Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Newton of Braintree Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, I, too, support these amendments. I also do so with some humility because I have become mildly disabled in recent years and I can understand how many disabled people feel that the life-changing effect of disability is not always fully appreciated. Your life changes completely in all sorts of ways. You wonder whether you can accept an invitation. How will I get there? Will I be able to get back? What will it be like when I get there? Will I have to stand up?

This is with relatively mild disability—for people who have greater suffering it is much worse. I suppose it is one of the reasons I have received more articles and letters on this bit of the Bill than any other section. I recently had a letter from Scope, which is in support of these amendments, of course; it urges that they should be fully supported. It points out that a social-model-based assessment is required and a great deal more attention needs to be paid to the life-changing aspect of disability.

I thank the noble Lords who have brought this before us because it is quite important. If one is able-bodied, one does not realise exactly what it means to have no real mobility. It really is totally life-changing and I do not really think in setting the new arrangements in relation to the PIP this is entirely appreciated by the Government.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, perhaps I may intervene briefly in view of the fact that I arrived at exactly the moment the noble Lord, Lord Low, was making kindly references to me in his speech, although he will probably not have recognised it until a bit later. I was told subsequently by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, that she has also referred to me in reasonably friendly terms and I am duly grateful for that and also for what I understand were friendly references made towards the back end of last week by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and possibly also again by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister.

If you wonder why I have not been here it is not just because I am so busy but because I was frightened off by the phalanx of female Peers that fell on me the last time I was here for some entirely innocent remark. It has taken me a long while—believe it if you will—to regain my self-confidence. However, I am here and since I have not heard all the debate I am not going to attempt to comment in detail. Also, it would look a bit odd for me to defend the name or the precise detail of it or anything else that I and the late Nick Scott—who played a seminal part in all this and should be remembered in this context—put in place 22 years or so ago.

It is important to recognise from what has been said, even while I have been here, that it has captured the support of disabled people as a phrase, a concept and a purpose, and it would be a huge shame if—I gather that the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, has used this phrase—we landed up throwing the baby out with the bathwater and losing some of what was gained with DLA, even if it is obviously right that at this stage, 20-plus years on, it should be reviewed and refreshed.

All my instinctive sympathy says that if this nomenclature is what disabled people themselves would like, are comfortable with and feel reflects their needs, I cannot see why we should die in a ditch to change it. That is my position, and I will leave it there with the Minister. I am looking forward to his usual—what was the word used about the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in the papers yesterday: silky?—silky and constructive reply.

[Lord Touhig]

What’s in a name? I come from south-east Wales where these things are important. We all call the Department for Work and Pensions the DWP, but in my part of Wales “dwp” is a word; it means “stupid”. It seems to me that if we are creating a new benefit, it ought to have some relation to the people it is supposed to support.

I am president of a group at home called Access. It campaigns on behalf of people with disabilities. Our members are middle-aged and militant. If they see cars parked on pavements, they stick stickers on them saying, “Pavements are for people. Shift it”, and they go back to check whether the cars have been moved. When the town centre was being redesigned, they persuaded two council officials to sit in wheelchairs and said, “You try to get into town and see the problems”. I talked to some members recently about this because they were asking about the new benefit and what a personal independence payment is. One, who I have known for many years, said to me, “I am not independent. I am wheelchair-bound and dependent on my husband, my family and my friends. Surely the benefit ought to reflect the fact that it is support for me as a disabled person”. So I have every sympathy with those who have tabled this amendment. It is important that the name reflects the people that it is to support and aid. It is quite reasonable to propose that “disability” should be in the name of this new benefit.

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[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I hope that the Deputy Chairman will not mind if I intervene from a sedentary position, which I think has been accepted in this Committee previously. I take the Minister’s point. We are all—I certainly can hardly deny even with a big “C”—being conservative with a small “c” on some points. Picking up from what the noble Baronesses on the Front Bench here, as it were, were saying earlier, we have to acknowledge a combination of things, which is nervousness among the disabled population about what is going on, accompanied by a change of name with which it feels comfortable. If the Minister could allay the concerns more clearly, it might be easier to change the name. I ask the Minister to bear in mind that at the moment they are trying to change a name which is aggravating the worries about the actual changes that are going on. That is the political point.

