House of Commons Hansard Debates for 9 Jul 1990

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Social Security Bill (Allocation of Time)

7.12 pm

The Minister for Social Security and Disabled People (Mr. Nicholas Scott : I beg to move

That the Order of the House [28th March] be supplemented as follows :--

Lords Amendments 1. The proceedings on Consideration of Lords Amendments shall be completed at this day's sitting and, subject to the provisions of the Order of 28th March, those proceedings shall, if not previously brought to a conclusion, be brought to a conclusion three hours after the commencement of proceedings on this Order. 2.--(1) For the purpose of bringing any proceedings to a conclusion in accordance with paragraph 1 above--

(a) Mr. Speaker shall first put forthwith any Question which has already been proposed from the Chair and not yet decided and, if that Question is for the amendment of a Lords Amendment, shall then put forthwith the Question on any further Amendment of the said Lords Amendment moved by a Minister of the Crown and on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown, That this House doth agree or disagree with the Lords in the said Lords Amendment or, as the case may be, in the said Lords Amendment as amended ;

(b) Mr. Speaker shall then designate such of the remaining Lords Amendments as appear to him to involve questions of Privilege and shall--

(i) put forthwith the Question on any Amendment moved by a Minister of the Crown to a Lords Amendment and then put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown, That this House doth agree or disagree with the Lords in their Amendment, or as the case may be, in their Amendment as amended ;

(ii) put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown, That this House doth disagree with the Lords in a Lords Amendment ;

(iii) put forthwith with respect to the Amendments designated by Mr. Speaker which have not been disposed of the Question, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendments ; and (

(iv) put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Lords in all the remaining Lords Amendments ;

(c) as soon as the House has agreed or disagreed with the Lords in any of their Amendments Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith a separate Question on any other Amendment moved by a Minister of the Crown relevant to that Lords Amendment.

(2) Proceedings under sub-paragraph (1) above shall not be interrupted under any Standing Order relating to the sittings of the House.

Stages subsequent to first Consideration of Lords Amendments 3. Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown for the consideration forthwith of any further Message from the Lords on the Bill.

4. The proceedings on any such further Message from the Lords shall, if not previously brought to a conclusion, be brought to a conclusion one hour after the commencement of those proceedings. 5. For the purpose of bringing those proceedings to a conclusion-- (

(a) Mr. Speaker shall first put forthwith any Question which has already been proposed from the Chair and not yet decided, and shall then put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown which is related to the Question already proposed from the Chair ;

(b) Mr. Speaker shall then designate such of the remaining items in the Lords Message as appear to him to involve questions of Privilege and shall

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(i) put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown on any item ;

(ii) in the case of each remaining item designated by Mr. Speaker, put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Lords in their Proposal ; and

(iii) put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Lords in all the remaining Lords Proposals.

Supplemental 6.--(1) Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown for the appointment and quorum of a Committee to draw up Reasons.

(2) A Committee appointed to draw up Reasons shall report before the conclusion of the sitting at which it is appointed.

7.--(1) In this paragraph "the proceedings" means proceedings on Consideration of Lords Amendments, on any further Message from the Lords on the Bill, on the appointment and quorum of a Committee to draw up Reasons and on the Report of such a Committee.

(2) Paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 14 (Exempted business) shall apply to the proceedings.

(3) No dilatory Motion with respect to, or in the course of, the proceedings shall be made except by a member of the Government, and the Question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith.

(4) If the proceedings are interrupted by a Motion for the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 20 (Adjournment on specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration), a period equal to the duration of the proceedings on the Motion shall be added to the period at the end of which the proceedings are to be brought to a conclusion.

The motion provides for a total of three hours debate both on the motion itself and on Lords amendments to the Bill. I do not intend to detain the House overlong, as I hope that there will be general agreement that we should move quickly to debating the important issues before us.

