Welfare: Personal Independence Payment

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, the Minister is on record as saying that not every PIP claimant will require a face-to-face assessment. In the case of autism, will the Government ensure that evidence is collected from professionals who know an autistic person well, before a decision is taken on whether a face-to-face assessment is needed? When one is considered necessary, can he confirm that the assessors will be fully trained to understand the communication difficulties associated with autism?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, autism is, as the noble Lord points out, a really difficult area for people. It is difficult to understand and see sometimes, but we have a comprehensive training set-up for ATOS and Capita, which will be conducting the assessment. Clearly, each of those people will need to be approved by the DWP. Autism is among a group of quite difficult things to assess, and I personally take his point about its importance. The Government take his point and we will make sure that, when we give the approvals for that, it is one of the issues that is dealt with absolutely properly.

Taxation: Families

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I join all noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lady Hollis for securing this debate. No matter where we sit in this House or what our political affiliations are—or if we have none—I think we all agree that the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, brings huge background knowledge and commitment to trying to solve some of the problems that we are talking about today.

On Monday, I asked the Government,

“what is their estimate of the saving to public funds as a result of the work of unpaid carers in the United Kingdom”.

In answering, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said:

“the Government themselves have not estimated savings to public funds as a result of unpaid carers’ contribution to care and support”;

but he added that,

“there can be no doubt about its huge value to those who receive care and to the wider community”.—[Official Report, 14/1/13; col. 470.]

Why, then, when a disabled youngster in the care of his or her family becomes a disabled adult, is he or she considered a separate household from the caring parents with whom they live, making the parents subject to the housing benefit cap?

The Government have said that a family with a disabled youngster and in receipt of disability living allowance would not be subject to the cap, and to me that seems right and just. But for the life of me I cannot understand why this situation changes when the self-same disabled child becomes a disabled adult. On the Government’s own admission, around 5,000 carers in the United Kingdom will see their housing benefit capped. It will mean that the average affected caring family will see its financial support cut by £87 a week. The Work and Pensions Minister, Esther McVey, said in the other place on 10 December that families that would be exempt from the cap would be,

“those on working tax credit, all households with someone who is in receipt of a disability-related benefit, war widows and widowers, and those in receipt of war disablement pensions”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/12/12; col. 15.]

I praise the Government for that—I think it is fair and reasonable. That is why I cannot believe that the Government really intended to penalise some 5,000 families in the way that they will do with the regulations that have been published. I urge the Minister to look again at this and accept the view from Carers UK, which says that it is,

“simply unfair to protect some carers and not others”.

I again refer the Minister to the comments from Esther McVey on 10 December, when she said:

“I will reiterate what a household is: a household is a basic family unit, and for the purposes of paying out-of-work benefits that will be a single adult or a couple and children”.

However, she added that,

“once another adult is in the house, that is a separate household”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/12/12; cols. 15-16.]

When that adult is the disabled child whom they have cared for since birth, it is plain daft to treat that person as a separate household—frankly, it is barmy, and it is an insult. As this stands, a caring family is being penalised simply because the disabled child grows up into adulthood. That cannot be right. In fact, I believe it is a tax on disabled people growing up.

I should declare an interest as a vice-president of the National Autistic Society. Families affected by autism will be hit particularly severely because, according to National Autistic Society research, they spend longer caring and therefore have less time for employment. Across the United Kingdom, 21% of all carers spend more than 50 hours a week caring, but of those caring for someone with autism, 83% say they spend at least 50 hours caring. This was highlighted in Who Cares for the Carers?, a National Autistic Society document published in 2009. Caring for someone with autism is therefore disproportionately intense in terms of hours. In return, if the carer spends at least 35 hours a week caring, they receive the princely sum of £58.45 a week carer’s allowance. This cap will therefore disadvantage carers who spend at least as many hours caring as many people work in a week and are therefore themselves unlikely to find employment. That illustrates the reality of caring for an autistic child or adult.

Perhaps I may briefly touch on two case studies. Ann and Laurence have four sons. Two of them—Peter, 31, and Stephen, 21—have Asperger’s syndrome and ADHD and live at home with their parents. Although highly intelligent and educated to MSc level, Peter struggled for three years to get a job until his mother helped him find one as a teaching assistant. Stephen is less able to succeed academically and will never be able to live independently. His mother describes the challenge:

“When you have your children you think you will nurture them and teach them to become independent like my parents did with me. But that’s not the case.

I wouldn’t expect to be doing the things for my adult children that I’m doing. That’s a carer’s role ... My fear is that one of us will get ill and we’ll have to care for that person plus the two boys, and that will be difficult”.

Mark and Cathy have a six year-old called Malachy, who has classic autism. He is non-verbal and communicates through his own invented sign language. Caring for Malachy is exhausting and relentless. Mark often goes to work having had just three or four hours sleep. He and Cathy rarely have time to do the normal things that couples do, such as go out for an evening. Mark describes the challenge as follows:

“Malachy’s autism and difficulties [are] like a time bomb within your family. He completely dominates everyday life. It permeates my employment. Cathy had to give up work. It permeates the situation with the two younger children … he gets a lot of one-to-one attention”.

Things are already difficult for carers. A National Autistic Society survey last year showed that 74% of carers do not receive any support at all, and one in three carers under the age of 40 said that they would like to work, but cannot do so because of their caring role. Many more have had to give up paid work, reduce hours, work part-time or take lower paid jobs in order to care for someone with autism.

