Disability Benefits and Social Care Debate
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Maria Miller
Main Page: Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke)Department Debates - View all Maria Miller's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(12 years, 4 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)
The right hon. Gentleman will of course know that the £320 million specialist employment support budget is protected, and that any money coming from Remploy will be reinvested in it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)
As the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) seems to be rather hazily acquainted with some of the facts and the reality of his time as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, perhaps I may take some time to recount to him some of the facts, in particular that spending on disability living allowance increased by 40% between 1998 and 2010 and that the welfare bill rocketed by the same amount. Indeed, in a decade of unprecedented growth and rising employment, improvements in the life chances of disabled people were, sadly, few and far between.
Members do not have to take my word for that. The hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) has said:
“We need to address some home truths about the Labour government’s welfare changes…they have seriously eroded the protection of disabled people...The methodologies that underpinned much of our argument are questionable.”
Those are telling words. Labour’s something-for-nothing culture was more than just their Government borrowing money they did not have. They failed to tackle welfare reform. That has corroded people’s trust in the system, and it is disabled people who are left to deal with the fall-out.
Sheila Gilmore
The Minister will be aware that research shows that at least half of the 30%—or 40% now—increase in DLA payments was due to demographic changes. The Minister should not give an exaggerated picture of what has been going on.
Maria Miller
The hon. Lady will know that that 40% figure is an absolute truth. She will also know that the majority of the increase has nothing to do with demographics. She should look at the figures more carefully. Unfortunately, now that Labour is in opposition, it is more willing to engage in the petty politics we have just heard—points scoring—than in a meaningful debate about how to transform disabled people’s lives.
We must not forget that for disabled people independent living is about far more than disability benefits or social care alone: it is about individuals having choice, control and freedom in their daily lives; it is about attitudes, and making sure disabled people receive equal treatment; and it is about us in society, and the make-up of the communities in which we live. I hope that in the winding-up speeches Labour will answer more fully why it still believes in the segregated employment that my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) mentioned earlier.
Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)
As we are discussing some of the most needy and underprivileged people in our society, does my hon. Friend agree that we should look at projects such as one that is running in my constituency, through which we, together with employers, the National Autistic Society and local parent groups, are going to get young people into work in front-line jobs—not hidden away? I thank my hon. Friend for the Government’s support for that project.
Maria Miller
I commend my hon. Friend for his work in this area. I hope to visit his constituency to see the work he has been doing, ensuring that the disabled people he represents have the job opportunities I know they want.
Shamefully, much of what we have heard today has been scaremongering. Nothing illustrates that better than the claim by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, as stated in the motion,
“that the Department for Work and Pensions has dropped the aim of achieving disability equality”.
That is an outrageous and unfounded claim, intended to frighten some of the most vulnerable people in society.
This Government enacted the Equality Act 2010, which applies to disabled people. Our approach is set out in our equality strategy, which states that
“equality will be a fundamental part of the Government’s programmes across the UK”,
and the DWP business plan explicitly states that we will
“enable disabled people to fulfil their potential”.
That is a clear and practical expression of how we have made equality a reality, rather than merely the warm words offered by the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr Tom Clarke
I mean no disrespect to the hon. Lady in pointing out that I expected the Secretary of State to speak for the Government. If he had, I was going to put the following point to him. Was he reported correctly when he was quoted as saying:
“In other words, do you need care, do you need support to get around. Those are the two things that are measured. Not, you have lost a limb…”?
Does the hon. Lady not accept that such language and insensitivity is doing untold damage to any attempt at reform?
Maria Miller
The right hon. Gentleman does a huge amount of work in this area, and I would not want to fall out with him. I know that we both believe that disabled people should be looked at as individuals, and that he does a lot of work to make that a reality. I do not want to categorise people simply because of a condition they have. People deal with their conditions in different ways. That is what the personal independence payment is all about. I hope we can continue to work on this matter with the right hon. Gentleman, and with many outside organisations, because we need to put right the previous Government’s failure to introduce any reforms.
Let me dispel some of the other myths we have heard, starting with those about Remploy. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill knows full well that the programme Labour put in place was unsustainable, with more than £250 million in factory losses since its modernisation programme began. Labour set the unachievable target of a 130% increase in Remploy’s public sector sales in 2008, when the right hon. Gentleman, as Chief Secretary to the Treasury at around that time, must have known public sector spending was set to fall. Under Labour, very few additional contracts were won, and what is particularly shameful is that all this did nothing more than give people false hope. The modernisation plan was designed to turn factories around through a £550 million investment, yet it now still costs more than £20,000 to employ an individual in a Remploy factory and losses last year alone amounted to £65 million.
