Trade Union Bill

Debate between Lord McKenzie of Luton and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, rather than looking at the types of organisations that are covered, this amendment looks at the role of safety and learning reps. My noble friends Lord McKenzie of Luton and Lady Donaghy have put their names to it.

The role of safety and learning reps is probably unparalleled. Having worked a lot with trade unionists from other countries, I know one of the things that they have learned from us is how it has improved the workplace. The work these reps do benefits the whole organisation enormously. Our fear is that it will be at risk if these representatives are denied the time to undertake this work and to do it at a high standard.

There are some workplaces where safety representatives are particularly important, where there is heavy machinery is one, but also in hospitals where there are drugs, surgical equipment, radioactive equipment and very pointy needles often with nasty things on them, so safety is clearly particularly important. I shall take just one example which could affect any one of us. It is when firefighters come to our homes to put out fires. Safety is key to their lives, but it impacts on our property and often our lives. The Fire Brigades Union is a proud and active trade union, but it is also the professional voice of firefighters and has a key role in improving health and safety. It trains highly qualified serious accident investigators who work with fire authorities to investigate incidents where firefighters have been injured or killed in order to identify problems and implement improvements. Our fear is that any restriction on facility time for health and safety reps—that could be without even Clause 13, just that they are concerned about what it looks like on paper—could come at a very high price, particularly in safety-crucial industries, such as fire and rescue. Cuts in any such time could stop FBU reps investigating incidents thoroughly and consequently retraining or redesigning protocols.

The amendments in this group would exclude safety and learning reps from these provisions. Both contribute to the success of the relevant businesses as well as to the wider economy. I beg to move.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I shall speak to Amendments 87A, 89A and 89B, which are in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Donaghy, and in support of Amendments 79 and 80A to which we have added our names. Our focus in this contribution is health and safety and particularly the role of safety reps. I should make it clear that focusing just on that does not mean that we resile from the broader issues of representation and facility time which have been argued so effectively by my noble friends.

I came at this issue and learned about health and safety not through long active work in the trade union movement, like a lot of my noble friends, but as Minister for Health and Safety in the DWP under the tutelage, for a period, of my noble friend Lord Hain, who is not in his place. I understood from that the importance of partnership working, the role of the HSE and, in particular, the role of safety reps and the contribution they can make.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord McKenzie of Luton and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 10th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, this is by way of a serious probe to understand the Government’s plans and their progress on supporting individuals with drug and alcohol dependency. Clause 59 essentially removes the regime set out in the Welfare Reform Act 2009. Those involved in considering that legislation will recall that it ended up in a considerably better place than where it started. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who is not in her place, should be able to claim considerable credit for encouraging the Government of the day to move from where they were to where they ended up.

The thrust of those provisions involves requiring claimants in the JSA regime to take part in a substance-related assessment where there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that they have a drug dependency which affects their prospects of obtaining or remaining in work. The jobseeker’s agreement is suspended if the individual engages in a voluntary rehabilitation plan. Such a rehabilitation plan could involve submitting to treatment, possibly at a specified institution. In the event of somebody failing to engage in such a plan, a mandatory plan could be imposed, but the legislation is very clear that such a plan cannot require a person to submit to medical or surgical treatment. A similar regime is provided for in the legislation for people in the work-related activity group but not, of course, the support group. Perhaps the Minister can remind us what, if any, regulations to introduce these measures were eventually promulgated—none, I suspect.

The information pack provided with this Bill states:

“It is considered that provisions from the Welfare Reform Act 2009 are too narrowly focused, impractical and expensive. In December 2010 the Government published a Drugs Strategy outlining first steps to ensuring the benefit system supports effective engagement with recovery services, which is considered to be more successful than coercion. For these, existing powers can be utilised”.

Perhaps the Minister can set out for us how the first steps are progressing.

On the Government’s drugs strategy, page 23 says:

“The first step is to ensure that the benefit system supports engagement with recovery services. We will offer claimants who are dependent on drugs or alcohol a choice between rigorous enforcement of the normal conditions and sanctions where they are not engaged in structured recovery activity, or appropriately tailored conditionality for those that are. Over the longer term, we will explore building appropriate incentives into the universal credit system to encourage and reward treatment take-up. In practice, this means that those not in treatment will neither be specifically targeted with, nor excused from sanctions by virtue of their dependence, but will be expected to comply with the full requirements of the benefits regime or face the consequences. Where people are taking steps to address their dependence, they will be supported, and the requirements placed upon them will be appropriate to their personal circumstances and will provide them with the necessary time and space to focus on their recovery”.

Clearly, the availability of support services will be key to this approach. Perhaps the Minister can give us an assessment of what is currently provided and available. The provisions that are being removed from existing legislation contain powers to extend the application to alcohol. Perhaps the Minister can say what the Government have in mind for those with an alcohol dependency; what services are available and what assessment has been undertaken.

The 2010 drugs strategy also says:

“We will also look at amending legislation to make it clear that where someone is attending residential rehabilitation and would be eligible for out-of-work benefits, they will be deemed to have a reduced capability for employment and will therefore be automatically entitled to Employment and Support Allowance”.

Is this still the plan and where is the legislation that provides for that? Presumably entitlement would cease after 365 days, maybe earlier if the claimant has a partner with modest income or capital. Whatever the limitations of the 2009 legislation, it provided a range of protections for individuals: a substance-related assessment could only be conducted by an approved person; relief from certain tests if the claimant provided a permissible sample, but not an intimate sample; an absolute bar on having to submit to medical or surgical treatment; protections concerning supply of information; and protection in criminal proceedings in respect of information provided about drug use. How will these issues be addressed in the new arrangements?

