Welfare Reform Bill

moved Amendment No. 33: 33: Clause 8 , page 6, line 17, at end insert— ““( ) make provision as to the timing of the assessment in relation to the assessment under section 9.”” The noble Lord said: I am afraid that we now have the exact opposite. The amendment is far from a quickie, and I apologise in advance for the length of my remarks. I shall speak to Amendment No. 41 as well. Since carefully reading the debates we had on the first day of Committee, I am aware of the misapprehension I was under when I drafted the amendments. As Ministers will have realised, an amendment to Clause 10 is missing. The ones I have tabled, however, refer to the two strands of the PCA. Amendment No. 33 relates to assessing limitations for work in Clause 8 and Amendment No. 41 relates to assessing limitations for work-related activity in Clause 9. When I tabled the amendments, I was under the impression that these were the two tests that were to be taken on the same day and were causing lobby groups so much worry. I now understand that my amendments should have included the assessment in Clause 10, which deals with work-focused, health-related matters. Given the enormous confusion that this area of the Bill has led to, I hope Members of the Committee will forgive me if I take a moment to set out my understanding of the assessments in the hope that if I am still mistaken in any aspect of them, the Minister will take the opportunity to correct me. Otherwise, we will have a very long Report stage. The first interview, or test, is to contain the two assessments laid out in Clauses 8 and 9, each assessment being undertaken by a trained healthcare professional appointed by the Secretary of State, and one taken immediately after the other. This work, I understand from the Minister’s letter of 23 February, is to be contracted out to Atos Origin, the same firm which has designed the computer system and whose staff are to be—or are they already?—trained as healthcare professionals. This first interview’s primary purpose—possibly its only one—is to assess whether a claimant is eligible for ESA by means of assessing the effect of a long list of fairly general descriptors and whether that same claimant is eligible for the support group by means of a list of 46 functional descriptors. So far. so good. My understanding of the second interview is a little less clear. This interview will be the first introduction to the work-related activities in which the majority of claimants will be expected to participate. The Government appear to be favouring the idea of having this interview on the same day as the first one to reduce the inconvenience of travelling to the testing centre but also to allow the benefit provider to introduce the claimant to the new system as soon as possible and start early intervention to overcome any barriers to work or work-related activities there might be. I hope that the above explanation of the assessment is correct and look forward to any clarification that is necessary. However, this explanation raises many more questions, as does much of what we heard on the first day. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, explained at cols. 49 to 52 that the second interview—the work-focused, health-related assessment—will be undertaken by a healthcare professional. Information from this assessment will then be provided to the personal adviser who will have different and appropriate skills in overcoming societal barriers, low self-confidence in knowledge of the work available in the area, and so on. That is in marked contrast to what his colleague, Mr Murphy, explained on Monday to the All-Party Group on Disability, when he said that the second assessment would not be undertaken by a healthcare professional but instead would be an opportunity for an employment adviser to become involved. I am sure that I am not the only Member of the Committee who is confused on this issue. Who are we to believe? Are the Government still undecided who will conduct the work-focused interview? It would be helpful if we could have a definitive statement. I, for one, do not want to have to return to this matter on Report. The confusion becomes even deeper when we return to how the decision-maker will make his final decision. From what Government officials had said, I was under the impression that information from both interviews would be considered relevant to the eligibility status of the claimant. But if, as I understood the Minister to say last week, a decision on the eligibility of the claimant to the higher support rate is made immediately after the questionnaire and the original interview have been completed, that cannot be right. Which of these is correct? Or will it merely be information from the assessments as laid out in Clauses 8 and 9, as common-sense would suggest? I am afraid I also have many questions about the decision-maker. Although I asked them last week, they were not answered satisfactorily. I shall have another go. It appears that the decision-maker will take all relevant information and evidence, the notes from at least the first assessment, any information from the claimant’s doctor and so forth, and make the final assessment without ever having met the claimant. Will he be making decisions only on borderline cases? What qualifications will the decision-maker have and how will he or she be chosen? How many of these decision-makers are the Government planning to have? Will there be one for every jobcentre office or will they have little contact with the assessors, let alone the claimants? These questions are critical to the understanding of my two amendments. I seek to maintain some distance between the first interview—I am avoiding the word ““assessment”” deliberately—in order to distinguish between the three clauses and the two interviews, and the second one. I think the Government have indicated that it is their intention to hold these two tests, should they be deemed necessary, in as short a time as possible, one immediately following the other early in the 13-week assessment phase. This has caused considerable concern, especially among those working with mentally disabled people who are worried about the possible effect this could have on a claimant. They point out that the first test will be focused on what a claimant cannot do, whereas the second test is designed to look at what he can do. Even if the second test will have no effect on his eligibility, confusion about what it will have an effect on could lead to considerable stress. A claimant may very easily become concerned about being too optimistic in the second test about what work-related activities he could undertake, which would lead the decision-maker to doubt how sincere he was about his limitations in the first test. I understand the Government’s point that many people with disabilities would prefer not to have to make two journeys when one would do. If a claimant has limited mobility, they would probably rather the interviews happened on a single day, as the Government have suggested. However, this will not be true for everyone. Some may find the interviews exhausting or stressful and would prefer to spread the load over a few days. Can the Government commit to a more flexible timetabling of these interviews where the claimant will be able to signal a preference for having the two tests on the same day or otherwise, as appropriate? I am afraid there is a further point I wish to make: the Government have indicated that some claimants will evidently be unable to attend either of the face-to-face assessments. This could be because they are confined to hospital. In these cases, written evidence from their doctor will be sufficient for them to be moved straight into the support group. There is some confusion over how widely this will be applied. Will it be the decision-maker who judges the written evidence and makes the decision that further assessments will not be necessary? If not, who will do this? Can the Government explain what criteria will be set for this to happen? Will it only be for those with severe physical disabilities or will those with certain mental illnesses also be considered? This Committee stage has been, is, and will be dominated by probing amendments. It is unfortunate that although the Bill was discussed in another place for so long, I for one still do not have a clear picture of the system the Government want to set up. I hope that the Minister’s response will clear up the confusions in this area once and for all and I apologise for having felt the need to speak for quite as long on quite so many matters. I beg to move.