Personal Independence Payments

Tom Clarke Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I welcome this debate.

The measure of a Government’s compassion is their treatment of the most vulnerable members of society. Although we all recognise the unfortunate reality that we must deal with our nation’s deficit, that should never be done on the backs of that section of our society. I requested this debate in response to the dreadful experiences of some of my constituents with personal independence payments. Many of them require the state’s support in order to enjoy a life that those of us fortunate enough to enjoy good health often take for granted. For them, a fair measure of support makes the difference between spending their lives at home, isolated, alone and cut off from the rest of society, and enjoying as active a life as possible and participating in their communities.

Colleagues will know that in the past I have raised the deficiencies of the former disability living allowance. When a constituent of mine endured the difficulties associated with a laryngectomy—the removal of the voicebox, which is almost always carried out as a means of treating cancer—I spoke in the House. The benefits process was so convoluted that it resulted in an individual having to fill out an application form of massive proportions. That would be difficult for many of us, let alone for an individual with a profound physical or mental disability. In this individual’s case, using a telephone was just not possible. Enable, the charity supporting people with learning disabilities in Scotland, has said:

“Whilst it may be possible for many claimants to make this initial call without support, it is our experience that people with a learning disability are often unable to do this and require the physical support of advice services. This is especially true when no family or other support is available to assist.”

Citizens Advice Scotland agrees.

I sought this debate today not least to congratulate Citizens Advice Scotland, which runs the Scottish citizens advice bureaux, on its 75th anniversary. I warmly commend its excellent staff and many volunteers. Crucially, it released a report recently that shows that the rollout of PIP to replace DLA is in an utterly shambolic state. I commend that report to the House for its consideration, and I intend to make a number of references to it. For example, for some rural residents in the north of Scotland the nearest assessment centre is in Inverness, which requires an 80-mile round trip. In some cases, people have to go even further, travelling distances of up to 100 miles, and even in urban areas there are serious problems.

I will give another example of a person who was contacted by Atos for a home visit, so that they could receive a medical assessment for PIP. The individual was receiving in-patient care in hospital on the arranged date and informed Atos, which told her that non-attendance at the meeting would affect any award of PIP. Therefore, the patient had to arrange for an early discharge from hospital and pay for a taxi back to her home. Using a walking frame and with a nasogastric tube in place, she was told by the health care professional who arrived to see her that the assessment could not be carried out because she was too ill. Of course, that left the patient very upset and the health care professional informed her manager of this. Consequently, the health care professional was told that she could carry out the assessment if the patient agreed that it could go ahead. Afterwards, the patient had to get another taxi back to the hospital, at a cost of another £12.

Numerous cases involve what is at best a very sceptical line of questioning and at worst an outright interrogation of a claimant’s circumstances, and I know that many of my colleagues know of similar experiences.

Another decision involved an individual with heart failure who was initially refused any component of PIP, because she had walked from the car park to the assessment centre, albeit with enormous difficulty.

Time and again, the main reasons why people are asking for PIP decisions to be reviewed are, first, the failure to consider fully the impact of a client’s condition during the medical assessment, and, secondly, inconsistencies in the information provided by the Department for Work and Pensions following a decision.

Decisions about the refusal of the mobility component also cause problems. In its comprehensive report, Citizens Advice Scotland states that it has found selective use of evidence in order to make a decision not to award the benefit. Clients feel that not all of their circumstances have been considered, or that they have been over-simplified.

Another awful example is that of a client who had just been awarded a PIP daily living standard rate. He was told that he could drop dead at any time due to a heart condition, and he had a specialist cardiologist’s report from the beginning of last year stating that. The person is so traumatised by the wait and the hardship that have been caused that he cannot face the appeal; he has been told to avoid stressful circumstances at all costs. All that, and much more of what is in the report, is totally unacceptable.

Four in five advisors say that delays are causing worsening health, and in nine out of 10 cases are causing additional stress and anxiety, not to mention financial strain, while claims are being assessed.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate, and I am sure that we will continue to discuss this issue during the course of the day.

What can double or treble delays is the delay upon delay in the appeal procedure. I know of the case of someone who first applied for PIP back in September 2013. She was refused it in the first instance. She was then successful at the first-tier appeal, but the Department has not yet decided whether or not to appeal to the next tier up; because of various delays and errors, that decision has not yet been reached. So, 13 months after first applying, she is still facing nobody knows how many months of delay, and that kind of thing is causing people much tension and pressure, is it not?

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions must be brief.

[Mr Clarke]

I know why my hon. Friend feels so passionate, and the experience that he has shared with us is reflected in the views expressed in the report that I am asking the House to consider.

Another example I can give is of an individual who has serious health issues and who last year was diagnosed with throat cancer. He has been waiting for an appointment with Atos to be assessed for PIP. Due to the length of time that his processing is taking, he is now in a great deal of financial difficulty, with rent and council tax arrears of almost £2,600, despite his wife working full-time.

As we all know, PIP is an important passport to many other benefits, such as carer’s allowance, disability premiums, the mobility scheme, concessionary travel schemes, etc. It is indeed a lifeline for people who could not afford to leave the house otherwise and it is a vital part of their personal finances. It cannot be right that many of them face ruin and destitution while they are waiting for their claim to be processed.

This extreme financial hardship has caused a number of individuals to rely on handouts from friends and food banks, and on the accumulation of debt to an unsustainable degree. I know of an individual who has been waiting for an assessment since November 2013, but now his income has been so reduced that he cannot travel to appointments; if he pays for transport, he cannot top up his electricity meter. He has post-traumatic stress disorder and his current situation is resulting in his becoming more withdrawn and reluctant to request help. His mental health is deteriorating as a result. He has worked his entire life and in his 50s is a first-time claimant.

