Danny
Alexander: I will be brief because we have had a good
debate. I had not intended my opening remarks to inject the note of
party political rancour that has entered into the debate between the
other two
parties.
Mrs.
McGuire: For the hon. Gentleman’s information, I
may have inadvertently said section 28. I meant section 82. Perhaps I
was thinking of former
battles.
Danny
Alexander: I am grateful for the Under-Secretary’s
clarification, although I was a little disappointed by her response. I
accept that members of the Committee have entered into the discussion
about the funding of pathways and its delivery with good intentions,
but I am not at all satisfied with the answers that I received about
the specifics of the funding. We might hear more from the Chancellor in
his pre-Budget report about levels of investment that may or may not be
put into such matters, and I hope that the hon. Lady will take that up
with her friends and colleagues in the
Treasury. Even if we
accept that we trust the Government—I am not saying that I do,
but they are asking us to take it on trust that the necessary amount
will be spent—it worries me that no clause in the Bill makes
clear the reciprocity of responsibility that the Under-Secretary
rightly described and the commitment that I share that would not allow
a future Government, perhaps of another party or of a political hue
that chose to make substantial tax reductions and seek cost savings, to
reduce the funding for pathways to work and to increase their use of
the conditionality regime. There is nothing in the Bill to prevent that
from happening and that would allow for the fact that, in future years,
the support package might be thoroughly inadequate enough to undermine
the use of the conditionality regime. I know that that is perhaps not
the intention of Ministers here, but the Bill could be used by future
Governments, too, and that remains my
concern. Question
put and agreed
to. Clause 10
ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause
11Work-focused
interviews Question
proposed, That the clause stand part ofthe
Bill.
Mr.
Boswell: I have a few points to make about the clause. The
more that I look at the Bill, the clearer it becomes that the next few
clauses hang together and cannot be construed in isolation. I wish
first to put on record my appreciation that, in this case, the
Government have provided us with draft regulations and, as they refer
to the substance of the action planned that we shall be discussing
again in respect of clause 13, I shall at least touch on some of those
issues. As is evident
from the existence of regulations and the absence of specific
amendments, the clause is not particularly contentious. It gives rise
to several points that I hope that Ministers will bear in mind when
they work out the administrative arrangements and that relate to the
reassurance of customers and the avoidance of a lot of appeal or
difficulty when carrying them out
subsequently. It is
clear, by definition, that the purpose of a work-focused interview is
that it results in something positive. It is action directed towards
the return of the person, the customer or the claimant to work, which
is an entirely acceptable principle. Although I do not wish to go on as
much as I did on Tuesday about such matters, my experience of looking
at the pathways to pilots in Derbyshire confirmed that that approach is
being taken, and I welcome
it. Within those
pilots, there is no requirement for particular activity; the obligation
is to appear for the interview. As we debate clauses 12 and 13, we will
see that there is at least the potential of a specific obligation,
albeit not necessarily to carry out a particular piece of work-focused
activity, but, as it were, the noose is tightening on the claimant to
do something about it. We could argue endlessly, but it would not be in
the spirit of this Committee for me to suggest that that has a
malicious or unpleasant overtone about the motivation of people who are
claimants or customers. It is worth recording that figures I have seen
from Jobcentre Plus suggest that, under the present pathways, 23 per
cent of claimants never actually make the work-focused
interview. On a
“saloon bar” interpretation, this could simply be because
the claimants have not got a case and they do not turn up. More
realistically, it may well be that, for many of them, the condition has
worked its way out and they are perfectly fit and able to return to
work. We celebrate that. There may be a variety of reasons, but clearly
the work-focused interview is a something of a milestone along the
way. There are some
interesting issues about the timing. If we take the pathways
experience, my understanding is that the interview takes place in the
eighth week of claim. That is over and beyond the six months of
statutory sick pay, so it is quite a long time from the incidence of
the condition or the initial incident. There may be a reason for not
attending the interview, and some people would take the view that the
system needs time to settle down and for some people to return to
work. This is defensible, although my hon. Friends and I will be arguing
later in a different context that there is a strong case for earlier
intervention in the whole process when the condition establishes
itself, even within the statutory sick pay period, but we will not get
into that debate today. However, Ministers owe it to the Committee to
say something about the optimum time or how flexible that can be in
relation to the individual. I think that it is good to connect with
people earlier in the process rather than leave them to nurse their
difficulties until it is too late to find a remedy for them.
