Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I am grateful, as indeed the House should be, to the Minister for introducing the Welfare Reform Bill. It is inevitable that, in a 17-minute speech, he has been able only to scratch the surface of this very complicated Bill. It will create, if only temporarily, no fewer than six levels of benefit under which claimants may fall. Is that really necessary? It will make the social security system even more complex and difficult to administer than it is now. However, I say straight away that we on this side of the House agree with the policy that the Government are enacting. To that extent, there will be the same consensus here that was widely commented on in another place. First, we agree on the figures: some 2.7 million people are claiming invalidity benefit, 1 million of whom say they would like to be in some form of employment. It is therefore perfectly rational that the Government should seize on this as an objective. The way they have chosen to do so is to propose a new benefit which turns, as the Minister almost said, traditional social security logic on its head. Rather than concentrate on incapacity for work, this Bill is all about capacity for work. To my mind, that is the right approach. Your Lordships will know that I am a long-term believer in the proposition that the objective of social security is to help people to help themselves. I therefore have no hesitation in repeating my mantra that disabled people are people first and disabled second. It follows that many disabled people are capable of some work-related activity, which will include unremunerated work as well as salaried employment. We also know that many disabled people want to work. To achieve that ambition it is vital that they have practical support to find suitable jobs and then to remain in employment. It is the intention of this Bill to make that happen. So far, so good. However, to advance the proposition that 1 million people on existing benefits are to be weaned off them over 10 years causes consternation among current claimants. Two of the recent letters I have received about the Bill are pertinent here. The most recent is the most trenchant. It starts: "““The Government seems to be determined to harass the mentally ill into seeking employment. Why?””." I hope that the Minister will kill this proposition stone dead and tell us that there is absolutely no intention of harassment of people with mental illness, cancer or any other affliction, not least because, if this idea is generally held, the Government will be suffering from their own spin. The other letter, which I received just as the Bill was published in another place, is more complicated. That correspondent refers to himself as the full-time sole carer of a sufferer of a chronic mental illness. She receives both incapacity benefit and disability living allowance, though at what rates I do not know. The carer, for his part, receives carer’s allowance and, due to his wife’s chronic schizophrenia, is ““unable to work””. He further comments that, "““being a full-time carer is hard enough as it is, without having the constant fear of possibly very harsh reform policy being implemented””." Clearly, he lives in fear of benefit withdrawal. I replied that I saw no likelihood of that happening, but that I would write to him again if the situation changed. I ask the Minister: was I right in my response? I certainly hope so. It is noteworthy that both these letters concern mental illness, an affliction that will be referred to many times during the subsequent stages of the Bill. It is easy, in social security terms, to cope with long-term illnesses, whether mental or physical. It is much harder to support those with fluctuating illnesses, or those whose treatment is temporarily debilitating. The obvious example here would be the radiotherapy or chemotherapy of cancer patients, who suffer sometimes quite long periods of tiredness and inability to concentrate once their treatment is completed. The treatment, too, may on occasion need to be repeated, and before Third Reading we will need to be assured that the regulations and administration surrounding the Bill will cover the situation of such patients. There is a lot in this Bill that we will have to tease out of the Government. My honourable friends were grateful that the Government saw fit to produce many of the regulations flowing from the Bill in draft form during the proceedings in another place. However, some regulations have not yet seen the light of day. I note that the Minister said that two of them would soon appear before the public gaze. I mention in particular those in Clauses 8, 10, 12 and 15. I hope that the Minister will be able to do a little better than produce just two of the four I have mentioned. Three would be excellent; four and I would let him off. The detail of the Bill rather than the policy concerns us; for example, is the 13-week assessment period too long for some disabled people? Will there be a system for fast-tracking those with terminal conditions? There are also issues surrounding the assessments; for example, will specialist medical practitioners be involved in the medical rather than the capacity tests? The Explanatory Notes state that there will be a two-part assessment, the first part concerning evidence provided by the claimant and supported by his GP and the second concerning advice to the decision-maker, presumably a layman, from a doctor or other healthcare professional approved by the Secretary of State. We will have to probe how specific such advice will be or whether it will be of a general nature. We also need to consider the third interview regarding the sort of work or work-related activity it