Social Security and Employment Support for Disabled People
Sarah Newton Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab) (Urgent Question)
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the changes that her Department intends to make to social security and employment support, including the assessment process, for disabled people and people with health conditions.
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
Yesterday the Secretary of State provided the House with a written statement, and delivered a speech to Scope that included, among other announcements, an announcement about changes in the delivery of health and disability benefits.
We are making significant progress in improving people’s experiences of claiming disability benefits by working through the recommendations made by several independent reviews of personal independence payments and the employment support allowance, but we need to continue to make improvements in order to give better support to people with health conditions and disabilities. The written statement set out a number of additional measures that we will implement to make improvements, now and in the future, in support for disabled people and those with health conditions.
We will improve and simplify people’s experiences by no longer undertaking regular reviews of PIP awards for claimants at or above the state pension age unless they tell us that their needs have changed. We will also transform the delivery of assessment services. We have established a health transformation programme to undertake the significant task of combining the currently separate work capability assessment for ESA and universal credit and PIP assessment services in one unified, integrated service from 2021. We are extending the contract for the health and disability assessment service, which includes the delivery of the work capability assessment, and aligning it with the duration of the extended PIP contracts. That will allow for a safe and stable service now, and as we make the transition to the new integrated service.
The Department for Work and Pensions will also be testing how we can increase engagement and build a trusted and strong relationship between work coaches and people who are awaiting assessments for universal credit or who are found to have limited capability for work. The Minister for Employment will take that forward.
The health transformation programme will be co-designed with disabled people. The Secretary of State and I will engage regularly with disabled people, disabled people’s organisations and charities. All of us, whatever our age or need, want an equal chance to live a life of opportunity and fulfilment. We intend to support disabled people during all the phases of their lives, so that the pursuit of equality is a shared goal.
Debbie Abrahams
Thank you for granting the urgent question, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister for her response. I am, however, disappointed that the Secretary of State was not here to respond, and that the Minister has had to respond to an urgent question rather than making an oral statement, given the extensive scope of the proposals.
I welcome yesterday’s announcement that there would be no PIP reassessment for disabled people above the state pension age, but why are not all disabled people—particularly those with progressive conditions such as motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis and cancer—being exempted from repeat assessments? I have a constituent with terminal secondary breast cancer which has gone into her bones, and she has been refused PIP.
The launch of a transformation programme whereby PIP and WCA assessments will be integrated by 2021 is interesting, given that the Government have previously said that that could not be done. How exactly will the two assessments be merged? Who is involved? I am grateful that the Minister has said they will be co-designed with disabled people, but will she commit to supporting the principle of “nothing about you without you”? Will there be a pilot? If so, where and when, and what would be the sample size? Will there be an independent evaluation?
Who will provide the new service? There are real concerns about the profiteering enabled by this Government at the expense of disabled people. There are also worrying reports in various GP journals this week that the medical records of claimants will be made available to the DWP or their social security support will be denied. So I will be grateful if the Minister can confirm that this is not, and will not be, Government policy. Obviously there are huge issues around privacy and ethics.
There is also strong evidence of the physical and emotional harm that these assessments are having on disabled people, over and above their condition. What is being put in place before 2021 to improve the poor quality, validity and reliability of these assessments?
On UC and the role of job coaches in determining limited capability to work, the detail was most unclear in the written ministerial statement. Can the Minister expand on it and confirm that work coaches may start an assessment to determine a claimant’s capacity to work? Can she also confirm a shift in the Government’s approach to sanctions and expand on her Department’s approach to conditionality?
I welcome the review into the inadequacy of social security support for disabled people and more widely. Poverty is a political choice, and 4.2 million disabled people have been pushed into poverty as a result of the £5 billion in cuts since 2010. So what form will this review take and, again, who will be involved?
On the Government’s more ambitious targets to get disabled people into work, again the pendulum is swinging back. The Conservative general election pledge in 2015 was to halve the disability employment gap, but it is actually 4.4% lower than 2015. Then in 2017 there was a pledge about 1 million additional disabled people getting into work, but there was nothing about access to work.
Finally, what is the Minister going to do about the cultural changes needed in her Department to ensure that disabled people and other claimants do not feel demonised, even dehumanised, as happens all too often?
Sarah Newton
I fear I will test your patience, of Mr Speaker, if I try to answer all of those questions at once, but I will do my best.
I welcome the hon. Lady’s tone and her welcome for the measures we announced in the written ministerial statement. Clearly we have been listening very hard to Members across this Chamber and, most importantly, to disabled people themselves about the changes they would like to see, and that is what has driven the changes we are going to be making. I absolutely want to confirm that throughout the process—in fact this is how we work now—we engage fully with disabled people, enabling them to help us develop the services which are for them.
The hon. Lady touched on a few points about people being repeatedly reassessed. I remind her that we brought in the severe conditions criteria so that people who have reached the highest level of support on PIP will not be routinely reassessed; we have introduced a 10-year light touch review so that many people with the sorts of conditions and illnesses the hon. Lady described will not be undergoing further reassessments. We also have a special process for people who are terminally ill. I undertook research in the summer—and I have been delighted to work with the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) on the work she has been doing—looking again at how the special rules for people at the end of life are working. We have worked very closely with the medical profession, which I think was not often aware of the special processes that could so easily be put in place to enable people to get benefits within days. I will shortly be announcing new guidance which is the fruition of the work we have been doing over the last few months.
I want to remind everyone that in the transition from DLA to PIP many more people with mental health conditions are now receiving support, particularly at the highest levels. Concerns have also been raised about work coaches and their ability to work with people with disabilities and health conditions, and I want to reassure the House that all of our work coaches are receiving extensive training and will continue to do so. Over 10,000 work coaches have already received training in mental health services, so I believe that that personal relationship that we want all people claiming benefits to have with their work coach is a possibility and is happening the length and breadth of the country.
We are looking at conditionality and have taken up the recommendations given to us. When people with severe disabilities and health conditions apply for UC there is no conditionality; that conditionality will be switched off, and then as the relationship develops with the work coach, if and when they are prepared to take those steps to work, they will be fully supported by their work coach and other resources that they have available.
As would be expected, we listened to and worked with a range of stakeholders before the announcement to develop the new service. I can absolutely commit to the House that the co-design will be ongoing and there will be plenty of opportunities for everyone in the House to be involved in how we take that forward. But the simple ideal behind it is to reduce the number of assessments people have to take and reduce the amount of information they have to give to the Department. We have all heard in our surgeries each week particularly in terms of people in receipt of both ESA and PIP that they can be asked to complete a whole number of forms where they give us the same information, and are going to assessments where they give the same information. The whole aim of this is to reduce that and to simplify it, so that people give us the information once and we are able to make the best decision we can right from the outset.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
It never made sense to me for us to pay different contractors who compete with each other to recruit competent staff to carry out assessments which make many disabled people feel they are involved in a duplicatory process, which adds to the stress. So may I strongly welcome today the decision to combine the ESA and PIP assessments? That will make the system more efficient and hopefully provide more dignity for disabled people.
Sarah Newton
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. This builds on some of the work he started when he was in the Department. It is very much based on listening to people and their experience of the current benefit system. I could not agree more that we need to have a much more streamlined, simplified process under which people tell us the information once, we gather it once, and we are able to make the best possible accurate decisions the first time.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) on securing this urgent question.
As we saw yesterday, the Secretary of State announced changes to social security, disability and health. By my calculations, she made no fewer than nine different announcements in her statement. The Government will now hand over more money to the Centre for Health and Disability Assessments, better known as Maximus, to continue to carry out the work capability assessments. This is despite the failure, year on year, to meet the Department’s own performance standards and no fewer than 36,000 ill and disabled people wrongly deprived of social security as a result of WCAs. Can the Minister therefore say why the Government have decided to extend the contract for another 16 months? Will the Minister finally consider bringing these assessments back in-house?
The Government have announced that they are looking to merge the assessments for PIP and ESA into an integrated assessment service and use a digital platform to do so. Does the Minister not agree that there is serious risk involved in combining both assessments when the standard of decision making for PIP and ESA is the subject of so many failures? Given the consistent failures with the online platform for universal credit, what confidence should ill and disabled people have that this will not happen to them when they go through a process to access vital social security support?
Over 1 million sanctions have been imposed on disabled people since 2010, and those sanctions have been shown to be counterproductive and cruel. But so far the Government have committed to only a small “test” review of conditionality and sanctions. Why will the Government not follow Labour in pledging to scrap the punitive sanctions regime?
The Government have once again moved the goalposts on employing disabled people. First they wanted to halve the disability employment gap and now they are going to review it yet again. It is time for the Government to consider expanding Access to Work, rather than simply reviewing their employment targets. There are currently seven reviews being conducted into disabled people being wrongly deprived of social security support. These changes are just a drop in the ocean, so will the Minister finally accept that there needs to be fundamental reform, not just tinkering around the edges?
Sarah Newton
I really would have hoped that, today of all days, the hon. Lady could have found it in her heart to welcome the changes that have been asked for by so many people inside and outside this Chamber, and to recognise the great work that has been done by disabled people, and those who work with them, to engage with us so constructively and enable us to move forward and tackle the issues that she is describing.
The hon. Lady is right to say that we said yesterday that we were going to be more ambitious in enabling more disabled people into work, because we have made such good progress. Since 2013, over 930,000 more disabled people are now in work. Over that time, the disability employment rate has increased from 7.4% to 51.5%, and the gap between the disabled employment rate and the overall employment rate has been reduced to 30.2%. I do not want to see any disabled person out of work when they would like to be in work, but we have made progress and that is why we have committed to reviewing our targets and to being more ambitious. Access to Work is a great scheme, as we all agree, and it supported record numbers of people last year, including more people with mental health conditions and more young people with learning disabilities. The Access to Work fund is demand-led, and it grows every year because every year we are seeing more disabled people into work, and that is what we want to do.
Returning to the hon. Lady’s questions about the contracts, it is really important to me that, while we are going through such a fundamental transformation of our assessment process, we have safe and stable delivery for people who are applying for benefits. That is why we have extended the contracts to 2021, to align with the PIP contracts. We have not just accepted the existing situation, as the hon. Lady knows, and I am grateful for the work undertaken by the Select Committee on this. We have been pushing for continuous improvement within those contracts. The new contracts have higher standards for service delivery, and I would be happy to put a letter in the Library so that people can see the terms of the new contracts and see that they are driving forward improvement. We all want to see the right decisions being made at the first opportunity. We do not want to see people having to go through mandatory reconsideration and then on to appeals in the courts, and we have a whole series of reforms to ensure that that does not happen.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
I welcome what was in the written statement yesterday and what the Minister has reiterated about the more ambitious target to get more disabled people into work. As an aside, I also welcome what the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) said earlier. As a former Minister for disabled people, I am particularly attracted to the more ambitious target that we had in our 2015 manifesto. Indeed, I may have had a hand in writing it myself. On the substantive question, if we are going to get more disabled people into work, we need to ensure that the social care system—over half of whose budget is spent on working-age adults, not on older people—works better with our social security system and with the other means that we have of helping disabled people to become more independent. I urge the Minister to publish the social care Green Paper as soon as possible, and to start that much-needed debate so that we can deliver those policy changes that many disabled people across the country are crying out for and give them the opportunity to live more independent and fulfilling lives.
