Social Security: Claimants

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Wednesday 30th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The staff of the DWP, who I think are effectively being attacked in that Question and by its implications, have really transformed the way that they approach this. With the work coach transformation they are tailoring requirements to the needs of individuals, following a thorough discussion with them on what their needs are in order to get them to play an economic part in this country.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, despite my years of trying to persuade the Department of Work and Pensions to recognise the severity of CFS/ME, is the Minister aware of how utterly demoralised people who have to undergo assessments feel if they are not believed? Even when the derogatory assessment has been overturned by a tribunal, it takes them months and months to regain their self-esteem. Can the Minister please get this matter in hand once and for all?

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Countess for that question. We have been working on this issue with her and her group for some years now, and I am under the impression that we have made a lot of progress on ensuring that the illness is thoroughly recognised.

Work Capability Assessments

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

It is a delight to hear from the noble Lord. We do not have a managed economy of the kind that he may be suggesting. We had talks with Nissan with a very good outcome: Nissan took the decision to go on investing. Clearly, a lot of discussion is going on with the steel industry in this country, given that until recently, steel in the western world was under severe pressure.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that if the scheme is to be a success, work capability assessments must accurately reflect people’s ability to work? In many cases of people I deal with who have fluctuating conditions, assessments do not reflect the ability to work. What are the Minister and the Government doing to improve the situation?

[Lord Freud]

We inherited the work capability assessment, and we have now put it through five independent reviews and developed it considerably. The point at issue in the Green Paper is whether we should combine the assessment of financial need with that of the support that the person needs. That is the main focus of the Green Paper.

Universal Credit

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The marginal rate—the rate at which one withdraws benefit—is 65%. In practice, among the incentive effects are that all the constraints about taking temporary jobs or trying part-time jobs have disappeared, as have some of the constraints against people who may be disabled with fluctuating conditions. They would not normally dare take on a job because if their condition came back, they would have to restart the process of getting on benefits. Because universal credit is both an out-of-work and in-work benefit, it means that there is no risk element to being in work.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will no doubt have seen and heard increasing criticism of tax credits as a way of supporting profit-making companies which should be paying proper wages to their staff but are bad employers. What are Her Majesty’s Government doing to reduce the number of people claiming tax credits and incentivise employers to pay proper wages to their staff, so that they do not need to claim tax credits?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, it is a bad day to answer that question. The real point is that as we move from the combination of the benefit and tax credit systems into one universal credit system, the incentives will be restructured to encourage people to work their way down the taper.

Personal Independence Payments

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The two processes, for PIP and for DLA—or rather, for the WCA, which I imagine is what the noble Baroness meant—are separate, and separate contractors operate them. Indeed, Maximus has come in to run the WCA process. As for the figures, statistics will be released next week, on 18 March, giving the PIP clearance times and the waiting outstanding times. That statistical release has been preannounced, in accordance with the normal protocols.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, I express my thanks to the Minister for the excellent revision that was made of the training manual for CFS/ME. What checks are made of the assessors to ensure that they are not bringing their preconceived ideas about CFS/ME to the assessment that they make of people with that condition?

[Lord Freud]

This is an area into which we have looked very closely, helped by the noble Countess. We have an audit system for all of these tests whereby we test that they are being conducted to the quality that we require.

Work Capability Assessment

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The important thing about doing these assessments is that someone assesses correctly in terms of capability of performing functions and capability of working; that is, what people are able to do. As I said earlier, we have more specialist professional support going into the system to make sure that those assessments are done accurately.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, is there any foundation to the report in the Independent last week that some 6,000 people with diseases such as Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and severe CFS/ME have been put into the work-related activity group? If that is the case, how many of those people have been got into work? What is the point of putting them in the WRAG if they are not going to get better?

[Lord Freud]

Clearly, I am not able to respond on specific people going into specific places. The whole point of the assessments is to focus on functional capability or needs at the point of assessment.

Employment: New Jobs

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Monday 27th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we have a widely spread recovery, which is touching all the regions, as I said. To pick up a point that I may not have dealt with adequately, these are full-time jobs. More full-time jobs have been created over the past year than total jobs; in other words, we are reducing very slightly the number of part-time jobs, if that is the full-time equivalent. This is a widely spread recovery of jobs—long-term jobs, female jobs, regional jobs, young jobs. This is good news.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, would the Minister care to comment on the report in today’s press that British apprenticeships are being advertised in Romania?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I cannot control where people advertise anything.

