Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Lord Lansley and Baroness Meacher

Monday 25th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may intervene briefly to say a word about Amendment 42 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and Amendment 43 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Layard. In Committee, we discussed this briefly. While I have previously made it clear that I would seek to minimise those occasions on which we seek in statute to specify the circumstances in which people should access NHS treatment, that principally should be determined on a clinical basis. Past experience has demonstrated the value of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme in providing assistance to people with mental health and behavioural disorders, especially anxiety and depression. Your Lordships will know that the numbers who are in receipt of benefit and who are out of work by reason of those conditions has significantly increased over the last two decades. We need to respond to that.

The IAPT programme, which begun under the Labour Government before 2010, was continued and rolled out during the coalition Government after 2010. I stress that the importance of this will, I hope, give the Minister the opportunity to say that, while not accepting the letter of Amendment 43, the Government are sympathetic to the spirit of it. After 2012-14, there has been a 25% increase in the number of therapists providing psychological therapies through the National Health Service. That rollout is continuing. Health Education England anticipates that the increasing supply resulting from its commissions for training places for psychological therapists should arrive at the point whereby at 2017-18 the demand for such therapy is able to be matched by the supply of trained therapists. We have an opportunity, in the timeframe anticipated for the measures in the Bill, to make it more certain that somebody with anxiety and depression requiring access to therapies while signing on for benefits should be able to access that therapy. I hope that the Minister can give that positive response to these amendments.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I really was not expecting to speak today on this. We had asked that Amendment 43, on IAPT, be shifted and taken separately on Wednesday. The IAPT programme has now been going for 10 years: we had the first pilot in the mental health trust in east London 10 years ago. The point of that pilot, and of the whole programme, was to help the large numbers of people with mental health problems back into work. I remember talking to jobcentre staff and having great difficulty persuading them to refer people to the programme. Ten years on, we have so much evidence that if people with depression or anxiety receive good therapy quickly, they achieve remarkable results—far better results than any other that I am aware of in the psychological therapies. I stand here completely unprepared, save only to say to the Minister: please make use of what is an excellent programme on the whole—nothing is perfect everywhere, of course not—to help the 50% or so of unemployed people who desperately need precisely such help so that they can quickly get back to work. I make that big appeal to the Minister.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Lord Lansley and Baroness Meacher

Monday 21st December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley]

I understand the point that the noble Baroness is making, but I am afraid that I do not agree with it, for two reasons. The first is by virtue of the other measures that this Government are taking in relation to availability of childcare, the further extension of personal tax allowances and the increase in the national minimum wage, leading to a national living wage. All of these enable people who are in work to achieve more of a living income through being in work. The second and most important reason is that work in itself changes the character of a household; it changes the character of people’s lives. Frankly, in the long run, it changes people’s employability.

[Baroness Meacher]

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is making an incentives argument, which I accept completely. Does he accept that, when people are unable to work more or at all because they are carers or severely disabled, the incentive argument really falls down?

[Lord Lansley]

The point I was answering was in relation to people in work, so that is a slightly different point. In relation to that point, too, as the noble Baroness has brought it up, the structure of the benefit cap is designed to ensure that people who are in a support group under the employment and support allowance, those in receipt of personal independence payments, and so on—there are number of exceptions—are not covered by the benefit cap. Those households are not covered by the benefit cap. We are focused, to a large extent, on those who have a capability for work even if that capability may be restricted in some ways.

I did not complete the point I was making in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. Many years ago I was deputy director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce— and I do not think it has changed in the slightest—and I know that what matters to employers is that people have been in work and have all the attributes of somebody who has been in work. The longer one is out of work the less likely one is, as we know, to have those attributes. Therefore, the entry into work, even if it might not necessarily be the right job or be regarded as suitable or appropriate, will by its very nature make someone more likely to have those attributes necessary for work.

That is just one of the reasons why the benefit cap is needed. It is also needed because of a sense of the fairness between those who are in work and those who are not. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said there was a relationship with average earnings. That was true when the benefit cap was introduced, but to assert that it is some kind of mechanistic or scientific relationship is misleading. It is a judgment. A judgment was made, when there was previously no benefit cap to try and establish a benefit cap at a level that was regarded as fair.

I have to tell noble Lords—again coming from recent experience of fighting elections and being in the other place—that the public support the benefit cap. They regard it as still generous—too generous in many respects. When one looks at the relationship with those who are in work—the four in 10 households, broadly speaking, as was mentioned—who are not earning any more from their work than would be available through the benefit cap by the accumulation of benefits, they do not regard it as fair or reasonable for people to accumulate more by way of benefits than they are able to access by work.