Disability Support

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

Government Members appear to be arguing that there should not be a cumulative impact assessment for disabled people for which my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) has argued so eloquently.

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)]

indicated dissent.

[Ruth George]

I am glad that the Minister is disagreeing and I very much hope that she will put me right and will agree to this.

There are plenty of figures out there. We know that 30% of families including someone with a disability are in poverty. That is 10% higher than the rest of the population. In fact, according to the Social Mobility Commission, half of people in poverty—nearly 7 million people—are in a household with an adult who has a disability. Fixing the problems of poverty for people with disabilities will go a long way to fixing the problems of the UK’s high level of poverty.

Over the last eight years, we have seen successive cuts to benefits that affect people with disabilities. From 2013, we saw a 1% benefit uprating for three years. Employment and support allowance lost over 5% of its value compared to the retail prices index and 3% compared to the consumer prices index. The four-year benefits freeze will take off 6.5% compared to the CPI and a full 10% compared to the RPI; 15% of the value of that benefit will be lost over seven years. These are not generous benefits in the first place.

In addition, many disabled people have had to cope with the cuts to local housing allowance, which is down to 30% of median rents. They therefore have to bulk up their rent out of their meagre ESA. Child tax credit has been frozen. The childcare element in tax credits has been at the same maximum since 2005, and the amount of help people can get with childcare costs has reduced from 80% to 70%. In addition we have the bedroom tax, which affects so many people with disabilities, and £30 a week has been abolished for those in the work-related activity group under ESA.

People with disabilities have been facing all those cuts, even before the cuts under universal credit. That is why people with disabilities feel so strongly that there needs to be a cumulative impact assessment of the full impact of the history of serious cuts to their income. Under universal credit, we are also seeing cuts that affect children with disabilities. The Government claim to support and protect the most vulnerable in society, but my constituent—a single parent with a son with a disability—wrote to me saying, “My son is six years old. He is practically bed-bound, yet the Government want to transfer me on to universal credit because I can no longer work to support him, and his support will be reduced. If my disabled son is not one of the most vulnerable people who needs protection and support, then who is?” I put that question to the Minister today.

The difficulties in claiming universal credit for people with disabilities have been set out in many cases elsewhere, but because roll-out so far has been mostly to people who have been on JSA—not to people with disabilities on employment and support allowance—we have not seen the scale of support that is needed. However, as I mentioned earlier, I am already seeing problems in my constituency with regards to people with disabilities getting the home visits that they feel they need.

Families in particular are feeling the cuts, including parents who are disabled with children who are disabled. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth set out the appalling level of cuts—a reduction in income of nearly £10,000 a year—that those families will see under universal credit. It is no wonder that families fear universal credit. A constituent with a four-year-old son who is autistic and non-verbal wrote to me to say that she has had to give up work to care for him because she cannot get care in the school holidays, so as well as losing her own wage, she has also lost tax credits. The family looked to claim housing benefit, but found that they would need to claim universal credit instead. Given that they have already racked up rent arrears because their income has been so reduced, if they faced five weeks’ wait for support under universal credit, they could end up losing the house they have been tenants in for the last 21 years. I hope that the Government will be listening to these real stories of people who are already suffering. I have had universal credit in my constituency for only two and a half months, and I am already seeing constituents who are suffering under it.

That is on top of all the constituents who are suffering from employment support allowance and PIP assessments. In the Work and Pensions Committee, I set out to the Minister the very harrowing account that I had heard of a group of survivors of sexual violence and their experiences of PIP assessments—how one woman was curled up on the floor crying and sobbing uncontrollably while the assessor simply repeated the questions at her deadpan and offered her no support or understanding whatsoever. I was very pleased that the Minister agreed that that was a disgusting situation that should not be allowed to continue. In response to the Committee’s report on PIP and ESA assessments, the Government promised to look at the recording of those assessments and to bring that in. However, on questioning the permanent secretary today in the Committee, we heard that he had no idea how that was being rolled out, although the commitment to do so was made eight months ago.

A constituent who was looking to claim PIP said that she was forced to purchase her own recording equipment if she wanted her assessment to be recorded, whereas she knows that in the past the assessment centre had used its own equipment. She was also looking to get support with getting to the assessment centre. She was told that she could get there in a taxi but that it would cost £100 up-front and she could only claim that back 30 days after her assessment. People with disabilities are not being treated in the way that they should be treated. I am afraid that this is a culture that we are coming across time and again in what we hear in our constituency surgeries.

The Disability Benefits Consortium found that eight out of 10 people who underwent a PIP assessment found that it made their health worse. Two thirds felt that they had been poorly assessed. Constituents with mental health difficulties, in particular, find that those difficulties are not adequately assessed. One constituent said that, although she presented with serious mental health difficulties, the bulk of the questions she was asked were aimed at her physical health, where she has only minor conditions that do not prevent her from working. Only a third of the time was spent covering her mental health, and those questions were loaded. When she tried to expand and explain her answers, she was told to stick to the questions.

