Examination of witnesses (Questions 92 - 99)
WEDNESDAY 25 MARCH 1998
PROFESSOR IAN
BRUCE, MS
LORNA REITH
and MR RICHARD
WOOD
Chairman
92. May I start by reminding my colleagues and witnesses
that this inquiry is of particular interest to those who have
sight impairment and are blind. Therefore, as a courtesy for them
it would be easier if anybody who is making a contribution this
morning, either on the Committee side or the witness side, could
identify themselves the first time they speak. That will make
it easier for those who are blind to follow our proceedings. I
am Archy Kirkwood, I am the Chair of the Committee, and I am delighted
to welcome our friends from the Disability Benefits Consortium.
We have got Professor Ian Bruce from the Royal National Institute
for the Blind, Ms Lorna Reith from Disability Alliance, and Mr
Richard Wood from the British Council of Disabled People. Professor
Bruce, maybe we could start by asking you to say a word or two
about where you think the whole subject is at the moment in terms
of the Benefit Entitlement Project and other matters. I understand
that you have seen the Minister as a group in the past few days.
There may be some conclusions that have come from that meeting
which may be of assistance to us, and so perhaps you could do
that for us and the other witnesses could say a word or two to
set the scene. We have some areas that we want to cover in terms
of the evidence that we need to further the Committee's report,
but if you could start with that it would be very helpful.
(Professor Bruce) Thank you, Chairman. Perhaps
I could give a little background and then ask Ms Reith to come
in on some of the detail of the meeting we had on Monday. The
Disability Benefits Consortium, as I think you know, is over 250
disability organisations; we are organisations both of disabled
people and for disabled people. That means we have a lot of service
knowledge, we have a lot of knowledge about individual disabled
people. We do extensive research programmes both within our own
organisations and with the universities. We give a lot of advice
on disability benefits, so we think we are reasonably knowledgeable
about it. In terms of the Benefit Integrity Project, if I can
put in a little background, you will all be aware the whole issue
of disability benefits came into the public eye before Christmas
when there seemed to be a lot of evidence that there were considerations
of fairly significant cuts in disability benefit budgets. As time
has gone on and more evidence has been revealed there is some
indication through reassurances from the Prime Minister and from
the Secretary of State for Social Security that the reviews are
not cuts driven. As far as the disability movement is concerned
the jury is still out and a particular trigger to our uncertainty
about the context in which disability benefits are being reviewed
is the Benefit Integrity Project and some of the cuts that are
occurring de facto through that system, but also cuts that
are coming through other areas such as the changes from invalidity
benefit to incapacity benefit where those cuts are beginning to
bite, cuts in staffing of the Benefit Agency, changes in tribunal
systems which are de facto resulting in fewer people getting
awards that would have got awards before. We have a climate in
which there are cuts taking place at the moment and that is why
we are very concerned to see concrete evidence that the reviews
will not be cuts driven but will be reform led. Therefore we welcome
reassurances but we need all the concrete evidence we can get.
That is the background. In terms of the Benefit Integrity Project
you will know that we have been asking for it to be suspended
because we believe it is being badly administered and is affecting
disabled people very badly. We do not dispute the Government's
right to be able to review disability benefits. What we are disputing
is this way of doing it. We have had several meetings, primarily
with the Secretary of State for Social Security, and on Monday
we had a meeting with Baroness Hollis. Perhaps you would allow
Lorna Reith to update you on Monday's meeting and the latest developments.
(Ms Reith) We met Baroness Hollis and a number
of DSS officials on Monday. We repeated our view that BIP is wrongly
conceived and we would like it suspended. They will not agree
to that but what was important was that there was an agreement
that people over the age of 65 would now be in the exempt categories.
93. All people over 65?
(Ms Reith) All people over 65.
