Welfare Reform Bill

I welcome very much the new clause, the measured tones with which the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander) introduced it and the substantial speech, which included important additional matter, in support of the new clause from my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt). It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry). We have often spoken together on disability issues and, although we come from different political traditions, we find a lot to agree on. His specific point—why the Government’s Office for Disability Issues, commendable as it may be, had to be cut into a process that could properly be dealt with by an independent free-standing Disability Rights Commission or Commission for Equality and Human Rights—was a cogent one. He also raised an important and valid point about the exact circumstances regarding the taking of medication. The debate is about the nature of the personal capability assessment process, but it will inevitably extend into consideration of the wider operation of the system in practice. That is what concerns most of us. The initial gateway hurdle and many things that go on in the process might leave vulnerable people with an element of disquiet or a feeling of dissatisfaction and lead to the system lacking public credibility or becoming discredited. We do not want that to happen. The hon. Member for Kingswood reminded the House—he was looking at the matter objectively, because, sadly, he was not on the Standing Committee—that there was a remarkable degree of consensus across those discussions. In that spirit, I do not wish to repeat the general arguments that have already been put, because the House should make progress. It is self-evident that the Government are looking for a system that is better than its predecessor, and that there are real considerations that have been raised in relation to the pilots—matters that were raised in Committee and elsewhere—that continue to worry people. Of those, because they are personal interests of mine, I single out only questions of fluctuating conditions, which have already been touched on, and of multiple conditions, where, although the system is meant to score them collectively, it might be difficult to grasp the overall effect on the individual. The difficultly when one has a protocol-driven system is that, almost by definition, it does not deal with the individual as an individual, and in that we have the potential makings of unfairness or an inappropriate decision.