Welfare Reform Bill

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend has made that point to me again and again. The key problem resulted from the changes that were made to dislocate much of the process from people—face to face—who knew what was going on in their communities. I think—I hope—this Bill will change that, because local communities will now be able to determine how best to deliver that critical service, and they will be closer, I hope, to people who need it. That is the principle behind it, and I hope the House recognises that.

The remaining discretionary elements of the social fund, as I indicated earlier, will stay in the wider benefit system, and we will introduce payments on account to replace alignment payments and the interim payments of benefit when crisis loans are abolished, a point that my hon. Friend the Minister has also made on several occasions. We will extend the provision of budgeting loans so that they are available to help people, as I said to the hon. Lady just now.

On disability living allowance, the personal independence payment and the changes to and reforms of them, I believe—and the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, in her consultations, has by and large obtained widespread agreement—that we need to start reforming disability living allowance. I think most people accept that the system we inherited does not deliver for some of those in genuine need, particularly given its confusing nature. Disabled people often tell us that the claims process is incredibly complicated and decisions are not consistent. We need to sort that out.

Many people—a significant number—still wrongly believe that DLA is an out-of-work benefit, so, as people said on several occasions during the consultation, “Being in receipt of DLA is a reason why you wouldn’t want to be getting involved with work; you might lose your DLA.” Such confusion is absurd, because that is not the case, so we need to sort the issue out, and I hope people recognise that it is important.

About 50% of those currently receiving DLA did not have to provide any additional evidence to support their original claim, and more than two thirds of current recipients have an indefinite award. That means basically that no one is ever going to see them again, yet their condition may change; it may worsen or it may get better. That is why we propose to replace DLA with a new system—the personal independence payment, or PIP. This benefit will be awarded on the basis of a more objective assessment of individual need; that assessment is vital. The money will continue to be paid to people in and out of work, and it will not be means-tested. I want to be clear that we do not intend to take away the mobility of people in residential care. As I explained earlier, this is about overlapping payments. The review will cover all that. The key thing is reform.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

There is a great deal of uncertainty about how children might be affected by the reforms to DLA. Is the Secretary of State proposing further consultation? Is there any information that he can give about future processes regarding children?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We are consulting on that. However, this is going to be done later on, so we will have plenty of time to hear many more representations concerning children before we make any decisions. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is already talking to various groups about this particular issue.