04 June 2008

Rt Hon James Purnell MP

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

Independent Living Strategy Consultation - Giving disabled people equal access to work

Oval Cricket Ground, London

Wednesday, 4th June 2008

[Check against delivery]

 

Introduction

Last time many of us met, we were launching the Independent Living Strategy, in this very room.

It was a privilege to be here that day.  And I now think that day was a turning point.  Because we agreed, together, that the goal of policy for disabled people was independence.  We may not have agreed about how to get there.  There were different views about whether we should be legislating for independent living.  But we all agreed that the destination was independence.

It was the first time I’d met Jane Campbell, and I was impressed by the tough and effective way she’d obviously brought those different views together to a viable conclusion.  I’ve since learnt that tough effectiveness is Jane’s trademark.

But that day was also an education for me.

I remember Lucy [Mason] telling me about her constant struggle to get the system to fit around her rather than having to fit herself into it.  I remember her saying how dependent she was on finding a social worker who understood her – that at their best, they were allies, but too often they ended up trying to clip her wings.

I heard a lot of good feedback on Access to Work that day.  But also frustration that it was too well-kept a secret.  And a couple of complaints that Access to Work had tried to help, but had offered the wrong equipment, or had come too late. 

And I also heard some quiet anger about the way disability benefits got wrapped up with the idea of benefit fraud. People spoke to me of their concerns that disabled people’s reputations were being undermined and their income jeopardised by those claiming fraudulently. And that this eroded support for the very existence of disability benefits.

There are many insurmountable problems in politics.  But these are not amongst them. Why should Lucy depend on the pot luck of who her social worker is?  Why shouldn’t disabled people have control over the support they get? Why should the honesty of disabled people be questioned because a few people abuse the system?

The truth is there is no reason why you should put up with any of this.  These are the kinds of problems politicians love. Because they are problems that can be solved. And that’s what I hope we can do, together, starting with the Green Paper we will publish later this summer.

The Independent Living strategy was a co-production. And I want the Green Paper to be the same. So, today, I want to suggest some principles on which those reforms should be based and I want to ask for your help to turn them into policy.

I think there is a simple vision behind the conversations we had that day. It had three elements: that our goal should be an open, aspirational society.  That such a society should foster independence because independent people are free to flourish. And the role of the State should be to help people achieve that independence.

Without an effective state, people’s aspirations will too often be thwarted by poverty, poor schooling, low expectations.

But the state will only succeed if it focuses relentlessly on giving people power rather than telling them what to do.

This approach differs from traditional social democracy, because it provides a richer notion of equality.  One where we start from the equal worth of each individual and where the goal is to give everyone the chance to develop their capability.

And this idea of capability overturns the traditional approach to policy on disabled people. It used to be that they were defined as limited by their condition or impairment. In fact, each disabled person has her own ambition and her own capability- and society discriminates when it doesn’t ensure that each person has an equal chance to realise that capability.  

So, a commitment to equality means more than spending on benefits – it means giving each disabled person the chance to realise that ambition, whatever it might be.

I was reminded of this when Rowen Jade was talking at a recent seminar about stereotyping people with disabilities. She pointed us to the very names of the benefits – invalidity benefits – implicitly saying that disabled people were not valid.  Or nearly as bad, the current incapacity benefit – that they are incapable.

That had to stop.  And that’s why we are replacing the old Incapacity Benefit, based on an idea of what people can’t do, with the Employment and Support Allowance, based on what people can.

As you will know, we will be introducing ESA in October.

But policy never stands still.  And indeed, it was clear from the Independent Living strategy launch that a revolution is happening in disability policy, with justified demands that government goes further to support independence. 

What would actually achieving independent living mean?

It would mean giving everyone the support they need.

It would mean people would have control over how that support is provided.

And it would mean that the benefit system had the right incentives to encourage independence.

Scorecard

How does the current policy match up to those goals, of support, control and incentives?

Let me take them in turn.

Support

We recently consulted on specialist disability employment programmes.  The goal of these programmes is simple – to give everyone the chance to work.

On Access to Work we asked how you think we could improve the programme.  The responses strongly support the overall programme, but said that it was too much of a secret –and that we needed to invest more money to help more people.

For those who don’t know this programme, it provides grants to cover the cost of removing the barriers to work created by disability. Grants which can be used to purchase equipment, pay for a support worker and or fund transport adjustments. One of the reasons that Access to Work is so popular is that the support it funds is personalised – tailored to each individual’s specific needs.

So, what would a scorecard say?  That the support is good for those who get it, but not enough do.  The goal of policy should be that everyone who can benefit from Access to Work should be able to do so.  We’ve increased the programme’s funding from £15m in 1997 to £69m today. But meeting our aspiration would mean going further.

That commitment to independent living is also the reason why we have modernised Remploy.  Remploy’s factories do valuable work providing supported employment for individuals who need that level of provision.  But more and more people were saying to us that what they wanted was support to get in to mainstream employment.  That’s why we have agreed a new business plan with Remploy which places the emphasis on finding employment in mainstream settings, challenging them to find jobs for 20,000 more disabled people per year.