Housing: Underoccupancy Charge

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Monday 18th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, there is a misunderstanding here about the nature of the provision of a lot of social housing. Some 61% of people in social housing are single: they are not the families envisaged. Those are the people, by and large, who are affected by the removal of the spare room subsidy. We are looking at that very closely indeed.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister say what protection there is for the frail elderly, perhaps living on their own, or the sick or disabled, who do not know their way around the system and do not understand that they can appeal against any decisions that are made?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I emphasise absolutely that this policy deliberately excludes those who are retired—pensioners. The reason for that is that it is very tough to ask older people to make the kind of changes that are possible for younger people to make, so it is in that sense a flow measure. We are trying to get people to move down to appropriately sized homes—if they cannot afford to stay in their larger homes—when they are capable of doing so.

Mesothelioma Bill [HL]

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I have addressed it and was simply taking the opportunity to pick up a few points from the Minister’s opening statement, with which I think he was trying to be helpful in setting the scene for this. I was also trying to be helpful by saying what our position is on that. It seems to me that that is my responsibility at this Dispatch Box on behalf of the Opposition. We have tabled an amendment, so we can pick that up in due course. The key thing for us is whether the levy rate will be reduced at the end of that four-year period or whether it can be maintained at its opening level. Obviously that will have beneficial implications for the rate of payments in due course, but perhaps we will come to that on some of our later amendments. However, I support the amendment moved by the Government.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, perhaps I may quickly touch on some of those issues. The point raised by my noble friend Lord Avebury will be dealt with in the third group of amendments, but, as he shrewdly spotted, the figure of 75% comes out at £75 million of costs.

[The Countess of Mar]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister but would he please address his amendments and not the bits between?

[Lord Freud]

I have very little to say because very few points have been raised about the amendments, but I do want to make one point. I was asked whether the review needed primary legislation and I said that it did not. I confirm that it can be done in regulations, as I was fairly sure it could.

I would not call any Member of this House ungrateful. I have genuinely always gained an awful lot from noble Lords when we go through these really complicated matters, whether in relation to the Welfare Reform Bill or the Mesothelioma Bill. In this case, in Committee I gained an awful lot from what people were telling me and I did my very best to act on that. That said, and with the intention of satisfying the noble Countess, Lady Mar, I hope that noble Lords will agree the amendment.

Universal Credit

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

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

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

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

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Lords Chamber

[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

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Monday 23rd January 2012 Lords Chamber

[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

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[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 ---

[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

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

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

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Monday 14th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am very sympathetic to that point. The trouble is that when I and my colleagues—and, I am sure, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and the opposite side of the Chamber when it was in power—try to make positive stories, it is terribly hard to get any coverage at all. That is the trouble. The press is very hard to use in this way. I could use some emollient language here. I am genuinely concerned at the difficulties that we have as a department in getting a balanced view. Journalists tend to write unbalanced stories. I am conscious of and very concerned about that. I take it and I will try to get some counterspin, if you like, working. I think you are absolutely right that we are in danger of seeing the position of disabled people undermined by the media coverage and it behoves us to try to get that rebalanced. I accept the commission, if that is what it is, and will try to do something about it.

[The Countess of Mar]

Perhaps the Minister can put out some publicity about the very few people who claim this benefit fraudulently—it is less than 1 per cent, I believe.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the real trouble with the benefit is that it has been so loosely applied that it is impossible to take it fraudulently. I exaggerate slightly to make the point but that is the reason. The last time it was looked at in detail—I think it was 2004-05; I am plucking figures slightly from memory—I think there were overpayments of around £630 million and underpayments of around £250 million or £270 million. I am ahead of my team. It was around that figure. It was not because people were being fraudulent, it was just because it was no longer the right rate and you could not tell whether it had not been the right rate the day before or the day after. Fraud is not the issue with the DLA. The issue is the looseness of its application.

[The Countess of Mar]

The press go to town on people who are living in nice bungalows in Spain on their DLA. Yet, the very fact that it is loose is not the fault of the people who have been claiming the benefit but those who are administering it.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I cannot agree more. It has not been properly delivered. It has not been a proper gateway. It needs a new benefit and that is what we are trying to introduce.