Maria Miller
The right hon. Gentleman knows that my predecessors and I have put a great deal of effort into looking for ways to get work into Remploy factories. He also knows that the DWP has awarded business to Remploy factories.
Mr Frank Roy
Why is it that since the closure of the Wishaw Remploy factory was announced, no one from Remploy has approached either North or South Lanarkshire councils about article 19 contracts under the relevant European Union directive?
Maria Miller
Obviously, we will want to look into all such issues. The hon. Gentleman and I have already had a number of conversations about his factory, and I applaud the work he does in supporting disabled people in his community, but I should also draw his attention to the facts I gave him before: there are many thousands of other disabled people in his community whom I want to make sure are getting support, and our reform of Remploy will help to achieve precisely that.
Stephen Hammond
For the sake of accuracy, can the Minister confirm that there is a period of transitional benefits for anyone leaving a Remploy factory? Can she also confirm that last year Remploy employment services found work for 15,000 disabled people whose disabilities are similar to those of employees at Remploy factories?
Maria Miller
My hon. Friend makes some important points, and we will ensure that support is in place for people affected by the announcements we are making. But what we are about is supporting thousands more disabled people into mainstream employment, and we have clear support for our approach from disabled people and from disabled people’s organisations.
Given that they had to be reminded, the Opposition seem to have forgotten that they closed 29 of these factories. The difference is that when they did that, little attempt was made to find any alternative buyers. Worse, the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury did nothing to put in place a comprehensive support package for those made redundant. Perhaps that is why so many Labour Members know that in their own constituencies many of the people affected by the previous redundancies did not get back into work, and perhaps Labour Members should hold their previous Chief Secretary to account for that. We should contrast that with the £8 million package of support that this Government are putting in place. That shows the importance that we attach to the measure.
Geraint Davies
Would the Minister not agree that the previous Government set aside £500 million specifically to support the modernisation of Remploy factories, not to do something else on access to work? She is saying, “We will raid all that money that was for those factories where modernisation was a success and we will put it somewhere else because we judge it to be more successful.” It is all very well saying that we should have support for access to work, which I agree with, but that money was meant for a purpose. It is being robbed out of the hands of Remploy workers, and they will not get another job in the current conditions.
Maria Miller
The hon. Gentleman just has to face the fact that at the end of the modernisation plan, which we are approaching, decisions will have to be made. Given the fiscal problems we faced when we came into government—the devastating state the country’s finances were in—we could well have made some very different decisions, but we chose not to do so. We chose to stick with Labour’s plan to modernise Remploy, and it has turned out that we had £65 million of losses last year and it still costs more than £20,000 to employ somebody in a Remploy factory. We simply cannot allow that to go on. What we want to do is ensure that that money is working harder. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill would have had to take the same decision.
Maria Miller
The right hon. Gentleman knows exactly what I meant: our very clear commitment is to work at ensuring that those factories can be set free from Government control. That is absolutely what we are doing. We are spending a great deal of time—we started in March—on the process for expressions of interest. We have received more than 60 such expressions in respect of factories throughout the country—I believe we have now received about 65—many of which have gone forward to business plans. We hope that many more will go forward successfully. That is my aim, and it is why we are taking time to do this and taking the time to talk to Labour Members about this issue.
Labour Members need to wake up to what is happening in their constituencies. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) intervened during the speech by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, and I should gently remind her that although there are, importantly, 41 disabled people working in the factory in her constituency, many, many more are not receiving that support. Yet, through employment services, we were able to support more than 500 individuals into mainstream employment, not into segregated factories. So I would rather take the £740,000 loss on the factory in her constituency last year and use the money to support the individuals in that factory into mainstream employment, so that we can actually have the sort of world that my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys has been talking about.
Helen Goodman
The Minister was talking about my constituency so it would be reasonable if she were to give way. She talks about the other disabled people in my constituency. They comprise 5,320 people on employment and support allowance and incapacity benefit, and 650 people who are labelled “disabled”. Does she think those people are pleased with the cuts in benefits she is imposing?
Maria Miller
The hon. Lady will know that they will be pleased that they have a Government who have protected the specialist disability employment budget—£320 million—and we want to make sure that it is working better for more people. We estimate that we could support an extra 8,000 people into employment if we were to use the money in a more compelling way. None of this reform was the sort of reform that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill was looking at.
