Employment and Support Allowance (Sanctions) (Amendment) Regulations 2012

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am afraid that I will have to write to the noble Lord on that one. I do not have the answer immediately in front of me.

I can at least respond to one of the questions put to me by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. On appeals against WCA outcomes—the decision as to whether to put somebody in the work-related activity group or the support group—42% of appeals heard by the tribunal in the first quarter of this financial year were successful. What I do not have is the number of actual appeals. Regrettably, I will have to follow up in writing to the noble Lord on the other question that he raised about appeals. That notwithstanding, I hope that I have been able to provide enough information to satisfy the Committee today that these new regulations, which introduce this new sanctions regime, as I stressed at the start, very much emphasise the importance of the requirements on people in the work-related activity group as to how they can return to the workforce at the right time. That is what most people in work-related activity definitely want. It is our responsibility to make sure that they are clear on their requirements and that those requirements help them in that regard.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, when the noble Baroness mentioned the evaluation review, she said that the department was looking at people’s satisfaction with the receipt of their benefits. Two major ME/CFS charities have done reviews with their clientele, amounting to well over 1,000 people in each case. Would the department be prepared to accept these reviews as part of its evidence?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am sure that if evidence is there that would be relevant to what we are doing, it would be very welcome.

Universal Credit

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I should make clear that we are not entertaining paper applications. We are looking at either face-to-face or telephone support groups. We have looked at pushing JSA online and the figures have gone up from 16% in September last year to 39% this September. We are moving people very rapidly to the online route.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, the banks have shown us that computer systems are not infallible. Can the Minister tell the House what provision there is for back-up in case something goes wrong? These people are very vulnerable and cannot do without money for a long time.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we have a very substantial contingency prepared if, for instance, a disaster takes down our data centre—we have two data centres for that reason—and particularly if we have a cyberattack. We will have contingency built into the system to make sure that our payments systems do not go down because of these problems.

Health: Needlestick Injuries

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The judgment was made on the basis of the number of injuries or incidents. Industries with a higher proportion of these were clearly ones on which one would target scarce resources. As I have just explained, the declared figures for injuries from sharps with infection are that 100,000 people a year cut themselves. However, the real concern is how many are infected, and that number is rather low.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether the directive referred to in the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, applies to members of the veterinary profession? At least human patients keep still most of the time. Animals do not, and I know from my own experience what a needlestick injury can produce.

[Lord Freud]

This applies to human health and not to other industries such as waste and veterinary.

Welfare Reform Bill

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Tuesday 14th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I am very glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas. Obviously, we all welcome the Minister’s commitment to undertake a review. It would have been very helpful if we had had this promise earlier in our discussions as it would have enabled us to shape much more thoroughly what might go into that review. However, what concerns me is that I still think the Minister missed the key point in his introductory comments. If I have misunderstood him, I would be grateful if he could correct my misunderstanding and make his position clear to the House.

The issue is not whether the right number of children is above the line in terms of severe disability, and where that line is drawn, as he seemed to suggest. That is not the issue, although the Minister seemed to suggest that it was. The issue is the fact that children who are deemed to have a lesser disability still have very substantial care needs. Indeed, their care needs may be more expensive than those of a bed-ridden child who may be more severely disabled but has less demanding care needs. We are concerned about the ratio of financial support for the less disabled child vis-à-vis that for the more disabled child. Therefore, it is not a question of whether more children should go into the higher rate category rather than the lower but of the relationship in financial terms between the lower rate and the higher rate given that the degree of disability does not translate into the need for extra financial support because of additional costs. That is the issue we wish the Minister to grasp, not whether the lines in the sand are drawn differently between groups of children but to recognise that the financial support for less severely disabled children should be pegged pretty closely to the rate for more severely disabled children because costs do not follow the level of disability.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lady Meacher, I am a little puzzled as to why this amendment was rejected on financial grounds. I know that the Commons Reason given is that,

“it would alter the financial arrangements made by the Commons”,

and it does not need to offer any further reason. However, in this particular case, we have no estimate of the fiscal impact of these measures from the Department for Work and Pensions, so how can we know what the financial impact is going to be? Perhaps the noble Lord will make clear what the financial impact is going to be, particularly as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, presented her original amendment as being financially neutral?

Welfare Reform Bill

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, before we proceed with Third Reading, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Freud, and to the House, for so rudely interrupting him on the matter of affirmative instruments. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who unfortunately is not here, for putting matters right. I offer my sincere apologies.