I should also be clear that we share a common goal of supporting people to live a drug-free life. An opportunity to get and sustain a job is an integral part of helping to achieve this, but we are entitled to know and have on the record what the Government plan in this regard.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I will add a few more words on the 2010 drugs strategy. I very much welcome its view that the benefits system should support effective engagement with recovery services. It considers that this is more successful than coercion—a view that I strongly hold. As my noble friend said, the strategy covers all drug problems, including the severe misuse of alcohol. About 400,000 benefit claimants—about 8 per cent of all working-age claimants—are dependent on drugs or alcohol. I welcome the strategy of increasing the number of such claimants who engage with treatment and rehabilitation and go on to find employment.

I will ask a little more about the plan, quoted by my noble friend Lord McKenzie, about the choice between vigorous enforcement of the normal conditions and sanctions where claimants are not engaged in structured recovery activity, and appropriate tailored conditionality for those who are. How will that conditionality be decided?

My bigger question is: how can such claimants engage in structured recovery activity when the result of government cuts is that there are ever fewer agencies offering structured day programmes or any other form of treatment? I declare an interest as a trustee of Camden-based CASA. The noble Lord must pass it every day on his way back home. For 27 years CASA has provided in Camden a range of services for alcohol and drug misusers and their families.

Our dual diagnosis service for those with mental health and alcohol misuse problems has been ended. Our families service has been curtailed. Our older persons service has been halved. Our back to employment service has been closed. This month we had to shut our Camden day service centre in Fortess Road, which was well known, and sell the building. Many of our staff were made redundant and our premises were closed. That is the impact of the cuts on local government and other potential funders. My question to the Minister is not about the intention behind this, but about where people will get the services and the help that they need to be able to respond to the strategy. Furthermore, with the Government's withdrawal of 100 per cent of its grant to the National Agency on Alcohol Misuse—Alcohol Concern, as it is known—which I set up at the Government’s behest and with government money in 1984, who will help set up, co-ordinate and make known such services to the claimants who need them?

I would also like the Minister to tell us how those for whom structured recovery activities are appropriate will be identified. Also, how is structured recovery activity to be defined? I have been trying for 27 years to define it for our clients and have failed. I do not mean that as a joke: it is very difficult because it is a highly personalised service. I would be interested to know the Government's definition of structured recovery activity. We also know that the drug co-ordinators who were responsible for building the relationship between Jobcentre Plus and external agencies in the drugs field, such as treatment and probation services, have now been abolished. Who is expected to co-ordinate the work of Jobcentre Plus with the providers of these services in their local community?

The impact assessment for the drugs strategy states that:

“Employment support will be funded on an outcomes basis, using benefit savings freed up when people engaged with recovery services move into employment or full-time education”.

The assessment suggests that this funding provision will be delivered via the work programme. Will the Minister tell us what proportion of work programme providers are offering support with drug and alcohol issues, and how many people have accessed the support? Furthermore, as I hear that St Mungo’s and other voluntary agencies are receiving none of the anticipated referrals from the work programme, can the Minister outline where such services are being provided and where participants are being signposted to?

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord McKenzie of Luton and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 10th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Some of my comments will not be appreciated but I thank the Minister for his response. Clearly, I have not received the same response as did my noble friend Lady Lister. I will take it back and think about it. She does not know when she is ahead. However, I am afraid that I have to express some regret. A lot of us have done a lot of work in preparing for the Bill although I am sure that we have done much less than the Minister. I blame my noble friend Lady Sherlock in that when I asked her what I should do she advised me to read everything that was said in the Commons. I thank her for that. What I found again and again were promises from Ministers in the other House that by the time the Bill reached Committee stage there the relevant information would be available. Again and again I am afraid I read that our friends in the other place found that that was not the case. They nevertheless were given absolute assurances that the relevant information would be available before the Bill reached Committee stage in this place. To have something published today concerning a debate that is taking place today is simply not good enough. We cannot work that way; “before” ought to mean before. Anything that is relevant to what we are talking about should be with us in time to enable us to read it and think about it.

I welcome the remarks about our being involved in the debates about how this process is going to work. I think that those remarks were probably genuine. However, that means that we have to have the relevant information available, especially as we are trying to discuss the Bill without a wonderful array of staff to help us.

I also regret the remarks about ESA, maternity allowance and earnings. The women who will be getting this who have been in work may simply not qualify for a statutory payment because they have changed employers. However, they could well have been working full time before that. In that sense it is not a benefit but something that they earned and are entitled to. Therefore, to treat it as unearned income—as if a sugar daddy had given it to them—would not be the right approach. It has been earned, albeit in a different way.

Similarly, the Minister did not respond to the question of whether ESA affected the self-employed. They are another group of people who have paid contributions into a system. If they then discover that what they get when they are possibly very seriously ill with cancer is seen not as something that they have earned but something from a very kindly Government, that will not be the right way to ensure that people see the system as enabling them to get something for what they have put in, which is what many of us want. I am sorry about that and I hope that, even if the Minister does not respond orally now, he will think about those groups of people, and in particular about women whose circumstances may have changed and who may have moved to a better job. On the whole it is young women who get pregnant. They may be moving up in a career and may have moved to a different employer and therefore may not qualify.

I have two further brief points. We are obviously delighted about any monitoring and assessment. If there is to be no formal review, I will have to accept that that is the best way of doing it. Nevertheless, it would be very nice if the Minister or his successor will bring those reports to the House, where they can be debated in the same way as we are able to now.

Finally, I accept that the Minister may not want to set a target rate for a taper. He said that perhaps 65 per cent was too high but that a future Government could perhaps do something about it. I look forward to sitting next to my noble friend Lord McKenzie when he is the Minister in a future Government—

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

Do not wish that on me.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

—and can announce a different taper rate. With those comments, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.