Welfare Reform Bill

The initial contact is effectively brought about the other way around. It happens when someone calls a contact centre or presents themselves to Jobcentre Plus seeking to make a claim. At that point it should be obvious if someone has difficulty with the English language, although it would be less obvious that they had a literacy problem. The role of the adviser should be to try to identify what barriers to work and employment someone has and therefore we would expect these issues to be identified along the way. Once it is established that there has been a failure to undertake work-related activity and the sanctions regime is involved, Jobcentre Plus should be well aware of the individual circumstances. One cannot guarantee that this will work perfectly in all cases, but protections are in place. Again, I have a letter ready to go to the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, who is not with us at the moment. It picks up on a point she raised on the first day in Committee about the support available to those from ethnic minorities who do not have English as a first language and the ability for people to have advocates with them at their interview. I can say specifically that Jobcentre Plus has experience of providing jobseekers with interpretation services. We can extend the experience so that that which operates for JSA could be built on for progression-to-work. Under the new sanctions model that we are proposing, the first time that a customer fails to comply with their conditionality requirements they will receive a formal warning letter rather than a financial sanction. This will provide an additional opportunity to ensure that the customer understands the consequences of non-compliance. In the event that the customer is then sanctioned for a further episode of non-compliance without good cause, they will be able to appeal the decision. Taken together, these steps represent a good opportunity to show good cause and significant safeguards to protect vulnerable claimants. Amendment 42 and the second part of Amendment 85 would impose a limit of 10 days in which the claimant could provide evidence of good cause for failure to comply with their work-related activity requirement. Amendment 86 would impose a limit of 20 days for that purpose. As described above, our intention is to mirror the current period of five days that claimants have to show good cause for failure to attend a work-focused interview. I believe that this is a reasonable approach. Research shows that an effective sanction should be a swift, clear and obvious response to a particular failure, otherwise customers do not understand why they are being sanctioned and so do not rectify their behaviour. By extending the time allowed to show good cause to 10 or even 20 days and thus delaying the sanction, there is much greater potential to confuse the customer about the purpose of the sanction. That would defeat the purpose of the sanction as a deterrent. I appreciate noble Lords’ concerns that vulnerable customers, particularly those with severe mental health conditions or chaotic lifestyles, may find this difficult to comply with. However, we need to strike a balance so that people cannot abuse the system by deliberately not providing us with reasons for their non-compliance for four whole weeks. I do not believe that the customers we are discussing here would fall into this category but there would be some, if only a tiny minority, who sought to take advantage. It is right that time limits for showing good cause should be in regulations and not in the Bill as that gives us flexibility to change the period in the future should we gain clear evidence that five days is not appropriate for our vulnerable customers. We also need to bear in mind that other safeguards will be built into specific work-related activity. The clause states that a direction, ""must be reasonable, having regard to the person’s circumstances"." Regulations will make clear that a claimant’s medical circumstances will always be considered when requiring a claimant to undertake a specific activity, and guidance will set out what the adviser should have regard to when considering what is "reasonable" in the person’s circumstances. As we have discussed, this would include disproportionate travel, harm to health or excessive physical or mental stress, restrictions on availability of the activity, caring responsibilities, sincere religious or conscientious objections and excessive expense. There are also opportunities, if a claimant feels that the requirement placed on them is unreasonable, for them to request that it be reconsidered under the provisions for the reconsideration of an action plan in the Welfare Reform Act 2007. I hope that I have covered the points that have been raised.