Disability Benefits: Assessments

Debate between Justin Tomlinson and David Linden

Monday 4th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[David Linden]

Absolutely. I totally understand the hon. Lady’s point, and I am sure she will understand that a lot of the civil servants who were working on the design of the Social Security Scotland system were rightly deployed towards the covid pandemic. Ministers in the Scottish Government have acknowledged that the situation with the ADP waiting list is less than helpful. But I come back to the fundamental point on which I challenge the hon. Member for North Swindon, which is that our systems are about taking the view that the claimant is not on the make. That is the nub of the issue. With the UK Government’s system, there is a scepticism about whether the person sitting at the other end of the table is on the make or on the take, so it is about trying to find a way to catch them out. That is why there is an overturn rate of 68%, for example.

[Justin Tomlinson]

indicated dissent.

[David Linden]

The hon. Gentleman is shaking his head. I am sure he has something to say, so I am happy to give way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Tomlinson]

There is absolutely zilcho in the assessor’s contract to try to lower the success rate of a claimant. That is part of the driver behind our spending an extra £10 billion a year—a record amount. I wish the Scottish Government the very best of luck if they can identify changes; if they do, I encourage the British Government to adopt them. My point was that we should not be different for the sake of being different. We should always put the claimant first.

[David Linden]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, he has missed the point. The reality is that this contract is being delivered by the private sector—something to which I have a moral and political objection —with a clear brief to try to find people somehow on the make or on the take. If so, why on earth are the Government giving out a contract where the overturn rate is 68%?

[Justin Tomlinson]

The only thing within a contract that changes what an assessor is paid per assessment is that where there is poor quality, there is in effect a fine on the contract. Under the DLA, the success rate for the highest rate of support was 16%. Under PIP, with the assessors, it is 32% to 33%, hence why we are spending £10 billion a year more.

[David Linden]

The hon. Gentleman is saying what would happen if a contract were found somehow not to be working, but I rather suspect that the Minister will look at the fact that the overturn rate is 68%. I am not the Minister, but that would suggest to me, and to officials, that something is clearly going wrong with the assessment process.

Under the Scottish Government’s approach of abolishing the disability health assessments, person-centred consultations are held only when required. That is all in stark contrast to the frankly draconian measures that are being put in place and pursued by the British Government. I am sure that many people across the House share the view that the job of Government is to support vulnerable people, not to subject them to further hardship and scrutiny. However, there is an overall unwillingness, among both the Labour party and the Conservative party, to invest in social security. As it persists, disabled people continue to experience stress as a result of undergoing health assessments.

I can only hope that a leaf is taken out of the Scottish Government’s book for the sake of disabled people who are at the mercy of the British Government’s austerity agenda. As the Scottish Government use their devolved powers to mitigate against such draconian welfare policies, I am sure they will always ensure that the most vulnerable in our society and communities receive the support that they are entitled to while being treated with the dignity, fairness and respect that they deserve. That is the fundamental point of this debate, because that fairness, dignity and respect are not there, and that needs to change.

People with Disabilities: Cost of Living

Debate between Justin Tomlinson and David Linden

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

Thank you, Dr Huq—a double thank you for your late substitution this morning, for which we are all very grateful. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), who clearly demonstrated a real passion for this important subject. I think her constituents would recognise that she is a real champion for those who need a voice in this area, and I pay genuine tribute to her.

I also pay tribute to the Minister, who I know will respond in full. He has immersed himself in the details of his role and has always shown himself willing to engage with stakeholders. I think we would all agree that there is a wealth of knowledge and expertise in local and national organisations, and the Minister is passionate to utilise that wherever possible. That has come through very clearly in his time as a Minister.

I pay tribute to local and national organisations up and down the country that provide people with advice and support in accessing the often complex and daunting layers of support that are potentially available. For example Tim Saint, of the Swindon Carers Centre, does a huge amount of work in our community to help people access support. During my time as a Minister, I was surprised to see how many people miss out on the various forms of support that we have all voted to give them, often because they are faced with a complex and daunting system.