I think that, at this time, it is also worth remembering that with local authorities raising eligibility thresholds for social care support, and many services such as day centres closing down, many carers are likely to find themselves missing out on the services they need. Let us make sure that we do not make life even harder for family carers who, in fact, are the backbone of care in this country.

Universal Credit

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Touhig]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the information technology project required for the implementation of universal credit is on schedule.

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

My Lords, the universal credit programme remains on schedule to launch the pathfinder in April 2013 and to go live in October 2013.

[Lord Touhig]

I regret that I do not share the Minister’s confidence in this matter but, on behalf of those who depend on benefits to survive, I sincerely hope that he will be proved right and I will be proved wrong. In Grand Committee the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston, told me that,

“universal credit will be a digitally based process”—[Official Report, 8/10/12; col. GC377],

and confirmed that the Government intend people to claim this benefit online. However, work carried out by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, indicates that 8 million people in this country do not have access to a computer, and that of those, 3.9 million are disabled. What proposals do the Government have to ensure that people who are disabled and do not have access to a computer will be able to claim universal credit?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we did a survey on our complete claimant base and found, somewhat to our surprise, that 78% of them were already online, and, indeed, that 41% of them used online banking. Our target when we start next year is to have 50% of people going online, with others going to our other channels which support the online process. We plan to have a support and exceptions process to help the people who need support in getting their universal credit.

Jobseeker’s Allowance (Sanctions) (Amendment) Regulations 2012

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Monday 8th October 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in welcoming the noble Baroness to her job and I hope she will leave this sitting with the benefit of the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope. He made an important point that there is a distinction between fraud and error. When I served on the Public Accounts Committee in the House of Commons, the Department for Work and Pensions never seemed to make that distinction. Error was always considered to be fraud—that was always the general tenor of its evidence. It is important, especially with the changes proposed by the Government, that people are given the benefit of the doubt if there is a genuine error.

I would like to start where the noble Lord, Lord German, ended. At the end of his remarks, he referred to bringing together the sanctions regime for jobseeker’s allowance, the employment and support allowance and universal credit. What concerns me, and perhaps the Minister can answer this, is whether this realignment of the sanctions will involve the major IT project that is being prepared for universal credit. A number of us are concerned about the IT project for universal credit. Will this alignment mean that more people will have to claim their benefit online? Can the noble Baroness also tell us how many people presently claim JSA online?

What changes do the Government expect in the way that people will claim online when universal credit is fully rolled out in October 2013? The present chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge, has said that universal credit is,

“a train crash waiting to happen”.

In my experience serving on the Public Accounts Committee in the Commons, every major government IT project in the past 20 years has gone pear-shaped because of the failure of the IT systems. I think that these changes should be resisted but if the Government insist on pushing them forward, the last thing we want is the most vulnerable people having their benefits stopped because of some failure in the Government’s IT programme. The Minister should make it clear how much this will depend on the new IT system for universal credit. In response to my noble friend Lord McKenzie, perhaps she can tell us if the universal credit programme is likely to slip. We are told that the pathfinders will be introduced in April 2013 and the full scheme in October. We need to know this as it will affect the lives of many vulnerable people. Those of us who have sat in the House of Commons or other devolved Administrations in the United Kingdom have constantly had people come to them in their surgeries with problems where the system has let them down.

When I have taken up issues—I am sure this is not uncommon with other noble Lords who have served as elected representatives in the House of Commons and the devolved Administrations—I have been told, “Sorry, X falls through the net”. Who created the net? We created the net and if we are not careful with the way we are changing this net a lot of vulnerable people will be adversely affected. So I hope the Minister can give us answers to these important questions.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am grateful for the contributions that have been made in the debate today. A number of points of detail have been raised which I will do my best to go through before I conclude my responses. I will try to cover these points in groups rather than going through every individual one systematically, as I feel that it is important to cover some of the general points made by noble Lords that fall under several headings.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for welcoming me warmly to the Dispatch Box, but of course I am disappointed that he does not feel able to support these regulations. I have listened carefully to all the points that have been made today, and most of them have been questions about the regulations and concerns expressed about them. In answering them, however, I can go a long way to addressing them.

The people I think about most when I consider what we are doing today is those who find themselves suddenly out of work through no fault of their own, and who are desperate to get back into work and are doing everything that they possibly can to do so. When they go on to jobseeker’s allowance, or in due course when they are receiving an element of benefits that will apply under the universal credit, people will want to know that while the rest of us are fortunate to be in work at that time, a regime is in place that respects those who are doing everything that they can while penalising clearly and appropriately those who do not. They will want to know that they are entering into a regime that is properly labelled and properly reflects that they are trying their best to do what they can for themselves, and we will not do them any service by putting in place a regime that is not clear.

The noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, used some colourful language that she may have been trying to ascribe to those of us in government regarding what we are doing. I assure her that we are not saying that.

