Select Committee on Social Security Minutes of Evidence


Examination of witnesses (Questions 140 - 155)

WEDNESDAY 25 MARCH 1998

PROFESSOR IAN BRUCE, MS LORNA REITH and MR RICHARD WOOD  

Mr Wicks

  140.  It shows the need for a review if that is true.

  (Professor Bruce)  Yes. If you remember right at the very beginning we said a review under the right circumstances is a constructive thing but at the moment we do not have the right circumstances and that is why we are being very cautious about any sort of commitments.

Mr Goggins

  141.  I apologise for the fact that I am introducing issues which we just do not have the time to explore in full but nonetheless it is important that we make a start. Richard, a few minutes ago you made a very powerful statement about how the benefit system and how society treats disabled people as a burden. It struck me as we looked at the written evidence and heard some of the evidence this morning that in fact so much of the DLA system actually forces disabled people to prove they are a burden and the bigger the burden they can prove themselves to be the more benefit they might get. One of the ideas that we have heard is the idea of an All Living Test. The Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board told us last week that there was general support for an All Living Test. It would not be the first thing you have disagreed with the Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board on. I wonder if you are part of that broad support? What comments would you make? What difficulties do you see?

  (Mr Wood)  The comment I heard on that was if we were not all living we would be dead.

  142.  You are not supportive of the idea?

  (Mr Wood)  Basically it is difficult to be supportive of any ideas when they are just plucked out of the air. This is the whole problem with what is going on, people are coming up with all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas without proper consultation, without proper discussion about the way forward. I said earlier on, and let me reiterate, we could not as a movement support any overall cuts in benefits because we believe they are already at the lowest rate. We believe that DLA should be about supporting independence, it should be about supporting our ability to live in the community. This is not just an impairment related issue, it is about the barriers and experiences that impact on us. For example, take a person in a given medical category, their experience of trying to live independently will not be the same amongst all people because we are in different social circumstances. If we want to move towards a benefit system that supports individual people's need for support in the community then I think overall people would say "yes, that is good" because that is the way disabled people want to be moving on. We want to be moving to full citizenship. We want to have the same rights and responsibilities as other citizens. If we need benefits to support that, as some of us clearly do, then that is the way that we would like to go. Over and above that we want open dialogue.

  (Ms Reith)  If I can just comment on the All Living Test, without knowing quite what they meant, I believe they referred to the All Work Test for Incapacity Benefit in the same paragraph. The All Work Test for Incapacity Benefit has been widely discredited. We were very pleased that the incoming Labour Government actually had a manifesto commitment to go back to that test because of concerns at the way it was working. It is a functionally based test: can you lift a saucepan, can you move up and down stairs, stand and sit, and it does not bear any relation to the world of work. If the DLA Advisory Board are saying "we will take this completely discredited model, the All Work Test, and we will call it an All Living Test and we will do something similar for DLA" then I am deeply, deeply pessimistic about it being of any use at all. That may not be what they meant. The difficulty is that there is not very much information there about what they had in mind.

  143.  Putting aside the All Work Test and putting aside the fact that the proposal came from the Advisory Board, are there things that you can see that could be introduced that would make this process more positive and emphasise capacity rather than incapacity? That is the question.

  (Ms Reith)  It is a very, very difficult issue. If you are wanting to provide money to someone because of the extent of their needs somehow there has to be a process by which they demonstrate the extent of those needs and it is quite hard for that to be done in anything other than a negative way. I think there is a genuine problem there that we will probably never overcome. But there might be ways of phrasing things in a different way, "how can we make you more independent", "what would be necessary so that"—the phraseology was put in a slightly different way.

  (Professor Bruce)  It is important we do not throw out the baby with the bath water because so often everyone thinks they can design a new benefit that is going to be perfect. It is incremental and the issue of self-assessment, which was established in 1992, is very important. Incrementally it can be made better and better and better. We have not just got to chuck it all out and come up with a new idea.

  (Mr Wood)  I do firmly believe that you could move to what we would call social model benefits as opposed to medical model benefits. What that would do could be quite amazing in terms of promoting disabled people's independence.

Mr Goggins:  I am sure that this Committee would be interested in any proposal or practical suggestions. Can I move to Life Awards. One of the members of the Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board, who is disabled, said to us last week in giving her evidence that when she was given a Life Award it was like being given a life sentence. Since then we have had a letter from Professor Grahame which says: "Life Awards are a particular problem as they do not allow for improvements in the applicant's condition leading to reviews of care or mobility needs". I would be interested in your comments.

