Before commencing proceedings, I must advise the Committee that if there is a Division in the Chamber while the Committee is sitting, the Committee will be adjourned as soon as the Division Bells ring and resume after 10 minutes.

Clause 1 : Schemes for assisting persons to obtain employment: “work for your benefit” schemes etc.

Amendment 24

I have been taken by surprise, as I rather expected the Deputy Chairman to announce that if this amendment were agreed to, it would pre-empt the next amendment in the large group of government amendments that follow.

I tabled Amendment 24, which removes subsection (5) from proposed new Section 17B, because I was curious as to just what the Government were up to. I tabled the amendment before the Government got round to tabling their own, which is now listed in the Marshalled List as Amendment 25, which removes the first part of the subsection. I expect that we will hear why in a moment. However, I decided to table this amendment so that I did not steal the Minister’s thunder in the next group. I think that Amendment 25 is perhaps consequential on later amendments in the Government’s list; or perhaps it is the other way round, and those amendments are consequential on Amendment 25. Whichever it is, they are sensibly grouped. However, I will hold out for a brief explanation of what subsection (5)(b) does—the bit that is left after the Government have drawn a red line through their own drafting.

Subsection (5)(b) amends Section 8(2)(b)(i) of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001, which deals with the effect of committing an offence on the allowance for joint-claim jobseekers—in other words, couples. With the inserted words, that part of the 2001 Act will read:

“8 Effect of offence on joint-claim jobseeker’s allowance … (2) The allowance shall not be payable in the couple’s case for so much of any period comprised in the disqualification period as is a period for which—

(a) in the case of each of the members of the couple, the restriction in subsection (2) of section 7 would apply if the entitlement were an entitlement of that member to a sanctionable benefit; or

(b) that restriction would so apply in the case of one of the members of the couple and the other member of the couple—

(i) is”—

these are the important new words—

“or is treated as being subject to sanctions for the purposes of section 20A of the Jobseekers Act 1995”,

which covers the denial or reduction of joint-claim jobseeker’s allowance.

I should like the Minister to explain what difference exactly the new wording makes. Why are we treating members of a couple as being subject to sanctions and not individuals within that couple? I expect that there is a very good reason, but the drafting is a little impenetrable and I would welcome the light of clarity being shone into the Stygian drafting gloom. Why is “treated as being” so important that the draftsman, having had his attention drawn to subsection (5), decided to leave paragraph (b) as it is? I beg to move.

Subsection (5) is a technical provision and ensures that there are no loopholes for members of joint-claim couples who do not participate in “work for your benefit”. It is important to ensure that the new provisions we are introducing for “work for your benefit” do not have undesirable and unintended effects elsewhere in social security legislation.

Removing the entire subsection would mean that if one member of a joint-claim couple is sanctioned for not participating in “work for your benefit” and the other claimant is subject to a sanction for benefit fraud, JSA could still be payable. That would undermine the incentives to participate in the programme, and create an inconsistency between “work for your benefit” and other employment programmes.

As the noble Lord just identified, Amendment 25 is a government amendment which deletes part of this subsection, and I shall come on to why we need to do that when I speak to that amendment. However, to delete the entire subsection would have the effects that I have outlined. I hope that the noble Lord will not press his amendment.

It may be helpful if I place on the record a rather convoluted technical description, so that the noble Lord and others may be able to peruse it at their leisure. Clause 1(5) amends Section 63(2)(b)(i) of the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 and Section 8(2)(b)(i) of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 by inserting after “is”, “or is treated as being”. The purpose of this subsection is a little convoluted, as the noble Lord noted, but it is essentially consequential on new Section 17A(7) of the Jobseekers Act 1995, as inserted by Clause 1(2). New Section 17A(7) is about sanctions for persons who fail without a good cause to turn up for a “work for your benefit” session where he or she claims jobseeker’s allowance as a member of a joint-claim couple. New Section 17A(7) states that in those circumstances the participant is “to be treated as” subject to sanctions for the purposes of Section 20A of the Jobseekers Act 1995.

In other words, it switches on the provisions of Section 20A, which is an existing provision of the Act. Section 20A concerns sanctions for a member of a JSA joint-claim couple who fails without good cause to comply with a jobseeker’s direction or to attend a training scheme or an employment programme. If only one member of the couple is subject to a sanction, a reduced amount of JSA is payable to the couple for the period of the sanction. If both members are subject to sanction, payment of JSA is suspended altogether.

Section 63(2) of the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 and Section 8(2) of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 apply where a sanction is imposed on one member of a JSA joint-claim couple who has breached a community service order—this is the provision that we are going to remove—or been convicted of benefit fraud and the other member is already subject to a sanction under Section 20A of the Jobseekers Act 1995. In these circumstances, benefit is stopped altogether until the earlier of the two sanctions expires. Clause 1(5) therefore ensures that Section 63 of the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 and Section 8 of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 would work properly where one member of a JSA joint-claim couple was sanctioned for a breach of a community service order or for benefit fraud and the other member was sanctioned for failing to turn out for “work for your benefit”.

That is the logic of the technicalities behind the provision’s original construction. Perhaps when I move the next amendment I can explain further why we believe that part of it should now be deleted.

I think that I understand the Minister’s explanation. Perhaps I should have tabled an amendment to line 31 on page 2 to leave out the words,

“is to be treated as”.

Although the Minister has explained that the person would “be treated as”, why not just get on with it and do so?

I hope that the technical note I have just read out explains the connection with the existing sanction provisions that needs to be made for these new arrangements, which is,

“is to be treated as”.

It is the link to the provisions in the Bill and to Section 20A that drives this action. Not only do we need the word “is”, we need “is to be treated as”. That is why we need to insert the phrase.

I can envision an adviser—

A Division has been called in the Chamber. The Grand Committee will resume at 10 minutes to four.

The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, was in full flow. I apologise for interrupting him.

Having listened to the Minister’s exposition of the position, I was only going to say that of course we all understand entirely what he said—but it might not necessarily be wholly comprehensible to the ordinary jobseeker. That seems very bad PR. If our advisers are trying to be jobseekers’ friends, surely we want to try to make the Bill simpler so that people can understand what it is saying.

We are dealing here with a technical provision to ensure that the legislation works as we want it to. Bits of it will not routinely be consulted although customers may have a technical interest in those bits if they want to challenge something. This provision ensures that the technical framework is right and facilitates an appropriate sanctions regime.

I have clearly hit on a most abstruse and difficult point. By no means do I regard myself as a lawyer, and I hope that the rest of the Committee do not regard me as a barrack-room lawyer either. I note, however, that the Explanatory Notes say, as did the Minister, that the same approach is being followed as in Section 68 of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999, but that the Social Security Fraud Act came afterwards. Perhaps we had a different draftsman, or perhaps something else happened, but clearly there was an error in the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 in this respect. As I said, I will read very carefully what the Minister has said. I doubt whether it is a subject to which it will be necessary to return at the next stage of the Bill. However, a meeting or an exchange of letters might be an appropriate way forward.

I am certainly happy to have a meeting with the noble Lord to give him a more detailed explanation. I want to place on record that we are not saying that we think the Social Security Fraud Act was incorrectly drafted in this respect. These provisions will ensure that the pre-existing provisions are properly tied into what we want to achieve in the Bill. However, perhaps we can discuss that elsewhere.

The phrase “buckets of salt” comes to mind. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I shall speak also to the other government amendments in this group.

In 2001, the Government introduced a pilot scheme in four areas to apply a benefit sanction to those found to be in breach of their community orders. The pilot covers Derbyshire, Hertfordshire, Teesside and the West Midlands and is a joint initiative run between the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice.

The aim of the pilot was twofold: to link the receipt of benefit more closely to the fulfilment of responsibilities to society, and to encourage greater compliance with community sentences. The scheme applies to those offenders in the pilot areas who are aged between 18 and 59 and receiving jobseeker’s allowance, income support or certain training allowances.

The new clause to be inserted after Clause 22 will bring the pilot scheme to an end, and the other amendments are consequential on this. It was always the intention to evaluate the overall impact of these pilots before making a decision to introduce it nationally. Evaluations of the scheme have shown modest improvements in compliance, but any savings made in running it are outweighed by the overall running costs. Additionally, new measures introduced since the introduction of the pilots have proved to be more effective in holding offenders to account for non-compliance of community sentences. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 strengthened measures on compliance and enforcement and courts must hold offenders to account in all cases where they do not comply with their order. This includes the power to send the offender to prison for up to 51 weeks. In weighing up the improvements made with the introduction of other measures against the total cost-effectiveness of running the pilot scheme, we have concluded that it should not be rolled out nationally and should come to an end.

I reiterate that the amendment to the first part of the provision that we have been debating is consequential on this new clause. I beg to move.

Unlike with local housing allowance, there has been a fairly prompt evaluation of this pilot. I note that the Minister said that it did not appear to make much difference and, in any case, that it was not cost-effective. That is a very good reason for not pursuing it. We shall deal with pilots more generally later in our deliberations. However, can the Minister tell me when the pilot finished and how long the Government took to evaluate it before the decision was made?

This is an interesting moment at which to stop and reflect on how the pilot worked out in practice. I remember it very well. It was very controversial in 2001—when, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, was at the sharp end—which was quite a while ago. If the pilot was carried out under Section 19 of the 1995 Act it should have been limited to one year. It may have been introduced through joint legislation in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice or the Home Office—I do not know—but 2001 is a long while ago. I would like to know exactly when the pilot ended and when the evaluation was made available.

The potential sanctions were for up to 26 weeks’ benefit. That will be familiar to Members of the Grand Committee because those are exactly the kind of sanctions that are applicable under the provisions of this Bill. Although the community service sanction, as it became known, is not in point with our unemployment scheme—I understand that perfectly well—the possibility of improving compliance is an essential part of the Bill. If the pilot did not improve compliance and if, as the Minister said, the costs of sanctioning and of transferring information between the courts, the benefit system and the potential community offender outweighed the benefits of the scheme, are there any lessons to be learnt from the evaluation in terms of the work we are doing on this Bill? There should be some questions about hardship payments, for example, because they were part of the pilot and may be part of the new legislation that we are putting in place with this Bill.

It is a little casual, if I may put it that way, for the Minister to say, “These plans were put in place in 2001. They were too expensive and did not work very well, so let us take them out of the legislation”. I think that we are entitled to a little more than that. A written evaluation of the scheme must have been shared between the department and the Ministry of Justice, if no one else, and I for one would not mind seeing it. If it is not classified information—although I am always looking for state secrets if I can find them—perhaps the Minister can put a copy of it in the Library. There may be lessons that are directly apposite to the legislation we are considering. If that is so, the Committee should see the fruits of the conclusions that the Government reached in withdrawing the scheme.

As the person who had the honour, privilege and pleasure of introducing this in the first place, I congratulate my noble friend on coming to a clean decision on it. The easy way would have been to have let it fall into disuse without actually changing the legislation. My noble friend is to be congratulated on cleaning it up in this way.

