Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, Amendment 60A seeks to protect carers from the impact of the benefit cap in cases in which they are not living with the person for whom they care. On the last day on which we debated the Bill, the Minister told us of the value that the Government place on carers and their work. However, the Bill is drafted in such a way that this work will be valued only when the carer lives with the person for whom they care and thus excluded from the benefit cap by virtue of that person’s eligibility for DLA or PIP. Carers who are not part of the DLA claimant’s household, as we have heard, will be subject to the benefit cap. They are therefore likely to lose their carer’s allowance, suggesting that the Government place no value on their care.
As we have heard, the latest impact assessment estimates that 5,000 carers will be affected by the cap—that is the number provided by my noble friend Lady Lister—and yet not only does such care save the taxpayer thousands of pounds but the carer will be almost unable to work—or at least full time—by virtue of their caring. So they may face the choice of ending their care role in order to live. This is not theoretical. One in six carers has made the difficult decision to give up work to care, leading to an average loss of £11,000 a year. Many such families struggle to make ends meet as they cope with both a drop in income and the increased costs of caring—for example, through buying extra support and equipment and travelling to hospital and doctors’ appointments.
The impact of the cap will be to make this struggle significantly more difficult. Carers affected could lose £87 a week. Indeed, it may mean that some carers are faced with a tough choice between giving up caring—imposing significant costs on health and social care services—or taking a significant financial hit.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions told the BBC on Friday that people were “not suffering” as a result of his welfare reforms. Perhaps he would like to reconsider whether carers are likely to suffer if the amendment is not passed.
The Secretary of State might also consider the case of some of our service personnel. War widows are excluded—quite rightly—from the benefit cap, but should a mother helping to look after her son, injured in Kabul or Iraq, and claiming carer’s allowance for this, still be subject to the cap? Is that fair? I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Amendment 61, which relates to temporary accommodation, was to a degree dealt with in the first amendment we discussed today. It was a component of that broader amendment. We certainly support the amendment. I took it from what the Minister said in response to that general debate that something was afoot to address this issue but, without having had the chance to read Hansard yet, it was not totally clear what. Perhaps he will take the opportunity of saying it again, expanding, promising to write or whichever of those options he feels appropriate. It sounded as though there was a recognition of the need to address the issue that has been raised by the amendment. I certainly support the fact that there should be a move to address this and I look forward to receiving further information.
We very much support Amendment 60 and a period of grace. We would have been happy to support 52 weeks, but if 26 weeks is what the noble Lord, Lord Best, is pressing for, we would certainly support that should he wish to press the matter.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, that there are two things here. There are issues around transition. I see that the Lib Dem Benches are placing great faith in what might flow from transition and the offers that might come. However, I think that is different from an ongoing period of grace. The purpose of this, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, and my noble friend Lady Drake have enunciated, is to help people who fall out of work and to allow them a period of adjustment or a period of grace before the cap hits. There might be a transitional component to that, but this needs to be something of a permanent feature of the arrangements to make sense.
I suppose that six months corresponds with the contributory JSA period. My noble friend Lady Drake may be more up to date than I am on the data. It used to be 50 per cent back in work in three months and 75 per cent in six months. The data may have moved on. Certainly, given the unemployment figures that are around, I think even the longer period suggested by my noble friend must be somewhat difficult. The arguments in favour of a period of grace seem to be overwhelming. For someone to have to cope with all the traumas of losing their job and at the same time have to face changes in accommodation and moving to a new area, which could be a direct consequence of the cap, would be unforgivable. I hope that the Minister can say something positive on that as well.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, Amendment 60 would require us to provide for a period of 26 weeks during which we could not apply the benefit cap. The period would start from the date that a claimant’s welfare benefits first exceeded the level of the cap. It would therefore not only apply to new claimants, but also to existing claimants who have a change of circumstance that results in the level of the benefits that they receive exceeding that of the cap. We have said all along that we would look at ways of easing the transition for families. We do not want families to be taken by surprise by the cap or to create problems that people can avoid by taking appropriate steps. We want to ensure that people who might be affected by the cap know what to expect and can consider the options open to them.