I make no apology for asking the House to agree that we should limit the debate on our consideration of these matters to three hours. The House will know that we do not introduce such motions lightly. I am especially mindful of the passionate speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge- Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) in the debate on the original timetable motion moved by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House on Report on 28 March. The House will expect me clearly to set out why we are taking this further step. The motion is being introduced in the knowledge that the Bill is not an especially sizeable piece of Government legislation--it has only 23 clauses and seven schedules. Nevertheless, it has had a great deal of time devoted to it--I believe, its fair share of time--both here and in another place. To date, it has had 50 hours of debate on the Floor of the House and in Committee, and a further 30 hours in another place. Much of that time has been well spent as it has provided opportunities for amendments to the original Bill that have been widely welcomed, especially those on the pensions provisions and on the clause dealing with income support in residential homes. We have responded to debate and consultation both here and elsewhere and we have made important changes. There will be further evidence tonight of the Government's willingness to listen to Parliament.

The Bill has had a good run and the timetable motion is being introduced in the knowledge that only a limited amount of business remains. I have no doubt that the House will wish to spend some time debating benefit entitlement for students and, perhaps, the scheme for the recovery of benefit from tort damage awards. However,

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the bulk of the remaining amendments made to the Bill by another place are minor and technical and should not long detain us. I emphasise that it is important for social security issues to be debated regularly and fully in Parliament. The contributions made during debates are almost invariably thoughtful and sincere, although I would not suggest for one moment that it always provides a comfortable time for Ministers or that the Government agree with everything that is said. However, it is important to remember both the limited time that we have available for the business tonight and the fact that there will be other formal occasions on which such debates will arise--for example, those that arise from the annual uprating statement and the associated orders.

I very much hope that the sensible motion for the timetabling of the business is acceptable to the House.

7.15 pm

Mr. Michael Meacher (Oldham, West) : In an understandably and desirably short introduction, the Minister referred to minor and technical changes and suggested that the remaining business could be dealt with easily within the proposed three hours. I want to set out the Opposition's reasons for believing that such a timetable is pitifully and unreasonably short.

As hon. Members are only too well aware, the Government have already guillotined the Bill's proceedings. Since then, at least four highly significant changes have been made in another place. In particular, an issue is now developing that could blow up into a serious constitutional argument between this House and another place, especially in the wake of the War Crimes Bill. I am referring to the rights of students, especially postgraduates, to retain entitlement to housing benefit unless adequate alternative compensation is made. As I shall show, that is not being provided for in the Government's proposals. The issue incenses not only the Opposition, but widespread, independent and informed opinion outside this place. It has united 21 full-time academics and 12 university vice- chancellors in another place--mostly on the Cross-Benches--in opposition to the Government. Above all, it is a vital issue affecting the basic interests of hundreds of thousands of students, yet it has never been debated in this place.

We are now being allotted a mere three hours to debate not only the timetable motion, but the 20 Lords amendments that the Government are seeking either to amend or to overturn, plus other Lords amendments. That is the same abuse of the principles of parliamentary debate as Lord Justice Purchas complained of so bitterly last week, when he excoriated the Government for what he called wholesale and unregulated powers taken by the Secretary of State over the administration of the social fund. In his judgment, he assumed that Homer nodded--in other words, that Parliament had been asleep. In fact, we were not asleep ; we were simply overriden by the juggernaut of the Government's guillotine. I advise the judge--or, indeed, any other judge--that on this occasion Homer is not nodding. We are protesting with the greatest vigour at our disposal about what we might call the laughable--if it were not so objectionable--truncating of the time for debate of what is fast becoming a significant constitutional issue.

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It is not only the manifest and blatant injustice of withdrawing the entitlement of students to housing benefit that is being squeezed into a three-hour debate ; there is also the significant losses being inflicted on disabled people and the nasty little issue of the Government's proposal to deduct social security benefits from the Motor Insurers Bureau's compensation payments. That is on top of the Government's action in deducting social security benefits from compensation payments for industrial injury, so that the injured worker ends up with very little--and nothing for his pain and suffering. That matter also needs adequate time for debate. In addition, there are the Government's highly objectionable proposals to restrict entitlement in cases of error. The McKiernon judgment laid down that the rule that limited claims to five years from the time of the industrial injury was ultra vires. The Government are now advancing the constitutionally dubious doctrine that what was ruled to be illegal shall be made retroactively legal. Furthermore, the Government are introducing a new doctrine on the backdating of claims. They propose that a successful claim shall be backdated only to the date of the commissioner's decision rather than to the actual date of the claim itself. In other words, if the Department of Social Security gets the law wrong, the new law will deem that it got it right up to the point that it was told of its error. That is manifest nonsense. Those matters, too, urgently require adequate time for debate.

