Personal Independence Payment

Lord Freud Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord McAvoy]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to tackle delays in personal independence payment assessments.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

We are committed to ensuring that personal independence payment claimants receive high-quality, objective, fair and accurate assessments. I acknowledge that the end-to-end claimant journey is taking longer than expected. We are absolutely committed to improving performance, both ours and that of the assessment providers.

[Lord McAvoy (Lab)]

My Lords, as the Minister is aware, his own department’s figures show that it will take 42 years to clear the backlog. Yesterday in the House of Commons the Minister of State, Mike Penning, said that this was scaremongering. If that is the case, can the Minister give a guarantee as to when it will be cleared?

[Lord Freud]

One can do some funny things with mathematics and that 42-year figure is one of them. Clearly in the opening period of any new policy of this sort there is a ramp-up, and we need to get that ramp-up right. As I said, the position of this process is not satisfactory and we are taking a lot of steps to make sure that we get the improvement that we must have. We are pushing up the numbers of staff, improving claimant communications in this process, getting more paper-based reviews which will speed the process up, and taking a series of other initiatives to get this right.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, given the view just expressed by the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons that the introduction of personal independence payments has been a “fiasco”, and that in securing the contract ATOS gave,

“incorrect and potentially misleading information”,

does the Minister have any plans to re-examine the ATOS tender documents? Does he believe that ATOS should be able to bid again in future for DWP contracts?

[Lord Freud]

The build-up of PIP was done in a controlled and phased way, and that was acknowledged by the NAO. ATOS won that contract in fair, open competition and we have no plans to reopen that process.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, can the Minister tell us what assessment he has made of the level of support by Her Majesty’s Government to disabled people?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the Government remain committed to maintaining support for disabled people. We spend roughly £50 billion a year, every year, and that is held in real terms. That is a fifth higher than the EU average. The overall spend on incapacity benefits has remained roughly flat in real terms over the life of this Government, and indeed the benefits about which we are talking—PIP, DLA—have actually been going up in real terms over the past four years.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister’s assurances would be rather more encouraging were it not for the fact that, as well as this shambles of the WCA and the 42-year backlog, employment and support allowance has been delayed and proved not to be succeeding; the Work Programme has a 94% failure rate; the bedroom tax is not meeting its objectives; and at current speeds, universal credit will take 1,052 years to roll out. Is the Minister proud of these achievements?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are transforming the welfare system in this country. We are doing it across the piece. It is all very well for the Opposition to complain about the speed at which we do these programmes. These programmes are difficult to do. They were shied away from by the previous Government. I think that Peers all round the House will be pleased to see these transformational changes go in and transform the way in which this country operates at a fundamental level. There is a level of cynicism about what is always a difficulty: getting difficult, complicated programmes through exactly to timetable. People who know how difficult projects are know that process, but this is critical work for our country.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, there is, however, an important point that I would like the Minister to comment on, following on from earlier comments made by colleagues. People increasingly say to me that in the implementation of the flagship schemes contained in the Welfare Reform Act 2012 we are beginning to look as if we have bitten off more than we can chew. That is a matter of serious concern. On the narrow point of PIP, I exhort the Minister to hasten slowly. Will he give an assurance to the House that it is more important to him to get these things right than to do them quickly? In that regard, will he look at the possibility of clearing the backlog of personal independence payment claims before the rollout of the reassessment of DLA to other parts of the United Kingdom?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, as my noble friend said, we have to be careful to get the implementation right. We are aiming to do our programmes at the pace that we can do them, so if we have to slow down we will slow down. We go at the pace that works because it is one thing to not go at exactly the speed you may have planned at the beginning; it is another thing to make it difficult for people. In the case of PIP, we are looking at how we carry out the next stage of the PIP rollout, the natural reassessment process. We will extend that only when we have capacity to do so, and so far we have not made any decisions on when we will do that rollout.