Welfare Reform Bill

I shall speak to Amendments 100 to 102. Amendment 101 takes out all the provisions that allow the Secretary of State or a person providing services to the Secretary of State—that is, a benefits worker—to ask for drug information on a benefits claimant from the police, the probation service or other such persons as may be prescribed. It would also take out the provisions that allow that information, having been received by the Department for Work and Pensions, to be passed on to others. I felt that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, did not realise that there was such a provision, but paragraph 5(3) of new Schedule A1 says: ""Regulations under this paragraph may, in particular, authorise information supplied to a person under the regulations … to be used for the purpose of amending or supplementing other information held by that person; and … if it is so used, to be supplied to any other person, and used for any purpose, to whom and for which that other information could be supplied or used"." That is a little complicated in its wording, but it seems to allow this information to be passed on to quite a wide circle of other people. Amendment 108 is almost exactly the same, but it applies to the employment and support allowance rather than the jobseeker’s allowance. If the whole paragraph cannot be taken out, Amendment 101 is more limited. I doubt that Amendment 100 will be accepted. It would merely take out the words, ""such other person as may be prescribed"." This could include almost anyone. Liberty commented: ""Such information is highly personal and it is worrying, given this government’s history of data loss, that such information may be provided to an unspecified number of people"." Amendment 102 is more limited in that it excludes only health and social care workers from the provision that allows them to be approached for information, because they are the people most likely to have been given information by the client in confidence. There are three choices of level, but the people on them are all are highly critical of the blanket provision in the Bill.