We have made progress. Under PIP, including the legacy benefits of DLA, and attendance allowance, we are now spending £12.5 billion more in real terms on help for those with disabilities or long-term health conditions. Under the old legacy system of DLA, only 16% of claimants would access the highest rate of support. A few years ago, that figure had reached 33%, and for some health conditions, in particular mental health conditions, people are now six times more likely to access the higher rates of benefits. So we are very much heading in the right direction, and there are further opportunities to turbo-speed improvements with the forthcoming White Paper.

There are two key lessons the Government can focus on: speed and specialisation. First, on speed, there are lessons that can be learned from the welcome changes to the special rules for terminal illness. We were able to apply a policy change that was co-designed by stakeholders, their policy teams and end users—people with real-life experience. Using the same principles, we can widen the severe conditions criteria in the PIP system, removing up to 300,000 unnecessary assessments or reassessments each year.

The principle behind that is that we would look at specific conditions. We could then be fairly confident about the trajectory of that condition and set in place a timetable of support. For those people whose condition has perhaps changed more quickly than expected, there would still always be the option to have a light-touch assessment to speed up their access to the increased rate of support.

There is a sort of principle around this, which already exists with universal credit and the industrial injuries disablement benefit. An independent panel could look at these conditions, and one example would be motor neurone disease—I cannot understand what the point would be of putting somebody with MND through an assessment. Where we can be fairly confident of the deterioration of health conditions, we could put in place an automatic right to support, with the backstop that, if somebody’s condition, sadly, deteriorates more quickly, a light-touch assessment could then move them to the higher level of support much more quickly. Removing 300,000 people a year would mean we have more resources available to speed up the process for those who would go through the more standard, traditional route.

During covid, we made sure we kept the gateway open for new entrants, and it is a tribute to staff up and down the country that disability benefits continued. We used video and telephone assessment, a further benefit of which is that it allows for greater specialisation in terms of the assessors. Rather than relying on a fixed number of staff in each geographical location, we can assign someone with a particular health condition via telephone or video to other locations in the country. That also helps with the point about making sure that the assessments are right first time, so that people do not have to go through an appeals process further down the line.

I know that these broad themes are being considered as part of the White Paper, but they are a real win-win and they are probably things that people could rally around, regardless of which political background they are from. I certainly know from my time working with our very knowledgeable stakeholders and policymakers that there would be huge support for them.

A broader point is that not everything is black and white. As much as I admire the passion and drive of the speech by the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw, there was a presumption that everything the Government do is terrible and that everything the Scottish Government do is good. I say that because I have a brother who is a proud Labour party supporter, another brother who is an SNP supporter, a sister who is a sort of Lib Dem/ Conservative and a cousin who is a Green, so we cover all the bases, and I was very much brought in the belief that things are not black and white.

To their credit, the Scottish Government identified that we could and should have made changes to the special rules for terminal illness and to PIP, which is the main disability benefit. The Scottish Government have had challenges; they had hoped to complete both those tasks many years ago, but that has proved a lot more complex, particularly when we start to unravel the complicated machinery behind those benefits.

In my former life, I attended inter-ministerial meetings with Scottish officials and Scottish Ministers, who were always a great pleasure to work with, and I absolutely admired their end goal. However, they also had that presumption that the system was completely broken and had to be completely changed. Therefore, they sometimes would not listen to stakeholders and policy experts in disability and health charities who wanted changes but not necessarily the changes the Scottish Government had settled on.

For example, there is a principle that the Scottish Government do not like assessors. I understand that, given a lot of the media coverage of the earlier years of PIP, in particular. However, there is a reason why, under DLA, only 16% of claimants got the highest rate of support, compared with 33% under PIP. Many of the people who navigate the system are the least well equipped to do so. Therefore, we are relying on a system where, in effect, their evidence—self-supplied—is the only basis for them to get DLA. However, assessors tease out additional things and fill in the gaps, which is why we have gone from 16% to 33%.

[David Linden]

The hon. Gentleman is giving an incredibly thoughtful speech, but I have a fundamental objection to assessments. However, even if I was to follow the former Minister down the assessment route, we would find ourselves in a ridiculous situation where the people carrying out the assessments have no professional qualifications to enable them to adjudicate on the condition. For example, in one recent constituency case, someone was actually asked, “Does your son still have autism?”. That is the level of expertise we are dealing with and that, I am afraid, shows that the system is broken.

