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Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I should like to say a few words about these two amendments. In so doing, I declare my interest as a recipient of disability living allowance. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, had very much hoped to be present to speak to these amendments this afternoon but, sadly, she is not well and very much regrets that she cannot be here. However, she has asked me to say that she would like to be associated with my remarks. The Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board seems already to have disappeared. Its website has been removed and the telephone numbers associated with it are now being answered by other DWP staff. This might be thought to be jumping the gun somewhat. DLA, as we know, helps many thousands of disabled people with the higher cost of living as a disabled person, but, as we have heard, the Government have announced that they wish to make significant changes to the benefit. The June emergency Budget announced plans to cut working-age DLA expenditure and case load by 20 per cent. This would represent well over 360,000 disabled people aged 16 to 64 losing their disability living allowance. The Government opened a formal consultation on this proposal in December, but have indicated that they are considering extending the changes to children and to people over 65, potentially affecting many more thousands of disabled people and their families. However, the consultation is full of inaccuracies. One example is the repeated claim that there is no process to check that awards remain correct, but the DWP can require a review with an independent medical adviser of any DLA award at any time. The Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board would, of course, have been able to advise the department on this issue, had it been asked. The October spending review also made it clear that the Government want to end mobility payments to disabled people in residential care. This has been particularly controversial. Not enough detail is yet available on this proposal, but the DWP has already had to recalculate its figures on how many disabled people will be affected. Originally, the Government suggested that it would be about 50,000 people, but they now suggest that it will mean 80,000 disabled children, adults and pensioners losing benefit. One might have thought that, in the context of such significant DLA reform, an independent expert advisory body would have been useful to the Government and could have helped to ensure that reform was effective. Instead, it is apparent that the Government made their DLA pledges without expert support or full consideration of the impact. An adequately resourced DLA advisory board properly involved in policy development could have saved the Government some red faces. Axing the body risks undermining the Government’s ability to understand the benefit and provides ammunition to those who suggest that the Government’s plans are unfair. The inaccurate statements and the need to revise figures on the numbers of people affected only add weight to the belief that quango reform has been botched, as the Public Accounts Committee has suggested. The Minister for Disabled People has now convened, as we have heard, a new expert panel to help to design a different DLA assessment procedure and to facilitate a new stakeholder group on DLA reform more generally. I believe that the work of these groups could have been informed, if not led, by the advisory board, possibly, as has been suggested, in a revised form, and I hope that the Government will reconsider abolition. On Amendment 34, DPTAC has a strong record of bringing about change in a considered and measured way. Its influence can be seen across all forms of transport, from bus design specifications to guidance for the aviation industry. By recognising the constraints and characteristics of transport industries, it has been able to win over those in that sector who might otherwise have been resistant to change and it has ensured that the transport needs of disabled people are better met. For example, features that we now take for granted on buses today, such as colour-contrasted handrails, bell pushes that can be reached by passengers in wheelchairs, clear information displays and so on, were all introduced as a result of the work of the committee. The DPTAC spec, as it came to be known, was a standard accessibility specification for the bus industry and to this day remains a central part of the Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations. Of course, one cannot make a case for retaining a body on the basis of past glories alone, but in recent years the Department for Transport has, I am sorry to say, lost its focus on transport and disability issues, as witnessed by the complacent attitude that it has adopted towards the development of so-called shared surface schemes, in which pedestrians are expected to take their life in their hands and mingle indistinguishably with motorised traffic as all pavements and security barriers are dismantled. This has come about as a result of the closure of the specialist unit in the department, which had for 20 years led on these policy issues and provided secretariat support to DPTAC. The loss of DPTAC would be a further retrograde step. Rather than looking at abolishing the committee, the Government should recognise that DPTAC is a model that should be extended to other departments. It was one of the first bodies representing disabled people to require that at least 50 per cent of its members were themselves disabled. In its press release, the department has indicated that it will put in place measures to ensure that the needs of disabled people continue to be understood and represented. However, as other speakers have said, there is no detail on how that will be achieved. Like others, I very much hope that we may hear a lot more on this from the Minister today. However, I have to say that what little has leaked out so far is not encouraging. In a recent meeting on a different matter with representatives from the disability sector, the Transport Minister, Norman Baker, indicated that he would be looking to appoint a single disability representative to his bus advisory group. The needs of disabled people—the blind, the deaf and those with mobility difficulties—are so diverse that a single individual cannot possibility represent the interests of disabled people as a whole. If this is the kind of approach that the department has in mind, it is clear that it has learnt nothing and has understood nothing and that the interests of disabled people will not be well served. DPTAC is not a costly body. Payments for members were introduced only in the past year. The overheads of the committee are relatively modest. They include the salary costs of around four DfT officials, payments to members and out-of-pocket expenses, and some admin costs, such as stationery. The committee staff are located in the DfT. There are no other property overheads. This is not the kind of quango that commands a multimillion pound budget. The financial savings that will be made by abolishing it will not be significant if one contrasts that with the negative impact on the mobility and transport needs of disabled people that the abolition of the committee will have. I hope very much that the Government will think again about its abolition.