At the core of the problem—this is why the pilot at the time was limited in its geographical areas—was the issue of double jeopardy. The question was whether it was legitimate to sanction someone for failing to observe a community sentence, which meant, if that sentence was being properly monitored, that that person should have gone back to prison anyway. At the time, the changing direction of the Probation Service had not been sufficiently clarified so we were putting financial sanctions in that would not have been needed if the Probation Service had been working effectively; they would not have applied or, indeed, been relevant.

What has happened, as I think my noble friend said, is that since 2003 we have sharpened that aspect. Given that most of those offenders should not be in a position where they are receiving any benefit in the first place, there is not much point having sanctions on benefit for people who are not receiving it. Clearing up the legislation has made that section of the original 2001 Act largely redundant.

It was uncomfortable because we were trying to work out whether it was reasonable to go for what some people were alleging was double jeopardy or whether, in the absence of an even degree of involvement by the Probation Service in enforcing community orders, anti-social orders and so on, it was legitimate to have this as an additional penalty. We were trying to steer a line through that, and I am delighted that we do not have to continue to do so. We should congratulate my noble friend on clearing it up for us.

I am grateful to my noble friend, as ever, for her explanation of her engagement in this at an earlier stage. In February 2004 the DWP published an independent evaluation of the community sentences on withdrawal-of-benefit pilots. The evaluation highlighted a small increase in the number of people who complied with their community sentence because of the sanctions policy, and it was agreed that the length of the pilot would be extended to test the scheme further, looking at any lessons learnt before making a decision to roll it out nationally.

The introduction of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, to which my noble friend has just referred, brought new rules to manage the breach. Any need for the pilots to continue was effectively ended by the measures introduced by the Act to address breach; the Act replaced existing community sentences with a new community order, which was implemented with effect from April 2005. The Act removed the court’s discretion on whether or not to punish breach, which meant that a court then had to take action.

Will we learn the lessons from this? Yes, of course. We hope that piloting an evaluation will always lead to learning lessons so that we can ensure that we put into effect in future policy development those things that we have learnt.

A Statement was made by the right honourable Jack Straw in February this year indicating that the pilots would be brought to an end, so that is already on the record. I am happy to make details of that independent evaluation available to the noble Lord.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, I am delighted to discover that, when a pilot does not work very well, as this one did not for the reasons that the Minister gave in his opening address, it is done away with within a legislative framework.

I am getting more and more confused, though. Again, this needs explanation outside the Committee. If the original legislation was in 2001, presumably the first pilot started in 2002. At that point it was allowed to run for one year, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, said. It was then carried on to 2004, at which point there was an independent evaluation. It was then extended, presumably until 2005—or was it 2006? It was not until February this year, three years later, that the right honourable Mr Straw made a Statement on the subject. Does it really take three years for the final evaluation? I think that there is more to this than meets the eye. However, I doubt that the Minister, at this moment, can go any further—although he is looking fairly pregnant, so perhaps he can.

No, I was just looking to scotch the suggestion that there is more to this than meets the eye; generally there is not, so far as I am aware. These pilots were introduced and the change to the law which I indicated was the key issue which caused these to be, in a sense, outdated. In any event, on a value-for-money basis they have proved not to be effective. It is no more complicated than that. If it will help, I will circulate to all noble Lords attending this sitting a copy of the Statement made by the right honourable Jack Straw and a copy of the independent evaluation, and indeed any follow-up evaluation that is in the public domain. I should be very happy to do that. I hope that that will reassure noble Lords. There is nothing sinister in this.

What I think the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood—I am putting words into his mouth now—and I would require is a timetable, not least a timetable between the decision to end the pilots and the finish of the independent evaluation, showing how long it took. As the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, said, this is directly relevant to the pilots within the ambit of the Bill—which of course are extended from one year to three years, except for one or two of them which suddenly become two years. I shall have a lot more to say about that a bit later in our proceedings. Judging by the speed we are going, I do not think that that will be today.

We now come to an even knottier problem: what exactly is going on in jobcentres up and down the country? I have suggested that we insert the words of this amendment at page 4, line 16, and I was very pleased to see that the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, has added her name to it.

As discussions on proposed new Section 17A have shown, the Government, with the backing of my party, are embarking on what by any standard is a huge and complicated endeavour—getting millions of people back into work in any of the past 10 years would not be quite so daunting as it is at present. Given that unemployment decreases always lag behind any growth in GDP, this huge task must start in each case with human contact, personal understanding and tailored support, on which we have amendments a bit later.

Throughout our debates in the last two sittings we have had those thoughts as the background to our speeches. The time has come to crystallise those thoughts into a single narrative—that is, the type of person, and his work parameters, within Jobcentre Plus. Clearly the jobseeker cannot have the required contact, who is unable to give personal understanding and tailored support without an aid—a minder, if you like. This aid is called his personal adviser and is to be found in a jobcentre. Jobcentres have been on my mind ever since becoming a health and social services Minister in the Northern Ireland Office. I set myself the goal of visiting each of the then 23 jobcentres in the Province. Alas, I was decommissioned before I could achieve it. I did, however, manage to visit the majority, including the Falls Road—but that is another story. On the whole, I expressed myself as confident that what they were doing was both needed and effective.

Under this Bill, each personal adviser will have a number—presumably a very large number at the moment, though hopefully it will decrease in due course—of jobseekers on his or perhaps the jobcentre’s books. He is, as I said, already working in some capacity in the local jobcentre—within, that is, its remit and current practices. My honourable friends and I have been investigating what happens now in jobcentres. The unemployed individual enters. After some time, because there is likely to be a queue, he is seen by a job adviser. Although the latter has a number of jobs available, it is unlikely that there will be a vacancy suitable for the individual. The Minister should tell us how many of the 1,464,100 people claiming JSA on the last occasion that my noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy asked about the unemployment figures—22 April—accepted jobs that were actually advertised in jobcentres. Does he feel that all local job vacancies are known to job advisers? I was told that one jobcentre did not even know what public service or council jobs were available locally. That is not a happy picture, as I am sure noble Lords will agree.

The net result of such interviews, especially in these straitened times, is highly unlikely to be fruitful in that rarely will the jobseeker be offered an interview for a job. What is next? The answer is that he will be referred to a financial adviser. In most cases, he or she will be advised to claim jobseeker’s allowance. To achieve this, he then has to telephone the contact centre, and when eventually he gets through, he will have to give the information he has given to the two previous advisers all over again. The claim for JSA is then sent to the delivery centre. At present, I am told, there is a massive processing backlog and it is many days before the individual gets any benefit. Often he will have to apply for a crisis loan from the Social Fund, in the course of which he will have to repeat his circumstances yet again. In the future this may be contracted out under Clause 15 of the Bill, which we will come to, and that will no doubt occasion still more delay. What is the current time between applying for JSA and actually receiving it?

What a system to cope with the deepest recession in living memory. It is both time-consuming and repetitive, and suggests that the 19th century is alive and kicking. Can you imagine the frustration this causes to jobcentre front-line staff who are, to a man and woman, dedicated to helping unemployed people? Can you imagine, too, the stress of these hoops that the jobseeker has to go through? It is almost as though the system is designed to put people off. I do not believe that for a moment, but what I do believe is that the jobcentre has become dysfunctional. Part of the problem is the Government’s box-ticking and target mentality. Every weekday, thousands of job-focused interviews take place and no doubt all the targets are met and the boxes ticked, but how demoralising it must be for the staff. It is not their fault that their clients do not find a job, and it is not the client’s fault either. However, it is within their remit to make the system more user-friendly unless, of course, directions have to be given from on high, meaning Whitehall. I rather hope that that is not required.

Ministers claim that all is well. Jobcentres are doing the best they can, yet how many jobcentres have been closed in the past year and how much has been spent on refurbishing the remainder? How many jobcentre staff have been made redundant? This has sensibly stopped because of the severity of the recession, but the system I have described goes on. In this age of instant communication by computer, is it really necessary for the jobseeker to have to repeat his details again and again? What I have described is what is happening now. Proposed new Section 17A tacks on yet more work to a system which, to coin a phrase, is already not fit for purpose. Is personal advice a new job description or is the role of the personal adviser to be carried out by the existing job advisers? My own view is that they are two completely separate jobs and should be seen as such.

After the jobseeker has seen a job adviser—not necessarily the same one—numerous times, he will be referred to a personal adviser. What will the personal adviser know about him? On current form at jobcentres, the answer will be “nothing at all” until the jobseeker goes through his work history, if any, and his long period of unemployment. These facts will no doubt have been repeated time and again over however many years he has had contact with the jobcentre. How many millions of pounds have this Government spent on computers in jobcentres since 1997? Why are they not used to short-circuit what, by any definition, is a burdensome process to DWP staff and jobseekers alike?

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, on this amendment, which gives us the chance to discuss whether all Jobcentre Plus offices around the country will have enough high-quality trained staff properly to manage “work for your benefit” schemes. As the noble Lord said, the Minister has kindly provided us with interesting case studies—which I would call positively Panglossian—in which personal advisers were crucial in providing the right help and advice, and in understanding different situations and being flexible in a number of challenging circumstances. However, I should like to know who will monitor each Jobcentre Plus to ensure that these personal advisers and decision-makers, who are to do such crucial work in the future and who will have such an enhanced role in their clients’ cases, are up to the mark.

I do not know whether any noble Lord listened to “You and Yours” before lunch today, in which there was a section all about people’s experiences in Jobcentre Plus offices. It was not a very happy programme to which to listen. When it had just finished, the programme-makers were inundated with phone calls and e-mails, with people saying that their experiences were not very happy at all.

I have also had the benefit of some very interesting input from a large CAB in the north of England. It said:

“DWP policy, as stated in the Jobcentre Plus Service Standards, is to offer assistance completing forms to people who, because of disability or a language barrier, would struggle to complete forms themselves. We had a case recently where a disabled client sought a face-to-face appointment at a Jobcentre for help completing a form. Our adviser went through ten people at JCP, citing the Service Standards each time, before he managed to obtain an appointment for the client”.

Another problem is the use of telephones. A lot of people are told when they go to Jobcentre Plus offices to go away and use the telephone. DWP policy is that jobcentres should provide phones, but this does not seem to happen in practice. My informant said that it troubles him that people inquiring about crisis loans are routinely treated in this way in direct contravention of paragraph 23 of part 3 of the Social Fund guide, which states that,

“customers who are already in the office must never be told to go home and telephone”.

The role of Jobcentre Plus personal advisers and decision-makers will become more important as the Flexible New Deal is rolled out this autumn and the “work for your benefit” schemes are piloted. They are expected to deal with those who can hardly understand English, who may be unable to read and write, who have learning difficulties, or those who have multiple problems. Their clients may be violent, abusive, angry, clinically depressed, truculent or just desperate for a job. A lot is being asked of these people, the number of whom has had to be increased very quickly as Jobcentre Plus offices have become busier. How confident can we be that the training is now adequate to cope with this increased caseload? Who will judge when a JCP is ready to roll out a “work for your benefit” scheme, provided, of course, that it passes all the evaluations after the pilot scheme?

