Improving Lives: Green Paper

Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Masham of Ilton

Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The noble Baroness is right. One of the areas of greatest concern is people who have learning difficulties and people with autism. The figures are not good. There are more than 1 million people with learning disabilities and only 6% have work. I think we are going to see a report on autism this evening showing that only 16% of people with autism are in work. Clearly, in this period of consultation we need a particular focus on people in this group to help them into the workplace.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)]

My Lords, how is the Minister going to see that the various departments work together and not in silos so that disabled people get the help they need? For instance, there are some brilliant people in the spinal injury field but they may need help to get up in the morning and go out to work.

[Lord Freud]

That is exactly the kind of focus that pulling the two systems together should start to address. As the noble Baroness says, if somebody needs a bit of help at a regular time every day to get to work, just putting that little bit of resource in is transformative for that person. That is something that the system has never really been able to do until now and one of the things that we can start to look at as we bring work and health together.

Welfare

Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Masham of Ilton

Monday 21st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State are saying that at the Autumn Statement we will look at the whole picture and at how the finances of the country should be organised. At that stage, there will be lots of moving parts and we will be able to see how this fits in.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)]

My Lords, I agree with the part of the Statement that says that disability is very complex. There are very many different disabilities and many of them involve extra expense, such as extra food to keep fit. I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, about Motability. If you live in a rural area and do not have a car, you cannot get to work and are therefore stuck. Another very important issue is the people who do the assessments, about which there has been a lot of criticism. Can the Minister arrange better training for the people doing the assessments?

[Lord Freud]

I accept that one of the issues around the disability element is that we have a fairly one-size-fits-all approach. One thing that the new Secretary of State will be very interested to hear is how best to manage the process in the light of that complexity—I know that he is very aware of it. I have tried to deal with the Motability issue. It is different people who are getting that and it is based on a better test; PIP is a better test than DLA. We are putting a lot of resource into assessments and their quality is now showing some good improvement.

Mesothelioma Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Masham of Ilton

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I have just made the point that the public liability may have been bundled up with employee liability but it did not necessarily cover asbestos risk. That is the issue. If we start going into this, we are just blasting open and widening the position in a way that is very complicated and difficult to deal with under the timelines we are dealing with.

Moving to the second group about the self-employed, here the matter is not so clear-cut. Some people may appear to have been self-employed but if they are able to demonstrate when making their application that in fact they were employees, they may be eligible for a payment under the scheme. There is considerable case law amassed on this and we will ensure—I can commit to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth—that the scheme will reflect this when assessing applications.

I know it is not fashionable but I should point out that there is a technical problem with the amendment, which is cumulative, but I will not go through it. As drafted, this amendment does not work because you have to be an employee and self-employed. In our spirit of co-operation, if we wanted to take it we would adjust it, but there are good reasons in both cases why we do not want to.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton]

My Lords, what happens to the wife who has been contaminated by her husband’s dungarees? Will she get anything?

[Lord Freud]

Yes, my Lords. That specifically is what the state provision is there for. In particular, the 2008 mesothelioma scheme was set up to make payments to people, such as wives, who worked with asbestos. It is a smaller payment but that is what it was designed to do. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

Health: Needlestick Injuries

Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Masham of Ilton

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

This applies to human health and not to other industries such as waste and veterinary.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton]

My Lords, will the Minister consider expanding the directive to include patients living in the community, because there is so much emphasis now on care in the community? It is very difficult to get rid of sharps boxes, and if people have to inject themselves before going on an aeroplane there are no sharps boxes at airports.

Employment: Sickness Absence

Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Masham of Ilton

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the department has an enormous workload; I am absolutely conscious of that. It is driving through one of the biggest social changes that this country has seen for many decades. At the same time, we are decreasing the numbers in the department at the centre. That does not mean that it is happening at Jobcentre Plus, which is the client-facing area. We are confident that the department, which I have now been in for some time and genuinely find admirable, is able to fulfil these objectives.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is sometimes easier for GPs just to write a sick note, rather than find the real cause; and that this is very difficult for employers?

[Lord Freud]

One of the things that the sickness absence review did was to look at the mismatch in what people were trying to do. The worst of the mismatches was that GPs were signing people off on their sick notes because they could not do a particular job, while the work capability assessment later looked at whether they could do any job. It is those mismatches that we need to stop and sort out.

Employment and Support Allowance (Limited Capability for Work and Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity) (Amendment) Regulations 2011

Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Masham of Ilton

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Masham of Ilton]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, for bringing up this matter. He understands these matters so well and I support what he has said. This is a complex matter. Disability is complex, as it differs in so many ways.

There is great concern from many disability groups, as has been said, as well as the national AIDS group, which has not been mentioned. HIV is a very complex condition. People with it have to live on drugs for the rest of their lives. On some days they are better than on other days, and some drugs work in different ways on different people. This is a complex matter.