As we introduce the Employment and Support Allowance, more people will be supported to look for work.  We want to continue to reform these programmes so that they provide more people with the opportunities that they want. I have been particularly impressed with the work of organisations like Blindcraft in Glasgow whose business has been so successful that they are now close to not requiring any subsidy on top of their workstep funding.  As we reform our programmes further, we will want to explore new partnerships of this kind, to see whether we could provide better services to more people.

So, independent living would require an expansion in our support programmes. Independence is an achievement which requires a lot of support. It isn’t what you leave behind when you withdraw. 

Control

That said, it’s not just about how much is provided; how that support is delivered matters enormously.  Independence means having control over our lives, and that extends to having control over government services. Lucy’s story of depending on the goodwill of a social worker is repeated too often.  Of course, most professionals will do their best for disabled people.  But we need to design the system so that people are not at its mercy – there needs to be a solution when things aren’t right.

That solution is giving power to the individual.   The individual knows better than the state what she needs.  The individual often sees better than the state the different organisations who are trying to provide help, often sees the waste better than the official at the centre. And the individual should be empowered to decide how to overcome the barriers in her way.

That’s why the idea of individual budgets is generating such enthusiasm.  Because it allows the individual to shape the support to her needs.  But it still provides a way of recognising that some people will need more help.  It is the epitome of the enabling state.

Again, it was Rowen that expressed most graphically how an individual budget could transform a life.  She said the state was prepared to provide funding for adaptations to her home or to compensate her for not working.  But what she wanted was to be able to take that funding to get in to work so that she could pay for the help that she would decide she needed.

The Department of Health have pioneered the use of individual budgets and are now expanding their use in to social care.  Pilots of this idea have shown that individuals are more satisfied with the service.  But so far we have not yet found a way of pooling resources across different parts of the state, to do for Rowen what she is very clear she wishes to see.

We will continue to see whether we can join up better within Whitehall.  But an exciting alternative approach came out of a seminar we hosted recently to discuss the experience of individual budgets.

This was to turn the situation on its head.  As well as looking at how we might pool specific budgets, we should also explore how we could empower individuals to put those funds together themselves, and how we could give individuals a reasonable expectation that they would be able to receive the programmes and services that they are entitled to as an individual budget. Whatever the individual was entitled to, she would be able to request that funding be provided as an individual budget. 

There are many specifics that would need to be addressed to make this idea fly.  How would we establish what each individual was entitled to? What support and advocacy would the individual need?  When could the public authority be able to refuse to provide a budget? What goods would be included in the list of purchases? How would disputes be dealt with?

But if we could get this right, and there are good examples where it has worked well, it would make independent living real.  So, Baroness Campbell is working with a group to sketch out what this idea could mean, potentially for inclusion in the Green Paper.  And I would value your ideas about how we could make it work. 

Just like the Disability Discrimination Act established clear principles, but allowed for flexible implementation, so this right to control could be implemented over time, but based on the default position that the power should be passed to the individual.

Incentives

Finally, incentives. For too long, Incapacity Benefit has trapped people on benefits.  Incredibly, it was designed in a way that provided no support to people to get back in to work.  It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that it was used by the previous government to reduce the unemployment count, and to avoid the difficult questions about how to get the long term unemployed back to work.

In so doing, they created a benefit that became a trap.  Because if you provide support for being out of work, without a pathway back in to work, it’s not surprising that people don’t find their way out. And it’s not surprising that once people have been on IB for two years, they are more likely to die or retire than get back in to work.

We are determined to change that – so we’re not just abolishing Incapacity Benefit, we also extended our Pathways to Work programme to the whole country since April. That means an extra £1 billion spending on support programmes in the next 3 years.  And an extra £400 million in expenditure on ESA in the next 3 years.

We’re confident it is going to be money well spent – an evaluation of Pathways published last week concluded that every £1 spent on it led to a £1.50 gain to the Exchequer. Good for the exchequer yes – but also good for disabled people being supported into work

This is independent living in action.  Increasing support so that more people can work. And as more people work, and benefit costs fall, focusing support at people who need it most. Just as falling unemployment has resulted in a corresponding cut in real terms spending by £5bn, money that has been freed up for other priorities, so we should be aiming for that virtuous circle to be repeated with ESA.

That’s why we want to increase the benefit payments to those with the most severe disabilities, so that they are £16 better off than on IB. 

But it does mean that we will continue to reform the system so that it targets money effectively.

That’s why I hope we can work together to be agents of reform – so that we can switch money from keeping people on benefits to realising their aspiration.  If we can reform the system, we can explore expansion of other support such asAccess to Work.   If we can reform the system, we can provide more supported employment.  If we can reform the system, we can give individuals control. 

This is not about stigmatising people on benefit.  It is not about saving money.  It is about making sure that we are getting the support to the people who need it. It is about giving independence and control, through the smart use of the state, to people who have been supplicants for too long.

It won’t be an easy journey and we won’t get everything we want. But I am delighted that we are heading in the same direction. I hope that, as the inevitable trade-offs arise, we will all keep the destination in mind. There is no higher aspiration than giving control back to those to whom it belongs.