94. At any level of award?
(Ms Reith) BIP is only looking at people on the
higher rates of mobility and care components, so it is people
who would have been caught up in BIP who are now being exempted
if they are over 65. We had argued that it was worth doing that
because Government had already agreed not to look at attendance
allowance which goes to people over 65, so it seemed logical that
if Government did not think there was a problem with people of
that age group, why would there be a problem if they were getting
a different benefit for historical reasons? We are quite pleased
by that but I think it indicates just how flawed the whole process
is, that as BIP has gone on the Government is now looking at exempting
more and more groups because they are not finding the evidence
of incorrect awards. With regard to the other group that we have
asked about, people who are terminally ill. At the moment someone
who is terminally ill goes through a special procedure and those
people should be picked up as exempt. But people who have become
terminally ill since they were awarded benefit, the Benefits Agency
will not necessarily know who they are so there was an agreement
that that group should be exempt. The difficulty would be working
out a sensitive way of allowing those people to tell the Agency
that they are terminally ill so they can be exempted. A lot of
the other discussions that we had were I think quite positive
but were to do with changing the procedures, how visiting officers
behave, how much training they have. We were trying to get same
sex visiting officers so that women got visited by women and men
got visited by men, just to make the process a little less intrusive.
There was sympathetic response from Government on some of those
and we will be looking at the detail. What I would like to move
on to is that we also this week got the statistics for the end
of January figures for BIP. One of the things that we have raised
with Government is the need to present the statistics in a clearer
way than they have done to date. What they have been doing is
mixing up the BIP cases with ordinary renewals. People have to
renew their claim where it is expected that their condition will
change, so almost half of the people who come up for renewal will
have a change in their benefit award. To mix those in with the
BIP cases distorts the statistics so we have got an agreement
from Government that in the future they will present the statistics
in a way that concentrates just on BIP. I have done an analysis
of the statistics we got on Monday which I would like to share
with you. I have had to make some assumptions here because although
we have got statistics we have not got all the background information
we need. I think the assumptions I have based these figures on
are valid, but if we got more details from the DSS they might
change a bit. What I have done is to add back into the BIP statistics
all the people who were exempt from the process because if what
BIP is looking at is the integrity of the benefit as a whole,
then if it is agreed that with one group of people there is no
problem with the integrity of their award, it is important that
they are included in the overall picture rather than narrowing
it down and saying, "We will focus on the group of people
who are most likely not to have the right award" and then
giving the statistics just for that group. If you add back in
the people who have been exempted from the BIP process because
there is no doubt about their entitlement and then look at the
percentages (this is out of about 20,000 cases of people who were
on the higher rate mobility and higher rate care), 1.8 per cent
had their mobility component disallowed, 2.6 per cent had their
care component disallowed, 0.17 per cent had their mobility component
reduced, and 4.6 per cent had their care component reduced. I
think that those figures tell us that the BIP exercise is not
finding massive errors in the system. Yes, it would be nice if
all of those said nought per cent but it would be completely unrealistic
to expect them to do that. If you are talking about 0.17 per cent,
1.8 per cent, we are really not talking about a benefit where
there is a major problem.
Mr Goggins
95. For completeness I wonder if you could give us the
figures without including those people back in who were exempt.
(Ms Reith) They are in the DSS figures. The overall
rate of change was 25 per cent who had their mobility component
disallowed, 36 per cent had their care component disallowed——oh
no, sorry. I tell you: you have to be really careful with these
statistics. Those are the percentages of the ones that had a change.
Chairman
96. It is a difficult question.
(Ms Reith) I will have to re-work it.
(Professor Bruce) In essence it is much higher
and the argument is that BIP is a tragedy in our view and it is
all a lot of fuss for these low percentages.
(Ms Reith) Not as high as that—put those
figures out of your mind—but I can re-work those for you.
97. Could you do that just on one side of A4?
(Ms Reith) Yes.[2]
98. That would be very helpful. I do not want to get
too bogged down in the fine print of the percentages but I think
the point is an important one.
(Ms Reith) One further point on those figures
I gave you is that they do not include people who got their benefit
back on review because we have not got enough detail to be able
to work that through. We know that of the two-thirds of people
who lost benefit or had it reduced asked for a review of the decision
and a quarter of those got their benefit back on review. That
would in fact make those figures even smaller.
(Professor Bruce) Perhaps you would allow Richard
Wood to come in because this is a particularly important issue
in terms of organisations of disabled people as well as organisations
for disabled people.
