Care Bill [Lords]

Debate between John McDonnell and Sheila Gilmore

Monday 10th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I will speak to the amendments in my name. I share the view of the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) that we should not have nodded the programme motion through blithely. Many of my constituents have contacted me about the Bill, because care in my area is on the edge of crisis, with the new threshold rolling it back for many people. That is why I support new clause 11; people need their human rights to be ensured in the Bill. New clause 2 is important, because we have a Children’s Commissioner and we need a commissioner for the elderly and other care services, so that there is someone to speak out for people. I support new clauses 7 and 9, because I agree that introducing legislation without funding is meaningless. We place local authorities in an impossible position, as they struggle to provide the services.

With regard to the work force, we need to ensure pay and adequate training, so that we fully professionalise the work force. In my area, we have a high turnover of care workers, which leads to distressing results. In one case, an elderly lady was burgled and on the next day a new carer came in, but she thought that she was being burgled all over again, because she did not recognise the person. That is the instability in the industry at the moment. That is why I support new clauses 17 and 18.

On the amendments in my name, new clause 31 is generated by one of my constituents called Jonathan Kay, who asked me to get the matter dealt with in the Bill. For many years, Jonathan has been funded by the local authority to employ a personal assistant to enable him to carry out his day-to-day tasks—he is a disabled person—but he has experienced serious problems with personal assistants in the past, even suffering abuse on more than one occasion. When employing personal assistants, Jonathan has found assessing the suitability of candidates extremely difficult, and he has not been able to obtain reliable recommendations from any public body, despite using public funds to employ them.

Part 3 of the Bill provides that the training and education —but no qualifications—of carers will be undertaken by Health Education England. The purpose of my new clause is for Health Education England to allow scope for the local education and training boards to do such work and to compile, publish and maintain a register of all persons who provide regulated social care for individuals under arrangements made by or paid for by a public authority. That would allow people such as Jonathan to access a list of trained professionals whom they can employ with confidence, we hope, in future.

With amendment 26, I am simply seeking to install into the Bill a provision on the right to live independently, as recommended by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, but dismissed by the Government. The Government might well have been concerned about the legal actions that were taking place with regard to the independent living fund, but the Committee’s report made its disappointment very clear that the Government had not taken the opportunity of the Bill to be explicit about their support for the convention on the rights of people with disabilities and article 19—“Living independently and being included in the community”—being a human right. It should therefore be included in the Bill. The Government have given assurances that the general direction of the Bill might achieve the same ends, but that is not good enough in that it does not enforce the rights in law.

My amendment 21 covers the same ground as new clause 15, so I will not dwell on it in any depth, but I will give an example. Whether with our parents or in our community, we all know about the uncertainty of charges for residential care. They cause real concern and anxiety among families. Yes, the ability of local authorities to negotiate rates influences the overall market, but that is why there is a need for some form of indicative price. A care funding calculator is used to set the care of people with learning difficulties, and that model has worked and saved public funds. We should at least be considering in the Bill that sort of process for care overall.

My proposals in amendment 20 would

“require the local authority, when carrying out the assessment, to capture an individual’s main and other disabling conditions”.

A whole group of organisations, including the Parkinson’s Disease Society, Sue Ryder, the Motor Neurone Disease Association, the Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Epilepsy Society, the Neurological Alliance and the Alzheimer’s Society, have all campaigned for this simple change in the assessment process, which merely requires local authorities to collect and record information about an individual’s main and other disabling conditions when they are conducting their social care assessments and arranging care packages. Why is that important? It is important for local authorities to be aware of the different conditions in their community, so that they can plan long-term services, but it is also important for us to be aware of the information nationally, so that care services and our investment can be planned in the long term. Taking that into account seems to be a minor amendment.

Amendment 22, which I also tabled, was proposed by the Royal National Institute of Blind People and lobbied for by a number of my constituents. In clause 76, the duty is placed on the local authority to establish

“a register of sight-impaired and severely sight-impaired adults who are ordinarily resident in its area.”

