Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I support my noble friend in his amendments. Timely and efficient appeals systems are always necessary and in these circumstances they are essential. The social security appeals system is under strain and that strain will be intensified as a result of what claimants will now be experiencing. What are those difficulties? The number of social security cases going to tribunals in general were 418,000 in 2010-11, 70% higher than just two years previously, while, as far as I can tell, this year’s statistics are up a further 14% or so, and appeals against sanctions as such are only a modest proportion of these.

Social security appeals represent half of all tribunal cases. The tribunals are receiving social security cases faster than they can clear them, so that although half of all cases take 14 weeks or less, one-quarter take between three and six months to be heard and 10% take between six months and a year, so only half of those cases meet the key performance indicator, the KPI, of 16 weeks laid down by the department. During that time—that extra long waiting period already experienced—claimants’ circumstances change, they lose oral evidence based on memory and above all they are left without any benefit, some of them for months, and suffer real hardship. Timeliness and efficiency, therefore, are key.

We need the Government to tell us what problems they will meet in unleashing the stockpile of sanctions cases into a system already under strain, with the inevitable appeals that will follow, and how they propose to resolve them. How many cases are currently outstanding? Do the Government have the capacity to increase sitting days beyond the 80,000 or so required at the moment to deal with the full backlog? How long does the Minister expect claimants to have to wait? How many, and what percentage, will be over the three-month KPI target?

The second issue is not about numbers but about verdicts and outcomes. Of those cases going to appeal, some 40% overall are won by the claimant. Former presidents’ reports on this are, frankly, an excoriating indictment of the DWP decision-making process and their findings over the years are confirmed by the recent November 2012 report analysing appeals. The main reason why appellants win is that they produce additional oral evidence not previously taken into account by DWP. However, the reports and the research have noted that tribunal judges were continually frustrated by the behaviour of decision-makers within DWP. In the latest statistics, about one-third of local decisions on sanctions were reconsidered by the decision-maker and, of those, half were in favour of the claimant. Of those not accepted by the decision-maker, just over one-third are going on to tribunal.

Why are those tribunal judges so continuously frustrated by decision-makers’ efforts within DWP? First, we are told by tribunal judges that decision-makers choose not to accept additional, usually oral, evidence without having any good reason for refusing it. That is because they have often failed properly to engage with the claimant. Something like 65% of all appeals come into this category. Secondly, there is little evidence that decision-makers reconsider cases at all. They were, the report said, reluctant to do so and did not bother to explore any discrepancies in evidence or to follow up requests for further information.

Thirdly, decision-makers did not weigh medical evidence at all appropriately, especially for mental health claimants, nor did they seek further information when dealing with a progressive condition. That applied to something like 15% of the appeals that went to tribunal. Most damning of all, they often made different decisions from the tribunal decision-makers on the basis of the same evidence presented to the tribunal, which meant that decision-makers got it wrong, according to law, in 30% of the cases lost by DWP. In other words, had the decision-makers within DWP done their job properly, these reports suggest that DWP would either not have had the appeal because the decision-maker would have rightly reversed the original decision, or at appeal the DWP would have won most of the appeals that it lost because the tribunals would have accepted that all the appropriate evidence had been properly assessed. That is a pretty searing judgment of the current system.

What are the implications for those caught by this Bill? The problem is clearly threefold. First, local offices are making flawed decisions, including on sanctions, and that is before we get on to the disgraceful area of targets. Secondly, decision-makers are not doing a proper job reviewing those local office decisions and are endorsing flawed decisions that they should have corrected. Thirdly, the tribunal service cannot keep up with the increased number of appeals coming its way. Of course, this will get far worse now that legal advice and support are withdrawn and, as a result and as we shall argue later, tribunal cases will take twice as long to process.

Will the Minister reduce the pressure on tribunals and better support claimants by requiring decision-makers to do a more conscientious review of the original decisions? It is clear that at the moment too many of them are not doing a professional job—bluntly, they need to brought face to face with the evidence. Are decision-makers informed of the tribunal’s findings and is their performance reviewed when their decisions are overturned by the tribunal? Could that perhaps be a KPI? What guidance and additional training will be made available to decision-makers to improve their performance? If the Minister is going to review any targets, could we please have a new performance indicator, a really useful target that reduces the number of successful appeals by claimants from the current 40% or so down to, say, 20% or even 15%? That would really transform decision-makers’ behaviour.

