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However, we must not lose sight of the fact that ensuring that parents prepare for and enter work has a beneficial impact on individual claimants and their children. Evidence shows that the benefits to children if their parents are working are more far-reaching than increased income alone. Indeed, children have reported the benefits of parental employment, and parents making the move into paid work have observed
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Lord Northbourne: My Lords, simply for information, Amendment 15 refers to a person under the age of 16 whereas some of the other amendments, such as Amendment 24, refer to the “well-being of any child”. I understand a child to be any person under the age of 18, and I wonder what the reason is for the difference.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: The noble Lord raises an interesting point to which I regret I am unable to provide an answer at the Dispatch Box. I shall prevaricate for a little while in the hope that rescue may come from the Box, but if not, perhaps I may write to the noble Lord. I am sure there is a full answer, but it is not here yet. I shall write to him.
16: Clause 2, page 7, line 2, at end insert—
“(1A) But a direction under subsection (1) may not specify medical or surgical treatment as the only activity which, in any person’s case, is to be regarded as being work-related activity.”
17: Clause 2, page 9, line 5, at end insert—
“2H Good cause for failure to comply with regulations
(1) This section applies to any regulations made under section 2A, 2AA or 2D that prescribe matters to be taken into account in determining whether a person has good cause for any failure to comply with the regulations.
(2) The provision made by the regulations prescribing those matters must include provision relating to—
(a) the person’s physical or mental health or condition;
(b) the availability of childcare.””
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Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I shall speak also to the other government amendments in this group.
I return now to the important issue of good cause. Noble Lords will be aware that where ESA, IS or JSA customers fail to undertake mandatory activity they are given the opportunity to demonstrate good cause for this before a sanction is considered. In previous
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I continue to believe that it would be impossible to specify all the circumstances in which somebody would have a good reason for failure to comply with the requirements on them. Jobcentre Plus decision-makers therefore have a responsibility to fairly assess all the evidence available to them, considering each person’s individual circumstances. However, in order to assist the decision-maker in this assessment, regulations provide a list of matters which the decision-maker may take into account in determining whether the customer has good cause. These circumstances vary depending on the nature of the requirement and the benefit claimed. We do not propose to create an exhaustive list of circumstances that must be taken into account.
However, we have listened to the views of both Houses and believe that there is a case for making clear in primary legislation that good-cause considerations must take account of the availability of childcare and the customer’s health condition or disability. I am therefore bringing forward Amendments 17, 52 and 59 to achieve this. In practice, consideration of such matters already happens but we want to place this beyond doubt and ensure that it is safeguarded for the future. I hope that the amendments reassure noble Lords that no customer will be unfairly sanctioned where they are prevented from complying with a requirement because of a lack of available childcare or as a result of a health condition or disability, and that they go some way to reassuring the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher—who will be speaking to her amendment in a moment—that we make every attempt to give customers adequate opportunity to demonstrate good cause.
If a customer fails to attend a work-focused interview, the adviser will contact the customer by phone, prior to writing to them, to ask them for evidence of good cause. The customer will then be given five days to provide that evidence. I note that in her amendment the noble Baroness seeks to include in primary legislation that we must always make reasonable attempts to visit a customer with a disability, mental impairment or significant communications difficulty at their usual address. At present we attempt to make a home visit to customers who have a mental health condition, learning disability or a condition that affects cognition if they fail to attend a work-focused interview in order to explain the conditionality. If we are unsuccessful the first time, we will try for a second time. If this fails, a manager will investigate the customer’s situation to try to establish their whereabouts and make referrals to other services if appropriate. We would not sanction a customer if we believed that they had not understood the conditionality on them. We intend to apply these safeguards to good cause with regard to work-related activity also.
The noble Baroness wishes us to put in primary legislation that we should put in place any reasonable support measures to enable the customer to comply with the conditionality. Advisers already endeavour to do this. For example, customers with a learning disability may bring an advocate along to their work-focused
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As I have explained, we have also tabled an amendment to the Bill that good-cause consideration should include a customer’s disability or health condition. This demonstrates how seriously we take putting appropriate safeguards in place for our customers. Having said that, I beg to move the amendment. I hope, although she has not yet spoken to her amendment, that that helps the noble Baroness.
Baroness Meacher: My Lords, before speaking to Amendment 20, I thank the Minister for Amendment 17 on the same subject, which goes some way towards meeting the requirements under good cause, as he said. However, the government amendment on its own does not go far enough.
