Welfare Reform Bill

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)]

I know that the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) is keen for us to make progress today and was somewhat concerned that we did not complete consideration of all elements on Monday. I will try to address all the issues that I am able to address in a speedy manner so that we can consider things fully.

Right hon. and hon. Members who have been listening to the debate thus far will already have a flavour of the complexity of the current scheme. Unfortunately, the scheme is open to widespread abuse, and some of that is driven by the remoteness of the administration of these elements of the discretionary social fund. Just so that hon. Members are absolutely clear, I should say that we are talking about replacing budget loans, crisis loans and the community care grant with national payments on account, including advances and alignment payments, and with local authority -delivered local assistance. The bulk of the comments of the hon. Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Westminster North (Ms Buck) were about crisis loans, half of which are alignment payments, which will continue to be paid at national level through payments on account. It is important that hon. Members are aware that to all intents and purposes people will still have access to that money on a national basis. I hope that will reassure hon. Members regarding a number of the issues raised.

I do not think that the status quo is an option because of the level of abuse in the system at the moment. First, the number of crisis loans has tripled since 2006, but we do not believe that that increase reflects an underlying increase in genuine need as a result of the recession or anything else. We have looked in detail at the individuals who are causing that increase in demand and our analysis has shown that it is being driven by young single people on jobseeker’s allowance, many of whom are still living at home. We should be looking at what is driving that demand and asking whether the money is getting through to the sort of vulnerable people about whom the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is rightly concerned.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

What is the Minister going to do to ensure that the operation of the social fund across the devolved regions does not set a hierarchy of standards and differences that are so far apart that people come to realise that the social fund operates very differently in certain parts of the UK? That would create hardship for many vulnerable people.

[Maria Miller]

The national payments on account will be dealt with on a national basis in the same way in any part of the country and the regulated part of the social fund will continue as it is. The hon. Gentleman is talking about how local assistance will be dealt with and I am sure that he, like all hon. Members, will know that local authorities want to do their best by the vulnerable citizens we are talking about. That is certainly my experience of most, if not all, local authorities.

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Skilled and experienced professionals in the Department for Work and Pensions currently administer the discretionary social fund, but it is not clear who will take on that role within local authorities. That will present a significant capacity problem for local authorities that are already stretched in the current financial climate. The Government have not set out minimum standards and levels of service that they expect councils to adhere to. How will individuals access the replaced discretionary social fund, and where? What time scales can they expect for decisions? We might end up with significant variation between councils, whereas at present we have a clear national scheme. I do not believe that we have had clarity from Ministers on local eligibility.

[Ian Paisley]

The point that the hon. Lady is making is critical. A local authority might lay down a policy on this matter that is very good, but if another authority then does something slightly different that appears to be better, automatically all the good work that the first local authority has done will be seen as of no use as it will be held to another standard. We must have a single national standard so that people who require this fund, whether in Bushmills or Birmingham, know that they will see the same standard, with the same requirements, the same grant and the same opportunity to avail themselves of that assistance.

[Bridget Phillipson]

I agree entirely. It is vital that people feel that appropriate safeguards are in place with a national scheme and a national appeals system so that when things go wrong, as they sometimes do, there is an appropriate means of redress and decisions can be looked at again.

My concern with the Government’s proposals is that we will end up with massive variation between councils and between different parts of the United Kingdom, which will disadvantage people in certain areas. Some councils might choose a system that works very effectively and addresses the needs of vulnerable groups, but others might not do that so well. That is why the Government must be very clear about the standards that they will demand of local authorities, but they are not being clear.

Women fleeing domestic violence are often forced out of their local area in order to seek safety, so what safeguards can we expect when a woman is forced to move to an area where the local council might decide that she is ineligible for support? In the urban areas of the north-east, where large local authorities cover small geographical areas, it is not a great distance from Gateshead to Sunderland, but might the local authority in Sunderland, for example, take the view that the woman should seek support from her local authority in Gateshead? I sincerely hope that it would not take such a view, as that could hold up the process when the woman desperately needs financial help. This is not a factor at present because the scheme is a national one, but devolving responsibility to local councils will create a raft of potential problems for those councils and risk placing some very vulnerable people at risk of harm.

It is simply not good enough for the Government to hope that local councils will be able to manage this complex change. With a budget that is not ring-fenced and the potential for a reduced level of funding from recovered grants, it is inevitable that some local councils will not want to take people without a clear and established local connection, which I believe will be particularly damaging for women fleeing domestic violence if this is not done properly. That is why it is imperative that the Government set out detailed proposals, as amendment 39 makes clear, including eligibility criteria and an independent appeals mechanism. Without further clarity and detail, there is a real likelihood that some of the most vulnerable people in our communities will be unable to access financial support when they need it most.

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[Ian Paisley]

Does the hon. Lady agree that what will be foisted on people tonight if we are not careful is a sleight of hand whereby, from March 2013, people will be moved across duplicitously from DLA to PIP, and then PIP will be withdrawn? Of course, DLA will not be withdrawn because it no longer exists. That sleight of hand should be rejected outright by this House.