Given the trivial basis for sanctioning claimants uncovered by the Guardian, many of whom we can expect to appeal, thus increasing the backlog before eventually being overturned at appeal, as many of them will be, will the Minister ensure that cases going to appeal are pre-reviewed and re-reviewed by decision-makers to improve their own poor-quality decision-making? Will he also ensure that the number of tribunal sitting days is appropriately increased to meet the target of within 16 weeks, so that they are timely, and that—I am trespassing into a following amendment—sufficient advice is given to claimants, as my noble friend Lord Bach will argue, to reduce the number of unsuccessful appeals, given the delays? I hope that the Minister will be able to answer these questions and those of my noble friend tonight and in the process perhaps allay our very real concern for these claimants who are going to be caught up in an appeal system that is increasingly flawed and failing.

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

My Lords, the purpose of these amendments is to ensure that the reconsiderations and appeals arising from decisions relating to sanctions that are dealt with by the Bill are considered in a timely and efficient manner, and that appeals take into consideration the delay between the failure to participate and the issuing of the sanction.

I am happy to give a commitment to the House that DWP will process the stockpiled cases, and any reconsiderations and appeals that follow, in a timely manner. It is not in the department’s interest to procrastinate on these cases any longer than necessary. I also note that the department is already required by Article 6 of the ECHR to deal with social security disputes in a reasonable time, while the First-tier and Upper Tribunals are also bound to deal with appeals in a fair and efficient manner. When the Bill receives Royal Assent, I assure noble Lords that processing the stockpiled cases, including any appeals and reconsiderations, will be given a high priority. Purely from a business perspective, DWP will want to unwind these cases and any follow-up activity as quickly as possible so that it can utilise its resource in dealing with more current claims.

The associated amendment seeks to ensure that when the First-tier Tribunals and the Upper Tribunals are determining an appeal against a sanction decision issued in reliance on the provisions in the Bill, they have regard to the circumstances around the Reilly/Wilson case, particularly any delay resulting from the case. I understand, given the noble Lord’s statement at Second Reading, that he is concerned that, because there may have been longer than usual between the failure to participate and the issuing of a sanction, the claimant will be unable either to remember or to provide evidence of any good cause they had for the failure.

I will spend a moment describing the process that happens between a claimant failing to participate and the issuing of a sanction. When a claimant gets referred to a DWP decision-maker for a sanction decision, a letter is sent asking them to provide evidence of good cause. The letter says:

“Will you please contact me before”—

and then a date is inserted—

“to explain why you did not undertake this activity. You should note that unless you provide a good reason for not undertaking this activity, your benefit may be affected”.

So the stockpiled cases would, at the time of the failure, already have been asked once to provide good cause. The fact that we did not deal with these cases immediately will not have prevented these claimants from providing evidence of good cause at the time of the failure. The decision-makers will have all this evidence on the stockpiled cases already, so the risk that they have been unfairly treated is significantly minimised.

I know that not all claimants will have provided their evidence of good cause the first time they were asked for it, although this is of course entirely their fault. However, I reassure noble Lords that in these cases, where a claimant is attempting to argue that they had a good reason for a failure that occurred many months ago, decision-makers and First-tier Tribunals will make an objective decision based on the evidence before them. They would of course take into consideration any claimant’s argument that they had good cause, but that they cannot provide evidence because of the length of time since the failure. It would be up to those hearing the appeals to judge on a case-by-case basis whether they thought this argument was strong enough.

I also note that this amendment only seeks to ensure that the appeal, and neither the decision to issue the sanction nor the reconsideration, takes into account any time delay caused by the Reilly/Wilson case. I assume that this was not the intention of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. There is this oversight, and claimants in the stockpile would at the time have been asked for evidence of good cause. The tribunal is also already bound to have regard to all relevant matters.

