Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Tuesday 14th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Gosh, that is a good question. I had better hold my counsel on that.

The amendment inserts a third rate for disabled children. It sets fixed relationships between those rates. With our primary structure, we are trying to have two elements—for disabled children and adults—aligned at the same rates, which are principled changes so that we have some consistency and make the system simple and fairer. I am trying to take out complexity from a system that, if your Lordships remember, is falling down because it is so complex. So simplicity has a value in itself. If the amendment went through, we would have different rates and a mismatch within the structure of universal credit.

I have been asked a lot of questions about the amount of money. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, will be pleased to know that I did not include this figure in the £2.1 billion that I cited earlier. To maintain the level of £77, under the original amendment, would have cost £200 million, which is why the Commons attached financial privilege to it, in answer to the question of the noble Countess, Lady Mar. To answer the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, the reason why it is conditional is that there is not much point in having all the paraphernalia and trauma of a review if we have an amendment of this nature where we are locked anyway. That is why I made it conditional.

To answer the questions of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, about how it would work, we start the universal credit timeline in late 2013, collecting information up to 2015, so we will have the information to undertake the review in 2015. The changes that the review will presumably recommend can be incorporated from then on.

[Baroness Meacher]

This is an important point. Can the noble Lord make clear that, having undertaken the review, the Government could adjust the rates for disabled children with different disabilities within the current legislation so that we would not have to wait for new legislation? If we had to do that we would be talking not about 2015 but an uncertain date in the future.

[Lord Freud]

It will depend on what comes out of the review. If it concerns child PIP, which it may very well be, which is a recasting of the whole structure, we may need primary legislation; but if it is an adjustment of DLA, I think we may not. It will depend on the outcome of the review, which will be serious and substantial. One issue that noble Lords are raising is that there is dissatisfaction with the way that we are applying these rates. There is general dissatisfaction about whether we are using the right criteria. We have one rather simple criterion at the moment. Building that review of how we do it will be a substantial exercise. The interesting thing about this debate is the general level of dissatisfaction about whether we are using the right definitions to get to the right children and the right families. Funnily enough, that has been one of the main things driving us to make this commitment.

We have here a commitment that either we are going with a major review of the child PIP or, if not, a fallback where there will be a review anyway, albeit within the context of the DLA. That is the commitment, and I can tell your Lordships that it has been somewhat hard fought.

[Lord Freud]

I think that we will be discussing this a lot in the years to come—it is not a dead issue. When you set up such a review, it generates its own momentum. Noble Lords know how powerful a review in this kind of area is. Once you have a review like this and the momentum that follows from it, something happens reasonably rapidly. I do not think that you have set it in absolute terms because it becomes an irresistible force. Therefore, I do not think that that is a concern. The exact nature of what we then do begs a lot of questions that we simply do not need to ask. However, with regard to how we carry out the review, the involvement of this House will be taken very much into account.

[Baroness Meacher]

I really do not want to hold up the House at this stage but this is such an important point. My understanding is that the details are going to be in regulations. If that is the case, a review will be undertaken and I have no doubt that it will show that these rates are unfair. Why cannot regulations be changed within current legislation to achieve a fairer distribution of additions? That is my only question.

[Lord Freud]

I am saying that that may be one outcome but there may be a much more radical outcome in the introduction of PIP for children. The question is: are you better off doing that or adjusting DLA with the passporting arrangement? That is very difficult to prejudge when we have not done the review. Therefore, there is method in the, or perhaps I should say there is some method behind—

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[Lord Freud]

Yes, my Lords. I am sorry; I forgot to answer that. At this stage, I am not in a position to lay out transitional protection because we are currently looking at how it will work. However, it will be a bundled up protection. The work in progress effectively involves taking someone’s existing entitlement, comparing it with their universal credit entitlement and paying the difference as a lump sum, which is then maintained. However, in the context of what we are talking about, the migration process is rather more important than the transitional protection. In the vast bulk of cases, it is when those families move on to universal credit that will matter more than transitional protection, which will be towards the tail end of this period, if at all.

[Baroness Meacher]

I thank the Minister for his response. I accept what he says about the simplification of the system. That is absolutely right. However, I do not accept the suggestion that this system—certainly in this part of the Bill—is fairer. The fact is that it is not; it is deeply, deeply unfair. I find myself in a situation where we are either going to have the Minister’s acceptance—I think we do have that—that this is unfair and needs a full-scale review, or we have nothing. As the noble Lord, Lord Peston, indicated, maybe we are being bullied. My sense is that there are perhaps some rather large, old, hefty powers from another place leaning on us. Therefore, I would not wish to allege that the Minister is bullying us. I accept that if one has a full-scale review, there is a momentum and we will be there to see what happens and to try and make sure that the right thing does happen.

Disabled people and the disabled organisations who will be involved in the review will be on the case. Therefore, I feel reasonably confident that we will get there. My biggest worry concerns the timeframe and the need for further legislation. I still hope that if the Government get to the right answer in terms of the allocation of benefits to families with disabled children they could make adjustments to regulations while we await new legislation. That matters a great deal. We should not leave families newly coming on to these benefits severely damaged and, I think, cruelly treated. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, I think that I have to take up the challenge of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and try not to read anything at all in order to convince her that I actually believe in what I am going to say.

I preface my remarks by reminding noble Lords that the amendment is in the same territory as the one we discussed on Report that was moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and on which there was a Division. I confess to feeling slight surprise when I saw it come back in such a similar guise. If my arguments sound somewhat familiar to noble Lords, it will be because they have heard many of them before. I need to go through them in the context of this skilfully drawn-up amendment.

I start by making it absolutely clear to all noble Lords—in particular, to my noble friend Lady Browning—that this is not about deficit reduction. Every penny of the money will be recycled to increase support for severely disabled children and adults. None of the money that we are talking about will go to Her Majesty's Treasury, with which I have absolutely cordial relations at all times. The principle that was picked up by my noble friends Lord German, Lord Newton and Lady Thomas concerns the cliff edge that exists at 16 when youngsters transition from childhood to adulthood. As my noble friend Lady Browning pointed out, many of these youngsters are in practice dependent on their families for a long time. The cliff edge is something that we wanted to smooth out. This will be essential to protect work incentives in adulthood.

I said many times in the debate that we are overhauling the whole support system for people who rely on benefits. It simply does not make sense to concentrate on any one element. The universal credit will provide a package of support for families to meet a range of their needs. That is why we need to look at the overall impact of universal credit on families rather than look at individual components. If some families get a bit less on one component, it does not mean that they will get less overall. I will pick up on the point raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Wilkins, about some of the social activities that are required to have a good quality of life. The intention is for DLA to pay for those facilities. The purpose of universal credit is income replacement. The two benefits do different things.

I also remind noble Lords that, contrary to some estimates that have gone around this afternoon on the impact of universal credit, clearly the impact will be that families will be much better off. I remind noble Lords that I and my friends in the Treasury are managing on a steady-state basis to put £4 billion a year into the pockets of the poorest people through universal credit. That is the context in which we are making these changes. Noble Lords should not underestimate what it took to get that out through a government process: a steady-state £4 billion a year in universal credit for the poorest.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I think that I am right in saying that about £18 billion has been taken out in cuts. We are not getting extra benefit payments, but I applaud the Minister for having retrieved £4 billion; that is wonderful, and great news.

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[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are talking about severely disabled children receiving the full rate of £77. That is the point: we are trying to direct the money towards the people with the greatest need regardless of their age. That is what we are trying to do here.

[Baroness Meacher]

We have to be very clear about this. One of the main reasons for this amendment is the fact that it is so difficult to divide those who are eligible for the higher rate from those who are not. There is often a very narrow—and fairly arbitrary—margin. They just happen not to need to be disturbed at night, but during the day the costs may be even higher—the disruption to the family, the impossibility of working—all those issues are possibly just as great for those who will not qualify for the higher rates. It is really important to hang on to that.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, this is a really important point. It may very well be that the concern of the House actually boils down to a discomfort with the dividing line between severely disabled and disabled. If that is the case, the way to do it—and I pick up what my noble friend Lord Newton was saying—is not to look at aspect or concrete ratios but at the precise issue that noble Lords are actually worrying about, which is the relationship. I will commit to having a very close look at this. It is clearly tied up with DLA definitions, which are under constant review and are being reviewed.

If we move the children from DLA to PIP, we need to look at this and there will be a real consultation process. I will review this dividing line and look at that very closely, and when we come to the regulations on this, I will report back to noble Lords on exactly what we find. My sense is that this is the real issue underneath all this. I know noble Lords had to find an amendment that had to weave through, to express this concern, so we all know what is happening on a technical basis. Let us go to the real issue. The real issue is: are we getting the dividing line right? People ask me if I am listening—I hear what noble Lords are saying; this is what I think noble Lords are saying, and I will go and do something about that.

