Independent Living Fund

Marsha De Cordova Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas) on securing this important debate and I thank everybody for their valid contributions and interventions this afternoon. My hon. Friend makes a really good point in that this issue has probably not been discussed. Given it has been nearly two and a half years since the fund was closed, it is worth our revisiting it today. He points out that this is a technical issue. Also, he made the really important point that we need to know the quantitative impact of the devolving of funds on existing claimants. He rightly set out the importance of the fund and the part it has played in many disabled people’s lives to enable them to live an independent life and able to fully participate in society.

My hon. Friend set out how the fund made a contribution and how it was devolved to local authorities, particularly in England. That is a good example of the impact it could have when the scheme is changed in Wales. As it stands, it will potentially be devolved to local Welsh authorities, as has happened here in England. He made the point that local authorities’ budgets have been put under great strain, given the funding cuts they have had to endure over the past seven years. We need to take a fresh look at the way funding is given to support disabled people.

I pay tribute to Nathan Davies, a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham and a recipient of the fund. He is a disability rights campaigner and I thank him for all that he does. We need to hear the voices of disabled people so that we fully understand the impact that decisions made here have on disabled people outside.

[Susan Elan Jones]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the fears that my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham, I and others have is that, because there are such pressures on council budgets, there will be great campaigns on locally based issues—the closure of a library or the like—but individuals with disabilities will not have that same sort of voice and could therefore be left unheard and with financial problems as a result of the changes?

[Marsha De Cordova]

My hon. Friend makes a really valid point. She is right. We need to ensure that the voices of disabled people are heard. I can refer back to my own experience here in London in a particular local authority when the campaign on the closure of the independent living fund began. A lot of campaigning took place. It is important that we encourage and empower disabled people to ensure their voices are heard. I totally take her point that we need to ensure disabled people’s voices are not lost in any of the debates. As a disabled woman myself, my role is to ensure disabled people are empowered and their voices always heard.

From the outset it is fundamental that any support for severely disabled people is adequately funded so that we can ensure people with disabilities can live independently. We know that disabled people are twice as likely to live in poverty compared with non-disabled people, in part due to the extra costs associated with living with a disability. I cannot carry on further without talking about the Government’s past record in terms of the disproportionate impact that their cuts have had on disabled people. There are 4.2 million disabled people living in poverty and over the past seven years many disabled people feel they have been scapegoated by the Government. A 2016 inquiry by the UN’s Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities found that since 2010 the UK Government have been responsible for “grave or systematic violations”.

The independent living fund—I will refer to it as the ILF—closed in June 2015. The funding was devolved to English local authorities and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Governments. Devolved Governments adopted their own different policies. We have already heard about the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish policies. The ILF was originally set up in 1988 to help cover the extra costs of being severely disabled. It was also to ensure that disabled people could lead a full and active independent life in their community, rather than living in institutions or in residential care. At the time of the fund’s closure, more than 16,000 disabled people in Britain were receiving an average of around £350 a week towards the costs of living independently.

The ILF was a vital financial resource for many severely disabled people that enabled them to live independently. It helped to cover the everyday tasks that many of us take for granted such as cleaning, washing, cooking, going out and being able to participate fully. At the time of the closure the coalition Government stated that all existing recipients would continue to be funded by their local authorities. In reality, that has not always been the case. It was suggested that many local authorities would not ring-fence funding and the grant would simply be absorbed into a general pot.

For example, Disability Rights UK research suggested that only 29 councils in England would ensure non-ring-fenced funding would be allocated. Indeed, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,

“observed that social care packages have been reduced in the context of...budgetary constraints at the local level.”

As I have alluded to, we know that since 2010 local authorities have come under extreme pressures and have seen their budgets cut. They will continue to have to make cuts and it is unsure how much support disabled people will receive. For example, when an individual who received 27 hours of support a week through the ILF was reassessed under the local authority arrangement, he was to be given just nine hours’ support. Potentially he would have to make contributions as well, and naturally that would have been unaffordable.

