Welfare Reform

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for the question. Of course, she has a great deal of experience in this area; she knows only too well how the system works and how it has worked in the past.

This is one of the real problems with the current system. When people have been put through that binary judgment that they either can or cannot work, if they get into the “can’t work” category, the risks are so great that, if they try to work and fail, we will then come and say, “Ha, so you can work after all”, and then it will be taken away.

We are going to do a couple of things. First, there is a linking rule already there, which we will make sure that everybody is aware of, so that if you try a job and come back on to benefits within six months, you will be able to go back to your old benefits. That touches on a point raised by the noble Viscount as well. But we are going to go further: we are going to legislate to make it very clear that work in and of its own right will never be a reason for triggering a reassessment. It is really important that people know that. In the long run, we will break the connection between can and cannot work and support, because in the long run it is the PIP assessment and your abilities and needs that will determine how much support you get, not whether you can or cannot work. I hope that reassures my noble friend that we are determined to tackle this.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am speaking from the Back Benches today because I am very concerned about the sustainability of the benefits system, with an ageing population and the ranks of the inactive and people on disability benefits, as the Minister described. I am sure that it is right to focus on getting people back into work—and I am absolutely delighted that Charlie Mayfield is helping the Government. He comes from retail, as I do, and retail is detail. That sort of person is very helpful in trying to make things work.

I have a couple of questions. First, I have done some work on fraud in the past, including trying to use AI to reduce the cost of fraud. I was very concerned to hear that only one in 10 assessments is face to face. What does the Minister feel the opportunity is in tackling fraud?

Secondly, on timing, the Minister mentioned that there would be a change in PIP in November 2026 and in the work capacity assessment in 2028. Given the scale of the problem, can she give me any reassurance about timing and getting on with those changes?

Minister for Disabled People

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Mims Davies is the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, but I do not think we should spend all our time focusing on titles. I do not want to tread on my noble friend Lord Younger’s toes but, having studied this subject in preparation, I was trying to talk a little about what we will actually do for the disabled. Of course we need to respect them and talk about them in an appropriate way but, as noble Lords will know, it is important to have action and get things done.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, words matter, but action matters even more. Are my back-of-an-envelope sums right—is Mims Davies now the 13th Minister for Disabled People since the Government came to power in 2010? If so, does the Minister think that all this moving around is damaging things? For example, it is introducing massive delays to the Access to Work scheme, which left one autistic woman waiting 13 months to get a job. We need some action now, do we not?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The noble Baroness may be right: perhaps Ministers do move around more than is ideal on occasions. I was delighted to discover that I was not moving in the last reshuffle and can continue. The key thing is to focus on the work in hand, and I believe Mims Davies will do that, with support from across the Cabinet.

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting : House of Lords
Monday 24th February 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think this shows that it is important that we understand what the statutory instruments in this area are going to look like. It will obviously lead to a clearer conversation if the Government are able to move on that. The second thing is that, in my experience, things do not necessarily go the way you expect. When I sought my pension estimate before I retired, I ended up a year later getting a less generous pension than I had anticipated, perhaps because things had changed on the underlying demographics—health or whatever. We have to be quite careful to take account of the complexity of these things in the sorts of SIs that we make. Clearly, we need to consult on them for that very reason.

[Baroness Sherlock]

On a final point of clarification, if I have heard the Minister correctly—and I will read the record—I think she is trying to reassure us that she will consult and that this will be dealt with in regulations. The problem is that Clause 14(4)(b) states that regulations may include provision,

“specifying requirements to be met by the scheme relating to its financing, such as requirements,”

et cetera. All this amendment does is insert the words, “or by an employer”, because of the concern that the Bill may allow regulations to be made requiring the scheme to put money in. We want to be sure that the Bill will require the employer, rather than the scheme, to provide the money. That is why the amendment is written as it is, accepting that the Government will have to work out what is in the regulations and then what the regulator actually did as a result. Are the Government confident that the wording of the Bill will allow them to place a requirement on the sponsoring employer to do what the Minister has described?