Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Meacher and Lord Ramsbotham

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, this amendment has its genesis as long ago as 1996. As Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, I found that, at the end of their sentence, prisoners were released with a discharge grant of £46 or, if they had no address to go to, £92. The numbers claiming £92 went down when home detention curfew or tagging was introduced because, in order to qualify, they had to give an address. They were then required to go to their local jobcentre and sign on for whatever benefits they were entitled to, so having to live on their discharge grant until those came through, which could take up to three weeks and sometimes longer. I ask Members of the Grand Committee how they would cope if they were a single parent with dependent children having to live on £46 for three weeks, probably having lost their accommodation thanks to the rule brought in by Mr Peter Lilley in 1995 whereby council accommodation would be forfeited after 13 weeks of absence and their possessions removed. That is not to excuse those who break the law, but it offers an explanation for the appalling high reoffending rate among recently released offenders.

When I was Chief Inspector of Prisons, and on several occasions since then, including in your Lordships’ House, I have asked why benefit claims could not be processed while someone is in prison so that on release they do not receive a grant but the first of future regular payments. As very many prisoners are receiving some form of benefit before they go into prison, it should not be beyond the wit of man to suspend those payments during the period of imprisonment and resume them on release. However, every sort of reason has been put forward about why that is impossible, which I put down to lack of will power: the prisons from which they are released may not be in the same geographical area where they live and, therefore, not in the area where their nearest jobcentre is; there are no Jobcentre Plus employees in prisons who could process the claims; or the prison into which they were received and which suspended their payment may not be the same one from which they are released. I think all this is baloney and that the Government, by not grasping the nettle, are contributing to the reoffending rate.

My amendment is designed to put an end to that nonsense by regulating that individual benefit claims are processed during a person’s imprisonment so that the discharge grant becomes a thing of the past, except for those who do not qualify for benefit. There are other spin-offs to this process that can only help the conduct of imprisonment, because an individual’s national insurance number is a unique identification weapon armed with which there is no reason why one cannot pass information regarding individual claims around the system. Unique national insurance numbers, without which benefit claims cannot be made, will also help to prevent identity fraud, because pretending to be someone else will deny provision.

My amendment specifically mentions those who were in receipt of benefits at the time of their reception into custody, but I shall amend it at a later stage to include the assessment of all people inside and the initial assessment of those whose entitlement is discovered only when they are in custody. What I am proposing is in fact in line with something that has already been set in train regarding the work programme. The Deputy Prime Minister announced on 16 August that the Government intended to mandate prison leavers to the programme immediately on release from prison, with national implementation for jobseeker’s allowance claimants from March 2012, and to work with the Ministry of Justice on a pilot integration of reoffending outcomes into work programmes.

To enable that to happen, Jobcentre Plus advisers will process jobseeker’s allowance claims in prison—although for some extraordinary reason it is said that discussions with claimants will be voluntary and not mandatory. They will then make a record of all prison leavers that will be retained for 13 weeks from the date on which they leave custody. If a claim for jobseeker’s allowance is made during that time, the prison leaver will be referred to the work programme at the point of claim. To a layman, this all seems convoluted and bureaucratic. If the Department for Work and Pensions really is fully committed to supporting the rehabilitation of offenders, why can officials not sit down with those from the Ministry of Justice and work out a system that applies to every single prison leaver, not just those who are in the market for the work programme or jobseeker’s allowance?

The reason for proposed subsection (3) in my amendment is that, all too often, resettlement essentials in prison are left until the very end of a sentence, in which case it may be too late to process benefit claims. However, if processing is started immediately so that a prisoner’s status on release is well known in advance, that will be avoided. This applies to the work programme as much as to the universal benefit. Of course there will be problems with those serving short sentences but, as I have suggested, suspension and resumption rather than initiation may well be the required process.

Bearing in mind the unnecessary reoffending and misery that present procedures have caused for too long, I have corresponded with both the Ministry of Justice and the Minister over this amendment, being amazed that successive Governments should not have done something to rectify this over the years—particularly this Government, in view of what they currently have in hand at both the MoJ and the DWP. I am very grateful to the Minister for his response to my letters but, with respect, I suggest that in drafting his answer his officials may not have made the connections that I have tried to describe. I therefore ask him to reconsider his written refusal to support my amendment, dated 26 October, and meet me to discuss further action before Report. I beg to move.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I have not prepared any comments on this amendment, but it seems to me to be of enormous importance. I cannot imagine that the Minister would not wish to support it.

One very obvious proposal would be for every prison to work out the release rate of their prisoners and to determine how many hours per week of a Jobcentre Plus person they need in the prison to process all these prisoners in order that they are paid their full benefit entitlement before, I suggest, they go out of the door or within the first week.

It is a fact that a very large number of prisoners reoffend within that very early period following release, which seems almost inevitable. What else are these people supposed to do? I therefore hope that the Minister will indeed meet my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham to consider how to do it. It has surely to be done; it is a matter of how best to do it—whether to have people in the prison doing this work to overcome the problems of people moving from one area to another and even while they are in prison. I can see that that is a problem for individual jobcentres, but, one way or another, I hope that this can be resolved.