Clause 15 : Work-focused interview requirement

Amendment 2 not moved.

Welfare Reform Bill

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I am pleased to support this amendment so ably moved by my noble friend Lady Meacher and so clearly defined by the noble Baronesses, Lady Wilkins and Lady Browning. The principles behind universal credit are an acknowledged improvement on the current arrangements for benefits for people who are either in or out of work. Noble Lords cannot but be aware of the enormous strains that disability can put on individuals and their families. That has been pointed out to us today. These strains fall disproportionately on parents of children with disabilities. Most of the time the public are unaware of the emotional demands made by a child with whom his parents cannot reason and whose needs are unending, unpredictable and create additional burdens on the family finances. I have a huge respect for mothers who continue to cope while at the end of their tethers.

The improvements in neonatal survival rates have brought with them more children who are very dependent. Some will never be wholly independent. Some children become disabled through illness or accident for which no one is to blame. There will be no huge compensation payouts for them. This is a responsibility that can be too much for parents to bear alone and I believe that we should all ensure that they receive adequate support.

Recent research by Dr Esther Crawley at Bristol University showed that as many as one in 100 children away from school may have CFS/ME. Many of these children are currently in receipt of DLA at the lower rate, which has a mobility component, as well as others at the higher rate, although they can walk short distances. We do not know how such children will be assessed in future, although if the PIP assessment is anything to go by they will lose the mobility component. Their DLA helps with childcare costs and transport, among other things. It also provides a passport to other benefits, such as Blue Badge, congestion charge exemption and the London Taxicard. As one mother put it to me recently:

“Without these my daughter would essentially be housebound and not only would have no social life whatsoever, but she couldn’t get to medical or dental appointments or places of educational interest associated with her studies. She is a clever talented girl who cannot progress to higher education without these things”.

I am growing increasingly concerned about the strains that we are about to put on our less fortunate citizens by the provisions of this Bill. There are reports appearing on a regular basis of deaths of people found by ATOS to be fit for work. Chris Grayling acknowledged that 31 people had died while awaiting their appeals in the three years to last October. I understand that benefit cuts are also confirmed by coroners as the cause of at least 16 suicides. The noble Baroness, Lady Browning, has mentioned mothers who have murdered their children and then committed suicide.

Too often children with disabilities are cared for by a lone parent, as we heard from my noble friend Lady Meacher. Rejection of this amendment could be the last straw. Acceptance of this amendment may well be their lifeline.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

The figure that we have on the average amount is £8,800. There is a 5 per cent difference in the overall package for that family under universal credit. Those are the figures that we have worked out for the average. Taken overall, it is a small decline, and clearly there is a substantial incentive for the family to look at work. Work becomes much more attractive. Even a few hours of work under universal credit becomes attractive in a way that is completely impossible today.

[The Countess of Mar]

How can a single mother with a severely disabled child go out to work?

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

That is exactly what happens with regulations—

[The Countess of Mar]

If the House of Commons throws the regulations out, they can be thrown out; but if we throw them out, the House of Commons can ignore it completely.

[Lord Freud]

No, my Lords. Without wanting to get into a huge constitutional debate about this, my understanding is that if the House of Lords threw them out, there would at some stage have to be a satisfactory set of regulations that both Houses could agree. So it is a very powerful thing to do. Clearly, I would hope never to get into that position, which is why—

Welfare Reform Bill

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, we have to be honest with ourselves in this House. There is no way that you can reform welfare without affecting one group or another in our community. I cannot think of any means or mechanism whereby you can leave people as they are and change the system at the same time.

There is a fundamental double standard running through some of our debate this afternoon. First, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, made the point that the demographics meant that older members of the community were taking up a larger slice of the social security budget. That is true. However, many Members here have said that they do not want to do anything to upset the housing situation because of the inevitable disruption that could arise, with implications for children. Yet we have no compunction—the welfare state has no compunction—in sequestrating the houses of older people to pay for their care. I put it to noble Lords that policy in the 1980s encouraged families to buy their homes. Indeed, we made enormous volumes of public sector properties available to encourage people to buy them. People scrimped and saved in the hope of perhaps passing on a small legacy to their children. They lived their lives, worked hard, saved and purchased a property. What are we saying now? “Oh, I’m sorry chaps. Well done. You did that but now that you’re frail and need to go into care, we will pay for that by taking that property and reducing its value by £550 a week until it is £16,000, and then the state will look after you.” What consistency is there in that?

