Disabled People

Debate between Liam Byrne and Gloria De Piero

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I will give way to the Secretary of State in a moment, because I have a number of other points I want him to answer. The whole House would wish that he, and not the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), was answering the debate, because it is his failure of leadership at the Department for Work and Pensions that means that disabled people in this country are in such trouble today.

Let me deal with the cash commitments that we need to move on to. The Secretary of State needs to listen to this, because he cannot pursue this agenda of denial right the way through this afternoon; the power of hon. Members’ contributions demands to be listened to. Let us just consider contributory employment and support allowance, a benefit that people have paid into for years. The Conservative party and, in particular, the Secretary of State, have never believed in the principle of contributory benefits. By the end of this Parliament, such benefits will be no more than a rounding error; 280,000 former workers will by 2014 have completely lost their entitlement to support worth £100 a week—thank heavens we won an exemption for cancer patients. The truth is that those with mental health conditions and stroke sufferers will be very hard hit by this change.

Let us then consider the idea that disability living allowance should be abolished and replaced by the personal independence payment. We believe that reform is important, and we welcome the Secretary of State’s more sensible roll-out plan, but surely it is wrong to take away someone’s DLA without even a passing glance at whether the removal of that benefit will push someone out of work, push them into the NHS or cause a carer to have to give up a job. We are talking about important safeguards that should have been written into the reform of DLA. And we now have the lunacy of a Government forced to consult on issues such as the 20-metre rule after—not before—they introduce the regulations, because they could not organise things properly. It is an utter shambles.

We welcome the idea of strong social care. I wish to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) for the work that she has done and the way in which she has influenced the definition of well-being in the Care Bill, which is passing through the other place. DWP Ministers must know that one third of social care users are disabled adults, and we must avoid changes that take that system backwards rather than forwards.

There will be other changes that affect carers and children. Carers UK tells us that 3 million carers have had to give up work; one in five carers have seen their work badly affected by caring; and four out of 10 fall into debt. Yet, according to the Government’s own figures, botched reform to DLA could see another 10,000 carers lose support. Parents of disabled children will suffer, too. Parents of 100,000 disabled children will suffer from plans for universal credit. I understand from the Secretary of State’s performance before the Select Committee this morning that universal credit is now, after half a billion pounds-worth of spending, going to appear in the grand total of 10 jobcentres from October, which is about 1% of jobcentres. That is a tremendous success for the Secretary of State, topped only by his success in giving us a Work programme that is worse than doing nothing.

Families with disabled children currently receive an extra £54 per week from child tax credit, but that will be reduced by half when universal credit is introduced, which means a loss of about £1,400 a year for a family with a disabled child—or £22,000 over the course of a lifetime. The Prime Minister has told the House that

“we are not cutting benefits for disabled children.”—[Official Report, 14 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 793.]

I think Channel 4 FactCheck got it right when it said that

“the dial points pretty firmly to fiction on this one”.

The tragedy is that so many disabled people want to work, want to get themselves out of poverty, and the Government will not help. A single person on disability benefits will be under the poverty line by about £600 a year. Even three hours’ work a week lifts a disabled person above the poverty line, and 30 hours’ work a week lifts them above the poverty line by about £5,000 a year. At the moment the situation is so chaotic that someone going along to a work capability assessment is eight times more likely to end up in a tribunal than in a job. As for the Work programme, words simply fail me. It took some doing, but the Government did it: they have produced a Work programme that is three times worse than doing nothing—and that is on their own figures.

Last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer found the money to hand out a very nice tax cut—a very large tax cut—to some of Britain’s richest citizens. So this year we want to know: what is the Secretary of State going to ask the Chancellor for on behalf of disabled people? We think we should help him get the pitch right. The only way he can get that down accurately is by bringing forward a cumulative impact assessment of the changes now hitting disabled people. How else will he know what to ask for? How many people are losing their homes? How many are losing their DLA? How many are losing their homes, their DLA and their ESA? How many will lose carer’s allowance on top? And how many more disabled people will fall into poverty as a result of these sweeping changes over the next couple of years? Surely the Secretary of State cannot justify proceeding with these reforms blind. Surely he cannot go into negotiations with the Chancellor later in the year, before the autumn statement, oblivious to what is actually going on.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend may be aware of the work that Mind has done and the fact that about 40% of people applying for ESA are doing so because of a mental health problem. Work capability assessments are just not working, as we have all seen in our constituencies, and they need reforming.

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course the employment rate among people with a mental health condition is the lowest of all; it is a disgrace and it needs to change. At the moment, however, we do not have a system that actually assesses people’s needs at the same time as we assess what benefits they should be entitled to. There is a complete disconnection at the heart of the system. The point we want to make to the Secretary of State gently this afternoon is that he presides over one of the great Departments of state; about 100,000 civil servants work for him. If this country can organise an Olympic games, help put rockets into space and organise complex armed conflict abroad, he ought to be able to work out a cumulative impact assessment of the changes affecting disabled people.

The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Fareham, who has been forced to answer this debate, has, curiously enough, told the House the following:

“The Government regularly produces analysis of the cumulative impact of all coalition changes…The publication of cumulative impacts is a coalition initiative”.—[Official Report, 5 July 2013; Vol. 565, c. 862W.]

Labour Members welcome that. So can we please have a cumulative impact assessment of the changes hitting disabled people?