Sarah Newton
I very much thank my right hon. Friend for his contribution in the Chamber today and for all the work that he did when he had the privilege of holding this office. He is absolutely right to say that we want to be more ambitious. We will be looking carefully at how we can set ourselves really ambitious goals to ensure that everybody in our country has the opportunity to fulfil their potential in work, and that business, civil society and the public sector can draw on the talents of the very many disabled people who are unemployed at the moment. He is also right to talk about the importance of adult social care. It is of course the Department of Health and Social Care that leads on this, but I work closely with it and I have been encouraging it to go ahead and publish that very important Green Paper so that we can take forward those urgent reforms and enable more people to live independent lives.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
I cannot help but feel that this announcement was a missed opportunity to completely overhaul the punitive PIP assessment progress, which is deeply flawed and continues to be criticised by claimants and stakeholders. The latest PIP assessment tribunal statistics show that from June to September 2018, a staggering 72% of cases found in favour of the claimant. The Minister will be aware that Scotland is taking a wholly different approach, proposing to significantly reduce the need for face-to-face assessments, introducing rolling awards with no set end points, and ensuring that those with fluctuating conditions will not face additional reviews. That is what a system based on dignity and respect looks like. What are this Government doing to address the fact that claimants are still being wrongly assessed at such a staggering rate? Will she look at what the Scottish Government are doing to reduce the burden that is being placed on disabled claimants? Will she also agree to study carefully the responses to the consultation announced yesterday by the Scottish Government on delivering a fairer disability assistance benefit programme in Scotland?
Sarah Newton
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. I should like to reassure him that I do indeed work with my opposite number in the Scottish Government, and that we are working closely together as we go through the process of devolving PIP and other benefits to Scotland. Actually, we are testing and learning a great deal from each other. The UK Government are investing a great deal in health and work trials, and we work collaboratively on those. We are always prepared to learn from any part of the United Kingdom. I absolutely agree that too many people are having their decisions overturned on appeal—we want to ensure that we get all the decisions right first time—but it is worth keeping this in perspective, because 10% of all PIP claims go to appeal and only 5% are overturned. However, as I always say from the Dispatch Box, one person’s poor experience is one too many. We have been doing a lot of work with the Courts and Tribunals Service to bring down waiting times, and I hope that all Members will join me in welcoming the fact that we now have a new PIP online appeal service. Since November, people can resolve their appeals online, which is enabling far swifter resolution of those issues.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
I produced a list of things that had gone wrong in the claims procedures of my constituents, and I provided it to the Secretary of State’s predecessor to help her to shape these reforms. Will the Minister undertake to dig that paper out and have a look at it, and to ensure that those reforms can be implemented?
Sarah Newton
I think I can go one better than that, because I would like to invite my hon. Friend in to meet me and go through his paper with me, given all the hard work that he has put in, to ensure that we get this right.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
We all support any improvement in the lot of disabled people, but my constituency has one of the highest percentages of disabled people, because of past industrial diseases and so on, and I remember the grief that was caused to so many people when they were forced to reclaim or to appear before various groups of people to be reassessed. There are too many people who are still in that category, and I hope the Minister will be able to assist with improving that situation. I also want to ask her about the situation regarding Remploy. We had a big fight in this Chamber over Remploy, as she may remember, and we were told that alternative jobs would be available, but can she give us the actual figures? I know that too many people in my constituency who were employed in Remploy are still out of work.
Sarah Newton
The right hon. Lady raises an important point about reassessments. Through a series of measures that we have taken this year, and through the ones that we have announced, far fewer people will be reassessed. We want to ensure that people are getting the support they need. Under the old legacy system, people were just parked on benefits for a very long time, and they were missing out. The evidence of that is the amount of people who get more money on PIP than they did on DLA. It is important that people are assessed to ensure that they are getting all the support to which they are entitled. Remploy in Wales is doing a great job as part of our health and work programme, and we have also introduced new supported ways of employing people, such as the intensive personalised employment support—IPES—programme. I would be very happy to write to the right hon. Lady to describe what is happening in Wales, and if she does feel that people who should be in employment are not in employment, she should please come and meet me so that we can look at those cases.
Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)
I warmly welcome the changes that my hon. Friend outlined. Last week, the Scottish Government announced their timetable for replacing personal independence payments, disability living allowance, attendance allowance and carer’s allowance, which will now not be completed until 2024, three years after they initially promised. Will she reassure me, my constituents and all in the House that the Department for Work and Pensions and the UK Government did all that they possibly could to ensure that the Scottish Government were set up for this and that actually there is resistance from the Scottish Government to taking the powers?
Sarah Newton
I thank my hon. Friend for that very important question. She is absolutely right about the absolute commitment of my colleagues in the DWP to ensure that the Scottish Government can take on those powers. We have not created any delays whatsoever; the delays are all in Holyrood.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
A few moments ago, in Prime Minister’s questions, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) raised the case of a constituent who turned up for a disability assessment, was faced with a long wait and eventually had to rebook the appointment. The Prime Minister suggested that she or perhaps the Minister before us would look into the case, but it is not an isolated matter. I, too, have constituents with exactly the same experience, including a gentleman who last month at an appointment with the Centre for Health and Disability Assessments was forced to wait for an hour and 40 minutes, despite having told the CHDA that the nature of his condition meant that he would need to be seen very quickly.
I very much welcome the Minister’s offer to place in the Library information about the contract that has been issued to the assessment companies. We need to be able to scrutinise the performance standards and the rate at which the companies are achieving or failing to meet them. Will she repeat that commitment to the House, so that we can be absolutely clear that the information will be available to us?
Sarah Newton
I was not in Prime Minister’s questions to hear that particular example, but of course I will follow it up with great urgency. It is not acceptable for people to have appointments cancelled at the last minute or to be asked to wait. That is certainly not the service that we expect from our contractors.
I have made the commitment to publish the standards that we are insisting on in the contract. We monitor compliance with the standards very carefully, and there are penalties in the contract if people fall short of the high standards that we expect of them. Every person with a health condition or disability must be treated with respect and dignity.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend and her colleagues for listening so much and for making these changes, but will she look at the face-to-face assessments and at whether more could be done with paper-based reviews or home visits? It is pretty difficult for some people to get to the assessment centres, certainly from my constituency, and some people who have mental health conditions find the assessments incredibly stressful.
Sarah Newton
I thank my hon. Friend for his long-standing and passionate championship of the vulnerable people in his constituency and across our country. We have listened very carefully to what he has said and we have increased the number of home visits that can be undertaken but I definitely want to go further and, wherever possible, make decisions based on the information provided by the medical profession, the disabled people themselves or those people supporting them so as to reduce the number of face-to-face assessments. They are all undertaken by qualified healthcare professionals, whose training we keep under review. I want to ensure that we have only those face-to-face assessments that are really necessary.
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) on securing the urgent question. I share the welcome for the exemption of those over state retirement age from routine reassessments. Will the Government look again at exempting all those with learning disabilities and progressive conditions, including all those who only secured their benefit—ESA or PIP—through the tribunals process? The Minister is right that some disability organisations will welcome fewer assessments, but the fear or anxiety for disabled people is that the high error rate in existing processes will be transferred. Will the Minister give more detail about how that process will be improved and how individual disabled people and disability organisations can help to shape any new process, and when that will begin?
Sarah Newton
I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that that work is all under way. There have been several independent reviews of PIP and ESA, including one by the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, which made the recommendations that we are working through now, to ensure that the assessments are as accurate as they can be. We are not waiting. The huge benefit of the transformed service is that the DWP will own the whole claimant journey—we are building a whole digital platform—and we will be able to use the medical and other information far more easily to make the right decision the first time. As I said at the beginning, the whole new process will be co-designed with disabled people.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I welcome the announcements to bring in a better service for those seeking to make claims, in particular on the combination of assessments. An issue that is regularly picked up is a more independent record of some of the assessments. What further consideration have the Government given to things such as video recording of assessments, which might not only give confidence to the person taking part, but allow for quality-control reviews and an easier process in tribunal?
Sarah Newton
I thank my hon. Friend for raising video recording, because our hope is that that will bring a lot of transparency, trust and confidence to the assessments. We are reviewing the findings of a successful pilot. We remain committed to rolling out video recording.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
The Minister should know that there really are serious problems with PIP and work capability assessments. I have lost count of the number of constituents who have come to see me in a desperate state because of the lack of understanding and awareness, in particular for those with fluctuating physical and mental health problems. The fact that 83% of people with multiple sclerosis who appeal their PIP case are successful shows how flawed the system is. On that specific point, how will the assessment process and the training and skills of those delivering it change to address such serious problems?
Sarah Newton
Inevitably, we want to ensure that we make the process better. Each time I come to the Chamber, I describe the steps that we are taking. Specifically on the case of people with multiple sclerosis, or cases brought to me by people who feel that their conditions are not properly understood by healthcare professionals, I ensure that the healthcare professionals meet those people, that they look at the guidance together, and update it and the training used by the frontline people doing the assessments. We get positive feedback from that.
Every year, we look at independent research into the experience of people at the face-to-face assessments. It is really important to me that they feel that they are being listened to, and 89% of people said that the assessor had treated them with respect and dignity. In the high 80s, people are saying that they had time and felt listened to, and that they were able to—[Interruption.] That is still not 100%, which we are working towards, but it is important, because we do not want people outside listening to this debate feeling petrified about going to have an assessment. We know that the vast majority of people have a positive experience when they go along, but we are working continuously to ensure that we improve the process for everyone.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
This is welcome news for many pensioners, who do not now have to undergo repeat appointments, but it does not address the fundamental flaw in the system to which the Minister herself has alluded: 72% of PIP and ESA appeals still find in favour of the claimant. Atos, Maximus and Capita are not doing the job properly. Rather than seeking to improve that, will she not consider bringing the assessment in-house so that it can be done properly?
Sarah Newton
I point out gently to the hon. Lady that 8% of people who apply for ESA go to appeal, and 4% are overturned. I do not want that to be 2%, 1% or 0.1%; I want us to get the decision right the first time, but we must use the information accurately. It is important that we are evidence-based policy makers. When it comes to who will carry out the assessments from 2021, the healthcare professionals doing so have always been clear that by creating this transformed service and our own digital platform, many more people will be able to come forward to say that they can undertake the services, and I would be particularly happy if NHS trusts said that they would do so.
Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)
I welcome the fact that Ministers are seeking to improve the accuracy of PIP and ESA assessments and to reduce the number of appeals, but it still takes 48 weeks for an appeal to be heard in my constituency. May I ask the Minister to look urgently at how people are treated while they are awaiting an appeal? My constituent had a serious heart condition, and his doctor said he was not fit to go back to work. The DWP said that that was its decision, not the doctor’s decision. My constituent died on his first full day back at work, which he was forced into. He was awaiting his appeal. It is too late for him, but his wife has asked me to take it up with Ministers to seek a better solution for people who are awaiting appeals, many of whom are rightly and justly appealing.
Sarah Newton
I pass on my sincere condolences to the hon. Lady’s constituent. Of course I will sit down with her to review the case in great detail, because it is a very, very sad to hear what happened to her constituent. Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service has employed hundreds more people so that cases can be heard sooner. I am particularly pleased that we have introduced an online resolution service so that, once people’s information is uploaded on to the system, DWP decision makers can look at that information. If we can make a decision earlier that could prevent people from having to go to a tribunal, we will do so. I am very hopeful that we will start to see waiting times reduce significantly.
Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)
My constituents in Glasgow North East have seen £2 million taken out of their pockets as a result of the transition from disability living allowance to personal independence payment, but that is not the full story. People are often claiming these disability-related benefits as part of a wider series of social security payments, which have been subject to a freeze since 2016. Child benefit, for example, has been subject to a 23% real-terms decline since 2010, so obviously those in receipt will be disproportionately harmed. What will the Minister be doing? Will she write to the Chancellor of the Exchequer about ending the benefits freeze and ensuring that benefits are at least tied to inflation so that people can maintain a level of dignity in our social security system?
Sarah Newton
It is not true at all that benefits for disabled people have been frozen. This House recently uprated those benefits by 2.4%, and this year we will spend £4 billion more than we spent 10 years ago. All the benefits supporting people with disabilities will continue to grow to 2020. They will be growing throughout this Parliament.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
At a recent surgery I held for carers, a woman came along with a case relating to her daughter who has disabilities, and we managed to get a back payment of £22,000 in disability payments. If I had not held that surgery for carers, and if the excellent local carers organisation had not put that lady in touch, her daughter would still be waiting for those payments. We cannot have a situation in which people rely on such fortuitous circumstances to get justice. What can the Minister do about that?
