Disability Living Allowance

Margaret Curran Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Margaret Curran (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

I am pleased to be back in this Chamber debating this issue; I was at the earlier debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) on initiating this debate. He gave a passionate and eloquent description of the challenges in this field, and his knowledge will be of great assistance to this Parliament as we proceed. Of course, his timing is perfect, as the Second Reading of the Welfare Reform Bill takes place today. This subject includes many challenges and issues, and I am grateful to him for giving us the opportunity to focus on particular issues in this debate.

I shall say a few introductory words about welfare reform generally, but I want to focus on the mobility component of disability living allowance, particularly in relation to residential care, because the issue is of imminent importance. It presents a great challenge and is of great concern to many people. I still require much more clarity from the Government about the position, but I shall return to that, because a few hares have been set running this morning that we may need to catch.

The hon. Member for Arfon made very significant and reflective comments in relation to welfare reform. I am on record as having said during the last debate and in many of my exchanges with the Minister that I believe passionately in welfare reform. I have a background in this field and have been dealing with it for many years. Welfare reform will always be required, and we should never be frightened of it. Sometimes it is difficult. I absolutely accept that it presents challenges, because it affects so many people of great vulnerability. None the less, I have substantial criticisms of the way in which the reform has been conducted.

As the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) said, many questions are still outstanding about the reform and the impact that it will have. In particular, many disabled organisations will tell you that they are very worried about the premise of the reform. Rather than being cuts-based reform, it should be evidence-based reform. We should work with disability organisations and try to take them through this. Fundamentally, it should be based on the social model of disability, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer and other people are espousing a medical model of disability, so there are tensions in what the Government are telling us.

We are told that the driving factor behind welfare reform is simplicity. That has been mentioned today. However, if you go along with the Welfare Reform Bill as it stands, you could end up with greater complexity. I have heard this directly from disability organisations, and the hon. Member for Foyle also pointed it out. You could have children under 16 on DLA. You will have adults between 16 and 64 on PIP—the personal independence payment. Then you will have attendance allowance. Elderly people are now saying that they have to get attendance allowance even when they reach that threshold age. There is some confusion from the Government about that, but perhaps the Minister will clarify it.

There are big issues about how we are doing reform, and the Government must think carefully before they charge around telling everyone else that they must just follow suit on the reform. They cannot criticise those of us who are in favour of reform if we say, “This is not how it’s done.” Many people are saying that the reform has been rushed and not thought through and that some of the implications, if the Government go ahead, will be very far-reaching for the most vulnerable members of our society. The Government must take stock and demonstrate that they are listening to people, but a demonstration that they are listening to people has not been evidenced yet.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

Would the hon. Lady maintain the current spending of £12.3 billion on DLA under her own model of reform? She says that she is keen to see reform, but would she keep the spending at £12.3 billion? Obviously, it will increase, but can she tell us about any proposals for what she would do?

[Margaret Curran]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman what I would not do—I would not start from the premise of a 20% cut. I would work with disability organisations under a partnership approach. We do need to manage costs. Disabled people and their organisations agree with you that we need to manage costs. We do need to look at how the budget is increasing. I would be the first to acknowledge that, but we need to do it in a completely different way from how it is being done at the moment. You should not rush at it and you should not say that your only motive is cuts. I take the point made earlier. I intended to say that I would be polite in this debate. I may not have managed that so far and I may not manage it later, either.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady is always polite.

[Margaret Curran]

Thank you very much. Of course we shall be polite to one another in the House, but we must remind ourselves of the scale of the anger in the country about what is happening, particularly on the mobility component of DLA in relation to residential homes. People’s concerns are deeply felt. People are deeply worried, but there is also anger about how it is being done. We have all received representations from the voluntary sector, the charitable sector and local authorities that are confused about what is happening. The debate has also involved Members of Parliament. I had thought that it was cross-party—that it went across many parties, including the Government parties. Perhaps not, but we shall come back to that.