Picking up the issues raised by the noble Lord and the noble Baroness on national insurance credits, prior to the changes to the jobseeker’s allowance sanctions regime from 22 October last year, national insurance credits were paid during the period of the sanction. National insurance credits are not paid when the benefit is sanctioned on or after 22 October. The Bill does not change these arrangements. The payment or not of national insurance credits with respect to stockpiled sanction decisions will therefore depend—

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[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I support the amendment of my noble friend. I have to declare a sort of interest as a former Minister responsible in the DWP for the tribunal services before Leggatt centralised them. As a result, I would visit tribunals and, five minutes into the hearing, I could tell whether the claimant had or had not received legal advice and support or welfare advice and support before entering the appeal. Those who had presented a coherent account with the appropriate accompanying papers and evidence, were prepared for the questions asked of them. It kept the process simple and straightforward, and the cases that I saw took on average about 40 minutes to complete. In each case, the decision, usually up to half the time in favour of the claimant, was the right one.

Then there was the other sort of case that came to tribunal, people who came with their sheaf of papers in a carrier bag, which they shuffled through without any advice, unaware of what it was that the tribunal needed to know and what would count as relevant evidence. I recall one man, Indian or Pakistani, who was there with his wife; his eyes never left the floor, and he sat hunched over as he tried to explain in poor English and a low, faltering voice, why he was appealing against a refusal of DLA—and he could not. The superb chair, who we now call a judge, spent nearly two hours trying compassionately to coax his story and evidence out of him in some sort of order. It took more than twice as long as the previous case, and his appeal was upheld.

What lessons may we draw from the situation in which there is no prior legal help or support for advice? Social security decision-makers, as we argued on the previous amendment, frequently fail to review decisions properly. Unless the claimant is savvy enough to put his case in ways that fit guidance on reconsideration, we end up with an unnecessary tribunal case, and the tribunals handling such cases clear, as a result, two or three cases a day instead of five or six. I plead with the Minister to learn from this. I do not know whether he has sat in on any social security tribunals, but he would quickly see which claimants had had prior advice and which had not. Remove the advice and the need does not go away; it is merely displaced to the very much more expensive and time-consuming stage of the tribunal itself. Instead of advice being given in advance, the whole untangling of that mess has to be done by the tribunal judge in person. That seems to me key. The need does not go away; all you are doing is transferring it to the most expensive and laborious way of addressing it.

Legal advice, which we are told we cannot afford, is not a luxury; in my view, it is essential because social security is complex and most claimants, by definition, are probably poorly educated, not especially articulate, confused about what they are due and need help at the early stages. They are aggrieved. However, as my noble friend Lord Bach said, early advice may discourage people from pursuing unfunded and unfounded cases. Legal advice also helps ensure greater consistency and a common approach across regions. We are getting a lot of research evidence suggesting the unevenness of responses from decision-makers and tribunals trying their best to produce the consistency that local offices are not.

The Minister knows that we are seriously worried about what will happen when existing claimants are brought on to UC, which I very much want to work. I fear that the tribunal system will be completely overwhelmed unless there is legal aid and welfare advice available at the preliminary stage to screen out weak cases and to put into good order appropriate cases for the tribunal; otherwise, I believe that the system will buckle.

We are therefore deeply worried about the situation of claimants under the Bill who will not know what their rights are and whether the proposed sanction is valid. In some cases, they may have been stalled for many months. They do not have fresh evidence to bring to bear and can no longer rely on their memory to give a coherent account of what happened when. Did they have good cause? At the preliminary stage, legal or welfare rights advisers can perhaps help them find out, track hospital or school records, organise paperwork and explain to the claimant what will happen, why he has lost his benefit and whether the case against him is soundly based. If that welfare rights officer or the legal advice is not there to do that, the tribunal judge will have to, as I have seen with my own eyes. Can that individual stop the sanction? Is it possible for him to comply? Jobcentre staff cannot or will not now give that advice, especially given the evidence about targets. Claimants need the supportive, friendly, neutral, professional, cheap advice from outside the system. However, of course all this hinges on whether the department wants people to get the right benefits and the right outcome. Does it?

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, is it not the case that every Government of the United Kingdom since 1948 have been committed to the principles and values articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Is it not also the case that Article 7 declares that all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law? If the Government deny legal aid in these cases, will they not repudiate that historic and fundamental commitment?