Let me just get those figures correctly for you— it is £600 million overpayment and £190 million underpayment. I, like the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, am as concerned about the underpayment as the overpayment.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Freud]

I feel drawn to say, in response to the noble Baroness, that I was very happy with how the amendments were grouped, because it allowed me to deal with a complicated set of issues in their entirety. When amendments are degrouped you very often find that you are arguing one thing at one time and then miss a key part of your argument and have to repeat it. So I would plead with the noble Baroness to accept that at least I was very happy with how it was done and that we got through a very difficult set of issues—I know how difficult they are—in reasonable order.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (The Countess of Mar)]

My Lords, if I could offer some guidance, the groupings are informal and noble Lords are perfectly at liberty to decouple amendments if they are not happy.

Jobseeker’s Allowance (Mandatory Work Activity Scheme) Regulations 2011

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify the objectives of the mandatory work activity scheme and to explain further how the scheme will operate.

Before I go into that, I want to say that the department takes the concerns raised by this House very seriously. The concerns raised here and by the Merits Committee tell the ministerial team in the department that something has gone wrong. I am aware that this is not the first time in this Session that the department’s instruments have been called to the attention of this House, and we find that very serious. The full ministerial team is in agreement that providing the Merits Committee and the House with all the necessary information is of central importance, and we all regret—I particularly regret—any occasion when the Committee felt it received inadequate information. We are working hard to improve on this. We have arranged for senior officials to meet with the committee’s advisers this week in order to take a serious look at how we are falling down, and they will work with the committee team to ensure that the House is in future supplied with all necessary information. I can assure noble Lords that I am going to make sure that there is a process in the department that makes sure that the right information goes to the committee. This will not continue in this way.

Let me now offer some assurances about this particular instrument. The mandatory work activity scheme represents a new approach. I understand why some noble Lords feel that we should have conducted a pilot before introducing the scheme nationwide. Such an approach may have been the norm in the past, but there has been a change of philosophy in this area. The problem with small, limited pilots is that in the mean time they leave you with a moribund system. Central to the new philosophy of the department is that it is best to provide the freedom to allow initiatives to flourish into success. That is what the structure of the work programme is designed to do. It provides our own staff with the freedom to innovate. Advisers are given greater flexibility to make decisions on what help an individual needs in order to find work. It is one of a range of available support options that can be considered.

The budget is set by a central contracting process, but it will up to Jobcentre Plus to decide whether to use it and in what numbers. It will depend on whether there are claimants in a particular Jobcentre Plus area whose characteristics suggest that they would benefit from this intervention. Contracted providers will not be paid for places we do not use, so there is no incentive to use places that customers do not need. My noble friend Lord Kirkwood’s maths on his calculator is more or less spot on. We have the money for up to 19,000 places costing £8 million, which on the calculation of my team in the Box comes to £421. That is close enough to my noble friend’s answer of £423. How he got that discrepancy suggests that it is obviously a Hewlett Packard calculator.

It is important to recognise that we are not undertaking this work without assessing its place in the wider picture. We intend to learn from how mandatory work activity is used and what impact it has on the customers who are referred to it. I shall come back to precisely how we plan to report to the House on that.

I should also like to take this opportunity to address some of the other concerns that have been raised in the debate. It is vital to recognise that this support was asked for specifically by Jobcentre Plus personal advisers themselves. After all, they are the people best placed to understand what help those struggling to find work really need. During the summer, ministerial colleagues went out, listened and gathered opinions from Jobcentre Plus advisers. The consistent message was that they wanted a tool like this to engage a particular group of people. So the introduction of the mandatory work activity programme has been driven by the grass roots. The programme is aimed at a particular, rather small group of people who have become disengaged and stuck in a rut in their search for work. By getting them involved in mandatory work activity within their local communities, the aim is to give them the confidence they need to approach finding employment proactively as well as the basic disciplines that any employer would expect.

The noble Lord, Lord Rix, was particularly concerned about people with learning disabilities. We aim to replicate all the existing protections in referring people. JCP advisers are not looking for customers in this group. Equally, I shall pick up the concerns of the noble Countess, Lady Mar. Customers in poor health are absolutely not the target group for this scheme, which is aimed at those whose key barriers to work are the disciplines of employment. We know that every customer’s circumstances are different. As much as possible, we are giving discretion to Jobcentre Plus advisers on when to refer customers to mandatory work activity.

Although we are not being prescriptive, we are providing guidance to JCP so that it can provide a framework and achieve continuity of approach across the country. The guidance will indicate the type of characteristics that we expect claimants who benefit from this provision to display. As a department, we are choosing to trust those who have day-to-day experience of working with jobseekers. They are, after all, the people who are asking for greater freedom in how to help customers.

