Act

HC Deb 10 June 1985 vol 80 cc640-86

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lennox-Boyd.]

3.32 pm

Mr. Alfred Morris (Manchester, Wythenshawe)

I welcome the decision to mark, by this debate, the 15th anniversary of the Royal Assent to my Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Bill.

The House of Commons was never more constructive in its concern for people in special need than it was in its attitude to the Bill in the parliamentary Session 1969–70. There was no party animus in our proceedings. Everyone who spoke, whether here on the Floor of the House or upstairs in Committee, seemed to know the value of things as well as their cost.

It was a rare parliamentary moment when unity of purpose, in an important cause, triumphed over every other consideration. In a television programme on the Bill's enactment and effect, the presenter said:

It is difficult now for anyone to remember what life was like for disabled people before the passing of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. Her statement to a huge national audience was a reminder of how far we have come, since the Act became law, along the road to full public recognition of the problems and needs of disabled people and of their now undoubted right to equal citizenship.

As the television presenter went on to say, we have seen a vast number of improvements in provision since the Act received the Royal Assent 15 years ago. Far more money is spent on cash benefits and services alike. Quantum leaps have been recorded in the numbers of people identified as disabled by their local authorities and millions of people with disabilities have had their lives made better by the provision of aids and by adaptations to their homes, as by the Act's wholly new emphasis on improving access to public and social buildings.

In the entirely new climate which the measure created, spending on benefits and services for chronically sick and disabled people went up in the Act's first decade, and under successive Governments, from £330 million in 1971–72 to £3,030 million in 1981–82. In my own five years as Minister with responsibility for the disabled, the increase in spending was from £590 million in 1973–74 to £1,830 million in 1978–79.

I do not wish today to catalogue every improvement or to analyse at length all the effort that has gone into the implementation of the Act since 1970. That has been done in a number of important books, notably "Disability: Legislation and Practice" by Duncan Guthrie and others, and "Charter for the Disabled" by my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) and Eda Topliss. I must, however, stress again in this debate that the enactment of my legislation was the work of a very wide

fellowship of people. What brought them together, when I won first place in the private Members' ballot in November 1969, was a long-awaited opportunity to try to achieve social justice for disabled people.

My supporters included all the individuals and groups to whom my friend Maureen Oswin paid tribute in another important book when she spoke of

the many unknown people who work for reform …. professionals who put their careers in jeopardy in order to speak out against injustices to handicapped people … parents who campaign for years in order to bring about changes which sometimes take so long to come into effect that their own children do not benefit from them …. researchers and writers who produce papers and books which help to change attitudes and bring about reform … and the voluntary organisations and pressure groups which do so much to create changes at local and national level. Among countless others, they were the kind of people and groups who provided the impetus for the Bill's enactment. In their thousands they helped to transform the climate of parliamentary and public opinion from one of, at best, benign charity to one of acceptance that disabled people are entitled to live independent and dignified lives as full members of the community.

It must seem incredible and outrageous to many people now, but between 1945 and 1960 there was no mention in the manifestos of either of the main political parties of anything that might be done specifically to help disabled people. Between 1959 and 1964 there was not one debate in the House of Commons on disability. Notwithstanding all the advances in medicine, technology and communications, official attitudes to the claims of disabled people were both deadpan and dismissive.

It was through knocking on the doors of disabled constituents and trying to help those who knocked on my door, as well as from experience twice over of disability in my own family, that I became strongly convinced of the need for legislation to improve the well-being and status of disabled people. In Manchester alone, I knew of cases galore of disabled people who had every kind of moral justice on their side but no statutory right whatever to the help that they so vitally needed. If I was able to assist, more often than not it was as a guide through the maze of local charitable organisations or by asking a more than usually helpful local authority to stretch its permissive powers to breaking point. Even then, the beneficiaries were left with the feeling that they had been awarded a privilege for which they should be most truly thankful.

Every advocate of change knew that the permissive powers given to local authorities to help disabled people under the National Assistance Act 1948 were of only token value and that there was no likelihood of the law being changed by ministerial initiative. That applied even to the insistent claims for more humane provision for the many thousands of severely disabled young people whose appalling fate at that time was to be incarcerated in geriatric wards. I was much involved in campaigns to expose the treatment that those young people received, and heavy and protracted correspndence with DHSS Ministers left me deeply aware of the hopeless divisions in departmental responsibility for those and other disabled people and of strongly entrenched official opposition to legislation.

I was left with a fixed determination to change the law myself, if ever I had the opportunity to do so. The presenter of the television programme that I mentioned went on to recall

just how close the Act came to not being passed. This may now be news to most people, even to the vast majority of disabled people who have ben helped by the Act's provisions. But for the Back Benchers who worked with me on the unlikely enterprise that we launched in 1969 —notably my right hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley), the Honourable John Astor, my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones), Sir Neil Marten and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Mr. Pavitt) — the memory of how frequently close we came to disaster is abidingly clear. As the Act reaches its 15th anniversary, it is therefore appropriate for me warmly to acknowledge the unfailing help which they and other hon. Members on both sides of the House gave in enacting my private Member's Bill.

Our Bill became an Act of 29 sections. It affected 12 Departments of State and was a model for legislation in many other countries. We amended 39 existing Acts of Parliament, including such major statutes as the public Health Act 1936, the Education Act 1944, the National Health Service Act 1946, the National Assistance Act 1948 and the Housing Act 1957. We also made provisions, including those on access for disabled people to the built environment, where previously there was no legislation of any kind to amend.

At first I was not at all optimistic about the Bill reaching the statute book. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham has shown in the book "Charter for the Disabled", there was strong resistance behind the scenes from the late Richard Crossman, then Secretary of State for Social Services, to many of the Bill's provisions. There was also the problem of finding enough parliamentary time to complete all stages in both Houses of Parliament of what had become a very wide-ranging Bill.

To make matters worse, the parliamentary Session was cut short by the announcement in May 1970 of a general election. Lobby journalists then reported that the Bill was irretrievably doomed, but a very strange thing happened. My Bill had won strong all-party support, and was given precedence over most of the Government's own legislation in the few remaining days before Dissolution. It became law on the final day of the 1966–70 Parliament.

Conservative leaders, including the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), who became Prime Minister after the election, had made a strong commitment to the Act's philosophy and provisions. In fact, just before the general election was announced, they became pledged to enact my Bill themselves should it fall through lack of parliamentary time. Not for the first lime, however, there was a gulf between political commitment in opposition and positive action in government, and the Act undoubtedly lost some momentum due to the change of Government in June 1970.

Through lack of clear ministerial guidance, many people were unaware of the Act or that the Act applied, where appropriate, as much to the mentally ill and mentally handicapped as to people with physical and sensory disabilities. Others thought that, as the Act had originated as a private Member's Bill, its provisions did not have the same force as Government legislation. There is, of course, no such thing, but the new legislation was even referred to by some local authorities as a private Member's Act. This was responsible for slow reactions in some parts of the country, as was the myth that the Act had no financial backing.

Most unusually for a private Member's Bill, the Treasury had moved in the House of Commons and had carried, without a division, a money resolution in support of my Bill. Had that resolution not been approved, the Bill could not have made any further progress and would have fallen on procedural grounds. Therefore, the many anguished reports about the cost of the Bill having to be met by local authorities were as baseless as its description as a private Member's Act.

Mr. Laurie Pavitt (Brent, South)

While my right hon. Friend is recounting the near miracle of getting the Bill on to the statute book, will he remind us that it was Lord Peart who at the time enabled the money resolution to be got through the House and that had it not been for his action the Bill would never have reached the statute book?

Mr. Morris

My hon. Friend, who himself played an important part throughout the Bill's proceedings, has anticipated my next remarks. Lord Peart was extremely helpful at all times. Without his help, and that of many right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, the Bill could.not have become law.

In 1970 it was said that the Bill was an extremely ambitious measure for any private Member to introduce. Looking back, I regret that it was not even more wide-ranging and that some of its provisions were not made stronger. The five sections on improving access to the built environment, for example, could have gone further. The legislation as a whole could have been applied to Scotland and Northern Ireland sooner. Again, I regret that the Bill did not make it illegal to discriminate against disabled people.

No legislation is ever the last word, and I am happy to say that the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act has been more widely applied and made stonger in recent years. Its access provisions now extend to places of employment and have been strengthened in their effect. The Act as a whole today applies to Scotland and Northern Ireland and has thus become United Kingdom legislation.

The most pressing problem now is not naming an early date for any major new advance, but of doing all that we can to defend the services which the Act provides. Powerful voices are asking for more flexibility in applying the Act, by which they mean the right to dilute the provisions. Some local authorities protest that they now have to choose not only which of their discretionary powers to use, but even which of their legal duties to fulfil. Rate-capping and further cuts in rate support grant have made their dilemma even more cruel. "Must we break one law to stay within another law?" is how some council leaders sum up the agonising choice which they face.

It is not only Labour-controlled councils which protest. The Minister should read the extremely bitter comments on the Government's assessment of his borough's needs in a letter to The Times by Norman Hawkins, the Conservative leader of Hillingdon.

One official study after another makes it plain that local authorities now find it more and more difficult to fulfil their statutory duties to disabled people. Let us consider home helps. The number of people aged over 75 continues to increase, but the home help service is rapidly declining in terms of cases served and hours of service. Yet the over-75s need the home help service most, and the provisions of section 2 of the Act are clearly not reaching many of them in the way intended by the House when enacting my Bill.

The Secretary of State for Social Services uses the slogans of community care, but the Secretary of State for the Environment punishes every local attempt to make it a humane reality. For the city of Manchester, the capital allocation for social services for 1985-86 has been cut by a despicable 69.5 per cent. compared with last year. How does that help my city in trying to cope with its duties under the Act towards mentally handicapped people? Many other hard-pressed authorities fare little better, and yet we are told by the Secretary of State for Social Services of his total commitment to community care.

Essex county council has imposed a minimum £2 charge, regardless of income, on everyone using the home help service. Many desperate people on supplementary benefit in the county are unable to pay and no longer have a home help. They have lost a service which their county council has a legal duty to provide under section 2 of the Act. The legal advice to the present Minister, as it was to me when I was Minister between 1974 and 1979, is that a local authority cannot lawfully withdraw a service without diminution in need on the part of the disabled person.

The Prime Minister and her colleagues gave a pledge to disabled people that they would be "singled out" for special help. Yet in Essex, which includes the constituency of the Minister with responsibility for the disabled, disabled people say that they have been "singled out" for special hardship and that the law has been flouted to their detriment. How does the Minister answer that charge, of which he has been aware for many weeks, and what action has he taken?

Is it still the Government's policy that local authorities should not charge disabled people on supplementary benefit for their home helps? If so, should he not have strong words with Essex county council both about its repudiation of that policy and its discontinuance of the home help service to disabled people without diminution in need?

The legal requirements of the Act are not in dispute, as I was told in a letter sent to me by the Prime Minister on 23 January 1985—she wrote: "Thank you for your letter of 27 December about the reply I gave to Tony Lloyd in the House on 13 December about the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. I am grateful for this opportunity to clarify the position…. You can rest assured that it was not my intention in any way to question the statutory duties imposed by the Act on local authorities, nor to indicate any change in the advice given to successive Ministers for the Disabled on this point. I am sorry if the wording of my reply suggested otherwise."

The Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act imposes a duty on the local authority to assess the needs of anyone who is permanently and substantially disabled in its area. It also has a duty to provide for a disabled person's need within a reasonable time.

The corollary of this duty, as I made clear more than once when I was the Minister, is that no local authority may lawfully discontinue a service to a disabled person if his or her need for the service has not diminished. Nor is it lawful for a local authority to plead lack of funds as a reason for not providing a service. Again, although it may recover charges for a service, a local authority may not refuse or withdraw a service if the disabled person is unable to pay.

Why, then, has the Minister not made this clear to Essex, where many disabled people over 80 years of age who are dependent on supplementary benefit, and without diminution in need, now no longer have their home helps? Will he do so in this debate, and will he now respond to the protest of local authority leaders, of all political persuasions, who ask why they should be denied the resources they need to provide disabled people with the services that this House intended for them?

The Minister cannot deny that there is now a growing and grievious gap between the services that Parliament intended for disabled people and the provision made for them in many parts of Britain. In 1983-84, the net expenditure per head of population on services for physically and sensorily disabled people ranged from £3.91 in the London boroughs to £1.73 in the shire counties.

In London, Camden spent £8.38, compared with Sutton's 87p. In the south-west, Avon spent £3.49, while Cornwall spent £1.42. In Wales, West Glamorgan spent £3.34 and Dyfed £1.27. In the east midlands, Nottinghamshire spent £2.91 and Lincolnshire £1.52. In the west midlands, Wolverhampton spent £4.41 and Shropshire 80p.

How does the Minister justify those variations? As he knows, I quote from figures supplied by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. Is he not disquieted by the institute's findings, and what action has he taken since they became known to him?

The Minister must be aware that this debate occurs at a time of very considerable anxiety about the effects for disabled people and their families of what the Government are proposing in their Green Paper "Reform of Social Security". Peter Large, of the Disablement Income Group, who has the respect of hon. Members in all parts of the House, has estimated that many disabled people on supplementary benefit now rely very heavily — to the extent of 20 to 30 per cent, of their total incomes—on payments for additional requirements to help offset the extra cost of disabled living. He refers, among other extra costs, to those for laundry in cases where the disabled person is incontinent, special diets, wear and tear of clothing and extra heating. He states:

The proposed income-support scheme will sweep away these payments for additional requirements, replacing them all by a special premium for chronically sick and disabled people. If the premium is anything less than 30 per cent, of the basic income support payment, disabled people will again be among the losers. The House will recall that disabled people were the losers when the supplementary benefit scheme was simplified by the present Government in 1980. They were also among the losers when the available scale margin was increased from 50p to £1 and extended to reduce heating allowances in 1984. How much longer must they be the losers?

