Welfare Reform Bill

Before I start on the amendment formally, it is worth making it crystal clear that the structure of the changes we have made bear in mind some of the real issues that we are talking about. I am particularly conscious of people with learning difficulties and fluctuating conditions, or a nest of other problems. I want to spend one minute on the design of the new welfare system, when it comes out like Aphrodite coming out of the sea near Paphos. The first point is the design of the work programme, where the rewards are not to get someone into a job and to keep them there, as it used to be, for 13 weeks. When you think about it, that is not what we want; we want someone to be in a long-term job. The structure, particularly for the hardest to help, is that the real rewards for the provider are when someone is in work for more than two years—it is two years and three months. You do not get someone into a job for two years and three months if it is inappropriate. That simply is not going to happen so when we are talking about the work programme, the incentive on the providers is to match people up with jobs that they can do in a way that the current system simply does not. The second structural change that we are making, and which is really relevant in this area, is in how the universal credit works. By pulling together the two systems, the out-of-work benefits system and the in-work tax credit system, you do not have this desperate problem that we have today where if you take a risk and try to get a job and it did not work, you go back to go—and now try to get your benefits again. It is a nightmare but there have been bits of sticking plaster on it. If you are in a fluctuating condition and this week you cannot not work—let us say you have a job where there is a little flexibility—all that would happen would be that you would slide up the taper. Nothing would have changed in the nature of your benefit. There is just an adjustment in your universal credit payment and when you can work more, you get more. Those two things are big structural changes to bear in mind when we deal with these areas. They will help a lot because much of what people are rightly so concerned about are some of the incredible blocks that are in the current system and which make it so difficult for people to partake. It is why we have excluded so many people from having a full life, because in modern western society being part of the economy of the country is having a full life. They have been excluded and there is all the depression that results, so there are some really strong underlying changes that should help. I will narrow it down to the specific issues. It is of course critical to take account of a claimant's health condition and capability when considering how work-related requirements apply to them, and the Bill provides specific safeguards in this area. The claimant with limited capability for work cannot be expected to move into a job, and therefore cannot be subject to higher level sanctions. A claimant with limited capability for work and work-related activity, cannot be subject to work-related requirements, or conditionality sanctions of any kind. However, we do not intend to use legislation to stipulate what must be in a claimant commitment. Specifically, we do not want to end up with a long and inevitably complex list stipulating its contents, and certainly not in a primary legislation designed to set out a framework. We wish to avoid replicating the situation we have in jobseeker's allowance, which is an extensive, highly prescriptive legislation, even having regulations specifying obvious details such as the requirement to include the claimant's name in the jobseeker's agreement. We feel that if we started introducing specific legislative provisions dealing, for example, with addressing reasonable adjustments for health conditions, many others would follow. Of course, for those claimants required to look for work, where it is appropriate to place limitations on work, search and availability requirements, this will be properly reflected in the claimant commitment. The illustrative claimant commitments provided to noble Lords demonstrate how this might be done. But given that the claimant commitment is intended to be personalised, we believe that the exact content is best left to advisers to decide, following discussions with the claimant. As my noble friend Lord Boswell and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said in their remarks, we clearly do not want—or, you could almost argue, cannot afford—to breach discrimination, equality and public law duties. We must and will make reasonable adjustments to ensure claimants can access our services. But equally important is our desire to set requirements to help people prepare for, or move into work in a way that reflects a capability of circumstance. This is critical to support people to progress. There are additional checks and balances. If a claimant is unhappy with specific work, search and availability requirements, they will be able to ask for another adviser to review them. This happens now under the jobseeker's allowance, and there will be an appropriate review procedure under universal credit as well. Where a claimant does fail to meet a requirement, sanctions will not apply where the claimant demonstrates that there is a good reason. In considering whether a claimant has a good reason for a failure, decision-makers must consider any relevant matter raised by the claimant. So if the claimant submits relevant information about their health condition that has prevented them from complying with a requirement, the decision-maker must take that into account.