Let us also consider the work capability assessment, as Labour Members raised it. They will know that we inherited the programme from the right hon. Gentleman, but it was a harder, harsher and tougher process than the one we have now put in place. Since taking office, this Government have brought in Professor Harrington to renew these arrangements. Furthermore, we have listened to and implemented all the recommendations made in his independent review. The changes softened the system—
Maria Miller
I hope that the hon. Lady will forgive me if I try to make a little more progress, as I know that we want to cover a number of issues in this debate.
These changes have softened the system and made it fairer for people, recognising that many people with a health condition want to work and can do so with the right support. We have asked Professor Harrington to continue to review this process for us and make recommendations, because for too long under the last Government people were written off on benefits.
Maria Miller
If the hon. Gentleman could perhaps sit down and let me make some progress, we would be able to talk about the fullness of this debate. That would be a better way of doing it.
At the moment, some 900,000 people have been on incapacity benefit for a decade or more, many of whom will be disabled. This approach is not only unfair and unkind; it is also a waste of people’s potential.
Tom Greatrex
Is the Minister aware of the memo, published on The Guardian website this afternoon, from Paul Archer, the head of contact centres, headed “Supporting ESA customers”? It was sent to “all staff in operations” and it states:
“The consequences of getting this wrong can have profound results.
Very sadly, only last week a customer of DWP attempted suicide—said to be a result of receiving a letter informing him that due to the introduction of time-limiting contribution based Employment and Support Allowance for people not in the Support Group, his contribution-based Employment and Support Allowance was going to stop.”
Is it not time that the Minister and her departmental colleagues realised the seriousness of the implications of some of the decisions being taken by her Department and undertook a full inquiry into this incident and all other incidents where the real pressure being put on people is completely unfair?
Maria Miller
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to be concerned about such a difficult circumstance. I think he would only expect the Department to make sure that staff were handling such cases correctly. Of course every case like that is an absolute tragedy, and we want to make sure that the system works really well for the individuals concerned. I am sure that he will want to applaud the work that the Government are doing to try to make the system better. I repeat that the system we inherited was harsh and difficult, and we have softened that further.
Maria Miller
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, we need to make some progress in this debate or many hon. Members will not be able to contribute to it.
We are also reforming the disability living allowance, on which, again, the Opposition have failed to give any answers. Labour Members say they want reform, but the reality is that they have voted against reform every step of the way. As far back as 2005, the Labour Government found out that £600 million of DLA was being paid out in overpayments, yet they failed to do anything about it. In 2007, they found out that the independent living fund needed serious reform, but again they did nothing about it.
Mrs McGuire
The hon. Lady knows full well that when the independent living fund was running into difficulty we established an investigation into it, we reformed the fund and we had Sheffield Hallam university carry out an independent review. She does not need advice from her Secretary of State on that one.
Maria Miller
The right hon. Lady is obviously a little sensitive on that point, perhaps because the fund was about to run out of money when we took over. We had absolutely no choice at all about the action we took and perhaps Labour Members should take a little more of the responsibility. They lost control of the situation for some of the most vulnerable groups in society and they must stand up and be accountable account for that.
Mr Byrne
By the end of the Parliament, nearly £3.5 billion will be cut from disability benefit yet only £2.5 billion net is being taken from Britain’s bankers. How can the Minister justify the disgraceful fact that the Government are taking more from disabled people than from bankers? Will she justify it now?
Maria Miller
The right hon. Gentleman should have taken that opportunity to apologise for writing the note saying that the country had no money left. Although he knows that the banks’ actions made a difficult problem worse, he, as someone who is well versed in economics, also knows that the real foundations of the problems of our country are the structural deficit that he left behind
Maria Miller
The right hon. Gentleman should perhaps keep quiet while listening to what the Government are doing.
The former Chief Secretary did not solve the problems. He and the then Labour Government ducked the important decisions when they were in power—[Interruption.] And now, as I think hon. Members can hear, he is ranting in opposition. Meanwhile, we are working hard to try to implement the new personal independence payment, which is on track for 2013, meaning that support for disabled people will be fairer. At the same time, we are doing much more to support disabled people into work, enabling them to have the same opportunities in life as anybody else: from the Work programme, in which where we are paying providers by results, to Work Choice, through which we are providing intensive back-to-work support for those facing the greatest barriers to employment, and the Access to Work scheme, through which we are investing more to help disabled people and employers with the extra costs of moving into work. None of that was done by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill in his 13 years in government.
