Welfare Reform Bill

In this amendment, I was talking about the problem of excluding lone parents on the lower rate of DLA from the exemptions in the conditionality rules. Renewal applications frequently result in entitlement being cancelled or downgraded to a lower amount, only for the decision to be reversed after a lengthy appeal process. This has to do with people being excluded while an appeal process is undertaken. The fact is that these things happen quite a lot. The chopping and changing resulting from inconsistent renewal assessments will inevitably lead to some parents moving in and out of the group required to undertake work-related activity. Research shows that some 7,500 families care for two or more disabled children, involving in total between 17,500 and 20,000 disabled children. Some of these families with multiple disabled children may receive only lower-rate DLA awards. The cumulative nature of caring responsibilities within these families is absolutely enormous, but under the proposed rules, as I understand them, parents could still be required to attend work-focused interviews, undertake work-related activity or face sanctions. I should be grateful if the Minister could correct me if I am wrong about that. We are not talking about big numbers in government terms, but this could well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for each lone parent who is affected. If for a moment we put ourselves in the position of a young mother who has probably suffered a painful separation from a partner, she has experienced the grief of finding that her child may never develop completely normally, and she is on her own, dealing with constant uncertainties and pressures from the benefits system. Will her housing benefit cover her rent? Perhaps not. How will she pay the gas bill? She cannot. Then what will happen? There will be no heating for her disabled child or children. It is her child’s birthday; how can she afford a gift for him? On it goes. She then finds that her benefits may be threatened if she does not find someone to look after her child while she does some work-related activity. To me, this is simply inhuman. For a parent with a child with an invisible or fluctuating condition such as autistic spectrum disorder or ADHD, the problems are even greater. Undertaking assessment for DLA is not an exact science. Mistakes are many, especially for such children. Many will be on the lower rate of the DLA care component, if on any DLA at all. These families move in and out of entitlement to DLA or are subjected to repeated downratings only to be reversed on appeal. All that, despite no change in the diagnosis of the child—yet it is these children who are likely to be excluded from childcare settings. For those reasons, we ask the Minister to introduce amendments at Report to exempt all parents receiving DLA care component at lower, middle or higher rate from work-related activity and, secondly, to exempt all parents who were formerly in receipt of DLA for a child and are in the process of appealing a negative renewal decision. Thirdly, we ask him to retain a voluntary entitlement to access work-related activity for those who wish to do so. That would be a fair and reasonable approach. I am grateful to the Child Poverty Action Group for its helpful briefing on the amendment, and I hope that I have said enough to persuade the Minister that the amendment is reasonable and deserves his careful consideration. I beg to move.