Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I hope that by means of the Minister’s response to the amendments we will come to understand the Government’s thinking on why and how they will move from three levels of disability living allowance to two levels as part of what today I will call PIP, even though I hope that we may rename it. PIP will have a daily living and mobility allowance, with the daily living component awarded according to an individual’s ability to carry out key activities so as to enable them to participate in everyday life. This is a fairly fundamental description of why it should be paid. However, I will ask four questions about the move to abolish one of the rates. First, what is the evidence base for this change? Clearly there is one; we know that the Minister is a good evidence-based policy developer. However, I am unclear about what it is. Will the two rates satisfactorily encompass the whole range of disability that we seek to help or will it be simply administratively easier and therefore quicker to administer and get help to people? What is the rationale? Secondly, if neither of these two explanations is right, is it simply a device that has been selected by Government to help achieve the 20 per cent cut? Is it to be achieved by chopping out the bottom one-third of assessed needs? I am afraid that the Disability Alliance judges that this is the reason. It is particularly concerned that disabled people receiving the DLA low-care payments may lose support as a result of the scrapping of this bit of assistance and the Government’s stated aim of only helping those with the most severe needs. The figure of 652,000 mean that if you remove the whole of those—we do not yet know of course whether that will be the impact—that would cut £663 million from expenditure. However, the 20 per cent cut needs more than that because the Government want to cut out £1.3 billion. To achieve the Government’s planned savings they are either going to have to remove even more disabled people than those already in the third group or cut payments to those who nevertheless do qualify. I know the Minister already understands why so many people are living in fear. It is a word that has been used a lot today, I think for the first time this afternoon by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and since then a number of times. I am sure on reflection that the Minister would not want to repeat his own words when he talked about helping those with real needs. People receiving the lower level at the moment have real needs. They may not be the most severe but they are still very real. Although I do not want to go over what my noble friend Lady Wilkins said about the press reporting I have to say, as maybe longer in the tooth than some people here and rather more involved with spin doctoring in my past, I find it really hard to believe that a number of stories appearing in a number of newspapers on the same day is by accident. Certainly when Alastair Campbell was doing some spinning for us, that would never have been the case. When the same stories were in the same papers on the same days we could normally work out whose sticky fingers were on them. Maybe a look by the Minister rather closer to home—not himself of course—may help find the source of those stories. Unless we rein in the attacks on disabled people, trust in the Government is going to be very hard to rebuild. For all sorts of reasons I may not like this Government, but I believe that in a democracy it is really serious if we lose trust in the Government. It is a situation I do not like to see. The low-rate care aspect of the DLA may imply low-level needs. I give my thanks as ever to my noble friend Lady Hollis, who has to hand the definition of the lowest rate care components. You only qualify if you are so severely disabled physically or mentally that you, "““cannot prepare a cooked main meal for yourself if you have the ingredients””," or you are so severely disabled physically or mentally that you, "““require in connection with your bodily functions attention from another person for a significant portion of the day (whether during a single period or a number of periods)””." That to me feels like a real need, and a pretty substantial one. It is also the case, as has been referred to, that people receiving the lowest rate of the DLA are often unable to get support elsewhere. Cuts to these groups could remove vital preventative support, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, and in the long term lead to increased pressures on social care or NHS budgets, causing the on-costs referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to her question on that. As the Dilnot commission, which has been referred to, acknowledges, meeting these lower-level needs is essential to ensure the prevention of later higher or even crisis-level needs. The National Autistic Society has particular concerns that people with autism will lose out—people who are unable to access social care in part due to ever-tightening eligibility criteria. Low-level DLA is a key benefit that enables people with autism to live more independently. Since the announcement of the changes from DLA to PIP, the National Autistic Society has been inundated with e-mails and calls from people concerned that they may lose the support they rely on to complete everyday tasks such as getting to appointments or going shopping. My third question concerns a crucial part of the jigsaw that we still await: how we will keep disabled people in the community and how the new PIP will passport carer’s allowance. Worryingly, there has been no impact assessment of the effect of the PIP changes on carers. We have no idea how many are due to lose out either as a result of the 20 per cent cut or from the change from three rates to two. If some of the current higher-rate people go into what will be the third rate that is then lost, and they may also lose their carer’s allowance. The Minister paid tribute in an earlier session to the role of carers. However, he should know that tributes will not suffice; cash will be needed to enable them to continue their vital role. Fourthly, will the Minister outline how other passported benefits will be handled with just two rates of PIP? For many recipients free travel, taxis or blue badge parking enables them to live a more normal life. Perhaps he can tell us about any knock-on effects as some people are likely to fall out of eligibility after an assessment. It was mentioned earlier that it was only at lunchtime on Friday that the Committee received the DWP’s revised draft assessment criteria, or descriptors. They give some indication of who might be entitled under the new scheme. We have not had time for detailed scrutiny of the criteria, although I know that a number of my colleagues spent a lot of the weekend trying to do just that. Most importantly, as my noble friend Lord McKenzie said, we have yet to see the proposed thresholds for entitlement under the points system. Without these, it is impossible to assess the impact of the criteria on entitlement, and therefore what the change from three levels to two means. In answering an earlier question, the Minister said that we will have the proposed thresholds by Report. I was rather disappointed by that. It will not give us or, more importantly, people affected by the changes, much time to consider them. If it means getting them on the Friday before a Monday stage of Report, as happened with the last thing we received, it will not be a lot of help. It is absolutely crucial that we see the thresholds in good time. I would also be grateful if the Minister would tell us what further role disabled people and their organisations will play both in considering the thresholds and in continually reviewing and finessing the descriptors. In relation to the amendments in this group, will the Minister clarify what consideration the Government have given to the needs of the third-level group of disabled people? Should they be excluded altogether from PIP? How will their vital support needs be met? The Opposition fully understand the need for reform. Static is rarely the right approach for any policy or mechanism. However, our problem is that it is impossible to assess the proposed reform with so little idea of who it will affect or how. We know that the department must have made assumptions about the characteristics of the groups that will be excluded. It will have made budgeting assumptions. Therefore, I would be grateful if the Minister would share those assumptions about the people who will drop out of eligibility after the move from three to two levels.