Independent Living: Disabled People

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Penny Mordaunt)]

I am delighted to respond to the debate. This is my first Adjournment debate in my new ministerial role, and I am now in my 13th week. One opportunity a new Minister has in getting acquainted with their new Department is to ask dumb questions. Many of the dumb questions I have asked over the last few weeks are very pertinent to the debate: “How did you arrive at that particular figure?”; “What exactly is this money for?”; “Who is actually responsible for ensuring that this is paid?”; and “How do we know this is value for money for the disabled person?”

If we consider the history of our welfare system and the other layers of support administered by local government and civil society, we see that the picture is incredibly complex and muddy. I therefore thank the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) and others who have contributed to the debate, because it affords me the opportunity not only to address some of the issues she raised, but hopefully to further the cause of simplicity, transparency and, critically, accessibility.

I very much welcome the work Scope has done. Historically, Governments have had little detail about what disabled people have had to, and are choosing to, spend their money on. Scope has yet formally to launch its latest report—I do not want to steal too much of its thunder—but has done a valuable service in identifying certain key areas where costs for disabled people are considerably higher. This is not just clothing, transport and equipment, but, as the hon. Lady mentioned, energy and insurance, too.

Other organisations have helped on this agenda—Age UK, to mention only one, which is understandable when so many older people are also disabled. It has clearly established that the older people are, the higher their cost of living—an argument I have often deployed in defending the triple lock and pensioner benefits.

Part of the challenge of capturing these costs is that, apart from certain common trends, extra costs are so personal to the individual. Governments have therefore hypothecated for these additional costs for daily living or mobility. Increasingly and importantly, as we have seen with the Care Act 2014 and the personal independence payment, we leave the individual with a choice on how to spend that money. The spending power that a person has—that empowerment—is the best safeguard against poor-quality services and poor-quality provision. A disabled person will always be better than any five star-rated local authority in spending that money.

The other motivation for PIP was to ensure that we were directing money to those in the greatest need and with the most significant ongoing costs. Designed to cover those extra costs, PIP also improved on the disability living allowance by, critically, recognising mental health conditions, learning disabilities and sensory impairments, as well as physical disabilities. There are now more than 220,000 people receiving over £7,250 a year to help with these additional costs.

Under DLA, only 15% received the highest level of support, while it is 24% under PIP. Under DLA, only 22% of those living with a mental health condition received the enhanced daily living component, while under PIP the figure is 66%. The number of people on the Motability scheme has gone up since PIP was introduced, but we are keen further to improve its working. We have a programme of continuous improvement and evaluation by expert external bodies and stakeholders, including the Disability Charities Consortium. I am pleased that Paul Gray will lead a second review following his extremely helpful report, on which we have acted.

The forthcoming Green Paper affords us a further opportunity to look at those processes holistically, and to look at the person’s whole journey, whatever his or her personal destination might be. We have already made public the intention to stop retests for employment and support allowance when it makes no sense, and we hope that we can do more to reduce the bureaucracy and the burden on the individual. We must seize the opportunity presented by the Green Paper, and I urge every Member with an interest to engage in that consultation.

We also need more clarity about the vast array of support that is out there to ensure that the reach of our programmes and schemes matches the need. It is no good having an Access to Work scheme, a disabled facilities grant or 15 hours’ free childcare if people do not know about it and are not taking it up. However, as the hon. Lady said, we also have a duty to ensure that disabled people have every opportunity to secure best value for money.

Members have spent much time on the Floor of the House discussing energy costs, and I am confident that both Scope and the Government will continue to focus on them. Insurance markets can also afford more opportunities. There are certain practices that do, I think, require more Government action. The hon. Lady mentioned transport, and I agree that the scandal of charging disabled people higher fares is grossly exploitative. As one who has long campaigned on the quality of rail franchise agreements and the comfort, facilities and experience of the travelling public, I can tell the hon. Lady that she is preaching to the choir when she highlights the different treatment that disabled people experience on public transport.

I could give many other examples. However, I want to make it clear that this is not just about disabled people being short-changed—charged more and getting less for their money—but about businesses that are missing opportunities. The combined spending power of disabled people is immense. Some of the Department’s analysts have been working on the subject, and I can tell the House that we have vastly underestimated the spending power of that group. We will make the findings public shortly. Businesses, however, seem content to miss out on a huge customer base. Stores and products are inaccessible, irrelevant, or not even worth considering owing to the lack of accessible toilets. For some, spending a penny—in every sense—can be extremely difficult.

