Personal Independence Payments (Wales)

Mark Tami Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Mr Owen. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) made a powerful case about some of the problems that people are facing. I am sure that all of us in this Chamber want to see people getting back to work if they are able to do so, but none of us wants to see whatever ill or disabled people suffer from being made worse because of all the stress and anguish of the process that we are discussing.

We have all heard of vital paperwork not being sent out, delays of up to six months and longer, medical assessments being cancelled at the drop of a hat and even people not being told that their assessment will not take place. Then, when the process has been gone through, some people are being told that they should never have gone through the process in the first place, because of what they suffer from.

My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), who unfortunately has had to leave the Chamber, touched on mental health. That is a particular area of concern. We are talking about people whose lives are already difficult enough without some of the problems that the Government are now forcing on them. We see people who are literally in tears. They do not understand what is happening to them and are worried at every stage of the process. People are even saying to me, “Mr Tami, if I attend the interview, will that be held against me?” I say no, but they are worried; they are scared. They do not understand why their money is being stopped, why this is happening to them. We are making people ill by doing this; there is no point in pretending otherwise. I have been seeing people who were not great the first time I saw them, but each time I see them they are in a worse state. They are in more debt. They are worried; they are scared, because of what is happening to them.

I saw one guy who was in a wheelchair most of the time. He had had two strokes recently. Clearly, that person will not enter the realm of work very easily. Why do we have to put through this process people who are suffering? Equally, another man, who was 64 years of age, had a long history of heart illness. With the best will in the world, how will he enter the realm of work? Who will employ him? [Interruption.] I know, but that is how people view it; they feel that they are being forced out to work.

This is a very difficult situation. I accept that. Colleagues have mentioned the meeting with Capita. It has helpfully sent us a note about that and some of the questions that were asked. I notice that it is entitled “Health and wellbeing”, which is a somewhat strange situation, but there we are. Let me go through some of the points that it raises in the note. The first question is:

“Why are claimants facing delays in the assessment process?”

The Minister will not be surprised to hear that it is probably the Minister’s fault:

“Referral volumes from the Department are higher than forecast.”

One of my hon. Friends mentioned this:

“More health professionals are needed. The planning assumption was 141. We have now trained over 250 and will have nearly 450 by July 2014.”

Why was the original figure so wrong? It was not just slightly out. There is a massive difference between those figures.

This is one of my favourites:

“Why was the reality of delivery different to the original assumptions?”

Capita states:

“The complexity of producing the new and detailed reports means that there are a number of interrelated factors that add to the assessment timescales. Critically, the assumptions we originally built our operating plan to have not proved to be accurate in live running.”

I presume that in English that means that they have cocked it up.

[Nia Griffith]

Would my hon. Friend, like me, like the Minister to explain exactly what specifications there were in the service level agreement between the DWP and Capita for time scales after the PIP2 form and the medical assessments have been received for Capita to produce its assessment? What were those specifications?

[Mark Tami]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, because something has gone very badly wrong. As I said, some of these things are not just slightly out; there is a massive problem.

I will quote just one more paragraph from Capita’s note:

“What are the current timescales from applying for PIP to a decision being made?

The Department for Work and Pensions estimate that in total it may take around 21-26 weeks from the time a claimant first calls to initiate a claim to when they write to them with their decision. For most people this will include a face-to-face appointment which could take…12-16 weeks to arrange.”

I find that staggering. Then there is this very helpful comment:

“It may take less time than this or longer”.

There we are; there is our answer. Now we know that things are going very well!

As my hon. Friends have made clear, we have all dealt with such cases. I have details of one here. The person applied for PIP last November. They were chasing and chasing and finally got an assessment date for April, but they are still waiting to go through that process. Someone else applied for PIP in June. They had the assessment. However, they got an answer from the DWP only in March, and again that was after they had chased it. Someone else applied in September 2013. Three medical assessments were cancelled by Capita. Some were cancelled without the person being told. They chased for an appointment and finally got one in January. Again, they were having to chase all the time. My favourite is this one. Someone received a letter on 4 February this year informing them that a consultation would take place at their home sometime between 20 January and 25 January. They go back in time to have the assessment, back to the future, or perhaps it involves the use of a Tardis or there is some other new thing that the Department can use.

[Kevin Brennan]

I do not think that this has been mentioned so far in the debate, but Capita did not only meet us last week; it met many of us before the introduction of PIPs and it made certain commitments and promises, based on the assumptions that it had been given by the DWP that none of these things would happen. We were given assurances that there would not be these kinds of delays, that it had the right plans in place, that it knew what it was doing and that there would be no repetition of the mistakes made by other private contractors such as Atos. It failed miserably on that, and ultimate responsibility does come to the Minister. I am sure he accepts that, and we respect his willingness to take it on board, so as the Minister responding to the debate today, he does not need to go through the history of the benefit. We know that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

Order. Mark Tami.

[Mark Tami]

My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) makes a powerful point. The situation is a mess. Whatever promises are given, it just seems to get worse, even to the point, as hon. Friends have said, that the Department is now having to send in civil servants to try to stem the tide of chaos that is overwhelming the whole system.

On the day on which the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has decided to go, I am not calling for this Minister to go, but his Department needs to look at this situation. It is affecting, and destroying, real people’s lives. It is causing great suffering out there. I ask the Minister just to look at the Government Benches. There is not a single Tory or Liberal Democrat MP from Wales here today. Why is that? It is because they also know what a mess it is and they have run for the hills.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

Thank you very much indeed for calling me to speak, Mr Owen. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this very important debate.

