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Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I support the amendment. I hate the term ““alignment””. I worried about it enormously when it was used by the Government in connection with the proposal that mobility allowance should be removed from people in residential care homes because they wanted to align it with hospitals. We are now back to ““alignment”” again. One of the major problems that nurses and doctors in specialist units face in trying to discharge their patients with brain injury or the onset of MS, which causes vast deterioration, is getting their support sorted out so that they can leave the hospital. DLA with a time limit of three months is cited as being difficult to get into now, so raising it to six months is wrong. We forget that people do not on day one think of their long-term disability—whether that be a spinal injury, a brain injury or something that is sudden and quick—and say, ““Ah, I must put in my DLA request now so that I will get it in six months’ time””. That just does not happen. This is another delay for people who find themselves in an appalling situation, in a crisis, and having to face even further barriers to the support that can give them some independence, enable them to get back into the community and return to their families as soon as possible. The three-month eligibility period should remain. The six-month period will cause more problems. Hospitals will despair about discharging people and it could mean that disabled people will have to leave work earlier than they would have because they are not getting the support that they require quickly to keep them mobile and to enable them to stay in work. It is a lose-lose situation.