Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Campbell of Surbiton

Monday 25th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Yes. The Secretary of State for the DWP has no power to make referrals into the health system. That is just the way that these things are kept separate, and there is enormous sensitivity in the medical area about data and information flowing around the systems. In practical terms, that makes it impossible to join them up; it must be done in a much more subtle and clever way.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply to my amendment, which I shall come to in a moment. First, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and of course my noble friend Lord Low for putting their names to my amendment and believing in some of the arguments that I put forward in Committee. I would also like to thank everyone else, but they are too numerous to mention. I am thrilled to get that amount of support for the amendment.

I am fully aware of the Minister’s and the Government’s good intentions towards helping disabled people gain fulfilling employment. They were and, I believe, still are very serious about wanting to halve the disability employment gap. I welcome that, but I remember thinking the day I heard it, “My God, that’s going to take some work!” and, “Goodness me, we are really going to have to understand what lies behind the lack of mobility and movement within the unemployment field as it concerns disabled people”. I am aware that it will be tough—it will be really tough.

I hear what the Minister says about committing to making sure that disability is properly scrutinised in the annual reporting system. He will probably even get them to give a dedicated chapter to disability, but I also know that this will not do what it needs to for disabled people in really beginning to address that 30% gap.

I have been involved in writing and being part of generic reporting many times in my life. I have often been asked to do the work on disability for general reporting on health and social care. One very clear example struck me when the Minister was speaking—from when the Disability Rights Commission and the reports written by it was amalgamated into the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a lovely generic body where we would all work together on addressing the barriers that everyone faces with getting into work, housing, and so on. I am currently sitting on the post-legislative scrutiny committee on disability to see how well it is doing under the Equality Act and the commission. I have to say that we are receiving overwhelming evidence that the generic approach is simply not working. Disabled people are complex creatures; we are all so different, and all our support is different. Understanding why we are not entering the employment market will take something else—something more than a chapter in a generic report. However committed the Minister is that it should reflect the situation, I am afraid that it will not. That is why I was very keen—and I am keen—that something more should be put forward to address this intractable problem, as unemployment among disabled people is probably one of the biggest.

I am very tempted to test the House, but I am not sure that it would work—and, if it did, I am sure it would be overturned. So I am looking to the Minister to go back to the Government and to departments other than the Department for Work and Pensions, which, frankly, will write the report. Who will collaborate with the department across government? Which departments will really throw their weight behind this? I am sceptical, because they have not done very well so far on other issues. I would like the Minister to go back to the Government and say, “Okay, this will be part of the generic report, but I want it to be a substantive part, and I want more than a generic report with a chapter on disability that tells us all the things that we already know”. For that reason, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Personal Independence Payment

Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Campbell of Surbiton

Wednesday 10th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The judge found significant shortfalls in the introduction, as the noble Baroness said, and we agreed at the time that that was simply unacceptable. Noble Lords will probably remember that at the peak of the backlogs we were looking at waiting times of 30 weeks. That was in June; we set a target of less than 16 weeks, and we have now gone down to seven. On that basis we are confident about the full rollout, although we will and are doing it on a safe and controlled basis.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)]

My Lords, during the general election campaign the Prime Minister stated his desire to “enhance” and “safeguard” PIP. Will the Minister say how the Government plan to fulfil that election promise to disabled people and reassure them that their payments will be protected in the Chancellor’s up-and-coming Budget?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

To clarify matters, I said that this Government would support disabled and vulnerable people through this process.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

Protect!

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will recall that, during the debates on personal independence payments, warnings were expressed from all sides of your Lordships’ House about the dangers of rolling out this programme too rapidly, with some people possibly left exposed. He has told the House how long the average waiting time will be. Can he now tell the House the average amount of money involved for disabled people who have not received the funds that they are entitled to? What emergency provision is made for people who are, after all, some of the most vulnerable in our midst?

Personal Independence Payments

Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Campbell of Surbiton

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The backlogs that we suffered earlier have been reduced very substantially. The 14-week wait I referred to is down from 30 weeks in June 2014. We are now putting through 52,000 cases a month.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)]

My Lords, PIPs are intended to assist with disability-related expenses. The disability charity Scope estimated in a recent study that these amount to an average of £550 a month. Given that the Government have reasserted their commitment to protecting the value of the state pension through the triple lock, what consideration has the Minister given to affording PIPs the same protection?

[Lord Freud]

We are maintaining our spending on disability and disability payments and services are running at £50 billion a year. Indeed, our disability payments have been moving up right the way through this Parliament in real terms.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Campbell of Surbiton

Wednesday 16th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am very sympathetic to the thrust of the noble Lord’s point. Noble Lords will be aware that when we designed the universal credit we did it on a trajectory. It is really important that we get the right trajectory on all these introductions. In that context, rather than having a formal trial which has some very specific implications around that process, I take the point about a trajectory of introduction. Indeed, we are looking very hard at the optimum trajectory of introduction.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

I thank the Minister for his response. There is a lot in it, so I will deal with each part in turn. I thank other noble Lords for their contribution to this amendment. They have expanded it and given it colour, depth and breadth, and I am very grateful to them for that. I was particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, for saying that this is a process of discovery. It is a process of discovery, not just for the assessor but for the disabled person.

Noble Lords will understand that this is a very old, tried and tested benefit which has enormously benefited disabled people in making them more emancipated and independent. For me, as an old researcher, not to trial this seems absolutely crazy. I was heartened to hear the Minister’s comments with regard to the testing that went on over the summer. I am aware of it and I have tried to get as much information about it as I can. It is still a bit secretive, but I will do my best to get hold of more information. However, it is not a trial. It is not the real thing. The 900 test assessments are just testing out questions and testing the ground, not the life that a person will have to lead after they have been given their award. I still believe that a proper controlled trial is very important for this incredibly complex benefit. It seems simple but what it gives people is complicated.

