Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, this is the first opportunity I have had to contribute to the Committee. I declare my interest both as the named carer of an adult with autism and as, I believe, somebody who will need to attend the assessment meeting with him. I am that other person, so I am more than personally interested in this legislation. My friend the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, made a good point about getting good value for money and making sure a system works. However, there is another point about trialling it with new applicants. I remain cautious about the ability of a lot of people newly recruited for the purpose to carry out what will be really quite difficult balances of judgment across a wide section of people, particularly those with learning disabilities, mental health conditions and autistic spectrum disorders, some of whom will have two or all three of the conditions. I refer the Minister to my personal experience over many years: I am very proud to have raised the very first debate on Asperger’s syndrome in the House of Commons many years ago. When it came to getting contracts signed for people to get people into paid employment, one of the contract requirements was that the various agencies and commercial companies had a full understanding of this range of really quite difficult disabilities. All too often that training and preparation was based on reading up and taking a bit of advice. It never, ever, made the mark. To give an example, in the case of people on the autistic spectrum it is well known—if I am to generalise and as has been said quite rightly they are individuals who will all display individual characteristics—that their lack of imagination and inability to express and understand non-factual things, as opposed to in some cases a quite high level of ability in understanding factual information, very often leads one to read in manuals and books about autism that if you converse with somebody on the spectrum it is best not to deal in generalities but to deal with specific questions that require specific answers. Some of the contracts that have been issued in the past to get people with autism into work have led the people assessing their aptitude for employment to carry out conversations that frankly beggar belief. I have had some personal experience of this. The questioning would be very much along the line not of, ““How are you?””—that is a difficult question to answer—but ““Do you live in your own home?””, ““How many chairs do you have in your sitting room?”” and ““What size is your television screen?””. There was a mistaken belief that this was a normal conversation that somebody on the autistic spectrum would feel comfortable with. In one example the person being questioned was actually very intelligent and felt straightaway that they were being patronised, as any of us in this Room would have done. Therefore, a lead-in period is needed to assess not just the value for money and the way in which this new system is working but also to allow for time, which is really needed, to make sure that the people carrying out these assessments have a working knowledge of some of the more complex conditions and a much better understanding to be able to make their judgment. I hope the Minister will listen carefully to the points that are being made to allow a lead-in time for new applicants so that we can get this right.