7. Plaid Cymru Debate: Welsh Independent Living Grant

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:13 pm on 13 February 2019.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Helen Mary Jones Helen Mary Jones Plaid Cymru 5:13, 13 February 2019

Let's be clear that that is a belated change of heart very late in the day, after many disabled people across the UK have suffered dreadfully from that system. And you're quite right to say that we haven't got time to debate it here, but I'll happily take you on on it any time, anywhere, because it's not okay. Now, I think it's regrettable that the Minister is going to have to people through reassessment, but my understanding of the function of that reassessment is potentially to restore support that's been removed. So, my understanding from disabled people is that they actually rather welcome this.

So, to return to what I'd intended to say, Llywydd, I had expected to be giving a very different speech until the Minister made her announcement yesterday. I have watched this debacle both from outside this place and from inside it, and it has been incomprehensible to me, given the number of times that successive Welsh Ministers have committed themselves to the social model of disability, and I have been absolutely unable to understand what has happened. And while the Minister's change of mind yesterday is really, really welcome, as Leanne Wood has already said, it does leave questions unanswered.

We must express the extreme distress that this whole sorry process has put disabled people through, and those who love and care for them. To be honest, I sense from the Deputy Minister's statement that she understands that level of distress and wants to put it right, and we can't hold this Deputy Minister, as an individual, responsible. But we must ask her to look at what went wrong. How was this allowed to happen on the watch of a Government allegedly committed to the social model? We have to understand that if we are to prevent it from happening again. Was it a question, as we suspect is the case around the Government's proposals around post-Brexit agricultural support, of officials being reluctant for Welsh Government policy and practice to deviate from the English model? I hope I'm wrong. If that is the case, it's profoundly worrying. Was it a case of Welsh Ministers taking their eye off the ball? Again, I wasn't here at the time, and I'm not able to say categorically, but it certainly looks like that to me.