Welfare Reform Bill

It is a pleasure and privilege to follow the hon. Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry), who is extremely well known for his commitment to dealing with disability issues. I am sorry that listening to one of my speeches is no longer like winning the pools, as it might have been 12 years ago. I believe that there is indeed considerable understanding of the social model of disability in the Conservative party. As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, his amendments are intended to promote the social as opposed to the medical model of disability. Some hon. Members might be tempted to think that this is all a matter of semantics, but if they did, they would be greatly mistaken. The social model is essentially a recognition that, if we are to move towards including disabled people in the mainstream of society, we have to move beyond seeing disability as a purely medical condition. We must also accept the importance of removing the barriers faced by disabled people in society at large—whether they be practical barriers, such as problems with physical access to buildings or public transport, or psychological barriers caused by the attitudes and prejudices of others. One of the disappointments of the Bill is that it says nothing about the responsibilities of the wider community to help disabled people achieve engagement in the world of work. There is plenty of talk about what might be called the supply side of the problem—that is, about getting people ready for work—but very little about the demand side of ensuring that opportunities are not stifled by outdated or prejudiced attitudes among employers or society at large. That is where the social model is very important. In Committee, we had substantial discussions about the appropriate use of language. A number of amendments suggested using the phrase ““labour market disadvantage”” instead of ““limited capability for work”” at the beginning of the process. The Minister rejected that option, and he may be tempted to use the same arguments again today, but today’s amendments are nothing like as strong, as they would simply replace the words ““medical examination”” with the word ““assessment””. Omitting the word ““medical”” would not mean that no medical examination would take place, but it would make it possible for the medical examination currently planned to be expanded to cover a wider remit, as and when the Government consider that to be appropriate. The Minister may argue, as he did in Committee, that it is vital that the tests are objective. My response is that that objectivity is not confined to medical tests: when a person faces a barrier to employment that is linked to a disability, can that not also be looked at objectively? Conservative Members accept that an objective assessment of a person’s impairment must be the starting point. That means, at a bare minimum, that the phrase ““medical examination”” in clauses 8 and 9 should be changed to ““health and disability examination””. The phrase ““medical examination”” strongly suggests an examination of a person’s health, but it is clear from the PCA, the regulations and the 48 descriptors used to assess a person’s limited capability for work-related activity that the medical examination will look at issues to do with that person’s health and disability. The amendments would remove the language problem. Removing the word ““medical”” and calling the process an ““assessment”” would allow the process to be defined much more broadly. It would also allow it to be defined nationally and consistently. The Minister made clear in Committee his legitimate concern that widening the assessment to take account of other, non-health related factors would be unworkable in practice, but I repeat that the amendments would not commit the Government to widening the scope of the assessment in a specific way that would make it unworkable. They would merely change the language used to allow for a possible widening of the scope of the assessment at a later stage. If the Government accepted the proposals, they would be signalling that they really understand that achieving the Bill’s objectives involves tackling the wider barriers that disabled people face, as well their individual impairments. Therefore, I hope that the Government will give the amendments careful consideration.