Welfare Reform Bill

That is an interesting point, and I shall write to the noble Lord about it. We are extremely indebted to organisations such as the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux and Macmillan Cancer Relief, who provide an invaluable service to customers, supporting them with information and advice. I would be happy to look into that and come back to the noble Lord. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, perhaps broadens our horizons and makes us think slightly more ambitiously about the potential impact for the success of these programmes. He refers to inflow and the customers already on incapacity benefit. We have not touched on some of the important work in understanding what can be done for current customers. I shall share with noble Lords the experience of seven of the original Pathways areas which are looking at how it can be extended to existing customers. The extension’s aim is to obtain experience of whether the Pathways approach is equally effective with existing IB customers. The regime is different from that for new claimants in two major respects. First, existing customers attend three mandatory work-focused interviews, as opposed to six for new or repeat customers. Secondly, personal advisers have the discretion to award a job preparation premium of £20 a week, payable for a maximum of26 weeks, to existing customers in these areas if it will help them plan a return to employment and undertake work-related activity. The initial extension from February 2005 to March 2006 focused on those customers who claimed up to two years before the start of the pilot—so people on IB for some time. From April 2006, the mandatory work-focused interview regime has been further extended to IB claimants who began claiming between two and six years before the start of the pilots. Somerset officials will go deeper into this group by seeing all the incapacity benefit caseload within a district. That is valuable work for precisely the reasons the noble Lord has already stated. It is so useful to be able to work in such an evaluative action research-led way. If the results are positive that could be incredibly important in managing the migration of existing customers across the country. Clause 18 agreed to. Clause 19 [Relationship with statutory payments]: [Amendment No. 87 not moved.] Clause 19 agreed to. Clauses 20 and 21 agreed to.