There are issues,
which we will return to in later clauses, about the nature of the
interview and the basis of the action plan. I cannot help, if only by
consanguinity with a member of my family and the sort of discussion we
tend to have, although I cannot say we spend our whole weekends
discussing the Welfare Reform
Bill—
Mr.
Ruffley: Speak for
yourself.
Mr.
Boswell: I am delighted to hear that my hon. Friend thinks
of nothing else. I am
inclined to look at what may be termed the hard case, or the judicial
case—the moment when somebody says I have not been treated
fairly and I am going to appeal because they are stitching me up. In
constituency traffic, that is the kind of thing we get asserted to us
by constituents even if it is not the case. To avoid any doubt, that is
not the sort of approach to this process that the pathways officers I
saw were taking. It is not a penal process and nobody here wants it to
be. Even within the
narrow terms of clause 11, which is about the rules for interview, and
paves for the draft regulations that I mentioned, there are some
interesting issues. What is an interview? What is co-operation with an
interview, which is required under section 6 of the draft regulations?
It is to talk about assisting and encouraging the person to remain in
or to obtain work and about identifying activities the patient may
undertake to make that more likely.
As we have said extensively in
this Committee, many of the claimants may well have mental conditions,
attitude problems and feelings about themselves that are probably not
objectively justified, but we do not want to penalise people if they do
not quite fit in the interviewing officer’s book. On the other
hand, if someone sits in the interview in what used to be described in
the armed forces as a mode of dumb insolence and refuses to answer any
questions or to co-operate with the interviewer, one could reasonably
argue, and the regulations appear to argue this, that they have not had
an interview at all. They may have attended, but they have not played
their part. There are some issues about how that is to be
defined. 10
am I am a little
more concerned about the nature of the record and we may need to return
to this on clause 13. An action plan ideally should be consensual and
signed by both parties. It should say, “We have discussed your
case. We realise that you have these problems which
have been identified by the work-focused health-related assessment, but
nevertheless we think that you could try to do this”, and the
person will undertake to do so. There is also the question of a record
of what is to take place. That is specified in the draft
regulations. As the
Minister said the other day, the benefit situation for the individual
should be incorporated in some way into the action plan. It is a little
bit more than an action plan. In financial planning, if one went to an
independent financial adviser, one would call it a report and a series
of recommendations or agreed undertakings. It will be quite a complex
document. Some of
these things may be done for good reason over the telephone. There is
always an evidential problem. There is also a serious
issue—again, I do not want to get at officers
involved—concerning the appropriate bag of qualifications for
the individual conducting the interview. What was immensely impressive
about pathways to work was that the personal advisers clearly knew what
their job was. They were highly motivated and in certain cases rather
movingly so. I watched them from across the room carrying out
interviews. When going into institutions one looks at the body language
and it looked like a positive interview, with no lurking behind a
screen and telling people to account for
themselves. To
do what they will be asked to do, for not great remuneration, these
officials need a full bag of qualifications. They have to have
reporting skills. Something has to be written down. They have to have
the personal adviser skills to try to tease out what is possible. The
main point for the Minister that concerns me is that they have to have
an understanding of the benefits situation because that is clearly
relevant to the action plan. All my experience of the Department is
that people can be very good on the benefit that they are
administering, or they may be good at getting people back into work,
but they are not omnicompetent.
Some of the difficulties arise
where people are operating in silos. One person will understand the
disability living allowance very well. I see the Under-Secretary of
State is nodding. Another will understand the linking rules, someone
else will know what the local employment position is for the person
being coaxed back into work and someone else will have an input into
the health-related assessment. That is all perfectly sensible but it
all comes together in an action plan which has to be competent. It has
to be authoritative because it can give rise, at least in principle in
later clauses, to
sanctions. Unless
I have grossly oversimplified the pathways pilot model, personal
advisers on the benefits side talk primarily about the return-to-work
credit, which is relatively straightforward and part of the whole
complex, but not the overall bag of benefits. A benefits adviser would
be brought in if necessary. We are asking a lot of these action plans.