There has been a lot of speculation in the press about whether a grace period is what the Government have in mind. Clearly, a grace period could be a way of easing transitions, especially for people who have recently been in work and can be expected to return to work within a short period. A grace period would mean that their benefit entitlement would not be affected when they first leave work. This would avoid the risk that they would be prevented from looking for work because of the need to adjust their circumstances because of the cap. That point has been made in the debate.
However, people who have recently enjoyed a high income are better able to deal with temporary shortfall and can and should be expected to have made their own provision if they know that there are limits on benefit entitlement. A grace period also carries the risk that people are likely to stay on benefits for longer than they would otherwise simply because a higher rate of benefit is temporarily available to them, so while the grace period approach is clearly one possible approach, it needs careful consideration. Issues with run-ons and things like that would need to be looked at very carefully. We also need to consider whether other approaches may be just as effective or indeed more effective for some groups. What I can say today, as I said in Grand Committee, is that we are well aware of the issues, we are confident that we have the powers we need to ease transitions and we will consider the case for a grace period along with the other options that might be available.
Amendment 60A seeks to exclude carers from the benefit cap. For carers the benefit system is designed to provide financial support where caring responsibilities prevent carers working full time and, as such, carer’s allowance should be treated in the same way for the purposes of the cap alongside other income maintenance benefits. However, households which include a member who is in receipt of DLA, PIP on its introduction, attendance allowance or constant attendance allowance, will be exempt from the impact of the benefits cap. Households where a member receives carer’s allowance but no members receive DLA, attendance allowance or constant attendance allowance, will not be so exempt. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, who is a fast reader, pointed out, the revised impact assessment states that 5,000 claimants fall into this group. One of the reasons that the number is rather less than one might have expected—or that I suspect the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, expected—is because we are looking at two benefit units, so the disabled person retains all their disability benefits and the rest of the benefits are received by the other householder. That is one of the reasons why the figures net down to rather a small number.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Can I ask the Minister whether “before too long” would be before Third Reading? We have had lots of debates in Committee on the words “too long”, “too soon”, “soon”, and “very soon”. Could the Minister help us? What sort of timescale does he have in mind on that?
Lord Freud
No, that will be beyond the Bill becoming an Act, so we are looking at how we do this in regulations.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Given that we are expecting a localism Bill next year—I guess—would it be incorporated in that, so the House would have a chance to amend? The trouble with regulations is that you cannot amend, whereas with primary legislation you can.
Lord Freud
My Lords, we are going to spend a lot of time on getting this right. It is not something we want frozen in primary legislation. In fact, it would be very uncomfortable to freeze these items in primary legislation. Regulation is the right place to do these things. We have a consultation paper out on how we may move forward with temporary accommodation. There are some very obvious solutions within that—I touched on them earlier this evening—comprising separating out service charges and housing costs rather than bundling them up; that is where the temporary accommodation becomes so expensive. We need to get a solution to this so that we do not have a ludicrous go-round of people moving into expensive temporary accommodation which they can no longer pay for because of the cap. We are absolutely aware of this and have measures in train to get a solution in the round to that issue. However, it is not a simple set of issues.
Lord Greaves
On the same point, the Localism Act 2011, which we recently passed, means that in many cases local authorities will carry out their duty to find accommodation for homeless families by putting them into privately rented accommodation, where they will have to pay the rent. How will that tie in with a benefit cap that might apply to the accommodation, to which the local authority directs them in order to fulfil its homelessness duty? Will the local authority be under some obligation to top up the rent, or something like that?
Lord Freud
My Lords, one can very easily see circumstances in which a local authority considers that to be a very sensible use of the discretionary housing payments. That is one reason why we have ramped up that amount. I am not saying that it will be every time, but that might be a solution. We are looking to redesign the process of finding temporary accommodation, which is the immediate problem that local authorities are faced with, so that we do not get caught in some Catch-22, which would obviously not be smart at all. That is where we are with that; we are very conscious of those issues and very comfortable that we have the legislative powers to develop effective solutions.