Sarah Newton
The hon. Lady makes an important point. We know that too many people have been missing out on billions of pounds’-worth of benefits. That is why I hope she will welcome the fact that universal credit and the personal relationship that people have with their work coaches will enable them to understand the full range of benefits available to them. Citizens Advice, working in partnership with jobcentres, will be able to signpost more people to get more support, and I hope Opposition Members will spend some time in their jobcentres to understand the range of services and signposting that is now available from work coaches.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
These are very small changes in the right direction, but they recognise that the system does not work. To enable us to better understand the impact of Government policy on ill and disabled people, will the Minister commit to publishing constituency data on the number of UC50 forms that are issued to claimants and the number that are returned? Without proper detailed information, we will not be able to understand the impact on our constituents.
Sarah Newton
I will take that suggestion away and see whether we can collect that data and whether it is possible to provide it on a constituency basis. I challenge people who say that the whole system has failed because, from the information we have, we can see that millions of people are benefiting from these benefits and that more money is being spent every year. It is important that people have the confidence to come forward and access the benefits to which they are entitled. We remain committed to reforming the work capability assessment, which was brought in by the Labour Government in 2008, and we have taken a lot of time to consult a lot of people. Although everyone can agree that it needs to change, there is no consensus on how it can change. We are continuing that work, because I am determined to see these improvements made.
Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
I think we can all agree that social security staff are under a lot of pressure in dealing with the claimants we have heard about today. Does the Minister agree that those who administer social security should be supported in employment with adequate pay from this Government? Civil servants are receiving 0.25% to 1%—those who took the bribe—but such an increase, in real terms, is a cut.
Sarah Newton
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, because it gives me a wonderful opportunity to pay tribute to the fantastic, hard-working, dedicated and compassionate DWP staff, both in our operating centres and in our jobcentres. I understand from our lead officials in the Department that they have a very good working relationship with the trade unions and that they are listening very carefully. We are working very hard to make sure that people are fairly rewarded.
Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments
Sarah Newton Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab) (Urgent Question)
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will make a statement on the employment and support allowance underpayments.
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
The Department is correcting some past underpayments of ESA that arose when people moved from incapacity benefit on to ESA. We realise how important it is to get this matter fixed. Clearly, the mistakes should never have happened, but we know that it is vital that it is sorted as quickly as possible. Last Thursday, I tabled a written statement that updated the House on progress since the previous written statement in October last year. We are on track to complete work on the majority of the original 320,000 cases by the end of April this year. As of 11 February, 310,000 of that overall number have started the reassessment journey. We have paid arrears of over £328 million to 58,000 people, which is significant progress. The Department has also increased the number of staff working on putting these cases right from about 400 staff to approximately 1,200 staff, which will enable us to continue to complete this important activity at pace.
Following the announcement in July last year to pay cases back to the point of conversion, I confirmed in October that this will require us to review an additional 250,000 cases. We have started this activity and will aim to complete this phase by the end of the year. Last Thursday, the Department published an ad hoc statistical publication on gov.uk that sets out further detail on the progress it has made on processing the cases, including an updated estimate on forecast expenditure and the number of people affected. The Department now estimates that about 600,000 cases require review and that by the end of the exercise about 210,000 arrears payments will have been made. The increase, compared with the previous estimate of 180,000, is based on additional sampling and very careful, thorough checking. Alongside the written statement that was published last Thursday, I also published an updated version of the frequently asked questions, and this has been deposited in the House Library.
Marsha De Cordova
Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker.
On 21 February, the Department for Work and Pensions published a statement saying that 210,000 ill and disabled people could have been underpaid vital employment and support allowance after a grave error by the Department dating back to 2011, when it wrongly migrated them from incapacity benefit on to contributions-based ESA, denying them essential social security, such as the severe disability premium, to which income-based ESA would have entitled them.
The Government initially estimated that 70,000 ill and disabled people were underpaid. In October 2018 that number increased to 180,000 people, and now it has emerged that up to 210,000 ill and disabled people were underpaid, on average, £6,000 in social security. How can we trust that the number will not increase?
Thus far, 20,000 people have died before receiving the social security to which they were entitled. That is 20,000 people who will never be repaid what they were owed by the DWP. The Department estimates that more than £1 billion will be spent to rectify this catastrophic error, and we have now learned that it will employ up to 1,200 staff to do so.
How many people have been pushed into rent arrears, council tax arrears, debt and destitution? Will the Department listen to Labour’s demands and pay compensation to those who have been pushed into debt? What support will the Department provide to the estates of the 20,000 ill and disabled people who tragically died before they received their payment?
Given the scale of the issue in transferring to ESA, how will the Government avoid repeating this error when they transfer ill and disabled people from legacy social security on to universal credit? Given that there are currently seven reviews into ill and disabled people being underpaid, how much of the Government’s total expenditure is spent on underpayments? Finally, will the Minister apologise to the additional 30,000 disabled people, and their families, who have been denied thousands of pounds in social security, and to the 20,000 people who died before justice was done?
Sarah Newton
I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. Let me make it absolutely clear that, each and every time I have addressed the House, I have thoroughly apologised on behalf of the Department for these administrative errors. This should never have happened, and I am very happy to apologise again today. Although I wish this had never happened, we are working at pace to make sure that people receive the payments to which they are entitled.
The hon. Lady is right to say that we have reviewed the cases of people who have subsequently deceased, but she is not right about the quantities of people who would have actually benefited from this exercise. We are only part of the way through, and we do not know, as yet, the total number of deceased people who, having reviewed their case, would have been eligible for additional payments. Where we review the cases of deceased people—of course, we are reviewing all of the cases—we make the payments to their family. We are working carefully and urgently to find the families so that we can make the payments.
On the additional resources that we have made available to complete this exercise, I am sure the whole House would agree it is vital that we get on and sort this out as swiftly as possible so that people can benefit from the additional sums of ESA and other disability premiums to which they might be entitled. I am pleased that we have been able to find the additional resources to enable us to do this. I made the commitment to the House that we would complete the exercise this year, and that is what we are going to do.
The hon. Lady rightly asks what lessons we are learning, especially as we are now planning for the managed migration of people from ESA on to UC. The key lesson we have learned is to make sure that the claimant is involved in that decision. For all the right reasons I am sure, it was decided to migrate people from incapacity benefit on to ESA without contacting them—just passporting them over. I have heard Opposition Members make that call to me as we approach the managed migration, and that is the key mistake that was made. The opportunity was missed to check in with people claiming the benefit to make sure that their circumstances had not changed and that there were not additional payments to which they might be entitled, and that was the cause of this particular problem. I am determined that those lessons are learned so that, as we do the managed migration in a measured and careful way, the mistake is not made again.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
How is it possible for someone with a long-term condition to have their ESA changed and their mobility car taken away without there having been any assessment or contact with them at all?
Sarah Newton
I point out to my right hon. Friend that we are talking about ESA, and the entitlement or opportunity to have a Motability car comes with personal independence payments. We are talking about a decision that the previous Labour Government made to introduce ESA and migrate people to it from incapacity benefit.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
We are extremely disappointed that the Minister had to be forced to come to the House by an urgent question, rather than doing what she should have done and made this announcement via an oral statement. On Thursday, we discovered that the DWP had identified nearly double the number of cases to be re-examined and that the errors we believed to have ended in 2014 actually continued through to 2015. Those ad hoc discoveries are extremely concerning and beg the question: what other errors has the DWP missed?
What investigations is the Department doing to ensure that no other payment is affected in such a way? The most alarming aspect of this entire scandal is that 20,000 people whose claims were due to be reviewed have since died. Are the Government undertaking any investigation to determine the circumstances surrounding those deaths and whether this underpayment in any way contributed to or exacerbated those circumstances? Finally, we know that the Department is putting more resources into investigating this, but will the Minister confirm that that is new money and is not coming out of existing DWP budgets?
Sarah Newton
The hon. Gentleman asked me a range of questions. First, let me say that nobody has dragged me to the House. I regularly update the House; it is a matter of record how often I update the House through a whole series of written statements and by publishing a lot of data. I have made those commitments to the House and I regularly honour those commitments.
In terms of the additional resources, the hon. Gentleman will know that ESA has not been open for applications since the end of last year because people now apply for universal credit, so we now have extremely experienced ESA decision makers who have the time and capacity to support us with this exercise. We had recruited an additional 400 staff before the announcement that I made today.
In terms of the number of people who sadly will have deceased since we recognised this problem and who could have benefited from additional payments, we are very anxious to ensure that we contact people as soon as possible, and if we can find people’s families, we will make those payments to them. Virtually every time I come to the House or Westminster Hall, Members make allegations about the causal link between people being on benefits and them tragically taking their lives. Members need to be very careful when they say those things. As our deputy chief medical officer, Professor Gina Radford, has said, and as the NHS’s survey data show, we cannot make causal links between people being on benefits and them tragically taking their own lives.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
Given that people with learning difficulties find the prospect of a face-to-face interview quite stressful and distressing, what more can the Department do to support people in that situation when they need to claim benefits?
Sarah Newton
My hon. Friend makes a good point. In not only the process for claiming new benefits but this particular exercise, a lot of effort is going into ensuring that we find people and engage with them to check whether they are eligible for these additional payments. That happens through letters, telephone calls and even home visits, to ensure that we contact people in the most appropriate way possible for them.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
What is the Minister’s current estimate for how long it is going to take to complete this exercise and to correct all these very serious mistakes?
Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)
What financial support is available for disabled people who incur costs relating to their condition that welfare payments are not designed to meet?
Sarah Newton
I think my hon. Friend is talking about the benefits that are available for the additional costs of disability. There are three benefits there: disability living allowance, attendance allowance and the personal independence payment. As a country, we are going to spend over £50 billion on those benefits this year, which is a £4 billion increase on 2010, and those benefits are of course uprated each year.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
As the Minister knows, I have met a lot of people who suffer from acquired brain injury. Quite often, they find that the system does not really meet their needs, because the trajectory of their condition may not be clear and straightforward. They may have periods when they go through much worse phases, and Wednesday may be considerably different from Thursday. All too often, unfortunately, the way that they have been treated through all of this process has made it more difficult for them to get their minds in the right place. Will she please make sure that all 1,200 of the staff she is talking about are aware of the needs of people with acquired brain injuries?
Sarah Newton
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his active engagement with me in coming into the Department so that we could absolutely get this right. It is very important, for people who have not only acquired brain injury but a whole series of conditions that are variable, that the way we do the assessments truly understands their needs. We are utterly committed to making continuous improvement not only to the work capability assessment but to the PIP assessment processes.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I welcome the overall tone of the Minister’s statement and her replies to questions so far. Will she confirm what work the Department will be doing with advice charities locally to ensure that people are aware of this process and when they can expect to be repaid the moneys they should have been due?
Sarah Newton
For the first phase of people we have contacted, we have nearly completed the exercise. Most of those people will have been contacted and we will have paid them their arrears by the end of April. As we start on the next phase, we will be contacting people by letter. We have really good stakeholder engagement with a range of disabled people’s organisations and charities to make sure that people know this is happening and, when they do receive the letters and communications, that they understand what we are trying to do, which is to make sure that they get all the benefits to which they are entitled.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I welcome what the Minister had to say about the lessons learned from this catastrophe. Will she assure us that she will take the upcoming migration pilot as an opportunity to ensure that an alternative is found to the hard stop, so that claimants who do not make an application in time for universal credit do not have their benefits cut off?