I do not believe that any current Secretary of State has come into office more prepared, and having done more homework, than Iain Duncan Smith. I saw at first hand a lot of his work with his think tank. He went to the States. He studied carefully and learnt the situation on the ground. I therefore believe that the fundamental drive behind this is based not simply on an ideological rant but on experience and a thoughtful purpose as to how we are to improve our community.

The other thing we have to face up to is that we are not as wealthy as we once were and we have collectively allowed the social security situation to grow out of control. We allowed circumstances whereby people could pay unlimited rents for homes and then we throw our hands up in horror and say that perhaps we cannot afford to keep them in these properties any longer. Whose fault is that? It is the collective fault of parties and Governments over decades.

I support entirely the idea of national insurance, whereby we provide a safety net if we are down on our luck. I have so much of it in my own area, where for generations people have not had the opportunity to work, and I know—we all know—that people abuse the system. However, we should not allow that to make our decision for us. The question is: can any Government advance any proposal that will not upset one particular group or another in the community? I put it to the Minister that it cannot be done. You cannot make changes to welfare without upsetting people.

It is also misleading to gross up the total benefits paid and say that that is the equivalent to a salary of £35,000 a year. I disagree with that.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord but he appears to be making a Second Reading speech and this is Report stage. Would he kindly address the amendment?

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, I thank the noble Countess for the intervention, but because of the grouping I had thought that this was like a Second Reading and I am trying to address the issue of housing—the subject of the amendment. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Newton, that the grouping is unfortunate.

The point that I am trying to get to is: it will not be possible to change the welfare system without upsetting some group or other in our community. I therefore believe that if we put the amendment in the Bill, the Minister and the Government, including their successors, will be hidebound by it. However, the Minister has also heard the widespread view in the House that we are confronted with an area of concern, particularly when children are likely to be moved from their homes, lose their schools and all that goes with that. Secondary legislation is the right place in which to put this issue but, if we believe we can go through a process of changing the welfare system and not affect a particular group in the community, we are misleading it as well as ourselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, closed his remarks on Amendment 58D by saying that it is designed to prevent a slide into poverty, particularly for those who are young. The benefit cap is about changing psychology. It is about trying to get a change of circumstances in those families. Let me remind noble Lords—I know that they do not need any reminder—that the worst thing for youngsters is to be in a workless household. We need to change behaviours, and this benefit cap is designed to do that.

We need to move towards the cap in a highly organised way, and we will have a year to work with those families that are going to be affected. As my noble friend Lord Fowler pointed out, this affects around 1 per cent of the population that we deal with and we know exactly who they are. In the new impact assessments, we were working on the particular families. We can spend a year with those families making sure that they respond in advance to what the cap implies for them. It is a very simple answer for the bulk of them: we need to get you into work.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I gather that there are now more than 3 million people unemployed. Something like 72 people apply for every job in some areas. How are the Government going to get these people into work?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I will deal with that straightaway because it is a point that has been raised more generally. Two things are confused here. Levels of employment are, regrettably, too high. We as a Government regret that, and we are throwing enormous resources at ameliorating that position, but this is a different issue. This is about people and families who are, and have been, excluded from the workforce entirely. They have been inactive. We need to put in place arrangements to get them able to move back into the workforce. It may take a bit of time for them to get in, but that is a completely different order of issue from helping people who are unemployed and are waiting to get a job. We must not confuse snapshot numbers of vacancies available with flows. The problem is that the flow of people going into work is, on a monthly basis, slightly less than those who are moving out. That is the problem. However, there are still large numbers of people going into work every month and finding jobs. We just need to make sure that the excluded communities become part of that process. This is one of the ways to do it.

We need to make sure that that transition is organised. We need to put jobcentre staff and caseworkers on it to help those families. That is by far the most important thing we can do to make sure that this benefit cap has the effect that it needs to have. Clearly, we need assistance in hard cases, which we plan to have, but that is a second-order issue in terms of trying to work with families to get them back into work. In the Bill, we have all the powers that we need to get into the detailed design of the cap and to make sure that those circumstances are picked up and dealt with.

Let me pick up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, about benefit ghettos. The reality is that 67,000 families could not create a benefit ghetto in this country. That would be 1 per cent of working-age recipients. We are not talking about massive numbers on any standards.

