Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Sassoon]

It is certainly the case that if the law were not brought into line with what the Chancellor intended, at some point HMRC would have to make adjustments to the incorrect clawbacks that were calculated. We can discuss this for as long as we want. The fact is that there was a clear policy announcement. It should have gone through in the original statutory instrument—I think it was 2011/1035—and a claimant can at any stage ask for an appeal and ask to have their payments recalculated. However, clearly it would be pointless to do so if they expect that the amendment we are now debating will be agreed and will get the position back to where it ought to have been all along.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I am not clear on this. Are the Government saying that people who had money taken from them that should not have been taken are not going to have it given back to them? The Government have acted outside the law. People have been disadvantaged. Is it the Government’s intention to give back to these people the money that they were entitled to, as the law specifies?

[Lord Sassoon]

The technical position is that what is paid during the year is only an interim award. Of course, HMRC seeks to pay all entitlements on a correct basis. However, the final calculation is done at the end of the tax year. Therefore, at the moment HMRC is quite properly paying what it believes will be the position once we get the legislation lined up with the original policy intention.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, as I understand it that is not the position. The position for all taxpayers and claimants has to be finally calculated at the end of the year—and in many circumstances it can be done only then—because all sorts of circumstances may have changed. The issue is to get the legislation right in respect of this tax year. HMRC has calculated everything to date on the basis that there will be no further adjustments required at the end of the tax year once we get the legislation back into alignment with what was originally intended.

I appreciate the intention of noble Lords opposite to make hay out of this. It was a technical error in a statutory instrument that should not have happened. The amendment we are considering today is not to change anything midway through the year but to change the law with effect from 6 April 2011. There is going to be no unfairness and everything will be in line with exactly what my right honourable friend the Chancellor announced in the first place.

[Lord Touhig]

Make hay, my Lords? Some of the poorest people in this country have been denied the support they are entitled to. Is it true at 3.40 on a Monday afternoon we have a government Minister coming to Parliament and saying they are going to be denied the money that Parliament says they should have? Is that the case? Let us have a straight yes or no. Will these people get the money the law says they should have if we agree this amendment today?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, nobody is being misled because the Chancellor of the Exchequer made the position extremely clear in his original Budget Statement. People have had their calculations made on the basis of the Statement by the Chancellor. What we are doing today is part of the process of getting the law into alignment with that to make absolutely sure that people are paid precisely what was announced in the June 2010 Budget.

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[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.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with this amendment. I shall get my interest out of the way at the outset of this Committee stage as I, too, receive DLA. I shall be very brief. It is almost as though the Government want to airbrush the word “disability” out of the picture. I cannot think why, except that they want to signal a change of approach. It is this very fact that is making disabled people so worried that they may not qualify for the new benefit. Can my noble friend say why the words “personal independence payments” were used and whether it is too late to change things? This is not something I would die in a ditch over because there are so many other things in the Bill that may be in that category, but not having the word “disability” in the name is a terrible mistake, so I support this amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I begin by following the very proper example of the noble Lord, Lord Low, and apologise to the Committee for not participating in its debates until day 13. I have attended a number of sessions and amendments are down in my name and other colleagues’ names and have been down for some time but other commitments in the House have prevented me being here. I do not show any disrespect to the hard work this Committee has done because of that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, in her Amendment 86ZZZUA makes a very important point. She is seeking to amend Clause 78 entitled, “Ability to carry out daily living activities or mobility activities”. It makes commonsense for anyone doing that also to seek to collect evidence from the claimant’s own medical healthcare professionals. I hope the Government will certainly see that.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, very ably put the case for his Amendment 86ZZA which I and others have supported. It expresses concern about people who will carry out assessments having the right and proper qualifications. In making legislation we must learn the lessons of what we have done before and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, referred to it. My party when in government in 2008 introduced the work capability assessment as part of the employment and support allowance. It has been flawed. It has been shown that—the noble Lord just has made this point— 40 per cent of those who appeal against decisions have had their appeal upheld. Clearly there is a problem. It is important to have proper qualified people to carry out assessments. Indeed, Professor Harrington, in his report, recommended that there be mental, intellectual and cognitive champions in each medical assessment centre to support professionals in assessing those with such disabilities. Again, that makes sense.

I shall give two brief anecdotes to the Committee, if I may, from my time in the other place. On one occasion a family came to see me. They had been on holiday and their daughter, a young woman, was staying with an aunt in the same street a couple of houses away. She went home one morning to collect the post only to find a man sitting in a car outside the house. He got out saying that he was Dr So-and-So who had come to assess whether she was still entitled to benefits. The young woman protested; she knew nothing about it. He insisted on coming into the House to carry out an assessment of her, resulting in her benefit being stopped. This young woman was in a wheelchair and had been disabled from birth. The point I am making is that sometimes there is such a casual approach even under the present system to these assessments that I am worried that if we do not have properly qualified people, we will not get proper and fair results in future assessments.

In the other case, a woman came to see me whose benefit had been stopped. I listened to her arguments, read the papers, and so on. I thought this was unjust and took up her case. After about two months I was getting nowhere. I wrote back and forth and eventually asked for all the documents that the assessor completed when the assessment to remove her benefit was done. At the top of the first page on the right-hand side, the assessor had written “Wore a fish badge, probably a Christian”. I am not saying that that had any impact on the assessment but what was going through that chap’s mind when he carried out the assessment? Indeed, when I went back to the department they were so concerned that they did not want any bad publicity and the benefit was restored. My point is that sometimes the casual way in which those assessments are done is detrimental. We must ensure that people have proper assessments.

The purpose of Amendments 86ZA and 86ZB in my name, that of my noble friend Lady Healy of Primrose Hill, my noble colleague and fellow countryman, the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, are to ensure that claimants are not put through a face-to-face assessment where it is possible to determine the question of a claimant’s entitlement to a benefit on the basis of available, medical and social assessment evidence. That approach will not only save a great deal of money but would avoid placing undue stress on claimants with a disability or a significant illness.

I understand that the Government have estimated the cost of implementing the changes to DLA, including the new assessment regime, in the region of about £675 million. They plan to reassess all current recipients of DLA as part of the move to PIP and PIP claimants will also be reassessed regularly. The National Autistic Society has raised specific concerns about the introduction of face-to-face assessments for the new benefit, particularly given the experience of the work capability assessment to which I have already referred. When the educational support allowance was first introduced in 2008 the National Autistic Society followed a group with autism through the work capability assessment process and identified that the medical assessment was a particular barrier to fully assessing need. Many people reported that the Atos doctors undertaking the assessment did not have a full understanding of people with autism. I share the NAS belief that face-to-face assessments are not necessarily an appropriate way to assess the needs of people with autism because of the nature of their condition and associated difficulties that many have with communication.

Last Wednesday I was in Nottingham attending the annual meeting of the National Autistic Society. The question of replacing DLA with PIP and the worry about face-to-face assessments were on the minds of a lot of people there. I spoke to people about the problems this would cause for their autistic sons and daughters. If anyone needs to understand what autism is, I would start with four words: autism is for life. It is as simple as that. I repeat, autism is for life. One of the founders of the National Autistic Society, Lorna Wing, said, “When you have seen one person with autism, you have seen one person with autism”. That is important to understand because the autism spectrum is such that no two cases are the same.