Disability Living Allowance: Qualifying Period for Children

I will call Michelle Welsh to move the motion; I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind other hon. Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and from the Minister. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

I beg to move, That this House has considered the potential merits of removing the qualifying period for Disability Living Allowance for children. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. It is right and fitting that I start this debate where it all began for me, with dear Mabel—a brave, kind, clever, funny four-year-old girl who lives in my constituency—and her tenacious mum Rachael. When I was first elected to Parliament, I met with Rachael, my constituent, and she shared her experience with her daughter Mabel, who sadly had been diagnosed with cancer. Aged four, Mabel was diagnosed with Wilms’, a form of kidney cancer. After a horrifying six months, including two major operations and a tough course of chemotherapy, the family received the news that Mabel was free of cancer. Now, aged six, Mabel attends her local school, where I was fortunate enough to meet her, and is enjoying her life as a young child should. I know that the House will join me in wishing Mabel well. Following Mabel’s diagnosis, Rachael made an application for disability living allowance, which required completing a 40-page questionnaire that asks questions such as whether the four-year-old needs help monitoring their blood oxygen levels. Disability living allowance is supposed to support families of children with disabilities and serious conditions such as cancer. It can provide a lifeline of financial support at the time when it is most needed, yet the current system requires families to wait three months for the qualifying period. Let me be clear: the financial impact of cancer does not begin after three months. It is instant. Rachael shared with me that Mabel being diagnosed with cancer was the toughest time of her family’s lives. Despite that, she felt that they were in a more fortunate position than many of the other families on the ward. Rachael’s employer gave her six months off work as sick leave and her partner was able to work flexibly so that they could both spend time with their daughter at hospital. That time allowed Mabel to have support and care from her loved ones, and it allowed support from their family. I cannot even begin to imagine the anguish that families face with such a diagnosis—all the more when it is their child. Unfortunately, not every employer is able or willing to offer that support. That disparity should leave us asking: if we cannot be there when a child is diagnosed with cancer, what are we doing?

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. It is debates such as this that remind us of our job as MPs. Does she agree that when a family receive a devastating diagnosis, whether that is of a terminal illness, a severe disability or an aggressive childhood cancer, the financial shock and caring responsibilities are felt immediately? In the three-month qualifying period, families can sometimes accumulate up to £5,000 in additional debt during the most agonising months of their lives, while—I say this respectfully—the Government drag their heels. Will the hon. Lady join me in pressing the Minister, in her compassionate and understanding way, to get Government to recognise that a child’s suffering does not wait 90 days to become real, and to ensure that crucial financial support is delivered from the very point of diagnosis?

I absolutely agree. Too often, the financial impacts of a cancer diagnosis are forgotten. People think about the hospital visits, the sickness and the endless tablets, but a disability or serious condition such as cancer has an impact on every single part of someone’s life. Following a diagnosis, families immediately have to deal with the financial impact. It is a sad fact of life that bills do not care whether a child has cancer; they will still be due. But we can care. Cross-party, we can care. We can unite and do the right thing. Families with children with a disability or serious condition have to wait seven months on average before receiving a single disability living allowance payment. That is months and months of rent, mortgage payments, electricity bills and council tax, and it is weeks and weeks of food shopping. It is compounded by the fact that household income drops by an average of £6,000 per year. For one in three, that can reach over £10,000. Sadly, it gets even worse: the delay in receiving DLA means that a parent’s ability to claim any carer’s allowance as an additional or an alternative has a further impact on the financial strain. It is also important to note that parents in work are unable to apply for universal credit, and that that cuts out other potential streams of support. All this leaves parents with an impossible choice, a cruel choice that no parent should have to make: do they leave their child alone in hospital to face this battle by themselves, or do they not go to work? Do they skip bills? Do they run the risk of losing their home? Do they not eat? Do they turn the heating off? This is the reality. These are decisions that families should never have to make, yet they happen daily for families up and down this country. During my meeting with Rachael, she told me about a young boy of just six years old who was also on the ward. His parents were left with no option but to carry on working. As the nurses were unable to provide round-the-clock care, Rachael helped him to use the toilet, helped to dress him and helped him to eat. It is heartbreaking to think of the many children who have no one beside them—not just for the children, but for the mothers and fathers being left with no choice. I missed my son’s first day back at school today and have cried about it, but that is nothing in comparison with having to leave a child who is suffering from cancer in a hospital bed. Let me be clear: DLA is not designed to act as a source of income. It is there to help with the extra costs of looking after a child with a health condition.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her incredibly powerful speech. She is right that this is not a necessity; it can be addressed. Does she agree that the Department for Work and Pensions needs to ensure that parents get support from day one so that they can address the increased financial costs that they face from the beginning of a diagnosis, and the real need for parents to be present to support their child?