There are two other aspects that are new to the Bill since it left this House. One concerns the real danger of eviction of elderly people from residential and nursing homes as a consequence of what is still a major shortfall in income support, even after the Secretary of State's concession. The other is the £10 disregard for lone parents, to give them an incentive to claim maintenance from the absent parent. A whole range of other issues arise in the 20 Lords amendments. One is equal pensionable ages for men and women in respect of money purchase schemes. That is a major issue, if ever there was one, but we may not even have time to debate it tonight. Other matters clearly require further and proper debate, but that will be denied by the guillotine. It will preclude discussion of the many outstanding social security issues, such as the continued freezing of child benefit, and abuse of natural rights under the social fund which is regularly the subject of judicial attack. There is also the removal of all benefit rights from 16 and 17-year-olds, and the worsening plight of homeless families. To restrict debate on all the Lords amendments to only three hours makes a mockery of the principle of adequate parliamentary debate. To do so when one group of those amendments has huge financial implications strikes at the heart of our further and higher education system, and has never previously been debated in this House is, by any standards, an outrage.

I cannot believe that every Conservative Member denies that we are justified in rejecting the guillotine with a vote. Our only reason for not doing so is that we do not intend to collude with the Government in restricting even further the time available for debate. It is wrong and unprincipled to confine debate on 20 Lords amendments to three hours. Having made our position clear, we intend

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to concentrate debating time and the maximum number of votes on the subject of those amendments, to which we are so strongly opposed. 7.23 pm

Mr. Alfred Morris (Manchester, Wythenshawe) : This is another preposterous motion to guillotine debate on issues of enormous importance to people who crave our help and concern for problems that most right hon. and hon. Members have never had to face. The problems of disabled students, to which several of the Lords amendments refer, alone merit a three-hour debate in this House.

There need be no speculation about the effect of the Government's motion. It will make impossible any debate on many of the amendments and that alone is a parliamentary outrage, yet even the amendments that will be dealt with must be debated with insulting brevity in what remains of the three hours the Government are allowing for debate on the motion and the amendments as a whole. It is put to me by one severely disabled person that even some of the most dictatorial regimes across the world allow more consideration of disputes over social policy than this House will be permitted by the motion before us.

The more we try to do justice to any particular amendment this evening, the less time we shall have to debate others. That happened when our debates on Report and Third Reading on the Bill were guillotined and I want to describe briefly just one of the consequences. We had no time then--just as we shall have no opportunity this evening, despite the summary dispatch of other issues--even to discuss a provision the Government inserted into the Bill that will cheat of disablement benefit a huge number of people who have been deafened by their work or who suffer from industrial asthma.

In the case of my constituent Mr. Frank McKiernon, now aged 74 and a victim of occupational deafness, it was unanimously held by the Court of Appeal that the Government acted illegally in denying him disablement benefit. They were also refused leave to appeal to the House of Lords. The Government's reaction to the referee's decision was not one of apology but of defiance. Having been given the red card, as it were, they resolved to sit it out on the pitch and then to use force majeure to change the rule book.

The Government decided, without giving their intentions any publicity, to use this Social Security Bill to reverse Mr. McKiernon's legal victory in the Court of Appeal. The guillotining of our consideration of the Bill had helped the Government both to avoid publicity for a tactic that is bitterly resented by the disabled people affected and to duck the debate that there ought to have been, or should be now, in this House.

The Government will save more than £100 million by their action, while countless thousands of deaf people and victims of industrial asthma will have the right given to them by the Court of Appeal taken away. Warm praise is due to Peter Rosenfeld of Wythenshawe citizens advice bureau for his work on Mr. McKiernon's case. My constituent's legal adviser, Richard Poynter, to whom great credit must also go for his handling of the case, says in a scorching criticism of the Government :

"For the DSS to change the law retrospectively in order to cheat a disabled old age pensioner of his court victory is an act of petty spite. Once again, the Department is putting itself above the law by changing the rules to suit itself after the

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event rather than obey them while they are in force. Its vindictive action against Mr. McKiernon shows the Government's contempt for the rule of law."

