10/07/2012 Newsnight Scotland

get on to all the other things that On Newsnight Scotland tonight,

government welfare changes are going to mean a real cut in income

for some of the most vulnerable people - families with disabled

children. There are 70,000 disabled children in Scotland. The gloomy

predictions come in a new report by a children's charity. Is this

special pleading, or a legitimate forecast of a crumbling welfare

system? Good evening.

We are in the middle of a profound process of change in our welfare

system. The UK government is unpicking a complicated system of

benefits, aiming to direct help where it's most needed, but also to

encourage many benefit claimants to get back into work. Critics say the

process is having unfortunate consequences. They say changes will

see reductions in real income for some families with disabled

children, and that was never anyone's intention. The UK

Government says most families with disabled children will be better

off, a view not shared by disability charities. As our

reporter Ian Hamilton discovered, one charity is saying that families

with disabled children are being dispropotionately hit by the

current and imminent cuts. Jackson has a rare form of Down's

syndrome, which means he requires constant supervision.

Physically, he has problems with muscle tone, he has problems with

his hips, he has learned difficulties. He is 10 years old,

but mentally, he is four or five years old. He also has undiagnosed

autism. As a single parent, his care is all

down to his mother, and she is not alone. According to the charity

Contact A Family, nearly one in four disabled people in Scotland

are cared for by a disabled parent. Have I read, a lot of these

families are struggling. I have spoken to a charity who say that

they are struggling disproportionately, and that is

before the government introduced the majority of their reforms.

Contact A Family is a 58% of the parents think they are worse off,

and 82% of them put this down to the introduction of the welfare

reforms. Our research shows that families

with single children - Barker with disabled children are going without

essential items like clothing, food and heating. They are facing

spiralling debt problems and are trying to make ends meet. Research

shows it cost three times as much to bring up a child with a

disability. 200 of the affected charities were

in Scotland. 82% of people said they have gone without sunny

because they lack of cash. 19% they have bag say they have gone without

food, 18% said they have gone without heating. 61% say they have

not got clothes, 48% have gone into council tax arrears, and 21% cannot

pay their mortgage. The edited said cannot afford specialist equipment.

-- 32%. It is quite frustrating. I am the

kind of person, I want to go out and I want to work, and it is

better for me, and it keeps me happy, and obviously, if I am happy,

it is better for my son, but the whole thing about self-esteem as

well, if you are working you feel better about yourself. It is

practically impossible to get the hours at the rate of pay that you

would like. Basically, to keep your carer's allowance, you have to earn

less than what you would get. On the other hand, to get working tax

credit, you have to do 16 hours a week, so try to get a 16 hour a

week job that is six past 20 or less an hour is practically

impossible. -- �6.20. My son's life changed me in many

ways. I could not come to a conference on autism without

drawing on my own experience and try to tell you the lessons that I

have learnt about how we can make life better for disabled people and

for their families. Some say given his own personal

experience, the Prime Minister may have been more empathetic to

parents with disabled children. I think they missed is appointed

and frustration on the part of many families. The government's response

is that they will have transitional protection, so that families that

are moving from the current system to universal credit will have their

income guaranteed, the problem is that the transitional protection

will be frozen at will not be increased with inflation, so over

time, is extinct families will be worse off. -- existing families.

The other thing is that this does not help future generations of

disabled children, who will not be covered by this.

It is the fear of the unknown that is troubling family is the most.

It is a struggle as it is, to have any sort of contentment in your

life, to try and make things normal, so to do this, to put extra

pressure on the people, it is absurd.

We met with the minister for disabled people and asked her why

the West best at a club was choosing to cut back on benefits

for parents of disabled children specifically. Her response was that

the parents of disabled children were getting too much money that

they needed to be relied the disabled adults, and the money

reduced. We think disabled adults should have their income increased,

not disabled children be penalised because of that.

The UK government says that some families will win with the new

welfare reforms. But charities also say many more families will lose.

It is a waiting game, to see if this family will be richer or

poorer. Now, we asked the coalition's

Minister for Disabled People to join us on the programme, but she

was unavailable tonight. Her department told us "too many people

have been systematically failed by the current benefits system". I'm

joined from Dundee by Professor Paul Spicker, director of the

public policy studies at Robert Gordon University, from London by

Matthew Sinclair, director of the Taxpayers' Alliance, and here in

Glasgow by Margaret Lynch, who's newly in post as chief executive of

Citizens Advice Scotland. Thank you all very much for coming

in it. Margaret, if we start with the experiences and concerns that

have been identified three or offices, what our parents telling

you? Our managers who operate across the

whole of Scotland are reporting to us and absolutely massive increase

in have people coming to them with a very real concerns over welfare

and benefits reform, in particular, people who have someone in the

family who has a disability. There are reportedly huge increases in

the numbers of families who are having to go to charities, for

example, to get food parcels to help tide them over between one

benefit payment at the next. That is the situation of where the full

impact -- full impact has not yet dawned upon us. They are very real

concerns about the impact this will have on some of the most vulnerable

families across communities in Scotland.