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[Lord Freud]

Perhaps I may make absolutely clear the point about the numbers. There was a lot of comment from noble Lords opposite that the system would be overwhelmed by the numbers because people did not have legal advice and the system could not therefore cope. The point I am making is that that argument does not stand in the light of the rather small number of cases—between 1,500 and 2,000—that might come towards the First-tier Tribunal as a result of the Bill.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

If I may intervene, approximately 500,000 sanctions were issued last year. Something like 3,500 or 4,000 of those cases went to appeal. That was last year, before this additional provision hits them. The Minister may wish to reconsider his statistics.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, perhaps I may go back for a moment to the hiatus caused by the Court of Appeal decision. It means that those who stood to have the protection of the law as it stood at the time that they were sanctioned or due to be sanctioned will, if the Minister is right, no longer have that protection, merely because of the passage of time and because something has intervened that is absolutely no fault of theirs, but is, I am afraid, the fault of the Government. That seems to be against any British sense of fair play. I beg to test the opinion of the House.

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[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I will address Amendments 4, 5, 5A and 6 together. The purpose of these amendments is to place in the Bill detailed requirements for the independent report set out in Clause 2.

I should be clear that Clause 2 provides for an independent review of the operation of provisions relating to the imposition of sanctions which would, without this legislation, be unlawful. The amendments could be seen to imply a much wider review; it is not a full review of the operation of sanctions, although clearly there could be wider relevance. At least one of the things covered in the amendment is not within the scope of the Bill: paragraph (d) asks about the number of penalties imposed upon claimants in receipt of employment and support allowance. I can answer that today, as the Bill is only concerned with JSA claimants.

The Government are happy to consider a wide range of areas for the review, but it would be unhelpful to lock down the terms of that review at this stage. Despite my earlier comments, the amendments list a number of areas the review could usefully consider. I am happy to confirm what I said on Thursday, and give a commitment that we will discuss further with the Opposition the scope of the review. Within that process, we can look at the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on provision for outsiders.

Amendment 5A would ensure that the independent reviewer makes an assessment of the extent to which senior managers in Jobcentre Plus have used targets in the operation of sanctions. This amendment is completely unnecessary. There are no targets for sanction referrals. The Government have made a point of removing the vast majority of targets within Jobcentre Plus. It is regrettable that loose drafting of an internal e-mail suggested otherwise. If noble Lords look at sanctions, there is no clear trend in the proportion of the caseload who receives them. Prior to 2007, the rate was running at around 4%; since then it has fluctuated between 3% and 5%. There is not the clear trend in the growth of sanctions which some people have been claiming.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I do not doubt the Minister’s honesty and integrity in his statements about targets at all. However, the staff clearly do not believe him. It is clear from the evidence that we have seen—the leaked e-mails and all sorts of other examples coming to Members of Parliament and so on—that the staff in local offices believe, because they are told by their managers, that they have to increase the number of sanctions. In the e-mail, the manager of the particular jobcentre was criticised and told that she would be subject to first-stage disciplinary hearings because that office was something like 93rd out of 101 in sanction production; they should have been producing something like 25 a week and were only producing four or six a week. Therefore: “Guys, we should raise our game”.

The e-mail was not loosely drafted. It was very precisely drafted; we have all seen copies of it. That e-mail, from someone senior in the office to their staff, made it very clear that if they did not increase a number of sanctions, they, too, would be involved in a disciplinary process. That is believed by those staff and by staff across the country. I do not doubt the Minister’s word, or that he does not intend that to be the case. What is he going to do, therefore, to ensure that local offices no longer behave in this way?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, let me make very clear the difference between having targets, having business or management information, and doing something with that information. Clearly, you collect these data not just to answer parliamentary questions but to run the business. It is used to look at where there are outliers and peculiarities, and what the norms are. When a particular jobcentre may be well outside the norm on either side, you might want to ask it why that was the case. Was it justifiable, and what were the dynamics of that? In some cases you are clearly looking at particular parts of the operation that are not operating in line with the norms. That is not having a target culture. A target culture—as the noble Lords opposite will know, because they were running one in many parts of the public services—is where you incentivise and drive performance based on particular targets. We do not do that. We do not have targets. We do, however, have management information and, as I say, we need to understand why outliers exist.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, will the Minister explain why this senior staff member—the manager of the office—told the staff underneath her that unless they increased the number of sanctions she would be subject to the first stage of a disciplinary procedure, and that that, in turn, would mean that she would have to discipline them? How does he explain that?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am not going to pick up a particular case because I do not have the detail on it. It would not be appropriate for me to hazard a guess on what was behind a particular e-mail or a particular concern.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I hear what the Minister has said, and he is held in high regard across the House. In view of what my noble friend Lady Hollis has said, will he therefore initiate an investigation into how this memo came about? Will he come back to the House to explain what action the Government are taking on this? Somebody is clearly acting against government policy, and it should be stopped.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Will the Minister also, therefore, ensure that all DWP local offices receive the same information—that this is to be deplored?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I must repeat what I have just said. Clearly, we have internal management information. It is vital that we keep it, and we publish a lot of it. We need to understand why some areas, some jobcentres, have higher rates than others and why some have lower rates. Some may have very good reasons for having lower or higher rates, while others may not. We therefore need this information to correct the anomalies, and that is normal business practice. It may be that in particular cases a jobcentre manager is told, “You are running very high or very low figures, and you cannot justify the reason for that, so you need to get more into line”. It may happen. I have not got the particular details.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