Sarah Newton
We are absolutely determined to learn the lessons from this particular situation, but also from all other situations, and to make sure that people have the personal, tailor-made support they need so that they can make a smooth transition on to universal credit.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The incorrect transfer of people from incapacity benefit to employment and support allowance since 2011 has been a big and costly mistake, with over 600,000 cases examined, potentially at a cost of £920 million. May I congratulate my hon. Friend on getting on top of this issue and sorting it out? Is not the big lesson here that, when it comes to new benefits such as universal credit, it is important to get these things right before they are rolled out?
Sarah Newton
I very much thank my hon. Friend for what he says. This is why the Government are taking such a measured and careful approach to the managed migration of people on ESA on to universal credit. It is absolutely essential that this is done accurately, with compassion and treating everyone with dignity, and that nobody has a loss of benefit.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
I welcome the work that my hon. Friend is doing to deal with this massive issue. What more can she do, though, for those people who have, quite rightly, received a significant sum of back payments but who find that they have gone over the £16,000 savings threshold as a result?
Sarah Newton
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point and I want to reassure him and all other hon. Members. This was an official error, so the additional payment that people will get and to which they are obviously entitled—it is a back payment—is discarded for all income-related benefits, including universal credit.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
Administrative errors and other mistakes in strategy and practicality flow from values, so what is the Minister doing to inculcate into her Department a set of clear values, and to narrow the gap between operations and aspiration?
Sarah Newton
The hon. Lady makes a very important point about the culture of the DWP and the need to make sure that it is a learning organisation, so that people on the frontline feel empowered to escalate any errors or problems to their managers and that those managers are supported by the Department’s senior officials. I have been working closely with the permanent secretary to make sure that new approaches are brought into the Department to enable that learning culture, which ultimately will safeguard all of the often vulnerable people with whom the DWP works.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
These Government errors have led to extreme hardship and destitution for some of the most vulnerable in society—the people who can least afford to find themselves in this situation. Will the Minister agree to examine the case of my constituent Gillian, who as a result of changes to her benefits is unable to attend urgent hospital appointments for a long-term condition, because she cannot afford the transport costs? I was deeply distressed to learn of her situation. She has been told that that she may well have to wait up to 18 months for a resolution. That is not good enough.
Sarah Newton
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I would of course be delighted to meet her and discuss Gillian. Clearly something is not right. It does not sound like it is related to what we are talking about today, but clearly something has gone wrong and I would be delighted to meet the hon. Lady as a matter of urgency.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for her response so far. Underpayments to my constituents have ranged from £3,000 to one massive sum of £22,000. The issue affects some of my constituents when it comes to housing benefit. Can the Minister assure me that none of my constituents will be disadvantaged by something that is not their fault?
Sarah Newton
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that question. This was an official error, so the income disregards do apply and his constituents should not be disadvantaged in the way he describes.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Given that 20,000 disabled people have died while the review has been going on, it is a shame that the issue had to be investigated via an urgent question rather than an oral statement. We know that the figures have been amended since the last update and that 30,000 more people are being reviewed. Is it likely that the number will continue to change?
Sarah Newton
I disagree with the hon. Lady about our motivation. Since the issue came to light, we have had ministerial statements, written statements and debates in the House. We are absolutely determined to do the right thing by claimants.
Debbie Abrahams
Twenty thousand people have died—that deserves an oral statement.
Sarah Newton
As I have said, we have repeatedly come to the House and discussed with hon. Members what is happening. It is really important, as I have said, that we do the right thing as urgently as possible.
I will answer directly the question about additional estimates. Because we want to be so thorough in making sure that we are not leaving anybody out of this exercise, we did some additional sampling. We were not satisfied that people had always been given the right benefits since 2015, even though new measures were brought into the Department, and that is why there are some additional numbers. I would have thought that Members on all Benches would welcome the fact that we are being so thorough as to make sure that everybody who can benefit will do so.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
ESA passports people to other benefits, so when they get the backdated ESA payments will they be reimbursed for the other benefits they have missed out on?
Sarah Newton
If people were eligible for additional disability premium, then absolutely they would be backdated and going forward they would have those. Other Government Departments have other schemes which can benefit people who claim ESA, but they are the responsibility of those Departments.
Ged Killen (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
I am dealing with a very difficult case at the moment of a man who is in recovery from drug addiction. He had to apply for universal credit to get himself off the streets and into a house. Unfortunately, that meant he lost his severe disability payment. He is now wondering what the point was of getting clean and getting off the streets. He is much worse off and really in a very bad way. I am going back to him later this week. What should I tell that gentleman?
Sarah Newton
I am absolutely delighted that he has got off the streets and into a substance misuse programme. That will enable him to really turn his life around. There will be lots and lots of support in the jobcentre from his work coach to help him to take those steps to work. I would really praise him for being so brave in tackling his substance misuse and working with his work coach so he can live a full and independent life.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
What breakdown has been done of the type of conditions these ESA claimants have?
Sarah Newton
Our focus has been to make sure that people receive their back payments as soon as possible, so we have not looked at the particular conditions for which people were applying to ESA. We do produce ad hoc statistics, so I will certainly take away that request on how we might provide that for the House in future.
Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)
This feels like a perpetual war of attrition with the DWP. I have a constituent who, despite having numerous chronic medical conditions and depression, recently had a work capability assessment where she was stripped of ESA even though her GP certified her as unfit to work. She now has to go through the mandatory reconsideration process which is already adding to her anxiety. Coupled with that, she has been stripped of her housing benefit. What is the Minister going to do about this situation? Will she meet me to discuss this particular case? Will she review the unacceptable rate of ESA claims that are reinstated after mandatory reconsiderations?
Sarah Newton
Of course I am willing to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss that particular case. I assure him that we are absolutely committed to improvements to the work capability assessment, but for the vast majority of people the process works well.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
The Carers Outreach Service says that young disabled people in Wales face confusion and possible injustice at the age of 19 when migrating from child benefits and tax credits to claiming ESA. Education, health and social services are all devolved in Wales, and ESA problems could be resolved with proper co-ordination between those services and the DWP. Is it not therefore obvious that it could be very beneficial if key elements of the benefit system were also devolved to Wales?
Sarah Newton
I thank the hon. Gentleman for a question that goes way beyond what we are discussing today. He makes a very good point about when children are growing up and move from childhood benefits to adult benefits. Those young people will now be applying to universal credit, which has the huge benefit of the personalised tailor-made support that is available through the work coach.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I am a bit concerned that a Minister of State does not understand the difference between making a statement to the House and what an urgent question means. She has been brought to the House. This is not the first time I have made these comments to this particular Minister. I want to ask about the 20,000 people who have very sadly died without receiving the money they were entitled to. Is the onus now on the Department to seek out those families? If so, what steps are being taken to find those families?
Sarah Newton
I am happy to provide the hon. Lady with that clarification. The onus is on the Department. The Department is working really hard to find the family members of anyone who is deceased, so we can make the back payments of their benefits to them.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
The Minister must be aware of the hardship and misery that these errors in payments have caused to some of the most vulnerable in our communities, but does she understand the complete lack of trust felt by the sick and disabled towards the entire DWP system, in which there is a hostile environment towards the sick and disabled in which these administrative errors thrived? What steps will she and her Government take to rebuild trust with these groups?
Sarah Newton
I reassure the hon. Lady that we are spending record levels of money to support people with disabilities and health conditions. I am absolutely determined to make sure that we are constantly reforming the system to ensure that everybody gets the support to which they are entitled.
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
On Friday, an email from In Case You Missed It News included an item about my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), revealing that the Department’s presenting officers have not attended 80% of the tribunals that it forces disabled people to undergo to access their ESA and other entitlements. Have those officers been reassigned to address this backlog—one cock-up leading to another cock-up— and does this not reveal that the Department would be better off not wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on avoidable assessments, mandatory reconsiderations, presenting officers and avoidable, unnecessary tribunals, and that it should overhaul the whole process?
Sarah Newton
I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are absolutely focused on making the right decision the first time, but we do not force anyone to an appeal. It is up to them whether they would like a mandatory reconsideration or whether they would like to go to appeal.
On the presenting officers, we never, ever intended to send a presenting officer to every tribunal. We send them to a sample so that we can learn—[Interruption.] I am very happy to answer questions, but I would appreciate it if people did not chunter from a sedentary position, because it makes it very difficult for me to listen and respond to them in the way I am sure the hon. Gentleman would like. Those presenting officers are there to make sure that we are learning from where things go wrong so that we can get them right.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
A number of constituents have contacted me because they thought that they may be entitled to payment, but after some investigation, it does not seem that they are. However, how can my constituents and the rest of us in this House have any confidence in the DWP getting this right when the mistakes have been so rife, so egregious and so huge?
Sarah Newton
Of course, we will be contacting people who are concerned, but I reassure everyone in the House that the Department has taken this issue extremely seriously and has undertaken a very thorough review to make sure that everybody who can benefit from being back-paid will receive those back-payments.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
Given that fraud and error payments are usually published in official Government statistics together, is the Department planning on making sure that they are published separately so that the public are clear that the error lies with the Government and not with individuals claiming falsely?
Sarah Newton
We published ad hoc statistics last week so that we could very clearly respond to the question that the hon. Lady raised.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
We know that many people who fall on hard times can go on and off the radar, and some who have been underpaid may since have become homeless. Will the Minister tell us what efforts the Government are making to find these people to give them the money that they are owed and that they will be in desperate need of?
Sarah Newton
I reassure the hon. Gentleman that people would have been on benefits, so it is not fair to say that—or to characterise the situation as one in which—people would not have had any benefits. Clearly, some people would have benefited from additional payments because we did not give them the right amount of money, but people did have those payments in the first place.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Ind)
The Minister is sorry and says lessons are being learnt, but where is the sense of accountability for this terrible error, which has had such a profound effect on many thousands of people’s lives? Where are the extra staff and resource coming from to sort out this problem? Which areas of the DWP’s work are being deprioritised to make this right?
Sarah Newton
On the question about accountability, of course the National Audit Office has undertaken an inquiry into this issue and so has the Public Accounts Committee. There has been a lot of scrutiny, and it is quite right that there has been so much. I do not hold back from saying that this should never have happened. It is a very serious situation that we do take very seriously and are working hard to rectify. Please be assured that that is the case, that we have made the resources available, and that we will complete this exercise this year.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
One of the many people in my constituency who have suffered from a catalogue of errors by the DWP is supported by Cantraybridge College. He had no ESA payment from the start of November until I intervened earlier this month. He was told there was a fault on the claim but given no other details. What does the Minister say to people such as my constituent and others who have had to rely on the support of friends and family to get through desperate times while those errors have gone on?
Sarah Newton
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, but it does not sound as though that particular case relates to what we are discussing today. Clearly anyone who needs support should receive that support. The person the hon. Gentleman describes will now be claiming universal credit, and the huge benefit of universal credit is that that young man will have a relationship with his work coach, and they can work together to make sure he is getting all the support that he needs.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Many of my constituents fall into debt through arrears of payments, whether of universal credit or of other benefits, particularly PIPs. Can we not reduce the waiting time for people on universal credit from five weeks to two weeks, or even a week, because some of them are in destitute situations?
Sarah Newton
If people have not got any money and are destitute in the way that the hon. Gentleman describes, they need to go to their jobcentre and speak to their work coach. They can be signed up to universal credit and go away with an advance on the same day. I wholeheartedly agree with the more general point about making sure that we make the right decision the first time so that people are not delayed by going through mandatory reconsideration and appeals, and that is what we are working to do.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
When it comes to the 20,000 deaths, the Minister says that we as MPs cannot draw cause and effect in terms of underpayments. But surely, as a Minister, she cannot rule out any contributory factors unless we have a proper review and investigation into the circumstances in which those people died and what the effect of underpayments was. When will that review and investigation take place?
