Personal Independence Payments (Wales)

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Owen, and it has been a pleasure to listen to the debate. I particularly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) on securing a debate on a subject that is clearly of concern to many of her Welsh colleagues. Indeed, I am sure that those concerns would be replicated among colleagues throughout the UK. I am sure that the Minister will accept that what we have heard today is not just a matter of isolated cases that can be sorted out by the often very helpful interventions he makes when individual MPs take up issues with him and his Department; we are looking at a process of systemic failure and flaws.

The disability living allowance and the new personal independence payment are important benefits for the people who claim and need them, both in and out of work. Whether someone is working or not, if they are hit with a sudden, potentially catastrophic event—perhaps a stroke or a serious accident—they will start to face additional, often substantial, costs whatever their income situation. In some cases, their income will reduce or dry up. There will also be significant knock-on effects on that person’s family, who may also suffer a loss of income if they have to take time off to care for them. The importance of the personal independence payment in financially supporting the family in the round cannot therefore be exaggerated.

It is also worth noting that disabled people are particularly vulnerable to poverty. They face twice the risk that non-disabled people face, and research by Scope has shown that around half go into debt, using credit cards, overdrafts and so on simply to pay for essentials.

The personal independence payment is also an important benefit for those who suffer less catastrophically, as it enables them to continue to participate in, and often to take on and continue in, paid work. If people are unable to sustain the flow of personal independence payments, particularly those transferring from disability living allowance who previously qualified for mobility payments and find that those payments are not continued, they might lose their Motability vehicle and in many cases fall out of work.

In all cases, it is important that we get the assessment right, and that where people are entitled to the personal independence payment we get the money flowing fast. Yet what we have heard today is a catalogue of delays. While that is terrible for individuals and families, I want to ask the Minister first about the effect of such delays on the Government’s finances.

As colleagues have pointed out, the underlying policy intent of PIP was to make substantial savings in the benefits bill. Yet already the savings have been revised downwards for the current year from £750 million to £640 million. While I understand that the Government expect to get those savings back on track in due course, what will happen if they do not, or if the savings are further delayed? Will disabled people have to pay the price of the newly introduced annually managed expenditure cap?

There are also significant concerns about delivery, as we have heard this morning. Those concerns began to arise soon after the introduction of the benefit in late spring 2013—even as soon as early summer. My colleagues and I were picking up reports of delays and problems. As the National Audit Office pointed out in its report, once backlogs start to build up in the system, it is difficult to recover.

I understand, from a written answer from the Minister to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) just yesterday, that the Minister has set an expectation—not a requirement—that assessments would be carried out within 30 days. Frankly, that is already much longer than what we were used to with the disability living allowance. The total end-to-end expectation for DLA was 37 days. We understand that, for PIP, we have reached 74 days, or 107 days if we exclude the terminally ill cases, which have been sped up. Typically that is a long period for people to go without financial support.

As colleagues have pointed out, the delays are attributable to problems with the forms—people not understanding them and having trouble returning them quickly—and with security questions that people cannot get through. Another problem is that every assessment is subject to audit, which may be desirable to improve quality, but builds in further delays. There are bottlenecks in getting assessments through to decision makers because assessors are getting cases back and cannot cope with the work load.

I understand from the most recent figures I have seen—from the end of October—that Capita is managing to carry out 67% of assessments within the time frame. What is the position today?

The discussion about home visits and people having to travel to assessment centres was interesting. One advantage of having two contractors—Atos in some parts of the country and Capita elsewhere, including Wales—is that we have been able to compare and contrast their different approaches.

First, unlike Atos, Capita employs its own health care professionals; it does not subcontract to others to carry out the assessments. Also, as I understand it, Capita is committed to a model predominantly built around assessing people in their own home. Home visits amount to around 60% of the assessments carried out by Capita. Yet we heard today from my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) that his constituent has been required to make journeys of more than two and a half hours in each direction to attend an assessment centre. Will the Minister say a little more about exactly how the balance between having to travel to a centre and being able to have a home visit is working out in practice?