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[Lord Freud]

I thank my noble friend Lord Trimble for that. That is the position. I have heard strong arguments here and very great concern. I will talk to noble Lords before we get the regulations out to make sure that they find the regulations acceptable. I give that undertaking now. I beg the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I feel a huge weight of responsibility here. The Minister does not want me to test the opinion of the House, and I understand that, but hundreds of thousands of families all over the country with disabled and severely disabled children are desperate about this issue; I repeat, they are desperate. The pressure of that is difficult to bear. But I do want to say that I respect very strongly the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, for the huge amount of work that I know he does all the time on working towards a simpler welfare system. He has done a fantastic job on this. But, as he knows, the job of this House is to try to ameliorate the worst effects of legislation, and that is what we have done consistently throughout this process. The Minister has generously agreed to take back and think about these issues following the moving speeches that have been made by many noble Lords, but the fact is that we in this House do not have an assurance that anything will happen.

The Minister is under huge pressure from a Secretary of State who is an awfully long way from this. I think that he has little real understanding of what it is to be a poor family with a very disabled child and not able to afford to give to that child what they know it needs. I have concerns about that because we need the Government to understand the enormity of the pressure on these families. I have often said to my own children that I do not think I could have managed it at all because these things are so tough. That is the situation here.

The Minister referred to a cliff edge at the age of 16. The noble Lord in his place beside me referred to a cliff edge at the age of three. The worry is that what the Government are doing is introducing a cliff edge at birth and then at one, two and three, when severe disability hits. Do we want these families to fall off a cliff—and that must be how it feels—when they realise that they have made a lifelong commitment to care for a child but the state withdraws some of its support? That is a big issue for us.

The Minister referred to DLA funding swimming lessons, school holiday clubs and so on. The reality is that DLA does not cover adequately those expenditures, and that is the issue. Families do not have enough money, and it is why 40 per cent of them are in poverty. They need more money if they are to help their children fulfil their potential, whatever that potential may be. The Minister also referred to families being better off in work. I accept that, but the difficulty is that that is being achieved by impoverishing an awful lot of people, some of whom can work—speaking for myself, I support the Government’s quest to get more and more people back into work. But when we consider families with disabled children, particularly single parents with disabled children, as others have said, they cannot do this and it is terrible to impoverish them.

That is the dilemma we are facing. I know that the Minister is going to be deeply unhappy with me and I do not like making him deeply unhappy, but I owe it to the families out there to test the opinion of this House. We have to do it.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Monday 23rd January 2012 Lords Chamber

[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.

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[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.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I welcome these amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Patel. They allow me just to go through how the Government intend to introduce PIP successfully for young disabled people from the age of 16. Clearly, the central question is whether 16 or 18 is the right age. In one sense, all ages are a little arbitrary here. Adulthood is defined at different ages in different contexts. The key to the decision to start PIP at 16 was based around the assessment criteria and at what stage people fit in with those, in terms of the activities that they can undergo and how we can look at them. When we looked at it with a range of experts, we concluded that you would normally expect individuals without disabilities to be able to carry out these activities independently from the age of 16. For example, you would expect a 16 year-old to be able to wash and dress themselves, to communicate with others, to plan, and to follow and make a journey. It is the age at which, currently, you expect individuals to be able to be employed full-time. There is a general expectation that they have the capabilities of adults.

The group looked at whether you would expect even younger people—I had better use that word now, rather than adults or children—to fit this assessment. They concluded that children go through several developmental stages under the age of 16, and they do that at uneven speeds. So, there was a cut-off in developmental terms between the two stages, for the purposes of this test, at 16. The other way of looking at this is that it is about trying to move people into adulthood and independence. A lot of these youngsters are living in their households but need to move to independence. Having their own independent help and their own funding in PIP at that age matches their aspirations to move into adulthood, and allows them to make their own decisions about aspects of their lives.

This is an area where, as we described in our policy document, we have set out our intentions and outlined the key principles that we have debated and agreed with stakeholders. We have set up a subgroup of the PIP implementation development group specifically to help and inform the design and testing of the new system in relation to disabled young adults. Together with the focus group work and the interviews that we have held with disabled young people, their appointees and representatives, this is the process that we have under way to get the system right. One of the most important areas where we are using the development group is around the question of how we look at the process of moving people into the 16 category and how we signpost, communicate and get awareness of the changes and then join up the support for disabled young adults and their families.

Clearly, this is not the only testing that disabled youngsters undergo in this phase of their lives. There are a number of assessments as they move from childhood to adulthood. We will ensure that all young people claiming PIP or moving on to it at age 16 have the appropriate support to allow them fully to express their needs. We know it is important that they have a parent, an advocate or a friend to accompany them to that face-to-face consultation. We are not changing anything in terms of DLA in this area. We are changing a lot of things by moving DLA to PIP, and we will be discussing some of them, but in this area we are sticking with the same age as the existing DLA arrangements.

There was an anomaly that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, tried to pin me down on and defied me to find a good explanation for. I have been challenged and I shall do my best. On the point about the difference between the universal credit at 18 and PIP at 16, the blunt answer is that these are different benefits for different purposes. It is important that we do not think of PIP as an income supplement; that is not what it is, and nor is it for someone who is out of work. PIP is a payment to people who are disabled who will always need extra money to live because their costs of living are higher, and we will pay it regardless of whether people are in work or out of work. That is why it is a different argument. By giving PIP earlier, we are giving youngsters their independent funding to run their own lives from that point—not from the point when they are meant to be in the workforce and fully independent—when, if they do not have a job, they will need an income supplement. That is the difference. I hope that I have risen to the challenge; I am sure that the noble Baroness will say that I have not, but I have done my best.

We are working closely with the Department for Education to explore evidence gathered so that we can have a single assessment for an education, health and care plan that can be used to support a personal independence payment claim. We are trying to get rid of all the multiple assessments.

[Baroness Meacher]

Does the Minister accept that there are a lot of people who are very worried about this shift? The reality is that many of them who might have been entitled to DLA will not be entitled to PIP and will therefore lose out. They will also lose out on the disability additions. There is quite a big financial consequence here.

[Lord Freud]

I accept that there are concerns but one has to stand back. We are spending £12 billion on PIP in real terms, which is the same as the spending in 2009-10. The talk about a big cut refers to a big cut of a projection—the 20 per cent. I want to reinforce that point. In this House we should not get carried away with the simplicity of the big cut. It is not a big cut. With PIP we are trying to direct scarce resources, at a very difficult time, to the people who need them most. That is the purpose of it.

One of the other things that is happening—and is probably the biggest difference in emphasis between DLA and PIP—is that PIP is trying to take account of people with mental health problems in a way that DLA finds much harder. That is why the assessments and activities that are looked at are very different. Therefore, PIP is different and there are changes. Some people will lose out but they are the people who need the money less. That is the point of making the adjustment. However, the overall sum remains that £12 billion.

To pick up the point of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, we have the power and flexibility to treat 16 year-olds differently. This includes different assessment processes during the migration period. We are working actively now with children’s groups to make sure that we have the right migration strategy for youngsters and to finalise it. We will publish that approach. It is not a settled matter, which was, I think, the noble Lord’s real question. We are working very hard to get it right.

Let me deal with some of the amendments. Amendments 57, 58, 50ZGA and 56ZC would prevent our abolishing DLA for those aged 18, and potentially limit our flexibility by imposing statutory duties that would be less able to respond to change, especially as we refine and improve processes as a result of feedback and our experiences. It is very important that we have that flexibility. One of the things that we will discuss later this evening is feedback and the amount of research that we will carry out on a continuous basis. Clearly we want to incorporate that into how we apply PIP, particularly for youngsters.

This is very technical but I need to make it clear that the Government consider Amendment 56ZC to be consequential on Amendment 50ZGA; and, separately, Amendment 58 to be directly consequential on Amendment 57. I do not want any misunderstandings later, although the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is not in her seat at the moment to give me a piece of her mind. Given the reassurances that I have given the noble Baroness, and the technical limitations that the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, would impose, I hope she will withdraw her amendment.

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[Lord Freud]

My Lords, one thing I was trying to get over about trying not to have a two-tier process so that the rich can get their evidence and the poor cannot, is that we turn the burden on to the assessors, so that when someone cannot come out, that requires a house visit if we cannot use paper evidence. There will be examples where paper evidence will do the job; where it cannot, the onus is on the assessor to do the checking, rather than the other way round. That is how we will provide that protection.