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[Margaret Curran]

That is a very interesting observation, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for drawing it to the House’s attention. I know that he takes a great interest in these matters. That point gives us even more reason to argue that Members should support the amendments—they would avoid any problem of that nature.

When the Minister is not talking about “overlap” in an attempt to address the problem in question, she is talking about the need for a review. It was promised that the review, first announced earlier this year, would look into the provision of DLA mobility to those in residential care homes, which I know offered some succour to Members who were concerned about the matter. Labour Members were mildly optimistic that that was a signal that the Government were undertaking a rethink, as we know they are prepared to do when the time is right. However, we have been sadly disappointed. Although a review was launched, it has no time scale, there are no terms of reference, no review group has been established and there is no involvement for disabled people. No wonder people are confused about where the policy stands.

I remind the House that at Prime Minister’s questions on 23 March, the Prime Minister offered the Leader of the Opposition an opportunity to contribute to the review. I do not think that possibility actually exists. Have the terms of reference of the review been made public? No. Will the findings be published? No. This is not a review, it is, as the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) said, a delaying tactic to cover up a deeply flawed policy. In my wilder moments I thought it was perhaps an appeasement of some Liberal Democrat Members, because we know that their party conference overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the policy. The Liberal Democrats in Committee disappeared when the matter was voted on. They are here today, so I hope they will join us and help to defeat this particularly pernicious part of the Bill. I appeal to them to make their presence felt today in a way that they did not in Committee.

[Ian Paisley]

Does the hon. Lady agree that throughout all of this—no matter how it is dressed up or how Opposition Members are criticised—the policy is about doing one, well named thing? It is about making the pips squeak among the most vulnerable in our country. That is another reason why it should be opposed.

[Margaret Curran]

This is embarrassing, because hon. Members are putting the argument so much more effectively than I am.

To conclude on this section of my contribution, may I make an appeal to Members of the House? We have a moment in time. We are being watched by disabled people this afternoon, and by their organisations. This goes to the heart of what we are about. People will be prisoners in residential care and prisoners in their own homes if this provision is removed from them. Many opportunities for them will also be withdrawn. I appeal to hon. Members: let us do the right thing this evening and vote for amendment 43—I also intend, Mr Deputy Speaker, to press amendments 42 and 44 to a Division when the time comes.

I shall now discuss specific aspects of the personal independence payment that should be changed to make the new benefit fairer and more effective in giving support to those who need it, and to assist a smooth transition for existing claimants to the new benefit. Amendments 44 to 47 seek to amend clause 79 and the proposed change to the required period condition for PIP. The amendments would retain the three-month period that claimants must wait before they are eligible to receive PIP, but would extend the period over which a claimant must show that they will be with that disability from six months, as is currently the case with DLA, to nine months.

In other words, for those who have not followed every single detail of the Bill like those of us who served in Committee, like the Government intend, the Opposition would extend the current DLA required condition period from nine months to one year for PIP. However, the Opposition would extend the provision after receipt of the benefit, not at the beginning. To do otherwise would be to penalise unfairly those disabled people who need extra help associated with their disability early in their treatment.

Yet again, there is some confusion about the rationale behind the change in the waiting time for PIP. In Committee, the Minister said that the change was categorically not about savings. She clearly stated:

“I will be honest and open with my answer. I would like to reassure the hon. Lady”—

meaning me—

“that the principal aim of extending the qualifying period from three to six months is not about savings. We do not expect the measure to provide any significant savings.”––[Official Report, Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, 10 May 2011; c. 848.]

Furthermore, I have asked the Minister in a series of written parliamentary questions what the projected savings are. Again, her Department was unable to provide any sort of answer—nor do its answers so much as allude to potential savings resulting from this policy decision—yet at Department for Work and Pensions questions on Monday, the Minister appeared to backtrack, stating that “modest” savings were now part of the reasoning for pushing ahead with the change. In her response today, will she indicate the scale of those modest savings? It is a little concerning that the rationale behind changes that will make such a big difference to the lives of many disabled people in this country is, even at this late stage, being cobbled together by the Government.

If we cannot comment on savings from the policy, we can at least discuss its impact on disabled people who require PIP to help them to meet extra costs associated with their disability. In Committee, we discussed in great detail the different conditions that are likely to require early support, so I will not go into them in great depth today unless pushed to do so.

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[Jenny Willott]

I give way first to the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley).

[Ian Paisley]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who is being very good and lenient with her time. On the issue of overlapping, which was raised at the start of her comments, I want to point out that the disability living allowance as currently constructed is a non-means-tested benefit. Overlapping implies that there should now be a means test. If part or all of someone’s benefit were to be taken away, means-testing would be necessary. Is the hon. Lady saying that she will support a provision that would introduce a new means test by stealth?

[Jenny Willott]

I do not believe that this is about means-testing of benefits. It is about looking for sources of state support or Government funding for the mobility needs of individuals with disability. It is about looking at the different sources of money to ensure that it is provided evenly to people with disabilities so that their mobility needs are covered.