The existing provision relates only to adults and does not include children. My amendment simply ensures that the local authority is required to collect information on both adults and children. The reason for this is that, under the Children Act 1989, there is a requirement on local authorities to collect information with regard to blind and partially sighted children, but 20% of local authorities admitted failing to meet that legal requirement. Furthermore, 20% of local authorities have no register; three councils include just 1% of disabled children known to the authority on the registers; one in four authorities have whole registers with fewer than 2% of disabled children known to the council; and almost six in 10 councils include 10% or fewer of the disabled children. The RNIB therefore emphasises that in clause 76 we should place on local authorities a duty, when collecting information, to include children ordinarily resident in their area. Again it is the same mechanism; it is about the planning of services to ensure that they are properly invested in over the long term.

Overall, I welcome the Bill, but I fear that it will disappoint many as a result of the failure to address some of the considerable issues with regard to funding, rewards to the work force and professional training, and the appropriateness of the cap on costs.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to new clause 5, which is in my name. I thank the many Members who have supported the clause.

I have been pursuing the issue since 2011, initially on behalf of a constituent, a Mr Kenny, who suffered an injury when he was serving in the Army and is paralysed from the waist down. He originally lived in the London area, but his family is from Edinburgh and he wanted to move back to his family. For four years, he got absolutely nowhere, because neither authority would take responsibility for him being able to move. They argued backwards and forwards. Eventually, his family helped him to move physically, but for a period none of his care costs was being met, until Edinburgh relented and began to meet those costs. By that time, he had incurred quite a lot of debt.

I first raised the issue in 2011. The right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), who was then the Minister, said that it should be covered in the White Paper, but when that came out it only related to portability of care within England and not to the devolved authorities. I kept raising the matter and I was assured that something would be in the Bill, but when it was published the measures related to the portability of residential care packages but not home care packages.

Welfare Reform (Sick and Disabled People)

Debate between John McDonnell and Sheila Gilmore

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

Interestingly, all the statistics prove that people who are represented win their appeal in vast numbers, while those who are not represented are suffering. To be frank, it is no wonder that 84% of GPs have reported that patients have presented with mental health problems, such as stress, anxiety and depression as a result of undergoing or the fear of undergoing the work capability assessment.

For all those reasons, the BMA has called for an end to the WCA “with immediate effect”, believing that it should be replaced with

“a rigorous and safe system that does not cause avoidable harm”.

Such systems are used in other countries, so why can we not use one of them here? That is why the motion calls for the WCA to be scrapped.

People assessed as capable of work and put on employment and support allowance within the work-related group now lose their contributory ESA after 12 months. Some 700,000 disabled people are losing a total of £4.4 billion as a result of the 12-month cut-off. There has been a massive escalation in the use of sanctions against people who are on ESA or jobseeker’s allowance; some 900,000 people were sanctioned last year.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Is it not ironic, at the very least, that the people who are most affected by the one-year cut off are those who, for instance, have a working partner or small savings—the very hard-working people whom the Government say they want to protect?

[John McDonnell]

People thought that they were contributing to a scheme that they would see the benefits from. They now find that they have contributed, but that they will no longer get the benefits. That is unjust.

One in five of the people on JSA who were sanctioned is disabled. Sanctions mean the loss of benefits altogether for weeks or even months. That is compounded, as my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) said, by the increasing difficulty in securing advice or advocacy to appeal or challenge sanctions.

Work Capability Reassessments

Debate between John McDonnell and Sheila Gilmore

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. Everybody here is probably familiar with some of the issues relating to the employment and support allowance and the work capability assessment. Between the introduction of the assessment in October 2008 and August 2011, 1.15 million new claimants were assessed and 687,000 were declared fit for work. Of those, 102,500 successfully appealed their decision and were awarded ESA. That means that 9% of all ESA assessments have been overturned. When we look at assessments leading to fit-for-work decisions, the figure rises to 15%. Although the proportion of decisions overturned has started to fall, the overall number still remains extremely high.