They are meant to advise and to help individuals. I am sure that that
is the intention. They are meant to cover a lot of ground with people
who have quite a lot of difficulties. It is important that they are
well conceived and defensible—if necessary, in a
tribunal—because we do not want people being given low-grade
action plans that do not cover their needs, might contain factual
errors or give rise to other arguments further down the chain when, for
example, things do not turn out to be feasible. In this clause, we need
to make
certain that the work-focused interview is prescribed a proper gateway
to action, that it can all be dealt with in a professional way and will
not be skimped on or hurried through, which can give rise to
difficulties. We will no doubt want to explore this matter seriously in
other clauses. I do not find anything personally objectionable in the
structure or regulations at all, so there areno amendments on
it but Ministers do need to think about
it. Mr.
Ruffley: I endorse everything that my hon. Friend has
said. I would like to add a further point. This clause underpins the
rights and responsibilities agenda, which both the Government and Her
Majesty’s loyal Opposition support. As with anything to do with
rights and commensurate responsibilities, there is a fine balance to be
struck. This clause seems to be about encouraging people to find out
more about the support that they can get. The work-focused interview is
a good thing. It is designed to showcase the types of support that are
available to the customer. However, it must not frighten people off.
There is always that tension throughout all these reforms.
Mind and the Child Poverty
Action Group have raised a point about some of the literature that
customers have been receiving in pilot areas, regarding their
attendance at work-focused interviews. They have evidence—I am
not going to quantify it—that a threatening tone has been
deployed, threatening withdrawal of benefits for non-attendance. I am
not suggesting that that is widespread at all, but CPAG wants a review
of some of the language used. It quotes a standard letter sent to
claimants regarding their attendance at a WFI in a pathways
pilot: “As your
adviser, I need to meet with you to discuss how we can improve your
chances of finding work, now or in the future. We want to make sure
that you are getting the right support and are claiming all the right
benefits. It is important that you attend and participate in this
interview. If you do not, your benefit may be
affected.” I
am used to the rough and tumble of politics. I used to be, when I had a
proper job, a lawyer—[Interruption.]I was going
to say that I earned an honest living as a lawyer—well, a living
anyway. To many in this room, that kind of language may seem
straightforward and factual. It touches all the right bases in one
respect: it talks about the right support and making sure that people
get the right amount of benefit. However, it has affected some
customers. Sue Christoforou, the policy officer at Mind, said in
evidence to the Select Committee for Work and Pensions earlier this
year that, after receiving such letters, some of Mind’s clients
had “gone out immediately
to get a job because they feel that is what the letter is saying to
them, completely inappropriate jobs and after a number of days that job
fails.” I stress that
that evidence undermines neither the propositions in the clause, nor
the successes of pathways and the progress that it has made. However,
will the Minister commission, or assure us that he will commission, a
review, whereby officials continually analyse and perhaps audit such
specimen letters to ensure that the language can be tweaked, not so
that it loses its force, becomes meaningless prose or is so bland that
the customer takes no note of it, but so that it does not threaten
clients and customers—not my words—in the ways in which
some bodies say it does? One hopes that such cases are in the
minority.
Mr.
Boswell: I am much in sympathy with my hon. Friend. If the
Committee needs reminding, many of those people are nervous of any
administrative process and they feel that it is to their disadvantage.
Does not he agree that, under the review that he is canvassing the
Minister to undertake, it would also be wise if officials kept, as I
hope they do, a continuing dialogue with the disability organisations,
in particular those concerned with mental health, to ensure that such
text is run past them to determine whether a better outcome can be
achieved?
Mr.
Ruffley: I was going to come to that point. Taking on
board what my hon. Friend said, will the Minister undertake to conduct
a review of the language in conjunction with disability and support
groups? The review might produce a standard letter, so that its
drafting was left neither to individual branches of Jobcentre Plus nor
to providers, which might have different takes on it. The Minister
could then present the standard letter to the Committee at one of our
sittings and after due consultation with outside groups. It might
address the point that Mind has raised. We do not want even one person
who may be fragile or have mental health problems to be upset by the
process. One way of doing so would be with language on which we agree,
which would be used uniformly during the roll-out and when the
allowance was up and running.
Mr.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman refers
to the language that is deployed, but does he accept that often, there
is a broader problem with such regulations? In support of my argument,
I cite a document that Citizens Advice has circulated about an income
support appeal. The decision communicated to the client read:
“The decision
disallowing income support does not fall to be
revised.” To most people
that means absolutely nothing. It is double Dutch. Does the hon.
Gentleman agree that there is a wider problem that we must
consider?
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