The
Chairman: Order. I ask hon. Members not to be tempted to
interrupt Members when they are on their
feet.
Mr.
Hunt: Thank you for rescuing me, Mr.
Hood. I declare that
interest to show that I have some degree of knowledge of the business
background and of how courses have become a vital way for people who
are out of the labour market to re-engage in it. I used to have an
image of adult education as being flower arranging, cake-making, Latin,
Japanese, Shakespeare sonnets and other such wonderful and enjoyable
pursuits. In fact, when visiting adult education colleges one finds
that a huge number of the courses offered equip people with relevant
skills.
Adam
Afriyie: Is my hon. Friend aware that in the technology
industry, many people with learning difficulties and mental health
challenges attend courses and are subsequently able to be placed with
employers? There is definitely an opening for part-time and full-time
courses to assist in meeting the Bill’s
objectives.
Mr.
Hunt: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that
point, which brings me in a relevant way to my other points. Education
is an important part of the solution, so the Bill needs flexibility.
The amendments tabled by the hon. Member for INBS, as I think I shall
call him from now on—the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn,
Badenoch and Strathspey—would at least make part-time education
possible. I hope that
when we discuss education we will consider it also in relation to the
support part of the new employment and support allowance. We shall come
to that later, but if the Government are serious about wanting to allow
people on the support package to volunteer for the pathways programme,
they need to understand the role of education in making that possible.
Education might not be a matter simply of job placement, although that
is what it is most likely to be for people on the work-related part of
the allowance package. I support the
amendment.
Mr.
Boswell: May I, too, welcome you to the Chair,
Mr. Hood? You have probably picked up on the fact that the
debate has been broadly consensual and good-natured, and I shall not
subvert that. I wish to add only one or two comments.
First, one should always have
regard to the control function as well as the relaxation function, so
Ministers may need to reflect on the current definition of education.
For many people education will be perceived as attending an institution
in which education is delivered, but the internet and online learning
may require Ministers to draw the definitions widely to embrace the
appropriate restrictions. I am not anxious to encourage them to go
further, but I put those views on the record.
On my second point, I should
declare an interest as one of the parliamentary patrons of the National
Institute of Adult Continuing Education. The Minister is looking at me
wryly. As he will well remember, as a former Minister with
responsibility for higher and further education, I am deeply committed
to the cause of lifelong learning and I look only for allies on both
sides of the Committee in relation to it. We all believe that it is
important—whether in an employment-related or support-related
context, or in a context unrelated to other matters. It is a good in
itself, quite apart from the employment side of it, although I endorse
the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey on its
relevance to employment for people who have been out of the labour
market for some time and whose lack of prior attainment, though not
ability, may disqualify them or hold them back from reaching the
appropriate level in that
market. Finally,
although the words have not been mentioned, I suspect that somewhere,
stalking this debate, is the mythic figure of 16 hours concerning
people’s availability for full-time work, or their potential
availability for it were they able to go through the pathways and get
access to work. The suggestion is that there should be a distinction.
At the time of my ministerial experience of more than a decade ago
there was a rigorous distinction between the student support package
and the support that is available through the benefits system, and that
has broadly been maintained, but the explanatory notes already indicate
that there is some possibility of eroding or eliding it for disabled
students. I do not think that Ministers will expect me to declare the
end of the 16-hour rule as far as the Opposition are concerned. If they
do, they will be disappointed; it is a debate for another occasion.
However, and I speak in all seriousness, the role of education is
important, and we should like to feel that the system works to
facilitate it so as to encourage people back to work. We do not want it
to be used unduly pedantically so as to exclude people from the labour
market by making it, while theoretically possible, practically
impossible for them to qualify for future
employment. Alison
Seabeck (Plymouth, Devonport) (Lab): I apologise for being
late for the start of the Committee, Mr. Hood.
Unlike a number of Committee
members, I am not an expert in these matters. Paragraph 4(1)(a) of
schedule 1 refers to “prescribed cases”. Will the
Minister clarify what could be classified as such a
case?
