Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, in moving Amendment 39, I shall speak also to Amendments 41, 46 and 48. I shall speak first to Amendments 39 and 46, the purpose of which is to delete from the Bill the requirement to take part in drug tests to ascertain whether there, ""is or has been any drug in the person’s body"." As the Bill stands, these tests would be undertaken under the threat of benefit sanctions. The tests envisaged could involve providing a urine or blood sample, semen, ""or any other tissue fluid or pubic hair … a swab taken from any part of a person’s genitals (including pubic hair) or from a person’s body orifice other than the mouth"." Such legislation applying to citizens of this country who have committed no crime is in my view abhorrent. You might well ask why our soldiers landed on the beaches of Normandy. Indeed why did we fight the Second World War? Surely it was to protect the liberty of the individual against the power of the state. Compulsory drug testing outside the criminal justice system is in my view a breach of that national commitment and of everything this country fought for those many years ago. These provisions are a potential breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and are certainly an infringement of civil liberties. I understand that the Drugs Act 2005 introduced drug testing on arrest, thus within the criminal justice system. Yet at that time the Joint Committee on Human Rights expressed its concerns about the potential breach of the convention. Here, we are talking about people who are simply seeking state financial support. My second concern is that it is my understanding that no clinician will be willing to be involved in compulsory drug tests; they will not actually happen. Such tests would undermine any possibility of creating a good therapeutic relationship thereafter. As we have discussed, treatment depends on the client’s engagement in that treatment. Trust between the doctor and the patient is absolutely paramount. My other and quite different concern is that a test at a single point in time will not tell you anything about whether a person takes drugs regularly or merely occasionally. As indicated in the Bill, a series of tests would in fact be necessary, multiplying the assault and the problems that I have referred to. Also, these tests will not indicate whether any drug-taking is hindering the person’s capacity to work. I happen to know a number of people who take drugs on a fairly regular basis—one or two of them on a very regular basis—yet they work perfectly effectively. The fact is that it is possible. I have never done it myself, but I know others who do. All that the tests will tell you is that, at those points in time, the claimant had a particular substance in their blood. Such tests would therefore serve no purpose. My related point is that the paragraph as it stands is, in some sense, inaccurate. Drug tests will not, as paragraph 3 suggests, ascertain whether there has been any drug in the person’s body, whether the drug is in their blood or urine at the time of the test or not. Finally, drug tests can be inaccurate. They can pick up perfectly legitimate substances and identify them as being in the class of an illegal drug. For all these reasons, I sincerely hope that the Minister will be able to reconsider paragraph 3 and agree to its removal from the Bill. I beg to move.