Personal Independence Payments

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Crausby, to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon. I am grateful to have been granted this debate on the processing of personal independence payments. As in the constituencies of many of my colleagues, concern about the time taken to process PIP payments has been significant in my constituency. Several cases that have been brought to my attention are both shocking and heart-wrenching. I am here today to represent constituents who have come to me in despair for their stories to be heard. I know that many right hon. and hon. Members throughout the country have constituents in similar situations. I thank the organisations that have contacted me recently to tell me about their work and some of the challenges faced by the people they help. They include Macmillan Cancer Support, Scope, Mencap, the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign and Parkinson’s UK.

I believe there is strong support in this country for a social security system that helps people to get by when they fall on hard times, and that provides dignity and a decent standard of living for those who are unable to work because of sickness or disability. Before being elected, the Prime Minister said:

“The test of a good society is you look after the elderly, the frail, the vulnerable, the poorest in our society. And that test is even more important in difficult times, when difficult decisions have to be taken, than it is in better times”

yet, four and a half years on, life for disabled people is harder than ever. They have been among the worst affected by the Government’s decisions.

As the House has heard, the delays in personal independence payments are a serious problem, not only for my constituents in Bolton South East, but for people throughout the country. They are desperate people. Many of them have worked and paid into the system for years, but have been struck by disability or illness and forced to wait months for help from the Department for Work and Pensions.

PIP is a non-means-tested benefit available to people suffering ill health or with a disability. It is intended to help those who receive it so that they can cover the additional costs that will inevitably arise from their condition, whether they are working or not. It is important to remind the House that life costs more for those who are disabled. There may be additional costs for special food, medicines, equipment, extra heating and lighting costs for those who need to stay at home longer, and transport costs for those who are less mobile. Such extra costs are not luxuries. They are essential to a life of dignity, and any civilised society should make it a priority to see that people who need such help get it without fuss.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

A constituent of mine who has cancer and lost the use of her legs was one of the 720 people in Newport East with an outstanding claim. She was paid in October. The payment was approved in August, but it took until October to pay her, with no backdating. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister should address that point, because it is outrageous that we should leave people that long with no backdating?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. The crux of the problem is delay, not only in the assessment programme, but in giving the money. I will speak about a constituent in a similar situation to that of her constituent.

A recent Scope research paper shows that the costs add up to an extra £550 a month. Some costs cannot be avoided, but disabled people too often continue to pay over the odds for everyday items and services. The Government must guarantee that the value of PIP keeps up with disabled people’s extra costs. For example, placing a triple lock on PIP, as the Government have done on pensions, would ensure that its value is maintained and build the financial resilience of disabled people. PIP is the financial lifeline that disabled people rely on to help to meet those costs. Instead, its processing has brought distress and hardship to some of the most vulnerable people. Sadly, the Government have completely failed to remember the human impact. Behind the bureaucratic language and spreadsheets are enormous backlogs of ordinary people in need who are being let down and mistreated. I will give a few examples, which I am sure will be familiar to colleagues and their constituencies.

Mr and Mrs Booth came to my advice surgery in March. Mr Booth had had a stroke in August 2013. He was paralysed on his right side. He had been waiting for an Atos assessment since September 2013. PIP is a passport to other benefits and his wife could not apply for carer’s allowance until he received PIP. Mr Booth told me that he was being summoned to court the following week, and that he faced having his home repossessed because he could not repay his mortgage as a result of not being able to access benefits. He was receiving only statutory sick pay, and his future was hinging on the Atos assessment.