My constituent has been left on the verge of suicide by that assessment and the struggle of waiting for a response as to what will happen as a result. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth set out so starkly, there has been an increase in suicides by people who have been undergoing work capability and PIP assessments. None of us want to see this happen. In Committee, I raised with the Minister the fact that constituents of mine were being asked why they had not yet committed suicide. I was very pleased that she again took up the issue. That question has not come up in the cases that I have received more recently, so I very much hope that that practice is spreading through the privatised companies that do these assessments. However, there is so much more to do, as cases just from my one, very rural and relatively affluent constituency show.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)]

I should like to add my voice to those congratulating the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) on securing such an important debate. It is to the great credit of the House that, after what have been an emotional, long and tiring few weeks here, Members from every country of Great Britain are here tonight to speak up so well and so passionately for their constituents. This is probably our last full debate before the Adjournment debate tomorrow, and it is right that we have focused on such an important issue as the disabled people in our country and the amazing contribution that they make.

Of course, we should rightly focus all our efforts on what more we can do for those who are vulnerable and need our support, and I am sure that all hon. Members will want to ensure that we are doing everything we can to live up to the ideals of the United Nations conventions, which we helped to design, and to those of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which a Conservative Prime Minister introduced in this House. There is also cross-party support for the Equality Act 2010, which underpins so much of what we are doing. These are important issues that should unite the House, and I am pleased to have heard a lot of constructive comments this evening. I have very little time, and I will not be able to answer all the questions that have been raised, but I will write to hon. Members if I have not been able to address their concerns. I want to focus on the motion, as it is so important.

I want to reassure hon. Members that the Government do publish distributional analysis of the cumulative impact of Government decisions on household finances at every fiscal event. The last publication was in October, to accompany the autumn Budget, and assessed the tax, welfare and public spending changes announced from the 2016 autumn statement onwards that carry a direct and quantifiable impact on households. Her Majesty’s Treasury uses its intragovernmental tax and benefits microsimulation model to produce that analysis, and the underlying data comes from the Office for National Statistics annual living costs and food survey.

Her Majesty’s Treasury uses the LCF survey, because it is the primary source of data about what income people have, how they spend their money and what public services they have accessed. The survey is unique in capturing all that information. Only by assessing the impact of Government policy on each of these areas can an accurate and fully comprehensive assessment of the total impact of all Government policies on welfare, taxes and spending on public services be made. Looking at only one aspect, such as changes to income from benefits, does not provide a complete picture and is misleading. For example, the Government have committed to increasing spending on the NHS by £20 billion, which will have a positive and direct impact on the lives of millions of disabled people. To look only at benefits would be really misleading.

The LCF survey came into existence in 2007, but a household food consumption and expenditure survey has been run by Government since the 1940s. The primary purpose of these surveys has always been to collect detailed expenditure data for a sample of people, which is then used to assess changes in people’s spending patterns in order to adjust the basket of goods used to estimate inflation. The survey does not collect information from the sample of individuals that would allow us to assess whether a person is disabled—it has never been able to do that. As with all Government surveys, taking part is voluntary and a difficult balance has to be struck between the amount of information we are asking respondents to provide, and therefore the time it takes to complete the survey, and the proportion of the sample who are willing to take part. The survey sample is designed to be representative of the population, and the more people who do not respond, the more the estimates from the survey potentially suffer in quality.

Therefore, the lack of information about disability means that the information does not exist for the Treasury to estimate the cumulative impact of all Government policies on disabled people. However, the Office for National Statistics is currently undertaking developments to its household surveys to integrate various surveys and to link various sources of administrative data held by the Government, which means it might be possible to have the required information on disability status in future. The ONS is consulting users, and I have instructed my officials to raise the issue of disability status in the living costs and food survey. I encourage stakeholders, and all Members who care about this as much as I do, to contact the ONS, which is independent, and raise the issue. If we had that information, and if the ONS proceeds in the way I have just described by linking datasets, it would be possible for us to undertake the sorts of assessments that people have articulated so well this evening.

However, although a cumulative impact assessment is not possible now, the DWP does undertake a wide range of other research and analysis to assess and monitor the impact of policies on disabled people. The DWP runs its own household survey—the family resources survey—which collects information from a sample of households, with detailed information on sources of income, the amount of income families receive and detailed information on the characteristics of the people in those households.

[Stephen Timms]

rose—

[Sarah Newton]

I have said that I will not take interventions, in order to answer all the questions, but I will write to any Members I am unable to answer in the time available.

The family resources survey collects the information required to make an assessment of the disability status of people in a household. The information is then used to provide estimates of the amount of income that families with disabled people have. The DWP publishes estimates of the numbers and percentages of people within households with disabled people who have low incomes in the annual “Households below average income” publication.

