Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Walton of Detchant Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I support this amendment. I am not going to repeat what I said at Second Reading, in Committee and at Report stage, save to emphasise once again that as a family who lost two severely handicapped boys we know the impact of cost when there is disability in the family. Although at their latter stages they would undoubtedly have had the highest available support, at earlier stages they would probably not under the definitions now current. There are thousands of children and families who will most certainly miss out.

We are told that Disability Rights UK is very concerned about the impact that this will have on families with disabled children and particularly, as in our case, on those with more than one disabled child. It is concerned about the effect that it will have on the longer-term life chances if they grow up in poverty. The Minister said at Report stage that,

“the impact of the reform of disability payments on the number of disabled children living in relative poverty will be negligible”.—[Official Report, 12/12/11; col. 1055.]

Negligible—that is not the assessment of others. The Children’s Society estimates that over 40 per cent of disabled children already live in poverty. The Minister conceded at Report stage that we are talking about taking £200 million and redirecting it. What will be the effect of taking £200 million off those who already are very near to poverty? That is surely not acceptable.

The Minister emphasised at Report stage the provisions of the transitional arrangements being made, but he conceded that as inflation bites—and it is still running at 5 per cent—the value of this will erode, which will be a real loss to these most vulnerable people. If this issue is to be considered further, as the mover of the amendment requested, and the Government give it further thought, we must keep the issue alive by adopting the amendment today. Otherwise we will lose the opportunity. I beg the Government either to accept this or to come back with their own amendments in another place and bring them here—or, alternatively, I suggest that we as a House ensure that they are carried.

[Lord Walton of Detchant]

My Lords, I, too, wish to speak relatively briefly to this important amendment. In the course of my neurological training and in my career, I spent some time assessing children with cerebral palsy who attended the excellent Percy Hedley centre in Newcastle upon Tyne and received outstanding treatment. However, when I saw the varying degrees of disability produced by this group of conditions—a group of immense variability—and saw the effect that the condition of these children had on their families, sometimes leading to family breakdown, as the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, said, I became increasingly concerned about the evidence of the disability and the resultant poverty which developed in many of these families.

Some of my personal research was dealing with a progressive disease—Duchenne muscular dystrophy—where young boys born apparently normal would begin at about the age of three to have difficulty in walking. They then began to have problems with falling frequently and getting up from the floor, and progressively became increasingly disabled so that many of them were taken to a wheelchair by the time that they were aged 10. I saw the effect that this had when not just one but two boys might be affected in an individual family, and the problems faced by those parents were immense. I shall never forget one mother saying to me, “I see my son die a little every day”.

I am not talking just about static conditions such as cerebral palsy—although even in cerebral palsy as the child becomes older, the disability may remain neurologically non-progressive—but about the problems that begin to emerge over schooling and a whole series of other issues, which become increasingly important and increasingly matters for concern. I could go on about my personal experience in the field of neurology and paediatric neurology but I would simply say that this is a very worthwhile amendment, and one which deserves your Lordships' support.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I wonder whether I might intervene briefly. I am in a slightly awkward position, and it may not surprise the House to know that I have been approached by all parties to this argument, either to say something on their side or to shut up. I am going to make a slightly ambivalent speech which will leave a lot depending on the Minister. I fully support the concerns that have been expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, by my noble friends Lady Thomas of Winchester and Lady Browning, and by others. The Government need to listen to this and take heed, and come forward with proposals which address these concerns.

In the light of what I said last week, it will not surprise the House to know that I do not think that setting benefit rates or benefit relationships in concrete in primary legislation is sensible. I would prefer that we leave it for Ministers to decide in regulations, as the Bill provides, provided it is clear that they are going to put something sensible in those regulations and that we shall have a proper opportunity to scrutinise them. It will follow from that that I want a positive response from the Minister before deciding what I am going to do.

I will make one further point, which picks up on what the noble Lord, Lord Walton, was saying. The other thing that strikes me about setting things in concrete is that this is a world in which things change very fast, because of medical advances. He referred to Duchenne muscular dystrophy. I think I have more knowledge of cystic fibrosis, where the world has moved on hugely in the past 20 or 30 years—not least because of work done at the hospital of which I used to be chairman, the Royal Brompton—and that is happening all over the scene. Conditions that were immediately life-threatening or life-limiting at a very early age are now more treatable, and life is longer. Anything that ties us down to an inflexible framework for dealing with these problems is probably not the right way forward.

That, though, is simply a view that I express to the House. My fundamental point is that this is better dealt with in regulations, provided we can ensure that the Government will do that. I look forward to hearing what my noble friend has to say.