Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Hollins Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, I should like to talk directly to my noble friend the Minister about money, because we all understand the imperative to reduce the deficit and how, right the way through the Bill, trying to cut back has been part of the debate on almost every clause. However, this amendment seeks to attain proportionality between that higher and lower amount of addition made to universal credit for disabled children.

I come back to a question that we have raised in previous debates: what exactly do we mean by “disability light”, because that is really what we are talking about. These are still disabled children, in the same way as, in other parts of the Bill, they are still disabled adults. It might be presumed that it is somehow like comparing a light head cold with a really nasty bout of flu, but I say to my noble friend—I should have referred to my interests in the register—that it is not like that. For children with disabilities who will lose this huge sum of money and for their carers, particularly the parents, the impact will be great. We have already heard in your Lordships' House today about the impact on some—not all—families of caring for a disabled child, as well as on the relationship between the parents and—and this should never be forgotten—on other siblings. Usually there are other people in the family. They all share in the responsibility when they share a household with a disabled child.

I have spent many years dealing with casework for what must run into hundreds, if not thousands, of adults and children on the autistic spectrum. If this is about money, I hope my noble friend will take my word for it that although they might be considered as “disabled light” in childhood, a huge proportion of them will be the big bills to the public purse later on in adolescence and adulthood. Not only is the human cost of that tragic and avoidable—because most of it is avoidable, if it is properly planned and cared for—but there is the economic aspect. Just putting in the basics early enough, some of which are very low-budget items, can prevent the very big crisis-budget bills that inevitably come. I say “inevitably” quite deliberately, because that is what we know happens; it is well recorded. We have enough evidence of this right across the whole disability spectrum, particularly in some of those spectrums that I take a particular interest in, which are not immediately visible. They are the ones where there is no obvious physical disability but which none the less have a profound impact on the individual concerned. I do not want to overegg this, but Members of the House will have seen the headlines. We see these tragic cases where parents have a disabled child who is sometimes of school age but sometimes an adult dependent child; for those parents, childhood does not end at 18 or when they leave education, it goes on year after year. I can think of some pensioner parents with pensioner-age children still living at home and wondering what is going to happen to them. This is a lifetime commitment for parents.

I am quite sure that if my noble friend, and certainly the Treasury, have done the cost-benefit analysis that I asked for when we discussed DLA in the context of this Bill, they will find that this amendment, although not what the Government are proposing, will save the public purse over the medium to longer term. If we look at it in those crude terms—because that is what I feel they are—we will save a lot of pain and anguish. We will certainly save lives. At the end of the day, it will also save the Exchequer money in some part of the public sector where it will almost certainly have to be found in a hurry.

[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, I stand very briefly to support this amendment. As a psychiatrist who has worked for many years with families with disabled children such as those we have been hearing about, I feel very strongly about the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, made about proportionality. It is very difficult to base the cost of having a disabled child on whether the child needs care at night or only during the day. This relates particularly to children who have very difficult and challenging behaviour, including those with learning disabilities who might have attention deficit syndromes or autistic spectrum disorders. This amendment needs very careful and thoughtful consideration.