The extensive cuts to local government funding have ensured that in many cases some disabled people have been restricted or limited in the lives they could lead. As has been pointed out, there were local campaigns; I was not in this place at the time but I am led to believe that there was a protest here, by disabled people who wanted to change Government’s decision to end the independent living fund in its current form without devolving it to a local level. Despite assurances from the Government of the day, support has been removed from some disabled people, and reduced for those with the highest support needs. In England in particular, there is pretty much a postcode lottery; the level of support that people get is almost dependent on the local authority area they live in. We would all agree that it is fundamental that disabled people’s independence should not be dependent on the level of funding or eligibility criteria set by an individual local authority. Distribution of funding should also be based on need; therefore there should be some sort of universal policy for how that is done.

I want to speak briefly about eligibility. That is determined by the local authority, and we do not see, in many cases, whether recipients’ support has decreased or increased. A decrease would undoubtedly have an impact on someone’s ability to live independently. I share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham and hope that the Minister can respond on the important issue of what the impact of the changes to the independent living fund has been. How many recipients’ support packages have been reduced, and how many have remained the same? Are there any instances, among so many disabled people, of the support being enhanced? It is also important that we should know that disabled people’s voices will be included in the future when decisions are made about them. That is something that I believe and take a stand on, as does the Labour party. Since 2013 disabled people have experienced £27 billion in welfare cuts, affecting social security and social care support.

As I said at the start of my speech, we believe that it is fundamental that adequate funding is provided to enable severely disabled people to live independently. The Government must ensure that local authorities and devolved Governments are adequately funded. I urge the Minister to touch in her response on how we will deal with working-age disabled people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. We transferred the money for that purpose—I was going to come to this point later in my speech, but I will say it now. The hon. Gentleman gave various numbers for losses, cuts, and people not receiving money that came from the research that he has done, including work with third-party organisations. Before this debate I asked him to come and see me so that we could talk the issue through, because the fund was certainly transferred in the full expectation that its recipients would have their funding maintained. If there is evidence to the contrary I would like to sit down with him and go through that.

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s welcome for the independent review of the impact of the fund. That was carried out by leading social scientists and showed that the majority of people interviewed during the research were seeing the same level of expenditure, or more, and that the level and quality of support were going up. However, there was variability in that research, and I would be delighted to sit down with the hon. Gentleman and make sure that the money is being spent in the way that was intended.

Through the devolution of the fund, the vast majority of recipients of ILF—94%—were also recipients of care and financial support from local authorities. There was a lot of duplication, and that has enabled local authorities to have the person-centred approach that the Care Act 2014 was always about. We need to join up services around the individual because no two people are the same. No two families have the same circumstances, so we must ensure that support meets the needs of the individual and enables them to live as independently as possible. As the hon. Gentleman recognised, these are devolved matters, and it is for the Welsh Assembly to make these decisions. The Welsh Minister for Social Services and Public Health said that funding of the ILF will continue in Wales, as that will equalise support and “make it more sustainable”. That is certainly a point that the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues in Wales recognise.

We have a clear commitment to ensure that disabled people have the support to lead independent lives, and that is demonstrated in the fact that the Department spends well over £50 billion a year. This year, £52 billion will be spent on benefits to support disabled people and those with health conditions. That is around 2.5% of our GDP, and more than 6% of Government spending, and it is up by £7 billion in real terms since 2010. It is simply wrong when colleagues stand up in the House and say that the Government are cutting benefits for people with disabilities. These are indisputable facts, and when hon. Members stand up in the Chamber, and elsewhere, and wonder why there is a perception that the Government are being cruel and heartless to disabled people, I think they should look at themselves in the mirror. When Members constantly misrepresent the facts, of course people will be worried and scared. Like any other constituency MP I hold weekly surgeries, and I am frankly dismayed when people come along holding their Labour leaflets and showing me what they are being told. They are scared about cuts that are not happening.

