Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, before the Minister sits down I would like to intervene briefly in support of the amendment. This is a crucial amendment. I do not agree that putting it in the Bill and placing a statutory duty on the Government is nugatory and has no effect or is unnecessary. Psychologically, it is important that the personal advisers, who will come into play for the first time, have the ability to look at the whole picture, as well as some of the health-related and, I hope, biological, psychological and social measures behind some of these claimants and customers and—for the first time in 25 years in my certain experience and knowledge—have the ability to win the confidence of customers in a way that has never been done before. I have personal experience of this. In a previous incarnation—admittedly a long time ago—I acted as a CAB personal adviser in the town of Hawick in south-east Scotland. I saw streams of customers or clients coming across from the DHSS office, as it then was, and I would tell them exactly the same thing as the officials across the other side of the high street had done. They were much more prepared to accept it from me because they believed that I was someone who was acting in their best interests, broadly defined. If we get this right, personal advisers could play an extremely valuable role. One of the best ways to encourage people to come on down and talk sensibly and openly to personal advisers is the knowledge that someone sitting on the other side of the desk is going to do the best they can—become a personal friend and adviser and provide support, psychological and otherwise, in picking the customer’s or client’s way through the system. The amendment is a crucial part of enforcing that feeling of confidence that customers and clients will have. Uptake rates are a continual problem; people are denied entitlements that the system would provide for them if only they knew the route to ask. We miss a trick here if we do not accept responsibility. The amendment may not contain the right approach; perhaps its wording or suggested procedure is not right. I say to the Minister with all the conviction that I can muster that if he is somehow able to invest personal advisers with the ability to say, ““I am able to help you across a wide area””, people will come to them in a frame of mind that they would otherwise not have. In the Bill he is trying to change the psychology involved in this regard but he may be walking away from one of the best ways of getting assistance for the issue. I absolutely support the amendment. If it is a probing amendment, that is fine. I hope that the Minister will go away and think carefully about how to encourage people to talk to personal advisers; we should introduce a provision during the Bill’s passage.