[Justin Tomlinson]

That shows the slight misunderstanding here—and I say that in a good spirit. All the health practitioners who carry out assessments have at least two years’ experience and come from health professional backgrounds. However, the point where the hon. Gentleman is right is that they are not necessarily specialists in certain areas. If someone goes to a GP, the fact that they are the initial gatekeeper to the NHS does not mean they are an expert in everything—they refer people on to specialists. There would generally be five or six assessors in each location, so we cannot expect the collective knowledge of those assessors to cover every single health issue. Through the introduction of telephone and video assessments, however, we can refer people, and that is what I am pushing for. The point is: the role of the assessors was not broken, but it needed improving. That is what both the UK and Scottish Governments were looking to do.

I am urging the Scottish Government to be cautious about relying too much on the claimant, because not all claimants are in a position to argue their case and understand the conditions. It is not even just a case of that; it is also about people being unaware of additional health conditions. I made a point earlier about those with mental health conditions now being six times more likely to get access to the highest rate of PIP. Many people do not realise that their mental wellbeing is being impacted by their physical health condition. They would enter the PIP system thinking, “My physical health condition is impacting on me. I’ll fill in all the bits on that and answer the questions.” However, the assessor’s questions on how that impacts mental wellbeing then begin to identify additional challenges that the claimant was either unaware of or had got used to and took for granted. That then gives them the additional points that allow them to enter the higher rate.

It is same around the special rules for terminal illness. We extended that from six months to 12 months, working with hospices, the health and disability charities and GPs. The Scottish Government, with very good intentions, tried to create a system where it was automatic. They then realised that not everyone can be dealt with automatically, because we are all terminally ill in the sense that nobody lives forever. Conditions then have to be put in, but that inadvertently creates a more complex system. It would have just been easier to say, as Northern Ireland did, “Actually, on this occasion, the UK Government—having listened to the stakeholders and health and disability charities—might be on to something. In this case, we ought to do the same.”

Social Security and Pensions

Debate between Justin Tomlinson and David Linden

Monday 6th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[David Linden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I understand that political ideology will separate us, but in the five years that I have been a Member of this House I have struggled to get my head around the fact that, while the hon. Gentlemen who do their surgeries on a Friday morning see the same people as we do in our surgeries, who come and say that the social security system is inadequate and has left them in dire straits, there is no conviction to come into this Chamber and say to the Government, perhaps as the hon. Member for Amber Valley has done, that this is wrong.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

rose—

[David Linden]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman is about to tell us what the Government could do better.

[Justin Tomlinson]

In the same spirit of trying to help those most in need, why do the Scottish Government not mirror our proposed changes to the terminal illness rules within disability benefits?

[David Linden]

The hon. Gentleman is missing what is happening, given the limited social security powers that the Scottish Government have. Bearing in mind that 85% of welfare spending is reserved to this place, he will see that we are doing an awful lot to try to help people with social security, but if the Minister wants to back up my calls to devolve all social security to the Scottish Government, that will certainly be welcome.

Research from the Child Poverty Action Group shows that the majority, some 59%, of those affected by the two-child limit are working families. Perversely, some of those families work for the Minister’s own Department, which administers said benefits; that would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. The fact that a few weeks ago the Lords Minister, Viscount Younger, could not justify to the Work and Pensions Committee how the two-child limit is compatible with the Government’s own family test is a damning indictment of a Minister who is not over his brief and whose policies do not even comply with the family test for which he is responsible.

I turn now to universal credit, which should be topical, given Labour’s significant change in stance. That change provides an opportunity to seek cross-party agreement on reform of universal credit, because all three main parties in this Chamber now agree with the broad principles and the aims of universal credit. The challenge for us now is to make it work and to iron out the creases, which are by no means insurmountable. We know, for example, that the five-week wait for a first payment is needlessly pushing people into hardship. That could be relatively easily fixed by implementing proposals to turn advance payment loans into non-repayable grants after a claimant has been deemed eligible.