I hope I have gone through all the specific issues and given assurances on all those important matters. We are planning to meet the concerns expressed around the House. All I am asking for is that we have the flexibility to go on running the system as things change, as they inevitably do, and that we do not lock it up in primary legislation so that if we need to make changes it takes years. That is really what we are talking about.

[Baroness Meacher]

I apologise for interrupting the Minister. I just wanted to make a point about ME patients, who have the most awful time. I have direct personal experience of that—not myself but through people close to me. Does the Minister accept that Amendment 50ZR would enable someone bedridden with ME who has not seen a doctor for years to call their GP and have a proper assessment? They are bedridden; they cannot go to assessments. That would avoid getting into a benefit assessment straight off. That is the whole point of the amendment. There has been support around the House because of the many situations where tremendous distress can be avoided by an appropriate person—perhaps a nurse, perhaps a doctor—doing a full and careful assessment, rather than getting into the benefits system.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, picking up the point of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, about the discrepancy between Amendments 42 and 43, sometimes when a powerful argument is made in Committee, it succeeds even more than do the proponents of that argument. In this case we went back, thought about the measure and said, “If we are going to do it, let us do it properly”. That is why the measure is indefinite and not for five years. The noble Lord asked whether Section 1B on further entitlement after time-limiting covered contributory ESA under the first and second contribution conditions and the ESA youth awards. The answer is yes

Let me turn to Amendment 42A. I very much understand noble Lords’ concerns on this, but the amendment would not achieve the stated aims of placing in the support group individuals with conditions that reduce life expectancy to two or three years. Substantial provision is already available to ensure that individuals with life-limiting diseases are provided with appropriate support. The amendment seeks to ensure that individuals with uncontrollable diseases who do not meet the support group criteria of the WCA, set out in regulations, are treated as having limited capability for work-related activity. Under the current system, individuals who meet this provision and are treated only as having limited capability for work will have a condition that does not significantly limit their functional ability such that it would be reasonable to expect them to undertake work-related activity. However, anyone who has an uncontrollable condition may still meet the current support group criteria if, as a result of their condition, there would be a substantial risk to their health if they were held to be capable of work-related activity. A large number of protections are therefore built in.

Perhaps I may provide an example of how that might work—and does work. Consider an individual with extremely severe uncontrolled hypertension, who has little or no symptoms or functional impairment. This individual will not meet the test of limited capability for work-related activity necessary to go into the support group, or even the test of limited capability for work to go into the WRAG. As a result of their condition, work-related activity is likely to pose a substantial risk to their health.

[Baroness Meacher]

I apologise for interrupting the Minister. The point that I was trying to get across was in the example of the woman to whom I referred. It may be that today she could do a little bit of work—although probably not. The difficulty is that the assessors do not take into account the likelihood over a number of weeks that this person simply will not be able to maintain an employment pattern. No employer in their right mind would therefore take them on. The issue that I am trying to raise is that the assessment processes, as I understand them, absolutely do not go anywhere near that level of sophistication. I agree that we are not talking about large numbers of people, but each and every case is a tragedy in its own right. There will be people who, for reasons that we can understand, will be assessed as not qualifying for the support group at this moment, yet for whom employment is completely unrealistic. I hope that the Minister can get the sense of what I am trying to say.

[Lord Freud]

I am sympathetic to this issue—one has to be. Clearly, we are continuing the whole time with improvements to the WCA process. We are getting a lot of improvements. We are beginning to sense that. Although the figures do not show it, the anecdotal feedback is becoming much more encouraging. This is an area in which we can make the assessments with the kind of detail that is necessary as we work through the process. Indeed, that is where it should be done. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said, in these situations it is extraordinarily difficult to come up with a six-month or a year’s prognosis. We all know that. The position, on the balance of probabilities, is that if the prognosis is six months, people go straight into the support group. That has happened since 2008 and for about 10,000 people.

The data are extraordinarily imprecise. There is great variability among clinicians. It is very hard to pin down anything that we could use with any consistency stretching out to two or three years. Medicine is advancing with great rapidity, so whatever we decide on today may be radically different in two years’ time. A longer prognosis could mean that a condition could be very well controlled for a period and then deteriorate dramatically towards the end. The amendment concerns only conditions that are uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Clearly, that may not be the case for many life-limiting diseases. I think there is consensus around the House that in many circumstances work is beneficial and important for those with life-limiting conditions. Some will want to continue to work, and it is important that we have a system that does not write people off but allows for that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I start with government Amendment 45A, on which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, ended his remarks. We have already discussed government amendments to provide for further entitlement to ESA after a contributory award has been time limited. As I mentioned in the previous debate, it has been necessary to amend how the time limiting of ESA youth awards will operate as a result of providing for that new category of entitlement. We have introduced the amendments so that the deterioration category will be open to both claimants with a time-limited contributory ESA award and claimants with a time-limited ESA income-related award. In practice that means that the substance of the ESA youth time-limiting measure has been placed in Clause 51 instead of Clause 52. The government amendment preserves the intended policy for preventing new claims to ESA youth from being made in the future. The amendment to Clause 52 seeks to remove the substance of ESA youth time limiting, which will now feature in Clause 51, but to retain the measure that prevents new ESA youth claims being made.

Our proposed changes to the condition relating to entitlement to ESA on grounds of limited capability during youth are part of, basically, a set of principles around the form, where we are trying to focus our support for the poorest people. We are seeking to avoid duplication and to redefine the contract between the state and individuals as we move towards introducing the universal credit, which is clearly a far more efficient way of directing our resources to the poorest people.

As we go through some of the specific areas, I should remind the House that the universal credit, when it is introduced, is designed to focus each year an extra £4 billion into the pockets of the poorest people. On the other side, we do not think it is right in principle that, for example, a claimant who under the existing youth provision has qualified for contributory ESA as of right and then comes into a large amount of money—for instance, an inheritance from a parent—should then be in a position to continue to receive the scarce resources of the state in terms of contributory ESA without having paid any contributions. The figures available show that there is support for these youngsters in income-related ESA and that, indeed, 90 per cent of existing recipients will go from contributory to income related.

[Baroness Meacher]

My understanding is that many of these people may receive some income-related benefit but not at the same level of the contributory benefit that they would receive under the amendment. My second point is that the Minister has frequently referred to the £4 billion addition in the Welfare Reform Bill: is that a monetary addition rather than a real-terms addition because surely in real terms there will be a considerable drop in the overall welfare reform cost under the Bill?

[Lord Freud]

To be absolutely honest, unwinding the effects of the first full year, which will be in 2017, is quite hard to do in simplistic terms when compared to an SR. The simple answer is that the £4 billion is a real £4 billion, not an eroded £4 billion. The impact assessment makes it clear that it is made up of roughly half and half efficiency; it is a much more efficient system. We have taken the efficiencies that we have gained and put them back into the pockets of people, plus an extra amount of £2 billion. That is where the money is coming from. The bulk of it is going into the lowest two quintiles in a rather efficient way; I forget whether it is 80 per cent or 90 per cent, but the bulk of that money is directed very efficiently.

I turn to Amendment 45 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Finlay. Clearly, the design of that amendment removes Clause 52 altogether. As I have just mentioned in my remarks on Amendment 45A, we have a principled approach to reform, in which we are trying to modernise and simplify the current welfare system and remove duplicate provision when our resources are limited.

As we move towards universal credit, on which I have just spent a bit of time, there are other areas of rebalancing the relationship between the state and individuals. I remind noble Lords again that the small number of youngsters who do not qualify for income-related ESA are in this position only because they have alternative resources available to them. All those in the ESA support group will continue to receive unlimited support. We will also, of course, provide support to ESA youth claimants whose awards end, and they later become vulnerable through their conditions deteriorating so they develop limited capability for work-related activity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, not really. This is a prime area in which we have automaticity without any payment system. This is one of the areas where we are very vulnerable so it makes enormous sense to look at it now and as it comes up. Therefore, I would not agree with that point. Shall I rattle along?

Amendment 46 would create considerable and unwanted uncertainty for claimants and operational difficulties for the department. A claimant would need to claim ESA and go through the assessment phase without any entitlement to ESA at all until the question of limited capability for work-related activity was determined at their WCA. This is because, under Amendment 46, only claimants who were found to have limited capability for work-related activity at the end of the assessment phase would be entitled to ESA on the grounds of youth. As I have already said, the amendment would save rather less—£17 million until 2016-17. The discrepancy is in the SAR, which is covered by a very similar amendment, to pick up the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister.

