Disabled People

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 5th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Fellowes, on his maiden speech. I have been an admirer of the noble Lord for many years, both as a writer and an actor. At the moment I know him better as Lord Killwillie in “Monarch of the Glen” but I look forward to getting to know him as the noble Lord, Lord Fellowes of West Stafford, who, if his maiden speech is anything to go by, is most comfortable with direct and plain speaking. That is most welcome.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Low, on securing this debate at a time when the Welfare Reform Bill is at the Committee stage in the other place and the Government are embarking on major changes to the benefits system which will affect disabled people. The Government have previously stated that their aim is to ensure that disabled people are supported to lead full and independent lives, yet some of the proposed changes threaten to undermine this aim by making disabled people worse off and so less able to lead the lives they have the right to expect.

There is merit in some of the proposals put forward by the Government, including the universal credit. However, the good which these policies do will be dwarfed, I fear, by the harm which will be done to disabled people if the Government are not persuaded to change some of their other plans. The decision to cut the funds available for the personal independence payments, the extension to the qualifying period for personal independence payments, the time-limiting of employment service support and the changes to housing benefit will all hit disabled people and make them worse off.

I know and admire the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—he is a man of principle and high ideals which underpin his commitment to welfare reform—but some of these policies bear all the hallmarks of the Chancellor and his determination to cut public spending further and faster than is perhaps necessary. The disabled are being asked to bear an especially heavy burden in order to allow the Chancellor to meet his economic targets. That is not fair, just or right in a civilised society.

I shall concentrate the remainder of my remarks on the impact that the changes will have on people with autism, although my comments could apply generally across the board to a range of disabilities. In past debates, I and others in the House have pointed out that the National Autistic Society says that people with autism already routinely struggle to access the services they need and that, consequently, the outcomes for them are poor. Its research indicates that over 60 per cent of adults with autism rely on their families for financial support, 40 per cent live with their parents and 63 per cent report that they do not have enough support to meet their needs. As a result of this lack of support, one-third of adults with autism have developed serious mental health problems and only 15 per cent are in full-time employment.

I share the National Autistic Society’s concerns about the Government’s plans to replace disability living allowance with personal independence payments while, at the same time, making £2.17 billion of cuts in expenditure by 2015-16. This will adversely impact on adults with autism, who are already struggling to get the help that they need. Disability living allowance is a key benefit for people with autism to help them meet the additional costs that arise from their disability. If its replacement with personal independence payments marks a fall in spending, it seems inevitable that some of these people will be left without the support that they desperately need.

The Disability Benefits Consortium recently published the report, Benefiting disabled people?, which looks at disabled people’s experience of the benefits system and is based on the findings of two large surveys. When asked about DLA, fewer than 10 per cent of the respondents said that DLA covered all their disability-related costs, and 22 per cent said that they never received enough DLA to meet their health impairment-related costs. Given that disability living allowance is already inadequate to meet the needs of disabled people, reducing it further risks pushing an even higher number of disabled people into poverty.

The National Autistic Society is particularly concerned about decisions to focus support on “those with greatest needs” and the implications that that will have for people with moderate needs, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. Many with moderate needs currently receive the lower rate DLA care component and might therefore lose their support. If people with moderate needs lose their support, their health, independence and quality of life will deteriorate. It will leave them in need of greater support than before and place heavier burdens on the benefits system, the National Health Service and social services. Coming at a time when councils across the country are raising their eligibility criteria for social care and excluding many people with moderate needs, some people may find both their social care package and support from DLA withdrawn. The loss of this award could have tremendously detrimental outcomes for both the individual and society as a whole.

Together with the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, I had the privilege of working with the National Audit Office for a number of years when we both served on the Public Accounts Committee in the other place. The National Audit Office does a first-class job for the taxpayer and in its report in 2009 it demonstrated that huge savings could be made in the medium-long term by ensuring that the needs of adults with autism were met. The report focused on adults with Asperger’s syndrome and high-functioning autism, whose needs are often less obvious. The NAO found that identifying these individuals and supporting them could save more than £67 million a year depending on how many people were identified. The type of support that would help ensure that these savings are made would be low-level support such as travel training, outreach and social skills training. It is unlikely that people with autism would be able to access social care budgets for such help because of the eligibility criteria. The National Autistic Society knows that some people with autism are already using their DLA to fund this type of support, therefore potentially saving the taxpayer significant amounts of money.

I conclude by asking the Minister several key questions. First, what studies have the Government made of the cost in the medium and long term of people with autism losing their DLA/PIP entitlement if it leads, first, to an increased demand for mental health services; secondly, an increase in demand for primary care services; and, thirdly, a loss of employment. Secondly, how will the Government ensure that adults with autism—some of whom are the most vulnerable in society—will be able to access the personal independence payments? Thirdly, what support will be put in place for people with autism who lose eligibility to DLA/PIP, particularly considering the challenges that adults with autism face when trying to access social care services?

I appreciate that the Minister is standing in for his colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Freud—who we wish a speedy return to good health and to the House—and that he may wish to go away and reflect on the questions that I have put. Perhaps he would write to me later if he is not able to answer at this stage.

The Government say that they want to support disabled people to leave full and independent lives. I am sure that we all support that. However, if they are serious about this aim, they should think again about some of their policies, which risk plunging disabled people deep into debt and undermining their ability to live their lives to the fullest, something the rest of us simply take for granted.