Mr.
Boswell: Now that we have had the privilege, I welcome the
Under-Secretary to the Committee, as we have not had the chance to do
so. She is a good friend and has collaborated with me on many
disability issues. The quality of her initial contributions suggests
very good things for the future. She has made some entirely sensible
and helpful comments. If she requires, I can of course attack her
politically if it will make things easier, but I do not intend to do
so. Having had a good start, let us carry on as we
began. Question put
and agreed to.
Clause 5 ordered to stand
part of the Bill.
9.45
am
Clause
6Amount
payable where claimant entitled to both forms of
allowance Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Mr.
Boswell: I shall be even briefer. The provision is
entirely sensible. I have looked at the explanatory notes and the
helpful graphs, and my feeble mind concludes that the Government
intend—I hope—to give people the best outcome from the
income-related and contribution-related allowances. The better sum will
come out on top, and if necessary, one will be made up to the other, as
the graphs indicate. If the Under-Secretary will confirm that
conclusion, we need detain the Committee no
longer.
Mrs.
McGuire: I am happy to confirm that.
Question put and agreed
to. Clause 6
ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause
7Exclusion
of payments below prescribed
minimum Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Mr.
Boswell: One could reasonably describe the clause as small
but perfectly formed. Again, I shall take no more than a moment of the
Committee’s time, but it is worth pausing for thought. As I
understand the clause, it will prevent separate payments when the
entitlement is less than 10p a week. If the entitlement is paid in
conjunction with another benefit, such as the disability
premium that we have discussed, the amount could be more. The provision
appears to hark back to legislation introduced under the previous
Government—ours—in 1992. Will Ministers reflect on the
number of such payments that would be made in theory, and on whether
the payment continues to be appropriate? No one wants to take money
away from vulnerable people, but some of them may consider payments of
10p a week to be insulting.
I wonder whether it is a de
minimis provision that will need sensible revisiting in due course. If
the payment were 50p a week, would it make the slightest difference? I
would not rush to put my head on the block by saying that we should
change it now because the value of money and the cost of postage have
changed. We should not reopen the whole benefit payment issue, but will
the Under-Secretary share her thoughts?
Mrs.
McGuire: The hon. Gentleman has raised an interesting
issue. It is about getting the balance right. The de minimis level of
10p is appropriate, but I hear his comments, and I am sure that we will
reflect on them. However, we see no reason why we should increase the
de minimis amount from 10p. He has been around longer than I have in
some respects, and he may have seen the value of money decrease or
increase over the years. The point is well made, but we will
hold to 10p.
Question put and agreed
to. Clause 7
ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause
8Limited
capability for
work
The
Chairman: I have looked at the wide-ranging amendments to
clause 8, and at the moment, I do not intend to call a stand part
debate.
Mr.
Jeremy Hunt (South-West Surrey) (Con): I beg to move
amendment No. 255, in
clause 8, page 6, line 7, after
‘work’ insert ‘or work-related
activity’.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following amendments: No. 256, in
clause 8, page 6, line 9, after
‘determined’ insert ‘by a single
assessment’. No.
251, in
clause 8, page 6, line 24, after
‘work’ insert ‘or work-related
activity’. No.
252, in
clause 8, page 6, line 27, after
‘work’ insert ‘or work-related
activity’.
Mr.
Hunt: On the face of it, the amendments are relatively
simple. They are based on the question of whether it would be possible
to combine the assessment for limited capability for work, as described
in the clause, with the assessment for limited capability for
work-related activity in clause 9. The amendments would make possible
not only one single assessment, but the removal of clause 9.
