Welfare Reform Bill

It is a nice idea. I do not think I will make an utter commitment to it here and now but it is a cute idea and maybe we should put it in the contract. I will take it away and think about it. We do not think that we should prescribe this in the Bill or even in regulations because it is important that assessors have an understanding of the limits of their knowledge so they know when to bring in the expert advice. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, got that absolutely right. I will now go on to Amendments 50C, 50D and 50ZR. We know that individuals can have a wealth of material, knowledge and evidence that will help in the assessment process and we need to get the right material and evidence from them at the right time and we need to encourage that evidence to come forward. We will not create a two-tier system where the poorest and the most vulnerable have less chance of receiving benefit because they cannot afford to pay for the evidence. We are going to make sure that does not happen. I want to pick up the very valuable point raised by the noble Countess, Lady Mar. If we have a mandatory process to involve the individual’s health professionals it may very well be an entirely nugatory and expensive process in the many situations where the GP is not up to date with what is happening. That is the inflexibility of having something in the Bill which adds nothing except cost. If someone who has a learning disability has not visited a health professional for many years, why go through the expense of getting evidence? It would be unnecessary; it would slow the process down; and there may be someone else whom we would not have thought of including in the Bill who is much better placed to provide information and evidence for the assessor. We need to pull out the cumbersome implications of the mandatory process—the point made so precisely by my noble friend Lord Kirkwood. We have made it clear that face-to-face consultation should form part of the claim process for most—but absolutely not for all—claimants. Ultimately, consultation will play a key role in creating a fairer and more objective assessment. It needs to be done sensitively and proportionately, but where sufficient evidence is available, we are in absolute agreement that there does not have to be face-to-face consultation. There will be many examples where that is unnecessary. We are talking about something very close to, if not exactly, the tiered process recommended by the National Autistic Society. That is what we are planning to adopt. We have flexibility in the Bill to do that.