Exportable Benefits

The straightforward answer from my point of view is that they come from a written answer; the Minister can tell us where the numbers come from. It is difficult to reach a total. The estimated case load for disability living allowance is 20,000, but in an excellent piece of Government speak, no numbers are given for attendance allowance and carer's allowance because they equal""less than 5,000 and therefore"" equal""zero when rounded to the nearest 10,000"—[Official Report, 28 January 2009; Vol. 487, c. 563W.]" Only someone in government could, on seeing that 5,000 people were entitled to something, round the figure down to zero, but that is what we are told has happened. To put the figures in context, the £50 million estimated expenditure is about 0.1 per cent. of the total spent on such benefits, while the number of people affected is about 0.4 per cent. of the number on such benefits. Those numbers do not seem that dramatic or significant, given the Department's estimates for the growth of disability living allowance, attendance allowance and carer's allowance over time. I do not understand why the Government are working so hard to limit the number of claims, and I would be grateful if the Minister filled us in on that. At the end of February 2009, a month after the Minister answered that question, we had the fourth written statement to Parliament. That was 10 months after the previous one and one year and four months after the original judgment. On a Government website, Ministers finally published details of the eligibility criteria for those who were not claiming disability benefits when they left the UK, but who wished to claim them when they moved abroad. In a parliamentary written answer, the Government stated that the past presence test had been modified for those claiming from another EEA state so that they had to have been in Great Britain for not less than 26 of the previous 52 weeks. The Government also said that the test would be applied only once, on the date on which the entitlement to benefit was established. In other words, someone who claimed more than six months after having moved abroad would not be eligible for benefits. It would be helpful if the Minister told us how many people living abroad would be eligible for such benefits if the past presence test was not in place and what estimates the Department has made of the number who will be eligible over time. The Department must have done some thinking about that when deciding on its implementation of the ECJ ruling. In June last year—these things move very slowly—the Government said that they had had 2,100 requests for payment or reinstatement of awards from people living in EEA states. At that point, decisions had been made on 1,100 requests, with 1,000 pending a decision. For the benefit of hon. Members, will the Minister give us the latest information on how many requests for payment of benefits have been received and how many have been processed and had a decision made on them? Of those on which a decision has been made, how many have resulted in a benefit being awarded? In other words, how many requests for benefit have been successful? There is another disappointing aspect to the lack of dispatch in the Department's approach. In June last year, the Government said that 1,400 people who lived abroad were in receipt of benefits, but that the DWP had only "started to process" claims for DLA from other states following the statement on 24 February. It therefore took a year and four months after the ECJ ruling for the DWP to start processing claims. Given that we are talking largely about disabled and elderly claimants living abroad, such a period can be significant. The issue has obviously attracted great interest. There has been an e-petition on the No. 10 website, the media have given the subject a lot of coverage, and colleagues such as my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet have raised the issue in Parliament. As he said, the Prime Minister wrote to him saying that the 26 out of 52 weeks past presence rule was""compatible with European Community law"." I have been through the ECJ judgment carefully—it is not riveting reading—and it would be helpful if the Minister set out why the Department thinks that the past presence test is compatible with the ruling, given that the European Commission does not think so and has indicated to the Department that it intends to introduce infringement proceedings. On the issue of openness and transparency, I can understand why the Minister does not want to share specific correspondence, but given the information that has not been provided to the House—my hon. Friend drew attention to it—it is disappointing to see what is available on the European Commission website. There, the Commission clearly sets out that it is taking legal action against the UK for not paying benefits and that it""addressed a Letter of Formal Notice to the UK authorities. The British authorities have two months to respond"," as my hon. Friend said. Again, the Department took the full two months, so it did not exactly act with all due speed. The Commission then sets out the benefits and the ECJ ruling. It also says that the past presence test""goes against the European rules coordinating social security benefits and justifies the Commission's decision to start an infringement procedure."" We can get all that information from the Commission website, but when we ask Ministers to set out the discussions that they have had and the position that they have taken, we get rather less information. This is not something that I thought that I would say, or that we hear often in the House, but the European Commission is being more open and transparent than the British Government, and the Minister should rectify that. I have asked the Minister to set out the number of claimants abroad. Just to be clear, will he tell us what estimate the Government have made of the predicted case load and expenditure for existing claimants who move abroad, claimants who already live abroad and both sets of claimants combined? The Minister has talked about 2010-11, which is assumed to be the first full year for implementation of the ruling, but what does full implementation actually mean and why has it taken two years to reach this stage? It is worth making one final point, which my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett), who speaks for the Liberal Democrats, have touched on. One reason why the issue has attracted attention and annoyed some of those living abroad is that the same European Union rules that say that British citizens who lived here all their lives, paid taxes, contributed, worked and then moved abroad should get the benefits under discussion, also say that people who come here from other European countries are entitled to other benefits. We read all the time in the papers—the stories are not made up, but are backed by parliamentary answers—about people who have come to the UK from other European countries and have not worked here or paid taxes, but who, under EU rules, can claim benefits for themselves and their children. People find that extraordinary. We hear stories about Polish workers coming to the UK who can claim child benefit for their children, when their children do not even live here, but in Poland. The Government never seem to look for clever loopholes to avoid paying such people, who never seem to have any trouble claiming benefits. I do not suggest that they should not get those benefits—under EU rules, these things work in both directions—but it is strange that the Government have looked for every opportunity to deny money to those who have worked here, paid their taxes and gone abroad. Ministers never seem to make similar efforts with those who come to this country, and I am not saying that they should, but there is a disparity. People who come to this country never seem to have any trouble claiming money when they have not contributed. [Interruption.] It is all very well the Minister sighing, but that sort of thing enables people who are against our membership of the EU to score an easy hit. It also enables those who represent, shall we say, somewhat less democratic parties in this country to stir up all sorts of feeling against those who come here from other European countries. As everyone who has spoken has made clear, people are looking for fairness—they want people to be treated fairly. Once the law is established following the ECJ ruling, it will be incumbent on the Government to implement it as soon as possible so that those who are lawfully entitled to benefits receive their lawful entitlement. On the basis of what I have said and what my hon. Friend so ably said in opening the debate, it is clear that the Government have not moved with due speed. At each stage, they appear to have taken the maximum time available to them and tested every deadline. That is not how the Government should behave, particularly when many of the British citizens involved are elderly and disabled, and when every month really matters. In his response, I hope that the Minister will answer the questions raised by my hon. Friend and other hon. Members who have spoken in this debate, and that he will move to resolve the issues surrounding the past presence test and its lawfulness, or otherwise, and implement the settled law with all possible speed.