Even if the Minister cannot provide detailed figures, will he today at least try to give disabled people some reassurance about the percentage of the basic income support they can expect as a premium? Can he also give the House an assurance that the Government's proposals in the Green Paper will not be allowed to result in any reduction, in real terms, in the totality of expenditure on provision for disabled people and their families?

Dr. Peter Kemp, housing research fellow at the university of Glasgow, has said that industrial disablement pensioners could face cuts of up to £20 a week if the Government's proposed changes in housing benefit go through. Will the Minister comment on that, and, if he disagrees with Dr. Kemp, will he give his own estimate of the effect on the industrially disabled of the Government's proposals?

As to the social fund which is proposed in the Green Paper, the Disability Alliance has said:

The scheme will mean degradation for claimants and DHSS staff. It will force claimants to beg at social security offices for payments they desperately need. As well as cutting their income, it will strip away their legal entitlement to payments which they presently have as of right. The proposed social fund will be under the discretion of the local DHSS office and some payments will be repayable loans. The DHSS offices will be cash limited, so what will happen to disabled people who claim after their local office has run out of cash? With payments on a discretionary basis, the Disability Alliance wants to know how a local office will choose between Mr. Jones claiming for fares to visit his terminally sick wife in hospital and Mrs. Smith claiming for fares to visit her dying child? The Disability Alliance goes on to say:

"Claimants' humiliation will be heightened by proposals that DHSS staff will help them budget. This is a gross insult … which will be made worse in many cases by having to pay back loans to the DHSS itself."

How does the Minister respond to these comments on the Green Paper? He cannot deny that they come from people who are as well-informed as they are representative. Failure to respond to them today will deepen concern among people for whom needless worry piles handicap on handicap.

The Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation has been in touch with me about the new board and lodging allowances for people on supplementary benefit. This was an issue that I raised in the House on 24 May, and most of the questions I put to the Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, remained unanswered at the end of the debate. What RADAR says is that there is considerable alarm in the voluntary sector that the new board and lodging regulations as applied to residential and nursing care will lead to people being thrown out of homes when they can no longer afford to pay, or, if they are lucky, ending up permanently in hospital.

Local authorities are, of course, now in no position to pick up the pieces and RADAR states:

There is increasing evidence that the level of care which the best homes in the voluntary sector seek to provide cannot be provided within the limits set. Particular anger is directed at the different limits for disabled people according to whether they became disabled before or after pension age. I shall be grateful if the Minister will respond to that statement also when he replies to the debate.

I urge the Minister today to assert the priority of the claims of disabled people. We have to look within groups as well as between them. Among the elderly, the disabled are more hard-pressed and have problems and needs over and above those of the generality of elderly people. If, in a one-parent family, the parent or child is disabled, that family will usually be worse off and more at risk than other one-parent families. The same applies within other groups and strongly emphasises the priority of the claims; of disabled people. It is also the answer to those who now demand more "savings" in expenditure on disabled people.

The calls for cuts in benefits, as for more flexibility in applying the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, have to be resisted in the interests both of disabled people and of the taxpayer. Most people with disabilities face a higher cost of living than other people. They do so with lower than average incomes. The services that Parliament intended them to have under the 1970 Act are not a luxury or a privilege but a vital necessity if they are to live independently and as full members of society. There is ultimately no gain for the taxpayer in depriving them of those services. In fact, the cost of driving people into institutional care is often higher than that of allowing them to live, with the help of support services, in the community.

The description that I like best of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act is that for disabled people it was a first step into the light. Everyone who worked for its enactment can rejoice in the fact that it has been a model for legislation in many other countries across the world.

I am delighted, as the Minister must be, that the debate coincides with the visit to Britain of a distinguished delegation of people who work in the field of rehabilitation in China. The delegation is here until 17 June and is led by Wang Luguang as a senior representative of the China Welfare Fund for the Handicapped. He is accompanied by Qu Degui, as director of the international department of the fund, and by their colleagues, Liu Jing, Huang Dashu, Wang Dajue and Gao Jian. The Minister and I, together with my right hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South addressed them on their arrival in London on 4 June. They are here at the invitation of the British Council and the Sino-British Group on Rehabilitation, of which His Excellency the Chinese Ambassador and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs are patrons.

The delegation's close interest in the relevance to China's disabled people of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act has been a source of special pleasure to many of their hosts here. Wang Luguang and his colleagues are our honoured guests, and I am sure that the House as a whole would want them to convey, on their return to China, our warmest best wishes to all their colleagues for success in their endeavours in the service of disabled people there.

One of the central purposes of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act was to challenge what Sir William Oastler, talking of those who can afford every comfort, once called that

serene satisfaction with the status quo". The Royal Assent to the Act was welcomed by informed people in the statutory and voluntary sectors alike. There is still much to do if all its objectives are to be achieved and, until every locality has a level of provision equal to that of the existing best, the battle for fuller implementation of the Act must and will go on. None of the very wide fellowship of people who helped to enact my Bill ever doubted the size and gravity of the task that we confronted. Our hope was that, by working together to change the law, we could also change the status quo for disabled people and end the "serene satisfaction" by which they were oppressed. That still has to be our resolve.

4.4 pm

The Minister for Social Security (Mr. Tony Newton)

I, too, am very pleased that the House has the opportunity today to mark the 15th anniversary of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, the passage of which attracted considerable attention at the time and, as the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) has very fairly recognised, received, has continued to receive and will continue to receive a very wide measure of all-party support.

The concepts which the Act embodied—being aware of the needs of disabled people, supporting them in their own homes, giving them greater assistance with mobility, and greater access to a range of everyday facilities— command very strong support in all parts of the House. I say without hesitation and with pleasure that it is appropriate that the debate should be opened by the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe, in view of his personal contribution and his continuing commitment to the purposes and working of the Act.

On hearing the right hon. Gentleman's historical account of the difficulties which attended the birth of the measure, I was left almost feeling that it is easier to review the whole of the social security system than to go through what the right hon. Gentleman went through in an earlier period of his life.

I, too, was very pleased to have the opportunity last week to join the right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) in meeting the deputation that is here from the China Welfare Fund for the Handicapped, and to be able to assure them that we in the United Kingdom will do everything we can to help them in any way we can with their efforts to develop services for disabled people in China.

I am particularly glad that there have already been contacts between those concerned with the question in China and the formidable group of people with interests in disabled people in Hong Kong, which I happened to visit last summer, including the well known Dr. Harry Fang, a former president of Rehabilitation International, who attaches great importance to building up the links between Hong Kong and China in this respect.

I am particularly happy that, as a result of a co-operative exercise in which a number of us have been engaged—certainly the three of us who were present at the China Welfare Fund for the Handicapped last week —we were able to make arrangements for the supply of a number of hearing aids to China. I hope that will be seen as a practical demonstration of our good will. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South for the part that he has played in that exercise.

I do not mean to diminish the importance of the individual details and provisions of the 1970 Act when I say that in many ways its greatest impact and importance has been in its effect on the awareness of the needs of disabled people, not just within this House or in Government but at every level in society. Indeed, there can be very few Acts of Parliament of what is essentially a rather specialist nature which have made, directly and indirectly, so considerable an impact, and whose title has become almost a household word.

The Act undoubtedly marks a significant milestone in the history of services for and of attitudes towards disabled people and, if I may change the metaphor, it has provided a foundation on which all succeeding Governments have sought to build.

Over the past 15 years, many hundreds of thousands of disabled people have gained not only from the greater development of direct practical help, such as domestic assistance in the home, house adaptations, aids, the provision of telephones and so on, but from those provisions designed to open up opportunities and facilities for disabled people which have since been built on and supplemented by other developments.

Section 1 of the Act addresses itself to the importance of assessing the overall needs of disabled people and of ensuring that they are aware of the services available to them. Both those concepts have a wider application which the Government have sought and continue to seek to develop further. As the House knows, about 18 months ago we announced, together with the social security reviews, our intention to commission the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys to conduct a new national survey to gain more up-to-date information about the extent of disablement and its effects. The last such survey, the well-known Amelia Harris survey, was carried out at about the time of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 and is therefore about 15 years old. Much of the information that it gave us is out of date, and the survey has significant gaps, especially about disabled people in residential care. The new survey — the first major survey during that entire period—will help us to gain the sort of up-to-date information that we need for further planning for services and cash benefits for disabled people. In due course it will become an important part of our data base for carrying further the purposes which both sides of the House share.

A further important feature of the Act is its emphasis in section 2 on practical support for disabled people in their home, which goes closely with the concept of care in the community and the programmes to that end, which have subsequently been developed and reinforced. The Government—the right hon. Gentleman acknowledged this in a backhanded way — have sought to place growing emphasis on that through the development of joint planning, the extension of joint finance and the funding of pilot programmes. Those are all exercises in which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security has had a significant hand. We have given extra powers and extra cash to allow health authorities, local authorities and voluntary organisations to build and enlarge the care in the community programme.

Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster)

Will my hon. Friend assure the House that every possible recourse is made to the European Community on pilot projects? It is extremely keen on pilot projects for the handicapped, and we wish to tap every possible source.

Mr. Newton

I could hardly agree more with my hon. Friend's suggestion that we need to tap every possible source. To the extent that I or my hon. Friend can play a part in laying our hands on additional EC money for our community care purposes, she can be assured of our enthusiastic assistance and support. If with her experience and knowledge of the European scene she has any bright new ideas about how we can get more of that money, I hope that she will not hesitate to let one or both of us know of them. I assure her of a prompt response.

Regarding joint finance and care in the community, I re-emphasise the importance that we attach to the legislation which we passed in 1983, and which is beginning to come into effect. It ensures that voluntary bodies are represented on the joint consultative committee concerned with the care in the community programmes. I know from my constituency that that is beginning to happen. The voluntary organisations attach importance to it, as do the Government. It is a fruitful development of the decision-making machinery in this area.

The 1970 Act also gave statutory recognition to the need for adequate access provision for the disabled, not merely to specialised health or social service buildings, but to all the general facilities open to the public. It would be an understatement to say that over the years a great deal of attention has been given to that issue, for example by the work of the silver jubilee committee on access and the committee on restrictions against disabled people. We as a Government attach great importance to the access issue. As the right hon. Gentleman acknowledged in his speech, it is one of the areas where the provisions of the 1970 Act did not go far enough.

The decision recently announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment to amend the building regulations to ensure adequate access provision for disabled people to all shops, offices and single-storey public buildings was welcomed on all sides of the House and well beyond the House. Although I know that many would wish that we had already been able to go further, it has been firmly stated that my right hon. Friend hopes to extend those provision further when work on satisfactory means of escape requirements has been completed.

The access committee for England, which I established a little more than a year ago with DHSS funding by building on work by my predecessor my hon. Friend the Member for Honrsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi), to whom I readily pay tribute, has made a considerable impact in its first year of operation, not least by drawing together consumers and providers of buildings in constructive debate about some of the complex issues involved. I have been immensely encouraged by the progress of that committee and its vigorous start. Indeed, it was a pleasure to me that the announcement about the building regulations was made at an important conference organised by the acces committee for England a few months ago. I have no doubt from the work that it has already undertaken that its activities will be of major benefit to all local access groups, now established throughout the country, in their efforts to improve access locally.

In having a hand in setting up the committee I was particularly concerned to ensure that the committee should include planners, designers, providers of buildings and a considerable number of the disabled who would represent the consumer voice. That reflects a theme of the 1970 Act —the need for the interests of the disabled themselves to be acknowledged, and wherever possible for them to participate in the decision-making processes. I am happy to say that that principle has been readily embraced not only in the Government, but in many other public and commercial areas, with examples far beyond the original confines of the Act.

The statutory requirements in the Telecommunications Act 1984, both for British Telecom to take account of the needs of disabled people and for the Director General to establish a committee to advise him of the needs of disabled people and elderly consumers, is a clear example. So too is the decision by my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Transport, whose long-term interest in the needs of the disabled is well known to the House, to establish an expert advisory panel on disability to help guide her Department's policies.

As I have ranged wide, I shall return to the specific provisions of sections 1 and 2 of the Act, which deal with the practical support which local authority social services departments should be providing for disabled people in need. For many people those services have undoubtedly represented the most concrete and beneficial manifestation of the Act. It is perfectly proper that over the years those aspects have attracted most attention and interest from hon. Members, and today have brought many comments from the right hon. Gentleman.

I recognise that criticism has been voiced that local authority provision is not monitored closely enough by the Government, that restraints on local authority expenditure inhibit its power to meet the needs identified in that Act, and that the original Act needs to be reinforced in some way to remedy those alleged defects. On monitoring, local authorities are well aware of their duties under the Act, and it is clear that they take them seriously. Detailed guidance was issued to accompany the Act, and dealt with, for example, the way in which the numbers and needs of the disabled may be sought. At present I do not believe that there is a clear need for further detailed guidance. Apart from anything else, the Act leaves it to authorities to determine need in relation to individual cases, and how best to meet it. That is both right and an important principle.

Local authorities are the best judges of local circumstances, and are best able to assess the needs of the individual. Detailed guidance prepared by a Government Department, however well-intentioned, would not be an adequate substitute for on-the-spot decisions by the authorities that are closest to the needs of the indvidual and the services which exist in his area. More important, there is always a risk that minimum standards — in practice that is all that we could sensibly talk about—would be treated in some cases as maximum standards and would inhibit some of the developments that we would wish to see. They would restrict rather than enlarge the scope for flexibility and innovation.

