Welfare Reform Bill

I declare an interest as an adviser to the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. I was, therefore, very much involved in all the work leading up to the amendment, not in the drafting but certainly in the posing. I have mentioned many times, in connection not only with this Bill but other Bills that are going through the House at this time, the fact that I find it extraordinary that no assessment has been made of the impact of any of these Bills on any other Bills. At the moment, those of us who are involved in the apprenticeships Bill are also involved in the assessment of those with mental health and learning difficulties to ensure that they get education. Why should these not have come together? The Committee will not be surprised that I, as a former Chief Inspector of Prisons, find it extraordinary that the needs of prisoners with mental health problems are not addressed either in the Coroners and Justice Bill from the Ministry of Justice or in the Policing and Crime Bill from the Home Office, when both are concerned with diverting people with mental health problems away from prison and into places where they should be properly treated. In other words, we go round and round trying to find a place to inject. This month the Sainsbury Centre has published a document called Measuring What Matters, which will not have reached everyone yet because I got it only yesterday. It is about measuring the size of the problem which is included in the amendment, together with a guide as to what that assessment might be. Rather than be just a guide, it is based on pilots that have been conducted in 17 sites around the country over the past two years. The pilots were to find out the size and shape of the problem and how getting people with mental health problems into employment was being tackled. I shall not bore the Committee, even if there was time, with all the details, but some of the measures in the report—which I commend—are very significant. When talking about participation in the pilot, which included the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health, it said: ""In general, the level of engagement of commissioners in the project was poor … The engagement of employment service providers, particularly those from the independent sector, was far more encouraging … Local ‘champions’ were invaluable in facilitating adoption of the framework"," because they were the people who were, ""capable of winning over the ‘hearts and minds’ of busy clinicians and key managers"," and: ""There was no doubt that those sites which invested most fully in the project gained the most benefits"." If we are talking about helping people into work and maintaining that work, we are actually talking about what the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, was just now: the individual placement and support model, which has been in action since 1994. It remains the best model to be followed. It is absolutely what it says: individual placement and support. The point is that all these people are individuals with individual problems. You cannot predict them; you cannot put them into great groups. Each one has to be handled separately. The message to each and every group of commissioners and providers around the country is that they must be prepared to deal with these people. The interesting facts and figures show that: ""In most sites, two-fifths of incapacity benefit claimants were out of work because of ‘mental health and behavioural disorders’, while only one-fifth of people of working age in contact with specialist mental health services were in paid employment"." "Only one-fifth" out of the whole lot is something for which we should take no credit. The Minister and others should take the amendment very seriously. Its importance is that it comes from people who have been doing this work on the ground with these people over many years but particularly for the past two years. None of us in this House really has the benefit of them. We meet them, we hear them and we are briefed by them, but we have not actually been doing the work. In my experience, there is no substitute for those who have actually done it, which is why I so strongly support this amendment.