Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, this Bill has the potential to greatly improve the support and opportunities available to disabled people, who have for many years not been sufficiently seen as able to move towards or engage in work. I therefore welcome the recognition by the Government that disabled people on incapacity benefit should not be written off and sidelined for the rest of their working lives and that those who have left work because of illness or disability should be assisted to move back towards the labour market. I should also like to pay tribute to the way the Minister and his department have, like his predecessor, been anxious to engage in dialogue with noble Lords over the Bill. I look forward to approaching its passage through your Lordships’ House in the same spirit of dialogue, which is the surest way to achieve the best outcome for those the Bill seeks to help. The Disability Rights Commission has produced statistics of the employment disadvantage experienced by disabled people which are too numerous for me to catalogue in full but which are frightening in their import. Whilst the number of working age disabled people in employment has increased over the past decade, 48 per cent remain outside employment. For people with a mental illness or a learning disability the percentages are 80 per cent and 90 per cent respectively. Due to stigma and discrimination, fewer than four in 10 employers would consider employing someone with a history of mental health problems, compared to more than six in 10 for candidates with physical disability. As the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, has reminded us, as many as 90 per cent of employers say that someone with a visual disability would be difficult or impossible to employ. On average, disabled people earn 10 per cent less than non-disabled people at every level of qualification, and 40 per cent of people on incapacity benefit have no formal qualifications at all. The DRC welcomes the opportunity presented by the Bill to create an alternative future where, in return for taking steps towards work, disabled people can anticipate high-quality personalised support, wider employment opportunities, a labour market in which disability discrimination is eradicated, equal pay and prospects for advancement which make work pay both for them and their families. For this to be realised, the right conditions must be in place before conditionality is applied. The DRC fully accepts that with rights come responsibilities and that, as disabled people's employment rights and opportunities increase, so should society's expectation that more disabled people will make moves from benefits into work. Indeed, it is low expectations which are often at the root of the discrimination many disabled people face. But acceptance of greater responsibilities to work must be matched by the responsibilities of employers, employment support services and government, and should not place disabled people or their families in hardship. Applying conditions without adequate opportunities and support is not only unjust, it is a recipe for failure. The DRC has a number of proposals for delivering its alternative vision. These are too numerous to list here but may perhaps be summarised in the following way. Entitlement to employment and support allowance should be based on work-related disadvantage, not limited capability. During the Bill's passage in another place, there were proposals to change the conceptual basis from "limited capability for work" to "work-related disadvantage" in an effort to highlight the external, non-medical dimensions which shape disabled people's employment opportunities, and through doing so, ensure greater consistency with developments such as the Disability Discrimination Act. This would provide a clearer picture of the specific challenges, both for particular individuals and structurally within the labour market, which need to be addressed to promote and widen employment opportunities for disabled people. Your Lordships will be aware that concerns have been expressed by disabled people's organisations about a number of aspects of the Bill. One concern is the relationship between the work-focused health-related assessment, which is intended to explore what abilities a claimant has and what support might enable them to move towards work. As I understand it, this assessment is to be carried out immediately after the claimant has undergone the personal capability assessment interview, where they are interviewed about their application for employment and support allowance and how their impairment impacts on their ability to work. I am concerned that to have a discussion about what abilities a claimant has and what support might enable them to move towards work immediately after they have undergone the PCA interview, which focuses on what they are unable to do because of their disability or health condition, is potentially confusing and a cause of anxiety amongst claimants. Disabled people have spoken to us most movingly of their desire to work, but also the pressure theyfeel themselves under at the prospect of these two contrasting assessments. After all, how are they to know that what they say when discussing their abilities could not be used to further inform whether they pass the personal capability assessment? At the very least, there is a tension between the objectives of the two assessments. Without knowing the rates at which benefit will ultimately be paid, it is impossible to say that there is not a disincentive for claimants to embrace wholeheartedly the idea of work-related activity which will operate at the point of the work-focused health-related assessment. In another place, the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform undertook to reflect further on the timing of the personal capability assessment and work-focused health-related assessment interviews. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us whether he and his colleagues have had an opportunity to look again at the concerns expressed and at the possibility of increasing the time gap between the two assessments, with a view to reducing the potential for anxiety and confusion among claimants about the intentions of his department. I am sure the Minister would agree about the need to do everything possible to bolster claimants' confidence in the process if we are to get the best out of it. The Government have set themselves an ambitious aspiration of getting 1 million disabled people off incapacity benefit and into work over the next10 years. This is a laudable aim, but one concern I have is that the Bill does not introduce specific measures to help people who are at risk of leaving work due to a disability or health condition. It is estimated that, just in relation to people who experience sight loss, 3,000 leave work each year because they feel unable to continue in work, with more than 25,000 people in total leaving the labour force each year as a result of work-related injury and illness. Enabling such people to remain in work could do more to get people off benefit and into work than any measures designed to get people into work in the first place. The Disability Rights Commission’s code of practice on employment mentions reasonable adjustments that employers should consider to retain disabled staff. However, this code is not legally binding, and it has been argued that employers should be legally obliged to implement better employment retention policies and practices in order to retain disabled staff. The Minister may have heard of proposals made by the voluntary sector, trades unions and others to tackle this problem through the concept of disability or rehabilitation leave. Indeed, a Bill was introduced in another place during the last Session of Parliament designed to create just such a system to enable those who become disabled while at work to undergo a period of retraining or rehabilitation without losing their job. I was pleased that his party, in the Warwick agreement, committed the Government to take action in this area during this Parliament, and that the Labour Party's 2004 party conference report from its National Policy Forum stated that the party would go further to promote full civil rights for all disabled people, including: "““Taking action to ensure that employers fulfil the requirement already on them to make reasonable adjustments for disabled workers including where appropriate granting leave in respect of their disability and permission to phase a return to work without fear of losing their employment or livelihood””." I hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively on this point and indicate the measures that the Government are considering to meet this commitment and ensure that people who become disabled, or who develop a health condition while in work, are given the support they need for rehabilitation and retraining to remain in work. After all, as the Minister reminded us, someone who has been out of work for a year has only a one in five chance of being in work after five years, and those who are out of work for two years are unlikely ever to find work again. I am sure the Minister would agree that it is far preferable to enable a disabled person to stay in work than it is to have them leave their job, claim incapacity benefit and have to make their way towards the labour market. One other issue relating to Clause 15 is employment-related support, which will be provided to disabled people on the work-related activity component of employment and support allowance by contractors and those from the support group who volunteer to undertake work-related activity. The evidence of the Pathways pilots is that people with mental health and muscular skeletal problems have been the main focus of support activity, with their combined numbers representing around 1.4 million of the 2.7 million current claimants of incapacity benefit or severe disablement allowance. It is important, however, that we do not concentrate on those very large groups to the exclusion of other, smaller groups of disabled people who face significant challenges in finding and retaining work. I particularly have in mind visually impaired people, who, as I mentioned earlier, experience a rate of unemployment much beyond that of the average for disabled people. My concern is that, in looking at the large numbers who can be helped, we do not forget those smaller groups of disabled people who may be further away from the open labour market, and who may need long-term and well tailored support to move towards work. I hope that, in awarding the contracts for delivering employment support, the Minister and his colleagues will consider carefully whether bids adequately set out how they will meet the needs of smaller groups of disabled people and those with high support needs. It would be a great pity if these reforms led to employment support providers helping only those disabled people nearest the labour market to the detriment of disabled people with greater needs, who will require more help and support to enable them to move towards work.