The only Facebook 'Cause' I signed up to was one called 'Keep Disability Living Allowance'. It's a well-organised and well-intentioned campaign, but I regret signing up for two reasons. Firstly, the frequent follow-up emails, while sometimes containing useful information, are inclined to clutter up my inbox.
And secondly, I don't honestly think we should be campaigning to 'Keep Disability Living Allowance.' The so-called 'Personal Independence Payments' that are set to replace DLA are indeed a retrograde step and old-style DLA will unquestionably prove to have been fairer and more generous that the punative PIPs, but that in itself does not make DLA any sort of paragon of good practice in welfare provision. Why not use this debate, and whatever remains of the Paralympic legacy, to demand better? Because, to borrow the phrase allegedly used in response to a request for directions in Ireland, if I were looking to devise a fair and supportive benefit for disabled people, 'I wouldn't want to be starting from here!'
The main problem with DLA - and the same is equally true of ESA, and its predecessor Incapacity Benefit - is that you can visualise it as a series of steps, when what is actually required is a ramp. Take the care components. The lower is payable if the claimant either requires 'significant attention in connection with their bodily functions' or cannot safely prepare a cooked main meal without assistance. Leaving aside the nightmarish struggles there have been to define what the heck 'significant' attention is, what constitutes a 'bodily function' and how varied a diet the 'main meal' test should allow one to follow, there is one fundamental hitch with the whole concept. At some stage, a disabled person crosses a notional threshold between being entitled to nothing at all, and qualifying for DLA at the lower rate for care: that threshold might be no more than an extra couple of minutes of personal care.
Those extra couple of minutes could be worth a great deal more than simply the £20.55 lower rate care. It could mean a 'disability premium' when calculating a range of means-tested benefits, giving additional entitlement to Income Support, JSA or Housing Benefit. It could also save the claimant a small fortune in 'non-dependent' deductions for working adults in their household from any support with housing they receive. It might be the difference between free school meals for the children or not, free NHS dental treatment or full price, and a whole range of grants, statutory and voluntary services.
A 'step up' to the middle rate could have even more dramatic consequences. If those care needs are 'frequent' and 'throughout the day', or 'prolonged or repeated' at night, the weekly benefit is £51.85. But the claimant might also, if living alone, add a 'severe disability premium' to their entitlement, or enable their carer to claim Carer's Allowance. A successful claim for DLA at this rate can easily double a claimant's weekly income. But the difference between this and the lower rate may again be a matter of minutes of care, or the distribution of those minutes 'throughout' the day rather than as one or two longer sessions at the start or end of it.
Now consider the dilemma facing the disabled person who, after a few years coming to terms with perhaps the aftermath of an accident or a traumatic illness, finds they are starting to 'manage' a little better. They are under a strict obligation to inform the DWP of any relevent change in their circumstances, but if that could halve your income, wouldn't you be tempted to argue this wasn't really a 'change'? After all, it's not as if your health is actually better - you're just a bit braver about the pain, a bit cleverer about making the best of your 'good days', aren't you? And what if what was helping you cope better was private therapy or treatment you knew you couldn't afford if the price of your scrupulous honesty was over £100 per week less to live on?
All well and good, until someone feeling jealous of your nice new Motability vehicle sees you out and about on one of your 'good days' and makes that call...
A 'ramped' approach to DLA's successor, and to the spin-off benefits from it, would surely be fairer at the initial claim stage and would take some of the sting out of reporting a change of circumstances. We might imagine a scheme based on an initial assessment of percentage disability - perhaps akin to that used for Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit. If, for illustrative purposes, the maximum 'New DLA' payable was £100 per week (it would have to be greater - this is simply for easy sums!), an assessment of 25% would pay £25 per week, and assessment of 64%, £64 per week and so on. This same principle could feed through to the calculations for means-tested benefits, allocating a single, higher 'disability premium' on a proportional basis, so there would be no more all-or-nothing premium precipices.
Even quite a modest disability would be reflected in extra entitlement and it should be possible for fluctuating conditions better addressed - for example, a condition giving a 75% disability for two days a week on average, but only 25% for the remaining 'good days' would give an overall score of about 40%, whereas now there might be no entitlement at all. And why have qualifying times? A person coping with a short-term but debilitating injury or illness may still require personal care and extra help with mobility costs and there is no reason why a short-term award can't be made and regularly reviewed as improvement is anticipated.
This is just an outline idea. The percentages might be calculated on much the same basis as IIDB, looking at actual illnesses and injuries Alternatively, it could instead reflect the additional costs incurred on account of their disability and number of hours care 'reasonably required' by the claimant. In the latter case, benefit rates might actually correlate with the cost of employing a professional carer for that number of hours. Under those circumstances, there would be no need for Carer's Allowance as the claimant would pay their carer(s) the rate for the job based on the hours they actually required; ideally, the 'rate for the job' would be better than that offered by many private contractors, which is all too often essentially minimum wage minus travelling costs...
So there's my pitch for a manifesto commitment from the people who hope to be the next Labour Government. No PIPs, no DLA, but something smarter and fairer. It isn't simpler, but as I've probably said before, you can't do both 'fair' and 'simple' when it comes to Social Security, and it's time to stop pretending that you can.
