Welfare Reform (Disabled People and Carers)

Debate between Yvonne Fovargue and Anne McGuire

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Chope, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I thank the many Members who have made a contribution to this debate, and indeed I also thank the many Members who sat here in Westminster Hall but did not speak; they did not make a contribution but wanted to show their support for my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), who promoted today’s debate very successfully.

I have to say, in passing, that rarely have I seen a Government Minister so ill-supported by people on her side. Frankly, she is supported more by the number of officials with her than by Back Benchers.

I also thank the many organisations that have given us briefings, and indeed would probably have given briefings to many MPs from all parties. They include Scope, the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, the British Medical Association, the Disabled People Against Cuts, the Hardest Hit campaign, Rethink, Action for Children, Disability Rights UK, Mind, Pat’s Petition, the Gateshead Carers Association and the Gateshead Citizens Advice Bureau, which of course are in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, Carers UK, and the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux.

Many Members have commented on the Chancellor’s statement of 22 June 2010, in which he said that the Government would not grind the poorest into the ground. Frankly, what a difference two years has made. This is the same Chancellor who is now looking for more cuts from the Department for Work and Pensions. As many colleagues have said, there are many hidden costs to being disabled, which do not always compute.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the costs that has not been mentioned today is the additional cost of child care for a child with a disability, the benefit for which is being reduced under universal credit?

[Mrs McGuire]

Yes, and because of the width of the spectrum of impact that we are having to deal with, it has been very difficult to highlight every particular aspect of that impact. I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue.

There is a hidden accumulation of disadvantages that this Government have consistently tried to hide, in the face of the evidence that has been presented to them over the past two years by some of the organisations that I referred to.

The Minister told me last week in response to my question about a cumulative impact assessment—I think this was mentioned earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore)—that there had never been a cumulative impact assessment under Labour, as if that somehow absolved her from undertaking a cumulative impact assessment. I find that an astonishing answer, because no Government—neither Conservative nor Labour—have ever launched such a torrent of changes, with such a speed of change, in the way that this Government have done in tackling the support that we give to disabled people. I worked with disabled people during the premiership of Baroness Thatcher, and frankly I have never seen anything like this—never.

According to the figures, disabled people have dropped at least a massive £500 million in income since that emergency Budget statement two years ago, when the Chancellor said that he would not be breaking the backs of the poorest in our society. The cuts to the incomes of disabled households go up to more than £2,000 a year; they vary, depending on individual circumstances.

We can see what the impact of those cuts is. There has been the imposition of the 12-month rule on employment and support allowance, a benefit that is intended to support people who are too ill or too disabled to work. The Government were so stubborn that they would not even accept an Opposition proposal to extend ESA to two years, to give people the opportunity either to adapt to a long-term disability or to receive the treatment that they needed to take them out of illness. That change is underpinned by a flawed work capability assessment, which states that disabled people are ready for work when they are palpably not ready; we have heard examples of that today.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead that we should not just attack Atos. There are issues to do with Atos and the professionalism with which it is conducting some of the assessments, but we should pin the responsibility on the Ministers who are supposed to be managing the Atos contract. If it is not the Ministers who are responsible—as is the way with this Government—there will be a civil servant somewhere who will have to accept some responsibility.

We have an appeals service that is logjammed, and many people, after months of uncertainty, find that their benefits are restored. Sometimes that happens—this shows the bizarre economics of this situation—after they have had their Motability car repossessed; several months later, they find that they are to get it back again. What sort of economics is that?

Although I welcomed some of the mitigation, or easement, that the Minister announced in the changes to the personal independence payment, there are still many descriptors that are causing concern. I appreciate that the Minister has only a few minutes to respond to the debate, but perhaps she will share with us details of where the new descriptors in activity 12 come from. It looks as though the 12 points needed for the enhanced mobility rate can be achieved solely by people who have only a physical impairment and who are not able to stand or move more than 20 metres. Perhaps she can tell the House how many people will lose access to their Motability vehicles as a result of this further tightening of the gateway. I point out to her that even in the 1970s disabled people qualified for those little blue single-seater cars if they were able to move more than 20 metres, aided or unaided. Talk about back to the future.

From April next year, families with disabled children will receive £1,300 less than they would receive under the current system. It is estimated that about 450,000 families will lose out under universal credit. Until the last couple of weeks, the Government gave the distinct impression—this was a clever dodge—that if a carer was in the same household as a disabled adult child, their carer’s allowance would not be included in the benefit cap. The Government have now had to admit that an adult disabled person will be assessed as being in a different household from their parents’ household.

Before the Minister says to me, “That’s always been the way; when an adult reaches the age of maturity, or the age at which they can receive benefits in their own right, they are a separate household”, I accept that is true, but what we never did—indeed, what no Government ever did before—was decouple a carer’s allowance from the disabled person whom it is intended to help. That is what this Government are doing.

I say to the Minister in all honesty that if this Government are so sure that what they are doing is right, and that, as the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) said, they have the best intentions as regards disabled people, why in heaven’s name will they not carry out a cumulative impact assessment? I have said this to the Minister and to the previous Minister, who is now the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport: it is surely not beyond the wit of the best brains in the DWP to come up with a cumulative impact assessment that will prove either the Government’s case or ours.