I confirm that the Government see Amendment 46 as linked to Amendment 36A, but none of the amendments in this group is consequential on any other. We would expect the House to make a decision on each individually. In due course I will move the amendment in my name, Amendment 45A, and I urge noble Lords not to press theirs.

[Baroness Meacher]

I thank the Minister very much for his reply to the various amendments, and many Members of the House for their contributions. What we have here is an attempt to protect the dignity of a very vulnerable group of severely disabled people at a cost of £10 million, which is absolutely paltry. I refer to Amendment 46.

I feel that we are being somewhat sidetracked by the intervention on the European Union. Contributory benefits of all sorts are vulnerable to this situation. I think that the whole House has made it very clear that we are behind the Government’s fight to make sure that benefits tourism is stopped. We do not want to see it happen.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, can I make it absolutely clear that contributory benefits per se are not vulnerable because they are paid? The vulnerability is in assumed contributory benefits, where they have not been paid.

[Baroness Meacher]

If I may say so, that brings me back to the point that I made earlier. We need to find a way of making it clear that this is a non-contributory benefit for people who, sadly, will never be able to contribute towards a contributory benefit. This is a social benefit for very disadvantaged and disabled people—a very small group of such young people, who will never have a chance, almost certainly in the rest of their lives, of any sense of independence or dignity, unless we give it to them today at a cost of £10 million to the entire tax-paying population of this country. On that basis, I do need to test the opinion of the House. However, I respect the Minister’s position and hope we can have further discussions about how we can prevent benefits tourism, which is completely unacceptable.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, my intention is to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Best, so that he withdraws his amendment. I start by trying to convince the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and my noble friend Lord Cormack of the reason why we are doing this. It is not an arbitrary thing. We are not doing it because we want to annoy housing associations or local authorities. We are doing it for a very simple reason. If you are a tenant in social housing whose housing benefit goes straight through to the landlord and you take a job, all your arrangements for paying for your housing have to change. It is a major change in your arrangements and a real block on you taking the job. It is a major thing for you to organise, and you have to learn, when you take that first job and your housing benefit goes down within universal credit—because that is the change—that the money no longer goes through automatically to the landlord.

We have to break that link. It has to be the same arrangement whether you are working or not working. We deliberately excluded pension-age people from this because we are not expecting them to work. We do not need to worry about the people who find it difficult to work. It is working-age people who we want to go into work.

[Baroness Meacher]

I listen to the Minister’s passion—“We have to do this, we have to do this”—and I find myself thinking that that would be fine if we were in normal circumstances and the benefits were not changing but were pretty much going on as they always have, and people were not going to be facing major drops in their benefit levels or having to adjust to having to move because of all sorts of rules about underoccupancy or because of the tying of benefits to the consumer prices index and so on. There are so many ways in which people on benefits are going to be losing—that is the context—and this is not the time to be determined to bring all these people into line with people in work. Can we not wait until things are stable and then maybe introduce the rather nice idea of bringing these two groups together?

[Lord Freud]

The answer to that is very simple: the universal credit will, each year, inject an extra £4 billion into the pockets of the poorest people. That is what the universal credit does. It will start coming in in 2013-17, when hopefully the laws of the business cycle will still be working and we can expect an upturn at some stage. As we move into that situation, the concern will be what happens to the universal credit. This measure is for universal credit. It does not stand outside it.

[Baroness Meacher]

I apologise for interrupting again, but £4 billion is surely a tiny amount relative to the losses in projected benefits. This huge budget would normally go up very extensively each year, would it not? I do not have all the numbers in my head, but £4 billion in a tiny fraction of the actual real losses in benefit that people are going to face.

[Lord Freud]

Absolutely not; £4 billion is a very substantial figure. Over the course of this SR, we are looking at a loss of £18 billion spread over the four-year period. The noble Baroness can do the sums. The most important thing about universal credit is that the money goes into the pockets of the lowest two quintiles very efficiently. I contend that the noble Baroness’s argument is not a real argument.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, this amendment seeks to put an additional element into the amount of universal credit that is payable for those who are severely disabled and who have no one receiving either carer’s allowance or a carer’s premium for looking after them. In essence it seeks to recreate the current severe disability premium within universal credit. As such it would involve a significant increase in cost compared with the Government’s plans. That increase stands at £400 million, unless there were other readjustments. However, let us just take it at face value. At face value, it is unaffordable.

On Monday the House approved the Government’s plans to simplify the disability-related additions. Instead of the seven different components within the current system of benefits and tax credits for adults, and two further rates in child tax credits for disabled children, universal credit will just have two rates for both adults and children. By restructuring the rates in this way, we are not looking to make any savings. We are redistributing around £800 million of current spend without returning any savings at all to the Exchequer. The full amount will be reinvested by increasing the higher rate for more severely disabled people. In our policy briefing note we made it clear that there would be some phasing. I know that I owe the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, a letter on that matter.

Once resources became fully available, we expected to be able to provide a higher rate, at around £77 a week. This is significantly higher than the current £32.35 payable as the support component within ESA: £44.65, to give the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, the exact figure she was seeking. It will provide a much more meaningful amount to severely disabled people than the current patchwork of premiums, which gives some people more than others and makes it difficult for people to understand and obtain their full entitlement. I should make it clear that one of the features of the universal credit as a whole is that we are expecting a substantial amount of the gains to the poorer people to come from much better take-up. The simplicity of a system with automatic provision of everything that people are entitled to will mean that more people in this category are likely to be recipients and get what they deserve.

[Baroness Meacher]

It would be helpful if the Minister could explain whether there is any provision in the new system for child carers, where the mother might not be in the support group. You have to be very disabled, as I understand it, to be in the support group. Yet a mother might need her child to do an awful lot in the home: shopping and cooking and all the rest of it. Is there any provision for her?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I will come to that. What we are dealing with here is rather interesting, as we move from one system to the universal credit. We are dealing with the current system as it exists on paper, we are dealing with where we want to go in the universal credit, and then we are dealing with something in the middle, which is how things actually work on the ground. This is one of the areas in which things are working on the ground as they are not really meant to. It is simply not the role of the severe disability premium to provide money for young carers. Clearly young carers could be affected if they are providing support for a disabled parent who receives the severe disability premium. Under the current system, the youngster gets it because there is no adult in the house looking after them and they are not allowed to receive the carer’s premium. It is one of those things that has unintentionally fallen through the cracks. It was simply not intended as a support for young carers; it was designed to support severely disabled people who live alone.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

I am utterly shocked. Let me keep going; the hour is late and I am forgetting what I am talking about very quickly.

Turning to Amendment 28, we will impose reasonable requirements, taking into account the claimant’s particular circumstances, including any health condition or disability. Universal credit claimants with a health condition or disability that limits their capability for work will not be required to look for work. There are specific safeguards in this area. Decision-makers must consider any relevant matter raised by the claimant when considering whether there is good reason for a failure.

[Baroness Meacher]

That was the issue in Committee. Does it have to be raised by the claimant?

[Lord Freud]

When I say “by the claimant”, it can be done on behalf of the claimant by someone else. There is a clear duty on decision-makers to watch out for vulnerable people. The request I am making of the noble Baroness is this: if we begin to introduce specific legislative provisions around such matters of detail, we will end up with a whole mound—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Meacher]

I thank the Minister for giving way. What I am looking for is an assurance that, in regulations, the Minister will guarantee that officials will ensure for themselves that this person could perfectly reasonably comply with conditions. That is all I am looking for—an assurance.

[Lord Freud]

Can I leave it like this, without giving a hard commitment right now, on my feet? When we get to the regulations on this, I will look very hard at exactly what the protection is. I cannot offer any more now but I am sure we will debate this in the months to come. My main point here is that overall duties, rather than lots of specific ones, are the way to go.

Let me turn now to Amendment 36, which proposes an exemption from the sanction for losing employment due to misconduct where the claimant disputes that the dismissal is fair and has instituted proceedings—in other words, is taking a case to an employment tribunal. First, I assure noble Lords that the decision-making process around sanctions for misconduct is rigorous and rounded. We are proposing nothing in this Bill that changes the current process. Decision-makers will take all relevant matters into account when determining whether a sanction should apply, including evidence about whether claimants have left employment through misconduct or been unfairly dismissed. If a tribunal finds that there has been no misconduct by the claimant, this will be very compelling evidence. Where a decision-maker decides that there has been no misconduct, a sanction will not be applied.

However, we do not consider that there can be a blanket rule which says that, where a claimant has instituted proceedings for unfair dismissal, sanctions cannot be applied in that case. One of the reasons for this is that we want to avoid creating a perverse incentive for claimants to make claims to employment tribunals, which would put a burden straight on to employers for no fundamental reason. Decision-makers must have the flexibility to look at each case on its facts and to assess the strength of the evidence. I trust noble Lords will agree that this flexible, case-by-case approach is the right one.

