Proposition 55K0522

Projet de loi modifiant la loi du 6 mars 2007 modifiant la loi du 27 février 1987 relative aux allocations aux personnes handicapées et l'arrêté royal du 22 mai 2003 relatif à la procédure concernant le traitement des dossiers en matière des allocations aux personnes handicapées, en vue de permettre l'octroi automatique d'allocations.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Nawal Farih, Nahima Lanjri

Submission date

Oct. 2, 2019

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

administrative formalities disabled person social-security benefit

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP DéFI Open Vld MR PVDA | PTB VB

Abstained from voting

N-VA LDD

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

March 12, 2020 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

I would like to refer to my written report.

Colleagues, my group, the N-VA, fully supports the principle of automatic award of rights. Today, an adult person with a disability can claim an Income Replacement Benefit (IVT) and/or an Integration Benefit.

The right to an IVT depends on the financial needs of the rightholder, the right to an integration benefit depends on the care needs of the person concerned. It is a doctor of the Directorate-General of Persons with Disabilities who assesses this latter right.

Until the age of 21, a person with a disability can claim an increased child allowance, or what we in Flanders call the care allowance for specific support needs. In Flanders, it is up to a child and family doctor to assess this right.

In fact, this is a law that was passed in 2007, but that has never come into force because the royal decree has not been taken so far. The question is, then, why a bill is needed for this, while a royal decree should suffice.

This question in itself is not insignificant. A royal decision can be taken within the framework of a coordinated approach. Now there is a bill on the basis of which the 2007 law must enter into force by 1 January 2021. Only a few important questions remain unanswered.

For example, there is a need for a data flow between the counties, which are responsible for child allowance, and the Directorate-General Persons with Disabilities. This data flow does not exist today. There is also no concrete perspective on this data flow. What we know from experience is that setting up such data streams in less than a year is not obvious. I suspect you will forgive me this euphemism.

This bill threatens to become an empty box. This is of course the last thing we want. Then the question is what is worse: not entering something without it being prepared, or creating a false expectation. The automatic granting of rights consists in granting to a rightholder what he or she is entitled to, without charging him with a lot of administration.

In the period from 1 January 2019 to 31 August 2019, 10,206 persons with disabilities received additional child allowance valid until their 21st birthday; 75 % of them applied for the transition to the IVT system. The remaining 25% did not. It was often a conscious choice. This choice must also be respected. To do so, those who do not wish to receive the benefit will be treated on additional administration. From now on, they will have to actively declare that they do not wish to exercise that right. One paper store is replaced by another.

The General Directorate for Persons with Disabilities also calculated that this bill would generate an additional workload of 2.5%. In itself, colleagues, this is of course no reason not to support the bill. However, if one knows that the backwardness in the processing of the files is already large, then it is actually not serious to show the people here now that this additional workload is negligible without additional people and resources. As mentioned, the N-VA supports the principle of automatic granting of rights, but this bill is not embedded in a coordinated approach that addresses and removes all those practical problems, all those obstacles, in a proper, thoughtful way.

This is not good governance. This is, in the worst case, profiling on the cap of vulnerable people. Moreover, it ensures that there is a chance that with this bill you will turn a wheel in front of the eyes of people with disabilities. That is the last thing we want to do and that is why we will also abstain in the vote.

First of all, I would like to thank the colleagues of the CD&V group who submitted this bill that brings progress for some people with disabilities and which will organize an office examination by the General Directorate Persons with Disabilities (DGPH), which depends on the SPF Social Security. This is more an office examination than an automatic fee because there is a file that will follow and it will ensure that before those people who benefit from increased family allowances reach 21 years of age, they will be questioned about their intentions by the administration. Administrative figures show that among those young people who receive increased family allowances, 25 percent do not apply for income allowance or integration allowance.

The question is why. This can be a deliberate choice and it is quite respectable if these people do not want to enter the ARR/AI system. This may be due to a lack of knowledge of the administration or too complicated procedure. If among those 25% – which makes a few thousand beneficiaries – there are people who will have access to their rights, it is a step forward. In this sense, I do not consider that it is an empty box, as the previous speaker said, but rather an advance because we are moving towards some sort of automaticity of their rights.

For those people who, often, do not benefit from high incomes, the fact of obtaining the income replacement allowance still makes the difference. It is also known that there is a high level of poverty risk among this public. The real debate is therefore about raising the minimum allowances for people with disabilities. It is known that many of them live below the poverty line and this is ⁇ a challenge for the years to come.

We also discussed the issue of administrative work within the DGPH. It tells us that there will be a moderate additional workload and that a data exchange with federated entities will need to be implemented. The administrations will have until January 1, 2021 to settle things on the technical level.