I have not yet heard the case for the reform. This morning, some hon. Members have said that we need to introduce the cut in relation to residential care homes because all of a sudden care homes are very confused by the funding and all of a sudden local authorities are very confused by the funding. I have not had any representations in all my time as a Member of the Scottish Parliament or in my time in this Parliament about that confusion. It seems to me that yet another argument is being put forward for why we are doing this.

I have asked the Minister a parliamentary question about how many people have advocated the change to the Government. How many people have gone to the Government and said, “This is a real problem and it needs to be sorted out”? I have not had an answer yet. Perhaps the Minister could give me an answer later today.

Many interesting points have been made in the debate. We have been given individual examples by the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David). We heard from the hon. Member for the secret garden—I do not know whether I can call him that. I am referring to the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), who also talked about the secret garden of policy in the previous debate. He has raised many significant questions that have still to be answered.

Perhaps the most substantial point came from the hon. Member for Arfon, who said that the mobility component of DLA for people in residential care is about normalisation. I have not heard any Government Member be able to challenge that. You do not give that payment to an institution; you give it to the person so that the person can make their own personal choices. With the greatest respect, ironing out the so-called overlap or trying to ensure that you give it to a care home does not address that fundamental point. That is the issue—the payment goes to the person.

Let me establish a few of the facts. Some 80,000 people are affected by the cut, and it is a cut. It represents a saving of £160 million. I fundamentally believe that it is driven by the need for that saving. It will affect not only people living in residential care homes, but young people in residential schools. I accept the comments made about the Minister. They were very flattering and positive, and I am sure that they are all true. I also welcome the review. However, I am not as optimistic as some people are that somehow we are going to see a change. Therefore, I would like to ask the Minister a few questions about the review. Who is involved in the review? What is being considered? Do you have on the agenda the option of completely cancelling the cut?

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

Order. May I gently remind the hon. Lady to refer to people in the third person, rather than dragging me into the debate?

[Margaret Curran]

I apologise, Mr Davies. I will not drag you into the debate. I am referring to the Minister. I would be grateful if she could outline the parameters of the review. Is there any possibility that the cut could be cancelled as a result of the review? Will she clarify that?

As other hon. Members have said, a document has today been published by 40 organisations in the sector, which represent a vast swathe of opinion in this field. Those very credible organisations have told us that the Government’s arguments have shifted eight times. I think that they will need to issue another document, because I think that there has been another shift in the argument. I say that because the “road map” has been presented to us today. Somehow that is the solution to the cut; everything will be solved by a road map. As long as people know exactly where the funding is coming from, all will be solved. I think that that is fundamentally wrong and I hope that we are not seeing yet another attempt to explain an unjustifiable cut. The cut is wrong. It should be off the agenda now. We have the opportunity in the Welfare Reform Bill to ensure that that is the case. Labour will be arguing very strongly that we reject the cut. We need to ensure that we continue to give people in residential homes the personal independence that they have now. That should be maintained. That is what the Government should be doing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Lady will know that it is absolutely our intention to make changes so that the new PIP assessment supports people with long-term conditions. That is the—[Interruption.] I cannot possibly comment on something reported in the media that I do not have sight of. It is probably easier for me to get back to the hon. Lady to clarify the point than to debate it today.

As part of the wider DLA reform, we have looked at how the mobility component affects people in care homes. As many hon. Members have indicated, we discovered that, much like DLA, the mobility element is characterised by a lot of uncertainty and red tape, and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) picked up on that extremely well. Like him, I have talked to care homes, and every one I have been to has had a different experience of trying to tackle what is one of the most fundamental issues for disabled people—how to get about. That is driving me to make sure that we not only reform DLA correctly, but ensure that people living in our care homes get the support that they need.