I pick up the important point from my noble friend Lady Thomas on the DLA and how the cap interacts with it. The DLA is there for those in receipt of DLA. That is how we have worded the illustrative regulations. A person whose DLA award is pending and who is serving what is now, and will remain, a three-month qualifying period, would not be covered by the exemption. That is the point in the question raised by my noble friend. It shows why this issue and other similar issues need to be dealt with in secondary legislation, so that we do not have the inflexibility that we would have if it was in primary legislation.
We are conscious of the concerns around the introduction of the cap. I can assure noble Lords that we are listening. We have said all along that we will introduce measures to ease the transition for families and provide assistance in hard cases. We are still considering our plans, and it is essential that we get them right. The clause has been drafted so that we have all the powers that we need to ensure through regulations that we provide the appropriate protections. I hope that that gives the noble Lord, Lord Best, a measure of reassurance.
Before I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment, I would like to make it clear that the Government do not consider Amendments 60A and 61 to be directly consequential on Amendment 60. Further Divisions would be required should noble Lords wish to push those other two amendments in the group to a vote. I apologise for spelling that out, but we had a small frisson the other week. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Best
My Lords, I am sure talk of further Divisions will be unnecessary at this late hour. I am very grateful to many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, for supporting my amendment on the 26-week period of grace. She made the point that we cannot possibly require behavioural change from people who are already desperately seeking work, which is what we want them to do. I was also grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham of Droxford, in backing this amendment. People with no history of benefit dependency should surely be given a period of grace to find work.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, made the point that perhaps 52 weeks would be better than 26 as a period to allow people to get back into work, especially given the statistics we heard—that 50 per cent of people who go on to jobseeker’s allowance find a job within six months, but if we want to get 90 per cent back into work it may take a year in the current job market.
This remains a very important ingredient in the use of the cap. The Minister has promised that finding a solution is a priority and that a period of grace to ease the transition is one way of handling this, but there may be an even cleverer way. The Minister says that the issue still needs to be looked at very carefully but is confident that a way will be found. I must take this on trust, but with the expectation that there will indeed be measures that handle this transition and satisfy the House when the regulations, although those cannot be amended, are brought before us.
I am also grateful for noble Lords’ support on the amendment to make sure that temporary accommodation does not become a Catch-22 situation whereby homeless people are sent somewhere by the council, only to find when they get there that they are not able to pay the rent because the benefit cap has kicked in. That would be a calamity for them. I was grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham, for weighing in on that one and to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for asking for further clarification.
The Minister explained that we need to find a way, and he is confident we shall find one, of handling this exemption or exclusion, or in some way treating temporary accommodation differently and in a satisfactory way. I trust him to be as good as his word and I have pleasure in withdrawing these amendments.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I ought to pick up the initial remark by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that this amendment was to protect another unappreciated group. I emphasise that, from my perspective, this is a most appreciated group. This is an amendment that I listened to with great interest.
It would require us to exempt all family and friends carers from the benefit cap where they have assumed care for a child in the circumstances set out in Amendment 60B. There are two main groups: those formally approved as a foster carer and those providing care on a more informal basis. As noble Lords will remember, in Grand Committee I discussed and recognised the valuable role that kinship carers fulfil. I have had some very useful and valuable meetings with organisations that represent kinship carers to try to get a handle on their priorities. As I said earlier, one of the main issues they are concerned about is that crucial initial period when a child joins a household. In many cases the carer needs to take time off to help the child settle into their new circumstances.
Lord Freud
My Lords, as always, I am incredibly grateful to the noble Baroness for her suggestion. I am thinking of offering her a job. However, let us not redesign the benefits system on the Floor of the House, although we have gone into it on many occasions. Let me ask the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Drake
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their support and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, who also argued the case for family and friends carers in Committee. I accept that the noble Lord has shown a commitment to looking at the needs of this group and I think the charities would accept that.