There have been problems in the past, this cannot be denied. We talked a lot about delays, the duration of processing, computer issues. All this goes in order and, as far as I know, the duration of the examination of the files has returned to less than six months and there is no longer a delay as it was known before. Therefore, nothing prevents this official examination of young people with disabilities.

As he did in the committee, our group will vote in favour of this text, however recalling what has been said by the National Higher Council of Persons with Disabilities. For him, the real issue is not measurements but a real reform of the 1987 law that sets out benefits for people with disabilities. This law is completely obsolete and very complicated. What he expects from politics in the coming times, depending on a possible future government, is really to review this law, to simplify it and to be able to give people with disabilities access to their rights.

For today, we vote for this advance. We hope, in the future, to be able to work more generally on the 1987 law. I thank you.

It is obvious that the Flemish Interest will support the bill.

As a social party advocating the interests of our people and of our people with disabilities, we regret that the law of 6 March 2007 has never been implemented, and that no more initiatives have been taken by the previous governments to implement that law.

The automatic granting of an additional benefit to those who are entitled to it is the logic itself, of course, after an examination to verify whether the person concerned still meets the conditions.

In 2020, however, I can assume that the information applications of the Social Security Crosspoint Bank have also made progress, so that the investigation and the award are technically possible.

Regardless of whether it is an income replacement or an integration response, the correct exchange with the states for, for example, the entitled to an increased child benefit should no longer be a problem today.

We therefore not only acknowledge the merit of the proposal, which also aims to simplify administrative procedures for the person concerned, but we also fully support it.

If the DG Persons with Disabilities is unable to cope with the additional workload of the official research, which is currently budgeted at 2.5%, it is up to us, in particular to the Parliament and to the government of related matters, to subscribe the necessary resources for that service and for the adjustments to the information system. Parliament must at all costs prevent the 2007 law from remaining dead letter for a longer time.

However, this does not blind us to the choice of those involved who would rather not have it. It may well be that people prefer not to let their situation be investigated or already know with certainty that they no longer meet the conditions. An opt-out of the official investigation remains always possible, even after the approval of the present legislative proposal.

The Flemish Interest assesses each proposal on its content. We can fully and firmly support this proposal.

Everyone knows that people with disabilities are difficult and vulnerable. It is also very difficult for them to claim the benefits to which they are entitled.

Someone with an increased child allowance due to his disability who turns 21 must nowadays go through a whole administrative template to obtain an income replacement and integration accommodation. First, the person concerned must fill out an online application form from the federal government service containing both administrative data and a self-assessment on self-reliance. Upon receipt of that form, the FOD will contact the treating doctor to request the medical information of the person with a disability. The doctor receives that question through his mailbox or through a letter by post. The doctor must add the information from the Global Medical Dossier of his patient to the electronic form of the FOD or send it by post to the FOD.

To ensure that the doctor provides the data, the DG HAN service will also contact the person with a disability at the same time with the request to inform his or her doctor of the application, so that the doctor can provide the necessary data. The FOD therefore still checks whether the person with a disability meets the conditions for receiving a benefit on the basis of the medical and administrative data. This is usually the case, because from the information we have received from DG HAN, it shows that only 17% of applicants are not eligible. That evaluation can be done on the basis of paper pieces, but in some cases the evaluating doctor of the FOD invites the person with a disability for an examination. Finally, a decision is made, which is recorded in the file. The person concerned shall be informed of the decision.

This is to show that a lot of steps must be taken to request that.

Annually, approximately 15,000 people with disabilities are now receiving an increased child allowance, and they will most likely be eligible for that federal allowance on their 21st birthday, either an integration allowance and an income substitute allowance, or either.

The figures from our administration show that as many as one in four people with disabilities do not apply today, mainly because they are unaware of the existence of that right. One does not know that one is entitled to it, so one does not ask for it. Or it is also because the application procedure is too complicated, as I just said.

The measure we adopt today, this automatic examination to determine whether people with disabilities are entitled to a benefit, is therefore not an unnecessary luxury, but a necessity. I see that in the field as well. The social services of health funds, as well as numerous associations for people with disabilities, very often get people on the floor who are not or insufficiently informed about their rights or who themselves do not take the initiative to submit such a application.