When it comes to determining care homes’ duties and contractual obligations, the interpretation is very wide. It is not that people thought it was all rosy in the garden in the past, as the hon. Member for Glasgow East perhaps implied, because there is long-term concern about the lack of clarity over these obligations. There has been almost a sticking-plaster, pragmatic approach to trying to ensure that disabled people, who are some of the most vulnerable people in our community, get the support that they need. The situation has not been helped by an array of very different legal duties and contractual responsibilities, which mean that service providers and residents are unclear in practice about where responsibility lies. Indeed, the hon. Lady might pick that up if she talks to even more of her constituents.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) picked up on this issue in his contribution. I do not pretend to be able to give him answers to all his questions, but part of the problem is that responsibility for provision of mobility is spread across at least three separate pieces of legislation in a not entirely consistent manner. That is one of the issues that I will be looking at. We have the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2010. We also have the 2008 Act itself, which deals with the registration of care homes. It includes a clear obligation on care homes to promote independence, and mobility is part of that. There is also an important role for the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, which makes it clear that local authorities should not take account of DLA when assessing people’s needs. All those things mean that care homes and local authorities have a complex set of measures to deal with. The previous Government could have taken time to provide more joined-up thinking on the issue, and we have put our efforts and energies into dealing with the issue.

[Margaret Curran]

Will the Minister give way?

[Maria Miller]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I am trying to reply to as many points as I can. Perhaps she can raise any points that she has separately with me.

I have been told of cases where DLA payments have not been passed on to the person who should have been in receipt of them. As hon. Members will know, that is a serious offence. Some people have told me that they are having to pay charges for basic services in care homes, which should, by rights, be freely available. I am sorry if all that is anecdotal, but it paints a worryingly consistent picture of arrangements that are no way to ensure the best support for the most vulnerable people in our society, no way to ensure accountability and no way to ensure the best value for disabled people or taxpayers. In short, the situation is really unsatisfactory.

As much as the hon. Lady may not agree, it is my job as Minister with responsibility for disabled people to stand up and speak about these things and to ensure that we get some action. I want a far clearer approach in the future, so that disabled people everywhere in the country can know what they can reasonably expect. That was one of the issues that was usefully raised in the “Don’t limit mobility” report. Only with a clearer approach will we achieve the outcome that all hon. Members present want.

In the remaining couple of minutes, let me move on to some of the detailed points that I hope to cover. The hon. Member for Arfon raised a number of issues, but he focused particularly on budgets. It might be useful for hon. Members to know that when we talk about the DLA budget, we are talking about ensuring that we keep control of the growth in it. The expenditure that we are talking about for the future will be the same as we had last year for DLA, after a 30% increase in the number of people claiming DLA over the past eight years. I hope that that reassures hon. Members that we are not talking about the sort of swingeing cuts that have been painted by some less responsible Members, but just trying to ensure that the rapid growth that we have seen is brought under some control.

The hon. Gentleman also raised important issues about the application process. Let me reassure him that this will not involve a medical test, but an objective test built on the social model of understanding the barriers that people face when they have disabilities that they need to cope with. He raised a number of other issues, including, in particular, eligibility after 65, and I assure him that the personal independence payment will continue past retirement, as long as an individual continues to be entitled to it. If I have not picked up any of the issues that the hon. Gentleman has raised, I am sure that my officials will ensure that I write to him.

The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) raised a number of extremely important issues, some of which I have already covered. He also mentioned children, and I draw his attention to the report that my Department is doing with the Department for Education. It looks at how my Department will assess children in future in conjunction with the DFE, rather than putting children through multiple assessments, as at present.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy made an important contribution. I agree with his characterisation of the situation as chaotic. I will make sure that I get back to him about our communications with the Welsh Assembly and about the importance of making the work capability assessment available in a way that is consistent with legislation on the Welsh language.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) made a number of important and constructive suggestions, and I thank him for that. I will perhaps talk to him separately.

In an important intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr Brine) reiterated the importance of treating people as individuals. I am sure that he, too, will welcome the commitment to personalisation given by the Minister with responsibility for these issues in the Department of Health—