I wrote to the Secretary of State on 3 March and highlighted Mr Booth’s case. A week later, the judge adjourned the repossession order for two months to allow the situation with Atos to be resolved. By the time Mr and Mrs Booth revisited me at my surgery in July, Mr Booth had had his assessment in May, but they were still waiting. They had contacted DWP twice. It had assured them that the matter would be dealt with soon. Clearly that was not the case. I contacted the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), then Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, urging him to look into the case as a matter of urgency. I received a response at the end of July, which addressed some of the issues I had highlighted. The letter stated:

“I am sorry for the time it has taken to process Mr Booth’s PIP claim of 12th September 2013. There was an initial delay in forwarding it to Atos, the assessment provider, because we needed to validate the claim and this was not completed until 17th October. The delay in arranging for this to be done is regrettable. Unfortunately, experience so far has highlighted that in many cases, the assessment process has been taking longer than expected. We are continuing to monitor this closely and we are working with the assessment providers to try and reduce the time they are taking to complete their part of the processes.”

That was unfortunate and regrettable for Mr Booth. He was given a back payment of £4,694.37 for the 10 months he had waited, but it came too late for him. His home was repossessed and he and his wife had been made homeless by the negligent delay.

A second constituent, Ms Sylvia Syddall, contacted my office on behalf of her husband who had suffered a heart attack and three subsequent strokes. She had made a claim to cover the additional costs to support her husband. Atos first informed Ms Syddall that her claim had been received four months after the initial application was made to the DWP, and 16 months from the present day. Several administration errors followed, and Atos insisted on a medical assessment, despite being given much medical evidence stating that Mr Syddall was severely ill and had been hospitalised for a prolonged period, and was unable to feed and wash himself. However, the delay continued for weeks. Atos kept insisting that it would do a medical assessment despite there being so much staff medical evidence staring it in the face and telling it exactly what was wrong with him. Sadly, Ms Syddall’s husband passed away without his PIP payment ever being processed and completed. His wife had been paying for the additional costs herself and sadly, she did not even have enough funds to pay for his funeral. Sixteen months on, Ms Syddall is without her husband, without having received any payments. It is a particularly troubling case, demonstrating the consequences of the deeply flawed process that we seem to have at the moment and how such delays are hurting the most vulnerable.

Let me give a third example. Mr Darius Pope is a young disabled constituent, confined to a wheelchair after a road accident. He suffers depression. He is now suffering at the hands of Atos and from over six months of the DWP chaos. Will the Minister tell me what I, as an MP, should say to a constituent such as Mr Pope, who is faced with such considerable stress and anxiety from the processing of his personal independence payment application that he tells me he would take his own life if it were possible for him to walk out of his wheelchair? This constituent has contemplated suicide. The additional costs of living are so burdensome that he has to borrow money from his parents, which is not a great situation—that relationship has become increasingly strained.

Those are just a few of the appalling cases from constituents who have allowed me to share their stories, but there are many others. As I have said, I have no doubt that such stories are replicated throughout the country. When I posted about this debate on social media, I was inundated with stories from across the country.

The concerns do not just come from my constituents or colleagues. In a report published on 27 February 2014, the National Audit Office said that the “poor” early operational performance had led to long delays and uncertainty for PIP claimants. It said that the Department had failed to allow sufficient time to test the new system and that unexpected delays in the assessment process had led to a large backlog of claims. The NAO recommended that the DWP set out a clear plan for informing claimants about the likely delays they would experience while plans to improve performance took effect. I ask this question now and will ask it again later: will the Minister today confirm what progress has been made?

[Jessica Morden]

Back in April, in a similar debate on personal independence payments in Wales, the then Minister admitted that there were delays in all parts of the process, including at the DWP end. Does my hon. Friend believe it is important to hear from the Minister today how much of that delay in Wales is Capita and how much is the DWP, and what he and the DWP are doing to speed up the process at the DWP end, which he is responsible for?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and I hope the Minister has heard what she says—she echoes a concern that others have about the delays.