That is a grave charge against the Government, one that merits vigorous debate, but there will be no opportunity even to express a view.

By their guillotine, the Government have succeeded in enacting the most odious kind of retrospective legislation, of which Lord Boyd-Carpenter, from the Conservative Benches in another place, described as "oppressive" and which everyone else who knows what is happening condemns as a shocking abuse of power.

It would be a stain on the reputation of this House for the Government to go unchallenged. Nothing more clearly shows the harm that has been done already by guillotining our consideration of the Bill and the authoritarian nature of the Governnent's further curtailment of parliamentary scrutiny of its provisions.

7.27 pm

Mr. Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire) : I wholly applaud the attitude taken by the official Opposition in forgoing an extensive debate on the guillotine motion, so that we can spend the valuable time remaining considering the substantive issues that are before us.

I accept that Government need to resort to a guillotine in Committee and put their proposals to the House when a Bill is first presented. Sometimes, Opposition parties collectively decide to use time as a weapon. If I were the Government, in such cases I would reluctantly resort to the guillotine- -but this evening we face a very different situation. The membership of the House of Lords includes many people of high standing and of considerable expertise in particular areas. That is particularly true of their knowledge of the academic world, and many of the amendments before us have a direct bearing on our educational system and the way that students are financed. For this House to skate over decisions taken by the other place, after full consideration, is wrong and is in a completely different category from the guillotines to which Governments resort when a Bill is being considered in Committee.

I have never been behind the curtain of secrecy in any Government Department. The Minister may say that I am the better for that. Perhaps it will never happen but I live in hope. However, the Minister's Department has the benefit of social security Bills each year. This issue will not be left to languish for three or four years. We cannot anticipate what will be in the next Queen's Speech, but unless something unusual happen the Department knows that there will be an opportunity in the next Session to address these important issues within a more appropriate time scale. The Department therefore has no excuse for rushing through these provisions, which will result in ill-digested legislation.

I do not know what power Ministers have over the authorities of the House and the Leader of the House. However, social security matters are getting slightly out of hand. The courts of the land, as well as Opposition Members, are now saying with monotonous regularity that the means by which we are implementing technical changes to a very technical social security system is not good enough. The Government's ill-digested legislation

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will lead to future problems. They will have to introduce yet more guillotines if they want future social security Bills to reach the statute book. Conservative Members should also be worried ; their constituents will suffer from the effects of ill-digested legislation.

This is an issue of the House of Commons. Whatever view I may take of the contents of the Bill, the House is right to object strongly and loudly at its treatment. If we do not object, what will happen? The trend will get worse. I do not know whether it is the Department or the Leader of the House who keeps saying, "Don't worry ; we'll slip this through in three hours. We did it last year and we got away with it ; we had only a few court cases to clear up as a result. We've got to get our timetable through, so don't worry about that." It is a scandalous way to deal with legislation. If hon. Members did not take the opportunity to say so at this stage, it would be a great disgrace, and we should be doing a great disservice to the House of Commons.

7.32 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mrs. Gillian Shephard) : I shall be brief, in the interests of allowing hon. Members to debate the important amendments that have come to us from another place. However, I must repeat what my right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and Disabled People said at the beginning : timetable motions are not tabled lightly. The motion, however, provides us with sufficient time to consider the amendments.

The Bill has been given a fair amount of parliamentary time, both here and in another place. It will lead to changes in social security benefits for the disabled and provide greater protection for members of occupational pension schemes. The Bill includes interim measures to help lone parent families to obtain maintenance. It also makes changes to the law relating to income support and various other benefits, including national insurance contributions.

It is a short Bill ; it contains 23 clauses and seven schedules. Eighty hours of debate have already been devoted to it. The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) referred to a number of social security matters, as well as to the Lords amendments. I remind him that we are debating not the Bill as a whole but the Lords amendments. He referred to the McKiernon case, as did the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris). I remind them that Mr. McKiernon was granted an award last week, including substantial arrears.

