

We will consider the Court of Appeal judgment carefully and will announce plans in due course.

[Hywel Williams]

I declare an interest, in that my brother is enabled to live independently in his own community by the ILF, and I am extremely grateful that that opportunity is afforded to him. Will the Minister assure the House that when the Government come to consider their future plans, there will be full consultation this time with disabled people and disability groups in Wales, the regions of England, and Scotland, and specifically with the Welsh Government?

[Mike Penning]

I greatly respect the hon. Gentleman, but the conclusions of the Court of Appeal were nothing to do with consultation. It was a process issue, in that the Court felt that the Minister had not been given enough information, based on the information that was put in writing. The Court went on to say that there was evidence that the Minister

“consulted personally with many affected groups”

and it had

“no doubt that evidence of hard cases would have been forcefully drawn to her attention.”

That is what the Court ruled. It had nothing to do with consultation.