[Baroness Wilkins]

To follow up on that, perhaps I may press the Minister on press reports. Is his department, or are Ministers, ready to undertake some counteracting of what is going on in the press? On a previous day in Committee, he said that we do not control the press. Of course, the department does not control the press but there is a strong suspicion that stories such as the one that appeared last Friday in the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph with the same words may have been leaked from the department to the right-wing press. If Ministers cannot control the press, it would ease the fears of disabled people immensely if they could come up with some very positive comments for the radio and television media where they have some control to counteract the appalling image that is being put across about disabled people.

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[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, the amendment asks the Government to think again about the proposal to have only two levels of the daily living component of PIP compared with the current three levels for the care component of DLA. While changing from three to two levels may seem attractive from the point of view of simplicity, it is likely to be achieved at the cost of creating unnecessary dependency and hardship among large numbers of people. As we have heard it could also result in greater pressure on health and social services.

I am sure that the Government are aware of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation inquiry, which found that,

“that little bit of help”,

was crucial in preventing greater needs developing, enabling older people to remain in their own homes, living active lives and saving unnecessary expenditure on health and social services. The same experience applies to disabled people below retirement age. In addition, for many disabled people it is that little bit of help that makes it possible for them to seek and retain employment. Currently the lower rate of DLA care component can make a major difference and, in the long run, save unnecessary expenditure.

As the DWP has acknowledged, many of those who responded to the consultation opposed the proposal that there should be only two rates of the daily living component and expressed a fear that it would result in many people who currently receive some much-needed help no longer getting it. As the Government’s own review of research on what DLA is used for shows, there is widespread evidence that current payment levels do not cover the real costs that disabled people incur. That includes those receiving the lower rate of the care component. Not only will the removal of assistance to this group mean that some—many—will make greater demands on health and social care services, it will deprive local authorities of the funds to enable them to do so. Currently local authorities take the whole of the care component when charging for community care services. Once more, local authorities will face higher demands with fewer funds.

I shall close by quoting two people who currently receive the lower rate DLA care component and who explain the difference that it makes to their lives. The first person said:

“My medical condition means I need a special diet if I am to remain out of hospital. I use my DLA to pay for this food, and also for the extra heating I need to keep warm”.

The second person said:

“In the early stages of my wife’s illness we got this small sum of money which did make a major difference to our lives. It helped to pay for someone to sit with her while I went out shopping, and it meant that our lives could carry on that bit longer before we asked for more help”.

It is hard to believe that abolishing the lower rate will do anything more than remove much needed help from large numbers of people. This may help the Government to reduce the DLA budget but the costs will undoubtedly turn up elsewhere in public expenditure, whether it is in the costs of increased health needs or in the implications for social services budgets.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I picked up two points in the course of this debate. First, I think the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, indicated that she thought there were 655,000 potential losers from this. Is that right?

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

It is 652,000.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

I got it nearly right, but it is still quite a lot of people. In that case, my question to the Minister is: what steps does he expect to take—it may be that this is already clear and I just do not know—to protect people who are already receiving DLA at the point of transition? We are talking about sums of money that, although not large to many of those in this Room, can be very large indeed to some of the people who are receiving them. One of the things that I always had in mind—I think at one stage my then Cabinet colleagues occasionally referred to it as “Newton’s law”—is that not giving somebody something is quite different from taking away from somebody something they already have. I would like to hear my noble friend’s comments on that.

The other thing is also, in a sense, a question directed to the Minister, although it may also have occurred to the noble Baronesses and others who are interested in this. It is the reference in the Bill and in this amendment, which follows the Bill, to a person’s ability to,

“carry out daily living activities”,

being limited by,

“the person’s physical or mental condition”.

I would like to say a word or two about how that is to be done. In my day, which some in the Room will remember, we had a benefit called the housewives non-contributory invalidity pension, which entailed a lot of tests, that were regarded as demeaning and humiliating in the extreme, about whether somebody could boil a kettle or take a tin off a shelf. I think there were others, to judge from the reaction of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, who will remember them. I would not want to get back into that. Indeed, I got rid of it. I hope that we may have a word that there will be a more civilised way of assessing the ability to carry out daily living activities than is revealed on the surface of the Bill.