The noble Lord, Lord Rix, was concerned about the complaints procedure. A clear, independent complaints procedure exists through the independent case examiner. If providers are at fault, a hefty fine will be attached. The noble Countess, Lady Mar, expressed concern about trickery and quoted from an article in the Guardian. I can assure her that there are no targets in place to deliver sanctions, either in JCP or among providers. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, was concerned about costs. We have taken on board the recommendation of the SSAC that we pay childcare costs. Lack of suitable childcare is good cause for failing to attend. Therefore, there would be no sanction. We also pay transport costs under the programme. More detailed guidance will be available to JCP advisers. The guidance will be internal for them, so it would not make much sense to publish it.

We have now completed the procurement process and are able to discuss the suggestions of those who participate in the scheme. That may be helpful in clarifying how mandatory work activity will help customers as they look for employment. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said that research shows that workfare is not effective. We must make it clear that this is not workfare; it is a short, supportive and personalised programme. That is why flexibility is built into it. The noble Baroness said that that can be looked at in two ways, but the intention here, given the brevity of the programme, is to be supportive.

We have not asked contracted providers to give us details of every placement, but, as an example, several organisations have suggested that they will place people with charities that renovate old furniture to be used in social housing or by low-income families. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, spoke of benefiting the community. Examples of placements include improving local green spaces, improving community cohesion by working with excluded groups, maintaining cultural spaces and helping the development of social enterprises. Our aim is not only to provide visible benefit for local communities but also to give people the chance to develop skills that they can take forward when looking for work in the future. Most importantly, they will be expected to turn up for work every day for four weeks. They will be expected to work with their colleagues and to complete tasks that they have been set in a timely way.

In response to the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about placement monitoring, we will monitor placements through direct relationships with providers. It is clear in the contracts that placements must not replace current or future employees. We are seeking in this programme to instil essential work disciplines. Research with employers has consistently shown that they value such characteristics highly. A short experience of the workplace can help that development.

My noble friends Lady Thomas and Lord Kirkwood were concerned that there was no indication about how we would operate good cause. We will explicitly include good cause in the guidance in a similar way to that in other regulations. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, was concerned about there being no appeal for mandation. The decision to refer is an administrative decision subject to judicial review if it is unreasonable.

I thank noble Lords for allowing me this opportunity to try to explain these regulations more than we seem to have done to the Merits Committee. I hope that I provided some enlightenment. I recognise that some noble Lords hold deep concerns and I respect and acknowledge those. But in response to those concerns, I assure noble Lords that as well as monitoring the management information generated by the scheme from day one, we will be conducting an impact assessment in November 2012 to assess how mandatory work activity has changed outcomes for individuals.

On top of that, we have set aside £150,000 to conduct external independent research in February 2012 to learn about the experience that customers have while on the scheme, and the difference that it makes to the approach that customers take on their job searches. That will report in summer 2012. Any decisions about the future of the scheme will be based on the outcome of those reports. In order to ensure that the House has the opportunity for further scrutiny of any future changes, I commit that these reports will be laid before the House and noble Lords will be alerted that that has occurred allowing for further debate at that time. I hope that those offers are satisfactory and I urge noble Lords not to press their Motions.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Freud, for going to so much trouble, and I have no doubt about his sincerity. I doubt that any noble Lord in this House is completely against these regulations. We agree that some people need to be offered the discipline of work. But we are not happy about the sanctions and the noble Lord has made no effort to justify these draconian sanctions—they are very severe.

I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part. I will not go through their speeches individually because I know that everybody is hungry and will want to go to dinner. I am not satisfied despite the Minister's efforts that he has filled in all the gaps. We have a statutory instrument before us that is not clear and I wish to test the feeling of the House.

Employment and Support Allowance (Limited Capability for Work and Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity) (Amendment) Regulations 2011

Debate between Countess of Mar and Lord Freud

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Countess of Mar]

The noble Lord said that the department worked with disability groups. Why have those groups unanimously dissociated themselves from the internal report?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am pleased to answer that question. I am rather surprised by the actions of the groups. I have seen a lot of correspondence and a lot of internal work. There was very full engagement by both sides, and a lot of correspondence about fine-tuning the regulations. At the end of the process there seemed to be real agreement. Therefore I am genuinely surprised that, after the passage of some months, the consensus seems to have been significantly eroded. Income elements may have come to the fore, whereas the technical analysis that was the subject of the interplay between the department and the groups was perhaps easier to get to grips with.

