Tag: disability benefits

The Scottish Vision Strategy

I spoke today at the Royal National Institute for the Blind’s conference on the Scottish Vision Strategy, explaining some of the problems involved in the devolution of benefits, especially those for people with disabilities.   Really enthusiastic listeners at conferences tweet about it; no-one tweeted about mine, but there was an enthusiastic tweet about Ian Hamilton’s guide dog, Renton.  That puts me in my place.  For the truly dedicated, the audio recording of my presentation is here, provided as a podcast by Insight Radio (76mb).

On a personal note, I’m full of admiration for the way that blind people  manage their circumstances in a world that makes no concessions to them.  My late father, who was determined not to adapt to going blind, generally treated his white stick as a badge of shame, dragging it behind him if anyone made him carry it (that rather defeats the purpose).    Ken Reid, who is the UK Vision Ambassador for Scotland, commented: “Being blind is pretty much the same everywhere.  It’s rubbish.”

Ava's appeal: should a child with a disability still get benefits if her father works abroad?

A former student  asked me if I’d comment on a particular case reported in last week’s press.  A girl from Preston with serious disabilities has been denied DLA because her father is working in Germany.  The picture shows her mother’s response.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-JY9jrIcAAA-iD.jpg:large

The rules are complex.  When people are working in EU countries, they generally their benefits from the ‘competent state, which will usually be the place where someone works.  There’s a long list of benefits which are covered in these rules:  DLA care component is treated (oddly) as if it was contributory, and DLA mobility component is treated as a ‘special non-contributory benefit’, but the upshot of it is that only the competent state will be liable to pay.  That’s the position, then, which has led to the DWP claiming that Germany should be paying in this case.

The rule doesn’t make any sense.  Consider it first from the perspective of the operation of benefits in the UK.  Some benefits are income tested; many aren’t.  People’s pension does not go up or down because they have an occupational pension – or because they have overseas investments.  DLA is non-contributory and non-means tested; it isn’t affected because people have a court settlement, or an industrial injuries benefit, or a war pension.  So why should it change if people get a benefit in Germany as well – or if they don’t?

Next, consider it from the perspective of the European Union.  Benefits are not like residential care units, where people can only get one place at a time; people can draw income from several sources.  The European Union has been trying to develop networks of solidarity that cut across national boundaries.  Pensioners commonly get money from government and from occupational pension funds.  That’s what European integration means.  So a rule that leads to benefits stopping at national borders undermines one of the central principles of the single market.

I think the DWP’s interpretation in this case is doubtful, and it may well be challenged in the courts before long.  It looks too as if they’ve suspended benefits on the basis that Germany ought to accept liability for a non-resident disabled person, in circumstances where the UK itself wouldn’t.  There’s an evident  problem  in introducing rules that are so obscure that the DWP itself gets it wrong on its first go and where no-one has any hope of working out what ought to happen unless it goes to court.  This is bad practice in every sense, and it ought to stop here.

The Smith Commission

The Smith Commission has reported.  It was tasked to “deliver more financial, welfare and taxation powers, strengthening the Scottish Parliament within the United Kingdom”.  The powers that are promised in relation to benefits are limited:

  • The size of the areas being devolved is limited.  HM Government’s Scotland Analysis identified nearly £18bn of expenditure on benefits and tax credits for 2012/13.   Smith  proposes devolution of about £3bn out of that £18 bn.
  • The powers that are being delivered are hemmed in by the framework of the systems they are currently part of.  Income tax variation will be subject to UK rules on allowances and liability.  Although there will be some variation, Housing Benefit is not being devolved; it will be locked into the structure of Universal Credit.
  • Several important areas have been reserved, including the structure of the DWP and the imposition of conditionality and sanctions.

At the same time, there are some interesting movements towards devolution:

  • The devolution of a substantial package of benefits covering disability and related issues: Attendance Allowance, Carer’s Allowance, Disability Living Allowance (DLA), Personal Independence Payment (PIP), Industrial Injuries Disablement Allowance and Severe Disablement Allowance.  I had argued for devolving a group of inter-connected benefits, rather than taking Attendance Allowance in isolation; I’m pleased to see this here.
  • The creation of powers to develop new benefits as appropriate, which I’d also argued for specifically;
  • The devolution of employability provision, which will take hold as current contracts expire.