Often, the results of innovation by some authorities and by voluntary organisations have been the spur to progress in this area. For example, some local authorities have been experimenting with different means of providing care in the home. There has also been a movement away from institutionalised and group provision for holidays towards more individual provision in mainstream holidays. There have been more partnership arrangements with voluntary organisations in the planning and delivery of services. I would not wish to inhibit such successful development by appearing to give guidance from the centre, which might all too easily become a straitjacket.

However, to acknowledge that local authorities are the best judges of local needs is not to absolve them of their statutory duties under the Act. We have always made that clear, and have always been prepared to pursue investigations where prima facie evidence is submitted to us that a local authority may be in default of its duty.

Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead)

Does the Minister have any comment to make on Wirral authority, which is in breach of its statutory responsibilities by not budgeting for adaptations?

Mr. Newton

The hon. Gentleman would not expect me to make a judgment such as he invites in an exchange across the Floor of the House. I am aware of the comments that have been made about Wirral authority and, as he will know, we are making inquiries of the authority to enable us to judge the criticisms that have been made. If I can add to that when I respond to the debate later this evening, I shall, but the hon. Gentleman will accept that that is as much as I can sensibly say in response to his intervention now.

Mr. Field

I suspected that the Minister could not answer me now, but it would be helpful if he could give us an idea of when he expects to reply. We are debating the important anniversary of the Act, and in Wirral there is no money to carry out the adaptations that are an important part of the Act.

Mr. Newton

I note the hon. Gentleman's request, and if I can help him further at the end of the debate, I shall. However, he should understand that the inquiries that we make when we hear suggestions of a breach of statutory duty—there have been more than 20 over a fairly long period—take some time to carry out and involve us in considerable correspondence with authorities. If I cannot help him further today, I shall ensure that his query is answered as soon as possible.

The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe made several observations about financial resources. It is obvious that local authorities must make difficult choices, as must central Government, at a time of budgetary and financial constraint. I must make the basic point that the Government believe that it is essential, in the interests of the economy and not least in the interests of restraining inflation, which must benefit the disabled, that local authority overall expenditure is controlled. The adoption of sensible priorities is in no way inconsistent with the proper provision of direct services to vulnerable groups such as the disabled.

I am strengthened in that view by the fact that the Audit Commission states that there is still scope for saving in local authority support and administrative costs. Until some of the local authorities which are complaining can convince us that they have examined the range of their services to ensure that they are delivering value for money, I should be somewhat sceptical about some of the claims that are made about their ability to provide the services about which we are talking today.

The Government believe that local authorities can continue to bear in mind the interests of vulnerable groups within the financial resources available to them. After all, local authority budgets for personal social services increased by 21 per cent, in cost terms between 1978–79 and 1984–85. That is a long way from the cuts about which we sometimes hear. Those figures are reflected in the fact that, between 1979–80 and 1983–84, expenditure by local authorities on personal aids increased by nearly 40 per cent. in cost terms, and the number of cases of such assistance increased by 37 per cent. During the same period, expenditure on assistance with providing telephones to the disabled and the elderly increased by nearly 12 per cent. in cost terms, and expenditure by local authorities on residential homes for the younger physically disabled, blind and deaf increased by nearly 31 per cent. in cost terms.

I shall require much more persuasion than the right hon. Gentleman was able to produce today before I am convinced that the resources made available by the Government within their framework of policies make it impossible for well-organised local authorities to provide the services that the disabled require.

The right hon. Gentleman referred not only to the workings of the Act but to the Government's Green Paper on social security as it affects the disabled. There is no doubt that, alongside the improved services which we wish to offer and for which the Act has been an important part of the framework, the wider opportunities that we try to offer to the disabled, including improved access to buildings, the third main arm of the Government's policy towards the disabled must be the provision of an adequate framework of financial support. Without wishing to labour the Government's record in this area, I should say that we have increased expenditure on benefits for the long-term sick and disabled to £4 billion in 1984-85, which is more than 35 per cent. higher in real terms than in 1978-79— the year before we took office. As part of that, we have improved the structure of benefits for the disabled, for example, by introducing the severe disablement allowance to replace the non-contributory invalidity pension, and by removing the invalidity trap, which kept many long-term sick and disabled people on the short-term lower rate of supplementary benefit rather than the higher long-term rate. I could mention several other points, including the improvement in the mobility allowance.

However, in response to the right hon. Gentleman's queries, I should start by saying that I hope that no one on either side of the House will attempt to suggest that there has been anything other than widespread dissatisfaction with the present supplementary benefit scheme. Hon. Members may have different views about the Government's proposals and about possible alternatives, but there can be only one view about the unsatisfactory nature of the present scheme. Everyone will have heard comments that it is too complicated for the staff, let alone claimants, to understand; that some aspects of the scheme — especially those relating to disability — can lead to intrusive and humiliating questioning; and that in the areas of greatest pressure, the present rules do not allow a sufficiently flexible response to individual need.

It is to meet those criticisms that the Green Paper proposes a major reform, which will replace the present system with two new schemes. The first is the new income support scheme to provide regular weekly incomes for claimants. All claimants will receive a personal allowance based on their age. For those with families, there will continue to be children's scale rates, and, in addition, there will be a new flat rate family premium. I should make it clear, because I am not sure whether it has yet been fully appreciated, that where a family has a child in receipt of attendance or mobility allowance, the family will receive a double family premium.

For groups with extra needs, such as the long-term sick and disabled, there will be a further system of premium rates. On top of the basic personal allowance would be a premium for all pensioners, which would be higher for the over-80s, for lone parents and for the long-term sick and disabled. For this purpose, all claimants receiving invalidity benefit, severe disablement allowance, attendance allowance and mobility allowance, as well as those who are blind, would get the disablement premium automatically. There would be no separate rules about time on benefit.

Where the claimant's partner is getting one of these benefits, the couple would get double benefit premium, regardless of the status of the claimant. In both cases, where the claimant or partner does not, for one reason or another, qualify for one of these passporting benefits, there would be an alternative link to benefit—28 weeks incapacity for work would also qualify the claimant for the disability premium.

I shall attempt to list briefly the advantages of these proposals. First, they will be clearer and more comprehensible and will avoid, as a routine matter of setting basic benefit rates, the sort of questioning, for example, about laundry needs, and conceivably about bathing, that can occur. Secondly, they will be more consistent with the pattern of invalidity and disablement benefits and in particular fairer to those who may fall narrowly outside the qualifying criteria for mobility allowance and attendance allowance that are used for certain passporting purposes to some of the additional payments.

Thirdly, for those who qualify by incapacity—this is an important point—the proposals will mean getting the premium rate after 28 weeks, whereas at present such people have to wait a year before going on to the longer-term scale rate. Some 20,000 long-term sick and disabled people have been in that position for between six months and one year.

Fourthly, the blind will qualify automatically for the premium, which is likely to be of particular advantage to those who are not judged to be incapable of work and do not therefore at present receive the longer-term scale rate.

Fifthly, because in setting the premium we shall have regard to the existing expenditure on additional payments, the new system is likely to do more to help the 50,000 or so long-term sick and disabled claimants of supplementary benefit who at present receive no such additional payments. We have heard a good deal both in the debate and in other quarters about those who receive a number of additional payments. However, 50,000 people get no additional payments and therefore clearly stand to have their position assisted by our proposals.

Sixthly, as I have already made clear, families with children who are disabled as measured by mobility' or attendance allowance receipt will automatically receive the double family premium.

Seventhly, I repeat that the disability premium will be payable to claimants with disabled partners on the more widely measured basis that I have described, instead of being limited mainly to the circumstances of the claimant. To put that point more clearly and specifically in terms that I am aware will be picked up by the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), that means that an unemployed claimant with a disabled wife as measured in the way that I have described will receive the disablement premium, whereas at present he would normally be on the short-term scale rate of benefit.

Mr. Pavitt

The hon. Gentleman has clearly spoken about the premium being automatic. Does this mean that, over the whole range of new proposals, there will be many fewer means-tested benefits and less requirement for people to be able to show that they have a deserving case in the various categories?

Mr. Newton

We are in danger of some confusion of terminology. We are basically talking about a means-tested benefit in the replacement for supplementary benefit. However, it is clear that, because of the simplification of the benefit structure to incorporate the disablement premium and the extent to which that disablement premium will go automatically to a fairly wide group of claimants who are manifestly long-term sick or disabled, there will be a reduction in the amount of intrusive questioning that such people have to face before gaining entitlement.

Mr. Jack Ashley (Stoke-on-Trent, South)

What exactly will the double premium be?

Mr. Newton

The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Government have made it clear that for the present we are debating the proposed structure of income support and that until the details of the structure have been settled following consultation, it would not be sensible to seek to elaborate specific benefit rates that at any rate would not be coming into effect until April 1987. I fear that I cannot help the right hon. Gentleman with a specific figure for the family premium.

Mr. Alfred Morris

On the point made by Peter Large, is it possible for the Minister to speak about percentages? As he knows, the Green Paper is long on ideology and very short on figures. The Minister cannot help us with figures, but he should be able to help us to some extent with percentages, and to reply to the important point made on behalf of the Disablement Income Group, among other organisations.

Mr. Newton

I accept that my life would be easier if I were able to respond in the way that the right hon. Gentleman has suggested, but the difference between giving percentages of basic benefit rates and actual figures is not large enough to enable me to respond differently from the way in which I replied to the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) or to the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel) who asked me somewhat similar questions on Thursday last week.

Mr. Frank Field

rose —

Mr. Newton

The hon. Gentleman and I had about 10 minutes on this subject last Thursday, and I do not wish to detain the House as long this afternoon.

Mr. Field

I shall try to be more brief. Is it possible to answer the question put by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) earlier? Will the Minister give a guarantee that no disabled people on supplementary benefit will be made worse off by these moves?

Mr. Newton

I have given signs that significant numbers of disabled people are likely to gain within such a structure but I cannot, for obvious reasons, put figures on the numbers. However, our intention will be to make sure that at the point of change in the system, there will be protection against cash losers in income support. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a guarantee that all disabled people will be gainers and none will be losers in cash terms if no other considerations apply. However, I can say that, to the extent that there might be some who would otherwise be losers because of what I would see as a fairer distribution of the newly structured system, it would be our approach to ensure full cash protection on the point of transition. I hope that it is reasonably clear to the hon. Member for Birkenhead and will be thought by the House to be a sensible policy.

The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe asked about industrial disablement benefit, and the effect for people receiving that benefit on their housing benefit entitlement. Again, it is impossible for me to speculate in detail about the effects on particular people of benefit rates, taper rates and the rest that have not yet been settled and could be settled only once the structure of the system is settled.

However, I hope that it will be clear to the House when I say that one of the key features of the Government's proposed reforms in the Green Paper is a common basis of assessing income and of setting the benefit structure that carries through from income support to housing benefit and the proposed new family credit. The point in that which is relevant to the point raised by the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South is that the disablement premium will automatically carry through into what are now called the housing benefit needs allowances because the income support rate in the new income support system will form the needs allowances in the reformed housing benefit system. So the needs of disabled people are also clearly reflected in our proposals for housing benefit.

I want to deal with two other matters affecting the income support scheme. First, we are very conscious of the need to encourage disabled people to remain active to the maximum possible extent. The present earnings rules can undoubtedly be a discouragement for disabled claimants to earn more than £4 a week. We are proposing that single claimants or families receiving the disability premium should be able to earn a significantly higher amount—we have in mind £15—before their benefit is reduced. We believe that this will be welcome to many sheltered workshops, and I know from my own direct contacts that the British Institute of Industrial Therapy will feel that that helps its efforts to ensure a degree of active work and help for many disabled people.

The second matter touches on the capital rule. We are proposing to end the present £3,000 cut-off and to substitute a taper between £3,000 up to a final cut-off at £6,000. Although I do not want to exaggerate this in this context, from the many representations made to me over recent years I believe that that will be widely welcomed not just by claimants generally but particularly by the parents of many mentally handicapped youngsters who set out deliberately to provide some capital support for their children when they themselves have passed on. I hope that that will be a help to them.

Our proposals are concerned mainly with the structure of the new benefit system at this stage, and decisions on specific rates cannot be taken until nearer the time of implementation. However, I emphasise that the Green Paper makes it clear that one of the purposes of this reform is to give greater recognition to the needs of people who are disabled. It is our firm belief that the new structure will make that easier to achieve.

I ought to respond to what the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe said about the social fund, which is the second arm of our proposed replacement of supplementary benefit and which will provide help with budgeting difficulties, funeral expenses and financial crises. Especially relevant to this debate is that it will also seek to provide help with care in the community needs. At present the scheme contains in the rules on single payments a number of provisions to help vulnerable people to maintain themselves in the community. But, frankly, these areas can get lost in the mass of detailed rules which apply to the system. It can mean that many people may not know of the help available and that the process of decision making is insufficiently able to take account of all the circumstances of certain claimants such as disabled people. In proposing the social fund we want to give greater emphasis to these areas so that the needs of disabled people and others can be handled more flexibly and with greater regard to individual circumstances.

We shall continue to provide help which allows disabled people to move from institutions into the community. We shall continue to provide help with moving and other expenses, such as furnishing needs, for those setting up on their own. We shall continue to help with moving expenses for disabled people to go to more suitable accommodation such as sheltered housing. We shall also continue to help people to visit sick and disabled relatives in hospital.

In view of the anxieties that have been expressed I should make it clear that it is not intended that help of that sort should necessarily be made by way of loan. For the most part, help with moving out of hospital and re-establishing in a community care context would normally be more appropriately met by a grant rather than a loan. There will be areas where we hope that disabled people will benefit from the budgeting and loan-making provisions of the social fund, but in the area of community care plainly it will be more appropriate to do so by way of grant.

