Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, the amendment is designed to complement broader plans for social care and links to the Dilnot review of care funding. The Dilnot review examined care costs and how best to manage our demographic change. It concluded that universal disability benefits for people of all ages should continue as now. Dilnot was referring to DLA. The rationale for his recommendation was that DLA helps many disabled people avoid formal social services. It acts as a form of low-level needs management. However, Government plans include abolishing the low-rate care DLA payments of £19.55 per week, which 652,000 disabled people aged 16 to 64 currently receive. Despite ignoring the Dilnot recommendation, the DWP has not provided a cost-benefit analysis of what this abolition could mean for care services. Charities and individual disabled people have, however, indicated that reduced access to DLA will increase dependency on social care services funded by councils. About one in eight of the disabled people who completed a Disability Alliance survey suggested they would be more likely to need a council-funded care home placement as, without DLA, families would no longer be able to manage needs. This leaves councils funding a much more expensive service. The lack of information being provided on this issue, despite the clear recommendation of the Dilnot review, can leave us with no choice but to assume it has not yet been fully analysed. The Minister has suggested that providing a basic level of help is unaffordable, but we must also take into account the further costs of the two million medical notes from the NHS which disabled people who are forced to undergo the new assessment process will have to provide. This is not a cost-free policy. What about the analysis of the cost of potentially avoidable NHS use following the abolition of low-rate care payments? Disability and ill health do not just disappear, and the costs and needs of disabled people will be exacerbated. I suspect that there is an unfortunate silo approach being operated. Disabled people will suffer first and then their families, followed quickly by the NHS and councils. The DWP has been pressed on these issues since plans emerged in 2010. It is unacceptable that these legitimate questions on the policy costs remain unanswered. I also believe the amendment is essential to help mitigate the risks of the current government proposals to disabled people, their families, the NHS and councils. Figures published just yesterday suggest that of the 652,000 disabled people receiving low-rate care, about a quarter of a million may be able to access daily living payments under PIP. The statistics suggest an increase of 166,000 in the numbers receiving enhanced daily living payments, compared to DLA high-rate care, and an increase of 89,000 in standard daily living payments, compared to middle-rate care DLA. However, this means that 400,000 disabled people will lose support. My amendment aims to secure basic support for just some of those 400,000 disabled people. The amendment will not simply carry over the same people and the same rules. I realise that the Government need to ensure a new approach. The amendment allows them to retain the right to establish the level of basic need at which disabled people would be entitled to support, as well as levels of payments. The DWP has not yet published the payment levels that disabled people can expect under PIP, but it could examine different payment levels. I beg to move.