There were concerns about what will happen if people find themselves affected by the sanctions and not in receipt of benefits. Let us not forget that the reason why people are entitled to jobseeker’s allowance is that they are fit and able to look for work. Because they are fit and able to work but are not able to find work at that time, the payment is made to them. If they are not doing what is required of them to entitle them to the benefit, then it is only right that they should be sanctioned; there should be a clear deterrent in order that they should comply with the expectations placed upon them. If they are sanctioned, then what they lose is the jobseeker’s allowance—they do not lose any of the other benefits that they may be entitled to, such as a hardship payment or housing benefit. While this measure may look very severe, it is important to bear it in mind that this is about jobseeker’s allowance; it is not about all benefits over a period of time. I will come back to the politics to which the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, referred, because they are worth addressing, but not until I have dealt with some other matters.

Several noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, asked when a three-year sanction will apply and how it will be communicated. The new system will be explained to claimants. It would apply where a claimant has three times failed to apply for suitable job offers for work which they are capable of doing. The regulations are not designed to leave people in hardship, as I said, but to be a deterrent. Claimants will still be able to claim a hardship payment of up to 80% of JSA for the length of the sanction. They still have access to passported benefits such as housing benefit, free school meals and free prescriptions.

I know that there is a lot of concern about those who may face a three-year sanction. It is important to say that we do not expect many people to end up being sanctioned for three years. If the system is to work properly, the deterrent should be strong enough for us to avoid that. However, during a three-year sanction, a person is still entitled to JSA although it is not paid. They may receive hardship payments, but to do so will still need to meet conditionality, and their adviser will still work with them to help them to find work during the sanction period—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. In response to him, I repeat that we must be clear that JSA is a benefit for people who are deemed to be fit for work and not confuse JSA with other benefits of which they may be in receipt.

The noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, asked: how can people who are sanctioned find work when there are no jobs to be had? I refute that point. At any one time, there are about half a million unfilled vacancies in the economy, but that is only a snapshot that hides the dynamism of the job market in which most vacancies are filled quickly and new ones are coming up for people to move into. It is worth noting that of those who come on to jobseeker’s allowance, about 50% leave within three months and 75% within six months.

Several noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, in particular—asked about the evidence to support the introduction of the sanctions and what research had been done. Evidence from the UK and internationally shows that sanctions motivate claimants to engage with job search and other labour market requirements. For example, the DWP research suggests that more than half of claimants say that they are more likely to look for work because of the threat of sanctions.

Last summer, I spent about three days visiting jobcentres and spending time with advisers who were interviewing claimants as they came in. It was notable to me during those sessions how sanctions were a topic very much discussed and how once they became a possibility, some people who might not otherwise have done so changed their behaviour. Many noble Lords asked whether people under sanction would be supported by the jobcentre. I have already covered that; that is clear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

Yes, I can confirm that and I am pleased to be able to do so.

Before I conclude, I have some other small points to make. The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, asked about admin costs and additional staff costs. They are of course part of an agreed budget, but I will certainly write to him with further details about that. He also asked whether the private sector would be able to impose sanctions, and the answer is no.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked how many sanctions were applied each year and was looking for the latest figures. I can tell him that in 2011-12 there were 4.7 million active jobseeker’s allowance claims and, of those, about 495,000 sanctions were imposed and there were about 161,000 disentitlements.

Several noble Lords—and I know that this was reinforced by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig—raised the point about the importance of DWP drawing a clear distinction between fraud and error. That is an important point and I take it on board. He also asked about claiming online. There will be opportunities to discuss universal credit when those regulations are debated, but at the moment this question is not relevant to the regulations before us today. I take on board the point that he is making but I do not have an answer to provide to him today.

[Lord Touhig]

I am grateful to the Minister and I understand that she is trying to cover everyone’s points, but the particular question that I wanted to ask was whether the alignment—the secondary legislation scrutiny committee’s report talks about the alignment of the sanctions with the three benefits, including the new one to come in, universal credit—will involve a requirement for people to claim JSA online. If that is the case, how many people currently claim online, and how many people do the Government expect to claim online when the full changes come in October 2013?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I hope that this answers the noble Lord’s question: you can claim for JSA online but it is not a requirement to do so, whereas the universal credit will be a digitally based process so that will be a different arrangement. So we are not requiring anyone to go online at this time.

I know that I have taken a lot of time to go through everyone’s questions, and forgive me for being perhaps less fluent than my noble friend Lord Freud would have been if he had been here, but I was keen to ensure that I covered the many details that had been raised. I would like to pick up a couple of small points that were made at the beginning of the debate. As I say, from my perspective it is vital that we have a regime that is fair and balanced and properly recognises the efforts that people make when they find themselves in the dreadful and unfortunate position of being out of work. However, we owe it not just to them but to everyone else who is working hard to ensure that there is a regime for those who, sadly, need the threat of a sanction to lead them to co-operate with the requirements of this benefit.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, with regard to his comments about the tax regime, that, as my right honourable friend the Chancellor made clear in his speech today somewhere else, in every single year of this Parliament the rich will pay a greater share of our nation’s tax revenues than in every one of the 13 years for which Labour were in office. Forgive me for responding politically but I felt that it was only appropriate to do so, having had that point raised with me. I hope that the Committee feels able to support these regulations, and I commend them to the Committee.

Youth Unemployment

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I join all noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Adonis on this debate, which is most timely. I will concentrate my remarks on the challenges faced by young disabled people, in particular those with autism, when they seek to continue education or secure employment after the age of 16.

