New Clause 2
Welfare Reform Bill
12:15 pm
Paul Rowen (Rochdale, Liberal Democrat)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West and the RNIB on the new clause. We can all support it, because as he says, it would right a wrong.
The key point about the proposal is that people will become eligible for, rather than have an automatic entitlement to, higher rate DLA. The discrimination at the moment is that people are ineligible for the higher rate and can qualify only for the lower rate. It should be left to the normal processes of medical assessment to decide. Why should someone who is physically handicapped be eligible for an award when someone with a sight impairment is not?
The sums of money that the DWP spends on this annually are quite small—£45 million for 22,000 people. That was the figure that was given to the RNIB. It is a comparatively small amount of money in global terms, even if all 22,000 people automatically qualify. The caveat is that people will not automatically qualify. They will have to demonstrate that their disability means that they qualify. That that does not apply is the injustice that blind people feel at the moment.
I have been given an example by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable). A 14-year-old boy in his constituency had had an accident when he was nine and had ended up being severely disabled, with poor eyesight. He was initially given the higher rate, which meant that his mother qualified for a Motability vehicle, which she has used to take him around. He is now able to walk but his sight has not improved, and following a reassessment he now gets the lower rate. His mother will therefore lose eligibility for the Motability vehicle.
In our view, these decisions should not depend on which rate a person is on; they should be based on a proper assessment. The fact that the boy became ineligible for the higher rate caused the mother to lose eligibility. The key point is that blind people should be eligible—we are not saying that they would all automatically qualify. A number of hon. Members back such a change—as the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West said, more than 200 Members signed various early-day motions in the past two years—and there is a very strong feeling across the House that this is the right time for a change. The Bill would be considerably strengthened in a number of ways if the Government accepted the new clause. I am sure that people would be very pleased if the Government accepted such a positive measure.