Disabled People

Tom Clarke Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

I have great respect for the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), and although I do not agree with everything he said, like my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), he brought some reality to a debate that so far—I am referring to contributions from the Government Benches—does not seem to relate to the world in which I live, the people I meet, or the families I represent.

The Minister read out what seemed to be a civil service briefing, but disabled people watching that are too accustomed to being asked to fill in large forms and all sorts of bureaucracy to be impressed by such an approach. We did not hear from Government Members of organisations such as Save the Children, Mencap, Radar, Enable and so on, which have proof of the cuts the Government are making, and particularly the disproportionate impact of those cuts on disabled people.

Let us return—it is right to do so, Madam Deputy Speaker—to the bedroom tax. The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), who has now left the Chamber, basically defended what the Government are proposing, as did the Prime Minister right from the beginning. The Minister did not say, however, that the Government have since done two U-turns.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

What is the policy of the Labour Front Benchers? Their position regarding the bedroom tax seems to be all over the place. We have heard that the Leader of the Opposition has said that Labour would not repeal it, yet in this debate the Labour Front Benchers have suggested that they would.

[Mr Clarke]

There was a time when I was on the Front Bench and I might have been happy to respond to that point. I am satisfied that the Labour party will present to the British people at the election a manifesto that they will endorse. I will fight and fight again, whatever Government are in power, to ensure that this monstrosity of legislation does not remain on the statute book.

Let us examine what the bedroom tax means to ordinary people in our constituencies. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) said, two thirds of those affected by the bedroom tax have a disability. That is absolutely outrageous. How can the Government have seriously considered putting in place such a proposal? According to an estimate by the National Housing Federation, 2,128 households will be affected in my constituency, and according to the Government’s own estimates 1,419 of them—along with 83,000 in Scotland and more than 400,000 throughout the country—are occupied by someone with a disability.

The Government claim that they are putting the housing market in a more appealing position. However, when we look at statistics—indeed, before we even do so—we know that there are simply not enough houses with the right facilities to which to remove disabled people if they have an extra bedroom. I have thought during the debate about several disabled people in my constituency and others I have met throughout the country. Two or three years ago, a young woman in my constituency was dying of variant CJD. She needed her bedroom, and she also needed another bedroom to accommodate the equipment that she desperately needed, including her supply of oxygen. How can we allow the Government to remove disabled people to smaller houses, when we know that those houses are simply not there?

[Barbara Keeley]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Has he encountered in his surgeries a family like I have in mine? They are a disabled couple in their 50s who need to move out of an upstairs flat because it is not accessible. They are being denied homes that would be accessible for them, such as those that already have a stairlift, because of the bedroom tax. The tax means that people have to move, and it restricts future choice too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Even if there were sufficient accommodation for this huge change to take place, the trauma that people with disabilities, and in many cases their carers, will be asked to go through is simply unacceptable.

Each of the people I have described stands to lose a minimum of £401 a year. At a time of rising fuel costs and rising prices in the shops, that £401 can be the difference between having electricity or not, having a warm home or not, or having three meals a day or not. The bedroom tax is creating fear and despair among the most vulnerable in my constituency and the country.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Is it not the point that, according to the Government’s forward budgets, they expect to make a saving from the bedroom tax, but if the people affected moved there would not be a saving? That is how cynical the policy is.

[Mr Clarke]

Again, that is a good point. I think of a constituent whose case I raised with the Prime Minister. I visited her the day after our exchange. Her house has been adapted because she is in a wheelchair, which she has to use upstairs as well as downstairs, so she needed a lift. That lift was provided in one of the rooms of her house. Are we to believe that it would help society for that woman to move to a smaller house, which would also have to be adapted? Where is the sanity of that, far less the decency?

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that heavily adapted homes are excluded from the spare room subsidy?

[Mr Clarke]

They are not. If the hon. Gentleman reads the regulations, the two U-turns to which I referred to do not include heavily adapted homes, but we will continue to fight for that.

Briefly on local government, we are told that the Government have increased funding for discretionary housing payments through local authority funds and that that will be enough, but we have seen a 338% increase in people applying for discretionary housing payments. Local authorities—I say this as a former president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities—simply cannot find the money. The Government cannot keep cutting, cutting and cutting again and then say the responsibility lies with local authorities when every single pressure has been put on them.

Personal independence payments are replacing disability living allowance. They will be paid at a different rate and the Government estimate that 600,000 fewer people will be eligible, all because the Government wish to reduce costs by 20%. Balancing the books, as they see it, is being done on the backs of disabled people, and that cannot be right.

On the Work programme, we have been told that the Government want to get people with disabilities into work. That is an admirable objective, and one that I have supported for a very long time, but the Government must know that there are simply not enough jobs available, not only for people with disabilities but for others on benefits too.

In 1986, I had the privilege of introducing what I hoped was a progressive Act relating to disability. I think of the people who supported it: Jack Ashley, Alf Morris and others on both sides of the House. It went through under a Thatcher Government. I say to Government Members to read what the Whips have told them to say and read what the civil servants have prepared, but to think and think again about how this policy affects ordinary people who are already disadvantaged, and, in all morality, to reject what the Government are seeking to do.