Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, in responding to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, I do not want to go over the debate we had last time, although I pointed out then that in the survey to which he referred, the policy implication it was drawing out more was the need to improve in-work benefits. Since that debate, it has been drawn to my attention that the loss of the limited capability for work element of universal credit will cut the benefits received by disabled people in work. I cannot believe that this is the intended consequence.

This matter was brought to my attention by Sue Royston. I will simply read out what she sent me, as otherwise I could get it wrong—welfare rights can get a bit complicated. She wrote:

“Under Universal Credit, the main additional financial support for disabled people in work to cover their extra costs in work is the limited capability for work element. Any person requiring additional support because of a health condition/impairment will therefore have to take the work capability assessment … and be placed in the limited capability for work group (WRAG group) even if they are working more than 16 hours a week. Anyone on Universal Credit who qualifies for the limited capability for work element currently receives an extra £30 in their Universal Credit regardless of the hours they work.

The limited capability for work element and for some disabled people additional support through the disabled person’s work allowance is meant to replace the additional support disabled people in work of 16 hours or more receive in the current system through the disabled workers element of working tax credit …

Removing the limited capability for work element in Universal Credit will … reduce substantially the additional support a disabled person in work can receive to help with their additional costs … 116,000 disabled people currently receive the disabled workers element in tax credits”.

I cannot believe that this is an intended consequence.

I support the amendment but I hope that, if it is unsuccessful, the Minister will look at this matter. It completely flies in the face of what is said to be one of the purposes of these provisions. Perhaps we need to come back to this on Third Reading because we did not look at it properly in Committee. Only the experts in welfare rights pick up something like this and draw it to our attention. It is a very important point that rather undermines the argument that this is all about improving work incentives, which the noble Lord, Lord Low, had already pretty well destroyed as an argument.

Finally, I do not think that I have ever said that paid work is a cul-de-sac. I have said that the danger is that it becomes a cul-de-sac and that depends on what happens to people who are in paid work. If I said it, I certainly did not mean it. It is the danger that we cannot assume that paid work is a route out of poverty. It certainly will not be a route out of poverty for disabled people if we cut their income by £30 a week.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, as I said in Committee, if this reduction in benefits for the disabled is about incentivising work rather than simply cutting costs from the benefit budget, I support the Government’s intention. However, the way in which they are going about the task to cut ESA WRAG and its universal credit counterparts is misguided. Clearly, other noble Lords agree with that. For that reason, I am inclined to support the removal of Clauses 13 and 14.

A number of noble Lords have spoken about this stubborn disability employment gap—this sad indictment on a society that has perhaps for too long been willing to ignore the aspirations of the disabled to engage fully in society through work. Reference has already been made to the Government’s impact assessment, which found that 61% of those in the work-related activity group want the opportunity to earn a living. It is quite right that the Government have committed to halving the disability employment gap. The problem is that this is a complex issue. Some have a physical disability, others a mental disability. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Manzoor and Lady Meacher, said, people with chronic illnesses are also lumped into this group.

I declare an interest, in that my sister works for the motor neurone disease charity, which has met with me about this. It is deeply worried about this. This is a disease the progression of which is so rapid that many people would be way beyond any possibility of doing any work even before they get any sort of assessment. It is vital for people with this devastating diagnosis—many are young with children—to have all the support that they need immediately.

However, if this cut continues under the Government’s strategy, I fear that it will be a poor strategy. Indeed, I fully concur with the review into these clauses, published by the noble Lord, Lord Low, which found that,

“the Government’s impact assessment of the removal of the ESA WRAG component is lacking in depth and quality”.

It may be that the case for a cut in benefits will act as an incentive to encourage the fully able to find employment, but I have still to see the evidence that that will apply for the disabled. By removing nearly £1,500 from the future budgets of those who join ESA WRAG or those receiving universal credit limited capability for work, it seems that all the Government are likely to succeed in doing is push more disabled people into poverty, and, as others have said, probably destroy what little confidence and hope that they have as they want to get back into work. Those in this group are not in the same position as fully able JSA claimants and should not be treated as such; many are likely to remain in the WRAG for an extended period and their benefits situation must reflect this reality.