Herman Janssens, a staff member of the KVG (Catholic Association of Disabled Persons), experienced this on the liver. He only asked for a greeting when he was 24. I quote him for a moment: “I could already have done that when I was 21, but as a student I wanted to do as little with my disability as possible. I was working on my studies. My parents thought I would not have the right to it, because I still lived at home. I don’t know how they got that wrong information. They also thought it would be better for me to earn an income from labor, but one was of course not in the way of the other. Because of my disability, it would take a long time before I found a job. I only heard about the benefits to disabled people when a friend with a disability informed me about it, so that was three years too late.”

This person himself experienced that he was not aware. He lost three years because he had not submitted that application, while he was entitled to it.

He now says that “application procedures for some people with disabilities and their surroundings remain too long and too complex. Automatic allocation of benefits will undoubtedly reduce the lack of inclusion of rights. We are therefore satisfied that this legislative change is responding to our questions.”

Research from the KUL also shows that many people with disabilities have trouble managing their daily administration and money affairs.

Forty percent of beneficiaries do not know how to get a compensation or a replacement income. While in our country 15 % of the population with income below the poverty line must live around, that percentage among people with disabilities is twice as high, namely 30,5 %. Therefore, it is absolutely no unnecessary luxury that the government itself will investigate whether someone is entitled to a benefit, especially for the weakest in our society, namely people with disabilities.

Indeed, the Parliament already decided on 6 March 2007 that the right to those benefits should in fact be automatically examined, but the royal decree determining the date of entry into force was always absent. We are 13 years later and the KB is still not issued. That is why I took the initiative to regulate that through a law.

The proposed legislative amendment was approved by a very large majority in the committee; only the N-VA group abstained. I am very pleased that this allows us to ensure that the administration of DG HAN will finally automatically examine whether persons with disabilities are entitled to a benefit on the basis of data that they receive from the counties as soon as the persons concerned reach 20 years of age. Currently it is about 15,000 people per year. In this way, it will not lose precious time and can investigate in time whether the persons concerned at the age of 21 years, if they no longer receive an increased child benefit, are entitled to the integration benefit or to the income replacement benefit. The DG HAN shall notify the interested parties by letter, after which they may declare that they will not resort to those benefits. I think there will not be much.

Ultimately, it is intended to make the bill, which we hope to soon again approve with a large majority, enter into force by 1 January 2021. For example, we give the administration sufficient time to organize for the necessary data exchange with the counties.

If this succeeds for the administration, it can, of course, be done for us earlier than 1 January 2021.

With this proposal, we are taking a step further towards the automatic allocation of rights. There is still a lot of work to be done in this domain. We must do so not only for people with disabilities, but for as many others as possible. The approval of the submitted text should therefore not be the end point.

Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues who have worked constructively in the committee to ⁇ the automatic award. I would also like to thank Minister Muylle and her administration, DG HAN. They have explicitly stated that they will and will organize the legal provisions on the ground. If it depended on them, we would have done it much earlier.

Thank you for your support later. I think we can really make a difference in the lives of 15,000 people a year.

Mr. Speaker, we will support the bill, because we agree with the advanced general philosophy. We believe that the automatic allocation of benefits for persons with disabilities contributes in part to combating the risk of poverty.

On the other hand, we still have two remarks. For us, the real challenge of fighting the risk of poverty will be in relation to increasing all these income allocations to the level of the poverty line.

In addition, this law amends the law of 6 March 2007, which already provided for making these rights automatic. It would have been enough for the King to take a royal decree so that it could be enforced. This is a 2007 law. Thirteen years that this automatic could have been applied. This finding also makes us doubt the willingness of previous governments to really make the fight against poverty a priority.

In this law is put forward a will that it be applied no later than 2021. We will be vigilant, as a political group, to ensure that it is effectively applied in reality.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Lanjri has well outlined the current situation and the one that will be there by 1 January 2021. The sp.a-fraction supports any realization of the principle of automatic award of rights. So we approach this positively because we see it as a progress. We want this progress for several benefits employment achievements. This includes the most financially vulnerable people, namely those with disabilities.

The non-take-up, as it is called in the jargon, is 25% effective too big. We should support all measures that can avoid the failure to include an income replacement and/or an integration measure. We must ensure that these benefits reach the people who need them. After 14 years, this principle must now become a reality.

It is up to the Minister responsible to ensure that the DG Persons with Disabilities is provided with the necessary resources, both in terms of personnel and information equipment. Mr Anseeuw, the ongoing computerization projects have already been initiated by a colleague of you. It would be better if these projects had already been completed. However, these resources are necessary to organize the information flows. The Director-General has announced that they will also come.

This legislative initiative is positive, but we must take on the challenge of modernising the entire system of benefits for persons with disabilities. The increase in benefits must also be addressed, as there are still too many persons with disabilities now living below the poverty threshold. We must absolutely do something about it.