The final amendment, which the noble Lord touched on right at the beginning, and which seemed like a game of tiddlywinks between us, is on targets. He knows what I am going to say—his side likes targets, we do not like targets—so I will say it, as it just keeps the night going. We will continue to collect this information to support our work. We need to know how many sanctions are being imposed, but collecting information is not the same as using it to target. It helps us to assess the consistency of approach in this area and to monitor and evaluate the impact of those sanctions, so that is what we are collecting.

On the basis of that rather rapid, somewhat biblical, summary I would ask noble Lords to withdraw or not move these amendments.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Monday 12th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, these amendments intend to provide for universal credit to be paid twice a month or, in Amendment 1, for a claimant to be able to choose to be paid more frequently than monthly. As with existing benefits, we will specify payment frequency in regulations made under existing powers in the Social Security Administration Act 1992. I am, though, grateful for the opportunity to set out why we intend for universal credit to be paid monthly.

We want universal credit to prepare people for work and to encourage them to move away from costly weekly and fortnightly budgeting. The present system does not allow people to take responsibility for their finances as the majority of people in work do, day in, day out. That is wrong. It means that the transition to work is more difficult than it needs to be as people have to adjust to monthly budgeting and managing their own rent payments, often with no support. We want to make the first steps into work easier by helping claimants to switch to monthly budgeting while claiming universal credit. Essentially, we are looking for a more empowering system.

The figures have already been raised in the debate. Some 75 per cent of all those in employment and 51 per cent of those earning less than £10,000 a year are currently paid monthly. It is then right that we help families to deal with the reality of working life, whether they are in or out of work, by paying benefits in a way that mimics payment of a salary.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked the straight question: what is so important about monthly payments? He went on to talk about the exploitation of poor people. That is what this is about. Save the Children has estimated that low-income families can face an annual poverty premium of £253 on their gas and electricity alone. Organisations including Consumer Focus, Church Action on Poverty and Family Action recognise the importance that access to the right banking products and sound advice can make in helping families to make the best use of their income. The simple point is that if you are managing on small gobbets of money weekly, it is very tough to match your budgeting process to utility bills or some of the larger or medium-scale capital items. That is why larger amounts paid monthly help people with this poverty premium.

However, I recognise that many people on low incomes are used to budgeting on a weekly or fortnightly basis and are concerned about moving to monthly payments. We absolutely need to support some families to budget effectively. That is why I am keen to develop effective budgeting support for families in this position. In some cases that is just a question of signposting to existing information and advice, in other cases it may require much more intensive, face-to-face support; but we need to take an innovative approach to these budgeting products if we are to stop the exploitation of the poor continuing, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said.

The universal credit and how we flow money to poorer people in our community is the main opportunity that we have to make a real difference for people in this area. We are working with the banking sector, credit unions, supermarket financial services and the Post Office to explore the opportunity to create cost-effective budgeting accounts. I am looking at accounts that my noble friend Lord Kirkwood will not be able to arrest at his whim, because there are some protections in the way in which we devise those accounts. In the next 18 months there will be an absolute focus of intense work to get this right. One example is the housing demonstration project next year, which will help us to understand the demand for budgeting support and the best ways to deliver it. I am not saying that it will all be easy; it is not. However, it is essential that we develop 21st century solutions to these issues and not think back decades and get in the mindset where we did not have these new ways of approaching things.

A simple system of payment on account will be made available to support claimants. Budgeting advances will provide an efficient means for eligible claimants to have access to interest-free credit, providing an alternative for those on the lowest incomes to high-cost, and even illegal, lenders. I must say that I was admiring a Wonga.com advertisement on the side of a bus this morning. In our system of budgeting advances, in the last year already over a million claimants received budgeting loans worth almost half a billion pounds. In the department we have a revolving fund of £1.1 billon, which will continue to be under our control for these purposes.

Clearly there is an issue, which we are addressing, about helping people move from fortnightly to monthly payments. We need to help with that migration period by stretching payment periods and providing the missing funding, if you like, as they move up, and I am looking at a system of doing that over three months. Many noble Lords have made the point that there are people with exceptional circumstances for whom a monthly payment is simply not appropriate. My noble friend Lord Kirkwood talked about the 15 per cent; my noble friend Lord Newton talked about those who will not cope. Clearly there is a group in this category. Where there is a risk of harm to the claimant or the household, we will of course want to make sure that safeguards for these people are in place. Nevertheless, we cannot set up a system to get the bulk of people in control of their finances and then take that control away from them when they can manage it. We need to look at it that way round, not devise a system which protects the 15 per cent of people that my noble friend estimated would be affected. We must not have the tail wagging the dog. We must include support but we must not have a system which stops people going into the workplace when they can. We have begun working with local authorities, housing associations and the relevant third sector organisations to develop guidance around who might qualify for more frequent payments or the direct payment of a proportion of an award to a third party, such as a landlord. Again, the housing demonstration projects will allow us to test the criteria for exceptions.

I appreciate noble Lords’ concerns about protecting claimants who have not previously been required to budget monthly. However, I truly believe that this is a fundamental part of what we are trying to achieve with universal credit. It is an opportunity to change the dynamic to design a system that is right for the majority but takes account of exceptional circumstances by ensuring that we have the means to make payments more frequently.

I wish to pick up a couple of questions. We can make universal credit payable more frequently. I say in answer to the point made by my noble friend Lord Hamilton that there is a small cost to doing it fortnightly rather than monthly but it is very small; it is about a penny. As regards the fallback position, the regulation-making powers which are used to determine the frequency of payment are not in this Bill but in the Social Security Administration Act 1992. The legislation on ESA and JSA, for instance, says that they are payable weekly. However, as we know, they are paid fortnightly. We have complete flexibility to pay as often as we think is appropriate.

[Baroness Meacher]

The noble Lord said that payments can be made more frequently. Will he assure the House that payments will be made more frequently, and that that facility will be available?

[Lord Freud]

I assure the House that where people cannot handle monthly budgeting, we will have arrangements to help them. However, I ask noble Lords not to tie my hands on this. This can make a major difference to poor people by creating banking and budgeting products that will help their lives. Tying our hands on this, particularly mine, will not help. Therefore, I ask noble Lords not to vote against this.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Monday 28th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Freud]

Let us not bargain. It is not a bad suggestion. One of the things we want to do—

[Baroness Meacher]

The Minister said that if something is complex, you will not have negligence. Does he accept that what is complicated for one person might be not complicated for another? Certainly what is perfectly straightforward for somebody of average intelligence, for example, might be incredibly complex and difficult to follow for somebody with an IQ well below average. Is there any intention to check that sort of thing out? I know there is a later amendment on this, but it is relevant to this discussion.

[Lord Freud]

It is very relevant. One of the things that we are going to be monitoring as we look at the system is clusters of mistakes because, by definition, the system is not working properly where we are in that position. We will need to work this system in carefully. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who is right on a lot of things, gives a warning, which is right. We cannot use this in an arbitrary way. We must have something, just as the NHS, HMRC and the train companies—I suppose everyone has boilingly paid the extra train ticket surcharge when they were on the wrong train—have systems to encourage people to comply with particular rules. It is particularly necessary where you have a system that is not even a free good. You are giving money out, so you have a positive incentive to shade a few inaccuracies without being fraudulent. We just want to keep people straight.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am delighted to hear such full-hearted support for monthly payments. First, I would like to speak to Amendment 103ZZA in my name. This amendment is technical in nature and seeks to restore the policy intent and simple premise that where a claimant has a debt, the debt should be recoverable from them. In the majority of cases, overpayments of benefit, penalties, payments on account and certain hardship payments will be recoverable from the claimant and will be recovered by deduction from the benefit that is paid to them. As the Bill is drafted, however, the Secretary of State is prevented from recovering such payments where the claimant’s benefit is paid directly to a third party, for example a landlord. This means that recovery from a claimant is limited to deduction from those benefits paid directly to them. This is unintended and so this amendment seeks to ensure that where a claimant’s benefit that is subject to recovery is paid to a third party, recovery may be made from that benefit.

This ensures that the DWP maintains the same powers of recovery as it does presently for recovery by deduction from housing benefit where it is paid directly to a landlord. Although the claimant may have other benefits from which deductions could be made, to do so adds both cost and complexity to the recovery process. In such cases, where no benefit is payable other than that paid to the third party, the DWP would be reliant on negotiating repayment from non-benefit income or potentially using direct earnings attachments to recover from debtors who are in pay-as-you-earn employment.