Welfare Reform Bill

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I, too, support the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, in her amendment. I read the whole of the information sent to us yesterday and I was pleased to see that ME/CFS, in which I am interested, was raised in two examples, and that the difference between the two conditions was shown. I am concerned not just for people with ME but for those who can almost function normally and will not meet the criteria for getting DLA. For example, there are those who, because they have an endocrine problem, cannot cope with the cold. They need extra heating and clothes. If they are working, they are probably on a minimum salary because they are not very well. Therefore, they need extra money. They might also need extra clothing.

If they are incontinent, they may need to be able to change their clothing regularly. They may need incontinence pads, which—as everyone knows from questions in the House—are extremely difficult to get from the National Health Service. My mother-in-law, who died a few years ago, could not go out of the house because she was worried about wetting herself in public. If she could have afforded incontinence pads, she would have been fine. She was not going to tell her children or her daughter-in-law about her problem and we had to extricate the information from her to find out why she was not going out. Such people get confined to their homes and become desocialised, and it is very difficult to get them back into society. We must take all these things into consideration—not just whether they can cook or wash themselves—when we think about what they need to keep functioning on a relatively normal basis.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly on this amendment. The comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, about her personal experience of the whole range of autism reminded me just how this range has developed over the years. When I first got involved with the autistic movement many years ago, it really was just one thing; but since then, many different branches and forms of behaviour have been identified. The fact that all these extra aspects have to be borne in mind re-emphasises the whole question of whether the clause is fit for purpose. In particular, the Asperger’s syndrome comment was very apt. I hope the Minister will be able to persuade us that there will be a thorough method of assessment by people who understand the range of problems that we are talking about as well as—as my noble friend Lady Mar said—the detailed and different ways in which extra help is used and needed for such people to have a basic ability to lead a normal life.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister can answer a question for me. I made a particular point about people having very special needs such as extra heating and incontinence pads, for example. If they are leading a fairly normal life but would be restricted to their homes because they cannot pay for things, will this be taken into account in the PIP assessment? I could not see it anywhere when I read the details. How are these facts going to be elicited when the person is being assessed? People do not fit into boxes—everyone is an individual. It seems that the noble Lord is trying to make people fit into boxes when they do not.

[Lord Freud]

We are very much trying not to make people fit into boxes. We are not saying, “Because you have that condition, that’s your relevant position”. We are trying to look at people as individuals. Clearly, you go through all these criteria very carefully and reach a judgment. It is almost impossible for me to say whether a particular person would hit the assessment criteria or not. You just have to go through it and see. However, we clearly expect someone to get a payment who has genuine needs for coping with life because of their disability. That is what it is designed for. I cannot answer the specific question, but I can tell the noble Baroness the principle—where that person needs that support as a result of their disability, they should get it.

When we develop an assessment for PIP, we have to balance a range of factors. A complete model should include all the perspectives and important interactions between an individual, their health and the environment. That is what the biopsychosocial model does. There are limitations in considering only a single perspective, and this is a much more holistic approach.

I do not accept the criticism that our proposals do not truly reflect the extra costs faced by disabled people. As I have tried to explain, it would not be feasible to assess the actual costs without something hugely intrusive to disabled people and very complicated. We therefore have to assess other factors as a proxy for these costs. We are using “care” and “mobility” in DLA, which we do not think are broad enough. So, in our draft assessment criteria we have a range of everyday activities for PIP that we believe are a good proxy for the impact of impairments, the overall level of disabled people’s needs and the extra disability-related costs. We will go on refining those; we will not just stop when we finish the consultation in April.

The proposals have taken into account many of the key drivers of cost that Scope and others are obviously concerned about. For example, individuals who have difficulty getting out are likely to have higher utility bills, while those who need support planning a journey and moving about are likely to have higher transport costs. The proxies and associated criteria should therefore allow us to prioritise spend on those who face the greatest challenge and expense. In answer to my noble friend Lady Thomas’s point on the tick-box assessment, the proposals, which have been around since May, are very much not a tick-box approach; they are trying to look at people’s functional capability.

We have changed the assessment very considerably as a result of the enormous amount of engagement that we have with disabled people and their organisations. We will go on doing that. However, if we had fundamentally to revisit our approach in the way in which the amendment would require, we would have to go back to the drawing broad, spend more time developing and testing, and have greater consultation. It would push back the start of PIP by at least a year and reduce savings over the reassessment period by £1.4 billion. This is, I think, the priciest amendment yet.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

This is an important debate because existing relevant medical evidence is absolutely essential to getting this test—and the whole process—delivered as accurately and as sweetly as it possibly can be. This is true in two separate directions. First, getting access to and active consideration of existing relevant medical evidence will make the examination—if an examination is needed—much more satisfactory for all concerned. As has already been said, it will reduce appeals—and it will minimise costs for that reason if for no other.