That takes me to the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, who pointed out that the reliance on judgment in relation to people with learning difficulties and people with mental health problems would itself be tested. Again, I am in a bit of a conundrum here as the Government have stated again and again that one of the reasons for reforming this benefit is so that they can better target people with mental health problems and people with learning difficulties, who are not necessarily seen as recipients of disability living allowance as they can walk, talk, leave the house without a wheelchair and move around. I am afraid that the assessors will still see disabled people in terms of their medical condition. Independence will be seen in terms of whether someone can give an affirmative answer to the questions: Can you walk? Can you see? Can you pick up a cup? Can you go down the road? If we are to target a significant group who have probably not benefited from DLA in the way that people with physical impairments have done in the past, that is another reason to hold a trial.

I know that the Minister and the Government are very keen to involve disabled people in the process and have done their best to co-produce, but the few people who have been involved are the very people who have come back to me to say, “Jane, we must have a trial, because this is a very big step for both the assessors and disabled people”.

For all those reasons, I am keen that we return to the issue of a trial. The trajectory might be a way to slow the process down. The reason why we decided to table the amendment just for first-time claimants, not for those going for their reassessment, was because that would be manageable. There would be another year for those of us who are awaiting this change to look at what is going on and how it would affect current recipients. So it was a practical issue.

For all those reasons, we will need to return to the issue of trialling, analysis and evaluation. In the mean time, I will do my best to get hold of all those testing papers in the depths of the DWP and then, we hope, we will not feel that it is so necessary to have a trial. For now, I beg to withdraw the amendment.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Campbell of Surbiton

Monday 14th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I cannot agree more. It has not been properly delivered. It has not been a proper gateway. It needs a new benefit and that is what we are trying to introduce.

Let me just get those figures correctly for you— it is £600 million overpayment and £190 million underpayment. I, like the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, am as concerned about the underpayment as the overpayment.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. In fact, I am quite overwhelmed—I did not expect such enthusiasm for this first amendment, although it is a very important one. I have to say again that this is not about a name; it is about intent. I believed, and I stand by it, the noble Lord, Lord Newton—who is now in this Room—when he said back in 1990 that the DLA was better assistance with the extra cost of being disabled. The DLA helps deliver that cost. I think it applied then and I am sorry it applies now. There is intent and it is important to get this name right.

I am so pleased that so many noble Lords have given their personal experiences and examples of the use of the DLA and that other noble Lords have talked about their experience of understanding the needs of other disabled people who may not be in this Room, such as people with hidden impairments and mental health conditions. Yes, we must reform the DLA so it meets the extra costs of all disabled people in this country not just those with physical impairments.

I do not know what focus groups the Minister was at when the name was discussed but it certainly was not with the disabled people that I have been talking to over the last couple of months. I do not want to boast, but I know rather a lot of disabled people. I have been working alongside disabled people for 30 years and I am tapped in to some of the biggest organisations for disabled people in this country which have a long history and authority in this area. So I trump the noble Lord when it comes to knowing what disabled people think about this amendment and its intent.

I am of course pleased that we might think of looking at the name again and I am thrilled that the Minister will be going back to the Minister for Disabled People in another place to discuss this. But I have to say that I rather like the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, of the “personal disability costs payment”. I am not crazy about the word “allowance” either, so I am happy to discard it and go with what disabled people feel comfortable with. Let us remember that it is what disabled people are most comfortable with that is most important. They have suffered from the most awful six months of media vitriol on disability allowance, and I know that for most of the people who use it, it is not about them. I feel really depressed when I open the Daily Mail in my mother’s house—I want to make that point—and I have to say that I feel a bit got at. But if I feel a bit depressed, think of what it is doing to hundreds of other disabled people.

I am glad that we have kicked off with a debate about the name because it has got all of us in the Room really focused on the issue, but having heard the debate, for now I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Disabled People: Disability Living Allowance

Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Campbell of Surbiton

Monday 7th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

It gives me pleasure to say that that is the exact purpose of this assessment. We want to make sure that the money that we do have is well directed to supporting people to have independent lives. It would clearly be perverse if people were supported to live an independent life and that support was then removed when they still needed it. I cannot envisage that that situation would develop.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, will the Minister tell us how the Government expect to achieve the projected savings of £1 billion by 2015 when the highly regarded disability charity Disability Alliance estimates that 823,000 disabled people will lose vital DLA support in order for the Government to meet that target?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness pointed out, the target is to reduce the spending on DLA by 20 per cent by 2014-15. But that is against a projection of a benefit that is, frankly, out of control. The actual figure in that year will basically come down to the level that it was in 2009-10, which is just below the £12 billion mark.

Disabled People: UN Convention

Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Campbell of Surbiton

Monday 5th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her informed questions, which I know come from her interest in and passion for equality issues. I can assure her that we will treat this convention with great seriousness and will push ahead to make sure that it does not slow down. Next July, we are due to report on progress in this area. We will be pushing to make sure that we do so to time. I can also assure her that in our welfare reforms we will look precisely at making sure that those who need support the most continue to receive it.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, one-third of disabled people live below the official poverty line, which does not measure the additional costs of disability. Under the UN disability convention, the Government must promote the right of disabled people to an adequate standard of living and social protection. Will the Government’s review of the disability living allowance and, more importantly the recent closure of the independent living fund to new recipients, breach that obligation?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, when we look at our obligations under the convention, we are clearly looking at a journey towards complete equality for disabled people. It would be naive to claim that within one bound we shall produce total equality. This has been a long journey, which started many years ago. We are committed to press on and make sure that as we move ahead we produce greater equality and improve the lot of disabled people steadily as the years progress.