Will specific training be given on how to deal with minorities, among whom any kind of nervous disease or depression is seen as unacceptable and who do not admit to having any such disease? It even takes people familiar with the problem a long time to find out that it is not just a headache but a long-term depression. Will the appropriate training be given?

This amendment tills the ground for my own amendments on learning disability which come later. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, for moving it. I received the Part 1 case studies from the Minister and was grateful to receive them, though there was nought for my comfort in them. I certainly welcome the amendment.

I, too, support the amendment. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, for bringing it to our attention.

The noble Lord uses the term “user-friendly”. This is complex legislation and the people entrusted with the task of providing a service have to be effectively trained in order to provide it. I know from such contact as I have had that it is a tough job now working in jobcentres. I can recall jobcentres where there are barriers to prevent people leaping over and assaulting the staff. Often the staff have to deal with dissent, various problems and so on. Quite obviously a degree of training will be necessary in order to cope with this extensive and complicated legislation. Exemptions will have to be dealt with, and by the time that we have finished with this legislation in Committee and on Report there may be even more exemptions. There has to be a training programme that enables those who are responsible for putting it into operation to provide the service that we all expect them to deliver. I support this amendment and hope that my noble friend the Minister will accept it either in this form or in another appropriate form.

I, too, support the amendment. I have tabled a later amendment in regard to people with fluctuating conditions and the training necessary to deal with them.

I was horrified to hear the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, say that there would be three days’ training. I told the Committee last week that I worked in the Ministry of Pensions 50 years ago. I had six weeks’ training, and things were much less complicated in those days. I therefore hope that the noble Lord is wrong.

I am particularly concerned about the over-50s. On Friday, there was a little article in the Telegraph which stated:

“White-collar professionals have been hit hard by the recession … the number of managers and professionals claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance jumped by 154 per cent”—

I do not have dates—

“while for skilled trade workers the increase was 77 per cent”.

These are big numbers—118,700 managerial people and 589,000 skilled trade workers. That is a lot of people to cater for. The noble Lord’s correspondence of last week showed that advisers will spend a lot of time with each client, but how will jobcentres cater for these increases in unemployed professionals, let alone unskilled workers? I am very seriously concerned about that and I expressed these concerns at Second Reading.

I strongly support the amendment, not unnaturally in the context of what we discussed last Thursday; namely, the need for advisers to understand about the family dynamics of the person who is being interviewed. I also support it in the context of everything that has been said around the Committee. It increasingly sounds as if an adviser’s job is an extremely complex and difficult one and that much longer training than is at present envisaged ought to be put in place.

Before the Minister replies, I say to the noble Lord and to the noble Countess, Lady Mar, that the three days I mentioned was on top of the training that already exists within Jobcentre Plus.

I add my support for Amendment 26. We are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, for bringing it forward. It is easy to forget that Clause 1 is about an employment programme that will largely be contracted out. This amendment is apt as regards not only this clause but the totality of the Bill. I hope the Minister will understand that we are raising these issues because the Bill is so ill constructed that it is very difficult to get hold of issues such as resourcing, which is a fundamental part of the Bill. I have a couple of points to make on that front. It is easy to underestimate the amount of benefit churn that we will see over the next three to five years. The number of people who will be reassigned to this and that and the amount of effort, money, back-office inquiry, checking, rechecking and reassigning will all be unprecedented in the 20 years of experience that I have in following these policies, and that is saying something. A huge amount of administrative work will be done that will benefit no one, although it is important that it is done correctly, efficiently and speedily so that people can get the services to which they are entitled. An enormous change is envisaged in the Bill and we should not forget that.

I shall try to relate my second point more to Clause 1 than to anything else. The departmental expenditure plans should come with a health warning, because we should have had the 2009 expenditure plans by now. I wonder why they are late. The previous ones were produced in May 2008. We are now past May 2009, so all the figures to which I am about to refer are out of date in more ways than one. All the figures arise—I hope I can get this confirmed—against a background of the 2007-11 Comprehensive Spending Review envelope, which requires the department to make annual savings of £1,225 million. I should like to have that confirmed because the 2007-11 Comprehensive Spending Review is very ambitious. It was cast in a very different set of economic circumstances and will run to 2010-11. If the DWP still anticipates saving £1,225 million each year, we should know that.

Table 1 of the May 2008 document, at page 98, shows that the total departmental expenditure limit peaked in 2007-08. It was at £7.994 billion and was projected to fall to £7.460 billion in 2010-11. Those figures will have changed by now, and I expect to see the changes referred to if not in the May 2009 annual report then certainly in the Pre-Budget Report Statement that we are expecting in the autumn. A fall in the total departmental expenditure limit is already built into the system; that was announced for the 2007-11 Comprehensive Spending Review period.

This has been an interesting if somewhat extensive debate around a range of issues which focused on training. If I may, I should like to deal in more detail with training in respect of mental health and learning disabilities when we consider those amendments shortly. I can deal with them now if noble Lords so desire.

This amendment is focused on the “work for your benefit” provisions of Clause 1 which, obviously, we shall start by piloting. With respect, the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, conflated the routine procedures and process through the JSA route. People to whom “work for your benefit” will be relevant will in general have been in the system for two years. These are not new claimants but people who would be known to Jobcentre Plus and have gone through the three stages and the Flexible New Deal and then moved on to “work for your benefit”.

I am bound to say that some of the descriptions I have heard of what happens in Jobcentre Plus offices do not match the reports that I get or indeed my own experience of visiting such offices. I know that when you go on a visit as a Minister you do not necessarily see things warts and all, but you get a chance to talk to people and get a flavour of the situation. I do not know if my noble friend Lady Turner has had the opportunity recently to get around a number of Jobcentre Plus offices, but the configuration of them has changed dramatically. They do not have the old grilles in place; they have been refurbished. It was a successful refurbishment programme, and both customers and staff see the benefit. There was some apprehension at the start of the process when the grilles were going and people felt that they might be vulnerable, but I understand that the reverse has proved to be the case.

I offer some statistics about the scope of Jobcentre Plus. It records about 5,200 of its customers moving into work every day. It receives over 7,600 jobs from employers. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale: no, of course the Jobcentre Plus system does not include all vacancies that exist in the economy; obviously it accepts all those that are reported to it, but it does not routinely go and try to identify every vacancy that there is.

Jobcentre Plus advisers conduct something like 45,000 interviews every working day. It processes 16,000 new benefit claims every working day, and prosecutes 42 people for benefit fraud. It takes over 60,000 calls every weekday at our contact centres. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, with regard to the idea of people turning up at Jobcentre Plus offices and queues forming, that overwhelmingly the process is that people contact the contact centre and are given a date and time for their appointment, to prevent what the noble Lord suggested from happening. There will still be people who just turn up routinely, but the process is to go through a contact centre to get a date for your appointment.

Could my noble friend develop one of the points that he has made? I recognise the attractiveness of Jobcentre Plus as a result of the amalgamation of the old employment exchanges and the DSS offices; however, I think I am right that—I am inventing this figure, but it will not be far wrong—fewer than 20 per cent of all job vacancies go through Jobcentre Plus. I may be wrong on that.

That is fine when you can rely on three-quarters of all people on JSA going back to work within six months so that there is a churn; in a way, Jobcentre Plus does not need to be much involved in the job-hunting procedure because people can do it themselves. If, however, unemployment continues to rise or the recession continues to deepen, will my noble friend, in response to something that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, said, think about discussing with officials whether Jobcentre Plus could be encouraged deliberately to widen its reach into the field of job vacancies? I was thinking about the public sector, such as local government or junior jobs in the education service—not necessarily teaching, but the ancillary jobs. The same goes for health authorities. Given the new range of clientele that is coming on to JSA and the need for wider job opportunities to meet those clients’ needs, could senior Jobcentre Plus staff be more proactive so that more jobs were simultaneously advertised in jobcentres as well as individual employers seeking to fill them? There is a big opportunity there. Maybe my noble friend can tell me that we are already doing this, but I am not sure that we are.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I was thinking that a member of staff from a jobcentre could, for example, read the local paper. The information is available, but not necessarily to the client at the time when he wants it. The noble Baroness has made a valuable suggestion.

I believe it to be the case that part of the operation of Jobcentre Plus is to have teams who do go out into the economy to see what vacancies are available. They are in touch with employers, particularly major employers, partly to engage with those who can assist with specific programmes that Jobcentre Plus is involved in. There is that process and there are the people whose job it is to see what is happening out there in the market. I am sure, as I said, that more can be done, but there are also processes—particularly with some of the newly unemployed, who in a sense do not necessarily need the support and motivation that others would need to access the job market—to get external support and advice as well. These processes are under way.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, referred to the departmental expenditure plan. I do not have the benefit of having the tables to which he referred in front of me, but perhaps I may say something on the generality of the resources available to Jobcentre Plus. As he may recall from previous debates, both in the Pre-Budget Report and in the Budget very significant additional resources were made available to the DWP for the tasks of Jobcentre Plus in tackling unemployment, particularly to support the Flexible New Deal and the programmes that are already under way. I think that it was £1.7 billion over the CSR 07 period and something like £1.3 billion in the Budget earlier this year.

The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, referred to the fact that we have fewer staff now than we used to. Yes, and we have fewer offices than we used to. That is part of the programme to address the very issue he highlighted of people having to give the same sort of details time and time again. Jobcentre Plus has been focused on getting more effective processes in place. Therefore, until recently that has meant fewer staff overall—I will come on to that point—and fewer offices. A more extensive office closure plan was proposed but a moratorium has been put on that. I think that 25 offices were identified which are now not currently to be the subject of closure. In recent times we have already recruited some 5,000 more staff, and are aiming to recruit 2,000 per month into 2009-10.

That is what I suspected. My point is that it is very hard to trace this. It may be that the Government have responded immediately, efficiently and all the rest of it, as the Minister says, but I cannot find any of that written down. I will happily settle for an assurance that when the departmental plan for 2009-10 is published, it will be transparently obvious exactly what money has been allocated, over what period and for what purpose.

Indeed. I believe that that will be the case and if it is not—if the noble Lord would prompt me on it—I will make sure that he gets the detailed figures. Apart from new staff being recruited, 2,000 staff have been redeployed from within Jobcentre Plus to deal with the increase in JSA claims. Some 4,000 more staff than the number given in our original spending review plans have been hired in the November 2008 to February 2009 period. In line with the recent Pre-Budget Report, Jobcentre Plus will be in a position to deploy some 6,000 additional staff by the end of 2009-10. So, considerable extra resource has gone into Jobcentre Plus. The announcements mean that we will be able to recruit up to 10,000 more staff on top of the 6,000 new staff already announced in the Pre-Budget Report. Those are considerable increases in staff numbers. If they are not apparent from the departmental expenditure plans then I am sure that we can find a way of supplementing the information for the noble Lord.

