Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Lord McKenzie of Luton Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, since Committee I have spoken to a number of people with learning disabilities about their aspirations for work. I want to remind noble Lords that the proportion of people with learning disabilities in paid employment has remained stubbornly low, at around 7% of people known to social services. Most people that I have spoken to—and I think most people with learning disabilities—want to work. They do not want to be assessed to be in the support group. They really want help to find work. But the truth is that the vast majority of people with learning disabilities have never worked: back-to-work support is not what they need. Nor do they need a massive cut to their income, which will further marginalise and isolate them. Will the Minister specify exactly what evidence-based support is being planned for this group and how and where it will be delivered? It seems that personalised support in looking for suitable jobs and making written applications—recognising the low literacy levels among people with learning disabilities—and ongoing support to ensure they succeed in work in the longer term, might help a number of people to increase their chances. But will the Minister also acknowledge that people with learning disabilities will be particularly badly affected by a drop in income, given the difficulties they often have with financial management and making the most of a limited income? This group of people is going to be so adversely affected by this change that I feel the need to emphasise again and again that this policy has not been thought through for this group particularly and will affect it really badly.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)]

My Lords, we have added our names to Amendments 41 and 44. Yet again, we have heard compelling arguments why Clauses 13 and 14 should be removed from the Bill.

I should say, compelling arguments bar one—I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that if we pass these amendments today it is not tantamount to leaving things as they are. The task from now on in is to do something the Government have genuinely started to do: to look at and tackle the barriers that disabled people face when they are trying to get into work. Surely that should continue and accelerate if the closing of the disability employment gap is to be achieved. I think the noble Lord said it was axiomatic that the bigger the gap between income in work and income out of work, the bigger the incentive. If the noble Lord thinks about it, if you took that argument to its logical conclusion, you would not have any benefits at all, and that cannot be right.

The noble Lord, Lord Low, took us through some of the detail of the report: the hardship that these changes would cause; that somehow recouping the benefit by a few hours’ work simply is not practical for people who have been assessed as not fit for work; and the need to tackle the barriers to work, which was a strong strand of that report. The noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, made a very strong point when she said that we are doing this the wrong way round: we are cutting the benefit without addressing the issues that need to be addressed to help people into work.

The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, reminded us that 50% of people with a mental health condition are in the WRAG. She raised the issue of people with progressive conditions—how on earth can we expect such individuals to access work? My noble friend Lady Lister, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Thomas, focused on the impact of Clause 14 and some of the extremely disagreeable consequences that could flow for people in work under universal credit. As has been said, that simply cannot be what the Government intended.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans reminded us that the disability employment gap is a stubborn one and we need to address it not in a generic way but in an individual, focused way. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, gave us just a glimpse of what the cuts to ESA will mean for people, pointing out that the extra expenses for disabled people are rising and are not effectively covered by DLA and PIP. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, focused on those people whom it has been particularly difficult to help into work—those with learning disabilities. These are fundamental parts of the analysis that underpins why these amendments are so important and why we should not allow these provisions to stay in the Bill.

Of course, the arguments have come not only from noble Lords today and in Committee but from a range of organisations that work day in, day out, with the very disabled people whom these clauses will hurt. Since Committee we have had more time to absorb the report, Halving the Gap, produced by the noble Lord, Lord Low, together with the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Grey-Thompson, which reviewed the Government’s proposals. The report could not have been clearer in concluding that,

“there is no relevant evidence setting out a convincing case that the ESA WRAG payment acts as a financial disincentive to claimants moving towards work, or that reducing the payment would incentivise people to seek work”.

Indeed, as we have heard, there are concerns that reducing the WRAG component would have the opposite effect and push people further away from the labour market. This is why we support Amendments 41 and 44. Frankly, we do not take lightly the prospect of removing whole sections of proposed legislation, but it would be no more significant than the effect these clauses will have on hundreds and thousands of disabled people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I will contribute briefly to this debate in support of the amendment. The issue here is that we are in a very different benefits culture from the one we had maybe until 2010—I am not sure when exactly. The point is that the claimant commitment is the basis for sanctioning. If a parent fails to comply with a claimant commitment, that is when they will be sanctioned. If the claimant commitment is completely unrealistic and the parent cannot comply with it—for example, if it requires the parent to travel 90 minutes each way and they manage to have childcare for only five or six hours a day, or whatever it is—it will be physically impossible for them to satisfy that claimant commitment.

