Welfare Reform Bill

I wonder if my noble friend Lord Rea will allow me to be his friendly neighbourhood psychiatrist. I must confess that whenever I am inundated by hundreds of briefing notes, a little bit of me feels that they must be wrong. There is a little corner of me that is deeply sceptical and wants to go back and read the Bill in detail. I have therefore gone back to read Clause 9 and, in particular, Schedule 3. I am deeply shocked at what appear to be profoundly unethical provisions that are, as many noble Lords have said, completely counterproductive. I speak as someone who has managed drug misuse and alcohol services and worked across a whole range of services in this area. Of course, people are sent from the courts, particularly young people, with a condition that they shall attend for treatment or at least an assessment, with the possibility of engaging them in treatment. That happens when they have committed a criminal offence. We have long recognised that. There used to be provisions in Victorian times for compulsory treatment of drug or alcohol misusers who had no mental disorder as a consequence, but since 1959 we have been absolutely clear, including in the 1983 Act and the 2007 Act, that that cannot be the case because it is a waste of time and counter-productive. We have here a set of provisions that cut across all previous legislation where we have debated how people should be cared for and treated appropriately and how they should be encouraged. Some forms of coercion are good and collaborative. You can work with somebody, encouraging them with carrots and sticks in a little way, but this sort of stick goes far beyond what is proper and what is likely to produce a beneficial effect. We know that people who are truly misusing drugs to the point where it interferes with their ability to work—there are many such—will not engage with this. The only study that I know on this was undertaken in New York on long-term serious drug users on this sort of exchange coercion plan to get benefits, and it simply did not work for people who were using drugs like this. I know of no other international evidence. If the Minister does, I hope he will tell us. It seems completely improper to demand that people should go for an assessment, which I assume would have to be a specialist drug-misuse psychologist assessment, with the aim that they should then be coerced into treatment. That they should be forced to give a urine sample when they are not suspected of or arrested for a potential criminal offence again seems extraordinary. This is not a situation where somebody is driving and they kill somebody else and therefore you want to know whether their urine has alcohol in it. It is a completely separate matter. Remember, the urine sample is taken for a drink-driving offence only when you have got to the station, after the breathalyser has already found you wanting. There are very few circumstances in which we would normally coerce people in this fashion. I find this unethical, unworkable and counterproductive. Although I support all the amendments, the only one that I really like is the proposal of the noble Lords, Lord Dubs and Lord Rea, to get shot of Clause 9.