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`Claims for the following benefits may be made by an authorised representative of the claimant as provided in the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986—
Brought up, and read the First time.
§ Mr. Tom Clarke (Monklands, West)I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I sense the mood of the House, so I shall be as brief as possible.
I was delighted by the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) and to see him at the Dispatch Box. I am sure that his appointment was richly deserved.
The new clause attempts to draw the attention of the House to the fact that section I of the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986, despite its considerable merits and having been unanimously endorsed by both Houses before Royal Assent, has still not been implemented. Having looked at some of the Hansard Committee reports, I do not believe that some of the explanations we received address the merits of the strong argument in favour of representation.
If the principle being applied to disability living and working allowances is to have any meaning for some of the most disadvantaged within our society, the provision simply will not work. We shall not have the safety net that we are all supposed to endorse if section 1 of the 1986 Act does not provide appropriate representation and advocacy. That is why organisations like Mencap, MIND and Deaf Accord strongly and firmly campaign for the very thing that the new clause advocates. That is why the 40 organisations that got together under the Act Now group are demanding that we have representation and advocacy. They do so not only because it works where they 443 have seen it, but because they know that the social security system will not apply to some of those most in need, which would be regrettable in the extreme.
If we cannot extend the social security system to all those who are entitled to benefit, including those with disabilities, we are denying a basic human right. Our system of social security payments, including the payments addressed by the Bill, is so complex and daunting that it is absurd to expect some of the most disabled people in our society, including the mentally handicapped and profoundly mentally handicapped, to understand it. The new clause seeks to go further than simply paying lip service, as the Government seem to do time after time, to section 1 and representation and advocacy, and it gives the House and the Government the opportunity to give those matters real meaning.
From my reading of Hansard, I understand that, in Committee, the Under-Secretary of State seemed to think that regulation 33 addressed this matter. In all candour, it does not. The Government seem to think that voluntary work is important in modern times, but none of the voluntary organisations accepts that regulation 33 is adequate. How can it be when councils such as Surrey refuse to deal with appointees, or when the Minister seemed to address all her thinking to tribunals? We want to make sure that all the assistance that we can possibly give to, for example, profoundly mentally handicapped people is given long before the time when a tribunal might even be necessary.
We address these problems in the light of all our discussions about community care. Although we might disagree about how such care is being implemented, I do not think that any hon. Member doubts that community care is about choice. If we fail to address their problems, how can we give choice to people who do not have representation and who perhaps cannot understand the system and could not possibly fill in the necessary application forms?
Fundamental to providing choice to people within community care is getting their income right. Income is important for us all. It is important to business people who can employ accountants and lawyers, and there is no reason to block opportunities for some of the most profoundly disabled people in our society. They must have the degree of representation and advocacy that the new clause would provide.
Organisations such as MIND have enormous experience in this field. It has told us that the proprietors of some residential homes are exercising the advocacy and representation role, but not in the way that is in the interests of the disabled person, whose rights and needs are paramount. That is an entirely unacceptable way to administer a system of social security and to deal with people's income. This is our opportunity to correct that.
Organisations such as Deaf Accord and SENSE rightly remind us of the very few deaf-blind who benefit from our social security system. There is clear evidence that that happens because, sadly, many such people do not understand or do not have the interpreters or the advocacy that I and most of my hon. Friends believe are essential if we are to address their problems, and especially those of the deaf-blind.
I think that the House supported the principle of advocacy and representation in section 1 of the 1986 Act, because it saw the simple justice of doing that and the need for efficiency. Many people might even have thought that 444 we cannot be caring and compassionate without an element of efficiency. There is an interesting programme on BBC Television tonight, just a week before the second anniversary of the sad death of Beverley Lewis. I understand that the programme will conclude that, had the representation provisions of the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986 been fully implemented, that tragic story might have been avoided.
We must learn the lessons of history which time after time have been brought to our attention in the House and elsewhere. Because I believe that representation and advocacy are as important in social security as in the health service, local government services, housing and elsewhere, I invite the Minister to welcome the new clause. At this late stage, I invite the Government to endorse the principle of advocacy, which we understood had been unanimously agreed.
§ Mr. Alfred Morris (Manchester, Wythenshawe)I join in the congratulations from both sides of the House to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on his maiden speech from the Dispatch Box. All I can add is that so felicitous and impressive a start to his Front-Bench work came as no surprise to me.