In that case, what is the difference between coming more into line and targets?

[Lord Freud]

The noble Lords opposite know exactly how targets operate because they operated a target regime. Targets are when people are incentivised to perform to particular figures.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

What if they are incentivised by the threat of being punished?

[Lord Freud]

They are usually incentivised to reach targets, and we do not run a target regime. The no-targets message has gone out repeatedly.

[Lord Freud]

The difference is that where someone is not performing in line with the rest of the business for no good reason—in other words, where there is nothing different in the underlying constituency of the business—they are not operating the business in line with the standards that we have. That is entirely different from having targets, because it is understood that no figures are going out with instructions to achieve something. The message that there are no targets goes out repeatedly to jobcentre managers; there has been a reminder from the Work Services Directorate that there are no targets; and we will investigate if people have misunderstood that approach.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, this is pivotal. This is Committee.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

It is Committee, but the Companion guides us by stating that, during any stages:

“Lengthy or frequent interventions should not be made, even with the consent of the member speaking”.

My noble friend is very tolerant and I know that he will keep responding to interventions. However, the hour is late and there have been several interventions.

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[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I should like to support my noble friend by saying that I am mortified about the additional numbers on the other side as the result of our strenuous debate. I thought that we might have persuaded a few more to abstain.

I hope that the Minister can agree to this amendment. There are three broad reasons why we need new guidance and clarity on the sanctions regime: the issue of targets/norms, good cause and compliance. The Joseph Rowntree research that came out in December 2010 shows that claimants have a low level of awareness of sanctions and that the more disadvantaged they are, the higher the risk of sanctions and the less knowledge they have about them. This applies to young claimants, those with a disability, those with a poor education, those with large families and those from an ethnic minority. The research shows that they are not out to flout the system but that they have poor information or non-intentional behaviour such as forgetfulness. In that context, I want us to support my noble friend’s amendment.

I turn first to the issue of targets. The Minister was at some pains to explain to us earlier that “targets” is a relevant word only where you are rewarding behaviour, but when you are punishing it, that is a “norm”. We know that if you exceed, you get a target, and that if you underachieve, that is a norm. It is clear that targets or norms, whatever we want to call them, are the enemy of mitigation. Using them to allow the Secretary of State to claim clean hands while the staff do the dirty work under pressure from above is completely unacceptable. We need clear evidence, guidance and clarity from the Minister on the sanctions regime to ensure that targets do not stand in the way of mitigation. If people are allowed to mitigate and sanctions numbers therefore reduce, so will the targets, and staff will obviously have an incentive to fail to ensure that claimants follow good procedure and appropriate behaviour because they themselves face disciplinary action. That is a moral, or immoral, position, into which they should not be put.

Secondly, we need this guidance to ensure that claimants are aware that they may be able to mitigate sanctions by establishing good cause. My noble friend gave the example of the lone parent unable to attend an interview. Every parent in this House has had a child who has been sick and they may have missed an interview as a result. There is no doctor’s evidence because, by the next day, the child is well. Certainly that happened to me on numerous occasions. However, in this new, suspicious, look-for-any-benefit-cutting-excuse, hunt-them-down culture, of course we all now assume that any lone parent will keep her child at home and away from school simply to avoid an inconvenient interview. She says that the child was poorly, but why believe her? As she can provide no evidence, the office has got her and another tick is put on the whiteboard.