I absolutely agree. Cancer is actually one of the clearest diagnoses that someone can get from day one. Cancer does not wait, yet families have to. The three-month qualifying period does not reflect the realities that families face. In Mabel’s case, the family were informed that they would not qualify for any support, as Mabel’s condition had not lasted for more than six months. In other words, she had not had cancer for long enough. That is despite her having undergone multiple operations and chemotherapy; to this day, she must still attend regular hospital appointments. It is my understanding that the qualifying period is meant to establish that a health condition is long-standing in nature, but with a diagnosis of cancer surely support should be given from the outset.

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate. Does she agree that there is a strong case for greater flexibility in rapidly diagnosed cases where a clinician has already identified a severe, serious and long-lasting condition, and that in such cases a qualifying period can be unnecessary, bureaucratic and indeed insensitive?

Absolutely. The bureaucratic system is failing families, but these issues could easily be resolved if medical evidence could be used instead of the qualifying period. I urge the Minister to look at ways in which medical evidence and research can be used in DLA to make the system better for those who rely on it. There are already provisions that allow the use of medical evidence to bypass the qualifying period, such as the special rules cases where someone is approaching the end of life. The qualifying period is outdated and does not reflect the complexities of lifelong conditions. I am aware that the Government do not know the cost of removing the qualifying period, but I do not think that any cost is worth more than parents’ ability to be there for their child when they have cancer. As it stands, we cannot cure childhood cancer. We cannot spare families the fear, the sleepless nights or the heartbreak of watching a child undergo surgery and chemotherapy. But we can ensure that when the worst happens, the Government stand beside them rather than placing further barriers in their way. Families should not have to prove their desperation for three months before receiving support. They should not have to navigate mountains of paperwork while sitting beside a hospital bed. They should never be forced to choose between earning a wage and being there for their child. Mabel’s story is one of hope. Today, she is back at school, enjoying the childhood that every parent wishes for their son or daughter. But her family’s experience has exposed a system that is failing too many in this country. The question before us is a simple one: when a child is diagnosed with cancer or another serious condition, do we respond with bureaucracy or with compassion? I believe we should choose compassion. I therefore urge the Minister to work with families, clinicians and charities to remove the three-month qualifying period and replace it with a system that recognises medical evidence at the outset. Let us ensure that no parent is forced to leave a child alone on a hospital ward because they cannot afford to be there. Let us build a system worthy of the families who rely on it—and let us act now, because cancer does not wait.

I am delighted to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) on securing this important debate. She has made a particularly valuable, thoughtful and passionate contribution this morning, and I join her in wishing Mabel, her mum Rachael and their whole family well. My hon. Friend called this debate to discuss the qualifying period for disability living allowance for children. As we have heard, DLA contributes to the extra costs that may arise as a result of a disability or health condition. For some, it can provide a total of just over £10,000 a year. It is usually paid to the child’s parent or guardian; it can help with the overall family finances and can be used as they see fit to meet their needs. It continues to be paid in full to children and young people under the age of 18 when they are in hospital. DLA is available if a child’s condition or illness is both of a long-term nature and one that gives rise to care or mobility needs. Payment begins once the three-month qualifying period has been satisfied. That helps to establish that the disability and resulting needs are of the long-standing nature for which this benefit is designed to offer support. The qualifying period provides a sensible division between short and long-term disability, but, importantly, it does not begin with the date of the claim; it starts with the beginning of the need for care and/or mobility that makes the child eligible for DLA. That period can start before the date of claim. The question as to when the need started will be taken into account by decision makers, meaning that consideration will always be given to whether the qualifying period has already been partly or fully completed prior to the date of claim.

If I have correctly understood what the Minister is saying, if a consultant, GP or other doctor sent a letter confirming that the condition started way before the application was made, that would be the qualifying period, and that would be done by a medical person. Am I reading it right?