Young disabled people at 16 hold the same aspirations to stay in education and find fulfilling careers as their non-disabled friends—a point which was well made in the National Autistic Society’s publication The Undiscovered Workforce, which was launched as part of its campaign to increase employment opportunities for people with autism. We know that disabled young people are two and a half times more likely not to be in education, employment or training than their non-disabled peers. Furthermore, just 15% of adults with autism are in full-time paid employment. These are clear signs that the educational provision available to young people with autism is currently not allowing them to achieve their ambitions.

A host of reports in recent years has evidenced that the transition to adulthood for young people with autism and other disabilities is poor, and that there is a serious lack of educational opportunities for this group. An Ofsted report stated that,

“the real choice of education and training opportunities at 16 was limited for many young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities. Inspectors found few courses available for young people with the lowest levels of attainment”.

For many young people with autism, particularly those with complex needs, the choices for post-school learning are very limited indeed. We know that young people with autism want to access employment and training. However, we also know that they need the right support in order to do so. While there is a dearth of education and training available for many young people, young people with autism have far fewer options. The lack of education and training for young people with autism is directly related to youth unemployment. Currently only one in four young people with autism continue their education beyond school, and so are adequately equipped to enter the world of work.

I am 64. When I was thinking what I should say today, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be 16 and autistic. What would it be like to face the next 50 or 60 years of my life staying at home with parents, family and carers, or living in a residential home? What of your Lordships—what if each of us was 16 and autistic? What if all the experiences, opportunities and achievements each of us has enjoyed in our lives had never taken place? That is the prospect for up to 75% of autistic youngsters: a cruel exclusion. The life experiences that we all take for granted are denied to them.

That is why post-16 education options are essential to support young people with autism into work and community life. Both of these outcomes benefit society as well as individuals and families. The social impact of unemployment for young people with autism is huge. Not continuing in education or training beyond school leads to a loss of potential for young people and for society as a whole. Failure to provide opportunities for education and training that will lead to employment denies young people with autism the right to fulfil their potential and to contribute to society.

In addition, there are huge social costs. Failures to provide for young people with autism also lead to higher long-term financial costs. In one of its reports the National Audit Office found that £1,000,000 per person could be saved by supporting young people with learning difficulties to gain life skills and be more independent. It also found that supporting a disabled young person to access work reduces lifetime costs to the public purse by £170,000 per person.

Is there a solution to this problem? Yes, there is. We can ensure that government initiatives such as the youth contract are accessible to young people with autism and others with disabilities. Can the Minister say how the Government will make the youth contract fully accessible to disabled young people? Can he confirm that the Access to Work funds will be available for young disabled people doing internships and voluntary placements? The raising of the participation age to 18 is most welcome. However, it appears that little thought has been given to what that might mean for young disabled people, many of whom are not in employment, education or training, not through choice but as a result of a lack of suitable provision. The raising of the participation age will only help young people if it coincides with the development of more and better educational settings. Have the Government invested the extra funding that is needed to meet the additional demands of young disabled people who are currently not participating? How have they calculated the level of this need? They must take into account all additional needs, not just those of young people with SEN.

The charity Ambitious about Autism produced an excellent document entitled Finished at School. It makes a number of recommendations in this document which I believe would improve post-16 education for learners with autism, which would have an impact on levels of employment. The document makes four key points: there should be a clear legal right to educational support up to the age of 25 for young disabled people; a funding system which gives young people and families more information, choice and support is needed; a cross-government focus on outcomes and destinations for young disabled people is needed; and, finally, a further education workforce with the skills to support young people with autism to achieve their ambitions is essential.

The Minister is a friend—he is a friend of all those who campaign and support people who want to improve the quality of life for people with autism. In my time in this House and in the other place I have certainly found that he has listened. I hope that he will listen to us on this occasion.

Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

The amendment on which mine is the lead name also refers to the autistic spectrum. When the noble Baroness is in the Chamber with us, I always feel as though you are definitely on the end of the passing movement, as opposed to being the play-maker. The noble Baroness knows exactly what she is talking about. At my conference, someone who was talking in a meeting about autism said, “You must understand that autism is a three-dimensional spectrum”. Does that phrase not start to explain why the diversity of people and their reactions are incredibly difficult to understand and always will be? I wish I had thought of that expression myself. The great diversity of needs and different types of behaviour mean that you must have some specific training.

When I was approached to put down this amendment, I had a conversation with the NAS. I want to use it as an example of the fact that you always need a certain degree of knowledge to make this type of assessment. I remember that, in years gone by, when the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, spoke for the then Government, our exchanges on the subject of the initial interview process went on and on and developed almost into a ritual dance. “Can we have specific knowledge?”, we would ask the Government. “No, but we will give them lots of training”, they would reply. We have got better, because we always do, but it remains the case that unless you have someone who actually understands the condition which they are assessing and reporting on, they will make mistakes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has already pointed out that mistakes cost “blood and gold” for everybody concerned. You burn up time; you burn up money; you cause suffering. Getting more expertise into assessment, either by taking a better history, or by making sure you have the right person there at the right time, will make life a lot easier and will probably save money in the long term or, indeed, in the medium term. The Minister has been moving forward, although he is pushing water uphill with certain concerns here. I stress that I am looking for clarification on where he is moving to and his thoughts on where this expertise is going to be dragged in. If you have a problem, empower people to say that there is a problem and that someone who understands it needs to be brought in. If you can do that, you will take huge steps forward. You will not get it right all the time but you will get it right more often.