Paul, we know that almost a quarter of Scotland, almost 70,000 people

are cared for by a single parent, had many of them are living in

poverty at the moment. Do you think there is evidence that these

children are being particularly disadvantaged by the way the

welfare reforms have been structured?

That is a very difficult question to answer. The problem is that so

few details about the levels of benefit, about the rules, about the

way the new system will work, had actually been released, that it is

based on guesses, on fears, at -- on uncertainties. I think the

apprehension that people are expressing is reasonable, but when

I have been asked how it will affect individuals, I find it very

difficult to give people a straight answer. There appeared to rescind

government response to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, they

seem to take the same view, that there are simply too many different

factors to take into account to give people a clear, sensible

answer about what is going to I suppose if we know that a very

significant percentage of these children are already living in

poverty, we also know that, for example, it costs three times more

for childcare for a disabled child than an able-bodied child, and

expenses in general are higher, I suppose it might be a reasonable

estimate to say that given those circumstances and figures there

will be a disproportionate hit here. It's certainly true that people are

vulnerable. I would put a little caution about that statement that

disabled children cost three times as much. Some do, but some cost far

more. The extreme case I referred to as being children who have

what's called a technological dependency, where we can be talking

about thousands of pounds to maintain a child in their own home

in a way that wouldn't necessarily be true of others, but equally,

there will be others where it's less so, but you're right that

where we're talking about poor finance that any attempt to --

families that any attempt to transfer money away from people who

are on low incomes must leave them with lower incomes still. That is

basic math. It's quite unavoidable during this sort of reform.

Let's pick up one of the points Paul raised there. We have a

Government statement tonight saying, "We're driving forward our welfare

reforms to simplify the system." Paul is talking about different

children will have different needs and their circumstances will change

- there does seem to be clear evidence that the system has been

oversimplified to the point where it no longer responds appropriately

to specific needs and circumstances. I don't think that's true at all.

You have to look at this report. There are two halves to it. One

half is looking at what are the financial pressures on families

with disabled children today? It finds those pressures are very

severe, which is absolutely understandable because we have all

sorts of things which are affecting all kinds of families, whether it's

higher electricity bills because of policies that subsidise some energy

and increase the price to consumers, whether it's higher Value Added Tax,

all sorts of things which affect families of all kinds but

particularly affects those families who are struggling the most, so

they do affect families with disabilities the most. That is very

separate issue. It's important that it's very separate from the

question of whether these welfare reforms are a serious problem for

those families, and that's where I think that a lot of this is

massively overstated. If you look at the - the evidence in this

report was that the two benefits people were most concerned about

were Disability Living Allowance and its change to the personal

independence payment and the universal credits - now, the

universal credit is one which will apply across the board to families

in need of benefits. I don't think there is anything particularly in

there that disabled families have to be concerned about because that

isn't the mechanism to give them that specific support you're

talking about. Disability living as llowance is designed to better

focus resources on the families that need it the most. There is no

big cuts coming through. All that's happening is resources

are being focused so we can keep down the big increase in that bill

that's coming through, so it should better help these families. It's

not going to be less specific. Let's just get a specific response.

End the DWP wouldn't agree with mathew. It has been fairly publicly

stated that the affect of the welfare benefit reforms will be to

take �2 billion out of the welfare payments that are made, and exactly

half of that... People borrowing... You have to let her finish. Carry

on. Exactly half of that will be to families where there is a disabled

member in the family or somebody who has suffered unemployment

because they've got a long-term illness or condition, so it's

simply not true to say that we have no... Sorry. No, no, Martin you

can't talk over each other or no- one will hear anyone. Let her make

this point. In terms of how this affects families in Scotland, we

know because Sheffield Halum university use the DWP's statistics

that over 170,000 current claimants, 115,000 will lose benefit, and of

them, 65,000 will be taken out of the benefits system. No, no.

