Welfare Reform Bill

The Secretary of State said that the debate was about changing lives, and he was absolutely right. It is about changing the lives of real people. I want to talk about my experience in the real world—the real world in which in 1969, as a young man, I worked for the National Coal Board. No one was ever put out of work because they were ill. There were men who had lost limbs, had lost eyes, or had chests full of coal dust, but the paternalistic attitude of the Coal Board was ““If these people want to work, let them carry on working””. Let us contrast that with the position 20 years later, in 1989, when the National Coal Board in the guise of the Conservative Government's policies was sacking men aged 20, 30 and 40. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr. Brown) said, men of 40 or 50 never worked again after being thrown out of work. They had no self-esteem, and did not know how to go forward. We are talking about changing the lives of real people. I had the terrible experience in the 1990s, when I was a trade union representative in a local authority, of going through an ill-health retirement programme with literally hundreds of home care workers, women in their mid-50s who had worked for 25 or 30 years and literally devoted their lives to the people in their care. Those women were worn out and could not carry on doing the job. In reality, they should have had the sort of things we have been talking about today: personalised help to move into other work. What we did instead—I am not proud of this—was to encourage these people to take ill-health retirement. That covered up the fact that job cuts were being made, but those people were burnt out through hard work. We also need to realise that in the workplace today there are many people who are stressed out. Again I am talking about real experiences. I represented people among the middle managers who did not realise how ill they were until they collapsed at work. The fear of having to go back into that environment absolutely paralysed them. It is not funny to see grown men cry, but that was my experience with some very tough and hard-nosed management negotiators who fell into that trap. We are talking about people in vulnerable situations. For the rest of my short speech, I want to talk about disabled people. I am privileged and proud to be the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on muscular dystrophy. A month ago we set up an inquiry into why people in different parts of the country get different services for muscular dystrophy and have different life outcomes. Last week we met a number of people who are living with the disease, are carers of those with the disease or have just contracted the disease. Across the country 50 per cent. of people with muscular diseases are not in employment. Three quarters of families living with people with this disease are suffering real financial hardship and, as we have heard, 43 per cent. of disabled people are in work compared with 74 per cent. of the general population. Last week we heard from the people individually, and they said that one of their biggest worries is that, under the new proposals, the people who assess whether or not they are fit to go to work, like many GPs, will not have real knowledge of a rare disease, will assess them wrongly and will put them into a situation where they are supposed to undertake work-related activity that they will not be able to do. If that is the case, they will fall out of the benefits system altogether and will be in even worse straits than they are now. I want to read out some comments from some of the people who were with us last week. Phillippa Farrant, whose son Daniel is 17 and living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, said:"““We had to move three times from our current home because of the needs of Daniel. The kitchen and living space is very cramped. This has impacted on our family life—no table to sit around… Benefits are a minefield—okay for the short term disabled person but not for the long term progressively disabled. You have to fill in forms every six months. More and more red tape…Two years ago we had to declare ourselves bankrupt, not because of fast living but because of the cost of looking after a disabled son…The whole benefits system is very complicated—it's hard to understand what you're entitled to.””" Although Daniel is past 16 and could claim incapacity benefit, it is better for the family if he does not. For other families, it is the other way round. Andy Findlay, who is 65, told us that it took 18 months to get disability living allowance. When a social security doctor came to assess him, he did not know what the strain of muscular dystrophy was:"““In his report he said that I was going to get better.””" For Andy Findlay's strain of muscular dystrophy, there is no cure or medication and no way he could recover. Laura Merry, a very bright young girl of 19 who is struggling to go to university, said:"““As I'm getting older I'm getting more involved in looking after myself and becoming more independent but it is very hard to understand all the forms, and the wording is confusing.””" I want to ask the Secretary of State and his Ministers some specific questions. Will they agree to meet people from the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, so that they hear the experiences of those at the cutting edge—not the professionals, but the real people? I ask them to meet those people to take this forward. Will they also make sure that the specific experiences of people living with long-term progressive muscular diseases are understood by those who will be doing the assessments? If they do not understand them, they will not be able to diagnose correctly and they will give the wrong advice. Will they ensure that we take forward the following from today's debate: that the Minister will come in an official capacity to the inquiry and give evidence to it, and that we will put together an all-party parliamentary group of this House so Members can discuss in detail what to do? Before I sit down, I want to say one last thing. The welfare reforms are right and proper—