If the Minister can give us some encouragement and some firm guidelines about what is going to happen to encourage people to get it right—not just to get the numbers through—I will be a very much happier man at the end of this.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I do not intend to detain the House long, because Amendments 50B, 50C and 50D were debated at some length in Committee. I attempted to withdraw Amendment 50A yesterday, but the gremlins crept in and the only thing that has been withdrawn is my name—the amendment still appears on the Marshalled List.

With Amendment 50B, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, has once again made a very powerful case in support of the need for properly trained assessors. In particular, all assessors should have an understanding of and training in autism if they are to recognise and understand the complex cases they will have to deal with. It has been said a number of times—I make no apology for repeating it here, because it is important—that when you have seen one person with autism, you have seen one person with autism. This is why the training is so important. A knowledge of autism and possessing the right skills to assess the needs of an autistic person are essential in making any decision about the appropriate level of financial support that that person might need. I believe that the Minister accepts this point of view.

Following the Committee stage, a number of other noble Lords and I had a very useful meeting with the Minister and his colleague Maria Miller MP, and we are grateful for that opportunity to exchange views in a less formal situation. One point from that discussion, which was touched on today by the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, did concern me—the point about the qualifications of the person carrying out the initial assessment. One of the Minister’s officials told us at that meeting that the initial assessments would be carried out by an occupational therapist. Will this be the case? That seems a very narrow skill base from which to draw the expertise for any kind of wider assessment, and it leaves me, for one, with the impression that the assessment is aimed primarily at getting people into work and not at trying to understand and support them if they are not able to work. Such a situation would fly in the face of the well-argued case that assessors should have specific training in all mental, intellectual and cognitive disorders, as advocated by the amendment. I hope the Minister can allay my fears.

I turn to Amendments 50C and 50D, in my name and that of my noble friends Lady Healy of Primrose Hill and Lord Wigley. The amendments concern face-to-face assessment and would, if accepted, exempt certain categories of people from the process of continuous reassessment where sufficient medical and other expert evidence existed to demonstrate that their condition would not improve. I return again to my concerns about people with autism. Autism can be summed up in this way: autism is for life. Any reassessment must accept this fact before progress can be made. The Minister made it clear, at Second Reading and in Committee, that the Government did not believe that a face-to-face assessment would be the right course to follow in all cases.

At our meeting, both the Minister and his colleague, Maria Miller MP, gave a strong impression that the Government would support a tiered approach to assessment in such cases, as advocated by the National Autistic Society and others. In practice, this tiered approach would allow for written assessment from professionals to be considered and a decision to be made, on that basis, about whether a face-to-face assessment was appropriate or necessary. I will not test the patience of the House any longer. I look forward to the Minister’s response and hope he will have something positive to say about a tiered assessment.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

This is an important debate because existing relevant medical evidence is absolutely essential to getting this test—and the whole process—delivered as accurately and as sweetly as it possibly can be. This is true in two separate directions. First, getting access to and active consideration of existing relevant medical evidence will make the examination—if an examination is needed—much more satisfactory for all concerned. As has already been said, it will reduce appeals—and it will minimise costs for that reason if for no other.

It has a second important function which I hope the Minister will be able to spend some time on. If the Minister could help us understand better how desktop assessments can obviate face-to-face assessments, he could diminish the fear factor that clearly exists, rightly or wrongly, about what will face people who might be invited to these face-to-face tests in future, and that would be enormously helpful. I am aware, having followed this for some time, that the DLA provisions which we put in the primary legislation in 1992 were, in some respects, too prescriptive. I understand perfectly that assurances can be made and put into regulations and put into medical contracts as well.

I am in the market for voting for this amendment if we do not get the kind of response that I hope for. However, there are ways of delivering the assurances that are being sought by our correspondents and the disability community. It would be helpful if the Minister could say a word about the contract. I understand that the contract is out to tender and it is too early to say who is interested, but people are drawing conclusions from the Atos Healthcare experience. I do not think that that experience would necessarily be repeated in the future if the terms of the contract are drawn sufficiently clearly. In that contract, if not in regulations or primary legislation, we should be saying clearly that on cause shown, if there is heavyweight medical evidence that can be addressed at a desktop level, those are circumstances where it should almost be a default that people will not be subjected—if that is the right verb—to these assessments.

I share a concern about the quality and experience of the assessors. I have a capacity issue as well as a quality issue about that. It does not matter if you get the best contract in the world and the most enthusiastic prime contractors who come in and promise, hand on heart, to do the best they can. The professionals with the right qualifications and experience to do this work may not be out there. If that is the case then we need to be very careful. There is not enough emphasis in the United Kingdom on this kind of medicine, and we should be promoting with our medical colleagues a far higher degree of interest in and development of the specialist skills that medical professionals need to do these jobs in order to make this process a success.

I have here a case history that caught my imagination. A 25 year-old young man is undergoing his first major reassessment of his problems as an adult. His assessments will involve MR scans, examination by neurologists, neurogeneticists, neurophysiotherapists and a specialised occupational therapist. He has scattered neuromotor difficulties. Although I trained as a pharmacist a long time ago, I could not even find on the internet what neuromotor difficulties actually amount to, but it is clearly a serious condition that is being addressed by experts at a tertiary, if not international, level by a centre of excellence in a region in the United Kingdom. The young man has written to say that he is now fearful that he will have to address the circumstances of these tests. It would be completely daft and stone mad that we cannot say something now that is clear. There may be technicalities with the legislation, and perhaps I could be persuaded that such provisions should not be in primary legislation, but we absolutely need some clear, copper-bottomed assurances from the Minister that a person in those circumstances would not face such difficulties.