The continued reservations seem to indicate that the Commission began with a presumption against devolution, rather than a presumption in its favour.  The only reason I can see for reserving conditionality and sanctions seems to be a fear that the Scottish Government might have chosen to do something differently.

ESA assessments: the system is broken

Information from a range of sources suggests that the system for assessing entitlement to Employment and Support Allowance has broken down.  The most obvious immediate problem is the withdrawal of Atos from the system, leading directly to a backlog of 712,000 assessments.   Quite apart from that, however, is the revelation that in addition to  the  extensive numbers of decisions overturned on appeal, there are also many more being overturned after reconsideration by the DWP.  Ilegal has put together information from several sources – the Tribunals Service, a statement in the House of Commons about internal reconsideration in 2010 and 2011 and a further response to a Freedom of Information request covering 2012 and 2013.  There are gaps in the data, which makes it difficult for me to verify their figures, and there needs to be more information about what is being appealed in what circumstances, but Ilegal claims that the tally comes to well over half a million incorrect decisions over the past five years.   The Guardian reports that, with the introduction of ‘mandatory reconsideration’ before appeals are possible, ‘thousands’ of claims are being held in limbo – from the scale of the problems, that could be hundreds of thousands.

This shows the futility – and overweening presumption – of trying to run a benefits system for millions of people by trying to make difficult, personal assessments of their physical capacity.  Much of this could have been done more simply, effectively and quickly if the government had been prepared to accept some pragmatic compromises.  I’ve made, in the past, some modest proposals for simplifying the system, such as accepting medical evidence of certain conditions like cancer or congenital learning disabilities as sufficient for admission to the ‘support group’. The scale of the problem now means this needs to go much further.   The benefits system should accept certification from hospital consultants and  exempt certain large categories of disability such as stroke or degenerative diseases.   Sickness benefit should be restored for relatively short-term issues like pregnancy.  Independent assessment should be reserved for cases where there are  reasons for doubt.

Delays to Personal Independence Payment

The reports of delays to the implementation of PIP are hardly a surprise.  I was expressing doubts about the programme over eighteen months ago, and the Major Projects Authority had picked it up as a project in trouble last May.   As Anne Begg has commented, however, delays are no bad thing. many problems to date, such as the hamfisted attempt to reassess claimants for ESA, have been caused because the government has tried to do too much too quickly.

Saving on mobility

The regulations governing the mobility component of Personal Independence Payment are set to restrict access to the higher rate. This is being done partly by changing the distance used to test whether someone can walk from 50 metres to 20, and partly by removing dome key words (such as “reasonably”) from the regulations. The effect will also be to reduce access to Motability, the scheme for providing cars, because that depends on receiving the higher or “enhanced” rate.

I have been looking at current figures on the mobility component of DLA to get a sense of who might be affected. Currently 1800 people receive the higher rate for mobility needs. More than half the claims are due to arthritis, heart and cardiovascular issues, musculo-skeletal issues, and back pain; the change in rules will affect many of those claimants, perhaps most. By contrast, the change hardly affects the the half-million mainly lower-level claims for mobility related to psychosis, psychoneurosis and behavioural disorder. That’s the group which has most clearly increased in size in recent years, but their position is being maintained with the reform of DLA into PIP.

I’ve previously questioned whether PIP was going to make much difference in principle. This kind of rule change suggests that the government isn’t expecting much from the reform, either; the money they are hoping to save is set to come from medical reassessment and limiting access, rather than changing the target group or the rationale of the benefits.

Will PIP block claims from people with disabilities?

The Minister for Disabled People has suggested that 330,000 people will lose their Disability Living Allowance when they are assessed for PIP, the benefit that is replacing it. The magazine Community Care suggests that the target is a reduction of 600,000 people taken off benefit by 2018. I am not sure how a cut in numbers of that size is supposed to be achieved, but it is most probably made up of three elements: people who will lose the lower rate for the care component, people who fail to turn up for assessment, and people whose conditions have improved sufficiently not to qualify. (There is a fourth element, which is the attempt to individualise assessments more closely – blind people, for example, will no longer qualify automatically for higher rate mobility – but that can work both ways.)

