Disability Benefits and Social Care

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

One day, Mr Deputy Speaker, you, like me, God willing, will grow old. I want to concentrate on the UK’s care system for the elderly. We have heard much today about benefits and changes to Remploy, but I want to focus a bit more on something that was touched on earlier—the need to provide social care for our elderly and for those with permanent and long-term disabilities, and the urgent need for reform.

I am motivated in this by thinking not only of my own growing old—I hope—and of all those in this Chamber, but family experience and my experience of supporting a friend of my age who, at the age of 28, sadly had a stroke and is now confined to a wheelchair and has to live with permanent care. Supporting him, and starting a trust to support him, gave me the personal experience of trying to navigate the care system for those with permanent disabilities, and it brought into sharp relief the difficulties that that brings to many people who support disabled people, whether they are of what would otherwise be working age or in old age.

The Dilnot commission has been the most important step forward in this area for many years. Criticisms of inaction can be levelled not only at the previous Government but at previous Governments. This is an area where cross-party support and a lack of political tension is necessary.

Over the past decade, 200,000 people have sold their homes to pay for their care. Yet more people, who did not have assets, have had to survive with substandard care. BUPA has estimated that in a decade, there will be a shortfall of 100,000 care home places unless action is taken. In the same period that spending on the NHS has risen by about £25 billion, spending on social care for the elderly has risen by only £43 million. Given that 400,000 elderly people are in care homes and that more than £7 billion was announced for this area in the spending review, we need to ensure that Government support is focused and that financial support is brought in from wherever possible to strengthen this crucial sector.

I pay tribute to the work that the Minister has done to bring forward proposals and ensure that we are moving in the right direction. The introduction of carers breaks is a welcome step forward. I warmly welcome the linking of social care and health care budgets in the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which will tie together what have too often been disparate functions.

It is clear that there is also a need for reform in self-funding. There must be support for vulnerable elderly people who do not have access, but we must also ensure that those who do have access do not have to lose their home to pay for their care. The problem is the lack of an insurance market. We can insure all sorts of things in life. The moustache of Mervyn Hughes, the great cricketer, was once insured for £200,000, Kylie Minogue’s rear was insured for $5 million, Heidi Klum’s legs for $2 million and Cristiano Ronaldo’s legs for €100 million. However, I cannot take out insurance for the possibility that I will have to spend many years in social care. Nobody in this country can insure against the small chance that they will need very expensive care in their old age.

The problem is the uncertainty over the cost. For many of us, there will be no care costs at all. For most of us, the costs will be relatively small. For a small proportion of people, however, there will be very high and uncertain costs. There is a role for Government in ensuring that the market works in tackling the uncertainty. There is uncertainty over not only what the cost will be, but who will be hit with the cost.

That brings me to the final point about why this matter is so important. This is not only a practical problem, but a problem of values. Those who save hard and work hard for their whole life feel that they are penalised by a care system that takes away what they have worked for. Those who put money aside and save for their retirement look for a something-for-something system in which people get out according to what they put in. We must look after our most vulnerable and end the scandal of people being forced to sell their homes to pay for their care. I hope that we will come forward soon with serious proposals to take this injustice away.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

I am delighted to welcome the contributions to this afternoon’s debate of my hon. Friends the Members for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran), for Islwyn (Chris Evans), for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) who just spoke so powerfully, for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) and for Westminster North (Ms Buck). They all made their contributions in their own distinctive ways. We have covered some of the areas identified in the motion.

I kick off by talking about the social care crisis, identified by the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) and highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North. I hope that we are now at a point in discussion where we can reach a cross-party consensus on social care. Both those Members identified the major difficulties. I think we should remember that it was my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition who invited the Government to come into those cross-party discussions, having had a pretty bruising experience prior to the last general election when we thought we might have had a basis for moving forward. I certainly welcome the fact that we are treating this issue with the seriousness and urgency that it deserves. However, my image of the contribution of the hon. Gentleman is that he goes around working out how much people’s bottoms and legs can be insured for. He is not normally prone to humour, but I thought that was a bit of light-heartedness on his part.