The situation becomes even more difficult where the debtor will not negotiate repayment, has no benefits paid directly to them and is not in pay-as-you-earn employment. Without the amendment, this would result in a situation where the DWP or local authorities have no effective way to recover the overpayment or penalty. I am sure noble Lords will agree with me that where there is an obligation to repay benefit debt, the fullest possible powers should be available to the relevant authorities to make recovery by the most efficient means.

I shall now address Amendments 103ZZB, 103ZZC, 103ZZD, 103ZZE, 103ZA and 103ZZZA. These opposition amendments seek to achieve a number of objectives, but are primarily concerned with protecting debtors. I am sure that there is no disagreement over the need for safeguards for vulnerable claimants and those in financial difficulty. We recognise, like the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, that protection needs to extend to the calculation of overpayments as well as their recovery. In common with the noble Baroness, we recognise that such a provision has value in ensuring that an overpayment reflects the true loss of public funds and for this very reason, such a provision already exists in secondary legislation relating to the recovery of overpayments of current benefits.

Like the noble Baroness, we believe that similar provisions should apply here, but feel that such a provision sits more happily in secondary legislation. For that reason, I am happy to offer my assurances that it is our intention to make provision for such a calculation in the regulations to be made under Clause 102, new Section 71ZB(4), which allows regulations to provide that recoverable amounts,

“are to be calculated or estimated in a prescribed manner”.

Placing the provision in secondary legislation allows for both flexibility and review.

Concerning the other issues raised within these amendments, I believe that future overpayment recovery from working-age claimants will be more streamlined and efficient than it is presently. Recovery will thus provide both greater returns and better value for money for taxpayers. For example, under the previous Administration, it was believed that there was a right under common law to recover overpayments occurring due to official error, and the DWP thus requested repayment of those overpayments on that basis. I see that noble Lords who may have been responsible for those requests are in agreement. The Supreme Court, however, ruled that there was no such right and that is why we are legislating to bring the law for working-age benefits back in line with the policy of the previous administration—a policy that we support.

Prescribing that an overpayment caused by official error would not be recoverable if the claimant could not reasonably be expected to know that they were being overpaid brings forward a need to make subjective assessment of the debtor’s capacity to understand entitlement before the overpayment is determined. Although I sympathise with the lack of understanding of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, about all the incredible overpayments that she gets and the £1 million that goes into her bank account on a regular basis, I have to say that that is not workable in this context. The DWP will not be prescribing those circumstances for the discretionary write-off or non-recovery of an overpayment. Cases will be considered carefully on their individual merits because each case is different.

As mentioned earlier, the code of practice will outline the policy as to whether recovery should be pursued, and lead to considered, consistent decision making. in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I am happy to confirm that that will be published in the form of a leaflet.

Considering whether an overpayment can, or should be recovered, the DWP will look at a number of factors, not solely whether the claimant received the money in good faith. It will have regard to ensuring that deductions from benefit or earnings—

[Baroness Meacher]

Will the code of practice be available to us before Report so that we know whether we have a reasonable situation?

[Lord Freud]

Yes, I am pleased to confirm that it will be available in draft. I want to avoid the cost of printing up a leaflet.

We will ensure that deductions from benefit or earnings to repay an overpayment should not lead a debtor to suffer undue hardship. That remains a cornerstone of our overpayment recovery policy. As presently, future benefit recovery will be subject to regulations that provide for a maximum rate of recovery. In many instances, however, this maximum rate of recovery may still prove unaffordable for some claimants. In such cases, the DWP will discuss an alternative repayment rate.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Freud]

Moving swiftly on—Amendments 72A and 73 exclude from time-limiting any days contributory ESA claimants in the WRAG have received ESA for before this clause comes into effect. We expect that around 100,000 people will have been in receipt of contributory ESA in the WRAG for more than 12 months by April 2012, plus an additional 100,000 who will reach 12 months’ duration in the WRAG during the rest of 2012-13.

On the issue raised by my noble friend Lady Thomas on retrospection, a benefit claimant has no right to receive ESA indefinitely if the conditions of entitlement change or their circumstances change and they no longer meet the conditions of entitlement. Through the amendments made by the Bill, we are changing the conditions of entitlement for the future so that entitlement will not end until Clauses 51 and 52 is commenced. This will not affect any entitlement that has already arisen. I assure noble Lords that we are not seeking to recover past ESA payments that claimants have received correctly, but merely defining their future entitlement to ESA on the basis of whether at the time the clause is commenced they have had ESA already and if so for how long, and whether they are in the WRAG. We took the decision to issue 115,000 notification letters to all claimants potentially affected by this change to ensure that they were given sufficient notice. This generated around 4,200 inquiries from claimants in response.

We wish to strike a balance between fairness of treatment for all those affected and complexity. We do not think that it is reasonable that people in the WRAG who have already received contributory ESA before Clause 51 comes into force should continue to do so for an additional year after the clause is commenced. This would be unfair to new claimants; we want as many people as possible to receive benefit for the same period of time. Given the very difficult financial position that we inherited from the previous Administration, this is another difficult decision that we have had to make to ensure that the economic well-being of our country is protected.

[Baroness Meacher]

Can I just raise a question? The Minister talks about the unfairness about those in the future and those in the past, but that issue exists anyway. People who started claiming 18 months or two years ago, or whatever, clearly had a different length of contributory ESA to those people who claimed any time from 1 April last year in the Government’s terms. What I was suggesting was that the conditions are changing as of 1 April next year, and it is retrospective to suggest that the conditions change from 12 months previously. That is what is retrospective. Of course, you will always have unfairnesses between the past and the future when you change laws. It is not logical to suggest that there is some sort of inequity between past and future and, therefore, there is no retrospection. I think that the Minister has to accept that there is retrospection here.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, perhaps I may add to the Minister’s woes. He will no doubt be aware that previous Administrations faced this difficulty when we moved from IVB—invalidity benefit—to incapacity benefit. What happened was that people on invalidity benefit remained on that benefit and only new entrants went onto incapacity benefit. That is one path. I can quite see that allowing long-term claimants to have two or three different paths is technically complicated and administratively undesirable, but it is what is most supportive and decent to the individuals concerned. Their expectations are not suddenly changed part-way through their later years.

The second path that the noble Lord could adopt would be to say that from now on, at a certain date, this will be a common rule for all new and existing applicants. That would be the middle path. What would clearly be wrong would be to say that this will apply only to new applicants and that we will knock off existing claimants who have come up to the time barrier. I have never known that in social security before—ever.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the accepted convention on retrospection is that it applies from the announcement of a measure. When the price of petrol goes up in the Budget, it goes up that night or the next night and then the Finance Bill becomes an Act four or five months later. That is the convention—you go from the date of announcement. We announced this move from October 2010.

[Baroness Meacher]

Perhaps I may suggest that the Budget is a completely different kettle of fish, because you absolutely have to implement financial changes on the day of the announcement—otherwise all sorts of people will play games and use the delay to do all sorts of things. However, social security is completely different. You are talking about vulnerable people dependent on benefits, and that is why the convention in the social security field is totally different from the convention regarding the Budget.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Freud]

There is a lot of change going on in this area, as noble Lords will know. We are committed to picking up the recommendations of Professor Wolf, who wrote a stunningly important report—one of the best reports in this area that I have ever read. There are some principles in there about funding following the individual which have not been fully worked out. I am not discussing a static situation here. On the question of the check-out counter and fitting it around A-levels, as things currently stand the position is that the person would have to take the check-out job and fit the A-level around that. However—I hope that noble Lords can read between the lines—this situation has movement in it in the years to come, given what the Department for Education is determining to do around the Wolf report. I do not think that this is the last word on the matter but it is the last word as far as this Bill is concerned at this particular time.

[Baroness Meacher]

Would the Minister take this away and think about how to word the legislation here and at DWP in order to allow for flexibility in, one hopes, not too many years’ time in response to the education ministry?

[Lord Freud]

I will take that on board. This is a very important point. It is not one that I would cavalierly dismiss at all. How we raise human capital among people who have perhaps not had as good a start in life as we would want them to have is a central point. I will think about it and try to make sure that the way we design the structure will allow the flexibility to incorporate future developments. I am grateful for this particular amendment.

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[Baroness Meacher]

I rise very briefly to add my support to this. Many years ago, I wrote a book about the withdrawal of benefits after four weeks from people who had been in difficulty. The book clearly showed that 90 per cent of them or more went straight into more crime. This is just another obvious, simple situation where that is all that the Government will do. I know that the Minister will not wish that to happen. I plead for him to take this away and think about it.