The tragic part of the situation is that everybody says, “Yes, there are delays,”—we have been hearing that since last year—yet when the pilot project was rolled out, why was it not rolled out on a smaller scale? Why were proper resourcing and staffing not given to the new system of assessment? Surely people must have known that when a new project is rolled out, there will be teething problems. The purpose of pilot projects is to see what happens, so why not do the pilot projects on a small scale? Why not make sure that the resources are there to deal with all the eventualities and problems? Why carry it out on such a massive scale that we end up with those backlogs? The backlogs are still there. It may be a naive solution, but why does the Department not employ more people who can process applications? Why does it not tell Atos to speed up its assessment process? I cannot believe that in the 21st century, in the country that we live in, such things cannot be expedited. For months and months we have been hearing the same story—“Yes, there are delays, yes, there are delays”—but there are solutions, and it seems as if nobody in the Department of Work and Pensions or other Ministries is bothering to listen or trying to deal with the solutions. It is almost as if lip service is being paid by everybody—they say, “Yes, there are delays; we are dealing with it,” but nothing has been done.

The Work and Pensions Committee and the Public Accounts Committee have described services to PIP claimants and the length of time people must wait for decisions on PIP claims as unacceptable. The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee rightly said:

“The implementation of Personal Independence Payment has been nothing short of a fiasco.”

I am pleased that the Minister recently acknowledged that the situation is not satisfactory and is working collaboratively with the assessment providers to improve performance and reduce the backlog of claims, but I would still like to ask him this: why should sick people have to pay the price for his maladministration?

Data released by the Department show that, of the 529,400 cases registered for the personal independence payment between April 2013 and the end of July this year, just over 206,000 have been cleared—either awarded, declined or withdrawn. However, the figures do not reveal how long those individuals had been waiting in that 16-month period when PIP was first introduced. Why are the Government not disclosing data on waiting times?

Before the summer, the Secretary of State reassured the House that, by autumn 2014, no PIP claimant would have to wait more than six months, and that, by the end of the year, no one would be waiting for more than 16 weeks. However, I was disappointed that the Department is working towards reducing its waiting times to 16 weeks to assessment rather than to payment, as first implied by the Secretary of State. Based on that time frame, the absolute earliest that a claimant could expect to receive a decision would be after 18 to 20 weeks, which is not acceptable.

In any case, autumn has passed, but I still have cases of constituents who have been waiting for more than six months. The end of the year is fast approaching. Will the Minister tell the House why he was not able to meet the autumn target for the constituents of Bolton South East, and how he intends to achieve the end-of-year target?

The situation is not getting any better; it is getting worse. People are facing major delays with both Atos and Capita to secure face-to-face meetings, and it is taking far too long for Atos and Capita to report after assessments. The longer those problems persist, the more long-term the impact. What is the Minister doing to ensure that his Department’s contractors provide an acceptable service to claimants?

Fightback is a local charity in my constituency that helps a considerable number of constituents. It reported to me that its helpline has been inundated with disabled people phoning for advice. It has received almost 50 calls on PIP delays in a day. Many are facing extreme delays of well over six months.

If the Department has revised its assumption, will the Minister set out the end-to-end process of PIP claims and how much time each part of the process takes? Does he agree that it is right and proper to ensure that disabled people, including those affected by cancer, receive financial support as quickly as possible, and that 11 weeks to payment, as suggested by Macmillan, is a more acceptable time to wait?

What struck me as unusual when carrying out the research for today’s debate is the reason why the Government have not published for more than a year the average length of time it takes to process PIP claims for normal and special rules as part of their quarterly statistics. In the interests of transparency, will the Department publish clearance and waiting times to demonstrate that claimants are waiting no longer than 16 weeks to assessment, in line with the current aspiration? Considering that the benefit has been in place for a year, why is it taking so long to provide a rounded and representative picture of PIP performance, improvement activity and claimants’ experience?

Earlier, I explained that my constituents Mr Pope and Mr and Mrs Booth had fallen into burdensome debt because of the additional costs of disability. A Scope report shows that they are not alone. I do not know whether the Minister is aware that statistics reveal that the disabled are twice as likely to have unsecured debt such as payday loans and credit card debt, and debt such as logbook loans. Such debt often totals more than half their household income. Even the Government’s research has shown that the disabled are over-represented among high-cost borrowers: 18% of disabled people use that type of credit, compared with 5% of non-disabled people. That prompts the question: why is a group that is already vulnerable to financial pressure being “looked after” by legal loan sharks and doorstep lenders, not the Government?

