Disability Allowance

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

I start my short contribution by making a confession. This is the first time in nearly 28 years as a Member of the House that I have made a speech in a debate on disability. That was not because of a lack of interest—far from it. However, this entire area of policy has always struck me as something of a secret garden—moreover, one with its own jargon and terminology. My experience is that if we use the wrong phrases or the wrong words, others, including people from NGOs and concerned charities, are likely to shout at us. As a result, I am never quite sure whether I am meant to refer to disabled people or people with a disability.

Listening to oral questions to the Department for Work and Pensions in the House last week, I again felt somewhat lost in this secret garden. I am genuinely interested in the matter, not only as a constituency Member but as the co-chair of the all-party group on carers. I was reassured to hear that even the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Miss Begg), whom I believe chairs the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, was not sure exactly who would be affected by the Government’s proposals. She observed that there was quite a lot on the blogosphere about who might or might not be affected by the changes.

My first request is that Ministers should set out clearly what is being proposed and who is likely to be affected. I am not confident that I am right, but after listening to the answers given by my hon. Friend the Minister at oral questions last week, I understand that it is primarily about people being supported and funded in residential care homes by local authorities. It is a consequence of the move towards personalisation of care—enabling people to have a much greater say over their own care packages, which by common consent is wanted by almost every disabled person. My hon. Friend highlighted the fact that the Department of Health has put £2 billion into social care. Am I right in assuming that a proportion of that money is intended to be used by local authorities, to ensure that residents in care homes continue to have a measure of mobility?

As the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) observed, the Treasury spending review of 20 October mentions on page 28 the intention to save £135 million, but I am unclear from whom that money has been taken or from where. Is it intended that the money should be replaced by the funding that the Department of Health has put into social care?

My hon. Friend the Minister said in the House that

“Local authorities, working with care homes, have a clear duty to promote, where practical, independence, participation and community involvement for every single disabled person living in such care homes.”—[Official Report, 22 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 6.]

Is that a statutory right? How do disabled people ensure that it is delivered? If it is not being delivered by the local authority, is the matter subject to judicial review? I am unclear as to whether something is actually being taken away, or whether the activities are expected to be funded through a different and separate funding route.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Peter Bottomley), I have an excellent Leonard Cheshire care home in my constituency. Agnes Court in Banbury is home for a number of seriously disabled residents. Many of them, like those mentioned by the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales), have been there for many years. Indeed, I have known some of them as constituents for practically the whole of my time as a Member of Parliament, as they have lived almost all of their adult lives at Agnes Court. The mobility component of the DLA has enabled the residents of Agnes Court and other constituents to access such things as electric wheelchairs; it has funded visits to local GPs or doctors; and, most important, it has funded visits and activities away from Agnes Court.

These constituents, like us, clearly want to live their lives to the full. Is this money now being taken away from them? If so, how will such activities be funded in the future? My hon. Friend the Minister asserts that local authority contracts with care homes should cover services to meet all residents’ assessed needs, including any assessed mobility needs, and that an individual’s care, support and mobility needs should be met by residential care providers from social care funding. If that is what she is saying, I hope she will write to the chief executive of every local authority setting out exactly what the Government expect them to do.

[Mr Andrew Smith]

I thank my fellow Oxfordshire MP for giving way; I know that he cares about these issues. I urge him and his colleagues to reflect on the perversity of these proposals. Even if local authorities, under instruction from the Minister, are able to put together some package of support for transport for people in residential care homes, which seems rather doubtful given all the financial pressures that they face, does it not go completely in the opposite direction from the whole philosophy of personalised care, which is that a person has a package appropriate to their needs and they can choose how to exercise it? They may choose to spend the mobility component of DLA on special transport—electric wheelchairs or access to Motability and so on. Will they not have less independence and choice, even if this money is replaced through the local authority route?

[Tony Baldry]

The right hon. Gentleman and I are both Members for Oxford constituencies. Having been a Chief Secretary to the Treasury and a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, he is a more frequent visitor to this policy secret garden than I am. I am trying to understand whether something is being taken away here. If it is, is it being replaced by something else? If it is, and if the expectation is that local government should be funding it, then that needs to be set out very clearly. The test for all of this is that when each one of us, as a constituency Member of Parliament, meets a constituent who is affected by these changes, we need to be confident that we can explain what is being proposed. I make no criticism of anyone at the moment—the Chairman of the Select Committee cannot even work it out. I am not confident at the moment that I know the answers. If the Government are proposing changes, it does not seem unreasonable to expect those to be set out clearly and unambiguously in terms that everyone can fully understand.

[Gavin Barwell]

rose—

[Tony Baldry]

I will not give way again, because many colleagues wish to take part in what is a comparatively short debate.

As this issue clearly involves at least three Government Departments—the Departments for Work and Pensions, for Communities and Local Government, and of Health—it would be immensely helpful, particularly for those of us who are professedly not experts in disability and welfare policy and legislation, if my hon. Friend the Minister clearly set out what role each of those three Departments plays in ensuring that the correct level of support to disabled people is being delivered locally and appropriately to meet individual needs. Everyone will agree that disabled people have different needs, and as far as humanly possible we need to have care personalised for each one of them. That also means there must be clarity regarding who is responsible for doing what.