Ms Buck

  144.  Particularly damaging to children.

  (Ms Reith)  It was Nicole Davoud who said that she found getting a Life Award depressing. That is her experience. Our experience is that for lots of people it is a relief, it gives people security and the opportunity to plan ahead. Quite often people only get Life Awards when they have had a number of short term awards first. Yes, I can see that in certain circumstances people might feel that it is difficult and it may well be that there are people on Life Awards and there are medical changes. I actually think that is a very, very small proportion. For the vast majority of people as they get older their position is not likely to improve dramatically. We think that Life Awards are very important. It may be that you would want to be doubly sure when someone first gets the award that it is right that they get a Life Award but because it gives people that security and ability to plan into the future and to know that they have got that one sum of money they can rely on. It has been very, very important in all the debate around Welfare to Work. If you are doing calculations for people about what happens if they move from being out of work into work, the one constant is Disability Living Allowance because it is not affected by whether you are earning or not. When you are saying "This is what you get now, this is what you might be able to claim if you take up that job that pays this much", the one secure income that person knows they have got is the Disability Living Allowance and it may be that that is what enables them to have their Motability car. We would still see a role for Life Awards.

Mr Gibb

  145.  One aspect of this report you might agree with, it would be helpful to have it on the record that you do, is they consider that cash payments are preferable to the provision of a direct service. Do you agree with that?

  (Mr Wood)  Yes.

  (Ms Reith)  Yes, we do indeed.

  146.  Can you briefly describe the effect that greater community care has had on this benefit, Disability Living Allowance?

  (Ms Reith)  Are you talking in terms of take up of benefit?

  147.  Yes.

  (Ms Reith)  There are two aspects on community care. One is the move from institutional care or long term psychiatric care to living in the community which people do with the benefit of having some extra cash. Therefore what in fact you have seen is a transfer of spending that was previously NHS spending to being DSS spending, that is one aspect of community care. The other is that as there has been a squeeze on local authorities there is now a built in assumption that something like nine or ten per cent of a local authority's social services budget will be raised through the imposition of charges for community care services. Because most local authorities㭛 per cent or whatever—now charge people for community care services they have also most of them been doing a lot of work with people to make sure that they are claiming the benefits to which they are entitled. That is one of the reasons why the take up of benefits has increased, local authorities helping people claim their entitlement, but partly because the local authority has got its eye on that money, part of that money, to go towards payment of services.

  148.  Just a political question, if I may. I am a passionate supporter of the Disability Living Allowance because I believe it does enable people to have an independent life and to put back into society energy and effort which they would not otherwise be able to do. I have a number of examples in my own constituency of people whose lives would be ruined if benefit were not there. Do you think that the Disability Living Allowance should be taxed, as has been proposed in this paper?

  (Ms Reith)  No. It is about in a sense compensating somebody for the extra costs that their disability brings. If Government believes that people on higher levels of income should pay more tax, well, let us do that equally across everyone who is on a higher level of income.

  (Professor Bruce)  If any of you took a train on business to Birmingham and you were given the money back for that train fare and then you were taxed on that money you would be a bit annoyed, would you not? DLA is a cost allowance, it is not income.

  149.  The other rumour that is going around is to means test the allowance, do you agree with that?

  (Ms Reith)  No, for exactly the same reasons. It is about promoting independence and equality.

  (Professor Bruce)  A level playing field.

  150.  Finally, given your antipathy to the Advisory Board, have you ever met these people and sat down with them?

  (Professor Bruce)  Frequently.

  (Ms Reith)  You have?

  (Professor Bruce)  Forgive me, we need to be clear what we mean. Two organisations were lucky enough to meet the Advisory Board during that year and the Royal National Institute for the Blind was one of them. It was quite difficult to manage but we did manage it. Do you mean do we know several people on the Board? Certainly I know several of the people on the Board through other committees and things of that sort.

  151.  Have you had formal meetings and how many formal meetings over the last few years have you had?

  (Ms Reith)  None.

  (Professor Bruce)  RNIB has had one.

  (Ms Reith)  You have had one. If you look at the DLAAB annual report, this was the 1997 annual report, it says here that the Board continues to attach great value to meetings with organisations representing people with disabilities. They then say that they met an incontinence nurse from Northwick Park and Saint Mark's NHS Trust and representatives from the Royal National Institute for the Blind. That is the full extent of their consultation with disability organisations. I have never met the Board and I do not think other disabilities organisations have. The RNIB put a lot of effort into securing a meeting with them. They do not even have their address on their annual report.

  152.  How do you think they could improve themselves and what do you think their role should be? Do you think they should exist?

  (Professor Bruce)  I think there should be a fundamental and radical review.

  (Mr Wood)  Of who is on the Board.

