Welfare Reform Bill Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateBaroness Thomas of Winchester
Main Page: Baroness Thomas of Winchester (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Thomas of Winchester's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(13 years, 1 month ago)
Grand CommitteeMy Lords, the wording of my amendment is taken straight from Statutory Instrument 2678, the Social Security Benefit (Computation of Earnings) Regulations 2009, with the additions of subsections 10 and 11. The reason I have copied the wording of this SI will become clear in a moment.
Old welfare reform hands may find my speech strangely familiar because I have been on this particular soap box since 2006. The amendment is about the way benefits are treated for service user involvement, specifically the unresolved problem of those disabled people on benefits who help with NHS research, public health research and social care research. The unresolved problem is the impact on their benefits of out-of-pocket expenses and, possibly, a small emolument paid by the organising body. Disabled people are asked to take part in research studies in these fields not just as subjects but as active partners in the research process. For many severely disabled people, this activity is the most important thing that they do, as they are uniquely placed to take part and they know that their participation may lead to better outcomes, both in the immediate future and for future generations.
Plans set out in the health Bill require clinical commissioning groups to base decision-making on evidence-based research. However, unless the universal credit rule on the treatment of certain reimbursed expenses as earnings is amended and the application of the notional earnings rule is removed, disabled people on benefits will continue to be prevented from offering their assistance. Research in health and social care will be used to commission our future healthcare but, as matters stand, two nonsensical bits of red tape in the benefits system will prevent the involvement of many patients. The two obstructive benefit rules were designed for employment and are entirely inappropriate for involvement. The first is the treatment of reimbursed expenses for involvement in research.
At this point, I should define what I mean by research. I am not talking about patients who are entered into clinical trials as part of their treatment. I am talking about those who, in the words of the relevant HMRC circular, are,
“invited to attend meetings to give their views on various matters to inform the research process and direction”.
Where people are paid a small fee for their help with this research and their expenses are reimbursed by the organising body, both amounts are totalled and treated as earnings. Where the total is above the benefit-earnings disregard, the excess is deducted from their benefits. This is because, as I said, the reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses is treated as earnings. People may end up with less money the following week or with no money at all for living costs for several weeks. If this happens, they promptly and understandably withdraw their help.
My Lords, I will look at it, but I am not sure I need to study it very hard. As I understand it, the fear of that individual is that if they earn too much money they get taken off their benefit structure entirely. Because they are earning too much, they are outside the disability benefit structure and they must therefore get on another one and they then have a terrible problem. That does not apply under the universal credit. The worst that could happen is that the universal credit goes down in the period, reflecting the emolument, but they are better off overall. That acute fear of being left stranded goes. In that particular case, and many others like it, the desperate cliff-edge position which currently exists is not there under universal credit.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for his support, as does my noble friend Lady Wilkins. I would like to take up my noble friend’s offer of a meeting before the Bill reaches the next stage, because we were told specifically by the officials of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, when he was Minister, that they could not extend this to bona fide NHS research—nothing to do with commercial interests—unless there was a peg in legislation on which to hang the regulations. I therefore do not accept my noble friend’s statement that everything can be done by regulations, because we found that this particular matter could not be done. We are not talking about people who can get a job; we are talking about severely disabled people, who are a million miles from the job market, but they have specific conditions which are needed for vital research. I hope this can be sorted out before the Bill goes any further. We need this peg, and it is not too late to put it in this Bill. I will take up the offer of a meeting, which I have done on many occasions when I have withdrawn this sort of amendment—and, of course, it finally bore fruit.
We do not need a legislative peg in primary legislation to make changes here. That was a reference to NHS legislation. How we define and work through the different types of income is something which we are going to do in regulation. I can assure my noble friend that, although this is something which is slightly complicated to do, it does not have the desperate urgency that requires it to be done in the next couple of weeks.
I am caught between two pieces of advice: one is that we do need legislation and one is that we do not. I am somewhat conflicted, and I would like to get this sorted out before Third Reading. We have been told that for the rules that I read out from the statutory instrument, there was a peg on which to hang it, and that is why they were there. We were told that because there is nothing for NHS research we could not extend it. I shall withdraw the amendment now, but hope that we can resolve this before Third Reading, if not Report.
Could the noble Lord arrange to send us copies of the earlier advice, because there is some confusion and I am not clear in my mind?
My Lords, I will have an early meeting with my noble friend on this, and we will take it from there. Subject to that meeting, I will provide that particular advice, otherwise we may go round the houses on this very technical matter. I hope it is one we can resolve pretty fast, with a letter.