[Marsha De Cordova]

It is not right to say that we are not being truthful because there have been severe cuts to support for disabled people. The introduction of the personal independence payment and the abolition of disability living allowance means that fewer people will receive additional support to help meet the extra costs of living with a disability. The time limiting of contributory employment and support allowance has also led to a reduction in the number of recipients who are eligible for support—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. This is an intervention, not a speech. The Minister is replying to the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing that out. The numbers clearly show a significant contribution to helping people live independently, but these things are not the only things we are doing. He is completely right to talk about enabling people to play their full part in society, including in work, and I am delighted that so many more disabled people are in work. The vast majority of disabled people want to play their full part in society and to be able to work, and we have set up very ambitious plans to ensure that more people have more support.

Let us look at some of that support. Not only do we have ESA and the personal independence payment, but enhanced and tailor-made support is available through the work coaches in Jobcentre Plus—that is more than £330 million. The marvellous Access to Work programme enables people to receive support of up to and over £40,000 a year so that they can go to work and stay in work. The subject of the newly launched Work and Health programme brings me on to the point raised by the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran about working collaboratively with Scotland. I am delighted that in Scotland people are working so constructively on some of that innovation, and testing new ways that we can support people to get into and stay in work. We have a constructive working relationship with Scotland, and Scotland is benefiting from some of the considerable investment we are putting into that programme. Just this year we have two funds, one of nearly £80 million and another of about £35 million. I will, of course, always look to work with colleagues in any part of the country where we can work collaboratively and constructively to learn from each other, so that we can enable more people to play as full a part in society as they possibly can.

We have also talked about other parts of the funding. Adult social care is incredibly important for disabled people, and we have committed to publishing a Green Paper by the summer, setting out how we will reform the system and have a longer-term settlement on social care. An inter-ministerial group has been set up to do that, because it is an essential reform that we need to achieve. It is also important to have a cross-party, whole nation approach to doing that, because various Governments have tried to get it right, but we have yet to come up with a settled view we can all support. I think that is long overdue, and I will work hard to support that inter-ministerial group in coming up with a set of proposals that will aim to command the support of the whole House. Any hon. Members here who would like to join would be welcome.

[Marsha De Cordova]

I am really pleased that there will be a cross-ministerial group. Can the Minister confirm that working-age disabled people will also be considered in the Green Paper and in the reform of adult social care?

[Sarah Newton]

We definitely have two pieces of work under way. One is part of adult social care and is about the care of elderly people, and one is for working-age disabled people. That is incredibly important. We are always looking to see what more we can do to support disabled people to live as independent a life as possible, and I also want to ensure that, as we look ahead, we draw on the lessons we will learn through the considerable investment in innovation that we are putting in through the Work and Health programme. I want to ensure that we have an evidence base for the reforms we want to put in place.

In the meantime, we know we need to put more money into the system. We have put in an additional £2 billion over the next three years. That money was committed in March last year, and will mean that local authorities have the funds they need to support disabled people in living as independent a life as they can and to meet their social care needs. Councils have access to £9.25 billion more in dedicated funding for social care over the next three years. I think that, with this additional funding, local authorities have the ability to meet the needs that have been clearly set out there and to meet the responsibilities set out in the Care Act. It is important to analyse the impact of the closure of the independent living fund and I am happy to meet the hon. Member for Wrexham, because what I really want to do is focus on what more we can do in the future.

I hope that hon. Members who have been present for today’s debate will see that we have a big ambition, through a whole range of programmes, to enable disabled people to live independently and play their full part in society, helping them into work. I believe that the challenge we face as a nation is above party politics; it should be above party politics. Those colleagues who want to work with me to improve, learn and move forward to realise that bold ambition are very welcome to join me in a meeting and in that great challenge.