Welfare Reform Bill

This is alarming group of amendments: Amendments 60, 61, 64, 65, 151 to 153, 155 and 155A; it is also appropriate for me to speak to the question of whether Clause 25 shall stand part of the Bill, even at this early stage. However, given the somewhat quizzical reaction of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, to the first amendment after our break, I reserve the right to come back to the question of whether Clause 25 shall stand part of the Bill when we actually reach it. We have now reached the point in the Bill on which the whole of the welfare-to-work provision will stand or fall. I confess that the amendment is not the most elegant that I have ever produced, not least because the Minister will tell me that, ""such person (if any) as the Secretary of State may authorise"," includes contractors. My first concern is what on earth the "if any" is doing there. We all know that contractors are going to be used as, no matter what training they are given, personal advisers will only have the sketchiest knowledge of, say, stroke, mental illness, learning disabilities or many of the other disabilities that rightly concern not only the noble Lord, Lord Rix, but all Members of the Committee. I hope, too, that they will have no personal knowledge of drug addiction or even the effects of occasional drug use. This, however, is for another debate on Clause 9. We know, because the Minister told us last week, that there is a list of preferred bidders on the DWP website. I was going to say "belatedly", due to the article in the Financial Times, but perhaps that is not fair; I am not sure on what date the list of preferred bidders got on to the DWP website. That is a tease—I do not expect a reaction. The firms involved are mostly big ones, which contract for all sorts of government projects; I really cannot believe that they will have any more knowledge of the problems that beset individual long-term JSA claimants than Jobcentre Plus personal advisers. Indeed, on the whole, I would expect them to have less. They will therefore have to subcontract, which raises the question whether the head contracts will have any reference to the sort of subcontractors that are likely to be appropriate. I hope that the pilots will cover the full range of problems likely to be found, but, by definition, there can be no guarantee of this. I have remarked before, and have no hesitation in repeating again—and again if necessary—that these contracts are to be front-end loaded. The major part of the money to be paid to the contractor comes with his engagement with a number of long-term unemployed claimants, presumably in a particular geographical area. I am guessing now what that will look like. I am grateful to the Minister—or at least I assume I am grateful to him; I am certainly grateful to someone in the department, who had a little meeting with me yesterday on the subject of pilots. That was volunteered by the Minister or by someone in the department and was extremely useful. I hope that it will result in some sort of written guidance on what is proposed sometime next week, which I am sure it would be appropriate to circulate to other Members of the Committee. But as far as one can guess from the list of preferred bidders, we are talking about geographical areas. Incidentally, I can find the word "geographical" applied to the word "area" nowhere in the Bill, although references are made in the notes on clauses. Perhaps the Minister could explain, not least because "area" could mean anything, such as "area of expertise", for example. I return to the point about front-end loading. If I was a conspiracy theorist, which I hope that your Lordships do not think I am, I might suggest that the whole objective of new Section 2G of the Social Security Administration Act was to get the long-term unemployed out of the hair of Jobcentre Plus. That would be one possibility; the other, which I hope pertains, is that personal advisers within Jobcentre Plus need extra help in getting the long-term unemployed closer to the job market and, one hopes, into full-time work. If the contractor succeeds in this, which after all is the ultimate objective, they should be paid more than the 20 per cent that is, I believe, currently on offer. Should an incoming Government want to change this at any time, it would appear that the Secretary of State could cancel the contract at any time by virtue of new subsection (6)(b). If that happens, will compensation be payable? Will it say so in the contract? That is the reason for Amendment 65. I assume that the contracts have break points at which it would be more appropriate to renegotiate them, hence Amendment 61. That brings me to my next question. What happens regarding the personal adviser in Jobcentre Plus? Does the contractor produce a personal adviser of its own? That seems to me the obvious scenario. If so, what is the relationship between the two advisers? It is already clear that action plans are to be contracted out; indeed, the only thing that, rightly, cannot be, is sanctions. If there is a dispute between the two advisers, how can the claimant choose who to listen to? How is the claimant to know that they are in a contracted-out regime? I hope that the Jobcentre Plus adviser will tell them that they will have to agree and follow a new action plan promoted by someone working for the contactor. We really need to know who is in control of this situation. Amendment 61 is purely a drafting amendment. Amendments 155 and 155A are also drafting amendments, but surely any mention of the Secretary of State includes authorised persons as equating to direct employees like officials in jobcentres. I am sure that other noble Lords will have a whole raft of questions that they want to put to the Minister on contracting out. As I said, it is such a vital part of the whole scheme of Clauses 1 and 2. I shall leave it there and hope that I have opened up the debate about the whole of new Section 2G. I beg to move.