I will go back to describing the system. The wider system that we inherited, after the measures that the internal reviews described, contained flaws that we as a new Government have looked to put right as quickly as possible. In June we launched the first of the five annual independent reviews of the work capability assessment—the first of the reviews that this House legislated for. It was carried out by Professor Malcolm Harrington, a highly respected occupational physician. He reported last November. He did not consider that the work capability assessment was broken but felt that it was not working as well as it should and made a series of recommendations to improve its fairness and effectiveness. We have fully endorsed his review, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, pointed out, and we have committed to implementing his recommendations as quickly as possible.

The first key element of those recommendations—I am borrowing, again, from the description of the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas—is that we empower Jobcentre Plus decision-makers to make the right decision. They will have clear responsibility for the decisions they make and will be given the support that they need to ensure that those decisions are independent and considered. I hope that that is one of the reassurances for which the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, was looking.

The second recommendation is to ensure that individuals are treated with compassion by clearly explaining everything to them, helping them to fully understand the process they will go through and ensuring that they know that they can provide additional evidence, including medical evidence, for consideration at any time. I hope that that is the second of the reassurances for which the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, was looking.

The third major change is to improve the transparency of the Atos assessment by ensuring the audio recording of assessments in the Atos pilot. The other element involving the Atos process is that we will account for the particular difficulties in assessing mental health conditions by ensuring that Atos employs “mental health champions” at every centre.

Nearly all these changes will be in place for the start of the reassessment, with the remainder completed in time for the summer. We have also appointed Professor Harrington to conduct the second independent review. He will now examine the assessment in more detail, particularly focusing on mental health descriptors and fluctuating conditions.

I shall now respond to the questions of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, on fluctuating conditions. The fact that conditions fluctuate is now embedded in the descriptors. We just want to make sure in this next piece of work that we get that absolutely right. We look forward to Professor Harrington’s recommendations following the second review in due course.

The regulations before us today are part of this improvement process. They come from the internal review undertaken and fully supported by the previous Government. That review suggested a number of changes to clarify and improve the technical descriptors; noble Lords have made these points so I will go through them quickly. The changes include placing individuals awaiting or between courses of chemotherapy in the support group; expanding the support group to cover people with certain communication problems and severe disability due to mental health conditions; greater provision for individuals who are in residential rehabilitation due to drug or alcohol misuse; ensuring the descriptors take account of someone’s adaptation to a condition or disability; and simplifying the language of the descriptors to ensure fair, consistent and transparent applications. These changes will improve the work capability assessment. They will increase the number of people with severe disabilities who are provided with unconditional support in the support group. They will ensure that we do not deny employment support to individuals who, with our help, can get back to work.

The internal review consulted a range of experts and groups and, as I described just now, tried to reach consensus. Significant concerns were expressed by the groups around the descriptors. I will not go into those because I am short of time, but I can respond to the noble Countess, Lady Mar, on fluctuating conditions. It must be possible for all the descriptors to be completed reliably, repeatedly and safely, otherwise the individual is considered unable to complete the activity.

The Department for Work and Pensions has undertaken rigorous testing of these changes to understand their effects. The department modelled the impact of the changes on data from almost 60,000 assessments, and a panel of experts was brought together to examine the changes in significant detail. Where any issues were identified during this process, further refinements were made to the descriptors. From this analysis we expect the changes to increase the number of new claimants who are put in the support group, specifically, those who are awaiting or are between courses of chemotherapy, and some whose limited capability relates to certain mental functions and communication difficulties.

I have run out of time, but I hope that the House will indulge me for two more minutes as this is really important. We are committed to the principle of continuous review and refinement of the work capability assessment. As part of that principle, we have reviewed in detail the working of the work capability assessment and consulted in depth with specialist disability groups to improve the assessment. The addendum to the original report shows how far such concerns were taken on board in these regulations. We are committed to taking Professor Harrington’s review to improve the sensitivity of the process. Of the 17 recommendations that he made, we will have 15 in place in time for April and the other two in a couple of months. I hope that that is a final reassurance for the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and the noble Countess, Lady Mar.

The changes that we are making in the regulations will improve the work capability assessment. They will expand the support group to cover people with severe disability due to mental health conditions and communication problems. They will ensure that the descriptors take account of someone’s adaptation to a condition or disability and accepting these regulations means that we can make these important improvements now. We remain committed to the principle of continuous improvement to the work capability assessment. I trust that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, will feel able to withdraw his Prayer to Annul these important regulations.