It starts with the issue of need. The point at which the child became eligible for disability living allowance marks the start of the qualifying period, even if that precedes the point at which parents make a claim. Understandably, when parents are in very difficult circumstances, their first thought is probably not about applying for disability living allowance. For children who are severely disabled at birth, the qualifying period can start at birth. The date of claim is usually the date the request for a claim pack is received. Provided that the customer returns the claim form within six weeks, the date of claim will be treated as the date that the claim form was requested. The Secretary of State also has the discretion to extend that period beyond six weeks if the delay is considered reasonable. In the sort of circumstances that my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest has described, we can understand how those issues can arise. If a child sadly has an end-of-life diagnosis, special rules are rightly in place. Those claims are always fast-tracked and the three-month qualifying period does not apply. The highest rate of the DLA care component will be paid from the date of the claim. My officials are currently exploring options to enhance bereavement support for parents through the social security system, and we will continue to engage with stakeholders as that work develops. Given that this debate stems from concerns about how quickly families get the support they need, it is worth highlighting that we have recently made significant improvements to waiting times for new child DLA claims. People are not waiting nearly as long as they did for their claim to be processed. My hon. Friend rightly highlighted the need to address long waits.

In the light of the fact that we are moving into a new era of a can-do Government, will the Minister look, together with clinicians, at the opportunity and benefit of delivering DLA from day one, and then bring the evidence back to the House?

I will perhaps come later in my speech to what the Government are planning to do. I am pleased to tell colleagues that between October 2024 and March 2025, the Department recruited and redeployed in excess of 100 case managers to improve clearance times for child DLA new claims. Between 1 August 2025 and 31 March this year, the Department cleared around 185,900 child DLA new claims, of which 68.3% were cleared within 45 working days. In that time, the percentage of claims cleared within these planned timescales rose from 4.7% to 90.7%. I hope that colleagues will recognise that that is a significant and necessary improvement. The social security system exists to provide opportunity and security. It is there to help people to navigate the difficult circumstances that any of us can find ourselves in. There can, of course, be few circumstances more exceptionally difficult than those faced by seriously ill children and their parents. Along with the emotional strain, parents can understandably experience a significant impact upon work and household income, as well as facing extra costs, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest very ably set out. It is understandable that many parents in this situation are likely to need additional support through the social security system. It is worth reiterating that beyond the support that DLA provides in and of itself, it can also passport to a range of additional support. That includes premiums in income-related benefits, carer’s allowance, the Motability scheme and exemption from the benefit cap. That is providing comprehensive help for families. For those who qualify, financial support is available through universal credit, including for those who are in work but on lower incomes. If needed, that support can be available on day one through an advance. Alongside the universal credit standard allowance, additional amounts such as child element, disabled child addition, carer element or housing costs are added as appropriate. Although universal credit is means tested and therefore not available to households that are better off financially, it is there as a safety net should those financial circumstances change. The social security system will always be a cornerstone of our support for unpaid carers and parents of disabled children, but it is not the only way we can help. Rightly, this is something that we have been thinking about across Government. Indeed, the Government have recognised precisely the issues that have been raised by both my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). As I am sure they are aware, only yesterday the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade closed its “Make Work Pay” consultation on employment rights for unpaid carers and parents of seriously ill children. That included seeking views on a possible new statutory entitlement to leave and pay for parents of seriously ill children, which is often referred to as Hugh’s law. That is in recognition of the campaigning undertaken by the family of Hugh Menai-Davis, who very sadly died aged six from cancer in 2021 but left this important legacy. I know that my colleagues will look carefully at the submissions to that consultation and will respond to it in the coming months, and I am sure that my hon. Friends present will look to colleagues in the Department and the work that they do. My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest rightly highlighted the importance of parents being able to support their children at these incredibly distressing times. In April last year, the Government introduced a new element of up to 12 weeks of neonatal care leave and pay for parents of babies in neonatal care to ensure that they have appropriate support during that time. The national cancer plan for England was published in February and was warmly received, not least for its introduction of a children and young people’s travel fund, backed by £10 million, and its recognition of the specialist approach that is needed for cancer in children and young people. Of course, our goal across Government remains to relentlessly work towards improving outcomes and experiences for children and young people with serious illnesses and supporting their families. I give that commitment to my colleagues today. Caring for a child who is seriously ill must be one of the most worrying and stressful situations that a parent can experience, which is why I am so glad that we have had the opportunity to discuss this issue today. Although there are no current plans to remove the three-month qualifying period from disability living allowance for children, my Department is already doing a significant amount of work and offering significant support. I assure my hon. Friend that we will continue to search for the right levers across Government to further strengthen support for parents in these terrible circumstances, and that we will always approach these issues with compassion. Once again, I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate on an important and sensitive subject and all Members who have contributed. Question put and agreed to.