We heard many examples this morning of problems with dealing with Capita as an organisation, whether someone is an individual, a member of the individual’s family or, for that matter, the individual’s Member of Parliament, trying to sort out a particular case. There have been complaints about difficulties in booking appointments; appointments being cancelled at short notice; and problems booking another appointment. There has been confusion when people have tried to find out the status of their appointment or assessment. People have been told to ask the Department for Work and Pensions, only for the Department to refer them back to Capita. As a result there is uncertainty for claimants about where their claims stand.

As was also mentioned this morning, there is concern that there are simply not enough experienced and qualified health care professionals in the market to carry out the assessments. What is the Minister doing to stimulate the profession and to encourage more people to enter it? What discussions has he had with Capita about how it intends to ensure that it has an adequate staff base to carry out the assessments? Will he explain why, as my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) pointed out, Capita was not required to provide evidence that it had that staff team in place before the contract commenced?

We have also heard that the length of time to carry out an individual assessment is much longer than was envisaged. While the working assumption was that assessments would typically take one hour, two to two and a half hours is becoming the norm.

When PIP was first introduced by the Government and was being discussed during the passage of what became the Welfare Reform Act 2012, we were told that there would be no time limit on how long the assessments would last; if it took a long time to extract the information needed in a face-to-face interview with a claimant, all that time would be given. Capita seems to have honoured that and said, “We will take as long as it takes to get the information we need.” The difficulty is that that simply is not a financially or operationally sustainable model. It is building in delay and cost, and it would be interesting to hear how the Minister intends to resolve that policy conundrum, as it seems to be working with the best of intentions to very adverse effect.

We heard that plans were agreed in January 2014 for civil servants to be drafted in to help clear the backlog that has arisen in Capita, which has been welcomed by colleagues this morning. Will the Minister say a bit more about what those civil servants are doing? Presumably, they are not health care professionals carrying out the assessments themselves. Will he also tell us where they have come from? Will there now be a scarcity of civil servants in another part of the DWP’s operation? Who is bearing any additional cost of deploying the civil servants?

Can we also have clarity about the balance between paper-based and face-to-face assessments? I understand that Wales is now piloting increased used of paper-based assessments. Will the Minister say in what circumstances that is taking place? What percentage of assessments does he now expect to be paper-based or face-to-face? What is the situation now?

As the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) pointed out, the Secretary of State himself seems a little confused about the Government’s intentions here, even as recently as last Sunday. On the “Marr” programme, he said:

“What we are introducing here is regular checks, face-to-face...This is much fairer for everybody, those face-to-face checks...Because of the face-to-face checks it’s much more likely that you will get a more accurate reading.”

I must tell the Secretary of State that people are not cars with speedometers; they are human beings with a set of conditions. The issue is not about accurate readings, but about understanding a condition in the round. None the less, there appears to be a discrepancy between the Secretary of State’s strong assertion on Sunday that face-to-face assessments were the direction of the travel, and my understanding that a considerable emphasis is now being given to piloting paper-based assessments in Wales.

I am pleased about the progress on terminal cases, and actually I have to offer my congratulations to the Minister for the speed with which he picked up that concern. I would like to ask the Minister about mental health, which was mentioned by a number of colleagues, and what he is doing to improve the expertise of assessors. I want to repeat the question asked by, I think, my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Mrs James) about whether Capita will have the opportunity to bid for the work capability assessment. Many in the Chamber would be rather horrified if it were. I also want to repeat the question asked by the hon. Member for Arfon about when we can expect to see proper audited statistics. The management information is useful, but it gives us only part of the story. Will the Minister also answer the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South about the lack of an MP hotline and the confusion about where complaints should be directed?

I have a few final questions for the Minister. We heard about the poor data matching between information already held on the benefits system about claimants and what was being uncovered when they went for a PIP assessment. Will the Minister say which he thinks is more reliable, and to what extent DLA information can be used as a possible means of clearing the backlog that we face? We would have expected many more cases where there is a dispute to be reaching the stage of appeals in tribunal, but the courts are sitting around with nothing to do. Who is bearing the cost in the court service of that lack of activity? Finally, can the Minister give us a little more information on his intentions for the independent review of PIP that has been promised for later this year?