As we know, debt does not just make day-to-day living harder for Mr Pope and others. It is impossible for people to plan for the future when they cannot be sure whether they can keep a roof over their head. Debt narrows their horizons. A disabled person’s debt problems are only compounded by the additional difficulties they will have in finding work that is suitable for them.

I hope the Minister uses this opportunity to answer the questions I have asked and to explain what he and his Department are doing to make the system easier for claimants. We have heard in the past acknowledgement from him and others that the delay is unacceptable and more must be done to address it, but what specific actions have been put in place to do that?

The essence of the debate is common human decency and treating people with dignity and respect. Certainly in the case of PIP, many hundreds of thousands of people in our country have failed to be protected by the Government. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response with concrete information on what they have done so far and concrete proposals on what they will do to deal with the backlog.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I accept the hon. Lady’s point. I mentioned it because some hon. Members have raised cases in which there have been two issues: a decrease in income because someone has been out of work, and extra costs. I am simply making the point that, in those cases, it is reasonable to expect PIP to cover the extra costs, but it is not a benefit designed to deal with the fact that someone is not working.

The hon. Member for Bolton South East wrote to us about the Booth case, but I do not think she has written to us on the Pope case at this point, so I do not have the specific details. If she wants me to consider it, I am happy for her to drop me details after the debate. The third case, about which she has written to the Department, is the Syddall case. I put on record my apologies for the delays in that case. When someone has a terminal illness, which was not the case or was not known about in this instance, we obviously prioritise their claim. As the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) mentioned, my predecessor put in place those changes to the process, and we are currently dealing with cases involving people with a terminal illness in about the expected time period of 10 days. In cases such as the one raised by the hon. Member for Bolton South East, when the person does not know that they have a terminal illness and dies while awaiting a decision, we deal with the claim based on the evidence we have. Any arrears of benefit, if applicable, are paid to the estate. A decision has now been made in that specific case. It will be communicated to the family shortly, and I will write to her shortly after that to give her the full details. I hope that is helpful.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank the Minister for the letter that is on its way to my constituents and me regarding the position on Mr and Mrs Syddall. There is a fast-track procedure for people who are terminally unwell. Is it possible to extend that fast-track procedure for people who may not be terminally unwell, but who are obviously disabled and in need of benefit, such as those who have had a stroke? Perhaps the concept of a special fast-track procedure could be extended to slightly different categories of case.

[Mr Harper]

I will come to that in a minute, because I will discuss the point made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) about paper-based reviews, meaning assessments made based on the paperwork without having to call someone in.

The general point arising out of the specific cases raised by the hon. Member for Bolton South East and other Members is on delays. I have been frank that delays are not acceptable since I made my first appearance at questions; when I gave my evidence at length to the Work and Pensions Committee, on which the hon. Member for Edinburgh East serves; and during the summer when I dealt with Members’ correspondence. The top priority when the Prime Minister asked me to do this job was to get the delays dealt with. That is my priority. I have been spending a considerable amount of time with my officials and meeting with both assessment providers to put it right. A new team of officials have taken over the work and are driving improved performance. We are working with the assessment providers and working with the oldest cases to improve it.

The hon. Lady asked for specifics. Between them, the two assessment providers have doubled the number of health professionals working through recruitment and training, and have increased the number of assessment centres—I will cover specifically the points raised by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) in a minute—and extended their opening hours.

We have increased the number of paper-based assessments, so in many cases it should be possible, based on the paperwork that people produce, to make a decision without having to call them in for an assessment. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East is right that, at the beginning of the process, the number ran very low and below where we expected it to be. We have improved the process. I hope she will be pleased to know that, when claimants have been unable to work and have gone through the work capability assessment, we are joining up the process, so that we take the ESA85—the report from the work capability assessment—and put it with their PIP form and any other evidence they have provided. That is enabling us to make more decisions based on the paperwork without needing to call people in for assessments. I hope that is sensible.