Let me say at the outset that it is very important that this type of debate takes place, not least because we can get better information on the record. I know that some hon. Members have not raised individual constituency cases during this debate; some have, but some have not. If they have not done so, please would they give us that information? We will be in contact with Members during the course of today and tomorrow, so that we can pick up on those cases.

I will start today by touching on the point that was raised in the debate about colleagues coming to me and getting responses. I think that it was raised by the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and I thank her for her kind comments about how we have responded to colleagues, not only in Westminster Hall today but at other times. Actually, it is very useful for me as the Minister to see what goes through, because if individual MPs write to me then I—as Members probably know—write them an individual reply, and while I cannot deal with every individual case, it does give me a better feel for what is going on.

With that in mind, I will go back from Westminster Hall today and act; my officials have heard what hon. Members have said and they will now hear what I am about to say. The hotline will happen. It is not acceptable that there is not a hotline in place. We will get on and do that.

I will touch, quite rightly, on what was probably the most sensitive issue raised in the debate, which is that of the cases concerning the terminally ill. I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), for her kind comments about the actions that I have taken on such cases in the short time that I have been the Minister. I was appalled—I have said that before publicly as well as privately—at the length of time that it was taking for cases concerning the terminally ill to be assessed and for payments to be made. I think that when I arrived in this post, the period was around 28 days. Under the previous disability living allowance system, which was not strictly comparable, the period would have been about 10 days. I want it to come down; I have anecdotal evidence that it is around three to eight days now. As I said to the Work and Pensions Committee, an average of five days is perhaps where we need to be. We need to ensure that these people who so desperately need help get it quickly.

I have worked particularly closely with Macmillan Cancer Support to develop some new methodologies. For instance, it is very difficult for someone visiting a terminally ill person to be on the phone to someone else while they are talking to the person they are looking after; that is particularly difficult with Macmillan cases. So we are going to set up a pilot whereby we give Macmillan the forms there and then, so that they have them on file and we can get them back and through the system more quickly. Macmillan said that it did not like the call system; it kept their nurses and other health professionals waiting for too long. So we are going to work with Macmillan and pilot that new scheme. And we will move from that scheme to secure portable document format, or PDF. That is what most of our GPs use when they deal with insurance companies or anybody else. Hopefully we will continue to review matters and we can continue to reduce the time that it takes to deal with these cases.

In an intervention, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) said that he hoped I would not just read out the speech that had been prepared for me. He knows me better than that; I have never read a speech in this House that has been prepared for me. I will continue to respond to Members as best I can and, of course, if I am unable to answer the questions in the time that I am allowed, we will write to individual colleagues and ensure that they have the information they need for their constituents.

Do I, as the Minister of State responsible for this portfolio, take responsibility for it? Yes, I do. That is the way that Ministers should act. There was a former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in Westminster Hall earlier, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain). He is not in Westminster Hall at the moment, but I went to him when I was a Back-Bench MP and said to him, “You are the Secretary of State. You’ve got to take responsibility.” That is exactly what he did.

Whether I make the right decision or the wrong decision will be for others to decide. However, one of the reasons that I wanted this portfolio was to make a difference. The old DLA system was broken; that was alluded to by the hon. Member for Cardiff West. Under that system, less than 6% of claimants had face-to-face interviews; most people were given a paper-based assessment for life. In the case of some people, that was absolutely right and proper, but for an awful lot of people it was not. For instance, it was particularly bad for people with mental health issues, because they could not get the upper rate on the old DLA, really. With PIP, they will be able to.

The hon. Member for Newport East asked me about the roll-out of this system. It has been rolled out in Wales; it is out, in its entirety, for reconsiderations as well as for new claims. So, the one area that I can see the new system in its entirety is Wales. We will break down the data and ensure that it is available to Welsh MPs, so that we can provide feedback. It is too early to give the full basis of the data, and the Audit Commission has also said that.

[Mark Tami]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I will just finish this point on the Audit Commission, because the Audit Commission was quoted several times. As I was saying, the commission also said that it was too early to see whether the new system would be value for money, because the information is not here yet. I just wanted to balance that argument a bit.

[Mark Tami]

Before the Minister moves off the subject of mental health, one of the other important issues is that, depending on what is wrong with them, people have good days and bad days. It is important to get an all-round picture of their issues, rather than just an on-the-spot assessment—“Yes, they’re OK. Fine.”

[Mike Penning]

I completely taken on board what the hon. Gentleman says. Indeed, what is just as important is that people with mental disabilities often have other disabilities as well and they need to be treated as an individual case, with all their disabilities considered in their entirety.

We are working very closely with Capita. The Capita model is different from the Atos model. As was alluded to by the shadow Minister, Capita is doing 60% of its work within the home and 40% in other assessments. It is completely unacceptable if someone is being asked to travel the distances that we have heard about today. The maximum time someone should travel is 90 minutes. In rural communities, which were referred to in the debate, even that length of time is really difficult, because travelling for 90 minutes in a big capital city is completely different from travelling for the same time in a rural community. I have asked my officials to begin a review today about the access issues that people are having. They will review not only the time that it takes for people to go to an assessment centre but the time it takes for Capita to come to a person’s home, because travelling time is not considered as part of the time for the assessment. I will come on to that in a moment.