Disability Benefits and Social Care

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore]

As my hon. Friend says, there are considerable problems with people being able to access legal advice on making appeals, but it is extremely difficult to access advice generally, given the cuts. We are certainly seeing that in my city, where the advice shop—one of the main advice centres—cannot see people for two weeks. Consequently, appointments are made two weeks in advance. Following an assessment result, people sometimes get a letter telling them that they have three weeks in which to appeal, yet it is difficult for them to get even basic advice in order to make an appeal. That is the reality that people are facing on the ground, so we need to look hard at the proposed tests.

Another important aspect of this debate—the Select Committee on Work and Pensions draw attention to this, and I hope that the Minister will consider it seriously—is that if we follow the pattern used with the employment and support allowance, people will be tested and re-tested, even though nothing in their circumstances has changed. One of the Select Committee’s recommendations was that limits should be placed on the number of re-tests under the new PIP. That is not to say that people should not be tested, but if they are re-tested constantly we may run into the problem of people having their next test virtually before they have finished their last test or their last appeal. That is not helpful, particularly for people with mental health problems, for example.

[Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that there is a balance to be struck, in as much as those in long-term care—the very vulnerable people she is talking about—should perhaps not be subjected to re-testing in future, whereas the others are entitled to a face-to-face reassessment, and that that is what should happen?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I do not disagree with the hon. Lady, in the sense that there has to be the flexibility to look at people’s exact circumstances. The point I wanted to make is that we need to impose some limitations, because the stress of having to go through the process is extremely great for some people, and their illness can be made worse.

Although I have taken interventions, and therefore have extra time, I do not want to take up too much time, because one or two other people still want to speak. The Minister who opened the debate would no doubt respond by saying that we are scaremongering—that what we have described will not come to pass under the test and that everything will be fine. Indeed, she has gone further than that. She has said on numerous occasions that one of the reasons for having a new benefit and not simply changing DLA is that people who currently do not qualify—people with communications difficulties, she has suggested, or people with mental health difficulties—will now qualify under the new benefit. That suggests that more people will be entitled to PIP. I want to know how she can square that with making savings of the size that the Government say they want. If more people who do not currently receive the benefit will qualify, that suggests that even more people will claim than at the moment.

The Minister has also said that we should not worry about the tests because they are going to be a “conversation”, and are not really going to be a test. She has also said that we should not worry about the time limits on tests because a test should take as long as it takes. That all sounds wonderful, but I would like to know—the Minister has to answer for us—how it squares with cutting costs. Indeed, it will add to the administration costs, so is that included in the contract with providers? We do not really know what the terms of the contract are, and if those things are not in the contract, they will not happen. Therefore, for all the warm words about having conversations, being relaxed and the tests taking as long as they take, what the Minister has described will simply not happen unless we are given clarity on whether it is in the contract.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Overall, as the hon. Lady will have seen from the figures that we published before Christmas about expected numbers in the Work programme, we are likely to see more people in the harder-to-help groups go into the programme than was previously expected. However, she will also have seen from the previous sets of statistics on ESA that we have a larger than expected support group, which is partly because of policy changes that we have made in areas such as cancer, addiction and mental health in which we are trying to provide better long-term protection for people who are genuinely vulnerable.

[Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

2. What steps he took to consult disabled people and representative organisations on the development of the personal independence payment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)]

We have consulted disabled people and their representative organisations at all stages of the development of the personal independence payment. That included a formal consultation in December 2010 and our response which was published in April 2011; an informal consultation on the draft assessment criteria in May 2011; and a 15-week formal consultation on the revised assessment criteria, which started on 16 January this year.

[Nadine Dorries]

I thank the Minister for that answer. Agate house in my constituency, a Leonard Cheshire home in Ampthill, looks after some of the most severely disabled residents. Some are born disabled and many have degenerative illnesses that mean that they will need greater levels of care in future. They will never need less care than they do today or be less disabled, yet they all have to go through the ignominy and bureaucratic process of an assessment of their allowance once a year. Will the Minister examine that matter? It seems an incredible waste of money, a bureaucracy, a waste of civil servants’ time and an embarrassment to residents. Could we change that?