[Lord Freud]

We are looking carefully at the system of hardship payments we want to put in place under universal credit. We want to ensure that there remains a financial safety net for claimants who have been sanctioned—that is what hardship payments are about. However, we want to avoid the existence of such a safety net undermining the deterrent effect of sanctions. It is clearly a rather delicate balancing act. I should make the point that, under universal credit, hardship is only available following a sanction, not at the start of a claim. It will no longer be necessary within the structure of universal credit. We are looking at a payment for people who have been sanctioned.

We are still considering how best to achieve this but believe that the ability to make some payments recoverable is one way of continuing to support those most in need while ensuring hardship payments are not seen as a simple replacement for sanctioned benefit. In other words, we want to make sure that sanctions continue to keep having an impact. We are still considering our approach to recovery that will ensure adequate safeguards are in place. This includes the arrangements in more complex situations of the kind the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, pointed out, such as when a couple has separated. Regrettably, I can not give hard answers to his, as usual, specific and beautifully placed questions. Those are issues that we need to address and are addressing.

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[Lord Freud]

You do not when there are caring responsibilities. We have discussed this. There is a responsive set of conditionalities for people who have other obligations. If you exclude people with very few hours—many will do those few hours for rather more than the minimum wage—they are actually much better off than under the current circumstances because we have done it through addition rather than as an extra disregard.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said that an estimated 50,000 carers will be worse off under the universal credit. That is not correct. That figure was an estimate of the number of single and non-disabled benefit claimants who are carers. Only those whose earnings fall within the very narrow band of two to five hours at the national minimum wage could experience a very slightly lower income under universal credit.

I turn to Amendment 52DB. The universal credit is designed to help improve work incentives to break cycles of worklessness. A couple will jointly benefit from a single earnings disregard set at the highest amount to which either person is entitled. In practice, this may mean that only the earnings of the first earner are disregarded. Given the financial constraints within which we are delivering universal credit, it is best to focus on the clear aim of reducing worklessness for the household as a whole rather than spreading the available resources among different earners in one household.

To revert back to an earlier amendment on piloting, this is clearly something that we can test. If that gets a better result, it can be changed when a Government have adequate money. This is not a matter of principle but of affordability. We estimate that if couples who were both in work were entitled to—

[Baroness Meacher]

Again, will there be flexibility within the legislation? As the Minister said, if the Government pilot this and find that the taxpayer is losing more money because fewer of these second earners go out to work, he will want to introduce a second disregard. Will there be the flexibility within the legislation to enable the Government to do that?

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Monday 24th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Meacher]

I rise to speak to Amendments 51CB, 51CC, 71C and 71D on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, who sends his apologies to the Committee because he cannot be in his place today. It is a little unusual for me to speak to amendments on behalf of a Conservative Peer, but it is a pleasure to do so.

Before I refer to the comments of the noble Lord on these amendments, I would like to support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, in relation to the claimant commitment and the importance of that containing the responsibilities of the Secretary of State as well as the responsibilities of the claimants themselves, and the importance of specialist Jobcentre Plus staff. I will also speak about those two points in the next group. The groups were together but now they are apart.

The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, has given me his notes on these amendments, which I will try to reflect in my remarks. He says that we heard a lot on the Health and Social Care Bill about the myth that the Secretary of State for Health is in total control of the National Health Service. The situation is not very different in the DWP, is it, he asks. I emphasise the fact that the noble Lord said that because it is more interesting that he makes these comments than if I were to make them. We all know that, although technically it is the Secretary of State who is occasionally involved in tribunal and court cases, it is really one of his officers who does the work and occasionally is found to be at fault—or, says the noble Lord, in the case of the employment and support allowance, not so occasionally.

The noble Lord was alarmed to discover that for ESA alone, there have been around 518,000 fit-for-work decisions between October 2008, when it started, and November 2010. The rate of appeal was around 40 per cent and, in that percentage, 40 per cent were successful in their appeals. The reason for all those successful appeals is not solely the Atos computer; the desk officers and DWP staff generally share the blame, although perhaps not to the same extent. The noble Lord has, with difficulty, discovered the success rate of appeals against decisions relating to other benefits from April to August this year. They are 15 per cent for JSA and 27 per cent for income support. Those are probably the nearest thing we have to the universal credit arrangements in the Bill and they give us a guide to what we might expect, not least because the fault, if fault there is, will be with DWP staff rather than computers. This all brings us to the noble Lord’s amendments: it must be vitally important that staff are not only trained, which to some extent they are, but monitored as well. The 24th report of the Merits Committee also raises these issues.

I share those concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, but perhaps I might add a few remarks of my own. I am aware that the Minister has been determined to reduce the appeals success rate and that he has in fact had some considerable success. If I understand it correctly, this has been in part as a result of introducing a review process, prior to appeal hearings, which has enabled errors to be picked up earlier. Perhaps the Minister can explain the average length of time between the initial decision and the review decision following an appeal, and how that average time gap compares with that between a benefit entitlement decision and an appeal hearing, as we had them before the reviews came into play—we still have them, of course. In other words, has the introduction of the review process significantly improved the position for claimants by providing a significantly earlier opportunity to have wrong decisions righted or overturned? Also, does the Minister know what proportion of successful appeals, whether at review or ultimate appeal hearing, apply to claimants with mental health problems?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the form and content of the claimant commitment is of the utmost importance and we are working hard to get it right. I hope that the illustrative claimant commitments provided to noble Lords have proved helpful in this regard. We are introducing the claimant commitment to improve compliance, bringing together in one place a clear statement of the requirements a claimant is expected to meet. What we need to bear in mind is that the claimant commitment is for every recipient of universal credit, many of whom will not be subject to work-related requirements. For these individuals the contents of the claimant commitment will be minimal, including the duty only to report relevant change of circumstances. In this case, the amendments we are discussing would not be relevant.

Even for claimants who have work-related requirements placed on them, certain requirements are simply not open to negotiation. A claimant in the “all work-related requirements” group must look and be available for work. A claimant in the “work-focused interviews only” group must attend work-focused interviews. These very basic requirements are not open to negotiation. When establishing the detail of requirements, for example, and the type of work that someone has to look for, I agree completely that there should be dialogue and consultation between the adviser and the claimant. This is not to say that we will not be tough on some jobseekers but, for the majority, we expect this to be done in co-operation. If a claimant is unhappy with specific requirements, they will be able to ask for another adviser to review them. This happens now under jobseeker’s allowance; there will be an appropriate review procedure under universal credit as well.

The basic work requirements, which are not negotiable—such as that the jobseeker must look for work—clearly would not and could not be the subject of such a review requested by a claimant. Similarly, in terms of the support we provide, we envisage there being a wide range of support available to help claimants prepare for and move into work. It is intended to meet the needs of individuals and target the right support at the right time. The issue raised by both the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, of what we are doing for the hardest to help and on creaming and parking is one that we have endeavoured to answer in the structure of the work programme, where we are trying to deal with it by price differentiation.

We have minimum standards for prime providers. If they breach those it is treated as a breach of contract, so we do have some powerful tools. At the same time, we have much more active management provider performance than ever before, and to the extent that providers are under-performing, we will shift market share by claimant group to the best performing providers in each area. This means that claimants will be moved to where they are most likely to get the best support to help them deal with their particular barriers to work. These are systems that we have created within an overall black-box approach, which would clearly break down entirely if we then imported a series of regulations and requirements such as were implied by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie.

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[Baroness Meacher]

I very strongly support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, because it seems to me that we are talking about oiling the wheels and enabling the system to work. It seems to me that part of that is transparency to the claimant, which is the noble Lord's previous point, but also transparency for the provider. If I understood this right, the assessment and the clinical report on the claimants will not be provided to the provider, who then has to prepare all this activity to enable the person to return to work. If that is really so, I appeal to the Minister to take that back and think about it because I cannot see the system working.

[Lord Freud]

Let me clarify what information goes over. The former WCA is confidential and does not go over. How does the adviser build the revised requirements with the claimant? The evidence that he uses includes the claimant’s fit note, advice from Atos—not the former WCA, but some advice can go over—and other medical evidence. Those things come together to form the basis on which agreement is reached.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Tuesday 4th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Freud]

We will get a code. But even the current impact assessment shows the transformative effect of universal credit when it is fully implemented. The combined impact of take-up and entitlements may lift hundreds of thousands of individuals out of poverty, including as many as 350,000 children. The vast majority of gains from universal credit will go straight to the poorest households.