Mr.
Murphy: I shall endeavour to respond to the points
mentioned. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and
Strathspey raised some genuinely important points about the role of
education, and the
importance of education in the skills and employment gaps, the income
and wealth gaps, the opportunity gap, and in all the other
differentials that we know have been endemic in our society for many
decades. Education is the key part of that. When we examine social
mobility, we see that the first factor to make a big impact is
childhood and family poverty, which we have already considered in
response to the comments made by the hon. Member for Windsor, and which
we may have a further opportunity to discuss. The second is the role of
the family, social networks and the social capital that families can
provide. The third is education, and predominantly primary education.
Although the context of the Bill is later years, primary education and
early years education is one of the key three drivers of social
mobility and the transformation of life chances, so the hon. Gentleman
is right to raise the issue.
The hon.
Member for Daventry drew on both his current involvement in education
and his distinguished career as a higher education Minister. He will
recall that we have spoken about this before, but during a previous
life I served as the president of the National Union of Students for
the UK. He was one of the few Ministers whom we looked forward to
meeting, because he was always willing to enter into a
conversation—there was a dialogue, not a diatribe. I hope that
he does not mind my saying that he was a new Conservative before being
one became this year’s vogue.
Mr.
Hunt: The Minister might be in danger of inadvertently
breaking up this afternoon’s friendly consensus by suggesting
that the modern compassionate Conservative party is a vogue, when it is
in fact much more fundamental than that.
The
Chairman: Yes, I am about to rule you out of
order.
Mr.
Murphy: I have not said anything yet. All I can say is
that we are judged by our actions as well as our words. The hon. Member
for South-West Surrey has not been here long enough to vote against the
new deal, tax credits or all the investments that have helped to drive
our labour market interventions, which make some of the Bill entirely
possible. To return
to the point that the hon. Member for Daventry and others made, my
experience is not based on statistical analysis or the fact that I was
the president of the NUS. I went back to a further education
college—Cardonald college, on the south side of
Glasgow—to have another shot at doing my school qualifications
part-time, and I remember the sheer diversity of that college, in the
mid-’80s. Further education has played an enormous role, and
will continue to do so, in supporting people from all sorts of
backgrounds, particularly those with a disability and a fluctuating
mental health condition. I think back to that time, when the college
played a remarkable role in trying to intervene and improve
people’s lives. Further education is not all about basket
weaving or recreational Japanese, as the hon. Member for South-West
Surrey, speaking for the new Conservative party, belatedly
acknowledges.
Mr.
Hunt: I am just going to bring the Minister back to the
debate for a moment. He mentioned disability, and one of the concerns,
which I am sure he will be able to address quickly, is that the draft
regulations, which he kindly sent to us before the Committee started,
have not been published in an accessible format. I wonder whether he
could look into that, because we have received indications that his
Department was unwilling to publish the draft regulations in an
accessible format. I am sure that that was an oversight, the simple
reason being that the whole Committee depends very much on the input of
disability organisations, with disabled people giving an important part
of that feedback. We would not want not to have that feedback on the
draft regulations.
Mr.
Murphy: The hon. Gentleman is entirely correct that we
must ensure a diversity of feedback. If the point that he raises is
genuine, I will of course look into
it. Mr.
David Ruffley (Bury St. Edmunds) (Con): On that point, the
publication of the Green Paper in an accessible form was delayed, so we
are not suggesting for a minute that the Department is not aware of the
issues. I received complaints that an accessible form of Green Paper
was not available at the time that everyone else had it, so perhaps the
Minister could share his thoughts on
that. 4.30
pm
Mr.
Murphy: I have already offered my thoughts on it. The hon.
Gentleman will be aware that we extended the consultation period on the
Green Paper for that very reason. That was the reasonable thing to do
at the time. Of course we as a Government and all public agencies must
continually find ways to ensure that our communications, our
conversations, our websites and our electronic communications touch the
lives of people, regardless of their experience and
background. Returning
to the point about education, I should stress that education in its
various forms will be an important part of work-related activity as
envisaged in the Bill. The chance to reskill and retrain would be an
important part of work-related activity. It is our intention to bring
forward into the contributory and income-related allowances the
corresponding provisions from incapacity benefit and income support.
