Welfare Reform Bill

moved Amendment No. 31: 31: Clause 10 , page 9, line 12, after ““professional”” insert ““and a personal advisor”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, this amendment would implement a rather more substantial modification to the Bill than would my previous amendments. The key part of getting a customer to consider taking up work or work-related activity is the interaction between the personal adviser and the claimant. The amendment would introduce the personal adviser—and, thus, the positive support for the claimant that he or she should provide—at the earliest possible stage of the process. As I understand it, the work-focused health-related assessment currently appears rather clinical. After undergoing a tough eligibility test a claimant is required to go off to another test to be further questioned, this time with little or no explanation about what is to be achieved and what happens next. The personal adviser could and indeed should provide that. I understand why further medical assessment will be necessary. The first eligibility assessments are tightly defined by the descriptors whereas I imagine the assessment here would be much more wide-ranging and might even include some medical assessment of the customer’s condition. The Minister will remember that I asked about that at the meeting that he so helpfully provided in the department the other day and was told that it would not involve complete undressing but that there might be a need for the customer to remove his jacket, for example, so that tests could be carried out on the flexibility of his shoulders or elbows. I am sure that the Minister will remember that. It is hardly invasive or embarrassing, so there does not appear to be a good reason why the personal adviser should not be present. It would make the assessment even more useful if it encompassed not only the medical possibilities and treatments that might be available but the non-medical training and activities that the claimant could undertake. The Minister raised the issue of confidentiality, which must place some limit on how involved the personal adviser can be, but I still feel that there would be a role for the adviser to play in fulfilling the work-focused element of the assessment more effectively and moving the claimant through the system quicker. That is to everybody’s advantage, not least that of the claimant. I beg to move.