Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I ask for a little clarification. I was somewhat astonished by my noble friend Lady Meacher referring to patients with multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s, and diseases that can in fact be terminal. I understand that there is a distinction between the point at which people are diagnosed and the point at which they might be assessed as being able to work, but these are progressive diseases and the danger is that these people could very quickly become not able to work and indeed very ill. It is on this point that I would welcome some clarification.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 44 in this group but I also have some comments that relate to Amendment 41. Like many in previous sections of this debate, I have been looking at disabled people getting into work, not what will happen, under Clause 14, to disabled people who are in work. There are some shocking and severe implications for this. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, was absolutely right that 116,000 disabled people who currently receive the disabled worker element in working tax credit will lose £60 a week. I cannot believe that it would be the intention of the Government to affect disabled people in work in this way. However, if Clause 14 stays in the Bill, that will happen.

In numerous debates, we have talked about universal credit being more simple; quite frankly it is not. I apologise for the somewhat technical nature of what I am going to say, but this is going to affect hundreds of thousands of disabled people. We have been told that a similar amount of additional financial support for disabled people in work would be available in universal credit and would be accessed through the work capability assessment even if the person was working full-time. Any disabled person who is working and requires additional financial support because of the extra costs, which have already been mentioned, would have to take the WCA. If they still qualified as having a limited capability for work, they would receive the £30 element in their universal credit, regardless of the hours that they worked. They would also receive the disabled person’s work allowance. For single people in rented accommodation it is worth a further £30 a week. Together, the limited capability for work element and the work allowance would replace the additional support offered in the current system through the extra element in working tax credit. Removing the limited capability for work element will therefore reduce by about £30 a week, or £1,500 a year, the additional support available to many disabled people in work once universal credit has rolled out. Only those who are working but qualify for the support group will receive an additional element.