There was also a strong theme about training. I understand that and I am not going to duck the issue, because we will be discussing it later in some detail. Perhaps it is best if we do so collectively then. However, I also bear in mind that Amendment 26 is to do with “work for your benefit”. It covers those who are work-ready, not the progression-to-work group. These are not people on employment and support allowance. We will have the opportunity of getting into these things in some detail shortly.

The amendment deals with Jobcentre Plus readiness and in particular seeks to ensure that “work for your benefit” is not implemented unless Jobcentre Plus is ready to operate the programme. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, acknowledged that “work for your benefit” is a contracted-out programme that initially will be the subject of pathfinders. The involvement of Jobcentre Plus will be around referring claimants to the provision and changes to the way that jobcentres work, so its involvement will not be extensive.

Would the Minister undertake to write to me on the questions I raised about help with filling in forms and the use of telephones? These are important practical matters about which we have heard much from my informant in a citizens advice bureau. It is not right that Jobcentre Plus offices should tell people to go to the citizens advice bureau when all they need is help with two specific things: calling the DWP helpline and filling in a form.

I agree that the role of Jobcentre Plus should be to help with that process, but I will write specifically to the noble Baroness. Perhaps she could exchange with me some of the detail that prompted her inquiry; I shall certainly take it up.

I understand the sentiment behind the amendment and I would like to assure noble Lords that the department examines the impact of any new programme before implementing it. Projects like “work for your benefit” also go through a gated review process where operational readiness must be clearly demonstrated before authority to implement the pilots is given. In addition, both Houses of Parliament will have an opportunity to quiz Ministers about operational readiness as we lay regulations for the “work for your benefit” pilots. The piloting regulations operate under the affirmative procedure and will therefore be debated in full. Evaluation of the pilots will give us a further opportunity to judge their operational impact and inform decisions on whether we roll the programme out nationally as well as how it can be done most efficiently.

However, I accept that changes in the economy have placed additional pressure on Jobcentre Plus and that is why we announced in the Budget an extra £1.7 billion to help ensure that Jobcentre Plus as well as contracted providers have the resources they need to cope with the additional workload, which is in addition to the £1.3 billion in the Pre-Budget Report. To recap, this means that Jobcentre Plus will be able to recruit up to 10,000 more staff on top of the 6,000 new staff already announced in the Pre-Budget Report. These are significant increases in resources and as such I believe that Jobcentre Plus will be well placed to deal with the current period of rising unemployment. It is able to manage current volumes and has put in place plans to function effectively if numbers increase further across all benefits. Bearing this in mind, ample safeguards are in place to ensure that Jobcentre Plus is ready for these changes, and we must remember that as an organisation, it has shown an enviable capacity for implementing change successfully, and there is no reason to believe that that will change.

I hope that I have provided some assurance to noble Lords. I am conscious that the second part of our debate in this area on the adequacy of training and monitoring is important and I hope it will follow shortly.

Rather like the Government never apologising for either inflation or, as we have now, deflation, I do not apologise for conflation. The whole point of what I was trying to say, and I was very ably backed by virtually all noble Lords—not quite all since the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has been moderately silent on this; she made a specific point which I commented on earlier—

Can the noble Lord explain the word “moderately”?

I will not explain what I mean by “moderately” because it might be embarrassing to all of us.

As I said, I do not apologise for conflation at all because Clause 1 is clearly about the next step after Pathways to Work has finished. I think that the Minister might even quote stage 4.

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord. “Pathways” has nothing to do with jobseeker’s allowance; it is to do with the employment and support allowance. However, we are talking about “work for your benefit”.

The noble Lord is quite right; my terminology was wrong. Clause 1 is indeed about welfare to work, which, as we all know, involves contractors and, as I think we all know, subcontractors. Someone is going to have to monitor all this. As the contractors in the pilots will be localised—I have somewhere a list which the Minister helpfully told us on Thursday was on the DWP website—and in specific geographical areas, it is logical to assume, although no one has yet told me, that the monitoring will be done, in part anyway, by the jobcentres in those areas. This monitoring is on top of the work that they are already doing. Over and above that, of course, there is the movement from the current job adviser to the personal adviser, as I tried to explain. I am suspicious, if I may put it that way.

Again, I am trying to be helpful to the noble Lord. We have contracted out the evaluation of the “work for your benefit” pilots.

To whom?

To the same organisation that is involved with the Flexible New Deal evaluation. I can write to the noble Lord with the name.

That would probably be helpful. None the less, there is a movement from the jobcentre to the contractor. Someone will have to organise that movement for the individual claimant, and I cannot see anyone, other than the job adviser, who is likely to do that. Therefore, as I said, I make absolutely no apology for conflation. I could have prolonged my speech even further by delving into the 2008 financial report of the Department for Work and Pensions, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, did, but I decided that my speech was probably long enough already and that, if there were a valid point there, someone else—almost certainly the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood—would make it, as indeed he did.

As I said at the beginning, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords for contributing to this short debate. There is such comity around the Committee that I have absolutely no doubt that this subject will come back on Report—in quite what guise, I cannot yet say for the simple reason that we have not finished our discussions on Clause 1, let alone Clauses 2 and 3. However, I can tell the Minister that something will arrive.

Perhaps I may help on one further point concerning contract monitoring. I should make it clear that employment programme contracts are managed at the centre of the DWP and not in individual Jobcentre Plus districts. That does not negate the point that they need to be monitored, but it is done centrally, which is where the expertise is built up.

Of course, the centre of the DWP is not dysfunctional, which I accused the individual jobcentres of being. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

This clause breaks new ground and is the cause of grave concern for many different voluntary organisations. There seems to be a lot of confusion about it and about Clause 2 —not least earlier in the Grand Committee—and I invite the Minister to clarify this part of the Bill. I have already spoken to him about it and I think he will welcome the opportunity to do so.

The first thing we need to have spelt out so that everyone is clear about it is who will and who will not fall under Clause 1. In particular, it is important to know at what stage lone parents, mostly mothers, will come under this “work for your benefits” scheme, assuming that it is rolled-out across the country. We do not know, of course, when income support will be abolished. This is causing its own problems. Those moved off income support onto jobseeker’s allowance will not come under Clause 1 either, as they will not be expected to look for work in spite of being labelled “jobseekers”. When will they come under Clause 1?

The Minister might also make it clear that “work for your benefit” is intended to be a pilot scheme, presumably in a few areas of the country only. We are told that it will be fully evaluated before—and if—it is rolled out across the country, but this is not in the Bill. Could “work for your benefit” be rolled out without a pilot, even by another Government? I suppose it could be.

We have to hope that the employment situation, which is now expected to reach over 3 million unemployed next year, will have improved when and if “work for your benefit” is rolled out, so that the number of people out of work for two years is much smaller than predicted. Even though we are hearing about a few green shoots in the economy, unemployment is what I believe is called a “lag indicator” and will continue to rise for some time after definite green shoots appear. People are desperate now for real jobs; there will be more of them desperate for those jobs soon and they are likely to become very angry if they are pushed into compulsory make-work schemes, in return for minimal JSA, which will do nothing for their long-term prospects.

Following on my noble friend’s questions, as we leave Clause 1 there are practical issues still to be resolved—certainly in my mind if in no-one else’s. For the avoidance of doubt, I declare an interest as a non-remunerated, non-executive director of the Wise Group, which provides intermediate labour market jobs in Glasgow; it is a social enterprise of which I have been a director for three or four years. It is exactly the kind of organisation that may in future take advantage of bidding for these contracts.

Reinforced by the previous debate about whether 2001 was a long while ago, I should like an assurance about the timetable. I am not looking for hard and fast dates but for an impression of how long it will take to complete due diligence and get the scheme up and running. If everything that can go right does go right, when does the department expect to be able to offer this employment programme? It is important for us to have an idea about that as we leave this clause.

The Minister will know that the preferred bidders are already out for the Flexible New Deal contract, phase 1 of which will start in 2009 and phase 2 next spring. I expect the employment programme set out in Clause 1 to come in after the second year of the Flexible New Deal has been gone through by customers and claimants, who would then be available for “work for your benefits”. So one way of looking at this is to say, “The scheme is at least two years away after the programme starts, so we have plenty of time”.

However, there are some fast-track provisions in the legislation which I want to understand. If a discretionary power is available to a personal adviser and a customer or claimant comes in who would be particularly assisted by gaining access to a “work for your benefit” scheme, could that be anticipated before the end of the two-year period normally expected before these programmes become available?

If there are going to be pilots—my noble friend made the powerful point that there is no guarantee that there will be—will one be in a rural area? Can we explicitly have an assurance that there will be pilots in rural areas?

We have had a very good debate about childcare, and the Minister has been very helpful in trying his best to respond to the questions, but I suspect that there is still scepticism about whether this will all work out in the way that he thinks. We will not be able to be sure about that in rural areas unless we study it in great detail. I make a plea for that and hope that he can give us an assurance.

I thank the noble Lord for his suggestion. I suggest that pilots should also include densely populated minority areas, which still lack most facilities.

We have had two and a half days on Clause 1 and there are still questions to be asked, as both the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, have pointed out. I have said I do not know how many times during those two and a half days that it all revolves around the personal relationship between the personal adviser and the claimant.

With regard to the need for pilots in rural areas, urban areas or wherever, the only guidance we can get is the notice to the providers on the DWP website. That covers virtually the whole country but we do not know, out of that list, where the pilots are going to be. Will there be 10 or 12 pilots?

Two.

Two pilots? In that case, it seems unforgivable if there is not one in a rural area and one in an urban area. I am surprised by the idea of only two pilots, though, with 14 preferred bidders. Something very odd is going on here, and I hope that the Minister can explain.

I am grateful for the opportunity to try to allay fears and explain on the record what Clause 1 and “work for your benefit” schemes are all about. As the Committee will be aware, we recently began to reform the jobseeker’s allowance system, including the introduction of the Flexible New Deal. This is designed to ensure that, as a JSA claim progresses, the support that a jobseeker receives increases. The quid pro quo is that jobseekers have an increasing duty to engage with that support. “Work for your benefit” is designed to fit after the Flexible New Deal and continue that progression in terms of support and responsibility.

The programme is completely separate from the progression-to-work group and will therefore not apply to lone parents with children younger than seven or to those who are on the employment and support allowance. If we want to look at this in terms of the Gregg proposals, this would apply only to the work-ready group—those claimants who are actively seeking work and are available for it. The programme should be seen in that context.

Clause 1 creates a framework for “work for your benefit”, which is, as I have said, a new employment programme that we intend to pilot from 2010. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, asked if we technically have to pilot; the answer is no, but we have a clear and stated intent to do so. We intend to pilot from October 2010, which is at the end of the first year of the Flexible New Deal; it logically follows on from that, given what I have just said. We expect it to run over two years. We have not yet determined where the pilots will be, but obviously one understands the thrust of the issues about urban areas, particularly those that have concentrations of disadvantaged people from minority ethnic communities, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar —Luton springs to mind as a good place to focus on. We are still looking at the pilot areas.