Matthew - Matthew, briefly respond to that because I want to move on

to some other points. Briefly respond to that, then. The reality

is that that cut is that we're going to arrest a big increase in

this bill. This bill has been increasing dramatically in recent

years. The tradgeektion was for it to continue to increase. We're

saying with all the many other areas of spending which are

actually being cut, this area of spending, we need to arrest the

rise. It's not a cut in the way people hear about. This kind of

inflated rhetoric is one of the reasons people are more concerned

than they need to be. It's leading to some concerns that... It's true

that there's been a rise in recent years, but that rise has been

mainly through two groups which are claimed more Disability Living

Allowance more frequently. The first of those are people with

mental illness. The second are older people who are getting

extensions on Disability Living Allowance. Both of those are going

to be maintained in the new reform, and the projections for expendture

that the Government is giving us are set to increase, so we've then

got to ask, where are the savings coming from? And the savings, where

they're intended, come from different groups of people, not the

ones who are driving the increase. Right. Let's talk about the

different groups who are competing here. How important is it, do you

think that in this debate disabled children, for example, are not set

up against the pensioners? Because that's another area they're looking

at reforms in. I think it's critical. It's outrageous to

suggest one group of very vulnerable people should have the -

feel like the risk is transferred from them to another group. This is

not the answer. I mean, the answer certainly is we would agree with

the Government that those who are able to work should be supported

into employment, but really, the answer - the - lies with economic

development and ensuring that there are jobs for people to go to.

Matthew, let me ask you something that's running parallel to all of

this. Aside from benefits, there is also the changes that councils are

making to the kind of support services they can give to families.

It's absolutely the case those are being cut back, aren't they? So you

can see that scenario that parents with particular needs could be

disproportionately disadvantaged. Look, what councils need to do in

the same way it's happening across Government is they need the look at

their priorities. We have seen in councils across the UK, for example,

There was a ninefold increase in the decade in the number of staff

earning over �50,000 a year, whereas in the wider economy, there

was just a threefold increase in that number. There are ways

councils can strike priorities, just as the Government has, and as

a result, the disability benefits budget, is being frozen even after

adjusting for inflation, not being cut, as has been suggested.

have made that point. That point is actually contested by Paul, but I

wanted to ask you something else before we leave this Paul. In terms

of the priorities you suggested earlier the Government was making -

the choices they were making - what choices do you think they're making

right now which might be slightly under the radar? Paul, sorry.

question that you asked first was about whether people were being set

against pensioners, and I am afraid the sad truth is, yes, they are. We

constantly hear about the global expendture that there is on

benefits. What people I think don't realise is that two-thirds of that

expenditure, that's two-thirds of all the money paid out by the

develop -- Department for Work and Pensions goes to old people -

people who are above working age - that means the there is no way to

reduce the budget by the sorts of figures that Government has been

talking about without directing that to some degree towards

pensioners. Now, what the Government has actually been doing

is it has been focusing on what it calls the out-of-work benefits, and

it's bundled disability benefits in with the out-of-work benefits, but

that's a much smaller proportion. OK. And there is just no way of

pulling the money out of the budget in the way that they're hoping to

do. Right. What will be happening, I am afraid is that benefits bill

will be increasing, and it will be increasing because the numbers of

pensioners are increasing. We have to leave it there. Thank you very

much indeed. A very quick look at tomorrow's

That is it for me for tonight. A Heavy showers continue to affect

parts of the UK overnight. It's heavy rain in Eastern Scotland into

the north-east of England, which lasts through much of the day on

Wednesday. Elsewhere you may see a bit of sunshine, but those heavy,

possibly thundery downpours get going again. North-west England

could stay dry. Across north-east England, you have rain or showers.

The showers in East Anglia and the south-east heavy and possibly

thundery into the afternoon, but with some sunshine in between, and

those in south-west England - it's not a constant washout. You'll see

glimpses of sunshine in between the scattered showers. Most of the

showers fade away from Wales. Late in the afternoons it will get some

sunshine, feel pleasant. In between the showers in Northern Ireland,

sunny spells. The sun hard to find in Scotland, a grey, gloomy day,

showers to the north. A cool feel to the weather especially in the

east in the rain. By the time we're all said and done, Edinburgh could

see 20-30 millimetres, about an inch of rain. A Met Office warning

in force. That much rain could bring possible disruption. That's

the picture for Wednesday - the rain continuing in Edinburgh. Look

at Thursday. Much of the northern UK has a brighter day. In contrast

for England and Wales, we see coming up from the south-west

another wet weather system, and some of this rain coming in on