In the 2016-17 survey, we saw that 16% of people in families with a disabled person were described as in absolute low-income poverty before housing costs, with a weekly income after tax of £280 or less for a couple with no children, compared with 19% in 2009-10. Absolute low-income poverty, on a before housing costs basis, has actually improved by three percentage points since 2010 for families with a disabled person.

Looking at all four measures of low-income poverty—before and after housing costs, and on a relative and on an absolute basis—poverty for people in families with a disabled person has improved since 2010 on three of the four measures, and there was no change in the fourth. I am not complacent. One person living in poverty in this country is one person too many, which is why we are determined to do everything we can to put more money in people’s pockets.[Official Report, 5 February 2019, Vol. 654, c. 2MC.]

[Stephen Timms]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Newton]

Let me make these points. I have been asked to address a lot of issues, and I really want to do that.

As well as the poverty figures, the Department for Work and Pensions publishes impact assessments for every new policy that carefully consider the potential impact of those policies on people with protected characteristics, in line with its legal obligations and its strong commitment to promoting fairness. The DWP has a continual and broad programme of research and evaluation of policies affecting disabled people, which is often contracted to independent research bodies, and all the findings are published. A recent example of such work is the research into the experience of PIP claimants, which was published in September and provided valuable insight into how PIP is working to inform policy development.

We have had some appalling misuse of statistics tonight. Of all the people who have applied for PIP, 9% have gone to appeal and 4% have been overturned. I work with a great number of colleagues in this House, with the Select Committees, with the all-party parliamentary groups, with disabled people and with those who represent disabled people. When we hear recommendations on how we can improve the process, we implement them. The Work and Pensions Committee did an extremely valuable piece of work on assessments for ESA and PIP, and we are delivering on implementing those recommendations.

The hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George), who is a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, spoke about the video recording of PIP assessments. I am determined to see that happen, because it will restore a lot of confidence in the process. We spent the summer carefully speaking to people with disabilities and to those who undertake the assessments—let us not forget that they are fully qualified healthcare professionals—about video recording. Putting all that information together, we started live testing the video recording of PIP assessments only a few weeks ago. That work will be completed in the new year, and we will be able to report back to the Select Committee and to the House on our progress and on how we will roll it out.

We are also undertaking a huge, large-scale test—it is actually the largest randomised control trial of its kind in the western world—as well as research into the employment and support package, to look at all the things that work to enable people with disabilities who want to work to get into work. It was interesting to listen to the personal experiences of the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd), and there are many disabled people who want to work but face unacceptable barriers to work, although we have made a lot of progress.

The latest data from the ONS shows that 900,000 more people are in work over the last five years, which is a steady increase in the employment rate from 43% to 51%, but we are very ambitious and want to see that gap close completely so that employers can draw on all the talents of the nation. We have set ourselves the goal of having 1 million more disabled people in work, on which we are making good progress.

Not only are we helping those people who can work into work, but we are always looking at what more we can do to improve our main health and disability-related benefits. Let us be absolutely clear that we are spending record sums on those benefits—over £50 billion this year, which is much larger than our defence budget. The figure has grown by more than £5.4 billion since 2010, and it is forecast to rise in every single year of this Parliament. All those benefits that are about the additional costs of disability were not frozen and were not part of the benefits cap, and include payments for carers, so it is simply not true to say, as Members have this evening, that we have been reducing the amount of money that we spend on the social security system.

[Stephen Timms]

Professor Alston produced a punchy report, and it made some telling points. He referred to

“the dramatic decline in the fortunes of the least well off in this country.”

He added:

“The Government has remained determinedly in a state of denial.”

From what the Minister is saying, it seems she is confirming Professor Alston’s point. There has, has there not, been a dramatic decline in the fortunes of the least well-off?

[Sarah Newton]

I was very pleased when the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth opened this debate by saying that she is an evidence-based policymaker, because I am too. I spent time serving on the Science and Technology Committee, where I was instrumental in having social science brought into its purview, and I was on the board of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. It is very important to me to make sure we use statistics, data and research accurately, and I am quoting from independent, impartial information.

As I said, one person in poverty is one too many, but let us not forget that we have had to deal with the legacy we were left by the previous Government of “There is no money”. We have had to make difficult choices about public expenditure, but we made sure that we increased the amount of money for people with disabilities and we increased money for the NHS. That extra money going into the NHS is directly benefiting people with health conditions and disability.

I have little time to wind up, but I want to mention that we have talked about other barriers that people face to fulfilling their aspiration to play a full part in our society, on which I completely agree. Employment is really important. All of us will be going back to our constituencies. We will do some Christmas shopping, go to carol services and enjoy a panto—we will be doing things with our families—but so many disabled people in our country will not be able to do that. We are absolutely determined through what we do with our sector champions and on our inter-ministerial working groups to make sure that every disabled person in our society can play their full part. We are removing those barriers. We are absolutely committed to living up to all the UN standards that we have signed up to, which are certain to make positive differences and changes.