These rules currently mean that where someone has been sick or disabled
for more than 28 weeks they will normally be able to claim
income-related benefit while in full-time education. The Bill, as
drafted, would allow us to maintain the current position and we intend
to do just that. The
rules are intended to draw a distinction between short-term sickness
while in education, and education while in a period of long-term
sickness or disability. The Bill as currently drafted allows us the
flexibility to accommodate changes in the way that education is
provided and studies are funded. I realise that the amendment tabled by
the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey was a
probing amendment, so I will not make a substantial point about it.
However, it takes away some of that flexibility by seeking to insert
“full time” before “education”.
The nature of
income-related benefits is such that they need to take account of other
support that is available to people. That is why the provision relating
to the income-related strand of the benefit does not specify that it is
full-time education that is incompatible with receiving the benefit. We
have a provision allowing us to define the meaning of
“education” in regulations, as the hon. Gentleman is
aware. We
also want people to undertake education in respect of work-related
activity, and if necessary we can make adjustments to the rules through
regulations to ensure that the interface between education and
work-related activity is fit for purpose and makes possible the type of
thing that we all wish to see which we have already mentioned today. I
think that is the point that the hon. Member for Daventry wanted me to
address.
Mr.
Hunt: The Minister said that that flexibility applies to
people on the income-related part of the ESA. Should that flexibility
not also apply to people on the contributions-related part? For
example, if someone with acquired brain injury from a very bad car
crash goes on a course, it might be a stepping-stone towards part-time
education and then full-time education. He or she may well be on the
contributions-based element of the ESA rather than the income-related
one. Should that flexibility not also apply to such a
person?
Mr.
Murphy: The hon. Gentleman raises a reasonable point. We
can continue our conversation about who has access to what aspect of
education and whether it is income-related or contributory. The
important point, which I made in my response to the hon. Member for
Daventry, is that we will take the flexibility to ensure that the
regulations can evolve through time in response to the changing nature
of education and the changing opportunities in information technology
and the changing demands of the customers of ESA, in terms of their
educational
aspirations. The
regulations will set out in more detail the policy, but the current
definitions of education for income support are in regulations and we
will bring forward what is currently in income support regulations,
for example, in schedule 1. How will students be identified as
qualifying for income-related ESA while studying full-time? We will
define that in regulations. There will be consultation with the
organisations that one would expect about the draft regulations which
will be entirely appropriate. But we intend to bring forward the same
definitions as currently apply to disabled students. I think that will
reassure the hon. Gentleman on the specific point that he
raised. As I said this
morning, Mr. Hood, our officials often write excellently
drafted and crafted speeches and they also write excellently drafted
and crafted paragraphs. I shall share one with the Committee and then
explain what I think it means. Paragraph 6(4) of schedule 1 provides
that we can treat a claimant as being in education when they are not
and a claimant who is in education as if they are not. I was puzzled by
that. To pre-empt questions from hon. Members, the paragraph is what is
generally regarded as a training provision and is standard in social
security legislation.
Again, to reassure hon. Members,
if someone is in education but we want to treat them as though they are
not, so that they can still claim income-related allowances, the power
in the paragraph enables us to do so. For example, if they are
undertaking approved training to enable them to evolve their skills and
career we would define them as not being in education for the purposes
of those ESA contributions. I hope that that reassures hon.
Members. Specifically
on the points raised about prescribed places, I am advised that we
shall stipulate in regulations, following consultation, exactly what my
hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Alison Seabeck) asked
about. I would be happy to see her take part in the conversation about
how we get those regulations just right.
With that, I encourage the hon.
Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, in the spirit in
which he tabled them, to consider withdrawing his probing amendments.
If there are additional specifics that need discussing, we can continue
that conversation as we consider the drafting of the regulations to
which I have already
alluded.
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