Mr. Michael Meadowcroft (Leeds, West)

The Minister may be aware that I am rather more sympathetic to the idea of the social fund than even some of my hon. Friends, partly because I have a naively optimistic view of DHSS staff and the way that they may operate it, given the chance. Will the Minister help me by saying whether grants under the social fund will be appealable to a tribunal on the grounds of reasonableness, say, and that it will be possible for those seeking to help disabled people to appear before such a tribunal and assist claimants if they feel that the fund is not being sensitively administered?

Mr. Newton

I welcome the hon. Gentleman's remarks. They give me some encouragement because I respect his judgment in these matters. He will be aware from his evident reading of the Green Paper that we have said that our intention with the social fund will be to make it subject to some form of speedy and flexible system of review within the Department rather than by the semi-judicial process of appeal which currently characterises decisions under the social security regulations. In my view, it is likely to be incompatible with our aim of sensitive and flexible decision making, taking account of the circumstances of an individual's need and not simply trying to apply detailed regulations, as happens with the present single payments regulations, to establish alongside that all the rigidities of a semi-judicial or judicial appeal process.

Mr. Meadowcroft

Can the Minister help me further by saying whether it will be possible to include advocacy in that? Many people in these quite extreme needs find it difficult to present their cases. Will there be the possibility of advocacy by local councillors, social workers or welfare rights workers?

Mr. Newton

That is a matter to which we shall wish to give further thought during the process of working up the social fund proposals. I must again unashamedly fall back on the fact that this is a Green Paper on all parts of which we shall welcome the views of others, including the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Meadowcroft). I shall want to give further thought to his question, but my initial reaction is that I very much hope it will be possible. It is in line with our general wish to ensure that decision making in this area incorporates some of the strengths— I hope not the weaknesses—of social work practice as distinct from rigidly applying social security regulations.

Beyond those reflections on the present single payments system, we wish to work towards developing this part of the new arrangements to promote further our community care objectives. The fund represents in significant ways a new approach in social security administration. It will be important to avoid the risk of being over-ambitious from the start, but I emphasise that it is our intention to enable the system to contribute more effectively than it often does now to a sensible mix of cash and care for vulnerable groups in the community.

The hon. Member for Leeds, West asked about staff. It is also our intention that these arrangements shall be run by specialist staff with special training. We have a core of such expertise at the moment because of the build-up since 1980 of the so-called special case officers who have been concerned with handling the more difficult cases. They have been encouraged in recent years to build up contacts with social service and health professionals. We shall seek to build on that experience, to give them training in handling the more sensitive issues affecting individual claimants and to enable them to serve as a readily identifiable focus for the other welfare interests which may be involved in helping disabled claimants.

We are looking for a system which will be more sensitive than the present one, and not more intrusive. We aim to match the skills needed to apply judgment in handling these community care issues and a response which is less bound by detailed rules and restrictions. We are talking about trained specialist staff handling a limited number of cases with more freedom of manoeuvre than is possible at present.

If we are able successfully to build up those proposals alongside the clearer, fairer and more comprehensible system of income support which I described earlier, we shall both have done a significant service to disabled people in relation to the benefits system and, in doing so, have underpinned those wider objectives of making this a better society for disabled people, which were the foundations of the Act for which the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe was responsible 15 years ago.

4.50 pm

Mr. Jack Ashley (Stoke-on-Trent, South)

The Minister for Social Security has unsuccessfully tried to ride two horses at once. He has tried to defend the savage local authority expenditure cuts by the Government. At the same time, he has tried to claim that he is defending the rights of disabled people. The two are incompatible. He cannot support the local authority expenditure cuts because they have severely damaged the living standards of the disabled. If he supports the cuts, he must acknowledge, not gloss over the fact, that they have been severely damaging to disabled people. That was the first two-horse ride that the hon. Gentleman tried to take.

The Minister tried to do it on another occasion. He tried to assure us that his review will not damage the interests of the disabled, but at the same time he tried to keep the review figures secret. That, too, is incompatible. He cannot assure the House that the disabled will not be damaged if he is unable to provide figures. We do not know what the figures are. Therefore, the Minister made a sanguine speech which was unjustified by its content. He pointed to the numerous advances that have been made, but they are limited and minor advances. They do not amount to a comprehensive package for the disabled.

The Minister is capable of making good speeches— he is one of the few good Ministers in this terrible Government—but on this occasion he did not make a good speech because he was unable to defend this Government's record and simultaneously to do his job successfully as a Minister with responsibility for the disabled. I intend to deal in more detail with some of the points that he made, but first may I say that I agree with the Minister about the importance of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, which was piloted through the House by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris). That Act was a great landmark for disabled people in Britain and, as we have heard from our great friends in China and, indeed, across the world, it has created new opportunities. It gave positive and constructive help to disabled people in need; it changed the climate of the whole country towards disabled people. It was an outstanding achievement, of which my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe can be proud.

The Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act was passed in 1970. Today, in stark contrast to those heady days, there is a mood of deep disillusionment that has to be contrasted with the picture painted a few minutes ago by the Minister for Social Security. Not just a general abstract feeling of disappointment but in some cases real, deep and grievous hardship is being faced by some disabled people. The tragedy is that that hardship is often unnecessary.

I have recently spoken to some severely disabled people and to three great experts on disablement: first, my wife Pauline; secondly, Molly Meacher of the British Association of Social Workers; and, thirdly, Peter Large of the Disabled Income Group and the Disabled Professionals Group. As all hon. Members know, Peter Large is both disabled and an expert. His views, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe has said, carry very great weight in the House.

All three of those experts have spoken to me of the changed mood among the disabled—of their battles to get any help at all from some local authorities and of the hardship now being endured by many thousands of disabled people. Despite the Minister's speech, that is the reality of disability in Britain today.

One of the cases quoted to me by Peter Large illustrates the suffering of disabled people that can be attributed to the cuts made by local authorities. This case will be familiar to the Minister. It concerns a woman, a tetraplegic, who is being cared for by a very elderly mother whose ability to cope is decreasing week by week. The local authority has tried to cut her home help, and the time of the nurses looking after her, who put her to bed at night, has been cut by more than half. Although her situation has improved recently, she still has to stay in bed throughout the weekend—fancy that—because she can get no help at all then. Her mother is too frail to use the hoist. She has been warned by the local authority that the present arrangements are certain for only six months and that thereafter she could be forced into an institution.

As Peter Large says:

For far too many people, care in the community at the moment is an ad hoc, stressful, hand-to-mouth fight for survival —an unhappy existence, often lacking dignity and privacy. That is a sombre, and, in my view, realistic appraisal by one of the greatest experts on the disabled. He pays tribute to that woman's Member of Parliament and to the Minister with responsibility for the disabled for their help. He says that their help for that woman has been very constructive, but that the personal intervention of the Minister is not the right way to run the welfare state. I agree with him. That should not be necessary. We should not need to call upon the Minister to rectify a grievous anomaly. Even after the Minister has acted, that woman is still confined to bed throughout the weekend. The Member of Parliament has done what he can and the Minister has done what he can, but that problem still has to be faced. I am not saying that that particular example applies to millions of people, but I believe that similar things are happening to many people throughout Britain.

The truth is that many disabled people in Britain are today living in fear. They fear what will be cut next. They have neither confidence nor peace of mind. They fear where the cuts will fall. They are consumed with anxiety about how long their family or the carers can cope without adequate help. Those problems are exacerbated by the proper policy that is being pursued by the Minister of expelling people from institutions and trying to integrate them into the community. The policy is breaking down because proper provision for those people is not being made in the community. They are being denied adequate community care.

One of the original aims of my right hon. Friend's Act was to make it easier for the disabled to obtain the bas^•ic help that they require, such as home help, aids and adaptations, but it has become a nightmare of complexity and a veritable Grand National of obstacles to be negotiated by people who are very severely handicapped. Such people are often not given information about their entitlements. They should receive information, because without it they do not know what to ask for or to whom to turn. However, when they are told of their entitlements, they face arguments as to whether they need the help, aid or adaptation. If they win that battle, they then have to be assessed by an occupational therapist. But there is a great shortage of occupational therapists, so they have to wait. It is a national scandal that there should be a shortage of such people. Even if the disabled win that battle and are assessed, they may be told that the aid, help or adaptation is not yet available, which means a further long wait.

The lesson to be drawn from those points and from the experience of many people is that life may be for living, but for far too many disabled people it is merely for. existing. It is not the local authority that is mainly to blame for such a deplorable situation, but the Government. They must accept the responsibility. The Government's battles with local authorities are familiar to hon. Members on both sides of the House. However, their financial support for local authorities has been slashed from 60 per cent. in 1980–81 to 49 per cent. now. The Government are responsible for that savage cut.

Local authorities vary greatly in their attitude towards the disabled. Unfortunately, the Minister was far too sanguine about local authorities. He said that they were the best judges. That may be true in general, but it overlooks the fact that there are many negligent, lazy, greedy, selfish and stupid local authorities that do not care about the disabled. We must face that fact. We must do as we always do, and pay tribute to local democracy, but let us simultaneously recognise that there are bad local authorities that give the disabled in their areas a rotten deal. We should be doing something about them.

Some of us, including the Minister, have argued about the disparate provision of local authorities and called for action. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe quoted some figures. Perhaps the Minister will comment on them at the end of the debate. The national average for local authority expenditure on the disabled is £2.07 per head of the population. But perhaps the Minister will comment on other local authorities, such as Sutton which spends 87p, Bury which spends 86p, and Oxfordshire, which is even worse, which spends 75p. How can one defend local authorities that are evidently neglecting the problems and difficulties of severely disabled people, some of whom may be imprisoned in bed all weekend and may have to look to an elderly mother to work a hoist which she is too frail to do?

I could cite many more examples, but I do not want to be emotional. I want, instead, to be practical. I have referred to the genuine practical problems and difficulties being faced by human beings. When we use the umbrella term "the disabled," we are really talking about individuals who suffer grievously. We should attack those local authorities that have neglected their responsibilities to them.

In the Minister's speech, I noticed a regrettable dichotomy in his attitude towards local authorities that he felt had been overspending. He implied that we could not allow authorities to waste money—that they should be businesslike, prune their expenditure, or conduct their business properly. But that attitude should be compared to his attitude towards their decisions on the disabled. On the one hand, the Minister seems to be ready to condemn local authorities if he feels they are extravagant, but, on the other, he is rather complacent if he feels that they are not fulfilling their duties to the disabled.

The Minister implied that we should leave things to the local authorities because they are the best judges of what should be done. That is an unfortunate attitude. The Government are eager to intervene when they think that local authorities are spending too much, but there are never any stern ministerial statements threatening penalties for local authorities that spend too little on the disabled. There should be. The Minister has powers. I accept that he makes investigations, but only about individual cases, and they do not affect the generality of disabled people. The Minister should get the Secretary of State to use his great powers and to take action against recalcitrant and negligent local authorities.

The fundamental issue is one of cash, and the omens for the disabled are grim. The Minister has discussed the new scheme, and he recognises that many severely disabled people rely on supplementary benefit and extra payments just to subsist. I think that 80 per cent. of disabled people on supplementary benefit receive those additional payments. But the Government have plans to abolish those additional payments and to replace them with a higher level of income support. Indeed, I felt very uneasy when the Minister negatively responded to my request for figures. But figureless proposals are meaningless. It is just possible that the average may suit the average person, but disabled people are not average, and their exceptional needs will draw heavily on the social fund. However, that social fund is cash-limited, and when it runs out periodically, those requiring help will presumably receive the same response as Old Mother Hubbard. That would be a sad response to make to people who are in great need.

Disabled people are also very worried about the Government's "enabling" theme for local authorities. Many of them fear that it shows a lack of commitment. I think that they are right. The Government are encouraging local authorities to duck the issue and are failing to extend the necessary and proper pressure on behalf of disabled people. Fine-sounding words from Ministers cannot disguise a lack of conviction or commitment. I do not level that charge at the Minister for Social Security, because he does his best, but in general the Government are failing the disabled. Many of the speeches made about the disabled do not reflect the passionate commitment and determination to act which should be there.

Voluntary organisations are admirable institutions, but they are not renowned for working together. Some of the bickering between them causes heart searching among those of us who are active on behalf of disabled people.

It is, therefore, a demonstration of how worried the organisations have become that they have formed an association called the Voluntary Organisations Social Services Group, which is determined to ensure that voluntary organisations should not become tools of the Government. It knows that the Government are turning from proper local authority provision to excessive reliance on voluntary organsiations and it rightly insists that any special programme funding should be supplementary and not a replacement for local authority services.

Disabled people and voluntary organisations are fighting back against the current disturbing trends. They reject the view implied by the Minister—I deplore his implication — that the Act is laudable, but not affordable. The Act is the law, and the law should be obeyed and enforced. It is the Minister's duty to ensure that the law is enforced, and he will be failing in his duty if he does not ensure that.

We need a number of clear and positive steps from the Government. First, the Act must be enforced, and heavy penalties must be imposed on those who break the law.

Secondly, we need a code of practice for local authorities on the provision of services for disabled people. The British Association of Social Workers produced such a code in 1983, and I hope that the Minister will consider its general application, because it would bring Scrooge-like local authorities into line. The code should include a specific requirement for the provision of information. The DIAL system — the disablement information and advice line — is demonstrating how effectively that can be done.

Thirdly, we need an alternative to the creasing, groaning machinery of getting help to disabled people. Gearing up the whole Heath Robinson contraption of local authority services to provide, say, a bath rail belongs not to pre-1970 but to pre-1870. Fourthly, we need greater participation by disabled people in the decision-making process.