I hope that the Minister will understand that this is an important amendment and that he will take as much time as he can to tell us as much as he knows about how these processes will work and where in the legislative process—whether by regulation or primary legislation—we can be assured that we will get some protection for the kind of young person to whom I alluded.

Universal Credit

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Touhig]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what conclusions the review body considering major government information technology projects came to following its review of progress on the universal credit programme.

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

Following the recent review of the universal credit programme, the Major Projects Authority made a number of recommendations, which are being taken forward, with a further review to take place in spring 2012.

The Major Projects Authority will publish information on the progress of the Government’s high-risk and high-value projects, referred to collectively as the government major projects portfolio, alongside the first annual report at the end of this financial year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Touhig]

After a conversation I had with the Minister yesterday, I thought he might be painting a much rosier picture. Can the Minister confirm that work on the IT project for universal credit is so far behind schedule that it will not be possible to use it when the credits are piloted in April, and that an interim solution will have to be used that will put a burden on business and industry? How much will that cost companies the length and breadth of Britain?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am pleased to confirm that the project is on time and on budget. The second paragraph of the MPRG letter states:

“Let me congratulate you on the significant progress that has been made”.

I think that the noble Lord is referring to a particular aspect of the RTI HMRC project where we have gone with what we call an interim solution to providing information on people's earnings per month in a way that will allow companies to have a stepping stone into what we call the strategic solution, which we plan to introduce in 2016. The gains to companies of that process are estimated at £300 million a year.

Young People: NEET

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

We are very concerned to have apprenticeships going to the people who need them most. Last week, we announced incentives for employers effectively to take an extra 20,000 people off JSA by giving incentives of £1,500 to do that. We are having a massive increase in apprenticeships. The starts have gone up to about 440,000 this year, which is up 50 per cent on the previous year.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, for many young people in this country, the only experience they have of full-time employment is looking for a job in the first place. When the Government's new unemployment scheme for young people is up and running, how many weeks will it take to place an unemployed youngster in work?

Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, my noble friend gives some very good examples of how easy it might be to make mistakes, particularly when the universal credit is quite low. I remind noble Lords that on 24 October the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, told us how easy it is to make mistakes. When he applied for his retirement pension, he got it wrong. Was he being negligent? No. It was an example of how easy it is to fill in a form wrongly. It is not necessarily negligence.

Apart from that little reminder of how any noble Lord could easily make a mistake, I also wanted to pick up a point made by my noble friend Lady Drake about the expectation that 80 per cent of claimants will be claiming online. Recently a piece of research, Increasing Digital Channel Use Amongst Digitally Excluded Jobcentre Plus Claimants, found that one group of those claimants were what the authors call the “uninterested”. The researchers said that this group will,

“require persuasion or compulsion before they will use digital services, possibly with the threat of a benefit sanction for non-use”.

I would be very grateful if the Minister could assure the Committee that there is absolutely no intention to sanction people for not using online procedures. Some people have a mental block against using computers and we do not want yet another sanction in the system. I know that it was researchers who said this, and not the department, but if he could give us that assurance now, that would be very helpful.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Drake has made some very powerful points this afternoon, which the Government need to take on board or we will get into a mess when this is finally introduced. They should be indebted, too, to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale. His point is that there is an implication that the person who makes this sort of mistake has been deliberately negligent. That would mark people out as trying to defraud the system. It puts them in the wrong to start with, when these things can happen by accident.

Noble Lords will forgive me if I remind them of a point I made in one of our earlier debates. When I sat in the other place, I had a constituent who came to see me because she had been overpaid a certain benefit, and the department was pursuing her strongly for repayment. When we got the papers, we discovered what had happened. There were some boxes she had to tick. One of the boxes asked, “Have you received income support?”. She ticked “Yes”. However, she had stopped receiving it about six months before, and so beneath her tick, she wrote, “But this stopped”, and she wrote in the date on which it stopped. When we got to the bottom of this we found that when the form was sent in to the department, its computer could not scan in anything that was not in the box, so it continued to overpay her. She was in a terrible state. A large amount of money was involved, and there was a huge problem as a result. It will go wrong.

Noble Lords will forgive me if I repeat something that I mentioned in the Chamber a little while ago. In the case of universal credit, a lot will depend on a new IT system. Every major IT system that the Government have introduced in recent years has gone wrong. I know, because I sat on the Public Accounts Committee in the other place for a number of years and we had to look at some of these issues as a result of inquiries to the National Audit Office.

My noble friend Lady Drake also made the point, as others have, about people filling in these forms online. Thirty per cent of the poorest families in this country have no access to a computer. It has been possible to claim jobseeker’s allowance online for 20 months. The take-up is 17 per cent. The idea that we are going to get to 80 per cent of people claiming benefits online will cause a huge problem for the system.