My anxiety and that of the charities that articulate the interests of family and friends carers is that the Bill is going through the House without one having achieved clarity over the kind of protection that this community will get under the legislation. The Minister said that this community would be supported in the most appropriate way, and that it was necessary to get it right in regulation. It would be helpful if he confirmed that there will be regulatory provision to protect this group, notwithstanding what the precise solution may be, rather than leave the protection to discretion. It would be helpful if the regulatory route was being taken. I thank my noble friend Lady Hollis, as ever, for coming up with an excellent suggestion.
Lord Freud
Perhaps I may answer that straight on. I hope I made myself clear that when we get the regulations on handling the transitions and the options around it that we discussed earlier, we do it in a way that looks after this group. I am not committing here to specific exemptions for this group, but I am saying that we are looking at how to do it so that we meet its requirements, of which I am very conscious.
Baroness Drake
I thank the noble Lord for that response. In the earlier stages of the debate on this community, my particular concern was that the protection necessary for it is not dealt with solely as a matter of discretion and that there is clear guidance—whether or not as a consequence of dealing with the matter as part of a wider resolution—that it is not left solely to the individual discretion of advisers. I take the response of the Minister as meaning that it will not be left in that way. He is nodding.
Lord Freud
Hansard needs more than a nod. Without elaborating on a lot of transitional arrangements, I am not quite sure how this will work. I am not sure that I can give absolute assurance either way, although I would lean towards setting these things out formally without discretion; but I am not in a position to give any kind of assurance either way. There might be elements of discretion in any set of protections that we develop.
Baroness Drake
Obviously it would have been preferable if the Minister had said unequivocally that this matter will not be left to local discretion, but it is clear that I am not going to get that reassurance. However, the noble Lord has said quite a lot on record that he is committed to trying to resolve the needs of this particular group. Perhaps I may borrow a phrase from the noble Lord, Lord Newton, in a previous debate: I will hold the Minister’s feet to the fire on this issue. On that basis, I agree to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I am looking forward to the Minister’s reply, otherwise we will worry about the sleeping patterns of the noble Lord. These amendments, as has been clearly set out, seek to mitigate the risk of paying the entirety of universal credit to one person and, in particular, to provide protection for women who are more likely to be the main carer in a couple and less likely to have the power in the relationship to determine how money is managed.
The Government’s proposals suggest that universal credit payments would not, other than exceptionally, be split between a couple. Instead, they would be paid, as we have heard, entirely into one bank account. The DWP briefing note states that,
“the Government wishes to place responsibility for household budgeting with the household. It is not Government’s role to dictate how a household spends their money”.
However, these amendments are not about how households spend their money but how they receive it. They are about allowing households to decide to whom the money should be paid. This principle is long established in social security policy. Households receiving child benefit can nominate a main carer and those receiving working tax credit can receive child tax credit in the bank account of the main carer and working tax credit in the bank account of the other partner.
Concerns about the shift in policy from this have been voiced by a wide range of organisations, all of which have presented strong arguments in favour of ensuring that the part of universal credit intended for children is paid to the person who has the main care of them. As has already been spelt out, we know that benefits labelled as intended for children are more likely to be used for that purpose. This amendment would enable the Government to identify the parts of the credit intended to help with the costs of children.
Research for HMRC shows that child tax credit is commonly identified as money for children and more often spent accordingly. Again, as has been said, we know that money within the household is frequently unequally distributed, particularly in low-income families. An Oxfam study of black and minority ethnic women in low-income couples revealed cases where,
“women had so little access to money that their husbands were effectively in control of key aspects of their lives”.
Benefits for children are sometimes the sole source of independent income for vulnerable women.
As the Women’s Budget Group points out,
“putting benefits together is key to the design of UC; paying it into one account is not”.
There can already be exceptions. Sometimes, for example, there will be rent for certain categories of recipients. Support for mortgage interest may be paid to lenders and, as the Women’s Budget Group states,
“a sanctioned claimant could lose their UC, and the remainder … paid to their partner”.
The DWP briefing acknowledges:
“There may, however, be exceptional cases that require alternative arrangements: to ensure safeguards. The Government intends to retain powers to split payments between members of a couple in joint claim cases”.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, will be able to sleep easy in his bed because it seems clear to me that the technology will exist to enable the Minister, if he so desires, to accept either or both of these amendments; that is, either paying the child elements of universal credit to the main carer or, in line with the Government’s assertion that they wish to enable choice, allowing families to choose to split their payments.
