A house of straws

I was in London to speak at an Inside Government conference last week. For my talk I chose to bring this largely English audience up to date with events in Scotland since last May and shared our position on integration. It seemed to be well received and I had a useful conversation with a new contact - Jesse Harris, Social Work Director of the Independent Living Fund. Based in England, the fund is of course UK wide and Jesse is currently planning a consultation on the future of ILF which will bring him to Scotland for two events. He expressed interest in the Self Directed Support Bill in working closely with ADSW and he will give us early notice of any announcements.

Peter Hay was also on the programme representing ADASS and we had a brief information exchange on areas of common interest including Southern Cross and social care and health integration. I gave him a copy of the IRISS report and ADSW position statement and he plans to feed them into his work on the Future Forum. This is the body formed to advise the Prime Minister about health sector reform in England. In his speech, Peter referred to integration as an experience, not a process and certainly not a structure (I could have written the lines myself.)

The conference was chaired by Baroness Pitkeithley (Lab) who is known to some of us as Jill Pitkeithley, chief executive of Carers UK for many years. She explained that she had to dash to the House of Lords for the 2nd Reading of the Welfare Reform Bill. Of course I blagged an invitation and sat near the throne in the south west gallery to watch the debate.

The experience buried a couple of long held prejudices – that the place would be largely empty and that it would be sparsely populated by rheumy-eyed old buffers from the English shires. In fact neither was the case. The House was fairly full and much more diverse than you might imagine. Seated near to me was a local peer, Lord Archie Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LIbDem). He is a noted speaker on welfare benefit issues and said:

“I give the Minister fair warning that I cannot support the benefit cap as it is currently cast and I hope that he will look at it very carefully. There are lots of reasons: for example, 70 per cent of those people are in social housing and 206,000 children will be the people who will carry the can for it. However, for me it is actually a question of principle. We have a system of entitlements in our social security system and, if you have the entitlements, you get the benefit. Here is an arbitrary system coming in and overlaying that by saying, "Well, you may well be entitled to it but we think it's too much". Parliament should not let that pass without some comment because it cuts straight across everything that we have known in the social security system…”

However my most cherished observation was of three peers, three women, three wheelchair users. They were seated side by side in the cross benches and illustrated better than anyone else how the Lords has changed in recent years.

Seated from left to right, Baroness Wilkins (Lab), Baroness Grey-Thompson, and cross bencher and finally Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (cross bench).

Baroness Campbell said:

“I should declare an interest as a DLA recipient. During the past 30 years, DLA, which in the olden days was called attendance allowance and mobility allowance, has enabled me to pass many milestones. Without it I would not have attended university. I used it to pay the cleaner to get me up in the morning and to put me to bed at night. That was the only allowance I had. I used it to get a job and to stop living with my parents-in short, to live independently. Along with millions of other disabled people, I will be affected by this Bill. The allowance was given to me for life and I am about to have my assessments again-I already have 25 other assessments. That is something to look forward to.”

Clearly tiring, her speech was taken over by Paralympics champion, Baroness Grey-Thompson (cross bench) who continued

"My life is like a house of straws. Once you remove one tiny straw, the house collapses. It's taken me years to feel independent and in control, to feel like an able-bodied person, to be human. If I lose out from the changes, I will stand to lose everything. Where's the sense in that?"

Finally from my trio of experts, Baroness Wilkins (Lab) said

“Disability living allowance is a complex benefit because disability is hugely complex and any reform needs to be done with great awareness of that complexity if it is not to leave disabled people more deprived and impoverished, denying millions the hope of living the independent lives that we have come to expect.
That awareness is sadly lacking from this Bill, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, just now. As all noble Lords' post bags and mail boxes have shown, disabled people live in great fear of it being enacted.

I only hope that I wasn’t the only person listening.