Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Newton of Braintree Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I want to speak in favour of all these amendments and to ask a question about Amendment 50ZB. When we discussed the Social Fund on our previous day on Report, I raised the fact that the Office of the Children’s Commissioner had published the Child Rights Impact Assessment of the Welfare Reform Bill. I understand that at that point the Minister had not had the opportunity to read the assessment in any detail, but I wonder whether he has had the chance to read it since then and, if so, whether he can assure the House about the line that says:

“In failing to guarantee that crisis support is available for children fleeing an abusive home with their parent/carer, the clauses abolishing the Social Fund fail to take all appropriate legislative measures to protect children from domestic abuse and we therefore believe they are in breach of Article 19”,

of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. That goes to the heart of the point which the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, has just raised. People might have a very good reason to cross boundaries. If one were fleeing domestic violence, that would be a good reason not to move to the neighbouring street, as I am sure the noble Lord would accept. How can the Government guarantee that local authorities will give appropriate support to children and families in that circumstance, and how can they prove that the UK will discharge its responsibilities under this convention?

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I speak as a heretic who is even now probably having his burning at the stake prepared by the Secretary of State for Local Government, my right honourable friend Eric Pickles, because I believe in ring-fencing. I have always thought it daft that Governments make available for a specific purpose money that is then spent by other people on something else. The Government get the blame for not having provided the money and everyone else gets the credit when anything good happens. I do not think that is sensible. However, it is a brick wall against which I do not propose to bang my head this afternoon.

The suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister—that if local authorities are going to have this money, they should at least be required to account for it—is a good one. I am slightly scarred by my experience as chairman—although I am no longer—of Help the Hospices; the previous Government allegedly made £50 million available but no one ever found it. It disappeared into thin air. I do not want to see that happen here. I do not want to see it spent on swimming pools, or campaigns, or many other good causes, when it is intended for people with severe disabilities.

--- Later in debate ---

From the Government's point of view, this makes good sense if they want to avoid the kind of debacle we witnessed with Atos Healthcare’s conduct of the work capability assessment. I simply do not believe that the new system will be ready to go by April 2013, when it is due to come into force. From where we are now, there must be a 15-week consultation period on the latest draft of the criteria, followed by a modicum of time for the Government to respond if the consultation is to be genuine. Regulations will have to be prepared and consulted on. The DWP states that the regulations will not be ready until the end of this year. After that, the details of the assessment will have to be finalised before contracts can be tendered and set for carrying it out. This cannot be rushed if the sort of problems that bedevilled Atos Healthcare, the company that carried out the work capability assessment, are to be avoided. Therefore, it is as much in the Government's interests as those of disabled people that we take the time needed to get this right.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, for the second time today I feel that I need to say something, however brief, because of my history. Just as I engaged in badinage earlier with the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about the Social Fund, I now have to declare to the House—possibly as a proud boast—that as a Minister I was responsible for introducing the disability living allowance in the early 1990s. I was given huge help by someone who deserves a great deal of credit, namely my former and unhappily now late colleague, Nick Scott, whom some noble Lords in the House today will remember with respect and affection.

On that occasion, we cobbled together a slightly curious construction based on the existing benefits of mobility allowance and attendance allowance, using the maximum amount of money I could extract from the Treasury at the time, to extend help to various groups who had previously been excluded, including the mentally ill. Perhaps we did a better job than I thought at the time because it has not only stood the test of 20 years but has survived with people now seeking to defend it against all comers, in much the same way as they defend the Social Fund.

What I say to the House may be uncomfortable for the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Low, for whom I genuinely have huge respect. This is not flannel; they are immensely valuable Members of this House. However, I have been taken down a different path. If somebody had told me 20 years ago that that structure was to be seen as anything near a settled state for 20 years, I would have been surprised, because there were obvious ways in which it could have been developed and carried forward to build on what we had achieved at the time. That is what the Government now seek to do. I say to the noble Baroness that I am not sure that it is right now to try to slow down the process by yet another review after the many that we have had.

Only yesterday the Government published a revised review of the assessment process. I accept that neither I nor anybody else has had a chance to digest it. However, it makes it crystal clear—this picks up on the second half of the noble Baroness's amendment—that this will be worked through steadily and carefully, in conjunction with organisations representing disabled people. I assume that account will be taken of the results of that consultation. Of course I accept that it would be nicer in a perfect world if we had all the details now, and that there will need to be a good deal of tweaking—or perhaps more than tweaking—as the consultation proceeds. However, I also accept that we have a Minister who knows his stuff, who cares about the subject and who has shown himself to be willing to listen to those representations. We should let him get on with it.

I do not accept the tenor of the e-mails that jammed my system from yesterday through the early hours of the morning into today, which suggested that the Government had a dastardly plot to do down disabled people. It is not the case, and I would not say this if I believed that for a moment. It is clear to me, having glanced at some of the e-mails—I have not been able to read them—that a number of them came from people who will not only not lose but may well gain from the proposals that the Government made. I hope that the senders will reflect on that.

This is not the moment for the House to agree this amendment. If we want to agree amendments, I suggest that between now and Report both the Minister and the House might reflect on the desirability of some extra-affirmative procedure of the kind used in the Public Bodies Bill for affirmative resolutions—I hope that they will be affirmative—that will come forward as a result of all the consultation. That would be far more productive than trying to slow the whole thing down with another review.

I have other points to make but the hour is late and the House wants to get on, so I will conclude by saying that at the end of the day I speak only for myself when I say that this would certainly cause delay, and would almost certainly add to the cost of an already expensive government programme. There may be smaller issues later, including those espoused by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, on which I may take a different view; but this amendment is strategic, damaging and mistaken, and I hope that noble Lords in all quarters of the House will join me in opposing it if it is pressed to a Division.

[Baroness Browning]

In the context of this amendment and the ability of health and social services to carry out their statutory responsibilities under the Autism Act, will my noble friend agree to take a look the number of people who currently have DLA but are predicted to lose it? There is a read-across here, because small levels of support have been identified as having prevented people taking their place in society and gaining independent living.

As I mentioned previously, I am concerned that as regards those who will lose the allowance—some will and others who apply in the future will not get it—the measure is going to have an impact on the way in which we have required health and social services to implement the Autism Act. Does my noble friend agree that there will be some hardship for those who lose it and that we have to face up to that reality, and that the Government should have a clear and examined view of how they are going to square that with the new statutory responsibility?