Can it be available more quickly? The reason for the two-year period between now and the pilots going live is because there needs to be the usual fair and open contracting process, as well as abutting the end of the first year of the Flexible New Deal. Results from the evaluation will be published in stages but with a final evaluation report in late 2012.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, asked about help with recycling. “Work for your benefit” is designed to help to tackle work recycling, but we will certainly want to look at the characteristics of those who reach the end of “work for your benefit” and adjust the design accordingly. If people who have been through the two-year programme and “work for your benefit” have still not accessed the labour market, that should raise real questions about the need to adjust the programme. In response to the question abut whether there will be room for complaining, I have here a clear “yes”. However, I think that we need to be clear about the processes and ensure that they are readily available.

Just to clarify matters, the programme will be contracted out and we will ask providers from the private and voluntary sectors to source work experience placements. In order to maximise people’s chances of finding work, we want “work for your benefit” to be personalised and tailored to individuals’ needs. As such, we anticipate that placements will be sourced on an individual basis with a variety of organisations. Some of these will be community-based, but we would not want to rule out participants being placed with private companies if that provides the best chance of moving them back into work. Our primary driver must always be to get people back into the labour market and out of poverty. We will of course include safeguards within contracts to ensure that placements in host organisations are in addition to any existing or planned vacancies. That will ensure that participants do not displace other workers, and we will work closely with our partners to monitor the effects of the pilot programme on the wider labour market.

“Work for your benefit” is aimed primarily at those who have been unemployed for long periods. We know that many of these people will be divorced from the labour market and will have complex barriers to work. To ensure that these barriers are addressed, focus will be maintained on job-search activity. We will ask providers to include relevant employment support alongside work experience. We want to encourage people to build on the work skills that they learn, but we also intend to allow personal advisers the flexibility to refer claimants earlier than the two-year point.

Before the noble Lord leaves that point, how early could they be referred?

We have no particular timescale in mind. I think that it will be when a personal adviser sees a benefit in moving someone straight to that role. I think that that opportunity will become apparent when we go through the pilots, and it is hoped that that will help directors in deciding whether we need to include a cut-off point, although one is not envisaged at the moment.

We anticipate that “work for your benefit” could have a deterrent effect on those who may be playing the system and are not serious about looking for work. However, the programme is not intended to be a punishment; rightly, it is aimed at improving people’s chances of finding sustainable work by providing an opportunity to develop work skills and habits. “Work for your benefit” is built on existing welfare reforms and incorporates the core message of rights and responsibilities but, more importantly, it represents an excellent chance for long-term unemployed people to re-engage with the labour market.

I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, asked whether these were the right economic circumstances in which to roll out these provisions. We have learnt the lessons of the past. We need to keep people who find themselves out of work as close to the labour market as possible, regardless of economic conditions. That gives them the best chance of capitalising on recovery when it occurs.

In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, all types of work experience, including voluntary work, if appropriate, can be incorporated into the arrangements.

The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, expressed concern at the fact that there may be only two pilots. To be clear, we envisage that there will be 10 to 12 pilots in respect of the progression-to-work programme, which comes under Clause 2.

I hope that that has dealt with each of the points that have been raised, and I hope that, at long last, we will feel able to support Clause 1 and move on to the rest of the Bill.

Before we do that, I understood the Minister to say that the two pilots that we are talking about in respect of Clause 1 would start in October 2010 and that the final results would be in 2012. Is that correct?

Yes.

But are we having only a one-year pilot or will it be a two-year pilot? If so, how will there be time for a proper evaluation before everything is rolled out countrywide?

The noble Lord is right; October 2010 is the start date because that is a year after the first Flexible New Deal kicks in. The pilot would run for two years and we would look to have interim evaluations as well as an evaluation at the end of the two-year pilot.

I have already spoken to this amendment but I move it to clarify a point. In his response to my speech last Tuesday, the noble Lord said:

“I am pleased to say that we already have an extensive programme of published and planned research and analysis covering the employment position of people aged 50 and over”.

I said in reply:

“I was pleased to hear the Minister say that they are doing constant research. If he could let me know, in a letter, the type of research being done I would be very grateful”.—[Official Report, 9/6/09; col. GC 53, 55.]

The Minister is normally very assiduous in sending a reply by return. I would be extremely grateful if he could let me have a response, bearing in mind the details of subsection (2) in my amendment.

I shall certainly do that. I should explain that it is not me who is assiduous in these things; the team of people behind me do all the hard work.

It is their fault.

We will endeavour to get a reply to the noble Countess expeditiously.

In that case, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Under the Bill, a lone parent who cares for a disabled child with entitlement to the middle or higher rate care component of disability living allowance will be entitled to income support and will not be affected by the conditionality rules, as I understand it, introduced for lone parents. However, those who are entitled only to the lower rate of DLA for their child are not exempted. These parents will be subject to the preparing for work conditionality that the Bill will introduce. There are very real problems about excluding parents receiving the DLA care component at the lower rate, and parents in the process of appealing against a negative renewal decision.

In this amendment, I was talking about the problem of excluding lone parents on the lower rate of DLA from the exemptions in the conditionality rules. Renewal applications frequently result in entitlement being cancelled or downgraded to a lower amount, only for the decision to be reversed after a lengthy appeal process. This has to do with people being excluded while an appeal process is undertaken. The fact is that these things happen quite a lot.

The chopping and changing resulting from inconsistent renewal assessments will inevitably lead to some parents moving in and out of the group required to undertake work-related activity. Research shows that some 7,500 families care for two or more disabled children, involving in total between 17,500 and 20,000 disabled children. Some of these families with multiple disabled children may receive only lower-rate DLA awards. The cumulative nature of caring responsibilities within these families is absolutely enormous, but under the proposed rules, as I understand them, parents could still be required to attend work-focused interviews, undertake work-related activity or face sanctions. I should be grateful if the Minister could correct me if I am wrong about that.

We are not talking about big numbers in government terms, but this could well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for each lone parent who is affected. Let us for a moment put ourselves in the position of a young mother who has probably suffered a painful separation from a partner, she has experienced the grief of finding that her child may never develop completely normally, and she is on her own, dealing with constant uncertainties and pressures from the benefits system. Will her housing benefit cover her rent? Perhaps not. How will she pay the gas bill? She cannot. Then what will happen? There will be no heating for her disabled child or children. It is her child’s birthday; how can she afford a gift for him? On it goes. She then finds that her benefits may be threatened if she does not find someone to look after her child while she does some work-related activity.

To me, this is simply inhuman. For a parent with a child with an invisible or fluctuating condition such as autistic spectrum disorder or ADHD, the problems are even greater. Undertaking assessment for DLA is not an exact science. Mistakes are many, especially for such children. Many will be on the lower rate of the DLA care component, if on any DLA at all. These families move in and out of entitlement to DLA or are subjected to repeated downratings only to be reversed on appeal. All that, despite no change in the diagnosis of the child—yet it is these children who are likely to be excluded from childcare settings.

For those reasons, we ask the Minister to introduce amendments on Report to exempt all parents receiving DLA care component at lower, middle or higher rate from work-related activity and, secondly, to exempt all parents who were formerly in receipt of DLA for a child and are in the process of appealing a negative renewal decision. Thirdly, we ask him to retain a voluntary entitlement to access work-related activity for those who wish to do so. That would be a fair and reasonable approach. I am grateful to the Child Poverty Action Group for its helpful briefing on the amendment, and I hope that I have said enough to persuade the Minister that the amendment is reasonable and deserves his careful consideration. I beg to move.

Is the noble Baroness's amendment expected to include mobility allowance? It was not clear from the drafting, or when she talked about the three rates, whether she was confining herself to the living allowance or including “mob” as well. I take it that she means to include “mob”, but she may want to clarify that.

This is a probing amendment; we may want to come back to the issue on Report to clarify that. I just think that lone parents of children with disabilities, whether they are entitled to DLA or mobility allowance—all those sorts of benefits—should not be included in the conditionality processes.

We support the amendment. I should declare an interest in that I receive disability living allowance. Disability living allowance has two components: mobility and care. There are three rates of each. A lone parent with a child under seven who qualifies for any rate of DLA should not have to participate in the work-related activity regime in order to receive benefits. Being the sole carer of a disabled child is likely to be a full-time activity and not one for which it is easy to find replacement childcare. Parents of those children are not exempted from the progression-to-work group, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, if their disabled child qualifies only for the lower rate care component of DLA. If the rate was the middle or higher rate, the parents would be exempted.

Having different rules for those parents is problematic because renewal applications often result, as the noble Baroness said, in assessments being upgraded or downgraded and then overturned on appeal. Families with disabled children experience high levels of poverty, with research showing that take-up of DLA is low, often because of the onerous application process, as well as ignorance of entitlement. Poor decision-making leads to a high level of appeals, which are often successful. I feel particularly strongly about this because I had to go through the appeal process, so I know all about it. There is evidence to show that there is a growth in disputed decisions of DLA, with it constantly being downgraded or removed and then reinstated on appeal.

I urge the Government to think again and to exempt the lone parent of a child under seven who receives any rate of a DLA care component from the conditionality regime. Those lone parents should not come under the work activity provisions.

I would add that minority women suffer on two fronts. Among many minorities, any kind of disability is understated or made invisible because it is seen as a failure of the mother. Also, many of them simply do not have the time, knowledge or information to deal with an appeal process and are likely to passively give up. That, of course, is dreadful for the child as well as for the mother.

The provisions of this amendment fell within my Amendments 22A to 22D. This is a particular case in point. The issue is whether it is wise to enumerate each case or to have a genetic categorisation in the Bill which includes all. The trouble with specifying one case is that it is immediately assumed to exclude others. In effect, this gives an opening for the Government to evade other obligations because you have specified only one. I hope I have made that clear. I, quite naturally, wholeheartedly support the amendment.

I support the amendment. I have had quite a lot to do with mothers of autistic children who have a range of problems with them. I am concerned that the stress that the mother is under through worrying about their child’s illness in the first place, and then because autistic children’s sleep patterns are chaotic and the mother gets little sleep—her house is often made into a state of total chaos; she cannot go out shopping peacefully or do anything peacefully—means that she is not fit to go out to work. There is no question of her holding down a job. Even children who are mildly autistic are difficult, as are children with a hyperactivity syndrome. I support the noble Baroness’s amendment.

To make it a full house, I also support the amendment. I declare an interest as having just finished the 40-page renewal of my DLA and I look forward to my appeal. I totally support the amendment.

I am afraid I am going to be the grit in the ointment on the amendment, which will dismay many Members of the Committee. During our extensive debates on Clause 1 we have, from time to time, strayed into Clause 2, for which I was in part, but by no means entirely, to blame.

Of course no one could but sympathise enormously with those single parents who have disabled children on disability living allowance, at whatever rate it is. To that extent, of course I go along with the amendment—at least, I would if I were convinced that it was really necessary. The Minister has already said that a lone parent having a disabled child—I assume this means any disabled child, at whatever rate of disability living allowance or anything else that he or she might be on—would be just cause for that parent not undertaking the various duties envisaged under Clause 2. That is, of course, with the exception of the initial interview and those that are repeated every so many months. That is why I wonder whether the amendment is necessary.

