Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Act 2013 (Remedial) Order 2019

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction to this order, and I offer my thanks to all the members of staff who have made this Committee possible with all their hard work.

Today, we are addressing an order that rights a legal wrong, and an illegality, that was committed twice by the Government. The Joint Committee on Human Rights tells us that, finally, the illegal government acts started under the Jobseeker’s Allowance (Employment, Skills and Enterprise Scheme) Regulations 2011 are righted by this order, almost a decade after the issue arose. On the narrow point of today’s debate, I can only be guided by the committee’s expertise, and I thank it for its comprehensive report. I therefore support the order.

That it has taken a decade to provide full remedy for an illegality in a regulation is, I suggest, something we might reflect on in other work around the House, from the Agriculture Bill and the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill to the immigration Bill next week, in all of which cases the Government seek to provide only a skeletal framework of their intentions, promising to fill them in later with regulation. I fear there will be decades of work in cleaning up the results.

The Minister said that she expected it would take 12 months to identify and recompense the affected individuals. I can only hope that that is delivered, given that what is happening with the Windrush scheme is not encouraging. Can she say what progress reports the House can expect over that 12 months? It would be good to have progress reports to see how this is going forward.

Today’s Committee provides a chance also to reflect on some of the broader issues, as noble Lords already have. I associate myself with the strong concerns about universal credit and sanctions expressed by both the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, and the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, in particular the five-week wait, the impact on child poverty and mental health, and the huge damage done to lives by sanctions.

It is also worth taking this opportunity to reflect on the importance of human rights legislation as a balancing force for an individual against the overweening and potentially overwhelming power of the state. Some 5,000 individuals are affected in this case, on the account of the Minister. Anyone might need to use human rights legislation; I doubt that either the young graduate or the HGV driver with whom this whole saga started ever expected to make personal use of human rights legislation, yet, in choosing to bravely stand up, this mechanism was available to them to ensure that the state was not allowed to force them into illegal temporary slavery—for workfare applied illegally can be described only as that.

Secondly, in the context of Covid-19 and the potential economic situation we face in the coming years, it is important to reflect on the damage done by forced work being imposed on people. Let us not forget that a Department for Work and Pensions analysis in 2013 found:

“There is little evidence that workfare increases the likelihood of finding work. It can even reduce employment chances by limiting the time available for job search and by failing to provide the skills and experience valued by employers.”


Over the past decade, we have seen many such schemes and heard horror stories such as the mandatory work activity and community work placement, and various localised trailblazer schemes for young people. They have been withdrawn. There was of course significant community backlash against companies participating in many of these schemes, but campaigners suggest that a more disguised, less visible form of workfare continues. Can the Minister inform the Committee, either now or perhaps by letter, how many people are now in work placements arranged by the Government? I do not include the word “voluntary” in that question, for we all know that there are wide degrees of voluntariness. I also ask the Minister to report to us on the use of “skills conditionality”—claimants being forced to attend a skills training provider, further education college or other adviser with potential benefit sanctions for non-participation.

These are issues that are close to my heart, because over the years I have seen so much damage done by such forced activities. In Ashton-under-Lyne, outside a jobcentre that was then known as being particularly harsh, I met a young woman who had been sanctioned for failing to complete an unpaid work placement. She suffered from agoraphobia, and would have had to take a long bus journey to the placement: she simply could not do that. She also suffered from acute uncontrolled diabetes, and she was reliant on feeding herself from a food bank. I dread to think where that young woman might be now. I think of a woman I met at a WASPI demonstration in support of women born in the 1950s affected by the increase in the pension age for women. She had been an office manager for decades, and was insulted and deeply disturbed by being forced by this system to go on a one-day course on how to write a CV.

We had companies that benefited significantly financially from these placements, and communities where large numbers of these placements meant that the income into the community from what should have been waged work was significantly reduced. As we face the potential significant rise in unemployment, it is important that we do not forget what damage was done by blaming individuals for the state of society, that we do not see any return to the disastrous and utterly appalling “strivers versus skivers” rhetoric that caused so much social division and heartache. We also need to focus on how this “job or activity at any cost” approach causes broader damage. There is lots of focus on all sides of politics on our productivity problem. I would question what we mean by productivity, particularly in the service and care sectors: when it comes to people-to-people contact, what constitutes productivity? There is also the question of people ending up in the right job, the optimum job for them and for society. Forcing people quickly into a new job that is a bad fit, with sanctions and the threat of starvation or having to seek the charity of a food bank, is in no one’s interest, yet that is the entire way our system is slanted.

That is where we come to trust: trusting individuals to know what is best for them, giving them the space, time and resources to develop their human potential, grow their experiences and find the way they can best contribute to society. It will not surprise the Minister to learn that I will briefly mention universal basic income. As a society and community, we should be helping people to find their way in the world, providing support through advice on study, careers guidance and practical support in making choices. But the best person to find the way forward, to identify the skills and experience they need, is the individual concerned. Giving them the space, time and security to do that through an unconditional payment that meets their basic needs is, I suggest, the way forward.

Removing compulsion to the dictates of the state and bureaucracy, and providing instead individual freedom and choice, is something that might find significant support even on the Government Benches.