Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Bone Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I can say to the hon. Lady, much as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has before, that we are reviewing all of this. The purpose is to ensure that those who are involved in caring will get greater and better support and that they will be better cared for themselves. The reality is that we chose for that reason not to take carer’s allowance into the universal credit, which the hon. Lady has not touched on, because that would have meant that some people might have lost out.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

21. What plans he has for the future of disability living allowance; and if he will make a statement.

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

Disability living allowance will be replaced by the personal independence payment, which is a new, more transparent and sustainable benefit underpinned by an objective assessment of the barriers disabled people face in living full and independent lives. From 2013-14, working-age individuals in receipt of DLA will be reassessed against the new eligibility criteria for PIP.

[Mr Bone]

It is so nice to have a Minister give such a full answer. In my constituency, people are worried that DLA is going to go and not be replaced by anything. I wonder where such false information is coming from. Does she have any idea?

[Maria Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and share his concern about the lack of understanding that people sometimes have about what we are trying to do. I can reassure him that the Government’s reforms are all about putting integrity back into the support available for disabled people, moving away from a discredited system of DLA in which, in terms of the higher rate for the DLA mobility component, more money goes to people who are drug and alcohol addicts than to people who are blind.