Disability Support

Debate between Ruth George and Stephen Timms

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ruth George]

The hon. Lady makes a very relevant point. The evidence from my constituents with mental health issues and brain injuries is that assessments are centred on physical health and physical difficulties.

I know from my 20 years working for the shop workers’ union, USDAW, that work is not easy these days, particularly for people with long-term health conditions. Employers now have sickness absence procedures, and employees often cannot have more than three periods of sickness absence, however short, in any six-month period. People with disabilities—particularly those who do not have a union representative to support them under the Equality Act 2010—are simply slipping through the net, not performing and being left out of the workplace.

Unfortunately, universal credit and the cuts to that benefit will trap people who have disabilities more without work, and particularly those who are on a higher-level benefit with premiums and then take up a short period of work. For example, one of my constituents took a job working for Royal Mail for six weeks over the Christmas period, because he felt relatively well and wanted to do it. He has just found out that when he finishes that job, he will be transferred on to universal credit and will lose his transitional protection and support. That is not a message that says to people with disabilities, “Try to work. Try to do your best.”

We see even more problems with the system where people with disabilities are being refused work capability assessments and are not seeing any money at all. One of my constituents was presented to me by a support charity six months ago. It has been trying for six months to get him some money, since he failed his ESA assessment. He had a fit note and should have been getting money. Only with my intervention did he get support. For six months, he was living off friends, family and food bank parcels.

[Stephen Timms]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend saw this comment from Professor Alston in his report:

“great misery has also been inflicted unnecessarily…on people with disabilities who are already marginalized”.

Ministers have sought to dismiss that criticism, but does that not sum up pretty well the experience of a very large number of people up and down the country?

[Ruth George]

I thank my right hon. Friend for making that important point, on which I was going to end my speech.

I want to quote a constituent with a disability who wrote to me to set out her experience. She was not asking for support—she was able to fight the system—but she said:

“The reason I’m writing to you is to encourage you to keep fighting for us in Westminster, to be the voice that is being taken away from the disabled people in this country. Fight to put an end to this barbaric, humiliating assessment system, where the person who makes life or death decisions doesn’t even get to meet you, isn’t medically qualified (specific to the individual condition) and is meeting targets to refuse claims.”

That is the view of people with disabilities. They want Parliament to be seen to be supporting them. The changes to universal credit in the Budget did not affect people with disabilities, who are some of the worst impacted by cuts to universal credit. I very much hope that the Minister and the Government are listening.

The Secretary of State’s Handling of Universal Credit

Debate between Ruth George and Stephen Timms

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Universal credit was a good idea, but the problems we are seeing in our constituencies are very significant. The Trussell Trust told us in its briefing for this debate that when universal credit is fully rolled out in an area, demand for food banks in that area goes up by 52% in the following year compared with 13% in areas where universal credit has not been fully rolled out. I noticed that the National Audit Office looked specifically at what the Trussell Trust said about demand for food banks where universal credit has been fully rolled out. The NAO states that its analysis

“aligns with the Trussell Trust’s.”

Indeed, the Department’s own analysis—the survey that the Secretary of State referred to, which was published last month—makes the point, as the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) has told the House already, that four out of 10 claimants in both the survey’s waves that were looked at were experiencing difficulties keeping up with bills. That is a much higher proportion of people facing hardship than has been the case with the previous system.

Why is universal credit causing much greater hardship than the previous system? Above all, it is for the very straightforward reason that people have to wait for five weeks before they are entitled to anything other than a loan once they have applied. A lot of people—I think we can all understand why—struggle to survive during those weeks. The theory was this: someone who has just left their job has a month’s salary in the bank that will see them through for a month; and after the usual waiting days, their money will start to come in. But a very large number of people do not have a month’s salary in the bank. There are a lot of good reasons why that is the case, but the most obvious is that people are often paid weekly. A very large number of people are paid weekly, but Ministers—I asked the former Secretary of State about this some years ago—have never had an answer to how those people are supposed to survive. I am grateful that the Secretary of State has told the House that she is listening and that she wants to work cross-party to fix these problems, and I very much welcome the fact that last October the delay was reduced from six weeks to five, but a gap of five weeks is asking too much of people who very often have virtually nothing in the bank when they make their claim.

[Ruth George]

Ministers have been saying that the advance payments solve the problem of the long wait, but the evidence we are getting from the Trussell Trust, among others, is that the high rates of repayment of those advances mean that they do not solve anything, but just prolong the debt that people are in.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If people are forced to depend on an advance right at the beginning of their claim, they are by definition plunged into debt right at the start. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has I think told us today, in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), that she will look at the repayment periods and, hopefully, offer a less demanding repayment schedule than is the case at the moment. However, just plunging people into debt at the beginning of a claim is a very serious problem.

The Trussell Trust, which I have referred to, said that we should pause the roll-out of universal credit to fix the problems. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) made that plea from the Opposition Front Bench, as she has done repeatedly and rightly. The Secretary of State can perhaps discount those representations, but she should weigh carefully what the National Audit Office said, to which attention has already been drawn today. Its report said that the Government should

“ensure the programme does not expand before business-as-usual operations can cope with higher claimant volumes.”

I very much hope that the Secretary of State and her fellow Ministers will weigh that cautionary note very carefully indeed.