Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

I want to speak briefly to the amendments in the order in which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, raised them. First, I enter a note of reservation about Amendment 51FZB. I do so not out of a lack of concern for disable people but out of a concern not to red-line, identify them, or subject them to special treatment unless that is appropriate. We all understand that many jobseekers who are put on to the work search programmes may find life more difficult because they are disabled—that is not in question. The issue is whether the sanction, or the potential for one, in the event of misconduct—I refer to the high-level sanctions in Clause 26 rather than those in Clause 27—should ever be neglected. If a disabled participant on this programme were to reply to the department, “You can think again Charlie if you think I’m going to take that … job”, I am not sure that they should be treated differently from anyone in that position who happened not to have a disability.

On the other hand, if the disability were germane or material to explanations offered as to his inability to comply with the requirements in the section, it would be entirely unreasonable of the Minister or his decision-maker not to have regard to that. It might well be sensible to take the advice of a disability employment adviser, but I do not believe that we should create an artificial distinction about disabled people if the nature of their conduct is not related, or could be said not to be related, to their disability.

As regards Amendments 51ZC and 51FZD, I will rest on the Minister’s explanation for the periods he has chosen. As regards Amendment 51FB, I shall share with the Committee my view, expressed not for the first time, that I am not a particular fan of sanctions regimes. However, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for admitting that there is a case for them and that they are necessary to support a conditionality regime, particularly where people are disinclined to undertake work, work experience or work preparation. We should not put too much by it and it will be interesting to hear the Minister’s response on how much this should be conditioned or targeted. At the back of my mind is the awful memory of the press reports in the first days of the Child Support Agency, alleging that the staff cheered when some delinquent absent parent had been identified. I am not sure that that is the right way to approach this issue; I believe that sanctions are better conducted more in sorrow than in anger, if I may put it that way.

I have one further question for the Minister. Before I ask it, though, perhaps I should say that, with respect to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, there might be a slight technical defect in the way that he has presented his Amendment 51FB; it bears on Clause 27 but it should bear also on Clause 26, unless there is some distinction in principle, and I shall comment on that. It would be helpful, for the benefit of those of us who have not been quite as assiduous as we should have been in attending the Committee, if the Minister could explain the difference between the two sanctions regimes in Clauses 26 and 27.

One further point is prompted by the fact that I know that, as I speak, our right honourable friend the Home Secretary is making a Statement and answering questions in another place on gangs and youth violence. We have recently had some press reports that there are to be further sanctions by way of withdrawing benefit from people who are behaving delinquently, whether by rioting or otherwise. I do not want to raise the question on that matter; I just seek this in clarification. I take it from my reading of these sanctions that these are specifically about the work programme and the conditionality thereon, and any such sanctions that the Government may decide upon would have to be delivered through another vehicle and either by additions to the Bill at some stage or by a separate piece of legislation. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that.

Essentially I am seeking clarification on some of the issues, expressing concern—as we feel our way through this Committee, which is our duty—about exactly how they would operate and a wish that we should at least not be unaware of any bigger and more major initiatives that may be coming down the track, although perhaps not on this particular set of clauses.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

Is there a disability employment adviser in every Jobcentre Plus office? What training do disability employment advisers have? If the Minister does not know the answer now, which I am sure he does not—it is rather a detailed question—could he possibly write to me? A lot of us are concerned that disability employment advisers may not be quite as boned up as we think they should be on all sorts of conditions. I say that having been at a Jobcentre Plus office where I had to tell a disability employment adviser that the person in front of him had rheumatoid arthritis, when they were not an English speaker and they were describing their symptoms, and he had never heard of the condition. That rather shocked me, so I would be grateful for that information.

[The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells]

My Lords, I enter the debate with a little trepidation. Like other Members of this Committee, I am sure, a number of letters have been sent to me and various cases put. I have had a particularly heart-rending one, running to several pages as so often these letters do, from someone who has fairly severe mental disabilities, according to the letter, and who has responsibilities at the same time, it seems, for a disabled mother. My understanding of the principle of conditionality at the moment in relation to unemployment benefit is that she could be penalised under this process. I would like some assurance that where severe disability is in place, as it were, we will be sure to safeguard the well-being of such people and that they should not be penalised in these circumstances.

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[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I would like to add to the questions that we will be showering the Minister with on this issue. We are dealing with the issues of caring and what recognition there is in the benefits system for that, of work conditionality—which, from what I have heard, worries me very much, so we will certainly be returning to that—and of disregard.

As the Minister will be more aware than all of us, at the moment if you do not care for one single person for more than 36 hours a week you do not get carer’s allowance. This could mean that you are caring for two people, each for 25 hours a week—his mum and your dad, for example—making 50 hours a week, but you are not entitled to carer’s allowance. At the moment, therefore, if you do not have a husband’s income to float you off it, you are probably on income support and you will indeed get the £20 disregard. As I understand it, and perhaps the Minister can confirm my worst fears, that person, who might be in their 50s and caring for 50 hours a week as a single person, would have full conditionality applied to them because they were not getting the carer’s allowance so they would be expected to work 30 hours plus, on top of the 50 hours’ care. On top of that, they would not get any earnings disregard. Will the Minister confirm that that scenario is possible?

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 52BD in this group, about disabled claimants. If the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, thought that her brief was complex, this is pretty complex too. At the moment, if a disabled person is in work they can claim the disability element of working tax credit if they fulfil two tests: a work disadvantage test and the benefit test. The work disadvantage test includes many criteria, but one of the most common ways to qualify is if you are unable to work full-time because of a health condition or impairment. You also have to fulfil the benefit test if you receive DLA or attendance allowance or you have been receiving sickness benefit for at least the previous six months.