Sarah Newton
Let me reassure the hon. Gentleman and other Members that if anyone makes an assertion to the DWP that in some way the treatment of someone’s benefits contributed to them taking their own life, that matter is taken extremely seriously and a full investigation is undertaken into the circumstances.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
Some 20,000 people have died since failing their work capability assessment in one way or another. Regardless of the circumstances of their deaths—we have to remember that six Secretaries of State and various junior Ministers have stood at that Dispatch Box and denied any link between social security failure and food bank use—surely it highlights the failure of the veracity of the work capability assessments, which require fundamental review. Will the Minister advise from which work streams the additional members of staff will be moved in order to deal with this problem?
Sarah Newton
Let me provide some clarification to the hon. Gentleman. What we are talking about today is people who were underpaid benefits. As they came across from IB on to ESA, they were put on to a contribution ESA when they could have been entitled to an income-related ESA. It is nothing to do with the work capability assessment, so the basic premise of his question is inaccurate.
On previous points, the morbidity surveys that the NHS undertakes looking at suicides are a matter of record. They are a very serious matter and are reported by the NHS.
Employment and Support Allowance
Sarah Newton Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
This written statement is a fifth update to the House on progress in reviewing and, where necessary, correcting past employment and support allowance (ESA) underpayments and paying arrears following conversion from previous incapacity benefits.
Since my last update to the House in October 2018 we have made significant progress. Due to the complex nature of these cases they take considerably longer than the average ESA case to complete. To ensure we make rapid and accurate progress we have therefore increased the number of staff working on putting these cases right from around 400 to approximately 1,200. This additional resource has led to a substantial increase in the number of cases that we have reviewed, corrected and paid arrears where due.
We have made good progress and by 11 February had:
started 310,000 claimants on the reassessment journey;
paid arrears of over £328 million to 58,000 people; and,
completed action on 207,000 cases1.
Based on the progress made since October we believe we are on track to complete work on the majority of the original 320,000 cases by April 2019 (phase 1). Unfortunately, some cases where the claimant sadly died prior to the exercise starting, are taking a significant period of time to resolve due to difficulties in identifying the next of kin or executors. There are around 20,000 deceased cases included in phase 1 that require review. While we continue to progress this work, we expect that the Department will need until the end of 2019 to complete these cases.
Following our announcement in July 2018 that we will review and pay cases back to the date they were converted from incapacity benefits to ESA, we are reviewing a further 250,000 cases (phase 2), as set out in October. Activity in respect of this group is due to start shortly, and we aim to complete phase 2 by the end of this year.
The cases included in this exercise were largely converted between 2011 and 2014. Revised operational guidance was put in place in October 2014 after individual cases that had been incorrectly converted came to light. As part of our commitment to correct all cases affected by this error, we decided to undertake additional testing of cases converted in 2015. This testing has shown that the error rate did not improve as quickly as expected and we therefore believe that it is prudent to review around a further 30,000 cases, that were converted from 2015 onwards. This reflects our commitment to ensure all those who may have been affected are identified and paid the arrears they are due.
The Department is publishing an updated ad hoc statistical publication today setting out further detail on the progress it has made in processing cases, including an updated estimate on forecast expenditure and the numbers affected. This will be published on gov.uk.
These updated forecasts will feed into the spring statement 2019. The Department now estimates that around 600,000 cases require review and that by the end of the exercise around 210,000 arrears payments will have been made. The increase, compared to our previous estimate of 180,000, is based on assumptions made using evidence we have gathered from the checking exercise to date. The data shows an increase in the proportion of cases in error among some groups of claimants. In addition, based on sample testing we have also included an assumption of the proportion of errors likely to be identified in the further 30,000 cases that have been added to the exercise.
An updated frequently asked question guide will also be deposited in the Library of the House for further information.
1 Some of these cases which were originally completed prior to our announcement in July 2018 that we will review and pay cases back to the date they were converted from incapacity benefits to ESA, will require further action.
[HCWS1348]
Oral Answers to Questions
Sarah Newton Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
I will allow the right hon. Gentleman to catch his breath, by saying that all people who carry out work capability assessments are fully qualified healthcare professionals, including nurses, paramedics, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and doctors. Most have two years’ post-registration experience, most have worked in the NHS and some combine working part-time in the NHS with being employed to undertake WCAs. As I said to the Select Committee during its recent inquiry on the WCA, future contracts will be open to all sectors.
Tom Brake
I thank the Minister for her reply and for giving me time to recover my breath. As a constituency MP, I am sure that she, like me and many others, will know many constituents who feel that they have been ignored, bullied or interrogated during WCAs. Given that in the past the Ministry of Justice has had to spend some £100 million in arguing court cases and appeals, will she at least undertake to examine whether the public sector is not in fact better placed to carry out these assessments than private contractors, who have a very poor reputation?
Sarah Newton
Let me make it absolutely clear that I want to make sure that every person claiming a benefit from the Department for Work and Pensions has a really positive experience. We look at independent research on our claimant experience, and the vast majority of people are treated with respect and dignity, and the right decision is made the first time. However, one person’s poor experience is one too many, and we are constantly working with disabled people and stakeholders to improve our processes.
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
It is so important to discuss how we can help those who cannot work, but we should also recognise that 900,000 more disabled people are in work since 2014. Will the Minister outline what more she can do to get even more disabled people into work?
Sarah Newton
My right hon. Friend makes a really important point. We have a strong safety net for people who cannot work, but it is also wonderful that so many more people are able to work. I am delighted to announce that from 1 April we will uprate the Access to Work grant to just under £60,000 per person per year, which will provide tailor-made support to enable people to work.
Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
It is really important to recognise and celebrate the achievements and contributions, in all aspects of life, of people with learning disabilities and autism. Disability Confident highlights achievements of disabled people, including those with learning disabilities. Most recently, the high-profile November and December campaign reached more than 16 million people on Twitter alone. We are investing in new support and employment opportunities too, and we also work with charities such as Autism Exchange and the Speaking Out Forum.
Sir Oliver Heald
My constituent, Sam Prowse, has been chosen as a winner on the inaugural Learning Disability and Autism Leaders’ List announced recently. He was chosen for his work with Hertfordshire County Council as an adviser supporting the library service on autism and on making information easy to read. Does the Minister agree that this list is a good way of celebrating the achievements of people such as Sam who give a great deal to the local community?
Sarah Newton
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for raising this matter. I very much support the inaugural Learning Disability and Autism Leaders’ List. I thank Sam for his contribution to his community and congratulate him on his achievement. There are so many unsung heroes in all our communities and it is always a pleasure to have an opportunity such as this. The Prime Minister’s award, Points of Light, provides another excellent way of highlighting the contribution of disabled people to our society.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
For the information of the House, I am wearing a Beatles “Magical Mystery Tour” vintage tie. I feel that, at the present moment in this country, I am on a magical mystery tour.
May I use this question to beg the Front-Bench team not to be condescending and patronising about people with different abilities? So many of the people on the autism spectrum with whom I work are extremely talented. They are unusual; they think differently. Many companies today are looking for people with that sort of quirky talent in the tech industries and much else. Let us not condescend; let us put more money, influence and resources into finding that talent and supporting it.
Sarah Newton
I absolutely share the hon. Gentleman’s passion and enthusiasm for speaking up and out for people with autism, who do have many special skills and talents. It is a pleasure to work with so many people on the autistic spectrum—people who are neuro-diverse—and to hear of their experiences in setting up businesses and in making real contributions to their places of work. I absolutely join him in speaking up for the huge benefit they bring to all of us in society.
Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)
Recently in my constituency, I held a Disability Confident event where I signed up many new employers in Angus and heard success stories of constituents of mine who have benefited from the scheme. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should be encouraging Members across this House to have a similar event so that we can see the successes of the Disability Confident campaign?
Sarah Newton
I congratulate my hon. Friend on taking that initiative. She is an absolute champion of enabling people to reach their full potential in society through work. I pay tribute to the many hon. Members across the political divide who have joined Disability Confident and who are getting out and having events in their constituency. We should all be proud that, for the first time in our country, there are more disabled people in work than out of work, so the nation can draw on that rich talent pool.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
I support the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). Is it not true that, because of their recruitment processes, many employers are missing out on the talent and the enrichment that employing someone with autism would bring? People do not even get that first opportunity. What more can the Minister do to support employers to think again about the way they go about recruiting people and to give the opportunity to a wider range of people to get that first chance?
Sarah Newton
The hon. Lady makes a really important point. We do not want employers to miss out on this fantastic talent pool of people. Through Disability Confident, we are able to provide free and extremely valuable resources to employers to show them how they can make reasonable adjustments regarding the recruitment, retention and management of people on the spectrum in the workplace. That is really important. I am sure that her question will raise awareness of the free, fantastic resources that are available to all employers through Disability Confident.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
Universal credit has been designed with accessibility in mind, and we are committed to providing a tailored service that recognises those with complex needs. We are improving accessibility features and we are adding to the system all the time, allowing people to claim online, by telephone or through home visits. We really want to work with many community partners or those who are supporting people with complex needs to make sure they do get that support.
Matt Western
A year ago I wrote, with 100 MPs from across the House, to the then Secretary of State to highlight what was really faced by so many disabled people, which is a hostile environment in trying to access payments. It now transpires that seven reviews are being undertaken by the DWP into the serious administrative mistakes that have been made, including why 4,600 disabled people have wrongly had their personal independence payments stopped. Will the Minister update us about what progress has been made on those seven reviews and, indeed, about what learnings are going to be taken forward?
Sarah Newton
We work very hard in the DWP to make sure that decisions are made accurately the first time. However, where there have been mistakes, we work really quickly to remedy them as soon as possible. The hon. Gentleman is quite right that we are going through some wide-scale administrative exercises on both employment and support allowance and PIP, and I regularly provide written ministerial statements to the House—the most recent ones were in December—setting out exactly what we are doing.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
Sarah Newton
It is absolutely right that we should be focused on making the right decision first time. We have had independent reviews of both the work capability assessment and the PIP assessments, and we are working rigorously to implement each of the steps that have been identified.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
Under schedule 2 to the Universal Credit (Managed Migration) Regulations 2018, the compensation for severely disabled people who have moved on to universal credit for the loss of premiums is a flat rate of £80 per month if they have been placed in the limited capability for work group. This is considerably less than the actual loss of income, which is approximately £180 per month. Will the Minister give a full breakdown of how that figure was reached, and will she listen to Labour’s demands and commit to ensuring that the compensation reflects the real loss of those premiums?
Sarah Newton
I fear that you, Mr Speaker, will not allow me the time I need to answer such a detailed question, so I am very happy to write to the hon. Lady. I do want to say, because I think the whole House will be pleased, that we have now enabled people who have single-tier pensions to be held back on the legacy benefits until the managed migration regulations come into effect.
Marsha De Cordova
Under universal credit, for working disabled people to qualify for in-work support, such as the work allowance, one must be found unfit for work under the work capability assessment. This is unlike the legacy social security system, under which a disabled person will qualify for in-work support, such as the disability element of working tax credit, by being in receipt of disability living allowance or PIP. Does the Minister agree with me that it is absurd that a disabled worker must be found unfit for work to qualify for in-work support, and will she commit today to reviewing this?
Sarah Newton
Universal credit provides tailor-made support for all people, including those with disabilities. Once somebody meets their work coach, they will have a personalised journey to support them into work and to make progress into work, and that can happen even before the work capability assessment is taken.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The House will know that the Government are doing more than ever to support people with disabilities in the workplace. Will the Minister tell us what is currently being done to safeguard the dignity of long-term sufferers on employment and support allowance and universal credit?
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Safeguarding the dignity and wellbeing of people with the most severe lifelong conditions is of paramount importance. A number of Members have raised cases with me where people were receiving the highest levels of support, including in personal independence payment, and they were then reassessed as not needing any support. I was very concerned to hear about that, so I am now ensuring that DWP decision makers review all such cases to make sure that we get the right support to the right people at the right time.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
On 2 November, my constituent won his ESA appeal—the DWP did not even bother to attend—but three months on, it is still arguing about whether he should get the full back pay. At what point did the Department become above the law?