However, it would help the Committee if the Minister could use the amendment to clarify a point that has already arisen in our debates: at what point in the child’s life does the single mother have her first jobcentre interview? The Minister spoke on Tuesday of progression to work happening with any force only when the child reaches three and continues up to seven. Even between these ages I have not identified any compulsion beyond, as I say, being sanctioned for not turning up to interviews. I may be wrong in that assumption, but if I am right it makes me wonder quite what much of Clause 2 is about. If the only sanction up to the age of three is for not turning up for an interview, there is nothing much to worry about whether or not you have a disabled child. It would certainly shorten our debates if the Minister could give an outline now of what is expected of a single mother and when, no matter what position she is in regarding her children.

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. All but the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, look to be supporting the position that I am going to take.

I shall try to deal with the noble Lord’s question about how Clause 2 operates. He will be aware that, so far as jobseeker’s allowance and full conditionality are concerned, we have already provided through regulations that that JSA regime will progressively apply to those where the youngest child is seven, so not for children below that age. Work-related activity is not just turning up at work-focused interviews; obviously, embedded within the programme are issues around work-related activity and possible mandation in respect of work-related activity. Although the framework of the Bill provides for a wider group of lone parents to be brought within it, we have been clear that the pathfinders we want to run would be focused on lone parents whose youngest child was not younger than three, so that would cover the three-to-six age group.

Clause 2 is not only about lone parents; it is about partners as well, and there are other provisions within it. If the noble Lord wishes to press on that, I will sit down.

Does what the Minister has just said mean that there will be no interview of any sort before the child is three? That is what I am really trying to get at.

I am so sorry; I was reading a note and missed what the noble Lord said.

I was asking whether what he has said means that there will be no interview for single parents under this clause before the child is three years old. It is a fairly simple question.

It is a simple question, and the answer is as follows: this is not specifically dealt with in Clause 2, but, at the moment, parents with the youngest child under the age of one have no conditionality—

No; it has nothing to do with conditionality. All that I am interested in is the interview process.

I was going to go on to say that, because the interview process is part of the conditionality, for parents whose youngest child is between one and two the requirement is a work-focused interview and action plans, while for parents with a youngest child aged between three and six it is a work-focused interview plus an action plan, plus work-related activity. That is the structure of what we are seeking to achieve. I assume that the noble Lord is content with that.

Am I right in thinking, therefore, that lone parents with a child between three and six would be required to attend work-related activity in certain situations if they had DLA only at the lowest rate, but would be exempt if they had DLA at the medium or higher rate? Would lone parents with children of seven plus be required to go through the return to employment unless they had the mobility allowance element of DLA at the medium or higher rate? If so, the amendment is needed in order to exempt those lone parents simply receiving the lower rate of DLA.

The answer, from the noble Baroness’s point of view, is that the amendment is needed, because what she says is right. I shall develop that.

I want to make it clear from the outset that any requirement to undertake work-related activity will always take fully into account the family circumstances and requirements of the parent. We are also discussing specific exemptions from the work-related activity provisions with stakeholder groups. When we introduced the requirement for most lone parents with older children—when the youngest child reaches age seven—to move from income support on to jobseeker’s allowance, we set a number of precedents for exemptions. Under those provisions for lone parents on jobseeker’s allowance—the work-ready group—regulations specifically excluded lone parents who were in receipt of carer’s allowance or who have a child in receipt of the middle-rate or highest-rate care component of DLA, but not the lower rate.

Parents with children in receipt of the lower-rate care component—

Can my noble friend help me? If the lone parent is on income support with a carer’s premium—I think, although I stand to be corrected, that that can be applied for a child on the lowest-rate DLA—that lone parent is, therefore, exempt, even if the child is not.

Yes; I was referring to jobseeker’s allowance and income support. For people who are in the JSA full conditionality regime, there is an exclusion for lone parents who are in receipt of carer’s allowance—so the allowance attaches to the lone parent—or who have a child in receipt of the middle-rate or highest-rate care component of DLA. I understand that the carer’s premium is only for middle-rate or higher-rate DLA; so they would be protected.

Parents with children in receipt of the lower-rate care component of DLA were not exempt because we considered that such a child, by definition, would not require the amount of care that precluded the parent from undertaking paid work, in the case of those parents on jobseeker’s allowance and, therefore, should not preclude parents with younger children, in the same circumstance, from undertaking work-related activity. It is certain that we will mirror these exemptions, but we need to continue to engage with stakeholders to consider the full range of customers with special needs. The full exemption provisions would then be prescribed in regulations.

As was mentioned several times, we will ensure that safeguards are in place whereby claimants are not put in a situation where they are being asked to comply with a requirement that is unreasonable or inappropriate to their individual circumstances. This is especially important when they have a disabled child. In all cases, we would ensure that the activities they agreed to were discussed and considered in depth, so that the action plan was suitably tailored to the needs not of only the parent, but the disabled child. Again, I assure noble Lords that it is not our intention to penalise parents, but to give them the opportunity to undertake activities that would help to improve not only their future prospects, but those of children in their households. I should say that lone parents with children on the lower rate of DLA at present have to attend work-focused interviews.

I shall deal with some issues around the safeguards that will be in place for parents undertaking work-related activity. As we discussed earlier, we proposed to adapt the flexibilities introduced into jobseeker’s allowance when in 2008 the entitlement conditions for income support for lone parents changed for those within the progression-to-work group. Therefore, we would expect the same flexibility for parents who could not find suitable childcare and are required to undertake work-related activities to be available to parents who are required to actively seek and be available for work. This would also include: allowing parents to refuse or leave work-related activity because there is no appropriate childcare available; allowing parents to be deemed as undertaking work-related activity for a maximum of eight weeks a year when a bereavement or domestic emergency has occurred; deeming parents as being treated as undertaking work-related activity if a child has been excluded from school and the action plan cannot be adapted to take this into account; deeming parents as being treated as undertaking work-related activity if no activity can be found in the area; counting activities within a parenting contract towards work-related activity; taking into account a parent’s travel time to an activity, including time required to drop off and pick up their children from school or childcare; and making at least one attempt to contact the parent by telephone and sending them a letter on the day to advise them of the need urgently to contact their adviser within five working days, otherwise benefit sanctions may be applied.

Perhaps I may mention other groups that we are planning to exempt from work-related activity, such as those on the middle and higher-rate components of disability living allowance and those entitled to the carer’s allowance and parents who are fostering.

The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, raised an interesting question about the propensity for appeals to be upheld and what that might mean. I think that we are right to reflect on that point as we need to understand the thrust of the issue that she is pursuing. Voluntary activity can be accepted as an activity on the action plan. It would then become a requirement, but that could be renegotiated if need be.

How can voluntary work possibly be a requirement?

It is what is agreed as part of the action plan. There are obviously processes under which someone can be mandated to undertake a specific work-related activity under the provisions of the clause. I understand that the noble Baroness is pressing for particular terminology, but that is the context. Clearly, if the work fell outside the action plan, a mandatory direction could not apply to it. I hope that that provides a degree of reassurance to the noble Baroness. I am sure that it does not meet her requirements fully, but that is the Government’s approach to this issue.

Would my noble friend like to comment further? He has very helpfully described the situation as it is. The noble Baroness who spoke about the flimsiness of the line between lower-rate and middle-rate DLA and what happens on appeal is absolutely right, particularly when dealing with fluctuating conditions or things such as HD. On those occasions, it is not always easy to carry out an assessment, remembering that DLA is not about the medical dimensions of a particular disability or sickness but about the implication for care needs. That is what determines what rate of DLA one is on. Having said that, as my noble friend knows, because it is very difficult to find childcare in that situation, the childcare tax credit had to be changed by the Government to allow it to take place in the child’s own home, which is not what the Government originally planned.

Frankly, because the line between lower-rate DLA and the rest is so flimsy and subjective and has no real connection to the degree of stress on the lone parent and her capacity to cope, I do not think that it would hold up in what I call the court of public opinion. Therefore, I strongly urge my noble friend not to reject the amendment but to take it away. It would be perfectly reasonable—and I would support him on this—for all lone parents, including those with a disabled child, on whatever rate of DLA to come in for six-monthly work-focused interviews. That would be absolutely right because—who knows?—as that child matured, his disability, if it were a behavioural disorder, might reduce and the lone parent might want to re-enter work and stay attached to the labour market in the gentlest way possible. I see no problem with that continuing, but I suggest that it is not acceptable to make work-related activity for a lone parent with a child, even on the lowest rate of DLA, mandatory. Where that lone parent volunteers and wishes to do that work rather than take part under the New Deal, that is fine.

I urge my noble friend not to reject the amendment at this point but to take it away and reflect on it to see whether he is able to come forward on Report with something that addresses the concerns that have been expressed. There should not be flexibility for a personal adviser to second-guess a doctor or a medical judgment for DLA; the lone parent should be given the right to determine what she does while the child is under the age of seven. It is entirely reasonable to keep the interviews going to see whether her circumstances change, but one should not add to the pressures and strains because, I suggest to my noble friend, that would not hold up in any test of public decency on this issue. Again, I suggest that he takes the amendment away.

Hear, hear!

As ever, we reflect on our debates, but I reiterate that the specific exemptions in respect of lower and middle-rate DLA do not preclude other circumstances, particularly fluctuating circumstances, being taken into account. These issues are addressed when the action plan is reviewed and work-focused interviews are undertaken. I would also say specifically that, as we have debated extensively, if appropriate childcare is not available at an affordable price, a person cannot be mandated to undertake work-related activity which does not reflect that circumstance.

I thank the Minister for his response and his willingness to have a look at the appeal situation by recognising that there is some merit in that argument. However, I am disappointed that he has not agreed to take the other part of the amendment away to consider it further, particularly in view of the force of the arguments put by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and other noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. It seems that the assessment is more of an art than a scientific process, and inevitably people will get it wrong, particularly with ADHD and other autistic spectrum disorders, because a child might walk into an office and appear to be reasonably okay for five minutes. Given that, I really do think that any public scrutiny of this issue would find it wanting. I believe that we will all want to consider bringing this issue back on Report. For the time being, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I shall speak also to the other amendments in the group. We debated this matter under Clause 1, so the groundwork has already been done. However, this amendment was deliberately not grouped with the earlier one because we are now talking about a different and more vulnerable group of claimants—those in the progression-to-work group who must undertake certain work-related activities. The Minister said last week that this rests on the nature of the support offered, in that it is personally tailored to an individual, not on the principle of the programme. I agree, but I wonder whether it is written down anywhere. Of crucial concern is whether enough investment will be made in each claimant to ensure that support is genuinely tailored to individual need and is of high quality. How this aspect of the Bill works will determine whether it will work as it should.

In general, we on these Benches are in favour of carrots rather than sticks, not least because of the powerful evidence base that supports the efficacy of a conditionality regime for this group of claimants. By carrots, I mean real encouragement to engage claimants with the kind of voluntary sector schemes that have a track record of success in this area. We know that the use of sanctions is supposed to be a last resort, and I hope the Minister will agree that, if there is an increasing use of sanctions on this group of claimants, it will be a sign that the policy has failed. I beg to move.