Resistance to these amendments would suggest that administrative simplicity is seen as more important than either ensuring that women have an independent income or encouraging money which is intended for children to reach them. I hope that the Minister will feel able to accept the argument for these changes.
Lord Freud
My Lords, under universal credit, couples will make a joint claim for benefit payment. We have been clear that claimants will receive universal credit as a single payment, which will ensure that claimants can clearly see the effect of their decisions about work on total household income. The House debated this issue extensively in Committee. We also discussed direct monthly payments in another context when the House accepted the principle of a single payment. Couples will be able to choose which bank account the total universal credit award should go into. Once universal credit has been paid into that account, claimants will have the freedom to manage their money how they wish. They will have the opportunity to transfer some of that money into another account, or they may choose to have the universal credit paid into a joint account in the first place.
Giving people these choices to manage their money is in line with evidence that suggests that, in today’s world, the majority of couples pool their resources—
Baroness Meacher
I apologise for interrupting the Minister. How does he feel that that will work if the partner into whose bank account the money is paid is an alcoholic and likes to spend most of the money, on a Friday or whenever it is, on alcohol, or a gambler, or somebody with mental health problems who is controlling and dominant and therefore gets the money paid into their account?
Lord Freud
I was going to say that 7 per cent of cohabiting couples and 2 per cent of married couples manage their finances completely. However, we recognise that there are cases—the noble Baroness mentioned some of them—which will require alternative arrangements. The Government intend to retain powers to split payments to couples as a safeguard. We are looking at the precise circumstances of where and how that split will be made and we will produce further detail as we develop the regulations. The obvious example, as the noble Baroness has said, is where there is proven abuse of the money by one partner or where children are considered to be at risk. But there will be other circumstances as well. That general point is accepted. Where an intervention by the state is required, we will make it to ensure that money goes to the right people or is split in the right way.
However, in circumstances where a universal credit award is split, neither party will receive specific elements such as that for child care. They will receive a proportion of the total award and be responsible for their own budgeting. Therefore, in practice, the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, Amendment 61C, is much closer to how we will manage such situations.
Universal credit is replacing a benefits system which in practice undermines personal responsibility by separating a person’s income into different streams for different circumstances. This does not reflect the world of work or encourage financial responsibility. We must trust that people know what is best for them and for their families, with the exception of those individuals and families who cannot handle that responsibility. In respect of those who can, it is not for government to dictate how a family manages its money. However, we are committed to ensuring that people can access support to manage their payments and help them budget effectively.
We are looking at a wide range of support. As noble Lords may remember, I think that one of the most exciting opportunities offered by universal credit is to enlarge the scope for financial inclusion which has been so lacking for many benefit recipients. We are looking at access to nationally available advice and guidance and at locally delivered, targeted support. We are talking to local authorities, housing associations and other stakeholders about how best to deliver this support. We are talking to the financial services sector about widening access to basic, including joint, bank accounts and developing improved budgeting accounts to help benefit recipients manage their money. We are looking to create valuable support mechanisms for a part of our community that simply has not had them. My aim is to have some quite specific new products that slot right under universal credit and give families much more flexibility to manage their money. I look forward to sharing more detailed proposals with your Lordships in due course.
With regard to my noble friend’s sleeping patterns, I think I can allow him to sleep at night. If we find that we need to make more splits than anticipated, the computer system will allow us to do that. We are designing that in. If he is right and I am wrong we will be able to make those changes, albeit more in the pattern of Amendment 61C than Amendment 61B. I can also assure him of a commitment to conduct intensive research on how universal credit works. We will make sure that what we are doing optimises the position for families. I hope with that second commitment my noble friend will not only sleep but sleep like a baby. With these explanations, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Meacher
I thank those who have contributed to this debate and thank the Minister for his reply. I am interested in his suggestion that we are dealing here with normal families who are perfectly capable and reasonable about the allocation of their money. When I ran the Child Poverty Action Group campaign for the introduction of child benefit 40 years ago, I received 2,000 letters, most of them from normal families. The letters were from the wives of all sorts of people—vicars, doctors and members of the Army—whom I would have considered very normal. However, they wrote to say that they depended on family allowance, which was only some ridiculous amount like 90p for the first child, and would often have to survive on it for a week because their doctor husband or their vicar husband gave them nothing, having drank their money away or whatever else they were doing with it. There are too many “normal families” that one might see walking up and down the street who do not treat their other half in a normal and acceptable way, so I am very relieved to hear from the Minister that there will be a computer system that will enable more splits and more complexity and sensitivity in this system. I am absolutely sure that it will be necessary, not only for a handful but for vast numbers of people across this country.