There will be an opportunity for the House to debate a number of the detailed issues raised by the hon. Member for Oldham, West and the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe, who, I know, has a particular interest in disabled students. As long as we make progress, we shall have time adequately to consider the Lords amendments. I do not apologise for the number of Government amendments that have been brought here from the Lords for consideration. The vast majority are minor, technical changes. The House understands the complexity of the law, notably the law relating to pensions. I repeat that we regret having to introduce a timetable motion. However, it is important for the smooth conduct of both the remaining stages of the Bill and parliamentary business as a whole. I commend it to the House. Question put and agreed to.

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Orders of the Day

Social Security Bill

Lords amendments considered.

Lords amendment : No. 1, after Clause 2 insert the following new Clause--

Income support : disabled students " . The following paragraph is inserted at the end of paragraph (c) of section 20(3) of the 1986 Act--

"(cc

(he is a disabled person and he is participating in a course of higher education and he fulfills the conditions in paragraphs (a) to (c) of this subsection ;".")

7.34 pm

The Minister for Social Security and Disabled People (Mr. Nicholas Scott) : I beg to move, That this House doth disagree with the Lordsin the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker) : With this, it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments Nos. 2 and 3 and the Government motions to disagree with those Lords amendments.

Mr. Scott : I ought to explain that, when Mr. Speaker's original selection list was issued, Lords amendments Nos. 7, 8 and 9 were to be considered alongside Lords amendments Nos. 1, 2 and 3. As a result of discussions through the usual channels, it was agreed that it would be more convenient if we split consideration of the amendments.

This group of amendments brings us to the issue of students' entitlement to social security benefits. Wearing my hat as Minister for Disabled People, I initially approached Lords amendments Nos. 1 to 3 with some sympathy. They relate to the position of disabled students and how we propose to define and indentify those who will remain eligible for income support and housing benefit. Despite my sympathy, however, I intend to explain why I believe that the amendments should not remain on the face of the Bill. May I also explain briefly why we have taken the unusual step of making proof copies of the social Security Advisory Committee report on the draft student loan amendment regulations available to the House before the regulations are laid.

You will be aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that there has been a good deal of speculation in the press about the content of the committee's report, much of it wide of the mark. There were also a number of references to the report during the debates in another place. In these circumstances, and in view of the interest that hon. Members have already demonstrated in the subject, we thought that it would be helpful and to put proof copies of the SSAC's report in the Library and to make copies available in the Vote office in order to ensure that the House was as fully informed as possible before today's debate. It would, of course, have been inappropriate for the Government to lay the regulations before the House had taken a view on amendments that would affect the scope of the regulations. I hope, therefore, that hon. Members will agree that this unusual step was sensible and helpful.

The amendments seek to introduce a definition of a disabled student, based on the criteria used for the local authority register of disability. I have already said that I

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have some sympathy with the intentions underlying the amendments. However, they are seriously defective and I shall seek the House's agreement to overturn them. Rather than quibbling about the precise technical drafting of the amendments, I shall confine my comments to the intention that lies behind them, which I understand.

I am certainly aware of the concerns expressed by hon. Members and their Lordships about the position of certain disabled students under the new arrangements for student support, which will take effect from the next academic year. We, too, recognise the special circumstances of students in vulnerable groups, including the disabled. We have always intended to preserve their entitlement to housing benefit and income support. Our views have differed only in defining what we mean by a disabled student for the purposes of benefit entitlement. Perhaps it would be helpful if I explained what our original proposals were and our reasons for putting them forward. The draft regulations that were referred to the SSAC in February provided for the continuation of income support and housing benefit entitlement for those students who meet the criteria for the disability premium and, additionally, any student who had previously met the definition of a disabled student under existing income support regulations. In practice, we expect most--if not all--students who have met that income support definition to meet the new one. However, because the old definition is based on the decision of an adjudication officer, it could not be imported into the housing benefit system. The housing benefit scheme operates without adjudication officers and it was therefore important to establish clear and straightforward qualifying conditions which it would be easy for local authorities to apply efficiently.