Sarah Newton
Something has clearly gone amiss, and I should be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and see what we can do to sort it out as soon as possible.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
I recently met a group of people who, despite having severe and unstable epilepsy, had been denied benefits. The questions asked by the assessors appeared to be completely irrelevant to their condition. For instance, one assessor’s report referred to a person’s complexion. How does the Department intend to ensure that assessors are appropriately trained to deal with different conditions?
Sarah Newton
I would be happy to meet the hon. Lady to go through the report. I assure the House that healthcare professionals are thoroughly trained and often work with leading national charities that represent people, including those with epilepsy, but of course there is always more we can do, and I should be delighted to meet the hon. Lady to discuss that.
Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)
I am told that many PIP claimants in Coventry with severe mental illnesses are being forced to attend medical assessments miles away in Birmingham. The assessors are rarely mental health professionals, and many of them fail to understand the complexities and fluctuating nature of the claimants’ conditions. Will the Minister commit herself to ensuring that Coventry claimants are assessed in Coventry and that all assessors are appropriately qualified?
Sarah Newton
Let me reassure the hon. Lady. People with severe conditions, including severe mental health conditions, can have home assessments; and many more people are benefiting from PIP than benefited from the legacy benefit, disability living allowance.
Several hon. Members rose—
Social Security
Sarah Newton Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
I beg to move,
That the draft Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2019, which were laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.
Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following motion:
That the draft Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2019, which were laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.
Sarah Newton
These two statutory instruments will increase the value of lump sum awards payable under the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979 and the diffuse mesothelioma scheme, which was set up by the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008. Those schemes stand apart from the main social security benefits uprating procedure, and there is no legislative requirement to review the level of payments each year. None the less, I am happy to increase the amounts payable from 1 April this year by September’s consumer prices index of 2.4%.
The Government recognise the very great suffering of individuals and their families caused by the serious and often fatal diseases resulting from exposure to asbestos, coal dust and other forms of dust. The individuals affected may be unable to bring a successful claim for damages, often owing to the long latency period of their condition, but they can still claim compensation through these schemes.
I will briefly summarise the specific purpose of the two compensation schemes. The Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979, which for simplicity I will refer to as the 1979 Act scheme, provides a lump sum compensation payment to those who have one of five dust-related respiratory diseases covered by the scheme, who are unable to claim damages from employers because they have gone out of business and who have not brought any action against others for damages. The five diseases covered by the 1979 Act scheme are diffuse mesothelioma, bilateral diffuse pleural thickening, pneumoconiosis and byssinosis, as well as primary carcinoma of the lung if accompanied by asbestosis or bilateral diffuse pleural thickening. The 2008 mesothelioma lump sum payment scheme widens the criteria for compensation to those who have contracted diffuse mesothelioma but who are unable to claim compensation for that disease under the 1979 Act scheme—for example, those people who were self-employed or whose exposure to asbestos was not due to work.
Payments under the 1979 Act scheme are based on the age of the person with the disease and their level of disablement at the time of their diagnosis. All payments for diffuse mesothelioma are made at the 100% rate. All payments under the 2008 scheme are also made at the 100% disablement rate and based on age, with the highest payments going to the youngest people with the disease. In the last full year, from April 2017 to March 2018, 3,680 people received payments under both schemes, totalling £49.2 million.
I am aware that the prevalence of diffuse mesothelioma is a particular concern of Members, given the number of deaths from this disease in Great Britain. It is at a historically high level. The life expectancy of those diagnosed with diffuse mesothelioma is poor, with many people dying within 12 months of diagnosis. The disease has a strong association with exposure to asbestos, and current evidence suggests that around 85% of all mesotheliomas diagnosed in men are attributable to asbestos exposures that occurred through work. Our latest available information suggests that there will continue to be around 2,500 diffuse mesothelioma deaths per year before the number of cases begins to fall during the next decade, reflecting a reduction in asbestos exposures after 1980.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Ind)
The Minister will be aware that Barrow and Furness has the highest number of asbestos-related cancer deaths in the whole of England and Wales. Is she aware of how many sufferers who were previously compensated under the scheme covering pleural plaques are now falling victim to terminal asbestosis and finding themselves ineligible for any compensation under these schemes? Does she not feel that that is unjust? Will she meet me and representatives of my community to discuss that?
Sarah Newton
I am always happy to meet colleagues from across the House if they have particular constituency issues or if people who really need support are falling between the cracks. There are three different schemes available to support people, and we are talking about two of them today. I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to explore those issues and to discuss the three compensation programmes to see whether there is more that we can do. We are absolutely committed to ensuring that people get the support to which they are entitled.
We expect to see a decline in the number of people being diagnosed with diffuse mesothelioma in the coming years, but many people will continue to develop the condition and the other respiratory diseases, based on their exposure, for some time to come. That is why the Government are committed to working in partnership with their arm’s length bodies and agencies to improve the lives of those with respiratory diseases. I want to give the House an example of that commitment.
Last summer, I hosted a lung health summit, bringing together the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, my hon. Friends the Members for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) and for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) and representatives from the British Lung Association and the NHS. This was an opportunity to discuss the important work that the Government and our partners are doing and to listen to the first-hand experiences and problems, brought to my attention by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood, that miners are encountering today as they try to get an appropriate diagnosis and therefore the financial support that we want them to receive.
A huge amount of work has been done as a result of that lung health summit, and I was delighted—as I hope everyone will be—to see that the recently published NHS long-term plan recognises the objective of improving outcomes for people with respiratory disease. The long-term plan sets out how the NHS will take action in a number of areas. This includes expanding programmes that support earlier diagnosis of respiratory diseases—including the pioneering lung health checks trialled in Manchester and Liverpool—and increasing access to proven treatments such as pulmonary rehabilitation. As part of the engagement process for the Government’s long-term plan, an NHS England respiratory oversight group has been created, which includes membership of the British Lung Foundation. In addition, NHS England has been working closely with the taskforce for lung health, which has also recently published its own five-year plan to improve lung health.
I want to take a few moments to talk about the work of the Health and Safety Executive in this regard. It does excellent work, the length and breadth of the country, but we seldom have an opportunity to reflect on that in this House. As a nation, we should be really proud of our long history of trying to prevent illness and injury at work. The very first factory inspectors were appointed under the Factory Act 1833 to prevent injury and overworking among child textile workers, and we have come a long way since then. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act came into force in October 1974 and the Health and Safety Executive was formed in January 1975. The HSE is now well established as a mature regulator with a mission to prevent work-related death, injury and ill health. This is borne out by the most recent published HSE statistics, which show a long-term downward trend in the rate of self-reported non-fatal accidents and fatal accidents to workers. Indeed, the UK consistently has one of the lowest standardised rates of fatal injury when compared with any other large economy.
Turning back to the importance of these regulations, I am sure we all agree that, while no amount of money can ever compensate individuals or their families for the suffering and loss caused by the diffuse mesothelioma and pneumoconiosis covered by the 1979 Act scheme, those who have those diseases rightly deserve some form of monetary compensation. Finally, I am required to confirm to the House that these provisions are compatible with the European convention on human rights, and I am happy so to do.
Sarah Newton
It is an absolute pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner). He probably does not realise how much we have in common. It was wonderful to hear him talk about when he came into the House back in 1970, when the subject of his maiden speech was mining in his constituency. When I had the privilege of being elected to represent my home in Cornwall in 2010, the subject of my maiden speech was very much my community and my ancestors, who were Cornish miners. They were mining different things—minerals, tin in particular—but of course suffered the same risks of exposure to dust. In our case it is silica dust rather than coal dust. I have always had the passion, as the hon. Gentleman does, to speak up for those people in my constituency and for my ancestors. My grandfather worked in the docks in Falmouth and was exposed to the very risks that so many hon. Members have spoken about this afternoon.
The hon. Member for Bolsover and others have asked why we are not automatically uprating these particular compensation schemes. Well, let me gently say that this debate makes a powerful case for why it is important that we do have an annual debate. I will absolutely think about what has been said about automatic uprating, but if we had automatically uprated the schemes this year and the provisions had gone through on a motion along with every other social security payment, would we have had the benefit of this debate? We have had the benefit of the hon. Gentleman reminding the House of the huge contribution of Mick Clapham. As he said, it is really important that we do not forget these things and that we do not forget the hard work that has been undertaken by colleagues from all over the House over many years. These are hard-won successes, so it is important that we take these opportunities to remember.
Mike Amesbury
This really is about doing the right thing and working together. Obviously we have heard very powerful historical stories from Members right across the Chamber, but automatic uprating is the right thing to do.
Sarah Newton
Of course we want to do the right thing, which is why we are here today, uprating the scheme. However, we should pause to reflect on the fact that this debate has enabled us to look at this dynamic situation; the hon. Member for Bolsover was absolutely right to describe it as such. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) said that he has doubts about some of the forecasts around the schemes. We have also heard from other Members who want us to look at research and at what more we can do. If we did not have the opportunity of this debate, how would hon. Members have been able to raise those matters? I will seriously look at the question of an automatic uprating, but today has also proved the importance of giving hope to so many constituents through such a debate.
Sir Mike Penning
The Minister is being very generous and the House is listening very carefully because this is such an important debate. This House is not going to turn down the uprating—never would. But we could actually have a proper debate on this subject through the Backbench Business Committee or in Government time. Actually, half the things that we have been talking about today are nothing to do with what is actually on the Order Paper, with all due respect, Mr Deputy Speaker; we have been having a more general discussion. That is probably the answer. I accept that the Minister has to take this question away, but this is a golden opportunity to say that this House accepts that the scheme should be automatically uprated. We should then have a general debate on the issues, but that should not be a reason not to uprate the schemes.
Sarah Newton
My right hon. Friend makes a really important point. I have already committed to taking this matter away, but this debate has been very valuable. As we have seen from the quality and range of contributions, this debate has allowed the time for Members to raise a lot of important matters. Quite rightly, we have roamed far and wide, but this was an important debate none the less.
Peter Grant
Following on from the comments of the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), with respect I do not think that the opportunity for us to talk to ourselves—and possibly to people watching—for an hour or so justifies the potential uncertainty for sufferers. Just now, they do not know how much they are going to get next year or the year after. I would quite happily forgo the chance to listen to my own voice for 10 minutes if I knew that my constituents could be certain for the rest of their lives that their payments would always keep up with inflation. This is the fourth time in three weeks that businesses has collapsed hours early, so there are plenty of other opportunities—through the Backbench Business Committee and elsewhere—to have these debates if Members so wish. I appreciate that the Minister cannot give a definite answer from the Dispatch Box just now, but I really hope that she will take this point back to her colleagues and come back with a positive answer at some point in the future.
Sarah Newton
I am happy to confirm what I have already confirmed to other hon. Members across the House—that I am absolutely happy to take that away and look at it.
I thank the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for his support for these upratings. He asked me a number of questions that I would of course very much like to answer. Before doing so, I join him in paying respect to his constituent Brian Jamieson. One of the things the hon. Gentleman asked me about was engaging with unions. Of course, trade unions play a really vital role in our society. I have already had a meeting with the National Union of Mineworkers, together with the hon. Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock), where we talked about a range of issues that the hon. Gentleman raised today. I will continue that dialogue, as well as meeting the Union of Democratic Mineworkers too.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
This debate reminds me of my own grandfather, George Winter, who suffered from pneumoconiosis. I cannot remember the exact percentage he had, but it was high, as was true of many miners in Tredegar in south Wales, where I am from. He was crushed in a pit fall in the Ty Trist colliery in Tredegar in his thirties. He had a broken femur and a crushed ribcage, and he was hospitalised for nine months. He always taught me, as I am sure that many Labour Members have been taught, that the trade unions were the most important vehicle for promoting good health and safety to make sure that people were respected and looked after at work.