[Maria Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and say to her that we absolutely share the objective of ensuring that the people with the severest challenges in living independently in our society do not receive undue assessments. At the moment there is no in-built reassessment under disability living allowance. She put her question in the present tense—I am not sure whether she was referring to other things for which people are assessed. I reassure her that under PIP, we do not intend to have fixed annual reassessments. They will be made based on individuals’ personal circumstances.

Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I feel privileged to be able to introduce a debate on the Government’s policy on preventing carbon monoxide poisoning.

I think you will agree, Ms Dorries, that many of the best campaigns in this House derive from constituency experience and the constituents who come to us with particular problems. About 10 years ago, a little boy, Dominic Rodgers, was found dead in bed by his mum, Stacey Rodgers. He had died from carbon monoxide poisoning. He was 10 years of age. He had been killed by a faulty boiler in a house next door—the gas had leaked across from one premises to the next. At that time, I promised that young lady that I would never give up campaigning against unnecessary deaths by carbon monoxide.

Over the years, through the all-party parliamentary gas safety group and in other ways, we have had a constant campaign to try to reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries from carbon monoxide poisoning. Many people do not realise how prevalent they are. The group has just had a major inquiry, chaired by Baroness Finlay. The latest statistics found in evidence that, every year, approximately 4,000 people are diagnosed by accident and emergency departments as having been poisoned by carbon monoxide. If they were poisoned by carbon monoxide, that means that they could have died from it.

I was talking to a casualty surgeon this week, at the launch of the Baroness’s report. Simon Clarke, an accident and emergency consultant from Frimley Park hospital, said that the other week he had a young woman come in who was not dead but severely affected by carbon monoxide. The two budgerigars in the house, however, were dead. Interestingly, I read a recent report that people do not keep budgies and canaries much these days—except in this case. The old use of the canary in the mine was to prevent the miners from being trapped by rising carbon monoxide.

Carbon monoxide poisoning is a very real problem that we face in this country. Many people do not recognise it because it is a silent killer—carbon monoxide is odourless and we cannot tell when it is around. The poisoning symptoms are tricky, and people might feel that they have a heavy cold or the flu. They might present themselves to their GP or even to A and E, but be sent home to the very environment that can kill because the symptoms are not recognised. We need a fully trained work force carrying out regular inspections in rented and owned property in this country.

When I started campaigning, the real problem was student accommodation, particularly if not very good landlords had not inspected the gas appliances, which became neglected and ceased to work properly. Time and again, we read of tragedies involving students dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. The regulations were changed, and landlords now have to inspect their property annually and have the appliances in such accommodation checked every year. What a fantastic lifesaver! We now rarely hear of students or people living in rented accommodation suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. Yet that regulation does not apply to ordinary people’s homes.

We are keen on warm zones and green zones and all the good things we do to insulate our homes, such as having double or triple glazing, cavity wall insulation and thicker stuff in our lofts or attics, to make our little domestic idylls warm and cheap to heat. At the same time, however, we block out all the draughts and incoming fresh air which, often, saved us from carbon monoxide poisoning in the old days. Both this Government and the previous one had programmes to improve people’s ability to keep warm at low cost, but at the same time we added to the danger because less fresh air was coming in. This week in London—they are still in the city I think—we had a wonderful couple, Ken and Kimberly Hansen, whose young daughter of 17 died of carbon monoxide poisoning two years ago when she was at a sleepover at a friend’s house. Ken and Kimberly are from Buffalo, in up-state New York, which gets very cold in winter. As our winters get colder, we will have the same problem, with people again trying to keep warm and cut down energy bills but not venting through chimneys any more, so when it gets cold they block off that bit of air that seems to cause a draught in the apartment or house and then, of course, the carbon monoxide kills.

