Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, unemployment is set to rise to more than 3 million by next year, with some forecasting civic unrest and rising crime. Those who have redundancy packages are finding that they are meaner than they thought and that jobseeker’s allowance is a paltry £60.50 a week. In July, 600,000 young people will leave school or college looking for jobs, adding significantly to the ranks of the unemployed. Will Hutton of the Work Foundation has called it an unfolding social calamity. Into this dark landscape the Government have introduced the Bill that the Minister has outlined. There are two ways of looking at the measures proposed. The first is that this is the worst possible time in which to introduce a tougher regime for all jobseekers because the jobs simply are not there, and imposing sanctions for non-compliance with the regime will hurt, not help, vulnerable claimants. The second is that this is precisely the time to give people more help and support to look for jobs, and a tougher sanctions regime all round is necessary to catch the workshy. The cynical say the tough talk is broadly for Daily Mail readers while the more constructive focus about extra help for jobseekers is for, say, Guardian readers. Even the Social Security Advisory Committee, in its quiet way, wonders whether the Government’s primary analysis is that people are unwilling to work and need to be coerced into employment, or whether it is that those who are unemployed require more support to overcome barriers to the labour market. It is not just the timing of the Bill which is of concern. After all, some of the measures will not be rolled out across the country for several years because they will be piloted first, so any Government in the future will have quite a bit of leeway. The main issue is whether the Bill’s provisions are likely to fulfil the Government’s admirable aim to get more people off benefits and into properly paid, sustainable jobs without causing vulnerable people real trauma and distress. We on these Benches do not think the Bill has the balance right. At the very least it contains too many sticks and not enough carrots, and the clauses relating to drug users are of questionable legality. However, as we have heard, the Bill is warmly supported by the Official Opposition; they even say its conditionality does not go far enough. So we will have to concentrate on examining how the proposals are going to work in practice, and on moving and supporting amendments that try to mitigate some of the Bill’s harsher provisions. After, we are not the first to point out that how the Government proceed will determine what they will achieve. First, looking very broadly at the work-for-your-benefit scheme for the long-term unemployed, which sets the tone for the whole Bill, it is not at all clear how it is going to help claimants find a properly paid job. If a claimant is mandated on to full-time work—that is, 35 hours a week—after two years’ unemployment in order to keep their benefits, are they still jobseeking and, if so, how? How long could a work-for-your-benefit scheme last? The Explanatory Notes say the Government envisage that claimants may participate in these pilot schemes for up to six months. Could this mean working full time for £60.50 a week for six months? No wonder there is perturbation among the unions and others that any such placement looks very much like work on the cheap. Why can the long-term unemployed not be encouraged to take short-term paid employment such as seasonal work? This is surely something the Government should approve of, particularly in the circumstances of a much weaker labour market than we have had for many years. The Government seem keen to stress that work-for-your-benefit is about work experience, including the discipline of getting up every morning to go to work, but any scheme lasting as long as six months looks much more like real work than work experience. It is not as though unemployed benefit claimants are all keen to dodge work in order to live a life on benefits. Many new claimants will have been working for many years only to find that their employer has gone bankrupt and their safe job has disappeared. Other claimants with low-level mental health problems or fluctuating conditions will soon be migrated from incapacity benefit to JSA and will need a lot of personalised help from Jobcentre Plus and other providers to get them to a state of job readiness. Sanctioning vulnerable people is very worrying. Evidence from other countries about how their similar schemes work for those with multiple problems is not convincing and we urge the Government to evaluate their pilots of this particular proposal very carefully before rolling it out. Perhaps the Minister could tell us whether this will be the case. Looking at the sanctions regime, there are plenty of instances given to us by Citizens Advice where existing claimants have been sanctioned but have simply not understood that this was going to happen, whether for reasons of language or perhaps learning difficulties. The Government say that sanctions are a last resort but the CAB evidence does not give us any confidence. Research by the DWP shows that the impact of sanctions on lone parents is negligible, yet in the Bill the Government are increasing the coercion and conditionality regime on them to seek work, which perhaps says something about the value the Government put on parenting in today’s world. Our starting point is that there is no typical lone parent. There are many with very young children who have not long been out of the job market and are keen to get back to work, but others who have been out of employment for years and have no up-to-date skills or any self-confidence. Each one has different circumstances and they should be able to make a choice. However, there will be no choice unless, at the very least, three practical issues can be addressed. These are: better quality, affordable childcare throughout the country, particularly for older and disabled children; much more flexible working, admittedly not easy for all small employers; and better public transport, particularly in rural areas. Another crucial factor is continuing high