The Minister said that advisers try to make home visits when they can, and so on, but this should not be done on an arbitrary or “if time permits” basis. Certainly in my limited direct experience of these matters, these things do not happen in general. My amendment introduces a general requirement on the welfare system to give claimants an adequate opportunity to explain their non-attendance at a work-focused interview or activity.
The amendment also includes three appropriate steps that must—not “may”—be undertaken by officials to ensure that a person with a disability, mental impairment or significant communication difficulty has had an adequate opportunity to demonstrate good cause. These are all reasonable attempts to achieve a visit to the person’s home—we understand that there are of course occasions when somebody just hides behind the door, pretends to be out and is just not available. All we are seeking here is that reasonable attempts should have been made. That is vital for people with mental health problems and fluctuating conditions. I spoke at length in Committee about just how vulnerable those people feel if they receive a letter inviting them to an interview and a subsequent letter saying that their benefits will be sanctioned. They may not even have opened the first letter and will certainly not have opened the second.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester: They probably would not even have had the letter because of a postal strike.
Baroness Meacher: Let us assume that the Royal Mail is working most of the time or at least continues to exist, which of course it may not.
I mentioned in Committee that the brother of a friend of mine went to see his brother who had a mental health problem and whose benefits had long since been cancelled. He had not eaten for goodness knows how long. My friend’s brother could hardly get through the door for all the mail, leaflets and newspapers behind it. Nothing had been opened, and there was no way that this man was going to get to the phone, make a coherent phone call or find a piece of paper and write a letter. None of that was remotely possible. One cannot emphasise too strongly the importance of home visits for these very vulnerable claimants. It just is not good enough to say, “Maybe we’ll try and do it”.
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The second step in the amendment is provision of any support measures that the person requires in order to comply with the Bill, leaving it rather open to take account of various special circumstances of different claimants. The third is the making of all reasonable adjustments under the Disability Discrimination Act.
The amendment is important because, as the Bill stands, claimants unable to attend a work-related interview or activity must demonstrate good cause. However, be it through ill health or a lack of understanding, they may inadvertently fail to do so. If somebody is being difficult, that is understandable, but if somebody inadvertently fails to comply, it does not seem right that they should be even poorer than they would otherwise be.
The Minister said in Committee:
“If the customer has a mental health condition or learning difficulties, the personal adviser will arrange for a home visit to take place. The adviser will always attempt to meet the customer before any reduction in benefit is proposed”.—[Official Report, 11/6/09; col. GC 129.]
This is an important statement, for which I thank the Minister, but he needs to give more assurance that these things will be in place. I hope he will agree for it to be written into the Bill as a specific duty. If it is left to guidance, as the Minister is suggesting, I have no doubt that it will lapse or be applied very unevenly across the country, which has always happened. The tragic suicides of people on incapacity benefit who have been informed by letter that their benefit has been cancelled make clear how important this is. It may sound trivial, but it is not.
With reference to providing reasonable adjustments under the Disability Discrimination Act, we remain concerned about the five-day timeframe for someone to demonstrate good cause—we tabled amendments in Committee on that issue. However, this amendment accepts that the five-day limit will remain, but that a claimant with a disability might justify a longer period or a different process for satisfying the good cause condition. We are looking for flexibility and individual treatment, rather than a rigid increase from five days to—let us say—10 days. It would be more helpful. Likewise, reasonable adjustments will have to be made in the case of a claimant with a mental health problem. We discussed the special needs of claimants at length, but this amendment is important because, in a new and tougher regime, it provides assurances for claimants in different circumstances and with a range of special needs. That is the important point about this—it seeks to ensure that people are not inappropriately and improperly denied the benefits to which they are entitled.
Lord Rix: I shall speak to Amendment 17. I very much welcome the Minister’s amendment on good cause, which will place on statute that any failure to comply with regulations must take into account a person’s physical or mental health condition. I want to underline several points.
The definition of good cause was extremely important in relation to safeguarding people with a learning disability, as has already been acknowledged, and should include their failure to understand what is expected of them, as well as recognition of inadequate
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- “has to show good cause for failure to undertake general or specific work-related activity due to learning, language or literacy difficulties or any misleading information given by the Secretary of State”.
It does not acknowledge the issue of support. What would happen, for example, if a person with a learning disability is expected to attend a work-focused interview but cannot travel independently and has no one to support them to attend? Surely that would be good cause for failure to comply. Any reassurances that the Minister can provide in this matter would be most welcome.
