Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 52BD in this group, about disabled claimants. If the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, thought that her brief was complex, this is pretty complex too. At the moment, if a disabled person is in work they can claim the disability element of working tax credit if they fulfil two tests: a work disadvantage test and the benefit test. The work disadvantage test includes many criteria, but one of the most common ways to qualify is if you are unable to work full-time because of a health condition or impairment. You also have to fulfil the benefit test if you receive DLA or attendance allowance or you have been receiving sickness benefit for at least the previous six months. There are other qualifying criteria that would take all afternoon to go through for both the work disadvantage test and the benefit test. An example of the work disadvantage test criteria is that you cannot extend your arm sufficiently to shake hands with another person without difficulty, which sounded rather French to me. Suffice to say that the criteria for qualifying for the disability element can be complex but probably covers a lot of disabled working people. Under the universal credit, many disabled people will not receive extra help because the gateway to extra support is through the work capability assessment. So someone will not qualify for the disability disregard if they have been found fit for work. For disabled people who are already in work, a new test will be designed and we are hoping that that new test will have some lower criteria in it. Some of the criteria for the work disadvantage test look similar to the criteria for the WCA, but it is unclear what the qualifying criteria will be for this test for disablement under the universal credit, as I have said. If everyone else is giving examples, I might give the example of someone who might benefit now from extra help but might not qualify in future. I am afraid I have not given her a name but she is a person with MS who can walk up to 100 metres but gets tired very quickly and is unable to cook a meal for herself. She may now qualify for DLA lower-rate care and might also receive the disability element of working tax credit, if she were able to work only part-time because of fatigue levels. This person probably will not qualify for the personal independence payment, although until we see the new criteria, which we were told would be available at the end of October, we cannot tell. This person probably will not qualify for any more help under the universal credit than a person who is not disabled. Another of the worrying things about the loss of this extra help for many disabled people under universal credit is the passporting factor used by local authorities for travel passes, leisure passes and so on, so disabled people may lose out on a much wider scale than may at first seem apparent. I look forward to hearing what my noble friend has to tell us about that.