The Minister with responsibility for disabled people paints a picture that, frankly, bears no relation to the reality of the lives of disabled people and their families and carers. When I heard her contribution, I wondered which world she was living in. She is a quiet and impressive speaker, although she showed today that she can sometimes be provoked. She somehow gives the impression that it will be all right on the night and that tens of thousands of people out there can be expected to say, “Well, that’s fine, Minister for Disabled People. We know that we are suffering”—as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington identified—“but we do not know what is in front of us; we have been vilified in the press, not just by media reporters, but by some ill-considered briefings from some politicians.”

The words of the Minister do not chime with the reality of what people are feeling out there. Over the past couple of years disabled people have been undermined and their confidence shattered, and they are living in a climate of fear. There has been an increase in hate crime. According to a recent report by the university of Glasgow for Inclusion London, the amount of negative reporting of disability in the print media has increased dramatically. People out there who are not claiming disability benefits now think that everyone who is claiming a disability benefit is a skiver. I hope that one day the Secretary of State will rebut the comments that are being made in some tabloid newspapers.

Let me dispel one or two of the myths that have been perpetrated here today. One is that lifetime and indefinite awards will never see the light of day again. In fact the lifetime award was replaced in 2000, because we recognised that it conveyed a mixed message. There has also been a dodgy use of statistics on all sorts of disability benefits, particularly by the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). He said that 75% of incapacity benefit claimants were fit for work, but when the position was examined properly, the figure proved to be as low as 37%.

An image or background has been created to justify a welfare reform programme that is flawed, at least in its implementation. We talk in general terms about disabled people and those who receive disability living allowance, but hundreds of thousands of people who have arthritis, learning disabilities or psychosis rely on the additional cost payment provided by DLA for their everyday lives.

Let me deal very briefly with Remploy, which has already been dealt with extensively today. Yes, we had to wrestle with some of the difficulties—I am certainly not going to run away from that—but the Minister gave only part of the picture. Any Member who was in the House before the last modernisation programme for Remploy knows that we engaged in an extensive and lengthy consultation. All Members of Parliament had all the figures in front of them from the moment that we embarked on that modernisation programme. What we did not do was organise a 90-day consultation involving people who were already feeling vulnerable because of all the other stuff that was going on around them, and embark on a factory programme without building elements of support into it.

Particularly important is the cumulative impact, which has not been addressed today. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said in its report:

“Given the breadth of the current reforms, the Government should publish a unified assessment of the likely cumulative impact of the proposals”.

The Government replied:

“The ability to undertake cumulative analysis is limited because of the complexity of the modelling required”.

So a Government who have tens of thousands of civil servants in the DWP are telling disabled people that, despite all that expertise, they cannot put together a cumulative assessment of what is happening to their lives. I think that it is to the shame of the Secretary of State that he is not prepared to put the big picture out there in front of people. The Joint Committee also said that we were in danger of breaching our commitment under the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities by posing a threat to their right to independent living.

Let me put a very brief cumulative impact assessment before the House. The DWP’s own analysis concluded that the benefit cap would have a disproportionate impact on households containing a disabled person, which were

“more likely to be affected”.

The Prime Minister has always dodged and weaved on this, but the reality is that the sum will be reduced by half under the new universal credit. The “Counting the Costs 2012” report by Contact a Family found that it costs three times more to raise a disabled child, and 73% of its respondents said they believe welfare reform will make them poorer. Mencap says 32% of local authorities have cut day care services in the past three years. The cumulative effect is growing. Some 57% of people with a learning disability currently receive no services at all, despite being known to their social care departments. Disability Rights UK has highlighted how losing DLA will impact on disabled people’s opportunities to get a job.

[Matthew Hancock]

The right hon. Lady talks about the need to see the big picture. Will she therefore correct something the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) said in his opening speech? He said unemployment is rising, when today’s figures show a fall in unemployment and a rise in employment, and that should be welcomed.

[Mrs McGuire]

I know the hon. Gentleman from our days serving together on the Public Accounts Committee, so I know how good he is with figures, and how he can bandy them around. The reality is that £9 billion more will be needed to pay for unemployment benefit. That is the real statistic.

[Matthew Hancock]

indicated dissent.

[Mrs McGuire]

That is the real statistic. We in this House bandy figures around, but the reality is that we are talking about people who are finding themselves—day after day, week after week, month after month—being unable to get a job. That is the reality: 2.5 million unemployed.