On general principles, I think the predictions are likely to be wrong. The common experience of selective benefits has been that when governments try to impose firmer boundaries, they are liable to discover that needs are deeper, more complex and more difficult to reject than they imagine. The distinction between the lower and middle care rates on DLA has always been confusing, and many people can argue persuasively for higher banding. There are new opportunities to include people with psychiatric disorders. And the PIP rules do not exclude the growing numbers of older people claiming DLA. Short term reductions have to be offset against the general trend, and as time goes on, inexorably, there will be pressure to extend protection. That happened with Single Payments, it happened with Incapacity Benefit, it has happened with DLA, and it will probably happen here, too.

Disability, the undeserving poor and a game of space invaders

Another announcement about benefits policy is made by the Daily Telegraph, the third hostile proposal I’ve had occasion to post about in the last three days. This one comes from their Senior Political Correspondent, writing from Abu Dhabi (I’m not making this up). It is a proposal that drug addicts or alcoholics should have benefits suspended if they refuse treatment. “This would see alcoholics denied benefits unless they attended regular meetings at a support group such as Alcoholics Anonymous. Similarly, drug addicts would be denied payment if they refused to be treated.” Apparently, what is keeping addicts from giving up the drugs is that they have too much money.

The article continues: “The proposal, which is likely to be fought by campaigners, could be extended to people who claim benefits because they cannot work due to obesity or back pain.” What objections, one wonders, could campaigners have?

This is beginning to feel like a surreal game of Space Invaders; the aim is to stop the bombs landing, while correspondents from remote places drop their loads, faster and faster, until something finally gets through. If anyone is out there: the reason why people with disabilities need support from benefits is that it is difficult to manage with a serious illness and no income. A good reason why you should support them is that, in time to come, either you, or a member of your family, or someone you care about, will be ill or disabled, too. That might just be because of obesity, or mental illness, or back pain, or any of the hundreds of disorders that people suffer. There are good reasons, then, to defend the system; but in Space Invaders, the defenders always lose.

An argument for free bus passes

Speaking of the Telegraph, the latest salvo in Iain Duncan Smith’s bombardment of the benefits system is directed at free bus passes and TV licences for pensioners. I’ve made general arguments for universal benefits before, but I’d like to add another reason for defending bus passes for pensioners. The structure of benefits for people with disabilities currently makes a distinction between people above and below the age of 65. Below the age of 65, Disability Living Allowance has two components: care, and mobility. Above the age of 65, there is only Attendance Allowance, which has no mobility component. In other words, support for mobility is substantially removed at the age of 65. The same distinction will continue to apply after the introduction of Personal Independence Payment.

From previouses censuses of disability, it’s possible to say that roughly two thirds of people with mobility difficulties are older people. We have two options. We can try to remove the kind of unfairness which means that someone who has a stroke at age 63 is treated much more favourably than someone who has a stroke at 66. There’s a very strong case case for doing that, but it would involve a complex, selective assessment of millions of people, and it could be staggeringly expensive. Or we can try more generally to offer practical support with mobility for a very large number of people. That is most effectively done with public transport. If we continue to suspend personalised support at 65, then from 65 up we have to offer generalised support. All right, it’s not ideal, and it’s not enough, but it has to be better than offering nothing.

Concerns about disability benefits

The Hardest Hit Campaign is a coalition of groups concerned about the impact of targeting people with disabilities for cuts. Their report, The Tipping Point, records the concern of many people with the prospect of losing current benefits. It follows hard on the heels of Holes in the Safety Net, a report anticipating losses to disabled people from the introduction of Universal Credit, published by Citizens Advice, TheChildren’s Society and Disability Rights UK. Pat’s petition asks the government to “Stop and review the cuts to benefits and services which are falling disproportionately on disabled people, their carers and families”.

Two thirds of the benefits paid by the DWP go to pensioners, and those are currently protected. Of the remaining benefits, nearly half go to people who are sick or disabled. The cuts are falling on this group, because the government has left itself with little else to cut.