Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I welcome these amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Patel. They allow me just to go through how the Government intend to introduce PIP successfully for young disabled people from the age of 16. Clearly, the central question is whether 16 or 18 is the right age. In one sense, all ages are a little arbitrary here. Adulthood is defined at different ages in different contexts. The key to the decision to start PIP at 16 was based around the assessment criteria and at what stage people fit in with those, in terms of the activities that they can undergo and how we can look at them. When we looked at it with a range of experts, we concluded that you would normally expect individuals without disabilities to be able to carry out these activities independently from the age of 16. For example, you would expect a 16 year-old to be able to wash and dress themselves, to communicate with others, to plan, and to follow and make a journey. It is the age at which, currently, you expect individuals to be able to be employed full-time. There is a general expectation that they have the capabilities of adults. The group looked at whether you would expect even younger people—I had better use that word now, rather than adults or children—to fit this assessment. They concluded that children go through several developmental stages under the age of 16, and they do that at uneven speeds. So, there was a cut-off in developmental terms between the two stages, for the purposes of this test, at 16. The other way of looking at this is that it is about trying to move people into adulthood and independence. A lot of these youngsters are living in their households but need to move to independence. Having their own independent help and their own funding in PIP at that age matches their aspirations to move into adulthood, and allows them to make their own decisions about aspects of their lives. This is an area where, as we described in our policy document, we have set out our intentions and outlined the key principles that we have debated and agreed with stakeholders. We have set up a subgroup of the PIP implementation development group specifically to help and inform the design and testing of the new system in relation to disabled young adults. Together with the focus group work and the interviews that we have held with disabled young people, their appointees and representatives, this is the process that we have under way to get the system right. One of the most important areas where we are using the development group is around the question of how we look at the process of moving people into the 16 category and how we signpost, communicate and get awareness of the changes and then join up the support for disabled young adults and their families. Clearly, this is not the only testing that disabled youngsters undergo in this phase of their lives. There are a number of assessments as they move from childhood to adulthood. We will ensure that all young people claiming PIP or moving on to it at age 16 have the appropriate support to allow them fully to express their needs. We know it is important that they have a parent, an advocate or a friend to accompany them to that face-to-face consultation. We are not changing anything in terms of DLA in this area. We are changing a lot of things by moving DLA to PIP, and we will be discussing some of them, but in this area we are sticking with the same age as the existing DLA arrangements. There was an anomaly that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, tried to pin me down on and defied me to find a good explanation for. I have been challenged and I shall do my best. On the point about the difference between the universal credit at 18 and PIP at 16, the blunt answer is that these are different benefits for different purposes. It is important that we do not think of PIP as an income supplement; that is not what it is, and nor is it for someone who is out of work. PIP is a payment to people who are disabled who will always need extra money to live because their costs of living are higher, and we will pay it regardless of whether people are in work or out of work. That is why it is a different argument. By giving PIP earlier, we are giving youngsters their independent funding to run their own lives from that point—not from the point when they are meant to be in the workforce and fully independent—when, if they do not have a job, they will need an income supplement. That is the difference. I hope that I have risen to the challenge; I am sure that the noble Baroness will say that I have not, but I have done my best. We are working closely with the Department for Education to explore evidence gathered so that we can have a single assessment for an education, health and care plan that can be used to support a personal independence payment claim. We are trying to get rid of all the multiple assessments.