In Coatbridge, which is in my constituency, on 1 April there were 82 PIP applications for daily living claims and 160 mobility claims. I checked with Coatbridge CAB this morning and discovered that all these claims are lying in the in-tray of Atos or DWP and not being brought to a conclusion. I also clarified the position of the CAB in Bellshill, which is also in my constituency. It is handling a PIP claim that has been pending for 10 months.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) tells me that there are similar problems in his city, and on that point I will give way.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way and I congratulate him on securing a welcome and—in many ways—a well-timed debate. He has just described what we are experiencing in Coventry, including sloppy paperwork and long delays in receiving benefits, especially the earnings supplement, which is claimed by 25% of the claimants in Coventry. CAB time is taken up with that.

We see the same if we look at matters nationally. About 75,000 people are affected nationally, so what is happening in Scotland is also happening in Coventry and the rest of England. I do not want to repeat what my hon. Friend has said. Despite that, we should congratulate the city of Coventry, because it is trying to get on top of what is, quite frankly, an overwhelming problem. This whole facility—the entire benefits system—must be looked at now, because it seems to be a shambles.

[Mr Clarke]

I am glad that my hon. Friend intervened to underline my assertion that problems exist throughout the whole United Kingdom.

The truth is that the picture is depressing, and it is not as if the Department for Work and Pensions has not been warned. The National Audit Office, which published a report in February 2014 entitled “Personal Independence Payment: early progress”, investigated the performance of the DWP as it introduced PIP. It found that

“the Department did not allow enough time to test whether the assessment process could handle large numbers of claims. As a result of this poor early operational performance, claimants face long and uncertain delays and the Department has had to delay the wider roll-out of the programme.”

The Department anticipated that it would take 74 days to decide on a claim, but the actual average wait is 107 days. For terminally ill claimants—I underline “terminally ill”—the process was taking 28 days on average against a departmental assumption of 10 days. That represents a wholly unrealistic assumption of the capacities of both the Department for Work and Pensions and Atos in Scotland. The end result is a system that would not work on paper, clearly does not work in practice and is further straining claimants’ finances and health.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said in response to the NAO report:

“The Department need to understand the causes of this backlog to develop a clear plan on how they are going to work with contractors to clear it, and ensure there are suitable processes in place to make sure this does not happen again.”

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I have experience in my constituency, as I am sure my right hon. Friend does in his, of people winning an appeal after a considerable amount of time. The person will receive their PIP allowance some six months after, but their housing benefit is not backdated to the point at which they lost their disability allowance. When the benefit is lost, the person also loses their passport to housing benefit, but local authorities do not backdate to the day when the person lost their disability or other benefit. People are therefore left with substantial debts in their housing account that no one will pay for.

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. If I may say so, I am pleased that we have here so many Coatbridge-born Members of Parliament, including my hon. Friends the Members for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) and for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham). Not least you, Mr Gray, have close associations with Coatbridge—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. The right hon. Gentleman knows well that my father was born and brought up in Coatbridge and that my grandfather was a butcher in Coatbridge, but that need not imply any sort of sympathy with his case.

[Mr Clarke]

Mr Gray, I do not think that anybody would confuse your neutrality in this debate with the opinions that you rightly express when you have the opportunity.

Mencap, when giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, asked that the reassessments of people currently claiming disability living allowance be stopped until the huge delays in assessing people’s PIP applications were dealt with. The Select Committee on Work and Pensions, chaired admirably by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), released a report in March 2014 entitled “Monitoring the performance of the Department for Work and Pensions in 2012-13”. It found that the current level of service offered to PIP claimants and the length of time that disabled people had to wait to find out whether they were eligible was “unacceptable”. Statistics published by the DWP on 11 February 2014 showed that 229,700 new claims had been submitted up to the end of December 2013, but that only 43,800 decisions had been made. Noting that some claims were taking six months or more to process, the Committee called for “urgent action” on the current “unacceptable service” provided to PIP claimants. While some of the reports were published several months ago, the situation has hardly changed. Statistics released by the DWP in September show that, of the 529,400 cases registered for PIP between April 2013 and the end of July 2014, just over 206,000 had been processed and awarded, declined or withdrawn. That means that just under 40% of cases registered for PIP have been cleared in 16 months, which is a wholly avoidable disaster for claimants.

The problem is not exclusively Scottish. The Government, through the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, are gambling that the British public are suffering from austerity measures and that they have little interest in how people with disabilities are being treated. The Government are wrong, and their standing in the eyes of the public is suffering. People with disabilities have families and friends, and the British people are profoundly fair. In any event, it is morally repugnant for the coalition Government to mistreat vulnerable people as a result of a bureaucratic logjam that they have created and for which they must accept responsibility. In other words, it is a United Kingdom Government problem.

I have congratulated Citizens Advice on its report, but it would be remiss of me not to highlight and promote the outstanding work of local government and their partners, which engage closely with vulnerable people. In my constituency, for example, North Lanarkshire council has recognised the plight of vulnerable people and has impressively put substantial additional resources into tackling their welfare issues, providing even more welfare rights officers. No praise is too high for the marvellous work that they do.

[Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Clarke]

If my hon. Friend allows me, I will not, so as to give the Minister time to reply.

In conclusion, the Secretary of State should have the humility to offer a profuse apology for the stress, hardship and financial inconvenience that the roll-out of PIP has caused to so many people. He should publicly apologise on behalf of his Government. There should be a clear timetable for dealing with the transition to PIP, and it should be agreed in consultation with local government, Citizens Advice, MPs and interested charities. There should be no further roll-out of PIP until all the problems and backlogs have been sorted. There should be a further independent inquiry to identify how the Department for Work and Pensions got into this hopeless mess and how it will respond.