We need to change that. We need to help businesses and other organisations to understand what they must do, and, with us, really understand what the unmet need is and what the game-changing investments will be, in equipment, in technology, and—as the hon. Lady rightly pointed out—in connectivity. How can we drive down the costs, achieve faster take-up, and ensure that Government-funded services provide real value for money for a disabled person? Tackling the costs of living and the digital agenda to which the hon. Lady referred, and improving the targeting and reach of our welfare and support services, is only one half of the equation. If we want everyone in our society to enjoy a good quality of life, financial resilience and wellbeing, we must not only continue to improve welfare, tackle the extra costs and champion the disabled consumer; we must increase incomes as well.

Giving more people the opportunities that come with a pay packet and a career is part of that. The disability employment gap is a scandal. It is a scandal that disabled people have not had the opportunities that others enjoy, it is a scandal that businesses and other organisations have been missing out on huge talent and insight in the workforce, and it is a scandal that the costs of unemployment—people not having the chance to have meaningful activity in their lives and all the health benefits that we know come with it—have been piled on to our public services. We have been tackling the problem in a number of ways, and I thank all Members who have helped the Department by, for instance, running Disability Confident events, but we need to do more.

The Green Paper—the first of its kind, truly joint with health—will move the debate to where it needs to be, and create the momentum it requires. The paper should also consider the resilience and opportunities of carers, and the need to ensure that they can nurture their own ambitions and dreams as well as their loved ones. That includes being economically active, either now or in the future, if that is their wish.

As well as ensuring that opportunities are open to disabled people seeking work, if we are to make more than a dent in the disability employment gap we must also create more jobs, including jobs that offer the activities and flexibilities that disabled people want and need. There is much good work in this space, but it is often down to considerable luck that such ventures are created, with the right people from education, the local enterprise partnership, the council and social enterprise being in the right place at the right time. We must make such ventures more mainstream, more frequent and more the norm.

The number of people with a learning disability who benefit from such opportunities is considerable, and we must grip this issue in order to afford them the income and experiences that they are currently being denied. Such activity forms part of every think-tank-produced checklist for a good life I have ever seen, together with a warm secure home, financial resilience, opportunities and choice, connectivity, the ability to travel and a social life. These are all things that enable a person to reach their full potential, and we must ensure that people do that, or our nation never will.

[Ruth Cadbury]

The Minister waxes lyrical about the importance of disabled people being able to participate in society—to work and to socialise if they want to—but does she not recognise the fact that the withdrawal of funds to key services and the withdrawal of benefits make that aspiration virtually impossible?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I would take issue with what the hon. Lady says about this Government’s record. I have mentioned some statistics on PIP, and I could mention others relating to how we are using the increasing welfare bill better and in a more targeted way. I do agree, however, that we need to join these things up much better.

I welcome the tone taken by hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn in an article that she wrote for her local paper, in which she called for more cross-party working on these issues. Politics can often be divisive, and these issues are too important not to make common good, and common cause. Welfare reform is often lengthy, but certainty and stability are desirable. Such is the scale of the challenges that we need everyone to work towards the change we need in business, services and products, in the public sector and in our communities. We need to link the national to the local. We need closer working across all sectors, and we need the opportunities that the third sector brings to be understood and capitalised on by commissioners. We need all parts of the public sector to work better together, and utilising the data that we all have will be a game changer for delivery. We need to extend our reach to those patient groups and peer support forums that we do not currently work with. We need to build consensus, common good and common cause across all sectors.

In the hon. Lady’s constituency, local government consultations are taking place right now that will impact on the people we have been discussing today. It is no good even the most perfect policy being formed in Whitehall if it cannot be delivered on the ground. It is no good having a wonderfully evaluated Work programme if the person who could benefit from it does not know about it, or if the type of benefit they are on precludes them from benefiting from it. It is no good a person getting into work, or getting a college place, if their bus pass does not work before the hour they need to start. It is no good a person having a back-to-work plan if they cannot access the healthcare intervention they need to be sufficiently pain-free to hold down a job.

If we are to continue to improve welfare delivery, to close the disability employment gap, to build resilience and choice, to open businesses’ eyes to the possibilities, to enforce the Equality Act 2010 and to continue job creation with everyone in mind, we need a cultural change towards disability. It needs to be part of the mainstream, because it is the mainstream. It needs to be at the heart of every consideration and every plan.

The new role that I occupy, the fact we are in the youth of this Parliament—although it might not feel like it at times—the raised awareness of these issues, the new opportunities technology brings and the Green Paper will all present an opportunity to achieve those aims. Colleagues must maximise these opportunities, along with their councillors, their local Jobcentre Plus team, their healthcare professionals, businesses and the third sector organisations in their patch. We need hon. Members’ help, and I hope that they will give it.

Question put and agreed to.