Disabled People

Lord Taylor of Holbeach Excerpts

Thursday 5th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity of participating in this debate, although it has not been by choice. I shall update the House on my noble friend Lord Freud: he is having medical treatment but as a precaution only. He hopes to be back in the House early next week. I know how much he was looking forward to this debate. Indeed, it places the debate at a disadvantage since he is not here to respond. I can promise to take the record away and to go through it with him. It would be helpful to noble Lords if we wrote a comprehensive letter together to all noble Lords who have participated in this debate, because there may be lots of questions which people have mentioned that I have to skate over today—particularly in view of the fact that I do not have quite the amount of time that I had originally hoped for.

I thank all noble Lords for their participation, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Low, for tabling this debate. It has been a special privilege to be here to hear my noble friend Lord Fellowes make his maiden speech in the House, and what a delightful speech it was. He talked powerfully of the imperfections of the way in which people talk about disability. How well he described to the Government the importance of their need to take seriously their responsibility to disabled people. I am sure that we will hear much more from him as an active participator in our debates.

The real impact of government policies on disabled people will be to help all disabled people fulfil their potential and participate fully in society. We have a moral obligation to support those who cannot work, but we also have a moral obligation to support those who can work to find suitable work—just as disabled people who can work have an obligation to look for work. This is a critical issue. There are more than 10 million people in the UK who have a limiting long-term illness, impairment or disability, of whom nearly half already work.

There is strong evidence of the significant health, social and financial benefits of work, and of the cost to individuals, society and the economy of long-term inactivity. Put simply, work is good for you. We have moved away from the old idea that disabled people should be protected from work. More and more, we appreciate that taking an active part in the labour market supports good health and well-being. Welfare reform is about doing what is right; it is not about reducing the benefits bill. The combination of fundamental reforms to the benefits system and a new radical approach to “back to work” support for everyone will ensure that everybody gets the right help.

Universal credit will replace the current complex array of benefits. It will be a simpler, fairer system. It will protect the incomes of current claimants so that nobody will be worse off claiming universal credit than they are under the current system. We will focus additional support on the most severely disabled people. Some households could see their incomes rise by as much as £40 per week if they qualify for the support component in universal credit, which we aim to increase from £31.40 to £74.50. Universal credit will provide more generous support for disabled people than for those non-disabled people who have otherwise similar circumstances. The seven disability-related components of the current system will be reduced to two, which will reflect whether a disabled person can reasonably be expected to work or undertake work-related activity.

I note and will take up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, on the earnings disregard for people who are engaged in research. We have a special disregard for disabled households, which enables many people to keep more of their earnings than they currently do under the employment and support allowance. The White Paper proposed a disregard of up to £7,000 per year for disabled households, equivalent to £134 a week. Once a disabled household begins to earn more than £7,000 a year, its benefits would reduce gradually as it earns more. I do not think noble Lords would consider that unreasonable.

Universal credit will encourage people to find work by simplifying the move from benefits to employment. In the mean time, disabled people will receive improved support through employment and support allowance. There are two categories of support. First, there is the key provision for severely disabled people in the support group and for other disabled people in the work-related activity group, who will explore suitable work or training. We propose to introduce a one-year time limit for those in the latter group, who will be claiming the contributory employment and support allowance. ESA was always intended to be a benefit that provides temporary support for those in the work-related activity group, where, with the right support, it is reasonable to expect a return to work. It was never meant to be a benefit for the long term for this group. The time limit of one year strikes the best balance between the need to restrict access to contributory benefits, and allowing for those with longer-term illnesses to adjust to their health condition. This is double the length of time for contributory jobseeker’s allowance.

I know that a lot of noble Lords were concerned about this whole area and the WCA. The noble Lords, Lord McKenzie of Luton and Lord Rix, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, raised it, as did the noble Lord, Lord Low, in his introductory speech. We have accepted Professor Harrington’s review and have appointed him to undertake the second independent review of the WCA. Refinement and improvement of the process are ongoing. I hope I can reassure noble Lords on that point. The work capability assessment generally is a matter of considerable concern to noble Lords. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, was concerned about the very large number of appeals that were successful. However, overall, 60 per cent of appeals are found in favour of the department. If the department’s decision is not upheld by the appeal tribunal, it does not mean to say that the original decision was incorrect. The tribunal is an independent body and in many cases new evidence is provided at the tribunal hearing that was not available to the original decision-maker, or the tribunal raises the original evidence differently. The Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work and Pensions are working together as part of a task force with the Tribunals Service, Jobcentre Plus, and the Pension, Disability and Carers Service to increase capacity and reduce demand for an appeals process. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Rix, that we will seek to improve this process. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, that there are no targets to get people off incapacity benefit.