The paternalistic days are over and the involvement of disabled people results in better decisions and preserves dignity. The centres for independent living set a fine example in the sharing of decision making and service delivery between local authorities and disabled people. If those centres are properly funded, they can provide great opportunities for many disabled people.

Disabled people have not only a claim, but a right, to participation in the making of decisions that affect them. They have a great deal to offer and they are willing to offer it. I hope that the House will not turn them down, but will give them an opportunity to play a major role in their own affairs.

We need change, and the debate should mark the moment of change, when the Government began to act decisively on behalf of disabled people and when disabled people played a much larger role in their own destinies.

5.14 pm

Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent)

It is a rare privilege for me to be fourth in a debate in which the three previous speakers have a record on this subject which I should like to match when I have been here as long as they have.

I pay special tribute to the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris). People all over the world know what a tremendous amount of work he put into the creation of the Act. In some ways, he is a remarkable model to new Members, such as myself, who are told when we come to the House of the dangers of not specialising.

On the other hand, it must be said that the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) are in danger of that other peril against which new Members are warned, which is taking one small corner of the whole fabric of society which—mixing my metaphors—could be a bottomless pit and insisting at every turn that all the resources available for the betterment of society should be directed to that corner.

I take issue with the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South, because it is an old trick to try to differentiate between a good Minister and a bad Government. The Minister represents a Government under whom expenditure on the chronically sick and disabled has reached previously unknown heights and has grown in real terms by percentages of which any Government have a right to feel proud.

I accept that there are local authorities whose record in this, as in many other matters, leaves much to be desired, but I am nervous of the suggestion that central Government should dictate exactly how much should be spent or what resources should be involved in every individual case. The need to look wider than just one's own preoccupation does not belittle the importance of the disabled, but it is necessary to remember other needs.

My constituency spans two district councils. For the 10th year running, one of those councils has set its rate at the same level. As a consequence, in a pocket of high unemployment in a prosperous part of the country, unemployment is beginning to fall because employers are moving into the area, partly because the rate is not only stable, but is extraordinarily low. That is a social good which will have an impact on the disabled, as on other people.

Regrettably, I shall not be able to stay for much of the rest of the debate, because I have to go to the annual general meeting of the Community Service Volunteers, of which I have the honour to be a trustee. That organisation is relevant to the debate, because, among other pioneering efforts, it has pioneered the exciting experiment of independent living for the disabled, under which young volunteers live in the same house as severely disabled persons and help them to cope with the difficulties of their independence. I echo the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South when I say that the volunteers undoubtedly learn more than the disabled person about what is needed in the partnership.

Mr. Tim Yeo (Suffolk, South)

Would my hon. Friend like to pay tribute to another aspect of community service volunteers' work? The able-to-help scheme allows disabled volunteers a chance to be the volunteers rather than the recipients of voluntary effort.

Mr. Rowe

I am of course delighted to pay tribute to that work. What is being done is a clear lesson that the disabled have as much to offer the able-bodied as the able-bodied have to offer the disabled. One of the essential features of this scheme is that local authorities need to respond to some of the difficulties with greater sophistication. I am sure the House knows that there was a tragic incident of a volunteer watching a disabled person die in peculiarly unhappy circumstances. The local authority, the volunteer and everyone involved was still so new to the scheme that they did not grasp some of the dangers in the experiment. It says a great deal for the maturity of the CSV and the local authority that the scheme did not die as a result of that unfortunate accident, but rather that lessons are being carefully applied to future efforts.

There is one minor but important point which I should like to raise with my hon. Friend the Minister. Although he has given the official reply, I hope that he will once again consider the matter. Let me cite the example of a couple in my constituency. The man is 100 per cent. disabled and his wife is unable to take any form of employment because she is caring for her husband. By frugal management she has managed to save some of the benefits which accrue to her family each week, and was looking to take out an insurance policy for the unhappy day, which is likely to come before her own death, when her husband dies. It transpires that, no matter where she turns or how she does it, the surrender value of any insurance policy that she takes out will be counted against her benefit entitlement.

Although I welcome the intention of the Green Paper to raise the disregard from £3,000 to £6,000, will my hon. Friend look again at those rare cases where there is 100 per cent. disability in the household and consider allowing some disregard on this so-called capital sum, which is a capital sum only in theory, especially if some form of caveat is entered against the possibility of borrowing against it.

Mr. Newton

As my hon. Friend courteously said that he might not be able to be here at the end of the debate, perhaps I might ask him whether his constituent is aware of the current £1,500 exemption on the surrender value on life assurance policies, which is part of the present capital rules.

Mr. Rowe

I think that she is aware of it, but I cannot be absolutely sure. Even so, the impression was that it would not take very long to build up a policy entitlement which would overtake virtually all of the disregards. It seems hard that people who forswear present pleasure for future frugality should be penalised in this way.

It is important that resources be made available for the disabled. Without money, comparatively little can be done. However, it is erroneous to believe that only money is required. We need a change in the attitude of society. Perhaps I might give a small but pertinent example. It is strange how reluctant house builders are to consider the possibility of building the kind of home that they build for young couples, which incorporate features that would enable the homes to be used by the disabled. I do not believe that any young couple, glad to have their first home, would find slightly wider than average doors or electric sockets half way up the wall a major impediment to their happiness. It is much cheaper to build in the flexibility than to make modifications. Such a simple adaptation on the part of society would meet the needs of the disabled and others.

I strongly welcome the recently introduced extension of the joint financing arrangements, which will allow joint finance to continue for 13 years in some cases. Decanting disabled people into the community is an immensely important issue, but there is an evangelism about some of those who believe in getting rid of institutions. If we are not careful, we will find that people for whom the community is not ready and who find it impossible to adjust are put into the community. That does not diminish the enormous importance of taking those huge institutions, often of Victorian origin, and reallocating them in other ways to the benefit of the Health Service and social services, thus making it possible for the disabled to live within the community. The recently improved joint financing arrangements give tremendous help to that.

Another commercial. I have in my constituency the headquarters of only one national voluntary organisation. It is small but of fundamental importance and is called the Association of Carers. It has just received its first assistance from the Government. We welcome that. It is designed to make it easier for the army of men and women —mostly women—who have devoted their lives to the care of disabled or handicapped people, to articulate their needs and to describe the support that they require. Much of what they have to tell the Government has been greeted with considerable sympathy by my hon. Friend the Minister. There is a long way to go before the disabled receive the kind of dignified treatment which we would all like to see. The Government have nothing of which to be ashamed. They have made enormous advances, with the assistance of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, in the introduction of which the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe played an important part.

5.28 pm

Mr. Michael Meadowcroft (Leeds, West)

I do not regard myself as a centrist but I shall not go as far as the forthright criticisms made by the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) and I go further than the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe). I agree with the hon. Member for Mid-Kent that we must not enforce nationally what we cannot persuade people of the need to do locally. If we cannot persuade recalcitrant local authorities to spend on what we believe they should spend on, it is up to us and our colleagues locally to persuade people in the area that they should support expenditure on means of assisting disabled people. We must create a resonance locally rather than think that we can do things centrally by forcing action on local government.

I am sometimes anxious that, in debates on social services and social welfare, the Chamber is rather cosy. Those right hon. and hon. Members who attend are anxious about the disabled, and their attendance hides the fact that there are other hon. Members who are not as interested and who do not have the same determination to fight for the disabled.

It is a strange paradox that although the Minister can give global figures for expenditure and cite straightforward cash increases we all find that in practice many needs are not being met. Perhaps higher expectations and greater information about what should be available mean that these needs come to the fore more than in the past, but I hope that the Minister will examine the situation carefully and not hide behind national figures when hon. Members are being bombarded constantly with cases of apparently simple needs not being met at the local level.

In Thursday's debate on the problems of the elderly, I cited two cases of linkage which I regarded as unsatisfactory and in which I believed that better services could be provided without additional expenditure. One concerned the vast cost of wholesale slum clearance and rebuilding. The other concerned the interaction of the social services, social security, the voluntary organisations and the National Health Service to assist individuals. Today I shall give one instance in which linkage is not working as it should for the disabled.

I am concerned to find that in some instances non-teaching assistants provided in schools are being withdrawn or are not following through to assist young people who move on to other schools. It is hard to dispute the statements of local authorities about the limited resources currently available making it extremely difficult to continue providing extra services which in virtually every case we would all regard as valuable and necessary to enable disabled people to blossom to their full potential in the education environment.

I, too, wish to congratulate the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris). I was not in the House in 1970, but I appreciate the problems that he must have faced and the last-minute fears that he must have felt about whether his Bill would finally become an Act. The right hon. Gentleman never misses an opportunity to put the case for the disabled and it is to his credit that he is not deterred by the risk of wearying people with a recital of the same facts and cases but ploughs on consistently.

The first election that I fought was for Leeds city council in 1968. Early on in my campaign I was brought starkly up against the problems of disabled people. As I canvassed in the streets of Leeds a message was brought to me asking me to call at a certain house to discuss the problems faced by a family with a mentally handicapped daughter. Without feeling that I was being particularly brave or deserving of credit, I duly called on the family and was horrified at the amazement of the parents when I did so. They told me that all too often the mention of mental handicap meant that no one turned up. That was an astonishing comment on the state of affairs in society at that time.

In the 15 years since the Act was passed, a great deal has been achieved in helping many disabled people to live almost completely normal lives in society simply because attention has been paid to providing greater access for them.

Another aspect of the Act which has not been fulfilled concerns the need for a better census by every local authority of the number of disabled people in its area. As far as I am aware, very few authorities carry out a proper census so they are unable properly to assess the provisions required. I cited the case of a rubella-affected child in Leeds who was very severely handicapped. She was deaf and blind and had a heart murmur. The authorities said that they would not provide a rubella unit because there were not enough rubella-affected children in the catchment area to justify such action. However, the parents of rubella-affected children in the area knew the precise numbers. On a certain day in Leeds the parents and the rubella-affected children all got together with the policy-makers from the local authority, both officers and councillors. As a result of that meeting, a rubella unit was built, attached to a school for people with hearing defects, and it has proved a great success. The census is a crucial tool if one is to make proper provision for disabled people.

I want to develop the whole problem of linkage and local authorities. One can place too much emphasis on the need to spend money. It is dangerous to make a statement like that in the House as it may be pounced on by the Minister and his colleagues as implying a need to spend less money or not to spend money where it is needed. I am not suggesting that. In many cases there is a need to provide cash to assist people. Sometimes, however, we do not look at a problem in the round to see how different Government Departments are affected and where their responsibilities lie.

The reduction or lack of expansion in home help services is not justifiable in financial terms. Looked at in the round, the lack of home help services probably causes greater expenditure elsewhere by accelerating the need for disabled people to be taken into institutional care. The home help service is one of the cheapest and most cost-effective services we have. The kind of people who are home helps, both male and female these days, are people who if they could afford not to be paid to do their work would willingly carry it out for nothing. I am sure many hon. Members have experienced, as I have, telephone calls to their homes at night and at weekends from home helps on behalf of their clients. They do this quite apart from their paid duties. It is a splendid service. I suspect that the home help service may thus even create a profit in sheer cash terms.

The way in which we help the unemployed through the Manpower Services Commission schemes is not cost effective and could be improved to the benefit of all concerned. I have previously mentioned the welfare maintenance and supply group in Bradford. That group of 12 disabled men met through the social contacts of disabled folk and found that they all had an interest in craft skills, so they decided to get together to make aids and adaptations for disabled people. They managed in the first year through the usual 100 per cent. MSC grant towards all the labour costs, but the MSC rules mean that no money can be kept by the project. That is crazy if one is trying to encourage people to be self-supporting.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman) is not present as it would gladden her heart to hear that it was then suggested that the EEC would make funds available to carry the project on, the local authority bridging the gap between MSC and EEC funding. Paradoxically, despite being a larger organisa-tion, the EEC is more flexible in giving grant to such projects and it was able to work in conjunction with the project, covering a declining percentage of the labour bill according to manufactured goods sold and the contracts for adaptations secured by the group.

As local council for voluntary service secretary, I thought that the group would probably survive with a grant of 40 per cent. of the wages bill, the rest being made up through the open market. In fact, the group is now working on a mere 20 per cent. subsidy. With that kind of flexibility, a 20 per cent. subsidy on the wage bill can enable 12 disabled people to fend for themselves and work in the community at a cost far less than that of having them unemployed and paying them 100 per cent. of all the multifarious benefits that the Minister has outlined today. These schemes have vision and if one considers the linkage between provisions they are both cost effective and beneficial to the individuals concerned.

There has been much criticism from various sources of the fact that, once held, international years are often forgotten, but such criticism is not always necessarily justified. When such a year works well and local committees are established, there is the possibilibity of continuing the momentum in beneficial ways. In the context of the International Year of Disabled People, many schemes were established—for example, access guides and information guides, which have since been updated —which have continued ever since. I am pleased that groups such as DIAL — Disabled Information Advice Line which was set up by disabled people for disabled people—have been able to maintain their funding. In many respects, the transportation side of the problem also burgeoned during that year.

I hate to say it, but it looks as though some of the community transport projects, such as dial-a-ride, will be hard hit as a result of the abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan counties, because the money received from hiring charges was underpinned by grant aid from the transport bodies. It would be a shame if such projects were now to disappear.

It is important to look at the implications of grant aid. It should not be shuffled from one Government Department to another. As to ways of achieving innovation, I am well aware that some DHSS section 64 grants have been very much appreciated and have done a great deal to assist voluntary bodies to provide a different style and character of service than that provided by the state, whether centrally or locally. I am glad that there is an increased ministerial awareness of the need not to confine such grant aid to year-on-year funding.

Sometimes it is almost self-fulfilling for Ministers to say, "But you do not get the same kind of secure provision or calibre of staff," but by and large, we shall not get the present array of people working in such projects if there is merely year-on-year funding.