Those figures do not include all the incapacity benefit claimants currently being migrated to ESA, a process that started last year and is due to be completed in 2014. The figures published recently cover claims only after appeals have been taken into account—they have been published on a different basis—so we have no data on how many claimants in the migration are originally declared fit for work and then appeal, and how many of those appeals are successful. Although that is not precisely the subject of this debate, I hope that the Minister will see to it that we have more comprehensive and comparable data in future.

The number of incorrect assessments and successful appeals is still high. Like many of my colleagues, I have been considering a number of different aspects of the issue. Earlier this year, I secured a debate here in Westminster Hall on the work capability assessment. On that occasion, I focused on the recommendations for new mental, intellectual and cognitive descriptors drawn up by Mencap, Mind and the National Autistic Society. Although the descriptors are certainly not the only issue that needs addressing, they could have gone a long way to improving the assessment process.

Professor Harrington approved and submitted the descriptors to the Department for Work and Pensions in spring 2011. It is frustrating that officials are only now getting down to assessing properly whether the descriptors would improve the WCA, and we will not get the results of that so-called gold standard review until next summer. There will have been more than two years of delay since the proposals were published.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I preface my remarks by thanking my hon. Friend for the work that she has done on the issue over a long period. Is her experience the same as mine? The largest number of constituents with whom I deal who have lost their benefits, and those with the most distressing cases, are those with mental health problems and those on the autistic spectrum.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. That is the case. There is a flaw in how the original test was drawn up if it is not accounting properly for those types of condition. That is why it needs to be examined.

Public Service Pensions Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Sheila Gilmore

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I wish to speak in support of amendments 1, 2 and 9. Amendment 2 is straightforward: it seeks to ensure that people are not forced to retire beyond the age of 65, as most of our work force have planned to retire then. On the argument that the amendment is unaffordable, let me remind hon. Members of what Hutton said about the 2007-08 changes. He said that they are likely to reduce costs to taxpayers of the pension schemes by £67 billion over 50 years, with costs stabilising at around 1% of GDP or 2% of public expenditure.

The other issue involved here is what our priorities are. The last figure I had for how much the unfunded public sector pension schemes were costing us was for 2009-10, when it was less than £4 billion. Some 60% of gross tax relief on pensions goes to higher rate taxpayers—that is £22 billion. The cost of providing tax relief to the 1% of our population who earn more than £150,000 was double the amount we are funding with regard to the public sector unfunded pensions—that is £8 billion. So the fact that we are willing to subsidise the higher paid—the rich—while forcing others to work longer and cutting their pensions at the same time reflects our priorities. That is why I have tabled the amendment: I do not accept the settlement or the Government’s rationale for these proposals.

Amendment 1 was eloquently discussed by my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), and I must declare an interest at this point: I am an honorary life member of the Prison Officers Association. One point that the POA made, which we made on Second Reading, is that if we increase the pension age for prison officers, we lose money because more of them will become injured and more will go off sick, and more cost will be incurred in compensation. The actuarial figures are there almost to prove it, so it is anomalous not to include prison officers. The point about psychiatric nurses is the role they play, particularly in institutions such as Broadmoor, where they are dealing with the most difficult cases—physical challenges—within the NHS. I find it bizarre that we are expecting police officers to retire “early” at 60—I hope we do not go to that—because of the physical nature of their jobs in dealing with criminals, yet when those criminals go into prison it appears that they no longer provide a physical challenge to the officers dealing with them then. The situation is anomalous, which is why I support the amendment to include psychiatric nurses.

