Welfare Reform Bill

Picking up on the powerful point made by my noble friend Lord Kirkwood on the Independent Review Service, that service review’s decision is made on whether to award discretionary Social Fund payment. These decisions must have been subject to an internal Jobcentre Plus review before being passed to the Independent Review Service. The reforms to the discretionary Social Fund will mean that the Independent Review Service’s workload will diminish and eventually come to an end. It would not be appropriate or feasible to have a national review scheme to deal with the diversity of new provision delivered by local authorities and the Welsh and Scottish Governments. Local authorities will set up their own internal review mechanisms if they think it appropriate to do so. In addition, the Local Government Ombudsman is fair and impartial, and is available to people dissatisfied with decisions made by their local authority. Amendment 86ZZZF would delay the introduction of new systems until universal credit is fully rolled out and has achieved prescribed performance targets. This would delay the benefits of a more localised approach to the discretionary support. Performance standards are already in place for the current benefit regime, for which the Secretary of State is accountable, and this will continue to be the case for universal credit. The business plan for 2011-15 confirms that the department will continue to publish a range of indicators on the performance of delivery businesses, including claims processing, customer and employer satisfaction and labour market services. With these measures already in place, we do not see the need for regulations to set out the performance targets or standards for universal credit which the amendment would require. On the question raised by my noble friend Lord Kirkwood on cuts-driven reform, the White Paper on universal credit gave the commitment that this was not a cost-cutting measure and that costs would be funded. The initial funding allocation is fixed for the rest of the spending review period and future allocations will take account of changes in need.