Personal Independence Payments (Wales)

Debate between Mike Penning and Mark Tami

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[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.