Deaths can also be caused when people to whom we refer, probably disrespectfully, as “cowboys” are not properly licensed to attend to gas appliances in the home such as boilers and other vectors.

We are considering not only gas but solid fuel, such as wood burning stoves or barbecues. My next-door neighbour the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) will be saying something about barbecues, because he lost a constituent who used a barbecue on a camping holiday only this year. All forms of gas—propane, bottled gas, liquefied petroleum gas—kill people as well, with approximately 50 deaths a year from all sources, of 4,000 reported cases in A and E.

If people go on holiday—to France—they should take a portable gas detector. I do not have a portable one with me, but one for the home, which is still quite small. In France, there were 200 deaths last year from those little gas heaters that the French are so fond of in their bathrooms and kitchens. An early-day motion tabled by the all-party group, appropriately in July, was intended to make people aware of what was happening.

Carbon monoxide poisoning is a great danger to our constituents. What we really want is regular servicing by properly trained engineers, and that annual check in all homes if we can have it. If we cannot have that, in the short term, we really need a detector in every home—such detectors are cheap. I sometimes ask the financial and insurance community why on earth a home insurance policy would be given without a detector in the home. The detectors can cost as little as £15 to £25, and they should be given to everyone who buys a home insurance policy or gets a mortgage. Forty-five thousand people a month in the spring and summer change their house, so why does a detector not go into a house every time one changes hands? I would like dual use with a smoke alarm, but a detector alone would be a great lifesaver. We have run the campaign for 10 years and I have become very intolerant of the slow approach. We want the detectors in the short term—now.

Tomorrow, with my colleagues and on an all-party basis, I shall promote a symbolic Bill, which privately I call Dominic’s Bill after the little boy who died in my constituency, to demand a carbon monoxide detector in every home in the United Kingdom. That would save us from many deaths and many cases of poisoning through carbon monoxide. I have to tell you, Ms Dorries—I know of your interest in health—that even cutting down long-term exposure that is not fatal would be a great breakthrough, because all the research shows that any exposure to carbon monoxide influences health and ability to function and can damage brain function.

I do not want to detain the Chamber, except to say that the campaign came from constituents and from a brave young woman, Stacey Rodgers, who instead of turning in on herself and destroying herself as many of our constituents do when they have a tragic loss, started campaigning, as did that American couple. She has been campaigning for 10 years, going into schools and doing something; there is no one better than her at explaining to young people the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning.

In a sense, we have reached a day of celebration, in that the “Preventing Carbon Monoxide Poisoning” report came out on Monday, and Baroness Finlay should be given all the credit for it, although there was also the work of the people who gave evidence. The Minister had input into the report, so he must pretty much approve of the 17 recommendations and I hope that he will take them on board. I also hope that he will look at our Bill. Let us get some action. Let us cut the deaths and the exposure to carbon monoxide, and let us do something practical for the short and the long term for our constituents.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

May I check with Mr Sheerman and the Minister that it is okay for Mr McCartney to speak—you have cleared it?

[Mr Sheerman]

We agree to that—we plotted beforehand.

Pensions Bill [Lords]

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The debate is extremely important and I am glad that the Secretary of State approached his remarks with such care. It is an important debate because our treatment of older people in our country is one of the most important ways in which we judge the health of a society. Those people have made our country what it is today, and, in their retirement, we respect and honour a lifetime’s work.

Frankly, when we came to power in 1997, too few of our older citizens enjoyed either that honour or that respect. Nearly 30% of our pensioners were forced to live in poverty. The state pension had declined from 20% to just 14% of average male earnings. That is why we set about changing that picture with such speed, passion and determination. That is why we lifted 1 million pensioners out of poverty; why we lifted gross income for our pensioners by more than 40%; why we ensured that no pensioner must live on less than £130 a week; why we introduced the winter fuel allowance, free off-peak travel on buses and free TV licences; and why we increased tax thresholds to ensure that 60% of pensioners now pay no tax. We are proud of our record. It is now set out in the Government’s own figures that pensioner poverty in this country is at its lowest level for 30 years.

