North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has urged the Welsh Government to provide a Statement or Debate in the Assembly Chamber on “the very important matter of future support for disabled former recipients of the Independent Living Fund”.
With the UK Government having devolved responsibility for this to the Welsh Government from 30 June last year, and the Welsh Government having only launched a temporary scheme from 1st July 2015, Mr Isherwood is concerned that the Welsh Government has just provided a written statement on future support and, speaking in this week’s Business Statement, said that this affects the lives of many disabled people and therefore warrants an oral statement or debate so that Assembly Members may subject this to proper public scrutiny.
He said:
“Scotland appointed a full-time Independent Living Fund (ILF) Business Manager and embedded a project assistant within Inclusion Scotland, Disability Wales’s sister body, months beforehand; and Northern Ireland appointed ILF Scotland to administer the ILF for Northern Ireland. The Cross Party Group on Disability, which I Co-Chaired in the last Assembly and which I’ve been asked to Chair in this Assembly, had taken evidence on the implementation of the Welsh Independent Living Grant from 1 July last year, and having identified widespread concerns, wrote to the then Minister, received a response, and he then issued a written statement on this in February, stating he had asked his officials to work with stakeholder representatives on options including a potential arrangement with the body set up in Scotland to provide payments for former ILF recipients to do the same for Welsh recipients. And at that stage, I can confirm that the membership of the Wales Disability Reference Group favoured this approach.
“Despite this, we’ve now had, this month, a written statement only from the now Minister for Social Services and Public Health, stating she’s concluded future support to former ILF recipients will go through normal social care provision from local authorities, ‘this being the most effective approach’, and that she recognises ‘some recipients would have preferred a different decision’.
“This failure, apparently, in this statement to co-produce, co-design, co-deliver and work with citizens and communities doesn’t meet the requirements of the Social Services and Well-Being Act, the Well-Being of Future Generations Act 2015 or the directives from the Wales Audit Office on the future direction of services. This affects too many of the lives of too many disabled people, so it merits an oral statement, or even a full debate, and I call for that accordingly.”
In her response, the Minister misleadingly claimed that the UK Government ‘got rid of’ the independent living fund and that the Welsh Government ‘rescued it by allocating precious resources’.
Mr Isherwood added: “I raised this on a non-partisan basis as co-Chair of the Cross Party Group on Disability in the last Assembly and its Chair designate in this Assembly. How dare she therefore play party politics with the right of disabled people to live independently and have a voice? She knows full well that the UK Government devolved responsibility for this, transferring £27 million recurrent annual funding to the Labour Welsh Government, and that the Welsh Government introduced its Welsh Independent Living Grant on 1st July 2015 accordingly, to run until the end of March 2017. She also knows that what follows it should be designed and delivered with disabled people themselves.”