Welfare Reform Bill

This is probably one of my favourite amendments. I have waxed lyrical on this subject for 18 months. In fact, instead of calling it the right to control, I am starting to call it the real right to control. By the time we get to Report, I shall probably have T-shirts for noble Lords with "The Real Right to Control" on them. This amendment is about getting the principle absolutely right for this transformative initiative. It we want transformation, we can have it, but unfortunately we cannot have it with the way in which the Bill is currently written. The purpose of my amendment is to ensure that Clauses 33 and 34 accurately reflect the policy intent of the right to control, as set out in the White Paper Raising Expectations and Increasing Support: Reforming Welfare for the Future. I have it here and I read it every night—I know those principles. The White Paper heralded a radical transformation of the welfare state. No longer would public authorities serve up a one-size-fits-all service; no longer would disabled people be cast in the role of passive recipients. Instead, disabled people would be empowered to take real control of the public service support to which they are entitled. This is after decades of being passive, so it is very important. However, I am afraid that the transformative approach promised in the White Paper is being lost in translation. Clause 33 states that public authorities will carry out an assessment of the disabled person’s needs, but does not recognise, as the White Paper puts it, that disabled people are the experts in their own lives. It then states that the authorities will prepare, in consultation with the disabled person, a plan setting out the way in which the authority proposes to meet those needs. This merely replicates current professional and service-led relationships and does not reflect the White Paper’s intention that disabled people should be recognised as experts in how best to meet their needs and achieve agreed outcomes and that there should be a more equal partnership at work. Indeed, the White Paper gives an example of support planning that clearly puts the disabled person in the driving seat, working constructively with the public authority, yet the Bill does not deliver that vision accurately. Further, Clauses 33 and 34 suggest that a disabled person will need to make a specific request to trigger notification of their resource allocation and another request for a direct payment. Placing the onus on disabled people to know that they have a right to request these things simply will not do. We know from experience of community care legislation that giving disabled people the right to request really works only for highly articulate, well informed and determined individuals—basically, bloody-minded people like me—who get the services. However, it simply does not deliver to the majority who desperately need and want them. Therefore, there must be a clear and specific duty on the authorities to inform people of their right to control; otherwise, authorities that are less robust than we would like them to be can all too easily avoid relinquishing power to disabled people. They simply forget to tell them about it. It is wrong to assume that if people do not ask for more choice and control, they do not want it. Moreover, we must not impose yet more red tape and burdens on disabled people to request this, that and the other. That would defeat the whole purpose of the policy. The final problem with this part of the Bill is that it contains no mechanism to give a disabled person the right to control other than in the form of a direct payment. Many disabled people do not want cash to buy their support. Indeed, we have just had a conversation on how difficult that whole administration bit is—employing people and so on—but we want a service that reflects what we need to do in our lives. Why can services not get us up at eight for work and put us to bed at 11 when we drag home from the pub? Instead, disabled people want the public agency to arrange for services to meet their needs. That is not beyond the whit of services. In these circumstances, it must still be possible to have choice and control over how needs are met. It must be a fundamental principle of a real right to control that you are not required to take responsibility for managing the money to enjoy choice and control over the services you receive. Disabled people who opt for services must be assured that those services will be arranged and delivered in line with their wishes and aspirations, so that they can access work so that they can take control of their families again. These amendments reinstate the key principles outlined in the White Paper and therefore fully reflect the Government’s intent. I see three major principles of intent in my amendments. First, they give disabled people the clear and automatic right to be told the level of resources they are entitled to: their budget; secondly, they give the right to be equal partners in the process of assessment and support planning; and, thirdly, they give the right to have real control over how resources are used, regardless of whether the disabled person opt for a direct payment, direct service or a mixture of both. I understand that the Government have concern over certain aspects of similar amendments debated in Committee in the other place. I have aimed to address these concerns in my amendments by, for example, ensuring that there remains scope for regulations to specify exceptional cases where a disabled person may not have an unfettered right to a direct payment. In addition, I have provided for future regulations to set out how a disabled person may appeal to an independent authority against a decision not to comply with his wish for a direct payment. My amendments aim to deliver the clarity we need to make this policy a success and enable disabled people to be active citizens not, as services would have them now, burdens of the state or just a bit better. The Bill does not deliver this policy. I have spent a great of time working with DWP officials in an attempt to explain these changes, and I should like to thank them for their openness and willingness to find a way through. Today, I am hoping to receive a constructive and favourable response and that the Minister will undertake to bring back government amendments on Report. I believe that we are finding a way through this one, so I am eager to hear what he has to say. I beg to move.