In dealing with such long-term issues, the House could legitimately have hoped that the Government would have built on those changes in a careful and consensual way. Instead, they have built nothing but confusion. Last Monday, the Secretary of State had to slap down his colleague the noble Lord Freud on whether there should be a cap on benefits; on Wednesday, we had the spectacle of the Prime Minister not knowing the consequences of his own Welfare Reform Bill; and today the Secretary of State has come to the Dispatch Box when this morning’s newspapers are full of stories of how his Bill might be shredded, not in this House but in the very Treasury that pushed him out to walk this plank in the first place. It is U-turns, confusion and blunder, and the poor Secretary of State is forced to sit there in the middle as the House of Commons’s very own Captain Chaos.

[Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I thank the shadow Minister for giving way—I almost thanked “the Minister” in a throwback to another day.

Somebody—I am not sure who—left a note saying that all the money had been spent. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree therefore that some measures that we could not have predicted when the previous Administration were in power are now necessary, such as the ones proposed today?

[Mr Byrne]

Perhaps the hon. Lady would like to reflect on why, just over 12 months ago, the Government whom she is so proud to support set out a policy in direct contradiction to the one proposed in the Bill. I look forward to seeing which way she votes and how she justifies that to her constituents.

This afternoon, we must try to bring some order to that confusion, and establish which clauses we agree on, and which clauses the Government—and, I might say, the Treasury—need to rethink. The Secretary of State began with automatic entitlement, on which there is a measure of agreement—it is a rock that we should hang on to in that regard. The proposal for automatic enrolment of workers into workplace pensions is to be retained, which is important, because as a country, we under-save for pensions. In fact, 7 million could be under-saving for their retirements. Bringing those people into a pension system and creating a national pension scheme into which they might opt could lead to a step-change in savings in this country.

The previous Government were very careful to build that consensus, which we did patiently, beginning with the noble Lord Turner’s commission. I am grateful that the Government have not junked that proposal, but it is deeply regrettable that they are increasing the salary threshold to entitle an individual to auto-enrolment. It is also regrettable that they are introducing a three-month waiting period before people opt in.

I understand the trade-offs that the Secretary of State is trying to make, but frankly, he has made the wrong call. Why? The first reason is that the salary at which someone is automatically enrolled will be raised from £5,000 to nearly £7,500. The impact of that will hit 600,000 people—they will be much less likely to opt in to long-term savings. If the Government raise that threshold in line with the coalition’s ambition to increase the income tax threshold to £10,000, nearly 1 million people will be excluded, three quarters of whom will be women. Their loss, potentially, is £40 million of employer pension contributions.

The Government are proceeding in full knowledge of that. There is no defence of ignorance. Their review states:

“Many or most very low earners are women, who live in households with others with higher earnings and/or receive working tax credits. These may well be exactly the people who should be automatically enrolled.”

Yet the House has been presented today with proposals that could exclude more than 1 million people. We think, therefore, that the earnings threshold should be looked at again. And if that idea was not bad enough, the idea of a three-month waiting period makes it worse and in itself could mean 500,000 fewer people enrolling automatically in a pension scheme. The loss to them could be £150 million in employer pension contributions. Put those two things together and the average man or woman could lose nearly three years of pension saving—a 7% reduction in an individual’s fund. I am afraid that we simply cannot support that measure.

That takes me to the most audacious broken promise of the lot—the proposal to single out a group of 500,000 of our fellow citizens, all of them women, and say to them, “You know your plans for the future? Well, you can put them in the bin.” The Secretary of State might think it a relatively small and trivial number, but the Opposition do not.