quality, well resourced, personalised support from Jobcentre Plus and contractors. These matters and others will be explored properly at later stages of the Bill. At this point, I pay tribute to the Government for at last recognising in the Budget the role of grandparents of working age in childcare arrangements. We also give a positive welcome to the right to control for disabled people, which I will come back to later, and to the extension of higher rate mobility of DLA to blind people. The treatment of those with drug dependency is perhaps the most worrying aspect of the Bill. There is no question but that jobless people who are unable to hold down a job because they are dependent on crack cocaine and heroin are a burden on the state, and it is understandable for society to want positive action taken to help get drug-dependent people back on their feet. But should we be getting tough by threatening to withdraw benefits for non-compliance with treatment or a treatment plan from those who may have not only an addiction but also mental health problems? Emphatically the answer must be no. Coercing people to have treatment for addictions is known to be counterproductive and could mean they flee the benefits system altogether, only to turn to crime to finance their drug habit. The Government’s rationale seems to be that benefit money from drug users tends to go straight into the pockets of drug dealers. However, some of it also puts food on a family’s table. Liberty and other organisations say that the proposals will breach the right to privacy under the Human Rights Act, notwithstanding government assurances that safeguards will be put in place once the Bill becomes law. Only this week we received the report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which bluntly recommended that these proposals are deleted from the Bill unless clear evidence is provided to support the Government’s view with appropriate safeguards. If this part of the Bill survives, we need to know how it will work. Jobcentre Plus staff may have plenty of experience of working with people they suspect of being serious drug users, but they are not trained to deal with them as ‘drug users rather than as jobseekers. Any assurances the Government make must be put in the Bill before this part is allowed to become law, not least about data sharing with the police force and Probation Service. The Minister in another place said details were still being discussed with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. I hope we get further in this House with finding out the results of that consultation before the Bill has passed all its stages here. There are also unresolved issues about the devolved Administrations and whether the pilot schemes outlined will be run in Scotland and Wales. Perhaps the Minister could enlighten us. Last week my honourable friend Paul Rowen asked how many JSA claimants had entered voluntary drug rehabilitation programmes in the past five years, to which the answer was that the Government do not collect information on the medical conditions of JSA claimants—another reason why this is not the right Bill to address this complex subject. I now turn to the right-to-control provision of services for disabled people, a welcome provision which is the third leg of a personalised budget for disabled people, joining social care and health. To my mind, the most important question is whether the three funding streams can be pulled together; otherwise what is a good initiative could get completely bogged down in confusion and complexity. This, too, will have to be explored at a later stage. I note that the director of adult social care in Oldham, Paul Davies, when giving evidence in another place, graphically said: ""What does not work is a load of bureaucratic jiggery-pokery at the back as organisations try to sort things out, and not always seamlessly".—[Official Report, Commons, Welfare Reform Bill Committee, 10/2/09; cols. 8-9.]" Before ending, I wish to raise an important matter. Here I echo the problem raised by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale: the Bill is shot through with phrases such as "regulations may make provision for" and so on. We have heard of 387. We are quite familiar with DWP Bills having to legislate through regulations and, of course, we understand why but, even so, this Bill is perhaps the worst of all. We now also have the shifting sands of pilot schemes in the mix. Although we have nothing against pilot schemes, this is another way of Ministers being able to be vague with Parliament. Between pilot schemes and regulations, it is very difficult for those of us whose job it is to scrutinise, in Parliament, what the Executive are proposing to get a handle on exactly what is being proposed in some very important areas of public life involving the spending of large sums of money. When the parent Act is not explicit about what the regulations will do, the situation is very unsatisfactory. Certain safeguards are supposed to be built into the system. One is for the Social Security Advisory Committee, the body set up to guide the DWP, to look at the regulations, to give its view and, if necessary, to report. But the Government very often ignore its advice, or take only one bit of it. The Delegated Powers Committee will report on the Bill before the Committee stage and some time afterwards the Merits Committee eventually plays its part in scrutinising statutory instruments. But I wonder whether we should not be looking at the super-affirmative procedure for at least one of the most contentious parts of the Bill. This would allow Parliament to see a genuine draft of a statutory instrument which would, I believe, be open to amendment. I shall end with a quote from the Minister in another place, Kitty Ussher, about how the social fund would work in future with external providers, which illustrates much of what I have just said. She said: ""There is not even a draft contract at this stage. It is about taking a power to keep options open later".—[Official Report, Commons, Welfare Reform Bill Committee, 12/2/09; col. 81.]" That seems to sum up the Bill. There is much work to do on this Bill, and we on these Benches will play our part in doing it.