would be appropriate for the claimant to do. One fact about the assessment process that concerns me is that with some conditions, especially in mental health, the claimant does not understand, or even hear, the questions posed by the interviewer. There should therefore be an arrangement like the one that exists now, to an extent, so that the potential claimant can bring an intermediary with him when appropriate. The Minister referred briefly to migration. I understand that on day one of the new benefit—which I assume will be at the beginning of April, but that is yet to be confirmed—only new cases will be admitted to the new employment and support allowance and no new claimants will be eligible for invalidity benefit. What will happen to those still on IB? I welcome the news that I heard just now that their current benefit will be maintained in cash terms, but will they be allowed to wither on the vine? Will people currently drawing the higher rate of IB automatically be transferred to the support component of the new benefit? What happens to their current passported benefits, such as free prescriptions and housing benefit? We know, because the Green Paper tells us, that around two-thirds of the 2.7 million people on incapacity benefits have been on them for over two years, and the Minister and his predecessor told us that they are more likely to reach retirement age or die than to gain employment. Those are deplorable statistics. One of the reasons for them is the lack of reassessment or, to put it more fairly, the irregular nature of reassessment. It seems only reasonable that if the state is providing income support for disabled people, it should monitor them, sensitively, of course, but none the less periodically. This is especially relevant for people with fluctuating conditions. We will discuss these issues and many more in Committee. However, one point is fundamental to the success of the Government’s policy: the attitude of employers. Many employers are reluctant to take on people with disabilities and, in some cases, to keep them on their staff. What will the Government do to encourage them to change their attitude? Are they relying on contractors to do that for them, or does the Minister agree that a concerted campaign by the Government is sorely needed? We need to see a huge increase in flexible employment patterns, and we will want to know how the Government intend to achieve that. So far, I have commented only on the employment and support allowance. However, the Bill contains rather more than that proposal; there are 40 more clauses. I do not intend to go through all the provisions now, but I shall highlight the first of them, which is housing benefit. At the moment it is paid according to an assessment made by the local authority rent officer of whether the rent charged is appropriate to the area, the individual property and the claimant’s needs. The Bill simplifies that, essentially, as I understand it, by establishing area rent tables for different sizes of dwelling and then setting standard maximum allowances, varying according to the size of the household. At the moment, in many cases the benefit is paid directly to the landlord, and the claimant never sees it. The Minister said that that happens in about 20 per cent of cases. The Government are right that that limits social responsibility, and they wish rent to be paid directly to the claimant’s bank account for onward transmission by standing order, but there are problems. The reason the benefit goes directly to the landlord is that experience has shown that often the claimant does not pay over the money. If there is to be a bar—and I am not entirely sure whether there will be—on the landlord’s direct receipt, it is inevitable that the private rented sector will stop providing accommodation for people on benefits. Already one sees advertisements for houses to rent in local newspapers with the words ““No DSS””. In my local paper last week, there were 15 such advertisements out of a total of 48 properties or rooms—almost a third. If this rises any more, where will rented housing come from? We have enough problems already with the social housing sector. I accept that all this has already been piloted in nine local authority areas; however, I am rather sceptical of the comment on page 6 of the Green Paper that, "““across the pathfinders most tenants have payments made into a bank account””." Two things strike me about that sentence. First, ““most”” can refer to any number over 50 per cent; and, secondly, ““a bank account”” does not necessarily mean the claimant’s own bank account, even a joint one. We will need much more precise information before we can agree to that policy. As the Minister said, the Government are also taking powers to deprive people of housing benefit following eviction for anti-social behaviour. Here, too, I need to be given a lot of reassurance that that is the right course of action. Since local authorities administer the passported benefits of housing and council tax benefit, I agree with information-sharing between local authorities and the department, so long as the information is relevant to the inquiries pursued; for example, in suspected fraud cases. I am surprised that such a power does not exist already in social security law. However, I am not enamoured of the Secretary of State’s view that the computer networks of the Government and local government should be linked. What business is it of a general practitioner, for example, to have access to the police national computer? As I have said, there is much in the Bill to be teased out, not only in revising it—your Lordships’ principal job—but for the information of those disabled people whom the Bill is designed to help.