It is now apparent that there is greater awareness of the administrative implications of grant aid. In work for the disabled and other work which qualifies for grant aid, it is often assumed that grant is simply given for a project, without realising the administrative implications. Some voluntary bodies have come unstuck through under-funding, even though it is only by a small proportion. However, such a proportion is crucial for a project even though it may not be for a statutory body.

We must also look carefully at what is now happening to urban aid grants through the Department of the Environment. I understand that in the main there is a virtual bar on new revenue money for projects, and for urban authorities such as Leeds and others in west Yorkshire, it will be difficult to maintain projects even at their present levels unless there is a change of heart about the amount of revenue finance to be made available.

The hon. Member for mid-Kent referred to the National Association of Carers. It has been estimated that if only 1 per cent. of families which now care for disabled or elderly persons refused to carry that burden and asked that their dependants be placed in residential care, the cost to the state would increase overnight by 20 per cent. I suspect that in some cases carers are literally being exploited. We must look carefully at support for such carers, not just in financial terms but also in terms of respite. If we do not do so, we may find that there will be a decrease in the number of those who are prepared to be carers, simply because they are incapable of doing so for any length of time.

It is desperately important that institutional care and care in the community are interlinked. However, I do not wish to anticipate the debate that I hope we shall have on the report of the Select Committee on Social Services. I notice that the hon. Member for Halifax (Mr. Galley) is present, and I am sure he would agree that the Minister should be given no excuse whatever to deny a debate on those matters. However, it is important to take on board many of the provisions contained in the recent report on care in the community. During our visits here and in the United States, we were impressed by the fact that when a local authority or voluntary project said that a certain number of disabled people would always remain in institutional care, we always discovered that in other areas such disabled people were being cared for in the community. Given the right support, I do not believe that it is impossible to care for any group of people in the community. We must therefore look at ways and means of drawing the funding together.

It is important that disabled and handicapped persons come out of institutions with a cheque which would go either to the voluntary body or the local authority. Even with joint finance or other tapered methods of finance, I do not believe that organisations are prepared to take on such responsibilities unless they have an assurance of continued financial support. It is important that such money be given for the place, not just the person, since otherwise voluntary bodies with no great capital resources on which to fall back might experience severe cash flow problems if the disabled person died, as a result of which that finance ceased. I understand that in the north-west that type of dowry money is being used effectively to enable people to come out of the institutions.

Given the different disabilities for which people are taken into care and for which they need special attention, it is interesting that quite a number of those disabilities are preventable. For example, the fourth largest group of people needing special care contains those suffering from cardio-respiratory disorders. More than 10 per cent. of the total fall into that category. We must therefore look at preventive work such as that carried out on diet and nutritional food labelling rather than concentrating on treating people once they have become disabled.

Those of us who are fortunate to be able bodied must talk to our constituents whenever we can, even in the clubs and pubs, and should point out that people who are not as fortunate as ourselves must have the care to which they are entitled. One of the Minister's predecessors, the right hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Prentice), told the Royal National Institute for the Blind in July 1979:

The disabled cannot expect to be exempted from the sacrifices necessary for economic recovery." I reject that. People with needs that are perhaps more serious than the problems we face economically are entitled to be protected from the cold winds that may blow. It is incumbent on us all to ensure that such services are provided and that those in need are properly cared for so that they can live as full a life as possible. That will be of benefit not just to the disabled, but to the rest of us when we see them take their full place in society.

5.48 pm

Mr. Tim Yeo (Suffolk, South)

The hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Meadowcroft) made some of the points that I shall attempt to make, but perhaps I can approach them from another angle.

I begin by paying a tribute to the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris). I am sorry that he is not present, but he will do doubt read what I have said. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his original Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act and also on initiating this debate on the 15th anniversary of that Act. It was on the right hon. Gentleman's first visit to India that he was informed that he had come first in the 1969 ballot for private Members' Bills.

At about that time the right hon. Gentleman and I were visiting the then Prime Minister of India, Mrs. Gandhi, as part of a group representing the Indian Spastics Society. We were lobbying the Indian Prime Minister to extend the special tax concessions available to voluntary organisations in India, which allow corporate donors to deduct more than 100 per cent, of the cost of a donation to certain research bodies in India. Tax concessions remain close to the heart of the right hon. Gentleman and myself in relation to what can be done for voluntary organisations in Britain. We are particularly worried about the problem of VAT and charities.

The Act has played a major role. Not only has it provided solid, practical help for thousands of disabled people and their families in the last 15 years, but it has significantly increased the public's awareness of disability. That is an important effect of the Act. It has been a beacon for many disabled people. As many hon. Members have said, it is regrettable that too many local authorities are still failing to carry out all their obligations under the Act.

All those right hon. and hon. Members to whom I wish to pay tribute seem to have left the Chamber. I was about to say something complimentary about my hon. Friend the Minister, but he too has left. His commitment is widely recognised. I have been aware of its since before I became a Member of the House.

I have had a long interest in the Act.I served on a group set up by the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation to examine the effects of the Act and to see whether it needed strengthening. We concluded that it needed strengthening three or four years ago. Voluntary organisations play an important role in monitoring the Act. They are useful watchdogs outside Parliament. They use their expertise to see whether it is effective in dealing with the problems in the way that was as originally intended.

The passing of the Act was not the end of the story. It was more of a foundation than a conclusion, and I should like to discuss the future. I do not want to discuss the social security Green Paper because we shall have ample opportunities to do that. I do not want to condemn that document before we have had a chance to examine it in detail.

There is much to be commended, particularly in relation to the principles, in the Green Paper. Everyone who has had to deal with the social security problems of the disabled and other claimants recognises the need to simplify the system. If we can direct a greater share of the social security budget to the most needy households, the Green Paper will serve a valuable purpose.

Hon. Members have accused local authorities of failing to carry out their obligations under the Act. Some local authorities claim that a lack of resources prevents them from carrying out their obligations. There can be no clearer reminder of the need to ensure that local authority money is spent wisely than the fact that it is not being spent on important services of the type required by this Act.

It is deplorable that ratepayers' money is being spent for political purposes such as publishing leaflets to promote anti-Government propaganda. Some local authorities refuse competitive tendering for their services at a cost to the ratepayers and to disabled people living in their areas.

Mr. Roland Boyes (Houghton and Washington)

The hon. Gentleman has been active among disabled people, and I am surprised that he should accuse local authorities in that way. He is talking about minute amounts of money being spent on political propaganda when millions of pounds are needed to satisfy the Act introduced so well by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris). Surely the hon. Gentleman concedes that each time the Government cut the grant-related expenditure allocation to local authorities they make it more and more difficult for authorities to carry out their obligations under the Act. Some local authorities can carry out their obligations only by breaking the law.

Mr. Yeo

I do not want to mar our constructive and mainly bi-partisan debate by having a detailed argument with the hon. Member for Houghton and Washington (Mr. Boyes). For whatever reason, local authorities have limited resources. That is inevitable. I want to ensure that those resources are used in the most effective way. Since one of the proper purposes for which those resources are needed is the relief of the problems of disability, it is a pity that some local authorities do not maximise their available resources.

The prevention of disability was referred to by the hon. Member for Leeds, West. The problem of prevention illustrates the difficulty of persuading local authorities and health authorities to carry out the wishes of central Government. Naturally, central Government are reluctant to dictate too minutely to local authorities about what they should do.

Before I worked for the Spastics Society, my predecessor Mr. James Loring launched the "save a baby" campaign, which was concerned with what the society described as the "priority of priorities"—the health of the future generation, and the need to ensure that as many babies as possible are born free of handicap and disability and are healthy.

Many aspects of prevention still merit attention. One aspect is the inadequacy of neonatal intensive care facilities. The provision of neonatal intensive care units remains below the level which even the DHSS acknowledges is required. That point was dealt with by the Social Services Select Committee in one of its early reports last year. It has been proven beyond doubt that the availability of neonatal intensive care facilities can save lives and enable healthy babies to be born, when the absence of such facilities would result in a handicapped baby being born. It is tragic that work by men such as Professor Osmond Reynolds cannot be duplicated throughout the country because of the absence of such facilities.

Mrs. Edwina Currie (Derbyshire, South)

As a member of the Social Security Select Committee, I confirm that what my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, South (Mr. Yeo) says is true. However, does my hon. Friend recognise that under the guidance of our right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench considerable progress has been made and that the perinatal mortality rate has dropped to 10.3 per thousand, which is close to the best rates in Europe, and is improving?

Mr. Yeo

I rejoice with my hon. Friend at the fall in the perinatal mortality rate, which is a mark of the considerable progress here over the last five or six years. It is the result not only of efforts by voluntary organisations and the professional skill of the medics, but of the fact that the Government have been willing to acknowledge the problem and allocate the resources to deal with it. The progress shows that it is worth doing even more, because there is still potential for further improvement.

Antenatal care is another important aspect of prevention. The Spastics Society produced a film three years ago entitled, "A Question of Confidence", which emphasised the tremendous variation in the quality of antenatal provision throughout the country. It is clear that some antenatal care clinics provide facilities for other children to be looked after while mothers attend the clinic. The environment, transport facilities and all other services connected with the good clinics are attractive and welcoming. In contrast with clinics which provide good facilities and are conveniently located, there are clinics in which appointments are not easy to make, where there are long waits and where no facilities exist for mothers to attend with other children.

Women are positively deterred from early attendance at poor antenatal clinics, although it is clear that clinics can be of vital importance. I hope that the Minister will draw the attention of his colleagues at the Department of Health and Social Security to those points, and I am delighted to see the Under-Secretary at that Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Mr. Patten) in attendance.

I have been disappointed with the reports of the maternity services advisory committee. They can be described as weak, in that they have resulted in virtually no action being taken. We now find that the committee itself has quietly been wound up, although it was to have been one of the major responses of the Department to the 1980 report of the Social Services Select Committee on perinatal and neonatal mortality.

Another aspect that must be stressed in connection with prevention is health education, by which I do not mean just sex education, but the whole question of teaching youngsters the importance of such issues as pre-conceptual care, of diet before pregnancy and of not smoking for those who are planning to have children. Those are all aspects which deserve greater attention than they now receive, and the way in which health education is put across in schools — I accept that it has received considerable attention recently—must be monitored carefully.

The prevention of handicap is vital. However, another aspect is preventing the ill effects of handicap. The hon. Member for Leeds, West referred to this when dealing wih short-term respite care, which is a vital service, as I know from the work that is carried out at the Tadworth court children's hospital, where I have the privilege of being chairman of trustees,. The service which that hospital provides is of the greatest possible value to families who care for chronically sick and disabled children for most of the year.

The relief provided by having their children in Tadworth for a week or two takes off the pressure, which can be considerable indeed when caring for children in those circumstances. Unfortunately, there is no clear statutory obligation on authorities to pay for that short-term respite care, although they have a statutory obligation to provide even residential education, if necessary in special schools, for handicapped children.

There is an obligation to provide residential accommodation for any child or adult where families are unable to cope. However, where families are trying to cope — and, in so doing, are relieving the state of a considerable financial burden—there is no obligation on any authority to pay for the respite care that may make that process possible.

The ultimate consequence of not providing such care would be to throw a greater burden on health or local authorities, and there could be further costs in connection with families which might break up through the pressures of looking after such children. Local authorities are reluctant to sponsor children unless they are compelled to do so. Although I cannot offer an easy solution to the problem, we must accept that it exists.

About two years ago a private Member's Bill was introduced with the aim of amending the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. It was designed to be an anti-discrimination measure. I regret that the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) is not present for this debate, although he introduced that amending measure. It is a pity that his interest in the subject appears to be so short lived—

Mr. Boyes

Cheap.

Mr. Yeo

—in that he has not managed to be here on what is, after all, an Opposition day.

The Act tackles a number of the consequences of disability and, in the way in which it raises the public's consciousness of the subject, it has contributed to reducing the problem of discrimination against disabled people. Nevertheless, more needs to be done and it is worth recalling the detailed survey that was carried out by the Spastics Society in 1983, under the chairmanship of Mr. Ron Gerver, which came to the conclusion that discrimination against disabled people existed and that the one way to tackle it might be by legislation.

A great deal of discrimination results from ignorance or lack of thought on the part of people who have no first-hand experience of disability. However, there are more serious problems, particularly, for example, in employ-ment. Applicants for jobs who acknowledge: their disability at the time of applying find that their interview rate is substantially lower than those who make no reference to their disability. That is a sad but unfortunate truth.

On a less acute scale is the difficulty which, for example, spastic youngsters may encounter when getting served in pubs. Because of their physical disability, they are sometimes turned away because it is thought either that they will be unable to hold their drink in the way in which other youngsters can — a belief which is without foundation—or that the way in which they drink might deter other customers. I appreciate that discrimination of that sort is not easy to legislate on and that probably the educational process is the best way to put it right.

I welcome some of the imaginative educational advertising campaigns that have been launched, particularly the campaign which the Spastics Society has been running for some time, and I pay tribute to Mrs. Anita Monsell and Mr. Benjamin Bowles, who put together that campaign. There is, however, a role for legislation, too. A measure might be difficult to frame, and I accept that the amending Bill which was introduced in November 1983 was far from ideal. However, legislation could be part of the educational process, and the first step to putting matters right is to recognise the existence of discrimination.

I could not conclude my remarks without referring to the voluntary organisations. I pay tribute to the large number of outstanding voluntary bodies which are active in the field and I hope that their role can expand. Many of them contain a specialist expertise which can never be in the possession of statutory bodies. They are run by extremely committed people who offer outstanding value to the state in the work that they do, and I urge the Government to continue their programme, which is already encouraging, of exploring how voluntary organisations can be used to help implement policies such as care in the community.