I am also relieved that the Minister will look closely at not only how universal credit in general will work but how it will work in this particular regard. I think I understood him to say that, and I very much hope he will pay great attention to this issue. I am absolutely certain it is terribly important for an awful lot of families. After my experience of 40 years ago—and I do not think human nature changes in 40 years—I really believe that is the case. I very much respect his new products and I think they will be splendid, but they will not deal with the sort of issue we are throwing up in this debate. I am sad to withdraw this amendment, but I am pleased to have had some assurances that this issue will not be lost.
Lord Freud
My Lords, it is a shame that the noble Lord is not here to move the amendment. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for moving it so ably. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, was pretty surprised and somewhat impressed as he heard the developments that we are making in this area. He has been a long-term campaigner in this area. I think he was worried about the bits that we had not yet caught. I was not able to have a meeting with him on this matter, but he met with my officials, as did his colleagues from Unlock, and we were able to provide a lot of reassurance about positive intent to keep going in this area. There are some differences, which is the reason why we cannot support the entirety of this new clause. That is not because we are in any way against helping in the rehabilitation of prisoners and other detainees but because we are moving along with our own programme. We think that that will prove more beneficial in the long run than introducing this structure, which we think would be expensive and resource, intensive in prison assessments.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
Perhaps I could concur with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. I support these amendments. As I said in Grand Committee, the key thing—I am a non-executive director of the Wise Group and we run one of these projects very successfully—is that the people who do the work are ex-cons themselves. My suggestion is that more Jobcentre Plus staff should be recruited from ex-convicts in future so that these programmes can be run positively. That is a facetious way of putting it, but this is a serious point.
Lord Freud
My Lords, it is a real point because we know that virtually all addiction treatment centres are manned by people who have gone through the experience of addiction. That is one of the reasons why they are able to help people. There is probably a very similar argument for convicts. Given the way in which we have incentivised the work programme, I would expect that that fairly basic knowledge will be picked up. I am in no position to instruct any work programme to do anything, but I hope that the way in which this has been structured financially will drive that logic.
Baroness Meacher
The Minister was talking about being unable to accept this amendment in full and referred to alternative arrangements. The whole point of this amendment tabled by my noble friend was to have clarity on the Floor of the House about acceptance of it. As I understand it, it seeks to ensure that the processing of claims goes on while prisoners are in custody so that when they come out the benefits can be paid very quickly. The idea is to avoid such people running straight off to recommit crimes. There is tremendous power behind this—logic, sense, cost-saving and so on—in terms of criminal justice costs. Perhaps the Minister could spell out what in the amendment the Government cannot accept and what the Government would put in instead. That would be very helpful.
Lord Freud
Last week, I think, we had a regulation on this. Time does not fly for the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, as he thought it was weeks ago. We have already announced that we are processing all JSA claimants in prison. It is hard to process everything. Clearly, housing cost is one element that is not there. I know the noble Lord is concerned about what we do with ESA claimants. The issue becomes real because as we move from universal credit, it is not just a question of not having JSA claimants but having universal credit claimants; we also have to look at how we will do that. We have to do that anyway. However, at the moment we have done JSA claimants and we have the issue of housing. We have support at the prison gate. When we discussed it in Committee, the noble Lord seemed almost shocked that we were doing that. We are moving very fast now. For the record, we will continue to work with the Prison Service, the Ministry of Justice and the other agencies to ensure that prisoners have all the necessary information about claiming benefits on release, and that benefit payments are made as quickly as possible on release. With these assurances, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw this amendment.