  (Ms Reith)  And what it does, over which we would be consulted.

  (Professor Bruce)  There could be a very important role for a properly constituted group with proper terms of reference and openness.

  (Mr Wood)  Something called the Disability Benefits Task Force which is what we asked for which would have a wider remit. I think looking at one benefit bit by bit is not constructive.

  (Ms Reith)  I have to say one thing that the Board does do—and I have to say I was under the misapprehension that this was all that they did—is to advise the Benefits Agency about things that are in what is called the Disability Handbook which are details about different medical conditions and the prognosis that attaches to those medical conditions. If an Adjudication Officer has a DLA form from somebody where they mention a particular condition that an Adjudication Officer has never heard of, there is a book they can go to where they can look up what that particular disability is and therefore what effect it is likely to have. That is what the Board and the doctors on the Board have done in the past and I think there is a perfectly useful function being served there. Whether that is the same group of people you want to then say: "Okay, how is the whole of this benefit working and how are the recipients of that benefit using it and what difference does it make to their lives and so on", no, I do not think they are the right people to ask.

Mr Leigh:  I was very interested in the question from my colleague who represents the South Coast which I suppose shows that Thatcherite ideology always stops at the doors of one's own constituency.

Mr Gibb:  No, I do not agree with that. My Thatcherite ideology will not be questioned by anybody. My view is that this allowance does enable people to have an independent life and therefore put back into society the same amount of effort that other people can. That is why the Conservatives introduced this allowance and why it is so successful.

Chairman:  This is a private fight which the witnesses do not need to join in.

Mr Leigh

  153.  You both dismissed this question that he asked, which he obviously wanted dismissed, that it should be means tested. I did not quite understand that because this is not a flag saying "I am disabled", it is why we are surely against means testing for pensions, because people have actually made a contribution towards it and therefore it should not be taken back subsequently through means testing or taxation. It is different for a pensioner. A lot of people, presumably some people who become elderly, have got quite considerable resources. I cannot understand why there is this fundamental objection to it being means tested. I am not saying it should be means tested, I just want to tease out a response.

  (Professor Bruce)  There is an important philosophical argument and that is what you are asking us for. It is around the phrase of "level playing field". If you are a Member of Parliament and you are paid a certain salary in order to do the job but you are disabled and you have extra costs which you have to pay out of your salary then you are not on a level playing field with an able bodied MP. Therefore, we would support, as is the case, that members and ministers who have disabilities should have additional money given to them so that they can get on to a level playing field with an able bodied MP or Minister. Is it therefore fair to say because an MP gets a good salary that they should get no extra money to cover their extra costs as a disabled person? I think philosophically you will see instantly that is an untenable argument. We are trying to get a level playing field between disabled people and able bodied people so that rights, responsibilities can be exerted. Luckily Parliament does just that and did just that last Friday.

Chairman

  154.  We have got a very important session and other subjects that we want to go into. I cannot draw the proceedings to a close without asking a final question about your relationship with the Advisory Board. It is becoming clear to us that there has been a fair amount of lack of consultation with the people and the players who are involved and have an important role in these questions. I have to say to you after the session we had last week and the session this week if there had been full consultation between you and the Advisory Board the Government would have been none the wiser because you have been taking very, very different perspectives on this question. I think that the Advisory Board was looking for a new role in the context of the new Government and were actually asking us to help promote that. If we do that we have got be very careful that we do not fall over one another and end up negating the very points of representation that have to be made on behalf of the people you seek to represent. Would you encourage a proactive role for the Advisory Board?

  (Professor Bruce)  Not under the present circumstances at all. We have made our position quite clear, that the DLA Advisory Board appears to be opaque, unaccountable, ill-informed, and working to terms of reference which are not adequate and working outside those terms of reference.

Ms Buck:  But apart from that!

Chairman

  155.  Apart from that everything else is fine.

  (Mr Wood)  They are not working in the interests of disabled people.

  156.  You do accept that this has got to be sorted out one way or the other.

  (Professor Bruce)  It certainly has to be sorted out and there is only one way it can be sorted out because what you are hearing is evidence of the vast majority of disability organisations in this country who both through personal experience and through expertise actually know what they are talking about. We do not always get it right but at least the basis of what we are saying has a legitimacy which I am afraid the DLA Advisory Board no longer has.

  (Mr Wood)  The current expression in Newcastle is "sack the board".

Chairman:  That has been extremely useful. I am very grateful to you. I know that these sessions are a burden. It is not just a case of appearing in front of us, it is the work that you do and the submissions that you make. They have been very helpful to the work of the Committee. We are very grateful to you for coming. Thank you very much.


 
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