Mr Baron
My hon. Friend makes a strong case for reform. The all-party group on eye health and visual impairment had a very constructive meeting with the Minister about the need to ensure that those who have very serious impairment of sight do not lose access to the enhanced rate mobility element of the PIP at the same rate as wheelchair users. Will she continue to give consideration to the fact that we do not want to return to the pre-2009 anomaly?
Maria Miller
My hon. Friend makes a strong point and I thank him for inviting me to the all-party group to hear some of the concerns expressed to him and to other MPs. Many of my hon. Friends and many other hon. Members who are present in the debate will want to ensure that the new PIP works hard for people who are visually impaired or have a sight loss. They will also be very aware of the fact that the disability living allowance required primary legislation to be changed; it took some two years to change it, because of its inflexibility and inability to take account of the real challenges people with sight impairment have to endure in getting out and about. I can give my hon. Friend a firm assurance that my objective is to consider each individual and the challenges they face, not simply the condition they have. Many people with sight loss or sight impairment face significant mobility problems and my hon. Friend’s points are not lost on me.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend, like me, will have constituents who have found themselves at the whip end of work capability assessments conducted by Atos. I hope that her PIP assessments will be a great improvement on that and that we have learned the lessons from Atos and the work capability assessment criteria set out by the previous Administration. Is she able to give me that commitment?
Maria Miller
We certainly need to ensure that lessons are learned from some of the problems we inherited on the work capability assessment. Many have already been learned and there is a clear read-across in the work we are doing. Although the PIP assessment is very different from the work capability assessment, there are many lessons to be learned.
Kate Green
The Minister is proposing to take a substantial proportion of the current DLA budget out of the new PIP budget—the figure we have heard is 20%—and to target the spending on people with a higher level of need. Does she not accept that reducing access to financial support for those with lower levels of need who are enabled as a result to remain in paid employment is a false economy and that prevention is probably better than cure in this case?
Maria Miller
I do not think that it can be a false economy to make a change that will see the end of £600 million going out in overpayments. The change is long overdue. We need a benefit that supports disabled people in a flexible, non-means tested way that is not related to their work status, with a firmer gateway to ensure that we get the money to the people who need it. That will mean that we are not left in the situation we are in now, where 70% of people have a benefit for life and there is no inbuilt way of reassessing that. We need to see an end to that inaccurate use of much-needed money.
Maria Miller
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will make a little progress. I want to move on to an issue that I think he will find very important: the role of universal credit in our commitment to supporting disabled people. We know that universal credit is a vital part of how we will support disabled people in the future, delivering a welfare system that people finally understand.
Under the current system, some people face losing up to 96p in every pound they earn through tax and benefit withdrawals. There are seven different components associated with disability, paid at different rates with different qualifying conditions. It is little wonder that disabled people have been put off moving into work for fear of losing out under the benefit system. Under universal credit, support for the most severely disabled will remain unconditional, as it rightly should, but we will also see a more generous system of earnings disregards for disabled people and carers. When people are able to work, or choose to work in spite of their disability or health condition, work will pay. The Labour party had 13 years to make those changes, but again it dithered and failed to make the right decisions for disabled people. I hope that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) agrees that it would have been better if Labour had voted with us on welfare reform so that we had strong support for these important reforms.
Jim Shannon
May I cast the hon. Lady’s mind back to the issue of the appeals process, particularly for those on ESA? Can she assure us, and me as the Member for Strangford, that when people attend ESA appeals those on the tribunal will totally understand the issues of mental, intellectual and cognitive behaviour? I perceive that they do not and that because they do not a great many people are turned down. Is it not unusual that 40% of those who are turned down for ESA win their appeals? Perhaps that is proof of the need for change.
Maria Miller
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to bring up the challenges in ensuring that the right support is in place for people with fluctuating conditions, particularly those with mental health problems. That is why so much emphasis has been put on that in the reform of how the work capability assessment works and in other areas, too. In the reform of the DLA, we are focusing on that issue—
Maria Miller
If the hon. Lady lets me finish my reply to the last intervention, that would be helpful. We must ensure that across the board we recognise that for many people who are not in employment, mental health problems are the primary cause. We need much broader understanding of how to ensure that we help people with mental health problems to get into work, whether that is through the Work programme or the work capability assessment.