It has a second important function which I hope the Minister will be able to spend some time on. If the Minister could help us understand better how desktop assessments can obviate face-to-face assessments, he could diminish the fear factor that clearly exists, rightly or wrongly, about what will face people who might be invited to these face-to-face tests in future, and that would be enormously helpful. I am aware, having followed this for some time, that the DLA provisions which we put in the primary legislation in 1992 were, in some respects, too prescriptive. I understand perfectly that assurances can be made and put into regulations and put into medical contracts as well.

I am in the market for voting for this amendment if we do not get the kind of response that I hope for. However, there are ways of delivering the assurances that are being sought by our correspondents and the disability community. It would be helpful if the Minister could say a word about the contract. I understand that the contract is out to tender and it is too early to say who is interested, but people are drawing conclusions from the Atos Healthcare experience. I do not think that that experience would necessarily be repeated in the future if the terms of the contract are drawn sufficiently clearly. In that contract, if not in regulations or primary legislation, we should be saying clearly that on cause shown, if there is heavyweight medical evidence that can be addressed at a desktop level, those are circumstances where it should almost be a default that people will not be subjected—if that is the right verb—to these assessments.

I share a concern about the quality and experience of the assessors. I have a capacity issue as well as a quality issue about that. It does not matter if you get the best contract in the world and the most enthusiastic prime contractors who come in and promise, hand on heart, to do the best they can. The professionals with the right qualifications and experience to do this work may not be out there. If that is the case then we need to be very careful. There is not enough emphasis in the United Kingdom on this kind of medicine, and we should be promoting with our medical colleagues a far higher degree of interest in and development of the specialist skills that medical professionals need to do these jobs in order to make this process a success.

I have here a case history that caught my imagination. A 25 year-old young man is undergoing his first major reassessment of his problems as an adult. His assessments will involve MR scans, examination by neurologists, neurogeneticists, neurophysiotherapists and a specialised occupational therapist. He has scattered neuromotor difficulties. Although I trained as a pharmacist a long time ago, I could not even find on the internet what neuromotor difficulties actually amount to, but it is clearly a serious condition that is being addressed by experts at a tertiary, if not international, level by a centre of excellence in a region in the United Kingdom. The young man has written to say that he is now fearful that he will have to address the circumstances of these tests. It would be completely daft and stone mad that we cannot say something now that is clear. There may be technicalities with the legislation, and perhaps I could be persuaded that such provisions should not be in primary legislation, but we absolutely need some clear, copper-bottomed assurances from the Minister that a person in those circumstances would not face such difficulties.

I hope that the Minister will understand that this is an important amendment and that he will take as much time as he can to tell us as much as he knows about how these processes will work and where in the legislative process—whether by regulation or primary legislation—we can be assured that we will get some protection for the kind of young person to whom I alluded.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I have difficulty with Amendment 50ZR. I fully endorse the fact that medical evidence is needed, but some people with ME have not seen a doctor in years, simply because there is no treatment for them. If the department is expected to depend a lot on medical evidence for corroboration of the illness, I do not know how people with ME are going to cope. That really disturbs me and the issue needs to be examined.

I fully support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, on training. People with ME have cognitive difficulties as well as all their other problems, and these are not very well understood. I give him my heartfelt support, and I hope that the noble Lord will take on board the fact that some people cannot get current medical evidence to corroborate their illness.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly because time is pressing. We went into this issue in some detail in Committee and I warmly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, which was better than the one we originally considered. The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, referred to the tiered approach, and I very much hope that the Minister can confirm that the tiered approach that has been pressed upon him by those involved with autism will be central to this matter.

I also hope that he can take the main thrust of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, whereby expertise needs to be brought on board. Earlier today, the Minister emphasised the need to make sure that those with greater disabilities get the support they need and that those with lesser disabilities get less. That approach is dependent upon knowing exactly what the conditions are. When we consider people in the spectrum associated with autism and Asperger’s we need to know the individual challenges they have. If the wording of this amendment is inappropriate, so be it. However, there needs to be an approach that brings that expertise on board, otherwise we are failing to do what the Minister says he wants to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I should have said this when I was making my initial speech. About 60,000 people with ME are either bedbound or housebound. To go to a face-to-face interview would cause enormous stress and probably exacerbate their symptoms. Will that be taken into account? They cannot provide medical evidence because there is no treatment; yet they cannot come out of their homes. How will the Minister deal with that?