Baroness Afshar: I have a concern with respect to minorities, which can regard any kind of mental illness as a dishonouring factor in the family and are highly likely to hide anyone who has that kind of disability and exclude them from access to these rights. Being able to find those people and visit them helps the individual—sometimes against the wishes of the family, but it is extremely helpful and important. I suggest that geography, too, should be a factor. There are areas in which you really do not see a social worker from year to year, because it is just too far. Often it is in those areas that the greatest need exists. A requirement for someone to check on them would help recipients.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope: I shall add a word or two about this important group of amendments and support the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. I concur with her argument. I am not naturally disposed to putting things like this in a Bill, as it often constrains consideration, because people are shoe-horned into primary legislation, which can inhibit flexibility in practice. However, this is so important—and the addition of the two or three issues to which the noble Baroness alluded under Amendment 20 would enhance the confidence with which people approached this legislation, if the Government saw fit to accept it.
I have a couple of operational and delivery-type questions around this area. Of course, the key person in the consideration of good cause is the decision-maker, but there is upstream and downstream activity from both these things. I know that decision-makers are serious professionals and experienced hands and are usually capable of carrying the weight of a decision of this importance. However, in the new regime, as far as I can see, service providers will take the initial decision to refer to a decision-maker. What will the process and guidance be, and what requirements in the contracts for service providers on training will be set out on this question about consideration of good cause? If there were proper provisions, guidance and requirements for training people before they started considering questions of the operation of good cause, that would be important to know.
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There is also, of course, the downstream activity of review through the independent tribunal process. That is well established and will, no doubt, come to decisions, as a matter of fact, in the fullness of time on questions
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Lord Freud: My Lords, these government amendments reflect exhaustive discussions in Committee, and we are happy to accept these protections covering physical and mental health, as well as the availability of childcare. We also believe it appropriate that those protections should be detailed in regulations rather than set out in the Bill.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed—
Baroness Crawley: I am sorry, but because the Minister is going to sum up now, would the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, like to contribute?
Baroness Meacher: No, I think it is fine.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. First, I understand and thoroughly support the thrust of what the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, is seeking to achieve here. I should make it absolutely clear to noble Lords that we take safeguards for our customers very seriously. Advisers always try to ensure that all customers understand the conditionality on them and the good cause process. Advisers endeavour to ensure that customers have all reasonable support in place to enable them to comply with conditionality. For example, a customer with a learning disability would be able to bring a support worker or an advocate to their work-focused interview if they felt it necessary.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Rix, if the circumstances that he outlined in his question arose where someone with a learning disability did not have somebody on hand to go with them to an interview, I could not possibly see how that individual could be sanctioned for failing to attend. We attempt to conduct a home visit to customers with a mental health condition, learning disability or condition that affects cognition, if they fail to attend their work-focused interview, in order to explain the conditionality and to rearrange it. I also take the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, made; sometimes, the community is not so supportive outwardly in helping people with some of the conditions that we are talking about, so home visits are particularly apt where that is concerned—as is the availability of translation services.
To go back to the process; if the first attempt to make contact fails, we will try for a second time. If those visits are unsuccessful, a manager will investigate the customer’s situation and will make referrals to
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Baroness Meacher: Forgive me if I have either misunderstood or not heard what the Minister has said, but was it that regulations will make it clear that if a person is suspected of having a mental health problem, a communication difficulty or, indeed, a learning difficulty, there will a requirement that every attempt is made to achieve a home visit? Is the Minister saying that regulations will specify a requirement?
Lord McKenzie of Luton: I am saying that it is likely to be in guidance rather than in regulations, but it will be clearly set out in a formal way for advisers to follow. It will be clearly set down.
Baroness Meacher: When the Minister says that it will be clearly set down, does he mean that a requirement that every attempt is made for a home visit will be set down? I just want to get it clear about the requirement. Forgive me.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: That is exactly right—the requirement to do so will be set down, so that it is absolutely clear for people who have to operate these arrangements. We will not sanction customers if we believe that they have not understood the requirements on them, and customers have the right of appeal. But we have common cause with the noble Lord, Lord Freud, on this—that dealing with the matter other than in primary legislation is the best way. It gives us scope for flexibility if in due course we should want to change or enhance those requirements.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, was right in saying that as regards sanctions, it will always be a decision-maker and always a Jobcentre Plus person who will ultimately deal with this. No contractors can take decisions to sanction people. Clearly, training is an important issue around that and we shall discuss it later. Clearly, issues around the number of cases of good cause should be part of a monitoring and evaluation process and I have no doubt that they will be. I hope that that explanation satisfies noble Lords and I commend the amendment.
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