Exportable Benefits

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs. Humble. I know that you take a great interest in matters relating to the Department for Work and Pensions, given the nature of your constituency. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale), who has been a long-standing campaigner on this subject. He demonstrated his usual doughty fighting spirit on behalf of all who depend on Members of the House to speak for them. I shall mention, as did my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet, the UK/EU Disability and Carers Group, a group of those affected by this problem. I mention it for the Minister's benefit. It e-mailed me late last year, saying that no member of the group at the time—more than 100 people—had received the legal reinstatement of their disability living allowance or even had the opportunity to have their case heard by the Tribunals Service. That brings me to a point made by my hon. Friend. Even once the law was established, it seems that the Government did not move with appropriate speed. I shall say a little more about that later. It is worth setting out a little of the background—I shall try not to repeat what was said by my hon. Friend—and saying something about the benefits. I shall also ask the Minister about the thinking behind the Government's stance. The three benefits are the care component of the disability living allowance—the mobility component is not included in the European Court of Justice ruling of 18 October 2007—the attendance allowance and the carer's allowance. The Court decided that those benefits should be removed from the list of non-exportable special non-contributory cash benefits, but should be classed instead as sickness benefits and therefore paid, as my hon. Friend said, to those who live elsewhere in the European economic area or Switzerland. I shall give the House an idea of the scale involved. Slightly more than 3 million people in the United Kingdom receive the care component of DLA, less than 1.6 million receive attendance allowance, and about 500,000 people receive carer's allowance. I mention that because I shall be asking the Minister to give us an idea of the number affected by the ruling and the Department's estimate of how many might be affected in future. I shall give an example: in 2008-09, about £4.7 billion was spent on attendance allowance for the 1.6 million who received it; it is a significant sum. To put matters into context, it would be interesting to hear from the Minister how much is involved in the present case. My hon. Friend said that a parliamentary answer gave an estimate of £50 million. That is a large sum, but it pales into insignificance when put next to the total amount of benefits paid. I shall have some specific questions on that aspect for the Minister. It is worth spending a brief moment to consider the chronology of this case, as it is one reason why those overseas who are affected are so agitated. They may think that things are clear after the ECJ ruling, but they believe that the Government have moved at a slow pace. My hon. Friend set that out well. However, the Government have not only moved a slow pace but have looked for every opportunity to delay making a decision. The ECJ judgment was delivered on 18 October 2007. The Government responded reasonably quickly with a written statement to Parliament, saying that they would carefully consider the implications of that judgment. Within a week, one could not expect them to say anything else. In December, two months later, we heard only that the disability and carers service was "preparing guidance", and would give full details of eligibility criteria in April. Not an awful lot had happened, especially given what we had been told publicly, in two months. At the beginning of April 2008, five months after the ECJ judgment, Parliament received a third written statement. Again, we were told that details would be set out on the website, and that officials were continuing their discussions with the European Commission. We still had to wait. Even five months after the decision, the Government were still not able to set out the eligibility criteria, either for those who had been claiming the benefits before moving abroad or those who lived abroad and were claiming for the first time. Later that month, the criteria were eventually published. In December 2008, more than a year after the ECJ judgment, the Government admitted that they had received 1,700 requests for payment of DLA, attendance allowance or carer's allowance from people who had previously lived in the UK. That information was gained in response to a question from my hon. Friend, who has been questioning the Government on the matter for some time. In January 2009, my hon. Friend followed up that question, asking the Minister how many of those 1,700 had been settled. He was told that the implications were still being considered. Later that month, again in response to a written question, the Minister said that the Government had set out their estimate of the increased case load and expenditure due to the ECJ ruling. He said that in 2010-11 they expected that the case load would reach 20,000 people at an annual cost of £50 million. That was assumed to be the first full year following full implementation of the judgment. That estimate is broken down into £30 million for DLA, £10 million for attendance allowance and £10 million for carer's allowance. I am not clear, however, whether that is for those who were claiming benefits before leaving the UK or whether it includes those living abroad who were claiming for the first time. That estimate gives no indication of whether the Government expect those numbers to change.