The hon. Member for Leeds, West rightly referred to the funding problems of the various organisations. When the Government are assisting voluntary bodies with their funding, I hope that proper account will be taken of their administrative costs. Many schemes fall down because of lack of concentration on that aspect.

I welcome the debate and hope that the Minister will take careful note of the points that are being raised.

6.8 pm

Mr. Laurie Pavitt (Brent, South)

Hon. Members in all parts of the House know that I am disabled by deafness. I am grateful to your predecessor in the chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for assisting me. For about 20 minutes I was disabled by blindness, but your predecessor had the good sense to have the blinds drawn. The sun was no longer in my eyes and I was able to see with clarity the handsome faces on the Conservative Benches.

I agree with the hon. Member for Suffolk, South (Mr. Yeo) that this is, in the main, a consensus debate. However, I question his final remarks about voluntary bodies. In my constituency there are 44 marvellous organisations, including the Brent Association for the Disabled, which last year received £840,000 as a pump priming grant from the Greater London council. Although I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the important role that voluntary bodies play, unless central Government replace the finance that such bodies have in the past received, I fear that their voluntary work will come to an end.

I share the concern of the hon. Member for Suffolk, South in that while I, too, intended to speak about the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris), the fact that they are both absent from the Chamber means that I must rely on the junior Minister and junior shadow Minister to convey to their superiors the essence of my remarks.

Today is a bit of a birthday for my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe. Those who piloted the Bill through in 1970 rejoiced that time had been found to pay tribute to his work. One of the key points of the Bill was that it co-ordinated the work of a number of different Departments under one Minister. Under the Labour Government, my right hon. Friend was the Minister with sole responsibility for disabled people.

I pay great tribute to the Minister for Social Security. He has the responsibility for disabled people as well as many other matters. The weakness in the present system is that there is still not only one Minister with responsibility for the disabled as provided for under the Act. Disablement is dealt with by many different Government Departments—Social Services, Transport, the Home Office and many others. All Departments have a responsibility towards the disabled and the chronically sick.

I have a profound regard for the Minister, but he has two responsibilities. I should be happy if the Minister were to be made Secretary of State or Minister for Health in the next Cabinet reshuffle. It would be a great improvement. Unfortunately, I am not at 10 Downing street to make that decision.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) commented on the Minister's speech. He said that he thought that it was a bad speech. I did not. The Minister made a good speech. He had the problem of having a dog's dinner wrapped up in green paper that he had to try to justify to the House. I thought that he made a good job of it.

The great thing about the Act was that it gave dignity and understanding to the disabled. It directed people's attention to them. On the last occasion upon which I had the privilege of speaking on health matters in the House, I referred to the National Health Service as being the jewel in the crown of the Labour party. It was, of course, associated with my right hon. Friend the late Nye Be van. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe added a further jewel to that crown 20 years later. The Act will be his monument during his period in Parliament and for the rest of the century. The Act was, as a number of hon. Members have said, a landmark.

The chronically sick have not been mentioned much during the course of the debate. During the Bill's passage through the House the young chronically sick were of prime importance. Young people who were permanently disabled were in geriatric wards. They watched people in the surrounding beds dying. A geriatric ward for an active-minded, intelligent young person, merely because he or she was paraplegic, was a second disability that the House would not tolerate. It is one of the reasons why the House passed the Act.

That anxiety has not been followed up. It is the responsibility of district and regional health authorities to provide wards in which the young chronically sick can be separated from geriatrics. The Willesden general hospital has a young chronically sick ward. Even there, the original intention of separating the young chronically sick from the geriatrics has not worked, because Willesden general hospital is now a geriatric hospital. When I served on its committee, it was an acute hospital. It now has 16 beds for the young chronically sick, but its other 80 beds are occupied by the elderly. The whole purpose of that part of the Act was to put young people with other young people so that their youth did not stick out like a sore thumb among elderly people.

There are two pioneers in my area who are confined to wheelchairs. They are Nancy and Andrew Robertson, and they gave their name to the young people's ward at Willesden general hospital. It is called the Robertson ward. It was a tribute to the work that they had done with Disability Alliance and the many other organisations that helped to put the Act on the statute book.

Access has been mentioned by the Minister and other hon. Members. People like myself who are disabled by a hearing loss are entitled to access to the spoken word. The Act provides for that, but it does not happen everywhere. Access is provided in the Chamber. It has an electronic loop, which it took me eight years to persuade the authorities to install. Members who are hard of hearing need not listen acoustically; they can hear electronically, as I do. Unfortunately, one can only hear the main speaker and sometimes, especially at Question Time, interjections are far more interesting. The person listening electronic-ally does not hear them. I am pleased to say that the House of Lords has a loop system. Black Rod consulted me, and now their Lordships do not need to wear a type of glorified telephone; they can also hear electronically.

I had the privilege of inaugurating the loop system at Leeds castle, in conjunction with Lord Geoffrey-Lloyd. Marks and Spencer has done a marvellous job in providing facilities from its foundation fund for churches and other public buildings, including Leeds castle. There is no point in people having access to a church if they cannot hear what is being said. There is no point in going to a cinema if the sound does not exist. The National Film Theatre fortunately has a loop, but no other London cinemas have. Three theatres have the system. I was able to persuade the Barbican to have a loop installed in its theatres.

That aspect of access has been neglected. Although the Act provides for it, local authorities do not regard it as a priority. One of the reasons is that a hearing disability is invisible. Everyone notices the paraplegic and the blind man with his stick, but those of us who are deaf find that not many people understand the problems involved.

The cost of the loop is negligible, but it makes a great deal of difference. The hard of hearing lose consonants. For example, someone might say, "Let's take a look." If I lose the consonants and am not wearing my two hearing aids that could be, "Let's rape the cook." There is no difference in the sound to a person who is hard of hearing. We have to be able to increase the clarity, not necessarily the volume.

There have been some advances since the Act came into force. There is now a new system to help the hard of hearing. It uses the infra-red ray. The Royal Festival hall has instituted that system. It is the only hall in the country that has it. The cost of such facilities for the hard of hearing is much less than the cost of ramps and a number of other things that are needed for wheelchairs. The cost of installing the loop system in the Chamber could be less than £1,000. Even at a time when there is a cash shortage, access for people who are hard of hearing should be provided as a priority by local authorities.

If hon. Members want to understand deafness, they should, if they have the chance, see the play "Children of a Lesser God", which has returned to London. It is a magnificent piece of dramatic art. The original actress in it was completely deaf, as is my right hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South. I am fortunate to have a residue of hearing. I can hear with two hearing aids. My right hon. Friend, who was only half as deaf as I am when he was first elected, unfortunately has no hearing at all. He has to rely upon a number of other aids. No disabled person wants pity. A number of hon. Members have said that we want equality. We do not want things done for us out of charity. We want them done as a result of decisions taken in the House and elsewhere, through participation. We do not want pity; we do not even want sympathy. We want understanding.

The best hearing aid ever walks on two legs—any member of the family or a friend of a deaf person. Pauline, the wife of my right hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South, is a fantastic person. She has done outstanding work for the deaf as the chairman of the Royal National ear, nose and throat hospital. Her work surpasses all understanding of what can be done by a person who is fully involved. The family and friends of a deaf person must understand how important it is for them to talk clearly and distinctly and to make sure that they have communicated. That is the best hearing aid that a deaf person can have.

As I said earlier, the debate has been about the second jewel in Labour's crown, provided by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe. We still have a long way to go. I do not agree with the Minister that he cannot monitor the huge discrepancies in spending allocations by local authorities. My right hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent, South and for Wythenshawe gave figures showing that many local authorities are failing to meet their legal requirement under this Act to service the disabled.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe, in his opening speech, mentioned several helpful books, but he did not mention his own book, "No Feet to Drag". The House gives my right hon. Friend credit for putting pressure on his own Government on these matters, just as much as he has with Conservative Governments. My right hon. Friend's book shows that those responsible for providing services for the disabled have failed in their duty, dragged their feet, and did not have sufficient understanding of the problems of those who are unable to do their own thing in their own time.

In 15 years' time, in the next century, when my right hon. Friend—like a Manny Shinwell—is sitting on the Front Bench of a Labour Government, I hope that the House will then have the sense to have another debate to mark the passing of 30 years since the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act received Royal Assent. It will be a permanent monument to him and to the Labour party.

6.22 pm

Mr. Roger Sims (Chislehurst)

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Pavitt), who has done so much on behalf of the chronic sick and disabled and has a long record in that respect which I could not hope to match.

The hon. Member and other hon. Members have referred to public attitudes. Whatever reservations the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) may have as to the extent to which his Act has been legally enforced, he can take a good deal of credit for the considerable change in public attitudes towards the disabled over the past 15 years. Not only is more provision now made for the disabled, but there is far greater understanding of and consideration for the disabled in many ways.

People now take it for granted that there may be a wheelchair going up and down the high street or moving in and out of the shops, and they make allowances for it. People understand the problems of the blind, whether or not they are accompanied by a guide dog. People realise how they can be helped.

The hon. Member for Brent, South was right to call attention to a group of the disabled whose problems axe still not fully understood in the community, despite his work and that of the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) over so many years. Both of them have set a splendid example in showing how the profoundly deaf and the hard of hearing can play a full and active part in public life and in this House. As the hon. Gentleman said, part of the problem is that deafness is, as it were, an invisible disablement.

There have been some impressive technical develop-ments which have done much for the deaf. There are far better and far more effective hearing aids available today than there were a few years ago. The introduction of Teletext on television has been an enormous boon for the hard of hearing and the deaf, who are now able to enjoy television to an extent that was never possible before.

The equipment used by the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South to enable him to take part in our debates has been a great step forward and has enormous potential, but, as the hon. Member for Brent, South said, in the community generally it is still difficult for people to understand and appreciate properly the problems of the deaf. They have not yet the equivalent of the white stick by which the blind can make their disablement evident to those around them, although the introduction and spreading of the sympathetic hearing scheme is a step in the right direction.

People generally do not always know how to react to the deaf. As the hon. Gentleman said, it is important to understand their problem and to speak clearly to them. To use the title of the BBC's Ceefax magazine, when speaking to deaf people there is "no need to shout". The important thing is to speak clearly and slowly. From time to time I enjoy the intriguing experience of an animated conversation with the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South in the "silence room" of the Library of the House of Commons.

Deafness is a far more widespread disability than is generally appreciated. The right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South and the hon. Member for Brent, South are quite open about their disability and show how they can live with it. It is surprising that a number of hon. Members on each side of the House who suffer from a degree of deafness seem reluctant to make it evident and thereby enable others to help them.

One of the problems for those who suffer from some sort of physical disablement arises from ordinary everyday living conditions. They need housing accommodation that is suitable for their particular needs. They need accommodation that has been constructed or adapted to cope with their requirements. Local authorities and housing associations are active in building or adapting accommodation to suit the disabled. Wonderful work has been done in that respect by the Cheshire homes. There is a first-class scheme running in my own constituency at Wood Lodge, where a mini-village has been constructed, with conventional types of accommodation as well as houses and flats specially built for the disabled, so that they can feel very much a part of the community.

My Government's policy of restrictions on the extent to which local authorities could spend their capital receipts inevitably affected housing associations, and therefore restricted the amount of work that could be done for the disabled, but help to the disabled in their own homes may well be even better than moving them into special accommodation. Often the provision of relatively small items or adaptations can make a great deal of difference to their lives. Some criticism has been made of the extent to which local authorities help the disabled in that way, but my own local authority social service department has done much to provide small and relatively inexpensive aids to the disabled, such as an extra stair rail, special seating and frames in the lavatory, walking frames, zimmers and so on, all of which make life so much easier for the disabled. The voluntary organisations also do very good work in that area. The Red Cross organisation is always ready to help with equipment in an emergency. Voluntary organisations often have a specialist knowledge and expertise in their particular field which exceeds that of the local authority.

Recently I had the privilege of attending the annual general meeting of my local association for the care of those with spina bifida and hydrocephalus. One realises the particular difficulties with which the parents of children who suffer from these complaints must cope. Sometimes bureaucracy is unnecessarily harsh in allocating assistance for adaptations. Often a grant will be available, and, where that is not the case, some adaptations qualify for relief from VAT. That is right and desirable, but it is extraordinary that VAT relief is available for work done to help access to a property and for the provision or alteration of a bathroom, washroom or lavatory, but not if one wishes to build or adapt a bedroom for a disabled person.

The wife of one of my constituents is wholly incapable of walking, is confined to a wheelchair and cannot climb stairs. He is out at work during the day and, in any case, could not carry her up and down stairs night and day. For many years she has been living in a small dining room on the ground floor. To improve the quality of her life my constituent is having a purpose-built bedroom constructed as an extension to the ground floor. It will be a room with a wide entrance, a large window, a ramp and various fitments which a disabled person requires. According to the VAT regulations the only part of that work which is exempt from VAT is the ramp. If he was adapting a bathroom, washroom or lavatory, the entire work would be free of VAT, but because he is building a bedroom, he must pay VAT on virtually everything.

When I took the matter up with the Treasury, I was told that a line must be drawn somewhere, but it seems rather a harsh line, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minster, who has a particular interest in this area, will have a word with the Treasury to see whether we can get a more reasonable approach to the problem.

We have gone a long way in 15 years, although not as far as many people would like to go in terms of the application of the law and the public attitude. There is still plenty of scope for Government action, and the Minister has not been short of advice today. There is also scope for greater public understanding of the particular problems of the disabled. If today's debate has done something to increase public understanding, our time has been well spent.