I hope that the Minister will get these regulations right. I have two questions for him. Who will be doing the assessments? Will these people be adequate? This is of great concern to many people, and this debate has illustrated how very complex the whole matter is.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, this is an important opportunity to discuss the regulations. A lot of points have been raised and I will try to deal with as many as possible. However, I take this opportunity to lay out the position coherently. I take the criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, that communication has been less than perfect. I shall try to describe what is happening to reinforce that communication programme and I commit to ensure that it is maintained.

There is still a lot of misunderstanding about the assessment and what we are doing to make it fairer and more effective. The first point to make is that these regulations seek to take the first step in improving the work capability assessment. They were developed in conjunction with technical experts and with considerable input from specialist disability groups. As noble Lords have acknowledged, they will ensure that individuals awaiting, or between courses of, certain chemotherapy will be placed in the support group without face-to-face assessment. They will expand the support group to cover people with severe disability due to mental health problems and communication problems—that includes people with autistic spectrum disorder, about whom the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, was concerned—and they will ensure that the descriptors take account of someone’s adaptation to a condition or disability so that we can provide them with the right support.

Before proceeding to debate the finer points of the regulations, I would like to put the reform into a context. The legislation before us today is part of a far broader commitment by the Government to tackle worklessness and intergenerational poverty. This is a very real and very urgent problem for us all, especially given that there are now 2.6 million working-age people claiming incapacity benefits, of whom some 850,000 have been claiming for a decade. This is a massive brake on the economy, costing the taxpayer billions of pounds every year, but that is not the most important point. The true cost of this level of inactivity is paid for by individuals left languishing on long-term benefits without hope or opportunity for a better life. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, said about the scourge of inactivity. If we abandon these people, we fail in our duty as Members of this House. For too long, too many people have had to pay for our failure to act.

Before the recession, there were 63 consecutive quarters of economic growth—that is the longest growth period the economy has enjoyed, as historians can best work it out—and the economy created 4 million additional jobs. Yet under the previous Government—I am not being political—just over half those jobs went to foreign nationals. The result was that, even before the recession hit, we still had 4 million inactive people. Millions of people were without jobs in a growing economy, yet the system was trapping them. That is why we were sucking labour from abroad. The system offered too few people the opportunity to escape and to make a better life for themselves. We must not fail them again, because the country cannot afford it, and neither can the individuals, their families or our society.

Studies have shown that welfare dependency, social isolation and lack of purpose in life have a debilitating affect on individuals. Decades ago, the late Aaron Antonovsky argued that the purpose in life—what he called coherence—was crucial to understanding human health and well-being. More recently, Waddell and Burton’s excellent review of the issue, written four and a half years ago, reinforced the evidence that showed that work is generally good for you. There is ample evidence that prolonged periods of inactivity and unemployment contribute to declining mental health. That is why the welfare reforms that we are introducing are so important, and that is why the regulations are such an essential element in transforming the lives of millions of people at risk of being abandoned to welfare dependency.

These reforms are the key to providing the lost with a path out of the cycle of dependency and poverty, and helping them on to the path to new opportunities. That is why we are embarking on a large-scale re-evaluation of those on incapacity benefits through the work capability assessment that will take in some 1.5 million people—not the 2.6 million on incapacity benefit who the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, mentioned —over the next three years. It is also why we are introducing the universal credit to make sure that work pays, and why we are introducing the largest welfare-to-work programme that this country has ever witnessed.

This is designed not to badger or bear down on the vulnerable but to give them a road map to a better life. It is only by tackling welfare dependency and starting to dismantle the benefits trap that we can help people escape the huge social costs of worklessness, social exclusion and intergenerational poverty. Many noble Lords will know how difficult it is to wrestle with the issue of child poverty without this kind of route.

Those who cannot work will of course continue to get the support they need. However, for those who can make the journey back towards the workplace, we will offer them structured support to become work-ready. This will provide real help for many of those who have previously been abandoned by the system—those who were simply labelled as incapacitated and largely ignored, whether they wanted to work or not.

The work capability assessment was introduced in October 2008 as a key part of the assessment process to determine entitlement to employment and support allowance. It replaced the personal capability assessment and represented a significant and overdue change in assessing an individual’s ability to work. It was developed in conjunction with technical experts, along with considerable input from specialist disability groups.

However, it was clear from the outset that, unlike the PCA, the WCA should be subject to an ongoing process of review, evaluation and refinement. Indeed, it was this House that passed the amendment that introduced the requirement for an independent review of the WCA for the first five years after its introduction—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. It was the only amendment from this House that made its way into the original legislation for the work capability assessment, and it received support from all sides. That was slightly before my time, but I know many noble Lords will remember it well.