Critics urge halt to 'rushed' disability benefit change
Lords back disability benefit shake-up
(about 3 hours later)
Changes to disability benefits are being "rushed through" to meet Treasury targets, campaigners have argued, as peers debate the issue.
The government has headed off a House of Lords defeat over plans to replace the Disability Living Allowance.
They want ministers to delay changes to Disability Living Allowance, saying new medical assessment tests are not ready.
Ministers want to amend the system to make sure claimants have more medical tests, but opponents say this will mean 500,000 people will lose benefits.
Lord Low, president of the Disability Alliance charity, said "the livelihoods of disabled people were at stake".
A proposal to delay the scheme by carrying out an extended pilot project before it is implemented across the country was beaten by 16 votes.
But ministers said the allowance was "20 years out of date" and £600m a year was going to those no longer eligible.
The government suffered three Lords defeats on the issue last week.
A group of cross-bench peers, backed by some charities, wants planned changes to Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and its replacement - the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) - to be put on hold pending further consultation.
Introduced in 1992 to help disabled people cope with the extra costs they face in their daily lives, Disability Living Allowance is paid to two million people of working age.
Campaigners say the plans - including up-front medical tests and regular health re-assessments for claimants - will drive more people into poverty.
Deficit
Ministers have conceded some changes but say they are focusing help on those who need it most.
It is thought that half a million fewer people will qualify for the replacement Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) by 2015 if the changes become law.
'No confidence'
The government wants to pass its Welfare Reform Bill by the end of the parliamentary session in May.
Introduced in 1992 to help disabled people cope with the extra costs they face in their daily lives, DLA is paid to two million people of working age. It is thought that half a million fewer people will qualify for PIPs by 2015 if the changes are passed.
It says the proposals will substantially reduce spending on benefits, helping to cut the deficit while also increasing incentives to work and targeting support for the vulnerable more effectively.
Lord Low, a crossbench peer who is also the former chairman of the Royal National Institute for the Blind, said: "This is being rushed through to meet Treasury targets."
During the Lords debate, cross-bencher Baroness Grey-Thompson, an 11-time Paralympic gold medal-winner, proposed delaying the introduction of PIPs until further testing was carried out.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The assessment system for disabled people, for the new PIP benefit, is not ready yet. This is a work in progress. Disabled people do not have confidence that the government is yet ready to deliver an assessment system which will achieve the outcome which is fair to them and takes proper account of disabled people's needs for a benefit of this kind."
But work and pensions minister Lord Freud promised to test the operational processes, allowing officials to see how they worked without actually affecting claimants' entitlements.
Lord low added: "We need to take more time to get it right, as disabled people's livelihoods are at stake."
He said the government recognised the benefit of moving away from the "big bang approach" to implementation, which would see both new claims and assessments beginning in April next year.
Spiralling cost
The number of new claims for PIP would be limited to a "few thousand per month" for the first few months of implementation, allowing "us to fully trial all the processes in a truly live environment".
But disabilities minister Maria Miller said campaigners were wrong to suggest that DLA was being cut by 20% and the government remained "absolutely committed to the idea and practice" of enabling people with disabilities to live independent lives.
But the government won the Lords vote by 229 to 213.
"What we are trying to do in these difficult economic times is to make sure that the rate of growth does not continue to spiral in the way as it has done in the past," she told the BBC.
"In the future we will be spending the same on DLA as we did last year."
Many vulnerable people were currently "falling through the net", she added, and changes were needed to ensure support was "getting through to the people who need it the most".
"We know that DLA is not a modernised benefit. It does not support people with severe mental health problems and learning difficulties in the way we would want to in this day and age as it is a benefit which is 20 years out of date."
Ms Miller said flaws in the system also meant that £600m was being paid out every year to people whose conditions did not justify it while others were being under-supported when their medical situations worsened.
She added: "There is not in-built reassessment and that means 70% of people are claiming this benefit for life."
The government has already agreed to halve the time seriously ill or disabled people will have to wait to be eligible for PIPs from six to three months.
The move came after peers defeated the coalition over other proposed changes to eligibility for another benefit, employment support allowance (ESA) - formerly known as incapacity benefit.
The government wants to pass its welfare reform bill, one of its flagship pieces of legislation, by the end of parliamentary session in May.
It says the proposals will substantially reduce the multi-billion pound welfare bill, helping to cut the deficit while also increasing incentives to work and targeting support for the vulnerable more effectively.