My noble friend Lady Hollis has just made the point that a lot of the good things that this Bill will seek to introduce will be damaged because of the kind of approach that this particular clause takes. The Government should really think again and take note of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I, too, support the excellent contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Drake. I am sure that we all understand that if someone really has filled in a form negligently and as a result has received extra pay, that needs to be dealt with. My problem is how on earth you word such a clause. There are people who clearly are incapacitated and so cannot work things out—they cannot read adequately or have had to have some help from somebody else who does not quite understand their situation. You can imagine all sorts of situations in which things would go wrong, certainly when it comes to people with severe learning difficulties, major mental health problems and so on. Unless the official dealing with these things really understands the individual and how they might have come to make these errors, it seems to me that the most appalling injustices will result, which I am sure the Minister would not be happy about at all. Will he think about the wording of Clause 113 and try to generate wording that distinguishes between people who have in some way been negligent or perhaps on the edge of fraud but you cannot quite prove it? One can imagine a lot of people who might fall within that clause but who perhaps belong in a clause that relates to fraud. They are quite different from a large number of people who are struggling, whether with literacy or other problems. I am sure the Minister would wish to make that distinction clear and fair. It was helpful to have this amendment, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

I do not think that we disagree on this. It would not be reasonable where there is clearly a lot of grey in the assessment, and I do not think a court in the land would allow us to say that someone was being negligent. That is not what negligence means. Negligence means not caring at all and just slamming down the wrong information or having information that you did not bother to put down. That is negligence. Getting something wrong on shades or “It didn’t occur to me” are not negligence and would not be construed as negligence in any court in the land. A lot of this is concern about things that the language does not support.

[Lord Touhig]

In my experience over years in the other place of dealing with cases in which people had been overpaid and the department sought to reclaim money, the department always took the line that the claimant was at fault and had been negligent. If we do not get away from that, we are storing up a huge problem. The line of the department has been that it is the fault of the claimant who has deliberately got this wrong, is in the wrong and therefore must repay some benefit they have had.

[Lord Freud]

I do not think that that is what is happening with overpayments, which are a separate category from these civil penalties. On overpayments, the department has taken the view that if people have received money they were not entitled to, that money should come back to the department, and there is no fault or blame attached in that requirement, so it is quite different from the civil penalty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Drake]

I am still not persuaded. I will stay with my point; I still remain concerned about targets. The Minister says that he has turned his back on targets. I accept that, but his assurance does not bind future Secretaries of State, who may not turn their backs on targets. Once this provision is in the legislation it is there for future Ministers and Secretaries of State to use.

I come back to the point that one cannot take reasonable steps to deal with an error unless one knows that one has made an error. This is the weakness with the example of the dentist appointment. With that example, you know that you have an appointment and therefore are in trouble for failing to meet that appointment. You do not necessarily understand, comprehend or know that you have made an error, or you may not necessarily have intended to make an error, in the form that you have filled in.

The Minister says that the Government have amended their figures by raising from £15 to £65 the level at which overpayment action would be triggered and that the number of penalties has been moved down to 400,000. I still think that that is a very large number. The Minister expects that penalties will apply to only half that number—to 200,000. I still think that that is quite a large number. That is his expectation, but once that power is awarded who knows what the figures will become, how the guidance in the department will be enacted and what the resultant figures may be? I do not think that noble Lords can be asked to express their approval or otherwise of a clause in a piece of legislation simply on the expectation of how a Minister would choose to deploy that power. One has to stand back and ask what the power is that the Government are taking to themselves. I am still left with concerns.

The Minister said that the Bill provides the powers but that you do not have to use them. That is not a compelling argument for not worrying about this clause. I am no lawyer, but I thought that one of the points of having rational legislation is that it protects the citizen against irrational political behaviour. An argument based on a disposition to use or not use a power at any particular time by a given set of Ministers does not really address the merits of whether there should be such a clause in the Bill.

The other issue is the £50 itself. The impact assessment says that,

“a £50 flat rate was determined as an appropriate starting point for benefit claimants to encourage better care of their claim”.

As that says, it is a starting point. Who knows how, over time, that level of penalty will evolve?

The Minister made the point that there will not be a scattergun approach to the civil penalty but that there will be clusters of mistakes on which the focus will be. That is good. If there are clusters of mistakes, it sounds dreadfully efficient to concentrate on them, but that is no reason for introducing a civil penalty; it is a reason for looking at managerial action or process or procedure, or focusing resources to address those clusters. Simply saying that every benefit claimant who does not fill out their form properly will now be subjected to the potential powers of a civil penalty seems a slightly over-the-top response to dealing with clusters of mistakes.

With all due respect, we have clusters of errors by the department and by local authorities. There are significant errors. I cannot believe that there would in the same way be penalties on staff who make those errors, and I would be completely opposed to that too. Errors often occur in the system for systemic reasons. That is different from fraud or from somebody knowingly tweaking their form or deliberately filling it in incorrectly in order to tip the benefit advantage in their favour.

[Lord Touhig]

Could my noble friend say—perhaps in response to the Minister’s answer to the noble Countess, Lady Mar, when he said that it would depend upon the circumstances, and following on the point just made by my noble friend—whether she thinks it would be helpful if the Minister, before Report, could provide us with the number of cases in which the department has accepted that an overpayment has been its fault and has not pursued it, and the number of occasions on which it has found that it has been the client’s fault and pursued that?

