Personal Independence Payments

Neil Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Gaffney]

Yes, and that is why I am making these comments. These are actual people who are on PIP. One said:

“I found it humiliating.”

Another claimant said that she found

“the whole experience was brutal and gruelling.”

Finally, one asked:

“How low do these assessors go? I was asked if I had thought about killing myself.”

Can Members imagine somebody going to an interview and being asked that? Let us think about that:

“I was asked if I had thought about killing myself.”

This is the country that we live in, in 2018. These are comments from people who have gone through the process and we should be listening to them and we should be supporting them, with action not words.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

I thank my constituency neighbour for giving way and congratulate him on securing this debate and on his speech. The examples that he has given, presumably from his constituents, are echoed by my constituents in Airdrie and Shotts. Like me, does he welcome the changes that will be made by the Scottish Government when we take control over some of these areas to ensure that there will no longer be face-to-face assessments unless they are requested and that there will be paper-based medical assessments carried out first? This is one of the most demeaning and most problematic aspects of the PIP assessment process.

[Hugh Gaffney]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned Scotland. Let us take Scotland separately, with the special Government up there. In Scotland, we must not walk by on the other side. The SNP Government have the powers to abolish PIP assessments, and that is what they must do as a matter of urgency. I will give my assurance that the Labour Benches in Holyrood will support that.

In Wales, Keith Jones from Wrexham was refused PIP, having been on DLA since 1997. Keith died before his appeal was heard. He died weighing just 6 stone because his mouth cancer meant that he could not eat solid food, and he struggled to walk more than 20 metres. I could go on about more cases, but I want to encourage interventions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

The hon. Lady is a very experienced Member of Parliament, and she understands that in an Adjournment debate we have very little time. My door is always open to all Members here tonight if they want to raise constituency cases or broader points with me. I will not be able to address these points if I take interventions. [Interruption.] I ask the hon. Lady please to come and see me, and I will be more than happy to listen and respond carefully to what she wants to say.

These disability benefits are also exempt from the benefits freeze, so they will increase again this year to make sure that they are going up in line with inflation. We have about 5.25 million people of all ages on benefits, but we are supporting 1.8 million on PIP. Again, we have heard the misquoting of information about appeals. Of all the people who have applied for PIP, about 9% have gone to appeals, of which only 4% have been overturned. One person who has a poor experience of PIP—one person who does not get the treatment that these people all richly deserve—is one too many. We are utterly committed to a continuous improvement programme.

It is really important to remember why we looked again at the disability living allowance. It was a benefit for its time. It was mostly focused on physical disability. It did not take into consideration all the mental health conditions that we know people live with. It did not take into consideration learning difficulties or sensory impairments like blindness. Understanding of other conditions such as autism has changed immeasurably. DLA was too reliant on self-assessment, and people had very little opportunity to be reassessed, so they could be underpaid in their benefit.

In fact, PIP has achieved many of its objectives. We can absolutely see that when we look at the results. Over 1.88 million people are now in receipt of PIP. Over 225,000 more working-age disabled people are now receiving DLA or PIP compared with when PIP was first introduced, and more support is now going to those that need it the most. Over 30% of claimants are receiving the highest level of support under PIP, compared with 15% under DLA.

There has been much talk, quite rightly, about people with mental health conditions. It is really important to note that 65% of PIP recipients with mental health conditions receive the enhanced rate of daily living component, compared with 22% of people on DLA. Clearly, where we were aiming to make sure that people with mental health conditions were benefiting from this new benefit, that is happening. It is a holistic benefit that looks at a whole range of conditions with regard to people’s ability to lead independent lives.

I have consistently listened to colleagues in the House. I regularly meet charities and stakeholders to ensure that we make improvements to PIP. We have had independent reviews of PIP. We have had a Select Committee inquiry, which made many recommendations that we have accepted. We are absolutely committed, and a lot of changes have already happened.

I would like to take this opportunity to update the House on the extensive work we have been doing on implementing the reforms to PIP that I have set out and communicated regularly to the House. Starting with the beginning of the applicant’s journey, we have done work on improving communications, including making changes to the forms, ensuring that people understand that they can bring people along to support them and providing far more access for disabled people. We have independent evaluation where we engage with our PIP claimants to ask them how we can improve the process. Some 87% of them found it a positive experience, but of course other people are not finding it a positive experience, and they are the ones we are working with. We are working with individual disabled people and organisations, and we have listened and acted.

I have been asked about particular changes we have made. Over the summer, we have done a huge amount of work to get ready for a proper pilot of recording PIP assessments. I would like to say to the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill that using the private sector to undertake assessments is not a new thing. It was brought in by the Labour party when it brought in ESA back in 2008. It was the Labour party that introduced work capability assessments and used health professionals to undertake those assessments.

Let us remember who these health professionals are: they are the nurses, physiotherapists, doctors and occupational therapists we all depend on when we go to our local hospital or engage with our local health service. Those are the healthcare professionals undertaking the process. They are highly dedicated and motivated healthcare professionals who receive very thorough ongoing training, particularly in mental health. There is a huge amount of stakeholder engagement from voluntary sector organisations that support disabled people to ensure that the assessors undertaking these assessments are completely up to date, and this is a continuous improvement process. We have also introduced a lot more guidance, support and training for our case managers. Healthcare professionals undertake the health assessments, and that information is then passed back to the Department, where experienced case managers are the decision makers.

Over the summer, I was also able to ensure that we implemented other important changes that we said we would to PIP. For people who have severe conditions from which we know, from their medical information, they will not recover, we have built on the work we have done on ESA by working in partnership with disabled people and the voluntary sector to make changes so that once people on ESA receive the highest level of support, they have a lifetime award, with a light-touch review after 10 years. We have now introduced that to PIP.

[Neil Gray]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Newton]

I have so much more that I would like to update the House on, but we are simply running out of time.

We remain absolutely determined to roll out at pace the whole suite of reforms to PIP that we have set in train. We are already seeing improvements in those processes. This is something we take extremely seriously, and we are working at pace and with great urgency. There is no doubt that Government Members want exactly what Opposition Members want, which is to ensure that all disabled people and people with health conditions in our country are treated with respect and dignity and get the support that they richly deserve. We have committed to and continue to spend more money than ever on benefits supporting people, and we will continue to do that every year in this House.

Question put and agreed to.