HL Deb 11 April 1989 vol 506 cc239-40WA
Lord Kilmarnock

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they will provide AIDS education for adjudication officers and management staff in the Department of Social Security to ensure that they act sensitively to the needs of people suffering from a terminal illness and take account of the need for urgency in dealing with their claims.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Skelmersdale)

Instructions and training for interviewing staff stress the need for special consideration for anyone in pain, or in distressing circumstances. The need for prompt decisions on all claims is stressed in all training for adjudication officers, and training for Social Fund officers makes specific references to the problems of the terminally ill.

The department's staff first received guidance on handling claims from AIDS sufferers in 1986.

Lord Kilmarnock

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they will exempt AIDS patients from the six-month waiting period for disability premium on the completion of a "long-term" medical certificate from the claimant's physician; and

Whether they will give an entitlement to the higher disability premium to patients who are disagnosed as suffering from AIDS or AIDS-related complex, or who are HIV positive, or who satisfy the attendance allowance test, and can produce a medical certificate to show that they have extra financial needs, including nutritional needs, as a result of their condition.

Lord Skelmersdale

The disability premium is available, immediately, to people who are registered blind, or have an invalid carriage, or who are in receipt of attendance allowance, mobility allowance or supplement, invalidity benefit or severe disablement allowance. Other people aged under 60 years have to provide medical evidence for a continuous period of 28 weeks before they are entitled to the premium. My honourable friend the Minister of State for Social Security and the Disabled has promised to consider the detail of this premium structure in the light of his monitoring of the Income Support scheme and all the reports of the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys on disabilities in Great Britain.