We are also breaking new ground to ensure that good-quality back-to-work support is available. Private and voluntary sector organisations will provide this support through the new Work Programme. The lessons learnt from the Pathways to Work programme have been taken into account in designing the new Work Programme. For people who may need more support to help them back to the workplace, including disabled people, we will reward sustainable employment, placing a much greater emphasis on supporting people to stay in work. Providers will receive higher payments up to £14,000 if they help people who need the most support into long-term jobs. This long-term, serious investment means that providers of back-to-work support can in turn invest in their business and in the people they are there to help. The 18 preferred bidders have indicated that they plan to invest up to £580 million over the lifetime of their contracts. We expect the providers of this back-to-work support to include respected disability charities such as Mencap and Action for Blind People, organisations which really understand the challenges that some may face.

For people facing more significant disability-related barriers to work, the Government have introduced Work Choice. This provides supported employment as well as support into work. Work in this area of specialist support continues. In the summer, Liz Sayce, chief executive of Radar, will produce an independent report looking at specialist support for people with severe disability-related barriers to work. Included in the scope of this report is access to work. We are continuing to look at ways to make the scheme more efficient and effective so that we can support more disabled people in the workplace. Since December, disabled people have been able to complete an online assessment of their eligibility for access to work via Directgov. This means that both disabled jobseekers and prospective employers can have confidence that the necessary assistance will be available to them. We want to make sure that the range of in-work support for disabled people is effective.

Another key form of this support is the disability living allowance, which is payable whether or not disabled people are in work. The current DLA provision needs reform. The benefit is too complex, and eligibility is based on unclear criteria and outdated assumptions about disability—often leading to inconsistent awards. DLA provision is too static. People’s conditions change, medical advances mean that once debilitating conditions may become more manageable, and technological changes mean that once insurmountable tasks become possible.

Disabled people deserve a system that recognises them as individuals and provides support on the basis of individual need, assessed objectively, and with clarity around eligibility criteria. We plan to retain the key elements of DLA as a non-taxable non-means-tested cash benefit that provides a contribution to the extra costs disabled people may face, whether they are in or out of work.

However, our proposal is to replace DLA with a personal independence payment that will provide for a fairer, more objective and transparent assessment of individual need. That will be at the heart of the benefit. It will look past broad categories of impairments and labels, and instead treat people as individuals and look at the specific challenges they face, rather than make vague assumptions. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, was very concerned about the target to reduce DLA expenditure by 20 per cent. Reducing DLA expenditure by 20 per cent by 2015-16 simply means bringing working-age expenditure back to 2009-10 levels and making it more sustainable for the future.

Regarding our response to a public consultation on DLA reform, we are working with disabled people and disability organisations as we design the PIP assessment, ensuring that it takes account of the full range of disabilities, including sensory impairments, as well as physical, mental, intellectual and cognitive impairments.

My noble friend Lady Browning and the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, particularly mentioned people suffering from autism and those responsible for their care. The National Autistic Society published a useful report on who benefits, and it raises a number of helpful points, such as a need for a new assessment to reflect the needs of people with autism spectrum disorders. We agree on all this, we are still working on the design of the assessment, and we will continue to work with disabled people and their organisations, including those relating to autism, as we take this work forward. We know how important it is to get this right. That is why we will test the impact of the new assessment criteria rigorously before we finalise the scheme.

I will conclude by referring to the comments of a number of noble Lords on the Equality Act and the implications that there may well be. The noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, mentioned this, as did my noble friend Lord Addington. We are very concerned about the red tape challenge and how it might impact on the Government’s commitment to the Equality Act. The red tape challenge is part of the Government’s commitment to transparency and growth. The Government set up the red tape challenge website to invite the public to take part in a debate on regulation. The website has recently been revised to make clear that the presence on it of a particular regulation or law should not be read as implying any intention on the Government's part to remove that regulation or law from the statute book.

Several noble Lords mentioned the particular restrictions on local government finance and the enormous impact on local government spending and responsibilities. I reassure them that the Government are very mindful of that. The noble Lord, Lord Sawyer, mentioned Remploy. I am very grateful to him for bringing it to our attention. We confirmed in the spending review that the five-year £555 million operational budget is protected and that the status of Remploy remains unchanged at a time when, as the noble Lord will know, many other programmes are under review.

I will conclude my comments because I am running out of time. I hope that I will be forgiven if I have not mentioned everything. As I said, I will go through the record and write to noble Lords.

I finish by reminding the House of the principles underpinning our reforms. Yes, budgets are tight for the moment, but the changes are about more than saving money; they are about changing lives and people's life prospects. It is right that we have been reminded of the Government’s commitment to fairness by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie; we take that commitment seriously. The real impact on government policies on disabled people will be to empower them, to establish the right and opportunity to work, to encourage accessibility and to provide greater choice and control over how public money is spent to deliver independence and ensure that no one is ever written off because of disability.