Turning to the new clause, let me say that my hon. Friend the Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke) did a superb service to disabled people by his work to enact, with wide all-party support, the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986. His work deserved much better than the shameful dilatoriness with which the implementation of the Act has been handled by the Government. Having legislated in this field as a private Member, I am well placed to assess the importance of my hon. Friend's work. I hold him and his achievement in the very highest regard.
As we have heard, sections 1 to 3 of the Act are still unimplemented. They are fundamental to the Act's humane purposes. They affect millions of people with disabilities—physical, mental and sensory alike. They are also profoundly important to millions of carers. It really is outrageous that crucial sections of that Act are still unimplemented more than four and a half years after Royal Assent.
I ask for a statement from the Under-Secretary of State about the Government's intentions with regard to the implementation of sections 1 to 3. As my hon. Friend the Member for Monklands, West said, this is very much a Beverley Lewis amendment. It is thus of deep significance to some of the most severely disabled people in this country. I hope that we can have a positive response from the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Maidstone (Miss Widdecombe).
§ Rev. Martin Smyth (Belfast, South)I support the plea for a positive response. I was a sponsor of the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke) and was delighted when it went through the House. It was three more years before we were able to get a similar Act for Northern Ireland. I understand that, as they were private Members' Bills, they did not necessarily commit the Government to expenditure. We understand some of the problems, but five years on in a Government Bill the disabled deserve the advantage of advocacy. I have heard no arguments in the House or outside among 445 practitioners denying the validity of the argument that the clause should be accepted. I lend my voice to those of hon. Members urging the Government to make a positive statement.
§ Mr. AshleyIf a disabled person is unable to speak for himself, it is unjust to deny him or her the right to have somebody else to speak for him.
It is deplorable—I choose my words carefully—that the provisions of the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act have not been implemented. Acceptance of this new clause would go some little way towards consoling my hon. Friend the Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke).
§ Mr. WigleyI support the hon. Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke), with whom I had the pleasure of co-operating during the passage of his Bill. It is now almost five years since that Bill was enacted and many disabled people find it difficult to understand why at least the parts of that Act which we are debating have not been implemented. Points were made in Committee about cost and the Minister may be in a position tonight to give the House more information about the cost of implementing clauses 1, 2 and 3 of that Act.
But more relevant to the new clause is whether its provisions are adequately covered by any other part of the Bill. I do not believe that they are. If the Minister can persuade me otherwise, I shall be glad to hear from her. If she accepts that they are not, will she, at the very least, give an undertaking that if and when the first three sections of the 1986 Act come to full fruition there will be adequate interplay between that Act and this Bill to ensure that the full force of those provisions can be used in relation to the new benefits that will come from this Bill? That is the very minimum that we should expect by way of commitment from the Government.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Miss Ann Widdecombe)I add my congratulations to those of hon. Members on both sides of the House to the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on his elevation to the Front Bench. I look forward to many confrontations and useful discussions with him in the future.
I also congratulate the hon. Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke) on the way in which he moved the new clause. I honour and respect the reasons that he advanced for so moving it. When it was discussed in Committee in a similar form considerable eloquence and feeling were displayed in the arguments of the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley).
But I have to tell the House that this addition to the Bill simply is not necessary. In doing so, I do not mean to imply any criticism of the measure that has been introduced, or to question in any way the importance of representation for people with disabilities.
The Government accept completely that somebody who cannot speak for himself should be represented in the important matter of claims for benefit. But that is no reason to give the authorised representatives envisaged by section 1 of the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act a specific role in relation to 446 disability living allowance and disability working allowance which are the scope of this Bill. I shall advance reasons why it would be undesirable to do so.
The right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) rather dismissed my statement in Committee that the matter of appointees was already satisfactorily covered by regulation 33 of the social security claims and payments regulations. The evidence that he adduced for doing so was that certain county councils, specifically Surrey, were unwilling to deal with appointees.
We are discussing claims for benefits and that is what is covered by regulation 33. The Department of Social Security, our local offices and tribunals and all those concerned in any way with claims for benefits are happy to recognise, and must under this regulation so recognise, the role of appointees. If county councils are not willing to deal with appointees in community care matters, that is not within the scope of the Bill.
I am by no means dismissing what the right hon. Gentleman says—it is important—but that is effectively a matter for community care legislation through the Department of Health and I undertake to draw it to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health. But in terms of benefits, towards which the Bill is directed, regulation 33 fully covers the disabled person's need for representation where there is an appointee. Where there is no appointee, representations are still accepted from people who are clearly acting on the claimant's behalf. There is also statutory provision for claimants to be represented at appeal tribunals.