The third reason for needing guidance on mitigation is that, as the courts have indicated, claimants need to know and have a right to know how they may end their sanction by complying with jobcentre requirements. This issue marks the crucial line as to whether we are using sanctions to reduce the benefit bill or whether we are using them to change behaviour. If it is the first, giving little information or hope for people to find their way back into the system, then the Minister risks creating a growing underclass without income, without much hope and without any help. But people, as Carlyle pointed out 150 years ago, will not starve quietly. Some may have families to help them, and they will be the relatively lucky ones. Some may beg, while others will cross the line into thieving, drug selling and semi-criminal behaviour. This is what the Rowntree trust warns us of. They will come to regard social security laws, in so far as they understand them, and increasingly other laws, as not applicable to them. We will all then pay a high price. If it is the second—that instead of simply trying to cut the benefit bill on any hook we can find, we want people to change their behaviour and sanctions are part of the tough love regime, as I believe they should be—then we absolutely must encourage people to end sanctions by complying with what they are expected to do. When they do so, we should rejoice, even though it means fewer ticks on the whiteboard of targets to be met.

Research evidence shows up that up to two-thirds of those sanctioned do not know the whys or wherefores, or what they can do about it. The Minister, whose integrity we totally respect, accepted at Second Reading that that was indeed the case and that therefore the issue of sanctions had to be revisited. If the issue has to be revisited, he should now accept my noble friend’s amendment, because it amplifies what he himself has already agreed. Mitigation means ending the culture of targets and, incidentally, protecting any whistleblowers in the process. It means ensuring that people have the help that they need to claim good cause where that exists and it ensures mitigation so that claimants will know how they can end the sanction by conforming to benefit requirements. I hope that all in this Committee agree on these three goals. In which case, I hope that the Minister will accept the amendment.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, this amendment, which would require the Secretary of State to issue guidance on the way in which claimants can mitigate any penalty imposed under the ESE or MWA regulations after the Act comes into force, is unnecessary, as this information is provided to claimants as a matter of standard practice. When a claimant is issued with a benefit sanction, they are as a matter of course sent a letter explaining the decision made and what effect it will have. The letter clearly tells claimants that if they want to appeal the decision, they should fill in leaflet GL24, If you think our Decision is Wrong, and that claimants can,

“get this leaflet from your Jobcentre or Social Security Office”.

Attached to the sanctions letter are two leaflets: leaflet 1NF1, on appealing against a decision and leaflet JSA9, the hardship leaflet). I have both of these leaflets with me today.

The leaflet on appealing against a decision explains in plain English who the claimant should contact if they want to know more about the decision or, if they think the decision was wrong, how to appeal it and what support they may get in formulating that appeal. The hardship leaflet explains what financial support is available, the eligibility criteria and how to apply for hardship, and provides the form they must fill in to claim hardship. The whole process is done as a matter of course and, indeed, is on the record and available for anyone to see how those leaflets work.

I turn to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, on recompliance. If a claimant has been issued with a 26-week sanction but has complied in the intervening period, they will be served with a four-week sanction. Recompliance is not particular to any scheme and can include participation in any other scheme. Of course, the sanctions regime has changed, so if the failure to participate was before 22 October last year, the old regime, which includes the re-engagement, applies. However, if the failure to participate is after 22 October, the current sanctions regime, which has no engagement and which builds up, will apply. That goes on the time of the failure to participate.

The noble Baroness was concerned about the time between the failure and the sanction being imposed on the stockpiled cases. I am sorry that I have not yet found a better word than stockpiled but it is for cases not people. As I said on an earlier amendment, the process of finding that information takes place immediately on the failure. They receive a letter and need to provide good cause at that point. Clearly, where there is a problem and there needs to be amplification, and there is a problem of information or evidence, the decision-maker will have to take that into account in the normal way, given that there is a gap and it is a justifiable lacuna.

As a matter of course, the cases that we have stockpiled will get issued with a sanction and receive the standard letter, and those accompanying leaflets that I outlined. This amendment is therefore superfluous and I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw it.