Employment and Support Allowance

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, let me make it clear that we do not believe that this is attributable to staff reductions at the Department for Work and Pensions. We still have over 70,000 employees. We have also been working hard to do more since 2010. Since this Government came to power, we have spent £5.4 billion a year more than we were doing in 2010 to support people with disabilities. We continue to do so while upping our game and, yes, demanding more from our employees, who are working extremely hard. That is to ensure that we have the proper resource and the staff to make sure that we can review all these cases at pace. We have already started making payments—over £40 million in arrears so far—so we are doing everything we can to ensure that people get the support they are entitled to and at pace.

Based on my meetings with the Minister of State for Disability and our Permanent Secretary, who made a robust case for delivery by our department in front of the Public Accounts Committee last week, I can say that the department is working hard. Yes, we are doing more, so noble Lords could say we are a little stretched, but we are proud of what we are doing and delivering. We want to get this right. On passporting benefits over to UC, we are making sure that people will not lose out in what they are entitled to.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, in the part of Gwent where I was born, the letters “dwp” form a word. It is pronounced “dup” and means stupid or daft. Could that account for why the accounting officer at the Department for Work and Pensions says that he does not understand all the letters that his office sends to claimants? If the author of the letters does not understand them, how on earth are the claimants supposed to do so?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I hear noble Lords laughing but this is no laughing matter. I take great exception to the suggestion that I am working for anything that could be described as a dump. I am the lead Minister for the correspondence that goes out to claimants and we work through that correspondence with a fine-toothed comb to make sure it is in clear English, polite, responsive and on time. Since I have been in office, we have been at 100% in terms of our timing. We are doing everything we can to support so many people, particularly those with disabilities and health conditions, to improve and transform their lives. I therefore will not listen to the noble Lord talking about—

[Lord Touhig]

The department admitted it.

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, no, somebody in the department may have said something but, as far as I am concerned, I am proud to work for the Department for Work and Pensions.