Disability Living Allowance

Maria Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Davies. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) for calling the debate, which has given Members from across the House the opportunity to talk about their personal experiences on this issue.

I am sure that everyone here shares a deep concern to ensure that we get provisions right for disabled people in all our communities, and the coalition Government are certainly absolutely committed to doing so. That is why we have taken the Equality Act 2010 through to Royal Assent, put in place the right to control for thousands of people, driven a personalisation agenda and promoted a new project on access to elected office to help more disabled people to be involved in debates such as this, because, all too often, they are not.

I welcome the support across the House for the need for welfare reform. I think the hon. Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran) supports it—at least, the leader of her party does—and we obviously need to debate some of the details today. I certainly welcome the support of the hon. Members for Arfon and for Caerphilly (Mr David).

When it comes to the Welfare Reform Bill, what is certain is that the Government have inherited a mess after 13 years of Labour, and nowhere is that more evident than with DLA, which is almost a case study in how not to run a benefit. DLA lacks any objective test; it has no in-built system to check people’s continued needs for support; and there is a real chance that some people will continue to claim it when they are no longer entitled to. That is no way to manage a really important means of supporting disabled people, and it is certainly no way to manage the spending of £12 billion of taxpayers’ money—an amount that was never envisaged when DLA was first outlined.

It is good to hear the hon. Lady accept that we need to manage costs, and I welcome that acceptance. The previous Government allowed spending on DLA to spiral unchecked. This Government firmly support the principle behind DLA of providing a non-means-tested benefit to support independent living, but the simple truth is that we cannot let DLA go on as it has, especially at a time when we are committed to making the welfare system fit for the 21st century. DLA reform is long overdue, which is why we are proposing in the Welfare Reform Bill today that the personal independence payment should replace DLA, creating a more transparent benefit that is better targeted and more affordable in the long term.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

On transparency, the BBC carried a statement from the Government this morning saying that they had no intention of extending the entitlement onset from three months to six months. Can the Minister confirm that that is the case?

[Maria Miller]

In terms of the entitlement.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

Extending entitlement onset from three months to six months.

[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—

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

Order. We must move on to the next debate.