Sarah Newton
I thank the hon. Gentleman for sharing with us the tragic case of his grandfather. That reminds us, as so many colleagues have done today, of the sacrifices that people have made in these essential industries. So much of what we look around at has been created by people who made the sacrifice of working in these very, very physically demanding and dangerous industries. He is right to remind us of the sacrifices that the families have made.
The hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) recognised—I join him in this—the work of Willie Clarke and John MacDougall, and other NUM officials, in creating the schemes that we have before us today. He also talked about Peter Quinn, his grandfather, and his premature death as a result of exposure to asbestos. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) about his father, who died 30 years ago. That really shows how the exposure to these dusts has had such a catastrophic effect on so many people’s lives, not only in this House but across our country.
I am absolutely delighted that the former Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead, was able to join us today and speak so passionately, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch). I recognise the really important contributions that they both made, as well as the former Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, in bringing in the 2014 diffuse mesothelioma payment scheme. As was so rightly pointed out, that filled the gaps in the schemes we are talking about today, meaning that many, many more people are getting financial support.
I want to add my own tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford—our meso warrior. This really shows the difference that individual Members of Parliament can make in this House by banding together with other colleagues to make such important changes to people’s lives. I take on board her very sensible suggestion that we look at the age of people when they are diagnosed as well as their occupation. We need to be constantly looking for new trends to make sure that we are aware of people working in new or different occupations who had hitherto been thought not to be so directly affected and who might benefit from these schemes. I know that she takes a particular interest in teachers and teaching.
Tracey Crouch
I perhaps ought to put it on the record that, because of my passionate speech on Second Reading of the Mesothelioma Bill, when it was quite clear that I wanted to make changes to the legislation, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), as the Minister at the time, made sure that I was not put on the Bill Committee. Newer Members of the House looking to make a difference in this place should perhaps make a more anodyne contribution on Second Reading and then do their bit in Committee.
Sarah Newton
My hon. Friend is a doughty parliamentary campaigner, and she shares a very interesting tip with newer Members of the House.
I am very happy to take away my hon. Friend’s suggestion, which was powerfully backed up by the former Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead, that we should look at the surplus within the scheme, which is funded by a levy on the industry. Those surpluses could well be used for further research. I will take that away and look at it. It was rightly pointed out that we need to be very mindful of future projections about the numbers of people who might be affected to make sure that the scheme has adequate funding to meet any future unanticipated needs. I will look at that again to determine whether there is more that we could do on that.
I want to reassure the House on the two points raised about what more the Health and Safety Executive is doing to raise awareness of the risks of asbestosis, especially in schools. The Department for Education and the HSE have been working for long periods on what more can be done to be raise awareness of the good management of asbestos, whether in hospitals or in schools. The Department for Education has taken a real interest in this. There is now a new assurance scheme that started last March, and funding is made available through the Department for the upgrading of school facilities. We are making a lot of progress in assessing the risk and skilling people up to manage asbestos when they find it and then ultimately replace it. The Health and Safety Executive is always informing all the different workplaces of the risks of asbestos and what can be done to reduce them.
It is absolutely fair to say that the Health and Safety Executive has had to make efficiency savings in its budgets over the past few years. However, in no way, shape or form can one say that that is leading it not to be able to do its job well. When I meet the chief executive and the chairman, as I do regularly, they tell me that they have the resources that they need to keep people safe at work. We have only to look at the evidence of what is happening in workplaces to see that the HSE has been innovative and creative, working in partnership with others. As I said in my opening speech, there are far fewer people acquiring injuries, and having fatal injuries, at work. That is to the great credit of the Health and Safety Executive, as I think a lot of Members across the House have recognised.
Finally, there is the question of the equalisation of the sums that are paid out between the people who are directly affected by the conditions and their loved ones. The same issue is raised each time this debate is held. The Government’s view is that it is most important that the funding is given to the people with the condition who would most benefit from it. Of course, I fully understand that families can be devastated and very badly affected, but there is still the recognition that they are able to get compensation, even if it is not at the same level. When we have to make decisions about how we use our precious resources—the taxpayers’ money that is available—it is only right that we target that money by giving it to the people to whom it can make the biggest difference.
We have had a really excellent debate in which we have managed to raise a lot of issues around the health service, education, the Health and Safety Executive, and research. I am very grateful for Members’ contributions and for the support across the House for these very important schemes that are having a very positive impact on people’s lives. I look forward to working with Members who have asked to meet me on how we can work even more closely together and make an even more positive contribution.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2019, which were laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.
Resolved,
That the draft Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2019, which were laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.—(Sarah Newton.)
Work and Pensions
Sarah Newton Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
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, 19 December 2018, Vol. 651, c. 944.]
Letter of correction from Sarah Newton:
An error has been identified in my response to the debate.
The correct wording should have been:
Sarah Newton
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 an increase 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.
Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme Levy
Sarah Newton Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
The Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme (Levy) Regulations 2014 require active employers’ liability insurers to pay an annual levy, based on their relative market share, for the purpose of meeting the costs of the diffuse mesothelioma payment scheme (DMPS). This is in line with the insurance industry’s commitment to fund a scheme of last resort for sufferers of diffuse mesothelioma who have been unable to trace their employer or their employer’s insurer.
Today I can announce that the total amount of the levy to be charged for 2018-19, the fifth year of the DMPS, is £39.8 million. The amount will be payable by active insurers by the end of March 2019.
Individual active insurers will be notified in writing of their share of the levy, together with how the amount was calculated and the payment arrangements. Insurers should be aware that it is a legal requirement to pay the levy within the set timescales.
I am pleased that the DMPS has seen four successful years of operation, assisting many hundreds of sufferers of diffuse mesothelioma. The fourth annual report for the scheme was published on 29 November 2018 and is available on the gov.uk website. I hope that members of both Houses will welcome this announcement and give the DMPS their continued support.
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Mental Health: Assessment
Sarah Newton Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan.
I begin by my adding my praise to that of other Members for the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley), both for securing this debate and for the way in which she addressed the House. She and others are absolutely right: I am utterly determined to make sure that we improve the system by which we assess people for employment and support allowance, the personal independence payment and of course universal credit. I am just as ambitious as everybody else in the room to ensure that we treat everyone in society with respect and dignity, and really promote their human rights.
On independent assessments, people who go on this journey—I do not want to call them claimants or customers; that was a good point well made by the hon. Lady—through the system give the approach that we have taken to both ESA and PIP a satisfaction rating in the high 80s. That is the vast majority of people applying for these benefits. This is not something we measure internally; it is properly independent research that we publish and is open to scrutiny. One poor experience is one too many. We are utterly determined to improve the experience at every stage of the journey, and really put the person at the centre.
PIP was introduced to ensure that mental and physical health conditions have parity of esteem. Many more people are benefiting from it than ever did from disability living allowance, and are getting the higher rates of support, for both their daily living and their mobility. Broadly, therefore, it is working, but as we have heard, there are some absolutely horrendous and terrible cases of unacceptable behaviour, where things are going wrong. I thank all hon. Members who have come along today. It is clear that everyone here wants to do the best they can for their people and to work with me to absolutely get this right, and I welcome that.
I want to answer questions, but I have been given very little time to respond; that is the nature of these debates. As always, I will write to hon. Members on any questions that I do not have time to address. I start with the invaluable work of the Work and Pensions Committee. It is great to have one of its members here speaking up for that. The Committee gathered a huge amount of evidence, and I looked through all the research findings and the Committee’s recommendations thoroughly. We have agreed to implement all those recommendations, and we are carefully working our way through every single one of them. I want to reassure hon. Members that I work very closely with SSAC. It is an invaluable body. Everyone in the Department always thoroughly considers its reports and recommendations, and whenever possible we seek to implement them.
A few hon. Members mentioned video recording, which, when I came from the Home Office to take up this position, I thought was a really good idea. One of the fundamental problems we face with people claiming benefits is a lack of trust. Unfortunately, too many people are worried. We have today heard eloquent contributions about people being really worried about having to go through the process. In spite of the fact that most people have a really good experience, most of them are worried before they enter the process. I obviously want to eliminate that, as does everyone in the Department.
I want people to fill in the forms confidently, and pick up the phone or go into their jobcentre thinking, “There will be compassionate people who will help me”. That is what we are all striving to achieve. I believe that video recording the assessments will play an incredibly important role in regaining people’s trust in the whole process. Hon. Members will know that audio recordings are already available, but they are not done with the most up-to-date equipment. It can be a clunky and difficult experience, and I want to make it as easy as possible.
Throughout the summer we did a lot of work both with people who are claiming benefits and with healthcare professionals. All assessments are undertaken by fully qualified healthcare professionals. They are mostly nurses, but they all have experience and they have additional training in how to undertake the functional assessments. They are highly motivated and trained individuals, and it was important to consider how they felt about the video recording, just as much as how people coming in to be assessed felt about it. Having taken all that into consideration, we have started a pilot, which is going well. It is voluntary, because we wanted to ensure that people felt really confident about having their assessments videoed.
The strength of the pilot will be that lots of people take up the opportunity. There is no point coming up with a videoing possibility if people are not prepared to say, “Yes, I would like my assessment to be videoed”. We have been working carefully on the pilot and will review the findings to see how and when we can roll the initiative out. There is an absolute determination and commitment to doing that, because it will build the trust and confidence in the system that we want.
We have also been looking at every single stage of the process. I really want to assure hon. Members that I regularly meet our stakeholders—the large charities and disability rights organisations. We have a PIP forum and a stakeholder team working with us on improvements to the work capability assessment, and disabled people are really getting alongside us and working with us on improving the process. I have already commissioned an independent review of the PIP application process. We have been looking carefully and in detail at every single part of the claimant journey—the person’s journey—through the system to see what more we can do, right through to how we can improve our mandatory reconsideration process. At the same time, as I said, we have been implementing the very helpful findings of the Work and Pensions Committee.
Going back to comments about what happens in the assessment, we will make a decision based just on the application, without sending someone to a face-to-face assessment, if we can gather enough information from the person applying for the benefit, and if they provide information from healthcare professionals, whether they be consultants, GPs or community mental health nurses. We will use that information whenever possible. A lot of our work over the summer was engaging with healthcare professionals to try to understand the barriers to their providing us with information. Relatively small numbers of people go to appeal, and relatively small numbers have decisions overturned. Most often, decisions are overturned because more information has become available by the time of the appeal. I am determined to see what we can do to have the information provided up front by healthcare professionals, so that we can make more paper-based assessments, without the need for face-to-face ones.
Hon. Members will know that we have introduced a set of new criteria called the severe conditions criteria, for employment and support allowance and now for PIP. If people have severe mental or physical health conditions that, sadly, are not going to improve, we put them into a category where they do not have to be reassessed, apart from a very light-touch reassessment after 10 years, just to ensure that their circumstances have not changed. That means that fewer people will be reassessed, and I hope that everyone here can commend that.
On some of the other observations on face-to-face assessments, we have had quite a discussion about the mental health questions. The questions that the assessors use and the training they receive is all approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. I think hon. Members were referring to the mental state examination questions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), who has left the room and is a doctor, said, this is the best practice of the medical profession. It is really important that the Department takes its duty of care very seriously—and we do. Right through from our job coaches in Jobcentres Plus to people in our telephony services, we have a really good process to ensure that anyone expressing suicidal thoughts is supported. For example, everyone in our jobcentres is going through mental health training to ensure that they feel able to chat to someone with suicidal ideation and keep them safe and in front of them while their colleagues secure additional support from the NHS. We take that extremely seriously and are led by the best evidence—
Sarah Newton
I have so few minutes and so many questions to answer.
I want to reassure hon. Members that our work in this area is led by the best possible clinical input. The deputy chief medical officer, Professor Doctor Gina Radford, oversees all this work, because keeping people safe is just as important as treating everyone with respect and dignity and ensuring that their human rights are upheld.
