Welfare Reform Bill

moved Amendment No. 8: 8: Clause 8, page 6, line 12, leave out ““or”” and insert ““and”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall also speak to the other amendments in the group up to Amendment No. 35. The amendments would not necessarily result in any changes to the current draft regulations or implementation of these welfare reforms; they would simply make provision to widen the scope of the assessment process in the future. An assessment of an individual’s physical, mental and sensory functionality does not equate to an assessment of that individual’s capability for work or for work-related activity. Some factors that relate to an individual’s impairment will have an impact on their capability for work, and obviously this must not be neglected. However, the medical factors related to their impairment are not the sum. The amendments are very much supported by RADAR. They would move the Bill closer to the now widely accepted social model of disability and widen its scope to reflect future advances in our understanding of what ““capability for work”” really means. They would allow future assessments to take account of the vast array of factors that may limit a disabled individual’s capability for work. Those factors could include education, training and skills, the availability of funding for reasonable adjustments, access to the workplace, discrimination, the effect of living in an area of high unemployment and the ability to access assistive technologies and their associated training and maintenance. Similar amendments were rejected in the other place solely for technical reasons. Those reasons have now been addressed, and I can see no reason why there should not be cross-party support for the amendments as there was in the other place. It is critical that we agree the text of the Bill to ensure flexibility in the regulations to follow. With the current terminology, regulations will always maintain a focus on impairment rather than incorporate barriers faced by a disabled individual that are beyond their control. It could be argued that the work-focused health-related assessment should not incorporate an awareness of these wider societal barriers, and that that should be done by the personal adviser in the work-related activity stages. I would argue that the personal adviser should be involved at this first stage, which represents the beginning of an individual moving towards the labour market. Indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, informed us in Grand Committee, the work-focused health-related assessment will advise the personal adviser looking after the customer on the kind of health-related interventions that would benefit the customer, such as a condition-management programme. The narrow impairment focus wrongly emphasises the start of work-related activity. It could even alienate disabled people from making the most ofthe process. In the other place, it was noted that the work-focused health-related assessment and the medical examination process will not only look at medical issues but will have a specific and detailed approach and will examine more than just the medical barriers faced by people with disabilities who want to re-enter the labour market. This will be enabled by removing the terminology ““health-related”” and by not limiting any part of the assessment to healthcare professionals. The regulation must move us beyond narrow understandings of disability. We must not categorise individuals only by their impairment or medical conditions. I beg to move.