Maria Miller
I will give way to my hon. Friend, then to the hon. Lady, then I really must move on.
George Hollingbery
The Minister might be about to come on to the subject of carers—I imagine that she might wind up on that point—but will she confirm two points? Will she confirm first that households in receipt of DLA, and therefore afterwards PIP, will not be subject to the benefits cap and, secondly, that carer’s allowance will be awarded outwith universal credit?
Maria Miller
My hon. Friend is right to pick up on those details, because such details make a real difference to family life.
Maria Miller
Will the right hon. Gentleman let me finish my comments on this point? I think his hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) was expecting to intervene, too, so perhaps a little more civility is called for.
My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) is absolutely right to say that disability living allowance will not be counted within the benefit cap. People who are in receipt of DLA will not be subject to that cap. That is a really important point to make and it is the sort of detail that can make all the difference. The same is true of his comment about the carer’s allowance, which will be outwith universal credit although the universal credit will also recognise the important role that carers play. As this is carers week, we should pay tribute to their role in our communities and our constituencies. I also pay particular tribute to the work of the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), to make more support available for carers, especially through carers’ breaks and by ensuring that carers are able to continue their important role.
Sheila Gilmore
I want to follow up on fluctuating conditions. Professor Harrington has been mentioned in the debate. He endorsed work carried out by charities on the fluctuating condition and mental health descriptors, so why have the Government chosen not to follow that up?
Maria Miller
We absolutely are following that up. I know that the hon. Lady follows such matters closely, so perhaps I need to ensure that she has more details, because I would have anticipated that she knew we are carrying out more work to ensure that there we have a robust evidence base, as she would expect.
I shall draw my remarks to a close. Given that this is an Opposition day debate, I had hoped that we would hear some clear ideas from the Opposition about what they would do; instead, we have heard the same confusion.
Maria Miller
The right hon. Gentleman was clear about what he would not do—he would not make reforms to DLA; he would not modernise Remploy; and he would not make the WCA fairer—but we heard nothing about what he would do. It is not much of an opposition when rant replaces engagement, when dithering replaces determination, and when there is such political opportunism, including attempting to intervene on someone who is trying to finish their speech. It is no wonder the Leader of the Opposition sacked the right hon. Gentleman as his policy guru; perhaps, for once, the Leader of the Opposition got it right.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
I will be brief. I was out of the Chamber earlier because I was in the Welsh Grand Committee.
People working in Remploy in particular, but also the disabled community generally, feel very much that they have been kicked in the teeth. They feel as if they are having to pay the price for the mistakes of the bankers. We all know that we had a deficit, but we also know that two thirds of it was caused by bankers, with the other third caused by the previous Administration investing more than they were earning at the time to keep growth going—and being successful in that. Now we have got zero growth and the deficit is going up.
Geraint Davies
No, I will not give way. I do not have time.
Let me turn to Remploy, which was set up after the war. When I started becoming actively involved with my local Remploy factory about a year ago, the orders it was receiving were not high enough. I went round to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, the local health service, the local university, and so on, and now the factory is working flat out, getting more and more orders. That just shows that if the central command in Remploy were more effective, the factories could be successful and could work.
As for the finances, yes, the previous Government closed 29 factories, but they also left a legacy of £500 million to modernise and reinvest. However, we now find that the residue of that—about £320 million—is being put elsewhere. It might be used to get people with disabilities into mainstream work, but that mainstream work does not exist, because of record unemployment and record numbers of people in part-time work, and we now have the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which will enable employers to get rid of people who are weaker without tribunals and all the rest of it. It all stinks, to be honest.
In regard to the financial literacy of the arrangements, the average subsidy has dropped from £25,000 to £20,000, and it costs £10,000 in lost tax and benefits to put a normal person on the dole. Lord Layard has just produced a report on the cost of unemployment in terms of mental health, and it is clear that people in Remploy will end up with other difficulties that will put an enormous cost on the health service. There will be no real economic benefit at all.
Alongside that, there is uncertainty about the pension fund, the factories and the assets. The Welsh Government have, in good faith, offered to take over the factories. They have said, “We’ll have the subsidies if you let us use the factories and make this work. Let us use procurement positively and smartly to make it work.” Of course, the offer has been turned down, because success in Wales would illustrate that similar success could have been achieved in England, and the Government do not want to see themselves failing. This is just a case of asset stripping of the most vulnerable people in our society, and it stinks.