I will conclude, so that I can give the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East a few moments to wind up. I am absolutely determined to carry on our work on fibromyalgia and on all the issues she has mentioned. I have invited people into the Department for weekly meetings, so that together we can make the changes we want to see.
Recognition of Fibromyalgia as a Disability
Sarah Newton Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Bailey. I begin by paying tribute to Adrienne, who I believe is with us today in the Public Gallery. It is through her persistence and determination to use the mechanism of petitioning Parliament that we are here in Westminster Hall today. It is a really good example of how people all around our country can ensure that their voices are heard in this place, so I congratulate her on that.
I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins), because he picked up on that opportunity and worked with his constituent. I am very pleased to say, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) and everybody else has done, that the hon. Member for Chesterfield is a champion. It is great that he has championed this cause, raised awareness of the issue and made sure that all of our public services are doing everything they can to help people with fibromyalgia, because we have heard today how absolutely debilitating the condition can be and how many people it affects.
Today has been a really good opportunity to build on the work that has been done with the petition and have this debate. I share the frustration that so many people have mentioned that we do not have time to address all the issues that have been raised and hear from the many people who have written to Members across the House because they want their individual voice to be heard.
Before this debate, I extended an invitation to the hon. Member for Chesterfield to bring his constituent into the Department. What we are discussing is a cross-Government issue; it affects the Equalities Office, which is the custodian of the Equality Act 2010. There has been much discussion about what more we can do about health services and research, so I will ensure that, along with me as Minister responsible for the main disability benefits, we have Ministers from the relevant Departments at a roundtable and summit, so that we can properly work with the information that has been provided today and with the great organisations that are undertaking research and standing up for those with fibromyalgia.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns), and to the wonderful husbands who have spoken about wives who are suffering. It is brave of Members of Parliament to stand up and talk so personally about situations that have such a detrimental impact on them. It is difficult for MPs to admit to any sort of weakness; we live in fear of our constituents thinking less of us for expressing that we have a condition or disability that might be perceived as a weakness. However, it is vital that people with disabilities and health conditions are in this place, because they have an important role to play in society. I am absolutely determined to ensure that we have a society in which we focus on what people can do rather than on what they cannot, and in which they are supported to reach their full potential.
I will now draw on some of the points I have been asked to raise. On the support in the health service, we have heard that it is clearly too intermittent. I know that there are good examples; colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care have told me that there are bespoke services for people with fibromyalgia, but we have heard from colleagues today that it is too much of a postcode lottery and that the services are not consistent. That stems from the fact, which has been recognised today, that it is a difficult condition to diagnose. Because the way in which fibromyalgia manifests is unique to each person, general practitioners want to ensure that they rule out the possibility of other conditions. We have heard so powerfully today that no two people are the same, so GPs, in the absence of a diagnostic tool, need to explore many different avenues before they can get to a diagnosis of fibromyalgia.
Justin Madders
It is not just about the postcode lottery. Many GPs do not really know about the condition, and we need to get more understanding out there. My wife saw a number of doctors before she got a diagnosis. Also, her experience of gaining specialist help to access the pain clinic, which hopefully she will do later this year, was that she had to be referred to a rheumatologist to get a diagnosis and then was referred back to the GP, to refer her on to the clinic. That is a pretty inefficient way of doing things.
Sarah Newton
The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point, but I understand that to help GPs the Royal College of General Practitioners and Arthritis Research UK have developed an e-learning course on musculoskeletal care, which includes fibromyalgia and is free to all healthcare professionals. It aims to improve core skills in diagnosing and managing any musculoskeletal condition. A medical guide on diagnosis and treatment has also been developed by the Fibromyalgia Association UK, and a mandatory core component of all GPs’ training is an applied knowledge test. This AKT is a summative assessment of the knowledge base that underpins independent general practice in the UK, within the context of the NHS. The content guide for the Royal College of General Practitioners, which serves to prepare trainees for the test, includes specific reference to a required knowledge of fibromyalgia. Clearly, therefore, there is now a consistent attempt to ensure that GPs going through training and coming into general practice have a much better understanding of how to diagnose and treat fibromyalgia than we have seen hitherto.
Sandy Martin
Fibromyalgia affects one in 20 women, so it seems bizarre that so many GPs still do not know about it. Training for incoming GPs is clearly effective, and needs to be so, but an awful lot of GPs still possibly need retraining. Fibromyalgia is not the only such condition. An awful lot of GPs have never heard of endometriosis, for instance, which affects one in 10 women. Ought we not to have a system in which GPs are regularly trained in these additional diseases and conditions that affect so many?
Sarah Newton
The hon. Gentleman is right. There are so many conditions that we are beginning to understand, as more research and information comes forward, and continuous education for GPs is vital. I understand from the Department of Health and Social Care that such education is ongoing and that there is free learning material for GPs on fibromyalgia.
Sarah Newton
I am really tempted to give way to lots of colleagues, but the more I do the less time I have to address the issues that have already been raised. I have taken a number of interventions, but as the clock is against me I will now press on and try to address as many of those issues as possible, bearing in mind that there will be a follow-up meeting and, as always, I will write to those Members whose particular concerns I do not address in my few remaining minutes.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend West invited me to invest. We clearly have long-term investment in the NHS, and plans for significant extra investment over the next 10 years have recently been communicated, with a disproportionate amount going into primary care and community services. Since each person is affected in such different ways, the pathway and range of care that people need will largely be co-ordinated in the community, with GPs. The new investment gives us hope, but alongside it we need to ensure that there is both education and training, and improved pathways. The one message I have heard clearly today—I know this from cases in my own constituency, of working with women affected by fibromyalgia—is that people are ping-ponged around the system, between physical and mental health services, with no joined-up care pathway. With so many other chronic conditions, the NHS has got so much better at having evidence-based pathways, so that once people have their diagnosis they understand the pathway they are on, and those who are able to support them know what support is available.
We need to take away and work on so much more from this debate. As many Members have said, it is about getting the ball rolling, ensuring that voices are heard loud and clear, and that we work across Government and the House to improve the quality of life of people with fibromyalgia.
On the benefits system, I want to assure people that fibromyalgia is recognised as a disability under the 2010 Act. It is really important for people to understand that. We have heard today that no two people are affected in the same way, so it is important that we have a person-centred approach to providing support, whether that is encouraging employers to be more aware of fibromyalgia and of the reasonable adjustments they need to make to enable people to stay in work, or looking at how the benefit system supports people.
The benefits system uses a person-centred approach, and I can absolutely reassure Members that the healthcare professionals who undertake the work capability assessments for the employment and support allowance, which is the income replacement benefit for people who cannot work, and the assessment providers for the personal independence payment, or PIP, which is a non-means-tested benefit for people both in work and out of work, have had training in fibromyalgia. A lot of that has been done in the past year, in association with voluntary sector organisations that have provided support. Members will know, because we are often in debates about improving PIP, that I am absolutely determined to ensure that we make the improvements to which we have already committed, so that everyone has access to the support they deserve.
Oral Answers to Questions
Sarah Newton Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
Ensuring the quality and accuracy of the assessments undertaken by qualified healthcare assessment providers is a top priority. The Department is implementing a wide range of improvements, as communicated to the Work and Pensions Committee and many stakeholders. All our assessment providers’ claimant satisfaction reviews continue to exceed the minimum satisfaction level of 90%. Accuracy is improving year on year for both personal independence payment and work capability assessments, and the Department closely monitors performance, including through the independent audit of assessment reports.
Kevin Brennan
Some years ago, my constituent Robert Shafer was denied benefits after a Department for Work and Pensions medical assessment was deemed fit for purpose, despite its being contradicted by all other medical evidence and the medical examiner being sent for retraining. Robert Shafer’s case has never been resolved. When will Ministers accept that the whole medical assessment process is in itself not fit for purpose?
Sarah Newton
I am very sorry to hear about that individual case. I would of course be more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to see what more we can do to help. The work capability assessment and PIP assessment process has been subject to a series of independent reviews, which we welcome, and we work vigorously to make sure that we make continuous improvements. For the vast majority of people, the processes work well.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
Just before Christmas, the Minister announced yet another review of disabled people being wrong denied vital social security, after 4,600 disabled people had their disability living allowance wrongly stopped and were deprived of PIP. It is the seventh review of its kind in the past year and provides yet another example of the devastating impact of the chaotic shambles at the heart of the DWP. Does the Minister agree that this latest review is the result of institutional indifference to the suffering of disabled people? Or is it simply the result of a Department in utter chaos?
Sarah Newton
Well, happy new year to the shadow Minister.
I utterly refute the idea that the Department for Work and Pensions and its staff, who work so hard, day in, day out—well, I will not even dignify those comments by repeating the allegations. The Department is there to make sure that people in our society get the benefits that they—[Interruption.] I am very happy to answer the question if the hon. Lady will refrain from chuntering so distractingly from sedentary position. We are utterly determined to make sure we have a benefits system that is compassionate, fair and fit for purpose. We are proceeding at pace to review the PIP claimant cases to make sure that people get all the benefits to which they are entitled.
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
I have a 31-year-old constituent who has the deteriorating condition cystic fibrosis. With lung function of less than 30%, he is now being assessed for a lung transplant. After a recent medical assessment, his PIP payments were stopped and he now has a 47-week wait for a tribunal date to appeal that medical assessment decision. Will the Minister meet me to discuss my constituent’s case?
Sarah Newton
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing up this case, and I will be very happy to meet her. It is really worth reflecting on the fact that, for the vast majority of people, PIP works well. Many more people are benefiting from PIP than they were under the legacy system, but one mistake is one too many and I will of course work with her.
Mr Speaker
We are short of time, but I want to hear the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone).
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
Asking the National Audit Office to investigate was an important step towards ensuring that disabled people are provided with an excellent, value for money service. It is troubling that excessive amounts have been paid out in bonuses and are sitting in reserves. We accept all the NAO recommendations and will be meeting the chairman of Motability this week to discuss how the organisation plans to implement them.
Nigel Mills
Does the Minister agree that the great work done by that charity is being undermined by the amount of salary and bonuses that it is paying out? Will she work with it as soon as she possibly can to make sure that that money is used for the benefit of vulnerable people, not the directors of the business?
Sarah Newton
My hon. Friend makes a really important point. The Motability scheme is very much valued by disabled people and I want to make sure that all disabled people with mobility concerns can benefit from it, so we will be asking the organisation to use up its reserves and to make sure that it reaches more disabled people to help them play a full part in society.
Mr Speaker
Order. The Minister is always most courteous in engaging with the person asking the question, but the rest of the House also wants to hear her, so it would be appreciated if she could look in our direction.
Mr Speaker
The question was an extraordinarily interesting one, and very comprehensive, but it was a classic example of what I call shoehorning. The hon. Gentleman was seeking to shoehorn his issue into a question to which it did not really belong, but the Minister’s dexterity is boundless and I feel sure that she will reply pithily.
Sarah Newton
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Of course, I will meet the hon. Gentleman to go through that case. It is well worth remembering that there are 600,000 people on the mobility scheme, which is many more than there were in 2010 before we had PIP. In fact, 144,000 people have been given enhanced mobility rates, and transitional protection is also available. I will be working with Motability to make sure that more people can benefit from that scheme, but of course we can meet and go through the details of that case.
Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
No, I do not think that that time is at all acceptable. That is why we have been working so closely with our colleagues in the Ministry of Justice to make sure that people can have their appeals heard much more swiftly. The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that more than 200 new judges have been recruited to the tribunal, and that through the use of automation we are beginning to see waiting times for appeals reducing greatly. But let us look at this overall: PIP works for the vast majority of people, and of the decisions that have been made, only 9% have been taken to appeal and 5% overturned. We are constantly looking to make sure that we make the right decision the first time, but the situation is improving.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)