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I think that the power exists for tax credits but not for other benefits. At a briefing session, I asked one of the Minister’s officials— I shall not land that person in it—how often it had been used. Their answer was that they were not absolutely sure. I asked whether it was 20 or 2,000 times. Nearer 20, came the reply—in which case, I wonder where that figure of 200,000 would come from and whether it suggests that a lack of clarity is expected in the forms rather than negligence on the part of the people filling them in.

Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Touhig]

86F: Clause 85, page 60, line 11, leave out subsection (3) and insert—
“(3) Regulations shall prescribe the considerations to be taken into account in deciding whether a fixed-term award would be appropriate.”

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, Amendments 86F and 86G in my name, that of my noble friend Lady Healy of Primrose Hill and those of my good colleagues, the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, are intended to make it clear that indefinite awards could and should be made for people with lifelong conditions or disabilities of a degenerative nature. Such awards should be based on evidence from healthcare professionals showing that the needs of the person receiving the award will remain the same or increase over time, and that they will therefore continue to meet the eligibility criteria for the benefit indefinitely.

The Government have stated an intention to make the personal independence payment awards for a fixed term, except in exceptional circumstances. In addition, the Government’s proposal is that there will be an in-built review process for all awards to ensure that they remain accurate. This proposal is based on the assumption that most individuals will show some improvement or will be able to adapt to their condition over time to the extent that their needs will lessen. However, this is simply not the case for those with long-term conditions. There are around 300,000 adults in England with autism, which is a lifelong condition. While some people with autism may develop the ability to manage aspects of their disability, such as improving verbal communication or overcoming an inability to travel by learning a specific route, such positive change happens only as a result of support, including the present disability living allowance. If that is taken away, progress risks being reversed.

I am not arguing that people should be granted indefinite awards solely on the basis of their diagnosis. However, if medical and social care assessment evidence for the individual claimant indicates that theirs is a lifelong condition that is unlikely to improve, this should be taken into account to indicate that an indefinite award may be appropriate. It is important that this is prescribed in regulation. Reassessing all claimants with long-term and degenerative conditions not only wastes taxpayers’ money but can cause significant stress for claimants, especially those with autism, who often have additional mental health problems. The increased anxiety can lead to deterioration in the claimant’s health, thereby undermining the Government’s purpose and the rationale of enhancing the independence of disabled people—to which we all subscribe.

Our amendments before your Lordships this afternoon would allow for lifelong awards where there is evidence to show that the individual’s condition is unlikely to change over time. In our debate last Monday I said that, so far as understanding autism is required, the condition can be summed up in four words: autism is for life. Where it is established that a person with autism should receive the personal independence payment, it, too, should be for life. I beg to move.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I rise to speak very briefly in support of these amendments so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig. Many of the arguments that underpin these amendments have already been rehearsed in the previous debate, so I will not take too much time.

It seems sensible to have an equal-handed approach to these circumstances. If someone has a condition that is palpably for life, the guidance should be that the benefit should run for life. Equally, in those circumstances where there may be doubt, there needs to be flexibility. What is needed, perhaps on the face of the Bill as these amendments propose, is that there are guidelines that take those two sets of circumstances properly into account. The system itself must be willing to respond to the individual circumstances rather than just follow a dogma about restricting benefits even where benefits are probably much needed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, it would be premature for me to go into much more detail here. Clearly, we are aiming to build up the award duration in consultation, and I would not want to pre-empt that consultative process.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this very short but useful and important debate. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, pointed out that we have sought to be flexible in these amendments. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, thinks that we are being somewhat restrictive. However, that is not the intention; we are trying to be flexible, recognising that there will be circumstances where it will not be appropriate for a lifetime award to be made.

The noble Countess, Lady Mar, made an important point in speaking about someone with experience of an illness that will not improve. Putting someone through all the problems and distress of a review will not be helpful at all. We all hope to God that many of these problems can be solved as time goes on. My noble friend Lord McAvoy made the point that, if what we are asking for were in the Bill and there were some considerable improvement in one area or another, we would obviously need to change the law if that were appropriate. Therefore, I think that we need to be flexible on that.

The Minister made the important point that £630 million had been overpaid in DLA. However, from my experience of sitting on the Public Accounts Committee in the other place, I would say that one really has to look into how that happened. Very often, it was due to failure by the department and not because someone’s condition had changed. The National Audit Office reports point this out. Indeed, on one occasion I had a case where a constituent had to complete a form and there was a box to be ticked against the question, “Have you received income support in the past year?”. She ticked it and underneath wrote, “But it ceased on X date”. However, because the form was scanned in, the department’s system could not read the words underneath, so it continued to overpay her and then demanded the money back. I fear that the problem of overpayment is often caused not by the person making the claim but by the system, in any event.

I thank the noble Lord for his clarity on a number of points and for the encouragement that he gave. I feel that can we make progress, as the way that we are working in this Committee and in this House helps us to improve the quality of legislation because of the backgrounds, knowledge and expertise that so many noble Lords have on a whole range of matters. I believe that by collaborating, we will protect those who are perhaps the most vulnerable—certainly, those who concern those of us who tabled this amendment—so that they will not have to go through all the trauma and difficulties associated with constant review of their benefit once it is awarded, if their condition is such that it will not improve. Having said that, I thank the Minister for his comments and I am sure that we will enter into more dialogue about this in future. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 86F withdrawn.