Welfare Reform (Sick and Disabled People)

Mike Penning Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jim Sheridan]

Well, whoever said it, I was certainly not a shirker, because I was desperate for work but could not get it.

I look at the Minister and must say that—I sincerely hope this will not damage his career, or indeed my reputation—as Conservatives go, he is quite a decent man. I hazard a guess—it is no more than that—that he would not mind being shifted to another portfolio. Those on benefits are demonised, and no consideration is given to the circumstances behind why they are claiming. There are some in this place and in the popular press who are obsessed with demonising people on welfare or disability benefits, which I think is unfortunate.

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

rose—

[Jim Sheridan]

I hope I did not offend the Minister.

[Mike Penning]

The hon. Gentleman might have destroyed his career by saying such nice things about me. I wanted to say that he is very generous.

[Jim Sheridan]

The Minister is safe in that regard, because I do not hold out any hopes for career prospects.

Welfare reform has not only encouraged the “shirker” myth about the sick and the disabled, but made life increasingly difficult for them. The Minister will probably say that the Government have put in place this legislation to ensure that the right people receive benefits, but it is a tactic to divert attention from the gross abuse of power by those with money in this country. Reference has already been made to the obsession with people receiving welfare benefits, but for those with money—the tax avoiders and evaders—life goes on as normal. If only a fraction of the resources used and the time spent on chasing down those on welfare benefits was diverted to tackle tax avoidance and evasion, some people might understand the rationale behind it.

Like many colleagues here today, I have had many constituents come to me with various concerns about the proposed reforms. There are so many different problems that it is difficult to know where to start. The move from DLA to PIP has been a particular concern. Since that move began, fewer than one in six people who have applied have had their claims decided. As other Members have indicated, some people have died before the process is complete. That reminds me of the cases some years ago when people were dying after being diagnosed with mesothelioma cancer but while still waiting for compensation. At that time, their claim died with them.

Inclusion Scotland has highlighted the case of the father of an applicant who was told that they would have to wait at least 10 months for any kind of decision, and perhaps even for a first assessment. A constituent of mine who is undergoing cancer treatment has been told that the eight-week time frame given by DWP is an unrealistic amount of time in which to process an application and offer an assessment slot. When my staff called the MPs’ hotline, they were told that they simply cannot process the number of applicants as there are not enough staff. They also say that most people who have applied for PIP will not be entitled to it, even before individual cases have been looked at. If that is the mindset of the staff processing the applications, it is hard to see how balanced decisions will be made.

When people finally hear about their assessments, there is not much hope. Only 15.4% of new claims have received a decision, and only 12,654 of the 220,300 people who have made a new claim since April 2013 have been awarded some rate of PIP. A constituent of mine got in touch because her father had been diagnosed with lung cancer. Because there is a possibility that his treatment will work, giving him a life expectancy of up to five years, he has not been classed as terminally ill. He is not well enough to attend a medical assessment and so will have to wait longer for a home visit. It appears that letters from his GP, cancer doctor and cancer hospital are not enough to prove the seriousness of his illness.

Like many people in this House and outside it, I had the pleasure of hearing my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) explain clearly where this Government’s priorities lie. Even under Mrs Thatcher we did not treat people like this. I wonder why, even given these austere times, we are now treating people in this country in that way.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I apologise as I had to pop out of the Chamber for a second—nature called—but I came straight back and I think I caught most of the speech of the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green).

[Ian Lavery]

It’s down to age.

[Mike Penning]

Yes, it’s an age thing; the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right—and that is no doubt the voice of experience.

I welcome the debate and congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on securing it from the Backbench Business Committee. This is the sort of debate that should take place. I also agree that it should be a non-whipped debate; that is right and proper. We may not all agree about what has been discussed, but it is, frankly, in my opinion something the Whips should stay out of, and we should have proper debates. I will probably get shot when I leave the Chamber for saying that.

There are also some parts of this very long motion with which I have a great deal of sympathy, and there are parts of it with which I do not agree, as Members on both sides of the House will realise, but perhaps we can try to work on what I do agree on and what we can do together to make the benefits regime better for the people we are trying to represent and the lobby that is here today.

Some 24 Members including myself have now taken part in the debate and it is a shame that it was time-restricted, but I understand fully why that was the case. We could have spoken for a great deal longer and have had longer contributions, however. Many Members on both sides of the House have raised specific constituency cases and my officials are in the Box and will have taken note of them. I will write to the Members concerned directly after this debate and see how we can progress those matters forward. I will also take a personal interest in certain cases, and in particular the case raised by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk). On that case, as the Minister responsible, I apologise unreservedly to the family. It falls back on me, and it is about time politicians stood up and apologised when things have gone wrong. In that case, things clearly have gone wrong and the family have every right to be aggrieved, and I hope the hon. Gentleman’s constituent makes a full recovery.

On the call for a cumulative assessment, I am not going to say to the shadow Minister that previous Administrations did not do that—although they did not—but there was a reason why and it is very complex, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has also said that that could not be done properly and accurately enough. I hope the shadow Minister and others will understand why, although the Treasury carries out independent reviews of different parts of Government policy, it does not do that. I respect the work done in other reports, but they are not cumulative in the way we would like.

[Ian Mearns]

Outside agencies have attempted to do cumulative impact assessments—Scope and Demos, for instance, worked together on an assessment. Surely, given the resources of Government, we can do a better job than those organisations and make a good fist of it.