There are other qualifying criteria that would take all afternoon to go through for both the work disadvantage test and the benefit test. An example of the work disadvantage test criteria is that you cannot extend your arm sufficiently to shake hands with another person without difficulty, which sounded rather French to me. Suffice to say that the criteria for qualifying for the disability element can be complex but probably covers a lot of disabled working people.

Under the universal credit, many disabled people will not receive extra help because the gateway to extra support is through the work capability assessment. So someone will not qualify for the disability disregard if they have been found fit for work. For disabled people who are already in work, a new test will be designed and we are hoping that that new test will have some lower criteria in it.

Some of the criteria for the work disadvantage test look similar to the criteria for the WCA, but it is unclear what the qualifying criteria will be for this test for disablement under the universal credit, as I have said. If everyone else is giving examples, I might give the example of someone who might benefit now from extra help but might not qualify in future. I am afraid I have not given her a name but she is a person with MS who can walk up to 100 metres but gets tired very quickly and is unable to cook a meal for herself. She may now qualify for DLA lower-rate care and might also receive the disability element of working tax credit, if she were able to work only part-time because of fatigue levels. This person probably will not qualify for the personal independence payment, although until we see the new criteria, which we were told would be available at the end of October, we cannot tell. This person probably will not qualify for any more help under the universal credit than a person who is not disabled.

Another of the worrying things about the loss of this extra help for many disabled people under universal credit is the passporting factor used by local authorities for travel passes, leisure passes and so on, so disabled people may lose out on a much wider scale than may at first seem apparent. I look forward to hearing what my noble friend has to tell us about that.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I support some of the concerns that have already been raised by other noble Lords. I am not clear about the logic of ending the provision for adding disregards if a claimant falls within two categories, both of which qualify for a disregard. As I have always understood disregards, the idea is that they compensate for the costs that a claimant faces, whether those costs arise from being a lone parent, being disabled or whatever. I am sure that the Minister has a rationale for the measure but it is difficult to think what it could be. Is he going to provide a disregard for the disability side, the lone parent side or some other side? Why provide it for this bit rather than that bit? Why not provide the disregard for both sets of additional costs? It would be interesting to hear his rationale for this measure.

Given that the Government want to make swingeing cuts to the welfare bill, I completely understand that two-earner households are not a priority from that perspective. However, going back to the Government’s commitment to having incentives to work, this is another example of a part of this legislation running completely counter to that aim. I know that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but as I understand it the second earner will have almost no incentive to work, particularly if they have children, as they will not have the earnings disregard but they will have to pay the 30 per cent or so costs of childcare. This will almost certainly be the case if they have children. Therefore, it would be helpful if the Minister agreed with me that this is a bit of a problem in terms of incentives to work or explained the rationale behind the measure.

Regarding people with mental health problems, I envisage—I think that the Minister agrees with this—that this group will lose overwhelmingly from the shift to the new system and the reassessments for ESA. Rafts of these people will come off ESA and on to JSA with the result that, even with a disability, they will not receive any disability support because they will be on JSA. Yet people with mental health problems can have additional costs in order to go to work that others might not have. For example, somebody with severe anxiety might have to have someone accompany them on their journey to and from work, although they may be able to sit there and do the job when they get there. However, if they get no financial support at all for their disability—I understand that that is what the system sets out—how will these people have an incentive to work? They will have to pay for this support out of their tiny pockets.

The other point about people with mental health problems is that many of them can manage only a limited number of hours of work and need to build up their hours slowly. I do not know how this will work. The structure of the universal benefit is very good in this regard and should make life easier for people—at least in theory, if the two computer systems of the DWP and HMRC manage to bond together as they are supposed to do. However, the loss of disability support will cause problems in terms of incentives to work.

Sue Royston of Citizens Advice also provided me with the facts that were read out by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I will certainly not repeat them but I would find it helpful if the Minister could confirm for me how the two tapers of the universal credit on the one hand and the council tax benefit on the other will work together. Perhaps he has already done that when I was not here, as I have not always been here due to other commitments. I still hope that he will ultimately find a way to bring council tax benefit within universal credit, as it is such an important issue.

I am sorry to be a bore and raise this again, but it would make such a difference for so many people. If not, it seems to me that claimants working a few hours and building their employment up slowly will be dogged by a terrible complexity and lack of clarity not that dissimilar to what they have suffered in the past. That would be a great pity.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Perhaps I may ask a couple more questions. I think that the Minister said that the figure I used of 50,000 was wrong because the only people who would lose out are those working between two and five hours at the national minimum wage. However, it is exactly those sorts of people who are carers and who will be doing quite small numbers of hours: the six-to-eight shift, if you like. Even though it is a small number of people, it would be interesting to know whether there was an impact assessment of the effect on carers and whether it showed how they would be affected.

I have two other points. One is about the figure of £4 billion, which gets used a lot. The disregards will not necessarily cost the Government money; if they are encouraging people into work, those people will quite quickly start paying tax and NI—not immediately but fairly quickly—and they will quickly pay for themselves. I realise that that will not happen at the moment as there is rather a lot of unemployment because of the Government’s policies, but we will not go there. Normally, though, the incentive is to get people into work, so that will soon begin to pay itself off.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

May I interrupt the noble Baroness at this point? I would like to ask my noble friend about the new test that is going to be devised for those disabled people in work. I do not think that he answered that. I apologise for interrupting the noble Baroness, but before she withdraws the amendment I would like to know whether he has any news or wants to write to me afterwards.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My second point is that the question that was not asked is why there is no additional amount of disregard for disabled people to take account of the council tax issues. I presume that the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, will speak, but if those extra points could be referred to it would be helpful.