Welfare Reform Bill

After listening to the Minister’s response, I think that he must take from the important exchange that the Committee has just had the notion that it is completely unsafe to think that in the current circumstances, even with the experience of the pilots for Pathways to Work, the provisions deal adequately with mental illness. In my experience, they do not. I declare an interest as a non-remunerated director of the Wise Group, which is a work provider in the Glasgow employment area. It was involved directly and indirectly in some of the Pathways work and it was quite clear that the new deal for disabled people was a huge asset and that the pilot roll-out promoted a lot of new interest. People were stimulated for the first time by the thought that they were actually getting active support. They came on down and got help—but it worked predominantly for people who had physical and other conditions. My experience may only be anecdotal—and I shall look at the IFS stuff, since it may be that the jury is out and we should all look at this matter more carefully. But in my experience as the director of the Wise Group people with mental conditions and mental illness were left out. Why? Because they take more time than anybody else. It is as simple as that. The other thing that is different about people with mental conditions is that it is not only about a good cause and regulations but about acting in good faith—and the vast majority of them are. The key to this is not getting regulations put in writing. I actually disagree with the notion of an exemption, because this particular client group deserves special attention, rather than being exempted. But they will not get that under the current regulations, because the personal adviser caseload is far too big to be able to able to apply the special resources and attention that these clients need. If that is true in the pilots, it will be true in spades when the roll-out comes and we have a £360 million budget wrapped around our necks to deliver the policy with. I do not know how realistic it will be in practice for the caseloading to be right and for personal advisers actually to have time to make these calls and house visits—an important aspect in my experience, mentioned at least twice. House visits are an essential part of the support that this client group needs. Personal advisers do not have the time to do that if their caseload is overstretching them. There is some argument about what the caseloading should be. Some of the figures I have heard are slightly worrying for an ordinary casework situation, never mind areas with predominant mental illness figures. It is essential to get the caseloading right, and for discretion to be made available to personal advisers to determine whether people are acting in good faith, never mind with good cause. If somebody is acting in good faith, the new system should respond positively to him or her, never mind the regulations. Who is the best person to decide that? The personal adviser, with time and the ability to say, ““I think you are trying to do everything you can to get involved in this, and are playing by the rules as best you can””. They should fall over backwards to support the customer in whatever way necessary to get them into work. Whether it is one, 10 or 40 hours a week does not matter; it must be tailor-made and time must be spent. There is no substitute for getting the resources available in the time that personal advisers have to get this right. If we do not do that, we will suffer. Bear in mind that, in the fullness of time, a lot of this will be put out to businesses that will contract to provide support services for groups of 500 clients. The Wise Group is a not-for-profit enterprise, so we are not driven by making money, dealing with shareholders or any of that; it is easy to over-emphasise all that and make it sound pejorative. But if you are contracting to supply services for a cohort of people like that, the last people you want to try to help are those who are mentally challenged, because it takes so much time do it properly. The experience under the old scheme, where people are often left behind—even in companies which try their best to do good practice—is that in any group of 500 clients, you will always get 400 who are nearest to the labour market, for whom you get outputs, for which you get contractual rewards. However, the last few dozen in every group get left behind and neglected. Make no mistake, people are currently neglected under contracts, because contractors do not have the time to move them in the direction in which they must move for their own benefit. If that happens now, it will potentially be worse in the future: worse for people with a mental condition. After the debate, I hope that the Minister will go and reflect carefully on the conditions. We can talk about the regulations until we are blue in the face, but until we get manageable caseloading for personal advisers and a sensible amount of discretion for them to deal with whatever condition they encounter in a customer or client with a mental illness, we risk failure in the important reform we are trying to introduce.