The new clause would in effect give authorised representatives the same right to make claims for disabled living allowance and disabled working allowance as appointees. It is quite unnecessary to duplicate the appointee provisions. There is, of course, no reason at all why an authorised representative should not also be an appointee and in many cases it would be sensible and desirable for one person to carry out both functions. But for that to happen, it would be necessary only for the authorised representative to apply to be an appointee in the normal way. It is not necessary to give the authorised representative a separate right to make claims.
It could be argued that authorised representatives should have an automatic right to act and not have to rely on the normal appointee provisions. I disagree, for two main reasons. First, there may be occasions when it would be better for the functions of appointee and authorised representative to be carried out by different people. It is easy to imagine, for example, a case where a person has been acting as an appointee for benefit purposes for some time, and so is well placed to look after a claim for DLA, but is unwilling or is not best equipped to take on the additional and wider responsibilities of authorised representative. At the very least, there must be flexibility to cater for that possibility. If legislation contained a presumption in favour of the authorised representative, as is proposed, there would be less flexibility and the arrangements that resulted might not be the best in the circumstances of an individual case.
Perhaps more importantly, the idea of an authorised representative is not identical to that of an appointee. A disabled person does not need to be unable to act to have an authorised representative. We have concentrated tonight on those disabled people who are unable to speak for themselves and to act on their own behalf. But there are those who are not, strictly speaking, unable to act and 447 there would therefore certainly be cases where disabled people were perfectly capable of making their own claims and would not want their authorised representatives to do it for them. In that situation, it might be assumed that the authorised representative would always defer to the wishes of the disabled person and that there would be no problem, but I would not wish to rely on that assumption. In any case, it would be wrong to take away through legislation the rights of disabled people to act for themselves—an effect that hon. Members may not have intended but that could result.
I am equally sure that hon. Members were motivated not by doubts about the effectiveness of the appointee procedures, but largely by a desire to press for the implementation of the remaining sections of the 1986 Act —a matter which has been raised by several hon. Members tonight. On that point, I repeat what I said in Committee. The Department of Health has recently consulted the local authority associations about the cost of implementing the sections and hon. Members will be delighted to know that a full statement will be made in due course. Again, I remind hon. Members that the Government have implemented the majority of the provisions in the Act. Hon. Members pointed to those provisions which have not been implemented and more or less suggested that we have spent five years doing nothing. But the majority of the Act has been implemented. The new clause is not necessary, in benefit terms, to secure any new rights, because the disabled are already fully covered. If they cannot or do not want to act on their own behalf, they are already catered for.
Perhaps Opposition Members should consider not those who, because they are seeking to make a claim through another person, already have information and are on the ladder, but those who cannot speak for themselves and do not know that they can appoint someone to represent them. We have commissioned a wide survey on information and the disabled person and we look forward to studying its results with considerable care. I ask the hon. Gentleman not to press his new clause.
§ Mr. Tom ClarkeThe hon. Member for Maidstone (Miss Widdecombe) was charmingly unconvincing. I do not understand how acceptance of the new clause could prevent the disabled from representing themselves if they wanted. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) and others of my right hon. and hon. Friends who drew attention to the non-implementation of the remaining provisions of the 1986 Act.
The Minister said that most of the provisions had been introduced, but in fact only 50 per cent. of them have. The Act was structured to meet its purposes, and was intended to be implemented as a whole. It cannot have real meaning unless the disabled have the right to be heard, and unless those who require advocates or representatives also enjoy that right. Unless the Government address that vital issue, those of us who supported that legislation will continue to feel that it has not achieved its objective.
The hon. Lady dismissed the argument that some councils will not deal with appointees. That is not good enough, and even if every responsible body dealt with appointees, that would still not be enough. We want to get away from formal confrontation. That ambition should 448 appeal to the Minister and to her Government. If the Government do not accept the new clause, there will be more and more tribunals and formality. More disabled people will apply for benefits to which they have a right, but they will not be allowed the assistance of an advocate or representative, as the new clause suggests.
The debate has provided an opportunity to highlight the non-implementation of important provisions in the 1986 Act. This morning's weather forecast showed that it was colder in the hon. Lady's constituency of Maidstone than in Moscow, and she did not do much to warm our hearts with her contribution. However, I shall be returning to this issue time and again, but I shall not delay the House by seeking to pursue the proposed clause, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.
Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.