Disability Benefits

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for his persistent and thorough questioning of the DWP on matters pertaining to disability benefits. I support him in these debates in Westminster Hall and the main Chamber. This word is often used, but it is good to have a champion on this side of the House. His work has been excellent.

There will not be one engaged Member of the House who does not have an awful story of someone being turned down for help when they are so much in need of it. I have a constituent who is a plasterer. I will not mention his name; I will just tell the story. At 50 years of age, he had many years of work ahead of him. He had never been out of work, because he had done a good job all his life. That was his plan, but he has had a number of strokes and has been in the intensive care unit. He has been told that he will never regain enough strength to work and that he will struggle with daily life. His wife is a care assistant in a special needs school, and she has been able to help him in many ways; he never dreamed that he would need that sort of help.

He has been turned down for the personal independence payment. For the life of me, I cannot understand how someone who needs help or daily care from his wife, mother-in-law and daughter has been given no points in that assessment. The system has clearly let him down. I can see the difference, because I know the guy. I have known him all his life. My staff will assist him in his appeal, of course, but I always thought that the idea of the benefits system was to help those in need; the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) referred to people who need help.

Looking at this issue really depresses me. The recent Supreme Court judgment has shown that assessments have not been carried out in the correct way, meaning that 250,000 cases are to be reopened to ascertain whether the correct assessment criteria were used. I am not boasting, but I fill in benefits forms regularly for people and I know the system very well. I have a staff member who does nothing but look after benefit queries, so we are on the frontline. She is incredibly overworked.

It is clear that the criteria have never followed the spirit of the law. The spirit is to ensure that those who need help with daily life can get it, but the reality is that incredibly ill people are being made to feel like liars, spongers or fakers. They are made to feel that they have no right to help and that the world is judging them. From grown men with cancer who require their wives to catheterise them multiple times during the day to those who are severely affected by lifelong learning difficulties and are forced to have their awards renewed and their routines disrupted with assessments, the system lets people down regularly. It needs to be changed. It needs to understand, with compassion, the issues that our constituents face. Yes, I understand that we need to ensure that those who claim are entitled to the system, but the way in which that is assessed needs to change now.

We say this to the Minister beseechingly and with honesty, on behalf of our constituents. We want to ascertain how quickly these changes can be made so that men like my constituent, who feel worthless and embarrassed to claim only to be told that they are not deserving of help, will actually be assessed on the needs that they have now. It is not about the needs that my constituent had five or 10 years ago, but about the needs of the man he is today—the man who needs care for life. He has worked for 34 years of his life in a physically demanding job. When he needs help, he should have a social welfare system that does the job. It should deliver for him when he has a dire need, with changes to his health and personal life.

This debate is so important and necessary. We need an assessment that takes people’s health conditions into account and that understands with compassion why they need help. It should understand the evidential base from their doctor, medical expert, wife, carer, mother-in-law or daughter. That is all the evidential base we need. I cannot for the life of me understand why it is not taken on board.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mims Davies]

I am very happy to look at specific cases. Only recently, I met one of hon. Lady’s colleagues, with members of the blind community and people with a visual impairment, to discuss how we can learn directly from their experiences. My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon made exactly that point.

I have a speech to make, but first I want to respond to some points that Members have raised. On vulnerable people and vulnerable groups who need specific support, will they please look at this morning’s Work and Pensions Committee sitting, at which the Lords Minister and I covered the topic of safeguarding? We have a vulnerable claimant champion; safeguarding concerns are rightly referred to social services.

I am happy to write to my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon on the point about end of life. The point that he made about appointees was covered this morning, in recognition of the work that we need to do to ensure that people have the suitable voice that they need and that there is progress in this area. As we speak, we are growing our visiting officers team to 700 to go out and support people in the way that my hon. Friend described, and we are making sure that we go to the people we need to hear from. On the mandatory reconsideration trial, it is too early for definitive results, but there was a very pertinent reminder for me to be dialled into it.

The Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), asked about audio recording. We have taken an opt-in approach, but I am happy to go away and look at the specific point that he raised.

[Jim Shannon]

The Minister talks about compassion. The medical evidence that has been presented is very clear in what it says. May I ask respectfully whether the staff looking at these matters are trained to understand the medical evidence?

[Mims Davies]

We have a new chief medical adviser and 4,000 clinicians in this area, with a statutory duty and an understanding that is very much among the learnings that we have gained. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman, but if there is more to say, I will write to him. Questions have been raised about how the evidence is looked at and how it works; I am asking those questions myself, individually, and am happy to continue to do so.

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[Mrs Pauline Latham (in the Chair)]

The question is, That this House has considered personal independence payment and other disability benefits.

[Jim Shannon]

On a point of order, Mrs Latham.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (in the Chair)]

There is not time—there is no time.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered personal independence payment and other disability benefits.