Social Security Regulations

My Lords, these regulations introduce very welcome changes, but they seem to have been drafted in rather a hurry and have left some unfortunate gaps which need to be plugged. This seems to be a case of cock-up rather than conspiracy. Nevertheless, they give rise to some unwelcome consequences that need to be addressed. Because I firmly believe that a conspiracy is not involved, I hope that the Minister will have sufficient wiggle room to make the small changes which are needed to make these very welcome regulations nigh on perfect. Like others, I congratulate and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, for having brought this Motion forward. She has put her finger on an important problem. Now that she has highlighted it, I feel fairly confident that the Minister will be able to take it away and get the necessary changes made to the regulations. Before I go any further, I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, the Minister and the House for the fact that I shall not be able to stay until the end of the debate, although I should very much like to, due to a long-standing commitment. I hope that the House will excuse me in the circumstances. That being the case, I shall try to be brief. The noble Baroness set out the position very fully and I do not want to weary the House by going over the same ground again. As we have heard, all kinds of bodies are required by the law or policy guidance to involve service users. Sometimes these are unpaid carers in the health and social care field. As we have heard, people who receive health and social care services are in many ways those best placed to contribute to improving the standards of these services by giving views on their planning, design and monitoring. In my early campaigning days it was a major preoccupation of mine to get recognition for the contribution that service users had to make to the improvement of services. It is good to see that this principle is now widely recognised and firmly established in public policy. Indeed, it has been government policy for several years to ensure that service users and carers are not left out of pocket as a result of their required involvement in the development of services. It has been policy to reimburse their expenses and sometimes offer a payment of a small fee, where appropriate, to incentivise their participation. However, as the noble Baroness pointed out, difficulties have arisen, because many service users who participate in this way with public authorities are on benefit, and there are strict rules on the amount of money that a person can be paid while on benefit, as opposed to when they are in paid work. Where a small payment is made, travel expenses, the costs of a carer, facilitator or personal assistant are treated as earnings, and the total may exceed the limit set on the amount that a person can be paid in a week while on benefit. These regulations allow the expenses of paid involvement to be ignored, rather than treated as earnings. The notional earnings rule, whereby a person who declines payment—because it might affect their benefit—can have an amount deducted as though it had actually been received, is abolished by these regulations. This is welcome, but the department seems to have screwed up a bit in translating its good intentions into practice. Public bodies are concerned that the term "service user groups" does not make it sufficiently clear that individual service users are covered by the regulations and does not adequately describe the variety of involvement arrangements made with individuals, rather than groups. No mention is made of carers and others who may support the individual service user. The main problem identified by many of those consulted about the regulations is that there are public bodies to which the regulations will not apply, or to which they will apply only for certain categories of involvement. They will also not apply to certain charities and voluntary bodies, unless the involvement is commissioned by a prescribed public body that is required by law to involve service users. Involvement in research is also covered, although it has been recognised for some time that it is good practice to involve service users in research on services. The Department of Health provides strong guidance for service-user involvement, but involvement is not required by law. Yet the regulations apply only where involvement is required by law. This will place Jobcentre Plus decision-makers in a difficult position. They will have great difficulty in differentiating between involvement required by law and involvement required only by policy guidance and good practice. Errors are bound to be made, and service users will risk their benefits being reduced because their expenses were treated as earnings or notional earnings were applied. The department acknowledges that some have questioned the fact that the regulations will apply only to service-user activity in the public sector. We are told that the department will evaluate the impact of this change before taking a view as to whether the policy should be extended beyond service users engaged by public bodies. As noble Lords will know, I am vice-president of RNIB, and I declare my interest. We were consulted by an independent consultant about these regulations and we made a number of comments. However, we have been disappointed that they have not been taken into account in the framing of the regulations, nor have they been taken into account in the guidance. Our comments were to the effect that charities should certainly be included. Many of our service users are on benefits but they give inestimable assistance on our committees and working groups and, naturally, we reimburse the expenses they incur in those activities. It seems quite wrong to us that the regulations should not apply to those expenses as they apply to the other expenses where public bodies are concerned. The department has said that it will see whether the regulations should be extended. It seems to me that the case for their extension has been very well made already and I very much hope that the Minister will be able to take these comments into account and have another go at the regulations before they are finally issued.