Mr. Hood, I wonder
whether you will allow me some latitude in my explanation of why we
tabled the amendments. They touch on one of the two most important
themes that I wish to draw to the Committee’s attention in all
our 16 sittings. It concerns the fundamental thinking behind the Bill,
which is that if we are going to make it easy for disabled people to
re-engage in the world of work, two things have to be
considered. The first
is the welcome provision in the Bill that gives people additional help
to deal with their health conditions and to deal with the challenges
that they may face in entering or re-entering the labour market. There
are lots of excellent things in the Bill, which have been presaged by
the successfully piloted pathways programme. I commend the Government
not only on presenting the Bill to the House but on the pathways
programme, which has given Opposition Members a great deal of
confidence that roll-out can occur practically and
successfully. There
is a challenge, however, and it is the complexity of the system. The
current benefits system for disabled people is extraordinarily complex,
and these amendments attempt represent a small step towards simplifying
the processes—not just the complexity of different available
benefits, but the assessment processes as well. The report that was
published last year—“Improving the life chances of
disabled people”—gives an example of a hypothetical
person called, I think, Kelly, who becomes disabled in her twenties. It
lists all the benefit applications that she would have to make. They
include applications to the wheelchair service, to the local council
for a disabled facilities grant, and to Access to Work for help in
modifying her computer and her desk. There would also be applications
for help with housing allowance, to social services for help
with a personal assistant, and to the independent living fund, if the
PA were going to cost more than a certain amount. The report does not
mention that, on top of that, she would have to apply for the
disability living allowance, or—if she were not in
work—incapacity
benefit.
Mr.
Boswell: Could my hon. Friend not add to his list the
question of passported entitlements—for example, to free
prescription charges—that might apply on receipt of certain
benefits but that would not be
automatic?
Mr.
Hunt: Yes, indeed—that is an excellent point. There
are so many applicable benefits. I have read that the Minister
is apparently the only member of the Government who can name
all five members of the Spice Girls—I think that that
appeared in The
Guardian.
Mr.
Murphy: It was nine years
ago.
Mr.
Hunt: All I would say on
that—
The
Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman asked for
some leeway, but I am looking for a reference to the Spice
Girls in the amendment paper and I cannot find
it.
Mr.
Hunt: I am grateful, Mr. Hood. I was merely
pointing out that it was considered to be a great feat of memory that
the Minister could remember five Spice Girls, but there are many more
than five disability benefits.
Why is that a challenge? The
reason is something that the Government often talk about, and
which—to their credit—they understand. It is the link
between disability and poverty. We know that the proportion of disabled
people in poverty—nearly a third of them are of working
age—are in income poverty, and the level has risen during the
last 10 years, which is of great concern on both sides of the House. It
is poverty of that nature that makes the benefits system so vital to
some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people in
society. The problem
with the current system is that it is like an onion with many different
layers. If one is disabled, one is completely dependent on it, and one
is likely to be dependent on it in one form or another for the rest of
one’s life, so one does not wish to risk one’s
entitlement to some or all of the benefits. That is why it is dangerous
to countenance making the system even more
complex.
Mr.
Boswell: My intervention is supportive, and it will be the
last that I shall make, because I agree with my hon. Friend’s
line of argument. Does he agree that the Department’s report
entitled “Opportunity for all”, which was published this
week, indicates not merely the coincidence between disability and lack
of employment and poverty, but the knock-on effects on families and
children? Typically, children growing up in families where one of the
parents is disabled suffer directly in the face of poverty and are most
difficult to help.
Mr.
Hunt: As ever, my hon. Friend makes an important point.
One of the advances that the Government could make to be more
successful in meeting their child poverty targets would be looking at
the link between child poverty and disability issues. We should like
there to be a specific strategy to make that
happen. Returning to
the poverty issue, because it is important, the Minister and the
Under-Secretary will know that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has tried
to quantify the additional costs of being disabled netted out from the
additional benefits that people receive. Disabled people face an
additional £200 per week in costs, ranging from the fact that if
they are in a wheelchair, they will not be able to shop around as
easily to get the best deals in the shops, as other people can, to the
additional costs of laundry, adaptations and so on. Because of those
extra costs and the link with poverty, the complexity of the benefit
system makes many disabled people fearful of risking the package that
is so vital for
them. We have to be
careful with this Bill, because although the extra help that it is
providing is to be welcomed, it also makes the benefits system even
more complicated by replacing incapacity benefit with a new benefit
with two elements—a support element and a work-related activity
element. I should like the Minister to consider whether anything can be
done to simplify the assessment processes.
I should have preferred to
debate a much bolder Bill dealing with the transfer to a single
working-age benefit, because that would be a huge step towards
simplicity. However, the measures that we are talking about have much
to commend them, which is why we support the Bill in principle.
However, the Minister should consider not just the complexity of the
benefits system, but the complexity of the assessment procedures and
whether it would be possible to move towards a single assessment
process that would be passportable across different benefits so that
disabled people did not have continually to go for different
assessments for various
benefits. Natascha
Engel (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab): We considered the
simplification of benefits in Select Committee and came across the big
problem of complexity in disability itself. It is not just a matter of
disability being physical or mental; if the benefits system were
simplified too much, it would not capture people’s disabilities
and people with different disabilities would be
disadvantaged.