6.32 pm

Mr. Ray Powell (Ogmore)

I am glad to be called to speak in this debate. I should like to echo the sentiments expressed by my hon. Friends to my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) for his efforts over the years in this area and for initiating the debate this afternoon. Although some of us are comparatively new Members of Parliament, having come to the House in 1979, we have known, studied and followed his work and that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr: Ashley).

I am the president of the disabled group in Ogmore, which has a comprehensive number of disabled people. Some of them suffer because they are legless, armless, or hard of hearing, but the majority suffer from pneumoconiosis, silicosis and other mining-related diseases. We respect them for the work that they and others have done over the years in Wales and other parts of the country, and we appreciate their problems and difficulties. My father was a miner in the Rhondda, and he worked for 35 years in Fernhill colliery. He was discharged with pneumoconiosis — 75 per cent.—but received little benefit from the coal owners at the time and the National Coal Board when it was formed.

I remember Friday 18 November 1983 when my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) introduced a private Member's Bill in the hope that Conservative Members would show compassion. A considerable number of hon. Members turned up, primarily to give the Bill a Second Reading. The Government promised to look seriously at the problem and hoped to be able to do something for us.

I wish to raise many matters on the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, and I appreciate that many hon. Members are aware of the time factor. I stress the importance of hospitalisation for people, especially as in Wales the vital care and nursing survices for chronically sick, disabled and elderly patients is at stake. Decisions are being taken by the so-called managers of the Mid-Glamorgan health authority to close a hospital in the Blackmill area of Ogmore. For years the hospital has looked after the sick, the elderly and the disabled for short-stay periods, so that the children and, in some cases, the grandchildren can have a break from nursing them. Now that the hospital is to be closed, most of those elderly patients will have to find alternative nursing accommoda-tion. That is precisely what the Government are doing in my constituency, in Wales, and, indeed, throughout the country. It is high time that there was either a change of attitude or of Government so that we can stop officials from reducing our health care facilities. The closure of the hospital is vigorously opposed by the people of Ogmore. Ten thousand names have been collected against the proposed closure. I am sure that with some persuasion the Secretary of State for Wales may agree to alter the decision.

When I meet the disabled in my group, they tell me of the personal and particular disadvantages to which they have been subjected since the Government came to office. Hon. Members do not need to go far to find how the disabled are suffering under the Government's policies. They need only go as far as the disabled in their constituencies. The Minister talked about the Green Paper, but the disabled people in my constituency cannot know about it because they cannot afford to buy the documents. Volume I costs £3, volume II cost £6.60, volume III costs £10.50, and the housing benefit review costs £6.10. That makes a total of £26, which is equal to the benefit on which some of them must live for a week. Therefore, when the Minister wonders why he has had no response from disabled and disadvantaged people about his proposals, I can tell him that it is because they cannot afford to buy the documents.

Mr. Alec Woodall (Hemsworth)

Does my hon. Friend accept that every time the Government review allowances, whether for the disabled, the chronically sick or anyone else, the disabled are always the losers, as they will be under the new proposals? That was pointed out by Peter Large, vice-chairman of the Disablement Income Group, in a letter to The Times last Friday. They were the losers when the supplementary benefit scheme was supposed to be simplified in 1980, and again in 1984, when the available scale margin was increased from 50p to £1. The disabled were also disadvantaged when the heating allowances were extended.

Mr. Powell

I accept what my hon. Friend says. The Green Paper is a Government con trick. They justify their proposals on the basis of a con by the Minister who said that the proposals will mean a partnership between the individual and the state—a system built on twin pillars, as he calls it—better targeting, simplification and an improvement of the work incentive. In reality, the proposals mean a vastly reduced state provision, wholesale privatisation, more means testing, cuts, no flexibility, more cuts, stigmatisation for the unemployed, the active encouragement of low pay and yet more cuts. As my hon. Friend says, disabled people will be more disadvantaged than all the others.

I could have said much more, but I know that some of my hon. Friends wish to speak in the debate. The proposals in the Green Paper relating to the disabled and to the disadvantaged in society who receive social security benefits will undoubtedly be a complete failure — [Interruption.] I wish that the Minister would stop talking and listen for two minutes. It appears that he is not listening to the views of the Opposition.

As I said, many of those who would have wished to contribute to the debate on the Green Paper and other documents will be unable to do so because they cannot afford them, but those of us who have seen the documents wish to tell the Minister a few things. The Green Paper fails completely to address itself to the problems of the present social security system. Its proposals will further erode the principle of social insurance, extend the stigma of the means tests, and remove the security of protection against poverty for millions of our people.

The Government should review the system so that disabled groups can be provided with a breakdown of the proposals. One cannot expect disabled people to digest all the information, let alone to pay for it. Indeed, even if they could afford it, it would cause them indigestion. We want something different. We want the Minister to listen to disabled people and to propose something entirely different from the Green Paper.

6.43 pm

Mr. Frank Haynes (Ashfield)

I shall not mention the new social security review because enough has been said about it today. I have not been convinced by the Government's explanation of the proposals. The Minister and other Conservative Members have talked about fairer distribution, but I am dying to know what amount of money the Government hope to save by the review. However, I shall have to wait to see what happens.

We are talking about the 15th anniversary of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) on the way in which he worked all those years ago to put this measure on the statute book. There is no doubt that it was a step in the right direction.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell), I had many years' experience of the mining industry and I realise the disablement that can result from such employment. I was one of the lucky ones, because I spent 40 years in the industry and was unaffected. I feel extremely sorry for those who have been affected and whom we try to help as much as we can. The nearest that I have been to their experience was spending a day in a wheelchair to find out how the disabled cope with their problems. I discovered some amazing problems. I tried to enter the public library, but discovered that the door was not wide enough for the wheelchair. I had great difficulty in squeezing into a lift so that I could get upstairs to where the books were. I could not reach the top two shelves. It showed me that we are falling down on the job of providing facilities for disabled people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore mentioned pneumoconiosis, which is an extremely serious problem. I have seen people fighting for breath as a result of contracting the disease from working in the pits. They are sent by their general practitioners to see the local consultant, who does a series of tests. The results of those tests are then sent to the regional health authority, where the decision about the percentage of coal dust in the lungs is made. Many of those people are told that their disablement is not severe enough to warrant the payment of benefit. However, it grieves and sickens me that, when many of them have died and post-mortems are carried out, more often than not it is discovered that they were 45, 50 or 60 per cent. pneumoconiotic. Yet they were turned down by those whizz kids in the regional health authority. The Government must examine the matter, because such people should receive the benefits to which they are entitled but which they are being denied. That is one matter that worries me when I consider the new review. How many more people will be affected in the way that I have suggested?

There are many accidents in the mining industry. We have a system of rehabilitation, but what happens? The Government put on the clamps and tell the regional health authorities that less money will be allocated next year. That has happened in the Trent region, with the result that it wishes to close a rehabilitation centre that is doing a marvellous job. The fabulous service that it can provide helps to get men back to work more quickly.

The Minister talked about local authority overspending. Ashfield district council has been fair, and has tried to provide for the disabled as much accommodation as it can afford. However, because of Government cuts, it cannot provide enough suitable accommodation, which means that many disabled people must continue to struggle up and down stairs in their old homes.

There are terrible problems, which I hope the Minister appreciates. However, I doubt whether there will be action. There will be no action until we get rid of the Government. We should spend more money on the disabled. For two years, I have been asking the Government to do something about the provision of hearing aids. The previous Minister for Social Security took no action, but I hope that this Minister will do something. In my area, people must wait 18 months for hearing aids. However, 14 ½ miles away in Nottingham, the wait is between four and six months. That is unclear. Let us have a balancing up and some money put into ensuring the proper provision of hearing aids. After all, deaf people are disabled and should be looked after properly. They have made their contributions, as many are elderly people, and they need such aids to be able to hear what is going on. Travelling expenses should also be given to those who have to travel to Nottingham.

While I was in that wheelchair, I found kerbs too high and doors that I could not get through. I could not get upstairs. We have to examine the problem properly. We have skated over it far too often and for far too long, but the Act is on the statute book. We have to make it work in the interests of disabled people so that they may enjoy a better life.

6.50 pm

Mr. Roland Boyes (Houghton and Washington)

My hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Mr. Pavitt) said that disabled people wanted neither pity nor sympathy, but opportunity and equality, and one opportunity that they want is the right to work. The Tomlinson report, as long ago as 1943, said that the aim should be to secure for the disabled people their full share within their capacity of such employment as was ordinarily available. It asked for the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act and suggested that employers with 20 or more employees should have at least 3 per cent. of their work force as disabled people.

Despite that report, only 30 per cent. of companies, according to the latest figures, meet the 3 per cent. quota. That figure was given in Hansard on 21 November 1984. On the other hand, there is strong all-party support for a quota system, shown in a report in New Society on 1 January 1981. Conservatives voted 66 per cent., Labour Members 72 per cent., Liberals 74 per cent. and others 61 per cent.—69 per cent. overall—in favour of the quota system being strengthened.

I hope that the Minister will say something about incentives to register. It is interesting to note that local authorities had an increase in the number of people registered because they get a benefit from so doing. I accept that the number of people wanting to work appears to be reducing dramatically, because there is no incentive to register as such people cannot get a job. I suggest that the Minister looks at his own house. The latest figures for Departments show that only five of the 44 fulfil the quota. In the Department of Health and Social Security, which should be particularly aware of this problem, only 1.5 per cent. of the staff are disabled. We should be asking companies, both private and public sector, to take their quota, and the Government should be setting an example.

6.53pm

Mr. Alfred Morris

There is no time for me to reply to the debate from this Dispatch Box. I count it more important that the Minister should have some time to reply, and I have been concerned to assist as many other hon. Members as possible to take part in the debate. I have three very brief points to make.

First, as the Minister will know, the Royal National Institute for the Blind published on 3 June an important report on "Local Authority Social Rehabilitation Services to Visually Handicapped People". It is a disturbing document, which says;

Local Authority Social Services departments' provisions for newly-blind people are inadequate, widely variable and likely to deteriorate further. I should be grateful if the Minister would respond to that statement in the short time available to him.

Secondly, the timing of the debate made it impossible for my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) and the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) to be with us today. I am sure that the House will understand their problem and will very much have missed the contributions they would have made to the debate. Thirdly, I hope that the Minister will deal with more of the questions raised with him in the debate than he has so far been able to do.

I am grateful for the kindness shown to me by so many of my colleagues — indeed by right hon. nd hon. Members on both sides of the House—who have spoken in the debate.

6.54pm

Mr. Newton

The right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) will realise that I am also under some pressure about the number of points that I can make. Not quite so many kind words have been said about me as about the right hon. Gentleman, but I am told that my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, South (Mr. Yeo) was quite nice about me, as was the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Pavitt). I am only sorry to have missed the rare privilege of compliments to a Minister.

I acknowledge the strictures on the social security review made by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell). However, I cannot immediately think of any significant way in which the social insurance principle is altered by the way that the provisions of the review affect disabled people. What has been the subject of debate today has nothing to do with social insurance benefits. We are concerned with the income-related or means-tested benefit, which is undoubtedly of great significance to disabled people, as has been acknowledged.

A number of organisations gave oral and written evidence to the review. In view of the strength with which the hon. Member for Ogmore put his remarks, I point out that I went out of my way to arrange for the Wales Council for the Disabled, which was not able to come to a public hearing, to come to see me personally at Alexander Fleming house to put its views. I was glad to be able to do that.

I remain convinced that our proposals, which I described at some length earlier, provide a clearer, more comprehensible system of assistance to disabled people in the income-related sector. It will be fairer across the range of disabled people who depend upon income support. To pick up what the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) said, for those two reasons and especially because of the former, benefits are likely to be much more effectively taken up by those at whom they are directed, than with the present confusing and complicated system.

Earlier, when I spoke of the advantages of the proposed new structure, I said that our intention was for the disablement premium to be paid where the claimant's partner, as distinct from the claimant, was either in receipt of certain benefits or simply certified as having been incapable of work for 28 weeks or more. I said that we would wish this last qualification — simply being incapable of work for 28 weeks even if no incapacity benefit was payable to form a passport—would also apply to the partners of claimants.

So as to avoid misleading anyone, I should acknowledge that this intention presents some practical problems, as in many cases the partner will not normally be in the employment sector. I cannot be absolutely sure that we shall be able to overcome this problem, but we shall certainly seek to do so, and in many cases the equal treatment rules that allow partners to decide which of them will be the claimant will probably provide an appropriate answer. I wish to show knowledgeable people outside that there is a practical problem.

I attach importance to the problems of deaf people, a point raised both by the hon. Member or Brent South, with his well-known knowledge of, and interest in, this sector, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Chiselhurst (Mr. Sims). The problems of deaf people demand more of our attention. I have formed that impression in the period over which I have been Minister with responsibility for the disabled, and we shall seek to reflect that in developing our policies.

The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe spoke about the RNIB and its survey. It will be within his knowledge that the Department has been carrying out work to discover more up-to-date information about the services provided by local authority social services departments to the blind. We have not yet managed to complete collating all that information, but it will be used as a basis for discussion with bodies outside, including the RNIB, to see what action might be appropiate to bring about any improvements that are shown to be needed.

I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, South about the need for prevention. He will be aware both of the present rubella campaign and of the Asian mother and baby campaign. These are two significant initiatives directed at prevention with which my hon. Friend is associated. I thought that he was a little hard in his words about the maternity services advisory committee. In general, its reports are felt to have been very useful exercises. They have been sent to all health authorities, with the committee's own check list of action, and the Government have made it clear that they hope that health authorities will pick up the suggestions made by the committee.

Finally, in this brief canter round the field, I must pay tribute to the work of the voluntary organisations. This matter was touched upon by the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Meadowcroft) and a number of others—

It being Seven o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 6(2)(c).