The criteria for the disability premium are based on the receipt of one or more of the disability benefits, long-term incapacity for work or registered blindness. These criteria are now well established in the income -related benefits and are being successfully applied both by local authorities and by local Department of Social Security offices. We felt that the criteria would cover a sufficiently broad spectrum of disability to pick up those students who face significant extra living costs because of their disability. Moreover, they could be clearly expressed in regulations and would be familiar both to claimants and to those administering the schemes. The House will have noted from the copies of the report that have been placed in the Library that the Social Security Advisory Committee also believed the definition to offer a reasonable and practicable yardstick. The existence of the premium structure in the income -related benefits recognises the fact that certain groups of people face additional financial burdens. The disability premium is no different in that respect. However, I should stress that neither the disability premium nor disability benefits generally are intended to cater for the special educational needs of students with disabilities. In our proposed definition we therefore sought to identify students who face additional daily living costs that were not necessarily consequent on their attendance at a course of education.

I am sure that hon. Members who have studied these affairs will not need reminding that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science has substantially enhanced the financial assistance available

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through the disabled students allowance. Those improvements will provide a good deal of support for disabled students to help them with their particular educational needs.

A number of debates have now taken place on disabled

students--during our proceedings on this Bill and during the passage of the Education (Student Loans) Act 1990. In those debates the position of deaf students was of particular concern. Indeed, their Lordships' debate on the amendments before us focused almost entirely on those students, although the amendments would go substantially wider.

In one respect, however, I believe that the criteria suggested by the amendments would not go far enough towards meeting their Lordships' wishes. It would not be possible to identify deaf students in Scotland. Registration with the local authority of the kind operated in England and Wales does not exist north of the border, and there is no register of any sort for the deaf. It would therefore be impossible under those amendments for housing benefit officers and DSS administrators to identify the group at issue.

We have considered carefully the concerns expressed in both Houses and those voiced by organisations representing deaf people. As a result, I am pleased to report to the House that we propose to consult the local authority associations on draft regulations which will preserve the income support and housing benefit entitlement of students who are entitled to a disabled students allowance by reason of deafness. Incidentally, under these arrangements we would include any student who has such an additional requirement indicated on his notice of award, even if, because of the means of testing of the disabled students allowance, the student was not actually entitled to payment of that allowance.

That criterion will be additional to those that we have already proposed, and we will aim to have it in place for the start of the next academic year, subject to the consultation with the local authority associations. To allow adequate time for the consultation, I propose to lay the necessary regulations, which will be subject to the negative procedure, after the main body of regulations. We believe that an extension of the present proposed arrangements to include deaf students who are entitled to a disabled students allowance recognises the needs and concerns expressed in this Chamber and elsewhere. In view of the Government's willingness to meet the concerns voiced on behalf of deaf students, and bearing in mind the defective nature of the amendments, I urge the House to reject them.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : I have to inform the House that Lords amendments Nos. 1 and 2 both involve privilege.

Mr. Alfred Morris (Manchester, Wythenshawe) : Time for this debate is now so strictly rationed that I must necessarily deal only very briefly with these important amendments. In doing so, I note that the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam), which would have had our support, has not been selected for debate. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) and me, the hon. Gentleman is a trustee of the fund that Lord Snowdon so generously founded to help meet the costs incurred by students with disabilities for which there is no statutory

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provision. Work with that important fund strongly emphasises the truth that all such students by definition and not least those who are deaf--have problems over and above those experienced by the generality of students. That is why I warmly welcomed the Lords amendments when they were accepted in the other place.

The Government oppose the Lords amendments in the terms in which they are drafted. In the case of the Minister for Disabled People, I am sure that he does so with some serious and sincere misgivings. The Minister has clearly lost at least part of a battle with the Treasury, and my purpose this evening is to make our contribution to ensuring that the overwhelming public support for the Lords amendments is properly reflected in this House.

7.45 pm

I sometimes have the feeling that, if the Lords were to dare even to amend factual or spelling errors in their legislation, Social Security Ministers would now be made to move,

"That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said amendment."