[Lord Wigley]

If the Minister accepts the figure for those who will lose relatively small sums that are of critical importance to them, and if the services that they have been able to purchase or the benefits in their life that they have been able to obtain by virtue of having that money now have to be found through some other means, has some assessment been made of the additional cost that may be going elsewhere in order to ensure that they do not lose out on aspects of their lives that are critical for their day-to-day existence?

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[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I support my noble friend in her request. In order to have a sound evidence base, we are going to need stats about how the existing clients of DLA—if I can put it that way—will map on to the future ones proposed for PIP and the implications for carers. It is not a discrete thing: it has interactions with ESA; it has interactions with in-work conditionality; and it has interactions with other things, like housing benefit, extra rooms and the rest of it. It has tentacles right through the whole of the Bill.

I will make a serious proposal to the Minister. I will personally not be happy to go into a Report stage of this Bill unless we have had, at least three days before the first day of Report, all the information that we need on the proposed changes to DLA and the linking effect to carer’s allowance, because it interacts with so many other aspects of the Bill. I hope the Minister will agree that that is an acceptable position to hold.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, before the Minister replies, which I assume he is about to do, I will just chip in again. I do not have the up-to-date knowledge that the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has from her more recent experience as a social security Minister, but I did once again prick up my ears at the reference to carers. There is obviously a link between disability living allowance with its three rates and the payment of carer’s allowance. This is not something that I have focused on, but I would much appreciate a word from the Minister about what the effects of that might be. That would be on top of the 652,000, as I understand it, and could mean that some households suffer what in conventional jargon would be called a double-whammy. We need to know something about that.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I would add to the noble Lord’s very helpful intervention that if someone who is currently getting carer’s allowance finds themselves disqualified in future, they will come within the whole remit of in-work conditionality and all the other issues that affect this Bill. It is not just a one-off enclosed issue; it has tentacles or effects or implications right across the Bill.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

I can understand that; that is where the noble Baroness is more up to date than I am. The Minister must be the most up to date of all.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I apologise that the information about the second draft criteria was not available earlier and I apologise for ruining a lot of weekends. What is the reason? We had a large volume of feedback to our informal consultation and we have made a significant amount of changes. It took some time—rather longer than we hoped—to work through it all. It is crucial that we get this right. One of the reasons—as noble Lords have pointed out already—is that there is a lot of sensitivity around this. If we put things out that are not right, we will create concerns where we should not. Misleading impressions here are very dangerous.

As I said, we aim to have the thresholds available for the Report stage of our consideration of this—not before the whole of the Report stage, but in good time for when we reach these matters at Report.

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[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, the second draft of the assessment regulations is very interesting but it does not help in the consideration of what we are talking about. It does not tell us the threshold, so we cannot assess how many points you would need in order to reach a level of having a limited ability to carry out daily living activities and so on. Will the Minister explain how we could use these to judge what he has just been talking about?

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

In an attempt to stop the Minister having to pop up and down, I think that I am right in saying that he has not responded to my concern about the effects of this proposal. Whatever the figures turn out to be, there appear to be some “losers”. What are the effects of this? What steps will be taken to protect or to provide transitional measures? We are talking about sums of money that are significant to people who have not got very much. We have to keep that in mind all the time. The Minister has obviously had his ears bashed enough and no one thinks that we will press the amendment, but we hope that he will think about it.

On carers, I listened with mounting horror to the fact that we shall not know what the effects will be by the time we return to this. If among those 652,000 so-called losers, or whatever number it is, there are a number who also lose carer’s allowance, we are talking about a number of households which will lose serious amounts of money in relation to their income. We need to know what is happening in order to make a judgment about these proposals. I do not expect the Minister to say anything else but he needs to know that this former Secretary of State recognises some concerns.

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, I, too, invite the Minister to expand further on the blue badge. Obviously, we have just had a very important discussion about passporting, carer’s allowance and so on. The Minister was almost seen to be giving me reassurance about blue badge and other mobility passporting issues. Perhaps he could expand on the discussions that he is having and on what he hopes the outcome of those discussions might be, and give me a little more hope on that matter.