Welfare Reform Bill

I am pleased that Amendment No. 59 recognises the potential of the work-focused health-related assessment, but I must point out that the amendment is unnecessary. Although the report of the work-focused health-related assessment is primarily for the personal adviser who will be carrying out work-focused interviews, the customer will also receive a copy of the report and will be free to share it with any third party he chooses. The main purpose of the work-focused health-related assessment is to identify health-related interventions. That is why we are using healthcare professionals to carry it out. With the customer’s consent, a copy will also be sent to his or her GP, who has ongoing responsibility for medical management of the customer’s condition. However, it has always been the intention that the healthcare professional carrying out the assessment will draw attention to any other intervention—for example, a workplace adjustment—which has been identified during the assessment. In these cases, again with the customer’s consent, we would share the report with the organisation that is working with the customer in relation to such matters. Reference was made to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, which seeks to ensure that, when people claim employment and support allowance, an assessment is made of their other entitlements and they are advised how to claim them. I agree with the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, that it is vital that people have access to information and advice on the financial and other help available to them. The Department for Work and Pensions already provides an extensive and supportive range of information on benefits and statutory entitlements and on how to claim them. For example, we provide a wide range of literature, including booklets and leaflets that are available to customers in a variety of locations, including advice agencies. They are also available in different formats, including, for example, Braille. Meanwhile, our website provides wide-ranging information about eligibility and how to obtain various entitlements. When notifying customers of benefit decisions and making payments, we provide information on the range of benefits and information sources that are available. We are also currently reviewing the scripts that we use at our contact centres to include a prompt within the Customer Management System script for the staff member to advise the customer to claim carer’s allowance and/or disability living allowance or attendance allowance. We aim to have this in place in the summer. That is one development in which I think the noble Lord has an interest. However, we recognise that we need to keep working to ensure that this information gets to the right people at the right time and in the right way. As we go forward with the implementation of ESA, we plan to consult customers and representative groups on an ongoing basis. Our aim is to involve them as far as possible in every stage of our business design for ESA. I do not believe that a statutory duty would add anything to the requirement that we already place on Jobcentre Plus to provide information at the right time to all those who contact it for help and advice; nor would it do anything to adapt and change the way in which this task is carried out in future. I recognise the noble Baroness’s and the noble Lord’s concerns but there are better ways of doing this than creating more regulations. A specific question was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, about access to work and voluntary and permitted work. Access to Work is a specialist disability employment programme, which is focused on helping people to remove barriers to paid work created by their disability. We recognise that volunteering can play a valuable role in helping some disabled people to prepare for work. However, Access to Work is designed to help and support disabled people in or entering paid work, and there are no plans to change the existing focus of the programme. Access to Work is available to disabled people whose jobs are temporary and/or part-time, and people who participate in permitted work can be eligible for support. Again, I should be happy to provide more information to the noble Baroness if, when she has read the record, she wishes me to do so. With regard to what happens at Jobcentre Plus when calls come through and what can be done, I touched on the fact that we are reviewing the script that we use in CMS. That is currently under way and we intend to include a prompt, as I outlined. Accordingly, I hope I have given the reassurances that the noble Lord and the noble Baroness require and that they will feel able not to press the amendment.