Disabled People

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

The whole House will have heard my hon. Friend’s powerful story. I am afraid that too often in the past three years we have had not the politics of national unity, but the politics of dividing lines—dividing lines after dividing lines. When has this country ever achieved great things when we have sought to divide one from another? We have only ever achieved great things in this country when we have pulled together, but I am afraid that that is not the policy of reform we see from this Government.

Today we have one third of disabled citizens in our country living in poverty. That proportion has increased every single year this coalition Government have been in power. That is a disgrace, and it is only surpassed by the Government’s attempts to make it worse.

Today I want to set out the great pressures that now confront disabled people and ask, in the words of our motion, that the Government, for the first time, put together

“a cumulative impact assessment of the changes”,

because the Secretary of State has an important duty to fulfil later this year. He has a duty before the autumn statement to set before the Chancellor of the Exchequer the combined concerted impact of the changes he is prosecuting on disabled people. These changes are big and they are well known. They affect the roof over people’s heads, the cash they receive, the care they enjoy, the help for their children and the help for their carers, and, of course, the systems that are currently failing to give disabled people the chance to lift themselves out of poverty by actually going to work.

Let me start with an issue that I know will be much in the news today: the hated bedroom tax. Two thirds of people hit by this tax are disabled. We know that council housing in this country is allocated according to need, and very often disabled people are given accommodation that is suited to their need. They may have a room that is available for a carer or for equipment, but the accommodation they were given was allocated according to need. Now disabled people face a tax on that spare room. Disabled people now face the distress of debt, being torn from their neighbours, and cut off from help very often if they are on disability living allowance. This is a cruel and unusual punishment meted out to the most vulnerable in our society, and this Government should drop it, and drop it now.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Government knew when they first introduced this tax that it would have this disproportionate and devastating effect on disabled people? Originally they had hoped to exempt them from the tax, but when they worked out how many would be affected, they simply buried their principles in the interests of expediency.

[Mr Byrne]

That evidence is now becoming well known, and we have had more evidence circulated by great organisations, such as Carers UK today, about the impact this tax is now having on some of the most vulnerable people in our community, including hundreds in the Minister’s constituency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hoban]

The hon. Gentleman knows very well that funding formulas are in place to ensure that the money is allocated. There is an obligation on local authorities not only to make a contribution towards tackling the deficit that we inherited from the previous Government, but to look innovatively at how they deliver services and ensure that we get value for money.

[Kate Green]

I point out that the previous Government did not conduct a cumulative impact assessment because we were not making so many sweeping changes all at once. However, I want to ask the Minister about his comments on disabled children. Does he accept that the welcome exemption that the Government introduced to allow adults with disabilities an extra room under the bedroom tax for an overnight carer does not apply to children? If he accepts that it does not, will he explain why it does not?

[Mr Hoban]

The previous Government were asked to supply cumulative impact assessments. [Interruption.] Well, that was the point that the hon. Lady wanted to make. However, that Government recognised that those assessments were too complex and difficult to carry out. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill is smiling; he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and he has to recognise that the previous Government failed to do that.