(Mr Wood) In setting the scene to the background
of this, we have to take into account what it is that disabled
people have been trying to achieve over the last 20 years in terms
of full and effective civil rights. We are working alongside the
Government to try to bring that legislation along, to look at
setting up a Disability Rights Commission to give people more
rights. We rather felt that the thrust of legislation, of Government
policies, was going to be to promote our independence. This is
crucial. It is not just about an amount of money that is paid
to disabled people. It is the reason why it is paid. It is paid
to give disabled people dignity, to allow us to live independently
in the community, to allow us to be independent of other people,
to make our own choices about how we choose to buy our care in,
whom we would wish to pay to do that, which goods and services
we need to be able to purchase to support that independence. Against
all the academic background of meetings with civil servants and
letters exchanged and meetings with Ministers, there is a real
background that says that disabled people are living in fear and
anxiety. If you speak to any of the organisations who are running
information lines, information services, drop-in centres for disabled
people, the number one issue that people are raising is the integrity
programme. People are in real fear that they are going to go back
into institutions, that they are going to become dependent again
on family members, and it is not of course then just disabled
people who are worried about this. The knock-on effect in families,
in all sorts of social relationships, is quite dramatic, or traumatic.
I have to say that in leading to the process that we are now in,
of having a number of meetings with Ministers over the last couple
of weeks or so, this has been a very long, painful process. We
were writing letters back in October asking what was going on.
There were all sorts of rumours and gossip going around about
taxing, about means testing, about handing over services to local
authorities. We still have not had a reply to those letters dealing
with the answers we requested. Coupled with that there have been
a number of reports—I am sure you are going to want to look
at some of those today—and intense press coverage, some
of it leaked by Government Departments, which seems to us to have
been totally irresponsible and which have made disabled people
feel that they are defrauding the system, that they are not entitled
to the benefits. This is really undermining disabled people's
confidence in terms of our view of ourselves as equal citizens.
I am sure the Committee is aware that this is what this benefit
is paid for. It is not paid as an income. It is paid to promote
our independence and to help us to overcome the barriers that
we did not put there. The measure of a society is whether it treats
all its citizens equitably and enables us all to be equal citizens.
That is what this benefit is about and taking that benefit away
is actually making us unequal citizens.
99. I wonder if I could ask you a general question first.
I suppose it is inevitable with a new Government, particularly
after such a relatively long time in opposition, that there should
be a period during which everything is theoretically under review.
To what extent have the departmental spending reviews for the
whole of DSS expenditure become complicated with the individual
benefit review for disability living allowance? We are certainly
aware, and Richard Wood was quite right to say so, that there
was a deal of anguish and apprehension out there because there
are complicating factors. People are confused about what is going
on. To what extent do you think there is confusion about the departmental
level of review of expenditure which is yet to unfold (and we
will not know that until July) as opposed to the actual specific
DLA provision. I want to come on to that but to what extent do
you think that these things are mixed up in people's minds?
(Professor Bruce) I think they are very heavily
mixed up because there are several reviews going on and it is
very difficult to work out where one stops and another starts.
The particular point is that the Government is asking disability
organisations to enter into a review when we feel under duress
because of the Benefit Integrity Project and that is not an easy
atmosphere for us to encourage a positive dialogue. If you are
asking more generally about the spending review I think the lack
of knowledge against the background of BIP makes us assume the
worst. We had some evidence of that before Christmas and it was
extremely concrete evidence. I think this Committee will be aware
of the leaked Civil Service letter which made it absolutely clear
that the DSS was considering very significant savings in its disability
benefits budget. That letter, thank goodness, was disowned, but
the fact that the letter existed—and I can read the exact
quote from it if it is of relevance to this Committee—seemed
to us to be unequivocal evidence of active consideration of very
major cuts in the disability benefits budget. Thank goodness that
letter has been disowned, thank goodness the Prime Minister has
gone on record saying that this is not a cuts led review, as has
the Secretary of State for Social Security, and indeed as has
Frank Field in quotes in the newspapers in the last week. That
is the scenario we desperately want to believe, but against a
background of BIP it makes it that much harder to believe. We
need concrete evidence that it is not a cuts led review. The Government
is putting the record straight but more evidence of that is highly
desirable. What better evidence could we have than the suspension
of the Benefit Integrity Project?
2 See Ev. p. 49-50. Back
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