Like many noble Lords, I have met people who are disabled who are longing to get back to work. I do not believe that the basic problem is one of incentivising them. It really is a different problem—one of perception. I remember when I was an archdeacon many years ago and we made some major steps when legislation first came through to get ramps for every one of our churches. We looked at these problems and thought, “How on earth are we ever going to do it?”. Actually, there was a massive change of attitude, partly because we insisted that some of the people who argued against it got in wheelchairs and got themselves into churches. They discovered just how difficult it was. I have to confess that I had a change of perception; I had not got my mind around it.

I believe that we have an even bigger leap to take now. The vast majority of disabled people will need customised, individual help. That is part of the issue and the problem. What is needed is not so much carrot-and-stick incentives, but a wider strategy that helps disabled people to overcome the many challenges that they face in entering, or re-entering and staying in, the workplace. We need programmes and interventions designed to help these groups into employment, not arbitrary cuts to the living standards of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

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Moved by

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

44A: Clause 15, page 14, line 30, at end insert—
“( ) in section 14 (claimant commitment) after subsection (5) insert—“(6) In preparing a claimant commitment for a claimant, the Secretary of State shall have regard (so far as is practicable) to its impact on the wellbeing of any child who may be affected by it.””

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[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, Amendment 44A is in my name and the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, who tabled a similar amendment in Committee. We return to the issue because we were not satisfied with the response in Committee to what we believe is a strong case for explicitly writing into the claimant commitment a provision to ensure that regard is had to the best interests of any child cared for by the claimant, in line with Article 3.1 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Thus the aim of the amendment is to ensure that the well-being of any child is taken into account when a job coach agrees a claimant commitment, which records a claimant’s responsibilities and the agreed actions that they will take to seek and find work. This is something that the Office of the Children’s Commissioner has pressed for as well.

The other reason for returning to the issue is to ask what has happened to a similar provision that was inserted into the Welfare Reform Act 2009, as Section 31, during its passage through your Lordships’ House. I am sure that my noble friend Lord McKenzie will talk about this as well, because he was responsible for adding that section in response to a series of amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, which had the support of the Conservative Opposition, whose spokesperson was the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, made a very telling point:

“A work action plan would not be worth its salt if it harmed a participant’s children in some way, through unsuitable hours or a lack of suitable childcare. I suspect that the Minister will resist these amendments by saying that of course we would expect any back-to-work plan to take into account the needs of children. If that is so, he should not be afraid to accept these amendments, or ones very similar to them, as a confirmation of that”.—[Official Report, 11/6/09; col. GC 167-8.]

I am tempted to leave it there and say, “I rest my case, my Lords”. However, there is a bit more to be said, and before turning to today’s amendment, I want to ask the Minister why Section 31 has not yet been brought into force seven years later. When Emily Thornberry MP asked a Question about this recently in the other place, the Employment Minister responded:

“There are no current plans to bring into force Section 31 of the Welfare Reform Act 2009”.

Why not? The case for it is all the stronger today, as conditionality has been ratcheted up with its gradual extension to parents with ever younger children, so that under this Bill parents of children aged three will be expected to move into paid work.

When we debated a similar amendment in Committee, the noble Baroness replied pretty much on the line anticipated by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, back in 2009. She painted a rather idealised picture of the kind of conversation that work coaches have with claimants, not recognised by organisations such as Gingerbread working in the field. I should say here that I am grateful to Gingerbread for its help with this amendment. She suggested that the aim of the amendment was,

“achievable through existing legislation and it would be unduly burdensome to set out this level of detail in primary legislation”.—[Official Report, 9/12/15; col. 1664.]