In supporting the Lords amendments, we on the Opposition Benches are concerned to correct now the unacceptable effects of the Bill as it left this House and to vouchsafe to all students who are disabled the retention of their entitlements to housing benefit and income support.

The Government have recently stated that deaf students are among those least likely to incur extra weekly costs because of their disabilities and, therefore, that they should not continue to receive such help. That is not true. By design, housing benefit and income support are not intended to cover additional costs. They are income maintenance benefits and, in fact, the Government failed in the other place to respond to a direct challenge made to them by Lady Darcy de Knayth on this point.

The Royal National Institute for the Deaf has shown that, unlike other students, those who are deaf cannot top up their maintenance grants with earned income. They have to spend longer on their studies due to communication difficulties and, even if part-time or casual work in vacations or in the evenings is not an impractical option for them, they are seen by many employers as "difficult" employees. That is because they often have to rely on lip-speaking or sign language interpreters for effective communication. The Minister for Disabled People knows all this as well as I do, just as he knows that, by its very nature, part-time and casual work for students--which is often waitressing, bar or reception work --is not always suitable for deaf people.

There is much statistical evidence that deaf people not only find it harder to obtain jobs but are, on average, paid less than people who can hear. In that regard, deaf students face problems similar to those faced by other disabled students whose vulnerability is already identified. They are undoubtedly much more likely to be unemployed or underemployed than able- bodied people with the same qualifications. There is, of course, no shortage of able-bodied students looking for part-time or casual work. That is just one of the difficulties in which students with disabilities find themselves today.

From many recent case studies undertaken by the RNID, I want to cite just one to illustrate the way in which deaf students, through no fault of their own, can be worse off than their peers. A deaf student at London university

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had numerous applications for part-time and casual work rejected. At long last, her persistence was rewarded by the offer of a job handing out magazines at tube stations in the mornings. But she was unable to keep the job, as it involved phoning in each morning at 5 am to confirm that she was coming and to receive details of the station at which she would be required to work that day.

In a letter to Lord Henderson of Brompton dated 17 May, Baroness Blatch for the Government referred to the problem of providing straightforward criteria

"which can be clearly expressed in regulations and readily understood by those who administer the benefits and, indeed, by those who might claim them."

But that is not a problem as far as deaf students are concerned. The Minister said that he will now be consulting local authorities about definition, but is it not already solved? The clinically accepted levels at which people are judged to have a significant hearing loss can be used. Those levels, approved by the British Society of Audiology, were initiated by the British Association of Teachers of the Deaf. Their use would be a straightforward basis for assessing entitlement to the retention of existing benefits. All hearing-impaired students who can benefit from hearing aids must have regular audiograms and the proof that they offer could be simply understood by those administering benefits. I hope that the Minister will accept that the RNID, in its briefing for this debate, has already provided the way forward in solving the difficulties about definition to which he referred.

In supporting the Lords amendments, we are not asking for deaf students now to have their educational needs subsidised by social security payments. On the contrary, we are saying that deaf students should not have to use for other purposes the money given to them for essential communication support and equipment in the course of their studies. Before the introduction of the new allowances, deaf students often had to use their maintenance grants to provide educational support. Unless they all retain existing benefits, as I hope will now very soon be confirmed, further to the Minister's welcome statement, the opposite will happen and they will be left in financial hardship.

In a letter that I received today, Lord Renwick states that the Dyslexia Educational Trust is trying to make a similar case on behalf of dyslexics. I am sure that there are right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House who will want to help if parliamentary opportunities occur to argue the trust's claims. Nothing in all my years in this place gave me more pleasure than to legislate on the educational needs of dyslexics in the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. The Minister clearly does not intend to help them now. Sadly, he said nothing that took account of the claim of the Dyslexia Educational Trust for very urgent consideration of the needs of dyslexic students.

I should like the Government to think very carefully again about definition. In the case of students who are deaf, we are discussing perhaps no more than 300 whose problems are already daunting enough without adding to those of any one of them by rejecting the Lords amendments. The cost of helping them all is minuscule. In his statement the Minister said nothing about the anticipated cost, but it is clearly very small. He knows as well as I do that disabled students passionately want to succeed, by their studies, in exchanging dependence on social security for the independence of having a job and

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