Mr.
Hunt: The hon. Lady makes an important point. It is
important that any simplification of the benefits system—the
purpose of which, as in this Bill, is to make it easy for people to
transfer in and out of work of work depending on their personal
situation—reduces the barriers that make them concerned about
transferring into work, particularly if they are out of work. She is
right; nothing that we do must make it more difficult for us to react
appropriately in the benefits system to the extraordinary range of
complexity of disabled people’s conditions. If there were a
thorough single assessment process considering every aspect of
someone’s disability, it would lead to a definitive report that
would, in my ideal world, be used by all organs of the state without
that person being required to go through the process time and
again. A Mencap report
says that 37 per cent. of severely disabled children have to deal with
eight or more different professionals from different services, often
asking the same questions. Although simplification would not be a quick
win for the Government—it is rather complicated to get
Departments to talk to each other—it would be an easy win in the
sense that it should be a measure that saves money, rather than costs
more. The assessment processes are expensive and there would be, on the
face of it, an enormous saving to the Government if it were possible to
have one single assessment that could be transferred
across. 10
am Mr.
Hood, you have given me some latitude, for which I am most grateful,
but let me return to the specific amendment. I hope that the Minister
might consider it. He might have some good reasons as to why it is not
possible to combine those two assessments and we will listen carefully
to those reasons.
Would it not be possible to
have one assessment that—as I understand it—is an
assessment of the level of someone’s disability and if that
disability is above a certain level so that they have limited
capability for work, they are entitled to ESA and if it is above a
higher level, they are entitled to the support element under the Bill?
Would it not be possible to do that in
one assessment, therefore simplifying the process for disabled people,
saving the Government money and speeding up the process for everyone
concerned? Danny
Alexander: I have considerable sympathy with the hon.
Gentleman’s remarks in support of his amendments and want to
press the Minister to explore a number of issues on those points. I
agree that the benefit system facing disabled people is complex. The
hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) is right to
point out that disability is complicated and many faceted. Nevertheless
the complexity of both the benefit system and the assessment process
can create considerable hurdles for many disabled people.
For example, one of my
constituents, having had an injury at work, was faced with going to the
same medical testing centre in Inverness on three separate occasions
over eight weeks to be asked slightly different questions by the same
doctor—one visit for incapacity benefit, one for disability
living allowance and one for industrial injuries disablement benefit.
Such repeated exposure to what—no matter how hard those people
who are doing the assessment attempt to make it an easy process and one
that people feel comfortable with—can feel like an intimidating
and intrusive experience. That is something that, if we can in the
course of this Bill, we should try and make simpler if possible. That
is not to decry the point about the complexity of disabilities that
people face and that one is trying to understand and assess, but to
look at whether the assessment process can be made more
simple. That captures
the point made by the hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr.
Hunt) about poverty faced by disabled people, particularly disabled
children and their families. In his earlier remarks in Committee, the
Minister referred to how he wishes to see the provisions of this Bill
used to help address the question of child poverty. That is something
that should be in our minds throughout our proceedings—both the
complexity of the system and the assessment process and whether that
may or may not act as a disincentive to people to take part. Therefore,
we need to look at the justification for having separate assessments
for limited capability for work and limited capability for work-related
activity. The draft
regulations for clause 9 set out the descriptors for the assessment of
limited capability for work-related activity—which we will no
doubt come to when we debate clause 9 in more detail. They have many
common factors with the list of descriptors set out in the
“Transformation of the Personal Capability Assessment - Report
of the Physical Function and Mental Health Technical Groups”
document published by the Department for Work and Pensions about a week
ago. The list of descriptors are different in some respects, but
similar in many
respects. Therefore,
even if it is not possible to consolidate all the assessments, it must
be possible to create some type of core assessment that would not just
inform limited capability for work-related activity but disability
living allowance and industrial injuries disablement benefit
assessments. It could also inform assessments for assess-to-work
funding. The Bill could be improved if the assessment that people get
when they are applying
for benefit carried with it an understanding of what level of
access-to-work funding someone might be entitled to or what type of
adjustments they might be entitled to funding to
support. | 
