On Tuesday the 23rd April there was a session entitled Personal Independence Payments in the House of Lords and the person who created it was Beverley Hughes and she started with “To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on disabled people and their families of changes being considered in the review of personal independence payments announced by the Prime Minister on 19 April.” and several people contributed and one of them was the Bishop of Gloucester who is Rachel Treweek and her call is very significant. The person from the Government who responded to these people was James Younger and here are his response. However all of the discussion is here.

Rachel: My Lords, yesterday I visited National Star, an FE college that serves young people with severe lifelong disabilities. Many of them are being subjected again and again to reassessment throughout their lives. That is not only traumatising but a complete waste of time and resources. What will the Government do to take this into consideration so that people with severe lifelong disabilities are not subjected to reassessment again and again, unless, of course, that disability is generative?

James: The right reverend Prelate makes a very good point. It chimes with what I said earlier, which is that we need to target our resources in the right place and be sure that individuals are looked after in terms not of the end result but of the process. That is extremely important. I will make this point again: where an individual has severe conditions, it must be right that we, the state as a compassionate country, look after them, and we need to be able to provide a better focus. This is, again, one of the reasons why we are bringing forward this Green Paper.