On sanctions and conditionality, far too many households face destitution, largely because DWP rules are pushing them into debt through sanctions and deductions. Recent changes to the universal credit administrative earnings threshold mean that even more people will risk having their vital universal credit payments sanctioned. These 600,000 people are already working, and there is clear evidence that sanctions do not work in getting people into work or to increase their hours or earnings. To that end, I have tabled early-day motion 715 to annul the relevant regulations, which I hope the Government will grant us time to debate and vote on, and I certainly hope we can count on Labour support in that.

However, there are other problems with sanctions and conditionality. For example, individuals who have had a sanction applied have also been denied the vital cost of living payments the Minister was rightly trumpeting earlier. That demonstrates a fundamental issue with the DWP’s attitude to those on low incomes, because preventing vulnerable families from receiving the social security they are entitled to when they need it most strikes me as somewhat back to front.

I will turn now to the UC childcare offer. If the Tories actually cared about working people, they would want to improve childcare support for UC claimants by supporting them with childcare costs up front and in full. The SNP continues to call on the Government to increase payments for those aged under 25 in line with increases for older claimants. We also continue to call for local housing allowance to cover the average cost of rents and for the shared accommodation rate for those under 35 to be suspended—that age range has always struck me as somewhat arbitrary.

The SNP has called for the British Government to fix these fundamental flaws in social security and to deliver a system that actively tackles poverty and empowers people. However, it is an inescapable and undeniable fact that the Scottish Government cannot change these policies while 85% of welfare expenditure and income-related benefits remain reserved to this institution here in London, and that includes universal credit, which is of course a reserved benefit. The only way to ensure that Scotland has a decent social security system is for us to take all legislative and fiscal responsibility for these issues by way of independence and to no longer hope that the full-fat Tories, or the diet Tories on the Labour Benches, will one day reform the social security system, which is clearly broken beyond repair.

I turn now to the order on pensions, and I start by genuinely welcoming the Pensions Minister to her place. I respect her enormously, and although we will doubtless disagree on aspects of policy, I have no doubt as to her motivations. Where we have common cause and we can agree—for example, on pension credit—she can be assured of SNP support. However, I am afraid that that is probably where the warm words and cross-party consensus will come to a halt for this evening, because the British Government have a serious job of work to do if they are to rebuild credibility among pensioners. Time and again, we have seen the Tory Government short-change pensioners, who are getting a raw deal from a pension system that they have paid into their entire lives.

Pensioners on low incomes are among those hardest hit by the cost of living crisis, and the British Government must do much more to ensure that they are properly supported, so let us start with the state pension. Westminster already provides a lower state pension relative to average earnings than most other advanced economies. Last year’s breaking of the triple lock will cost each pensioner £520 on average during the course of living crisis. The Government’s own Red Book shows that that will take £30 billion in total from pensioners by the 2026-27 financial year. Retaining the triple lock is the bare minimum I would expect, but I rather fear that that policy pledge will not survive the rigours of manifesto writing when it comes to both main parties in this House. However, I would like to be assured on that issue in the winding-up speeches.

A recent report from the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association found that the annual income required to maintain a basic standard of living in retirement has massively outstripped the rise in the state pension. For a single person, the minimum income now sits at £12,800, while the state pension will rise to only £10,600 in April for those on the full flat rate. Indisputably, the state pension remains an important source of income for pensioners living in, or at risk of moving into, poverty because of the very low take-up of pension credit, which I accept is the Minister’s biggest priority and one I am certainly willing her on to succeed with. However, Independent Age highlights that 5% of pensioner couples and 19% of single pensioners have no source of income other than the state pension and benefits.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s “UK Poverty 2023” report revealed that 1.7 million pensioners were living in poverty in the UK in 2020-21, the poverty rate for single pensioners is almost double that of couple pensioners, and almost one in seven pensioners overall are living in poverty—something I can see in its rawest form in communities such as Sandyhills, Carmyle and Baillieston in my constituency. We know that pension credit is a vital support for many older people, but only around seven in 10 of those who are entitled to it actually claim it, and up to £1.7 billion of available pension credit is, I am afraid, going unclaimed. In crude terms, that amounts to £1,900 a year for each family in the east end of Glasgow entitled to receive pension credit.