Baroness Meacher
I would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, but also the Minister for that very helpful reply. It seems that the Government are doing everything they can to resolve what has been a ridiculous situation of prisoners coming out of prison and having virtually nothing to live on for some time. With that, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, for the sake of brevity, I can say that I also concur with my noble friend and with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. My noble friend is simply seeking to have the issue on the record.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 62ZA and 62B. I could almost do so like my noble friend Lord Kirkwood, but I will speak at slightly greater length.
I would like to assure noble Lords that we are in agreement on the need to ensure that a claimant’s childcare responsibilities are taken into account when setting work-related requirements and when determining whether a claimant has good reason for failing to meet a requirement. For the record, let me set out how we intend to do this.
The legislation will provide clear safeguards. When a child is under one, support will be unconditional. When a claimant’s child is under five, we will ask the claimant only to attend work-focused interviews. If claimants fail to meet this requirement for no good reason, they will be subject to the lowest level sanction; the sanctionable amount for these claimants will be limited to 40 per cent of the sanctionable amount for other claimants.
Secondly, advisers will take childcare responsibilities into account when setting work-related requirements, and we intend to set out some specific safeguards on this issue in regulations. Regulations will prescribe that claimants with a child under 13 will be able to limit their work search to jobs that fit around their children’s school hours. This is key. The best way to prevent the inappropriate application of sanctions is to ensure that requirements are reasonable in the first instance.
Amendment 62B seeks to introduce a blanket exemption from conditionality sanctions for claimants who can demonstrate that they did not have guaranteed and predictable access to suitable childcare. We do not think such a legislative exemption is needed. As I have previously explained, when a claimant fails to meet a requirement, a sanction will be imposed only if the claimant does not demonstrate that there was a good reason. In considering whether there is good reason, we will consider all relevant matters raised by the claimant, which could include the availability and cost of suitable childcare. This flexible, case-by-case approach is the right one, but to be absolutely clear, when a claimant demonstrates that a lack suitable childcare meant that the claimant was unable to meet a work-related requirement, a decision-maker should determine that the claimant has good reason and a sanction will not be applied.
Noble Lords have previously raised concerns about where the responsibilities lie in relation to the provision of good reason. I would like to take this opportunity to clarify the position. We have a responsibility to ensure that claimants understand the decision-making process and that they have an opportunity to explain the reason for a failure to meet a requirement. The onus is then on the claimant to tell us the reasons and provide supporting evidence where necessary. The department must then determine whether the reasons raised are relevant and whether any of those reasons constitute a good reason. The current practice of visiting ESA claimants with a mental health condition or learning disability before the application of a sanction is a good example of the proactive process required to collect evidence of good reason in some cases. I can assure noble Lords that we will review our approach to collecting evidence of good reason for all claimants to ensure that we get this process right.
The final safeguard is the appeals system. Any decision to reduce an award as a result of a sanction can be appealed to the First-tier Tribunal. Amendment 62ZA seeks to require the tribunal to consider whether the claimant had guaranteed and predictable access to childcare. We do not want to go down the route of prescribing specific matters to be taken into account by an independent body; the existing legislation is clear and sufficient. The First-tier Tribunal must consider any issue or circumstance raised by the claimant that is relevant to a valid appeal, so in an appeal against a decision to reduce an award of benefit because of a sanction where a claimant cites lack of suitable childcare as a good reason for failure, this should be considered by the tribunal because it is plainly relevant to whether the award ought to have been reduced.
Given the safeguards we have in place and the commitment I have made to reviewing our processes for collecting evidence for good reasons, I hope I have provided the assurances on the record that were required by the noble Baroness and I urge her to withdraw this amendment.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for his full response, given the lateness of the hour. I should have thanked One Parent Families Scotland for its help with this amendment. As this organisation has written to the Minister, if there is anything that it wishes to follow up, I wonder whether he would be willing to meet representatives of this and other organisations that have written to him just to go through in more detail what he has so kindly said to the House. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.