I have tabled several amendments in this group and it might be appropriate if I speak to them now. The noble Baroness has tabled amendments that would change the emphasis of the scheme from one of a duty to fulfil obligations to one of entitlement. This is an area where I have some sympathy with her arguments. It sounds good to “empower” people, if that is the current buzzword. It would certainly be satisfactory if everything unfolded as we would like it to and if all those people we have in mind when we legislate were enthusiastic and motivated enough to take hold of their entitlement and use it to the full. That would be the best outcome that we could possibly hope for, but life is not like that.

I wonder whether the noble Baroness’s views will be supported by the reality of people who are willing to get into the job market but have no idea how to go about it and even those who are more ambivalent about getting back into employment. Will they be helped by having all carrot and no stick? These are good questions, and I will enjoy sitting down and listening to the Minister explain exactly why impositions, duties, coercions and threats are necessary—to put them in increasing order. I have no doubt that his department has looked long and hard at this and there will therefore be a well reasoned justification for presenting us with a scheme drawn up in this way.

My amendments in this group are much less weighted. Amendments 39, 40 and 41 are, broadly, drafting amendments. Amendment 39 would change the wording so that benefits were reduced for the prescribed time rather than until the prescribed time. I do not suppose that much hinges on this, as both versions would have a clear end date and so allow certainty. My suggestions would make it easier to collect and compare lengths of time that have been imposed as penalties. The Minister may consider that useful.

Amendment 40 would leave out the words “reference to” in line 35. I see those words as unnecessary. If they do not add to the meaning of the clause, why are they there? Amendment 41 has been tabled simply to ask what is meant by the words “to the prescribed extent”. Do the drafters mean time, amount or something else by the word “extent”? The drafting does not seem to be clear.

I support the amendment. My noble friend Lady Thomas is right that her “personally tailored” and subsequent amendments might sound the same in the context of the earlier debate, but they are fundamentally different. Clause 2 is a different place altogether from Clause 1.

I said on the first day of Committee that it is difficult from looking at the Bill to get hold of the Government’s strategic policy regarding welfare reform. The way it is contrived makes it hard to understand what the big picture is. Clause 2(1) refers to a person who is entitled to income support. Imposing on them a requirement to undertake work-related activity is a huge change and runs against everything that we have ever understood about income support, means-tested benefits and issues of that kind. If this is a transitionary measure to a single working-age benefit, as set out in the Green Paper and again in the report that Professor Gregg has produced, then it is important that we understand that. However, I am not sure that it is; as I have said before, the Bill is a mess. I would understand it better—I would have a better handle on the journey that is being taken—if we could get a reassurance that in the long run we are aiming for a single working-age benefit.

There are some politics around this. The current environment is pretty uncertain: we are facing a general election and we have had nine Secretaries of State leading the department since 1997, and I can list them. That is my pub trivia quiz question; I know them all in the order in which they served because I have watched them all come, stay for 15 months and go. I have nothing against the current Secretary of State, but I will be surprised if she gets more than 15 months. You need to think about that only for a moment when you look at the scale of the department and the importance of the services that it provides. I referred earlier to the answers to the staff attitude questions. I agree with the response to my question to the Minister—that the staff are all very high quality—but I find that they feel they are missing leadership from the department when I go around these Jobcentre Plus offices, which, I agree, are much improved.

We are dealing with important amendments that seek to exempt people from the new system. I understand why we are doing that, because it may be necessary, but if we were able to have what would be almost a philosophical discussion about where we are trying to go with this, some of us would be more reassured. That is why the provision of “personalised tailored work” sought in the amendment and in the consequential amendments in the group is so important not just to Clause 2 but also to the general direction of travel.

For example, carers should be taken out of the benefit system altogether. They should be put somewhere different and financed separately. It is amazingly confusing to the welfare-to-work agenda to try to deal with carers as well. Carers are on income support, but in Clause 7 we have to deal with abolition, which cannot be done yet because carers are entitled to it. We will come to the Government’s position on carers later, and it is important that we work out where that will leave us in terms of welfare-to-work and other areas of the department’s work. It is obviously being led by the Department of Health, so we will wait to see what that brings. Professor Gregg said in Recommendations 53 and 54 of his review that carers should be dealt with outside the benefit system. If that were the case, a lot of us would be reassured about the circumstances that some people are facing.

I will not rehash the arguments over the question of re-ownership, because we dealt with it in Clause 1. It is an integral part of what claimants should expect as they come into the new system. The so-called “black box” flexibilities that are now available to great advantage in terms of the contracting-out details for suppliers such as the Wise Group mean that these organisations now have much more discretion when dealing with claimants. I have seen it work where people are invited to come in and are worked into progression-to-work groups with no job-seeking duties. If people were dealt with on the basis of where they are and not on what benefit they are on, the age of their children or what condition they might have, we would have set up a much better system in the long run. The Government say that there is no tool to do that but I do not believe it. The Dutch have been doing it for some years with great skill, and we have expertise building up in the department that would enable us to do it as well. Distance from the labour market is the only test that matters. If people knew that they had co-ownership of the journey to get back into work, they would be a lot more confident about getting into the system in the first place.

That is my general position. The Government are missing a trick because of the confusion about whether this is an end in itself or part of a journey to a completely different place with a single working-age benefit. We need to be clear about that because we are not clear at the moment. Personalisation is important and so access to personal advisers is important. It should be much more of an on-demand service at some stages of the journey back into work than it is now.

We should stop talking about sanctions because people do not understand what they mean. Professor Gregg talks about fines, but what do we mean by that? Are we fining people for not complying? Financial penalties are a last resort. They are dire and, when applied, can have one of two effects. People wake up and realise that they are doing something wrong, often because they did not understand that they were doing so. If they leave work without due cause, they do not realise that it has a benefit penalty attached to it, so we need to get better at communicating. Alternatively, financial penalties for people who are acting in good faith are disastrous. The Gregg review talks about the urgent need for a review of the whole sanctions, financial penalties and fines apparatus. It is not working at the moment, and I have no reason to believe that, if it is not doing so now and there are no plans to change it, it is going to get any better. We need to understand that in terms of the personalised support being introduced in the Bill.

My plea is that the Government need to be much clearer. We should remember that this Government may not implement this legislation; my noble friend Lady Thomas might be the future Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and introduce provisions that one might not expect. We have to bear that in mind, I submit.

It would be uncharted waters.

It certainly would be uncharted waters. I should be happy to carry her bags and work with my noble friend, as I do. However, the point is that this legislation can be picked up, used, reused, altered and implemented in different ways by other people in future. We have to bear that in mind. This is a very important part of the Bill. The Government have to think very clearly about what they are trying to do. If they do not go for personalised support, a single working-age benefit and a much longer, more co-operative way of working, we need to be clear about that before we make any further progress on the Bill.

I am inclined to support this amendment. First, I like the idea of undertaking,

“personally tailored work related activity”.

That is rather similar to what I had in mind when I moved an amendment relating to skilled workers. Quite obviously, if you have special skills, a work-related advisory service is appropriate. Moreover, if the Bill is unamended, particularly Clause 1, a sanction is implied which involves the loss of income support, as has already been pointed out. On later amendments we shall discuss the circumstances in which income support can be removed. The amendment that we are discussing refers to an “entitlement” rather than a sanction. I am in favour of this amendment and I hope that the Minister will respond, if not to this wording, at least to the sentiment behind it. It is well worth considering.

I support the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. This matter applies particularly to minority women who may well be first-time brides, who arrive in this country with very little information, have children, are later divorced and find themselves reliant on family support without being able to connect with, appeal or go through the processes. If we recognise that rearing children and doing domestic work is real work, I do not see how we can ask them to start training to enter the workplace; they are working.

Hear, hear.

For many of them every day is a disaster because they do not know what to do. To impose another sanction on them is unfair.

In the same vein I find it very odd that we are making mothers go out to work and then pay someone else to look after their children. That seems absolutely crazy to me. The noble Lord has made clear that where the income of the parent is not enough, the social security system will have to support them in that case. This seems absolutely barmy.

I support the speech that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, has just made. The Bill seeks to influence the social norms of our society in relation to work, and particularly to influence the social norms of certain groups in our society who may have got out of the habit of working. I am not sure whether co-ownership of the Bill’s provisions is the right route but we should debate financial penalties. I shall not start that debate now but a number of the briefings that I have received from various organisations are profoundly concerned about financial penalties being imposed on people who are already living below the poverty rate. That is perhaps a separate issue but let us focus our minds on what is the best way to transform the social norms of those who are not working so that they feel working is the normal thing to do, the thing they ought to be doing and the thing everybody is doing. I suspect that carrots are better than sticks for that purpose.

This, again, has been an interesting debate which has strayed quite widely. I shall deal first with the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, about the strategy and where we are heading with this. We recognise that, overwhelmingly, people want to work: work is good for people’s health, it is generally their best route out of poverty and it is good for their self-esteem. Given all the data about the disadvantages that accrue in workless households and pass from generation to generation, providing people with the opportunity to participate in the labour market is a vital strand of government policy.

If that is our starting position, how does it work so far as the benefit system is concerned? We are seeking to implement the Gregg model effectively, which states that there are people who are work-ready; people who need a progression to work to enable them to access the labour market; and people who should have the opportunity to engage in programmes but on whom no requirement should be placed. That is the package of measures and the thrust behind the Bill.

So far as the structure of the benefit system is concerned, I agree that we should be structuring a system whereby the support you get is not dependent on the nature of the benefit you receive but is personalised and dependent on what most helps you to remove the barriers which prevent you accessing the labour market. Again, this is what we are doing, in part, with the Bill. Specifically, it remains an aspiration to end up with a single working-age benefit. It will be hugely complex to move from where we are to that objective but we have laid the groundwork in the Bill. It provides the prospect of removing income support from the system so that we end up with two working-age benefits, one associated with ill health and disability and one with the rest. We believe that is the right way to go. So that is the strategy and the wrap around for this.

So far as sanctions are concerned, if someone is sanctioned the system has not worked for them because we want a regime that encourages people to take up the opportunities that are there. We are learning from the experiences of our European colleagues—in particular the Dutch, the Danes and the Swedes—and considering how they can be brought to bear in a UK context. We are looking carefully at the position of carers and how best to support them. The link between how social care operates and how people who cannot work because of carer responsibilities should be supported is a difficult one. We agree that the current system is not satisfactory; that is why the Government are working on proposals which they look to bring forward in due course.

Amendments 29, 30, 32, 33 and 34 seek to remove the requirement for lone parents and partners of certain benefit recipients to undertake work-related activity as part of the conditions for full benefit entitlement and to allow the parent to choose if they want to participate. Those who do would have an entitlement to undertake personally-tailored, work-related activity. But by doing so, the amendment retains the status quo in that parents with a youngest child of seven or below would not be required to undertake work-related activity to help them move closer to the labour market.

