Disabled People

Debate between Ian Mearns and Michael Meacher

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

Research published in March by the think-tank Demos and by the disability charity Scope, which my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) mentioned earlier, revealed that by 2017-18, 3.7 million disabled people will collectively lose £28 billion as a result of the Government’s cumulative benefit changes. If Scope and Demos can do a cumulative impact assessment, why cannot the Government? That is a staggering expropriation from arguably the most deprived and disadvantaged section of the entire population and it is perhaps worth rehearsing quickly the range of the cumulative impact: the incapacity benefit reassessment; the reassessment of the personal independence payments; the overall cap; the universal credit; the time limitation of employment support allowance; the change to local housing allowance; the bedroom tax; the abolition of the independent living fund; the 1% cap on benefit uprating; the localisation of and 10% cut in council tax benefit; and the 1% cap on various benefits and tax credits. That is the range of it.

The study found that 123,000 disabled people faced three benefit cuts that will lose them an income of £18,000 in the five years to 2018. A group of nearly 5,000 disabled people will suffer a combination of six benefit cuts, losing a total of £23,000 each over five years. That works out as £88 per week per person, which for people on the breadline is absolutely huge.

The gratuitous harshness of the Government’s treatment of disabled people comes out mostly in the initial attack on and forthcoming abolition of the independent living fund. The ILF gave new life, engagement, mobility and participation to severely disabled people. Two years ago, the Government closed the fund to any new claims and now they will devolve it to local authorities. Let me ask the Minister some questions—and I expect a reply. Will that be ring-fenced when it goes to local authorities? Will it be the same level of expenditure, with no reduction in public spending of the kind that the Government slipped in when they made the switch from DLA to PIP or in the devolution of the council tax benefit?

Then we have Atos and the work capability assessments. Frankly, the ESA system is simply not working. A Citizens Advice study found that nearly half the Atos reports included inaccuracies that were so serious that they would have affected the decisions made and 70% of them included incorrect factual recordings of the history given. Reviews have found considerable variability in decision making, and there is a 42% success rate at appeal; the rate is much higher when the individual disabled person is represented. There is a very low employment rate among claimants 12 to 18 months after the decision.

The inherent problems that remain with the ESA are legion. The descriptors do not capture a person’s state of health in a way that reflects their ability to work, while medical evidence from those who have detailed, accurate and relevant knowledge is ignored. The assessors lack the time, ability and medical knowledge to understand an individual’s condition and how it relates to work and the assessment is irrelevant to work because no attempt is made to discover what work an individual is supposed to be capable of doing.

As so many disabled persons who have been through the process have said, the worst aspect of the employment and support allowance assessment is fear and insecurity. There is the belief that a test has been created for people to fail, no matter how sick they are; the stress that makes ill-health worse; and the stress and uncertainty of repeated assessments, which are like a sword of Damocles hanging over people perpetually.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) referred to Calum’s List. I thought 30 people had died; he says it is now 33. In nine cases, the family believe that stress triggered the death, and in 20 the person took their own life. Who is responsible for this bleak, unforgiving trail of misery? Behind Atos stands the Department for Work and Pensions, with its guidelines, regulations and descriptors, which underpin the Atos work; its targets—which are, of course, denied—for return-to-work decisions; and the sanctions to make sure that the assessors produce results.

[Ian Mearns]

One of the things that I find regrettable about this debate and previous debates that I have taken part in is that Government Members feel as though they are engaged in some sort of academic exercise; they are talking about statistics, rather than the impacts on real people.

[Mr Meacher]

I have certainly felt that. The Minister made an extraordinarily complacent and bland statement; he read out a speech that he was given by a civil servant as though he was seeing it for the first time. [Interruption.] I am referring not to the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), but the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban); we will judge the Under-Secretary in a moment. The speeches from those on the Government Benches have been extraordinarily disappointing, but I want to keep to the subject of the debate.

Behind the DWP stands the Treasury and the Chancellor, who have parcelled out targets for huge expenditure cuts, as we all know, without any prior investigation whatever of the extreme variability in human disability, let alone the wide differentials in job opportunities across the country. This is not an exercise in genuine social policy, but a preconceived shoehorning of the sensitivities of disability into the Chancellor’s unremitting cuts agenda.

If the Under-Secretary wishes me to be a little more positive, I will be, gladly. It is not at all difficult to see what needs to be done. We should make much more use of evidence and the claimant’s own doctor; significantly increase the time available for an assessment; improve assessors’ questioning technique, and preferably transfer that whole function back to the national health service; provide the claimant with a copy of the medical report and an opportunity to discuss inaccuracies with the decision maker; and, above all, greatly improve the descriptors.

I am sorry, but not surprised, that the Minister who spoke earlier has fled the Chamber; it is a pity. As he knows well—the Under-Secretary also knows; I spoke to her about this yesterday—for five months, I have been asking the Minister to meet a representative delegation to discuss these matters. I had to give the Minister a prior commitment—he seemed to need it for self-protection—that it would be a constructive engagement. It will be; we want to work with the Government to make things better, because we care about disabled people far more than we do about attacking the Government, although they deserve that we should. Given that the issue involves 1.5 million seriously disabled people, the reluctance of the Minister responsible, and his procrastination for so long a period as five months, is utterly scandalous. In the Under-Secretary’s reply to the debate, to which I shall listen very carefully, I expect her to tell us exactly when the Minister will meet us.