[Mike Penning]

Actually, I was going to refer to the work by Dr Duffy, and when we leave the Chamber today, I will ask my officials to contact Dr Duffy and his team to see whether we can work closely together. Perhaps we can give them better information so we can be as accurate as possible.

The right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) said my heart is in the right place, and I hope it is. I consider it a great honour to do this job and I desperately want to make things right and proper. If we look at the spending since 2009 going forward and projected into 2015, we see that the budget in this area of Government expenditure will continue to rise. We have a slightly more cumulative figure than the ones I cited earlier, and it is about £50 billion a year, so we spend just under £1 billion a week in this budget. The key for everybody in the House is how we spend it—that we spend it correctly.

I also believe in having a work capability assessment. I do not agree with the motion, but I do agree with the shadow Minister. I think that the assessment was brought in for the right reasons. I am not going to say all the problems were caused by the previous Administration because, frankly, the problems with Atos and the WCA have been there for everybody to see since the general election as well. It is not quite as simple as saying, as some Members have, that we should go out tomorrow morning and sack Atos. It has a contract. As I said at oral questions earlier in the week, I am determined that once we have negotiated the position with Atos—and we are in negotiation with Atos, which is why I was so surprised to read the views of Atos in the press over the weekend—we must make absolutely sure taxpayers’ money is not paid to Atos as compensation for the end of the contract when that comes. That would be fundamentally wrong and I would not agree to it. The negotiations continue.

We have discussed several aspects of benefits today, and I believe that the time being taken for people to be assessed is fundamentally unacceptable. This is an issue not only for the suppliers of PIP and the WCA—we have talked about Capita and Atos—but for my Department as well.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

rose—

[Mike Penning]

I want to make some progress, but I promise that I will give way to the hon. Lady in a moment.

[Kate Green]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I want to make a little more progress on this point.

The National Audit Office report has been mentioned today. It was a snapshot report based on the situation in the autumn of last year. When I appeared before the Select Committee, I spoke extensively about one aspect of the report, which dealt with terminal illness. It is crucial to understand that I hid nothing away from the Committee, and that I said that the length of time involved in dealing with those cases was unacceptable. It has now come down to about 10 days. That is still too long, although it is less than it was under the previous scheme. We will get it down even further. I am working closely with Macmillan, and we have agreed to pilot a scheme for the 2% of terminal cases in which we will return to a paper-based system until I can get a secure PDF into place. Macmillan is pleased with what we are doing on that. The system is still not perfect, but we have moved an awfully long way, and we learned a lot of the lessons before the report even came out.

[Kate Green]

My point is on the WCA, and I hope that the Minister will address the question that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) raised about the suspension of reassessment of ESA claimants for the next two years. Will he tell us why the Department appears to have decided not to inform claimants or Members of Parliament about that?

[Mike Penning]

If we were to inform claimants and Members of Parliament about the minutiae of every single change in policy, we would be here a lot longer. As most Members know, I am not hugely party political, but I must point out that the previous Administration did not offer that level of information either. That is not how Governments work. We are trying to deal with the delays, and to ensure that people get what they are entitled to as quickly as possible and that nobody will be worse off while we are doing that. We are, however, in the middle of a really difficult negotiation with Atos over the WCA.

I want to talk about how we can speed things up. Yesterday, I chaired a meeting of a network involving all the major stakeholders and charities. I hope that I will not upset any of the charities by leaving them out. It was a positive meeting, at which I said to them, “Sit with us and work with us to help us improve on what we have.” I was very much in listening mode, which is why I shall now give way to the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi).

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I am not going to make a party political point; my comment is meant to assist the Minister. On a voluntary basis, I have represented people appealing against assessments now, under the current system, as well as 20-odd years ago under the old system. The problem now lies with the assessment method, which involves only form-filling and box-ticking. That is why we can no longer assess people’s disabilities properly. In the old days, a medical expert gave evidence on a person’s ability. If we were to bring doctors back into the equation, we might find that more decisions were made properly.

[Mike Penning]

I am almost sorry that I gave way to the hon. Lady, because her intervention was so long. My time is being massively eroded, and I hope, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you will give me a few more minutes to address the issues that have been raised.

The consultants and GPs tell us that the clinical evidence taken at the assessment is vital. When they carry out an assessment, they are not there to provide a diagnosis; they are there to assess capacity. They can do that only by using an evidence base. One of the big issues under DLA was that only 6% of applicants ever got a face-to-face assessment. We are at 97% now with PIP. I agree that that is fundamentally too high, as I said to the Select Committee.

I have also attended tribunals to see what is happening during the last part of the DLA claims that are now coming through. I listened to the cases, and I agreed that some of them should never have come before the tribunal in the first place. Under PIP, we have mandatory reconsideration; that was never the case before. I have now asked my officials to go through the approximately 30,000 cases waiting to go to tribunal. We will mandatorily assess all of them, to try to prevent so many from going to tribunal. There is a lot of work to be done, but we must do as much as we can, together with the charities and the representative bodies.

Residential colleges were mentioned earlier. I agree that they do excellent work, but the college principals know that I cannot pay for places that are not taken up. That is what was happening under the previous contract. There were residential places with nobody in residence, and we had day people on day courses. We have worked with the colleges on that, and we will ensure that we have the necessary capacity. Interventions have eroded my time, so I shall now listen to what the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has to say; I think I know what it will be. Please, let us work together to ensure that the system is better for everyone we represent.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before I call Mr McDonnell to wind up the debate, I would like to congratulate the Minister on behalf of the House on his appointment today to the Privy Council.