Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

7: Clause 46, page 25, line 7, at end insert—
“(c) the grounds on which such sanctions may be terminated, prior to the period specified in paragraph (b), including the compliance of the claimant to such conditions as may be imposed.”

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, this amendment seeks clarification on the issue of what the Minister called “the prodigal son” when he referred to it in earlier discussions. I think that takes government paternalism perhaps a little too far. It relates to the situation of a jobseeker who has received a three-year sanction for a failure to comply with the requirements imposed by this legislation and the circumstances in which that sanction may be removed. This is important because in order to change behaviour, which we know is one of the great motivators behind the Bill, there really must be some carrots as well as sticks.

The three-year sanction is the stick, but the carrot has to be that people who start co-operating and fulfilling the work-search conditions should be able to work towards lifting that sanction. Their behaviour may well change because something in their own life has changed—the death of a parent they were looking after; the birth of a child; a marriage or a break-up; dealing with their own substance misuse; or simply, maybe late in life, growing up—or it may change as a result of the three-year sanction. For whatever reason, it must be possible for the sanction to be lifted, and this amendment requires that the grounds on which the sanction could be lifted should, first, be prescribed in regulations and, secondly, should include the claimant’s compliance with the work-search conditions.

On Report, the Minister told us that he had accepted this principle on ending the sanction and we very much welcomed his words on that. He said that it was,

“a lot better than where we were”.—[Official Report, 14/12/11; col. 1387.]

However, he also said that the department had decided that the proof of the prodigal son’s return was to be in work for six months. Of course, it partly depends on the definition of work, to which my noble friend has just alluded—going for just one hour a week is probably not what the Minister had in mind—so regulations will have to deal with that. Whatever the definition is going to be, we think it means that at that point the sanction will be removed. However, without our amendment, we are not absolutely clear that the three-year sanction can be lifted before the three years are up. It appeared so from the Minister’s words at Report but perhaps he could clarify that the Bill allows not just for a lower sanction to be set at the beginning but for the lifting of a sanction before its end. Clause 27(5)(a) allows for the lifting of the other sanctions but the Bill appears to be silent on the lifting of these higher sanctions.

However, assuming that the Bill does allow for such higher-level sanctions to be ended early, we nevertheless do not believe that having to be in work for a full six months is the right hurdle. First, it gives very little incentive for the claimant to engage with the jobcentre and to meet the conditions set, which would help that person to find employment through all that will be offered by Jobcentre Plus or other providers. Secondly, it would mean that the possibility of having the sanction lifted will depend not only on factors within the claimant’s own control, such as looking for work, but on factors well outside his or her control such as local and indeed national economic conditions.

I do not need to remind the House that there are 5.8 unemployed people looking for every job. A claimant who happens to be one of the 4.8 unlucky ones who, despite everything they do to try to find a job, cannot get work—perhaps because they live in Merthyr Tydfil, which I think was the example given on Report—will continue to receive a sanction through no fault of their own. This turns the sanctions regime into a punishment for previous failures rather than a useful tool to encourage engagement with the jobcentre and the work programme providers.

Our amendment leaves the exact formula for compliance open to regulations, as we know the noble Lord will listen to arguments made in the drawing-up of those, and it will give the Minister and his department a chance to think through the best way to ensure that the sanctions regime provides suitable incentives to engage with the system rather than cutting people off altogether. One obvious suggestion might be to lift the sanction after a period of compliance with the work-search conditions, but the detail could be left to the department as it also struggles with the definition of work.

Without our amendment, the Bill risks driving people further from the labour market rather than moving them towards work by engaging with the process and fulfilling the work-search criteria. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will be able to accept the amendment. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, under this construct, they will have to do the six months to wipe off the sanctions. Let us not forget that the sanctions that we are talking about do not involve the full amount of support but the equivalent of the JSA—£63-odd. There will be a very strong incentive on that person to take absolutely anything to fill in the rest of the time.

As I said, this is a very interesting area of deterrence and compliance and how we influence behaviour, which is exactly why I wanted to have the powers to pilot all these things. This is our starting point. Noble Lords have influenced us into making the lift at the six-month level, and it is clearly our best view today on what the reasonable balance is. No one can know yet as we have not done the live testing, but we will do it and we will be able to look at this and get the balance absolutely right. It might need to be milder, it might need to be tougher, but noble Lords will appreciate that if we pilot and test and look at these things in the way that I am describing, we will start to get answers on what works and move away from some of the rather more excited commentary and pressures from some of the media in this area. It could be of great interest to noble Lords if we start to move this into a social science area where we know the answer as opposed to an area where everyone has an opinion.

With those thoughts, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for passing the test on the regulations—obviously I knew; I was just testing him—and finding that out, which I had obviously failed to do.

As I said earlier, we welcome the fact that the Government have undoubtedly accepted that the three-year sanctions need to be lifted in certain circumstances. However, questions remain, some of which could be dealt with in regulations. For example, people need to know what the carrot is and what they have to do to get sanctions lifted. There is still the problem of defining work, particularly for someone who has childcare responsibilities and the job offer simply does not fit in with their responsibilities.

I am sure the Minister did not mean this, but I also worry about the idea of an incentive to take anything that is offered. Would that not allow certain rogue employers to exploit people on benefits because they know that if there are sanctions they can offer pretty thankless and underpaid jobs? Similarly, I also worry about people leaving a job. There is the problem of the strength of an employer, but those worries are by the by. The biggest thing to say about this is that the idea that you have to get a job to come off sanctions, even if you live in an area where there are simply no jobs available, remains a problem. However, I welcome the Minister’s commitment to pilot and test this. If it proved to be a big stumbling block, I assume that he could come back with regulations to allow for that. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 7 withdrawn.