I also tabled amendment 9, and this is specifically for the Fire Brigades Union. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) has said from the Front Bench, the Government have set up, in agreement with the unions, the working longer review in the NHS and the physical assessment in respect of the fire service. Evidence is piling in to those reviews—independent academic evidence, and details of physical tests that have been undertaken—to demonstrate that it is tough to do the job at 55, let alone at 60. I have seen some of the evidence put forward in the fire service review. When the previous Government increased the retirement age to 55 it was on the basis that there would be more firefighters doing preventive work and people could be redeployed into that work. This year, only 15 posts nationally have been available for redeployment, so redeployment is not an option. These people are still out there doing that physical job, and it is unacceptable to push the retirement age to 60. That is why amendment 9 would ensure that the pension schemes would be able to take into account the reviews currently taking place and that we would be able to adhere to a lower retirement age, particularly for firefighters and others as they are justified.

I am interested to hear what the Government’s responses will be, so I shall finish on this next point. Overall we seek to ensure that there is justice in the Bill, and that is certainly not the case at the moment. I reiterate that the Bill is increasing the contributions and increasing the length of time that people will be working. Given the life expectancy in my constituency, a large number of my constituents will not reach retirement age. Already, a third of all members across the schemes retire within three years of when they should normally do so because they cannot physically continue in the job. They therefore live on reduced pensions and in some poverty. My constituents will contribute more, work longer, most probably have a reduced pension at the end of it and have to retire early. That is an unjust deal when we are subsidising the wealthy through tax relief on their pensions.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I want to address a couple of issues and reinforce some of the points made in Committee. It is not good enough to say that the normal retirement age does not matter because people can retire early if they need to, as they will retire on much lower pensions—that is what actuarial reduction means. Those with many chronic conditions might have several years of suffering with the condition that has made them retire. That is not good enough.

The way in which the Bill is formulated fixes the retirement age in a way that makes it very difficult to introduce the flexibility that might be required by some scheme reviews. There will be a battle every time a review shows that there should be a lower retirement age, as the Government will be able to point to the Bill and say that that age cannot be moved as that is what Parliament voted for. However, amendment 16, for example, would allow the degree of flexibility required. Many people already do not work in the years running up to the normal retirement ages, not just across the public sector but in the private sector, too. As many are living on reduced incomes and having to dip into any savings they might have put aside for retirement, they are much more likely to become dependent on other state support in older age.

We have the big issue of longevity, but underneath that lies the fact that a substantial proportion of the population cannot even work until the normal retirement age, particularly men between 60 and 65 in many private sector jobs. Those people are already living on reduced incomes, so if we keep increasing the retirement age more and more people will be in that position.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Sheila Gilmore

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

Amendment 53 relates to the abolition of the social fund and addresses a number of the concerns that Members raised on Second Reading and in Committee.

The Government propose to abolish key elements of the social fund—the community care grants and the crisis loans—and to replace them with support through local authorities. The social fund, particularly the crisis loan, is critical to many Members in representing their constituents. That is the case not only in my constituency but across the country. These mechanisms support people in desperate need and at key times in their lives, and they are safety nets when people are facing essential expenditure that they cannot meet. My concern is that many organisations have made representations to the Government, Committee members and Members of the House urging that the social fund should not be abolished without robust and effective alternatives put in its place. The proposal should certainly be fully explored and tested before any change is made.

Social funds have been critical. The numbers of recipients of social funds and of applications demonstrate their importance. In 2009-10, there were 640,000 applications for community care grants, 3.64 million for crisis loans and 1.69 million for budgeting loans. Some 263,000 CCGs were awarded, 2.7 million crisis loans were awarded, and 1.2 million budgeting loans were awarded, so the expenditure was significant. They have a significant impact on individuals’ lives and in tackling poverty across the country. Some £139 million was spent on CCGs, £109 million net was spent on crisis loans, and £482 million gross on budgeting loans. This is therefore a large-scale activity that is vital to the most vulnerable and poorest members of our society. Even at this level of expenditure, however, the Public Accounts Committee concluded, having investigated CCGs, that only 32% of legitimate demand was being met.