However, this is not about some technical detail; it is about a basic principle enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the Government have signed up. In what way is it burdensome? The implication is that it would be burdensome for job coaches always to ensure that regard is had for a child’s well-being. To repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, said, a claimant commitment,

“would not be worth its salt if it harmed a participant’s children in some way”,

for instance, through unsuitable hours or unaffordable or inaccessible childcare. I know that Ministers think that parental paid work is intrinsically in the best interests of children, but, as I said in Committee, the evidence from academic work is actually more nuanced than that. The evidence also shows that the existing guidance for parents of young children is too often not followed.

The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, spoke in support of what became Section 31 during the 2009 debate. She was also part of a 2015 inquiry into women on jobseeker’s allowance, the launch of which I attended. That found evidence of divergence from the guidance in the claimant commitment that parents were asked to sign. This included a survey of lone parents that found that nearly a third of them stated that their commitment was written entirely by their adviser without any input from them and did not take account of their need also to care for their child. It is a common theme on Gingerbread’s helpline each month that parents of young children have been given inappropriate instruction that did not take account of the well-being of their children.

I will give just three examples from within the past six months. A parent with a two year-old child was wrongly told by her adviser that she needed to look for paid work. She is currently not required to do that until her child is five. A mother of a five year-old child had to sign a claimant commitment to say that she had to look for full-time work. She should have been able to look for work during school hours only. A caller with a 20 month-old child was wrongly told by her adviser at the jobcentre that she had to look for work or do courses, or her benefit would stop. These are just examples of what we described in Committee as the “parallel universe” occupied by claimants and their advisers on the ground, so different from the one described by Ministers.

The noble Baroness the Minister also said:

“It would also not be fair only to prescribe that claimant commitments must contain information relating to the well-being of children”.—[Official Report, 9/12/15; col. 1664.]

Could she expand on that, please? In what way would it not be fair to ensure that regard is had to the well-being of children in drawing up a claimant commitment? The intention is not that the commitment has to contain information about any child’s well-being; we are not looking for a survey of how children are doing, or the kind of survey that my noble friend Lord McKenzie was talking about the other day in relation to well-being. It just needs to show that regard has been had to it in a way that was clearly not the case in the examples cited.

Once more I refer back to the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, when he was speaking for the Conservative Opposition: why, if a child’s well-being is being taken into account by work coaches during the drafting of agreements, would the Minister be afraid to have this written into legislation? I urge the department to bring Section 31 of the Welfare Reform Act 2009 into force without further delay and to accept this amendment, or bring forward a similar amendment, at Third Reading. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. The noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, asked what there is to object to. It is a good question. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, gave a very good example of what happens when a child is unwell. But the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, in a sense finished off the argument by talking about the implications of the well-being of the child not being taken into account in a culture where many people are sanctioned—and, as the evidence from her inquiry showed, sometimes sanctioned for the wrong reasons.

I am again disappointed by the Minister’s response. It seemed simply to repeat the arguments that were made in Committee and did not really engage with the counter-arguments that I put. She said that Section 31 applies to JSA ESA. Yes, many lone parents are still claiming those benefits and will be for some time. As we know, universal credit is being rolled out slowly and the more complicated cases will move on to it more slowly, so why is it not being introduced in the mean time? I find it very sad that the good work of my noble friend Lord McKenzie is gathering dust. In fact, it was the good work done by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that started it all, because it was his amendments that triggered this section, but nothing has happened. Therefore, I am afraid that the fact that it is JSA ESA is irrelevant.

This is not just one other detail; the best interests of the child is a fundamental principle that policy-making and legislation is supposed to have regard to in this country, or in any country that has signed up to the UN convention. So I am disappointed. Again, we have evidence of a sort of parallel universe where all the wonderful conversations are being had. It is excellent that the training is happening and I welcome that. However, as I understand it, when lone parents had bespoke advisers who understood the issues, rather than generic job coaches, they tended to be treated much better than they are now.

The helplines of organisations such as Gingerbread are constantly showing that the best interests of the child are not being taken into account. When this Bill is out of the way, I wonder whether the noble Lord or the noble Baroness would be willing to meet those organisations to talk about why there is this difference in perception, and perhaps we could have another look at Section 31.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I shall be very happy to meet them.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

I very much appreciate that. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 44A withdrawn.