I shall pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on risk. By combining, effectively, out-of-work benefits and in-work tax credits, we effectively de-risk moving from one category to the other and that is a very powerful incentive for the poorest people to take a risk. One other aspect of it which I have been very conscious of as we develop the whole approach is that it is the best way of dealing with fluctuating conditions. You can move, take a risk and work for some months without being terrified that, if it does not work out, you have lost your benefit support structure, because you are just moving up and down the taper. So, from the aspect of risk, universal credit has huge advantages and it is one of the main drivers of our expectation to see many fewer workless households.

[Baroness Meacher]

I agree with the Minister that that is one of the great things about the universal credit—on the assumption, and this is the second point that I made, that the systems are properly integrated. As I understand it, this wonderful moving in and out of work, with your benefit going up and down as your earnings do the opposite, depends on the integration of those computer systems. My concern is that if the Bill goes through and the universal credit comes in but the IT systems are not ready, then I would have thought that the whole thing would be undermined. I would be interested to know the Minister’s response.

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Baroness. I will leave that till a little later; a number of noble Lords have raised concerns about the IT infrastructure.

To return to the structure of the universal credit itself, the single taper on earnings means that claimants will clearly see how the universal credit award decreases as income from earnings rises, making work financially rewarding for everyone. Alongside the work programme, universal credit will ensure that claimants have a route out of poverty through work rather than a lifetime on benefits—or on social security, depending on language; I will touch on language in a minute as well. I hope, and I hear from noble Lords in terms of principle, that there is general support for this approach.

The participation tax rate assesses the proportion of earnings that are effectively lost through tax and benefits on starting work. The dynamic effect of universal credit means that over 1 million fewer households will face participation tax rates over 70 per cent.

We will also tackle the issue of high marginal deduction rates, which undermine the incentive to increase earnings or hours once someone is working. Under the current welfare system, people in work can gain as little as a 4p increase in their take-home pay for every £1 increase in earnings, and people on out-of-work benefits could see a pound-for-pound reduction on their benefit.

On the questions raised in this area by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, regarding the numbers of people who face higher and lower marginal deduction rates, the impact assessment confirmed that 2.1 million individuals will have higher rates under universal credit but that the median increase will be comparatively small, at about 4 percentage points, and many of those will be households with above-average income for universal credit claimants, moving from a marginal deduction rate of 73 per cent to 76.2 per cent. Some 330,000 second earners will face higher rates, compared with 140,000 with reduced rates. The median increase is higher for this group, reflecting the fact that second earners already tend to have lower marginal deduction rates. As the Committee will know, the impact assessment also addressed the issue that some second earners might move out of work, but we are still expecting the net effect to be a large reduction in those who are workless.

On my noble friend Lord Newton’s concern about child benefit and the debate around that, the best that I can do today is to commit to taking that up with Treasury colleagues and find out what the process is. Again, I will revert.

I return to the universal credit. The way that it will tackle the problem of very high marginal deduction and participation rates is to have a consistent taper of 65 per cent. Overall, this produces substantial improvement in those marginal deduction rates. About 700,000 people who currently have rates above 80 per cent will benefit from it. I turn to IT.

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[Lord Freud]

We will have a debate on this matter rather soon, but maybe not today. The only way I can respond is to point out that, depending on how we adjust the system to have what is effectively a tax rebate system outside the universal credit, we could see different effects. Rather than prejudging this, I will reserve that information for another day. We will have plenty of time to deal with it.

I have been asked about IT by a number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Newton, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, among a few others who have some concerns. We have gone through a huge process of external assessment by the Major Projects Authority, which is a continuous process in stages. The most recent independent review stated a high level of confidence that the expert teams that we have assembled will see us deliver the programme. The review team said that we had made an impressively strong start.

The programme is on time and on budget. It is being developed in a radically new way to government programmes. The difference is that in a traditional government programme the whole system is built, trialled for a few months and then introduced. This system is being built in layers so that we can trial each layer as it develops and test it with customer insight. That process is happening. One of the things that we can do today is take some particular claimant types through the system. I am planning a demonstration for noble Lords later this month to take them through this process, because when they start to see the different elements coming together there will be a much better basis for understanding.

In my confidence, I can quote only these external sources; my own views are perhaps less relevant. The external sources are holding the programme up as an exemplar of how the Government should develop IT. We will be getting these external reviews regularly at each of the difference gateways, so it will be monitored externally very carefully. I have no knowledge of where this is on anyone’s risk register, so I cannot answer that particular question put by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. Obviously, though, any big programme is going to be looked at to ensure that it is being done to time and to budget. That is just governance.

I think there is a lot of confusion in the external world between what is an appropriate level of governance and external monitoring of an important, big programme, and the fact that there are always risks involved in developing it. I responded to the article in the Telegraph, saying that this was a programme on time and on budget. Basically, the article was misleading and I stand by that letter.

[Baroness Meacher]

I wanted to turn the question around another way. The Minister rightly says that there are always risks in these things. If, in fact, the IT system is not ready when the plan is for this Bill to be implemented, will the Minister give an assurance that there will then be a delay in the implementation of the Bill until the IT system is ready? If not, I go back to my other point about the risks, fears and so on. If there is a lot of change and reassessment, which we know are going on anyway, it would be helpful to have an assurance that, as he says, they would then have a system that would deal with a lot of the problems of the current system. It would be extremely helpful if the Minister could give us that assurance.

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for that. I am at a slight loss at how to respond, in case it is an “Am I beating my wife?” question. I am getting some help from the Box. The universal credit will be built on a computer system, or rather a pair of medium-sized computer systems. We have a careful introduction process. One of the options we had, if I can explain it in layman’s terms, was that we could have picked everyone up electronically out of current systems, moved them over and dropped them into the universal credit, with effectively a Big Bang approach—go for it.

That would have been the conceptual framework in which the noble Baroness asked her question. We are not doing that. We are moving people into the system over an extended period. We will start with the flow in October 2013, and then as we get the system working we will have some managed migrations over a four-year period. It is not the Big Bang approach—where you wait for the thing to go, and then you throw everyone in—that one might envisage. It is a much more considered, steady, incremental approach. Indeed, we are developing the actual IT by using elements and units of what we have much more incrementally than it might seem from outside. That is one of the things that I will try to show noble Lords when we have the presentation; indeed, it will be a wider presentation for all parliamentarians. I see that a few in the Room may be very interested.

Welfare Reform

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Freud

Monday 11th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. Again, I take comfort from her general support for the universal credit. The point I would like to emphasise is that because we have two systems, an out-of-work benefit system and an in-work tax credit system, the risk of moving from one to the other is enormous. One has only to experience doing a job which does not work out, having to fall back into out-of-work benefits with perhaps a delay of three months as the bureaucracy is sorted out and thus not being able to afford the baked beans mentioned by the noble Baroness, to realise that that kind of risk is highly unattractive. We have created a very conservative group of people who should be prepared to take that risk, by which I mean conservative with a small “c”. On child benefit, we have not made a full announcement of what is going to be in the spending review on 20 October, at which point the detail will be revealed, so I am not in a position to answer.

On the second point made by the noble Baroness, noble Lords will be aware that what we are looking at in the numbers is flows. Any work programme tries to balance the disadvantage experienced by people who have been out of the job market for a period and what it takes to get them back into work against those who have only just lost their jobs. Effectively, that is what all programmes try to do. Clearly, we need to ramp up the speed with which we can get people back into work, and this is one measure that is designed to encourage and put pressure on them.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, one of the Government’s aims is to reduce the number of employment support claimants by around half a million. I respect the Minister’s expertise in this area and, indeed, his commitment to produce a more efficient system. However, can he assure the House that he will not introduce, for example, the time-limiting of benefits to six months or a year, as has been mooted, for people with severe and enduring mental health problems and other long-term disabilities? Has he made it clear to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the cost of long-term hospitalisation of these people if their benefits are removed will be a great deal higher than maintaining them on benefits? Finally, will he delay the introduction of the new medical tests until the evidence makes it abundantly clear that they are fit for purpose for all, including for people with fluctuating and long-term disorders, most particularly of course for those with severe and enduring mental health disorders?

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Baroness for those questions. We do not have a target for the transfer of IB claimants into JSA, but we estimate that 23 per cent will move straight over. However, it is an estimate and one point of the trials that have been launched today is to find out what the figure might be. The process by which we move people over from IB to ESA means that a substantial proportion will move on to unconditional support allowance so that they are fully supported. However, we would like to make sure that the work-related activity group within ESA moves through the process so that it does not become another place to park people. We are therefore looking at ways to ensure that those in the work-related activity group move through so that they go into JSA as fast as possible. The worst thing is for people to remain inactive for a week longer than necessary.