I am extremely pleased that the Department for Work and Pensions is retaining budgeting loans and advance loans for alignment payments. However, I and many Members and voluntary organisations working in this field are unclear about what will replace the crisis loans and the CCGs. I am gravely concerned about the proposals to transfer responsibility to local authorities, which will be expected to design their own schemes for emergency support. Those responsibilities are being transferred at a time when local authority budgets are being cut. My understanding is that the funding will not be ring-fenced. In their consultation, the Government suggested that local authorities could also meet some of the demands with payments in kind—food parcels and second-hand furniture were mentioned as examples. I am also concerned that without clear guidance councils might be able unilaterally to introduce and force new conditions on those applying for emergency support.

I tabled the amendment because of the real danger that we will now be faced with numerous schemes being developed by local authorities, and that vulnerable people will lose this essential support. I am concerned that if the funding to local authorities is not ring-fenced, it will be diverted to other priorities.

Let me give the example of what happened to the playbuilder grant in my area. I chair the local play association, which I also helped to set up. When the ring fence was lifted, the Government initially sought to withdraw elements of the second year of the scheme. I am grateful that the Secretary of State for Education reinstated them and returned significant amounts to local authorities, which was a real breakthrough. However, because the money was not ring-fenced, much of it unfortunately appears to have been diverted into other areas of council expenditure, rather than going to improve play for children. That is just one example, from the most recent period, of funds that were not ring-fenced being allocated to local authorities and then spent for purposes other than those that the Government had intended. The Minister has agreed that allocations will be based on social fund spending, which will be regularly reviewed and the data updated. However, my concern is that if money is not ring-fenced in the first stages, it will be creamed off in the early years to be spent elsewhere.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

We in Scotland have had four years’ experience of the removal of ring-fencing, supposedly to free up local authorities. I would be interested to hear my hon. Friend’s comments on our experience. Now that the ring fence has been removed, it is difficult to track what is happening to funds such as the supporting people fund, which give people valuable low-level support.

[John McDonnell]

I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me: I forgot about the experience in Scotland. What she describes is a classic example of what could happen. I am quite fearful, because I have been a councillor and I know about the pressures on local authorities when they expend their resources. If there are no clear guidelines or statutory duties placed on the authorities, elements of expenditure that the Government might have allocated with the best of intentions might not be spent in the way that the Government would want.

I am fearful that if people lose access to the scale of emergency support they currently draw on, their alternative will be to go to higher-cost lenders such as loan sharks, thereby falling into greater debt. Even in advance of the reforms, we have already had a number of pawnbrokers opening up in the town centre in my area, with the local citizens advice bureau reporting increased evidence of the use of loans from loan sharks. A number of organisations have expressed their concern that having numerous different local schemes could mean that we end up with—I do not like this phrase—a postcode lottery of access to life’s necessities, as a result of the loans not being distributed coherently and consistently. I am also concerned that local authorities seem not to have been given any guidelines or directives about establishing an appeals mechanism. Unless an appeals mechanism is set up, claimants will not have the security of being able to challenge decisions made locally.

I would therefore urge the Government not to abolish or wind down the social fund without giving an absolutely clear commitment about what will replace it. If emergency support is to be localised, we need strong, unambiguous and extremely clear statutory duties placed on local authorities to support vulnerable people, and for those duties to be attached specifically to such funding. I urge the Government to think again about ring-fencing, so that the money cannot be diverted away from the poor. The social fund commissioner proposed that the Government consider establishing national criteria for the schemes to be drawn up by local authorities, to ensure consistency in the use of local discretion. It would still be possible to reflect local circumstances, but national parameters would be set on the use of that discretion. I am also concerned that the devolution of emergency support services might create high administrative costs—this has been mentioned by a number of organisations, including Age UK and the Disability Alliance—which might divert funds away from provision for the poorest.