[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.

Welfare Reform Bill

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Grand Committee

[The Countess of Mar]

The noble Lord referred to new Section 115C(1)(b), which states:

“the person fails to take reasonable steps to correct the error”.

Is this after the person has been told that there is an error, or must he find out that he has made an error in order to correct it?

[Lord Freud]

“Negligence” and “reasonable steps” are legally bound words. There is a huge case law about what they imply. One needs not to be negligent when filling in an application and to take reasonable steps to correct mistakes. If you do not know that you have made a mistake, you cannot expect to be able to correct it. That would not be a reasonable step. However, there is a legal framework around these words. I go back to the point I was trying to make about the incentives on the system as opposed to on the individual. On the penalty rates that I gave noble Lords, we expect that the amount collected in a year, for example 2014-15, will be roughly £9 million and the cost of delivering that system of civil penalties the same figure, £9 million, so there is no incentive in the structure to have unnecessary civil penalties. That is not the point. The point is to—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I must make this absolutely clear—it is my third go at this. An overpayment happens when someone is paid something they should not have been paid. A civil penalty will be charged only when there is both negligence and an overpayment. I forget the logical post hoc, or whatever. We need to get it round the right way.

[The Countess of Mar]

Let me get this absolutely clear. The department finds that there has been an error. Does it then tell the claimant that there has been an error, who says, “Oh dear, I’ll put it right”, and that is it, or does the department say straightaway that it is negligence? Is there a step in the middle when it goes to the claimant?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, in practice it will depend very much on the circumstances. Clearly, if one had a blanket rule it would be possible every time an error was uncovered to say, “Oh, just a mistake, I’ll put it right”, or, “It was negligence”. There will have to be occasions when it is pretty clear that there was genuine negligence. That will be testable and appealable on a set of definitions around what is negligent.

Welfare Reform Bill

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Skelmersdale]

My Lords, I am not sure whether I ought to declare an interest, but I will do so nevertheless. My daughter is a research biochemist at the University of Sheffield where she works in a cancer laboratory. Her objective, as it currently stands, is to starve cancer cells of blood—something that other researchers around the country, and indeed around the world, are currently working on without yet having achieved a satisfactory result.

Although I readily understand why the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, has moved his amendment, I find the amendment, although this might be unfair, perhaps—to make up a word—a little closed mind-ish. There is no doubt that, over recent years, the medical fraternity has made leaps and bounds in research. There is even, as I understand it, a possibility that stem cells could be used to repair the nerve system up the back. Now, such developments may come up in five, 20 or 50 years— I do not know, and nobody knows—but an amendment like this is so restrictive that it rather ignores the possibilities of medical science.

I readily understand the interest of the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, in mental health, particularly autism. I confess that I do not know anything about autism, whereas clearly he does. It is not beyond the wit of man to believe that some better treatment, understanding or social environment in respect of any mental disease could well improve matters to allow people a certain amount of, for example, work. My son-in-law suffers from ME, and apparently there is tremendous argument as to whether ME is entirely a mental disease or a physical disease with mental attributes. I do not know whether he will recover enough to work; I suspect that neither he nor anyone else knows that. However, I find this particular amendment—especially the second one—somewhat restrictive.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, in his amendment. I respect the view of the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, on ME, and I also thank the Minister for his recent letter to me that clarifies a lot about the department’s stance on ME. I am very grateful for what he has done.

However, there are serious cases of ME where people are just not going to get better. In the House the other day during our consideration of the Health and Social Care Bill, I described a young lady who has had ME since she was 15 and who is now 30 and is not going to get any better. There are a lot of people like that. She is suffering terrible stress with worrying about what is going to happen with her personal independence payments, and that is not helping her condition. In cases like that, where it is pretty obvious that the person is not going to get better—unless there is a miracle of medical science, when of course it should be reviewed whether the person’s health can be improved, which would be all well and good—such patients should not be subjected to the stresses of a medical examination.

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, I would like to follow the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, that medical science might come up with a cure, but I am puzzled as to why that is problem. Surely when the facts change, the law would be changed; I do not see any great problem with changing the law.