We know, certainly from the Fawcett Society inquiry I was involved with, that there is quite a need for training for these staff. That of course goes back for as long as I have ever been involved with welfare matters, which is probably some 40 years. Staff are very poorly paid, they tend to be rather inadequately trained and there is always a rapid turnover of staff, so you always have new staff who are trying to learn the rules, and so on. So this claimant commitment takes on a far greater significance in this day and age than it would have done 30 or 40 years ago.

That is why I ask the Government to take this very seriously. They need to accept that they have low-paid staff, a rapid turnover, poor training, and therefore that sanctions happen utterly inappropriately. The claimant commitments are wildly unrealistic in the experience of the inquiry I was involved with, which is very dangerous for the children. The parent goes along on a Friday to pick up their benefit and is told, “Oh, sorry”—or probably not even “sorry”—“your benefit has been stopped”. Is there any supper for the children? No, sorry, no food in the house—and so on. It is very serious for children affected by sanctions following the claimant commitment. That is why, although this sounds like a fairly innocuous amendment, believe me, it is very important.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I agree wholeheartedly with this amendment. It would be difficult to do otherwise because, as my noble friend reminded us, I moved a parallel amendment to what became the Welfare Reform Act 2009 when we were in government. When one looks back at legislation one has been responsible for there is always a moment of trepidation, but we are on safe ground in this case. Those were the days when the noble Lords, Lord Skelmersdale and Lord Northbourne, were heavily involved in our debates. Having said that—and I underline the importance that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has placed on this amendment—it is slightly disconcerting to understand that one’s labours at the Dispatch Box all those years ago have lain dormant and fallow, so I press the Minister to say why it has not been introduced.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Manzoor, seeks to set into primary legislation a requirement for the Secretary of State, when preparing a claimant commitment, to have regard to the impact on any child affected by it. I fully support the principle that requirements should be adjusted according to individuals’ personal circumstances, including the well-being of any children for whom the claimant is responsible. However, this amendment proposes to unnecessarily prescribe the contents of the claimant commitment in the Welfare Reform Act 2012. During discussions with individuals, work coaches already take into account all the personal circumstances relevant to both claimant and child when agreeing work-related activities. We continually review the operation of the claimant commitment and will act on anything we find that can be improved. Claimants can request a review of their claimant commitment if they have concerns.

On the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about Section 31 of the 2009 Act, it applies to JSA and ESA, not universal credit. As part of the claimant commitment, parents can input into the contents of the commitment within universal credit.

We are very clear about the importance of our responsibilities with regard to the well-being of children. Regulations 98 and 99 cover the circumstances in which all or some requirements should be suspended for a temporary period, which includes circumstances in which a parent has to spend time caring for a child in distress or if they are in the kind of situation which the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about. The number of hours a claimant is expected to spend carrying out work-related activity is also tailored so as to be compatible with the claimant’s individual childcare responsibilities.

These reasonable requirements, including any limiting or lifting and the reasons for this, are recorded within the claimant commitment. The amendment does not specify that it applies to the responsible care of a child; it refers to “any child”, which would make it extremely difficult to determine which children are being referred to other than those within the claimant’s responsibility. This would make it difficult for jobcentres to effectively administer.

The key principle of the claimant commitment is that we treat people as individuals and tailor their requirements accordingly. We have chosen not to prescribe in legislation what a claimant commitment should take account of in order that we can reflect all the possible circumstances people can present with. It would be too prescriptive to single out one element—the well-being of a child—and legislate that claimant commitments must contain this information. It would not be practical to prescribe everything a claimant commitment should contain—we want to take account of a broad range of circumstances.

We know that developing a skilled workforce is key to realising the flexibilities that we have built into the legislative framework of universal credit. We want to empower our work coaches to use this broad discretion to make sound decisions that are right for the individual in front of them. As the noble Baroness said, I talked at length about the work under way to invest in learning and development of our front-line staff, including the work coach delivery model and accreditation. I did that because I wanted to stress the importance we place on making sure that work coaches are trained and that they use their discretion to the benefit of the families they work with. I emphasised that element because I wanted to stress to noble Lords that we take that very seriously.

Existing legislation already enables us to take account of the well-being of children when setting a claimant commitment; it is something that work coaches routinely do. Therefore we do not believe that it is necessary to set out this level of detail in primary legislation. I hope that on that basis the noble Baroness will withdraw the amendment.