We know that the vast majority of those on benefits aspire to work at some point in the future and that paid work is good for them and their children in nearly all circumstances. Paid work for those who can is the most sustainable route out of poverty. To help more parents to meet their aspirations and do more to eradicate child poverty, we have continued to invest heavily in evidence-based policy responses over the past 10 years. The changes that we are discussing today are a further step forward along that path. They include the introduction of the voluntary programmes, such as the New Deal for Lone Parents and the New Deal for Partners. At the moment, these can be accessed voluntarily by parents at any time and they offer tailored advice by personal advisers. Therefore, they are already part of the system.

These programmes can give advice on the types of jobs available in the local labour market and can help in drawing up a personalised action plan to help parents to prepare for and access those jobs. They can also provide advice on the availability and range of formal childcare services in the local area, including details of where to access further information—for example, through a children’s centre or an extended school. They can signpost parents to advice on debt management or careers advice, and provide information, if appropriate, on the support available when starting work—for example, on tax credits. They provide support with the transition into work, such as in work credit and the in work emergency discretion fund. They can arrange work-related training to enable parents to update or develop their skills, as well as providing help with travel and registered childcare costs while they undertake a course. Therefore, that opportunity is there for people at the moment.

We know that our personalised support programmes, such as the New Deal for Lone Parents, help individuals into employment. We also know that combining programmes such as the New Deal for Lone Parents with work-focused interview conditionality increases take-up of support and movements into paid work. This combination of programme support and conditionality works for many people in improving health outcomes, lifestyle and outlook.

That is all positive. However, as we have taken forward evidence-based policies, we have learnt that there is more to do. We have learnt from the current conditionality and support regime that we have in place that there is still a significant disparity between the numbers who would like to move into paid work and those who take steps to achieve this. The current regime does not work as well for those further from the labour market, and taking new steps to bridge this gap gives us the potential to make a further significant reduction in the number of children who still live in poverty and to improve their life chances. We therefore want parents in the progression-to-work group to undertake a reasonable and personalised set of requirements. This should help to ensure that more of them feel that they are supported in realising their aspiration to return to paid work when they are ready to do so. To do this, they will have to follow another clear piece of evidence. We have learnt that regimes work best where the claimant believes that the process is intended to be supportive and where he has co-ownership of the return-to-work process.

To deliver on this, we have asked clients to agree with their adviser the steps that they are willing to take to make progress towards a return to work at the appropriate time for them. In order to help them to achieve this, we will provide a system of highly flexible and personalised support from the outset. Therefore, the model of conditionality and support that we want to test is based on an expectation that they will actively engage with their adviser on an ongoing basis; that they will consider, discuss and agree with their adviser an action plan comprising activities that they think will improve their prospects of moving back into work; and that they will undertake these agreed activities as part of their own journey towards employment and then, if required, follow directions from advisers where strictly necessary, underpinned by an ultimate recourse to sanctions for those who fail to engage with support without good cause.

In addition, we will ensure that we adopt a very broad definition of work-related activity that encompasses both more traditional training skills and job-related support and wider, socially inclusive measures, such as volunteering, undertaking parenting programmes or visiting a debt adviser. This will ensure that the agreed work-related activity is personally tailored to the individual.

I now turn to Amendments 35, 39, 40 and 41. As part of these pathfinders, we wish to test the effectiveness of an escalating sanctions regime based on the principles recommended by Professor Gregg in his independent review. As noble Lords will understand, it is sometimes necessary to use compulsion to encourage people to acknowledge their responsibilities, such as undertaking work-related activity that will benefit both their child and themselves. In cases where this mandatory requirement is imposed, ultimately we will need a sanctions regime for those who do not meet the requirements. We know that sanctions drive the behaviour of jobseekers, and we would expect this to apply also to the progression-to-work group.

However, this Government have always endeavoured to ensure that sanctions are a last resort and we have incorporated significant safeguards to support potentially vulnerable people. For example, we have good cause provisions and appeal rights, an ability to waive and defer any requirements, and reminders to customers when appointments are due. Only clear refusals to engage with reasonable requirements without good reason result in sanctioning activity. To date, the small number of sanctions applied through, for example, Pathways to Work, suggest that we have largely been successful.

As part of these pathfinders, we wish to test the effectiveness of a more progressive regime based on the principles recommended by Professor Gregg in his independent review. This needs to be clearly understood, use different ways to encourage re-engagement, and always offer speedy and simple routes to customers to end any sanctions imposed. We wish to discuss our plans further with stakeholders before we bring forward regulations.

However, I thought that it would be helpful to the Committee to set out a broad outline. Our plan is that any first failure by a customer to take part in a work-focused interview or undertake work-related activity or, as appropriate, take part in a work-focused, health-related assessment should not result in a financial sanction, as it does now. Rather, we want to issue people with a formal, final written warning so that they definitely understand the need to undertake the necessary requirements. This will back up earlier explanations by advisers and should serve significantly to reduce the numbers of people who actually receive a financial sanction in the pathfinder areas. Only where there are further, consecutive failures to complete any of the necessary activities without good cause will financial sanctions be applied.

For both employment and support allowance and income support customers, this will probably mean short-term reductions in benefit for two and then four weeks. Rates of reduction will be as now. In all cases, these can be lifted early where a person starts to re-engage in the progression-to-work process by attending a work-focused interview. Where even this fails to spur a customer to re-engage and there are further consecutive failures to meet requirements, our advisers will try to use their powers of direction to kick-start the necessary engagement. The ultimate backstop for repeated non-compliance will be a reduction in benefit levels to jobseeker’s allowance hardship payment levels. However, where this level of non-engagement has occurred, we plan to build on earlier contacts and ensure there is a full investigation of circumstances to work out whether there is some fundamental barrier to meeting requirements that has previously been missed.

Overall, the sanctions regime that we plan to test should be more visible, rely on a wider range of tools to engage customers and lead to fewer financial sanctions. It will build on the safeguards currently available. In this way we hope that it will support the positive and helpful progression-to-work regime that we are looking to build.

Amendment 35 removes new subsection 2D(4)(e) which deals with polygamous marriages recognised by the law of the countries in which they were conducted. This regulation-making power will ensure that each member of a polygamous relationship will be subject to the appropriate conditionality regime. Without this power we may not be able to achieve that aim, and some people would then not get the help and assistance they need to return to work.

With that reassurance and explanation, I hope that noble Lords will withdraw their amendments.

I thank all noble Lords who supported the amendment. Our debate has ranged widely from practical points to the philosophical ones raised by my noble friend Lord Kirkwood. The Grand Committee is very concerned about this part of the Bill and I thank the Minister for giving such a long explanation of it. His speech will repay a great deal of study. This part of the Bill begs the question of what is the strategic direction—the big picture, as my noble friend said.

Returning to the amendment, at least a personally tailored work-related activity sounds like a helpful carrot rather than a punitive stick. If I were Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the first thing I would do would be to repeal this provision, because I do not think that the evidence base is at all strong for that group of people. We need a much stronger evidence base on which to introduce such a punitive regime.

If the noble Baroness will forgive me, perhaps I may stress a point that perhaps I did not emphasise sufficiently fully in my response. The opportunities she seeks to make available through her amendment are essentially already there in the system. Individuals have the opportunity to take up a range of support, whether it relates to pathways or to New Deal regimes. We have learnt from that that, notwithstanding those opportunities—our understanding is that people overwhelmingly want to get to work—they are not producing that progression for enough people. That is why we believe that an element of conditionality and sanctions to support that is important. What I think that the noble Baroness would call the carrot approach is already, in large measure, the system that we have.

I thank the Minister for that further elucidation. I think that we are back to Dr Pangloss, the Jobcentre Plus advisers, because their role will be very important in this field and the work-related activity that is found for people. All Jobcentre Plus advisers must make themselves clear to claimants. I dare say that an awful lot of claimants, particularly those from ethnic minorities, simply do not understand what is happening to them. Very poor people will be penalised even further and have their benefits reduced.

However, we have spent some time on the amendment. I will study what the Minister said. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I move Amendment 36 and shall speak to Amendment 77. My noble friend Lord Skelmersdale and I have tabled Amendment 36 as a simple probing amendment on what may or may not be a simple issue. There are, in truth, elements that present us with a conundrum. The Minister referred to those in his closing contribution to the debate on the previous group.

The amendment would leave out paragraph (e) in new Section 2D, which is to be inserted into the Social Security Administration Act. Once more, we are asking the Minister to give us a run through how the regulations will work. Paragraph (e) needs to be read quite carefully for it to mean very much. Earlier subsections tell us that we have two members of a couple—P and C—who are getting the current rate of benefits. In that couple, C is getting benefits at a higher rate, and P has to undertake work-related activity as a condition of C continuing to get his or her benefit at that rate. So far, so straightforward.

However, paragraph (e) is obviously there because someone in the department realised that there may be some rather tricky domestic situations. The Bill’s draftsmen have wisely left the details to the hapless official who will have to come up with the regulations. To challenge the Minister, and trusting that he is willing to do so, is he prepared to give us an illustration of the style that the regulations will take?

Paragraph (e) clearly envisages a situation where C is a member of more than one couple. I assume that this means, or at least includes, polygamous marriages. Will the Minister confirm that that is the case and, if that is not exclusively the case, perhaps provide examples of other possible situations? What criteria will be applied to determine which person can or should not be? What will happen in cases where the claimant might be married to one person but living with another? Does there need to be a mechanism in place for more complicated family situations, where different members of different couples are each supporting dependants?

I am curious to know how this will be policed. I would like to hear a suggestion for how the Government will set criteria for rating the work-readiness of couples who share a member. There may well be more questions to ask once the Minister has set out his plans, but the wording of the Bill as it is now is tantalisingly embellished.

Amendment 77 is grouped with Amendment 36 because it is also probing and also refers to claiming couples. Clause 4(2) makes an insertion to the Welfare Reform Act 2007. Plainly, the Act was not reformed enough; welfare reform seems to be a bit like the Forth road bridge, with the Minister busy, paintbrush in hand. My purpose, though, is to justify Amendment 77, which is to ask what this change does. I looked at the wording of the new condition—the claimant,

“is not a member of a couple the other member of which does not have limited capability for work”—

and I asked myself, “What on earth does that mean?”. I would be grateful if the Minister could give an explanation that did not use a double negative and therefore made more sense. I beg to move.

I can see the poor Benefits Agency staff having quite a problem. What happens if the chap has two wives and they do not know about each other? How tactful does the Benefits Agency person have to be?

What does it do to the relationship in households where the man makes all the decisions and the woman is in this country as a dependant? How can there be “negotiations” in that sense, when they will be told what to do? What happens to freedom of choice for those women?

The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has set me a challenge: no double negatives. I will see if I can deal with the important points that he has raised.

New Section 2D(2) of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 makes provision for regulations to place on a partner of a benefit claimant a requirement to undertake work-related activities. Subsection 2D(4)(e) deals with the issue of polygamous marriages; that is its focus. In some countries such marriages are recognised under the law. The legitimacy of such relationships is recognised by the statutes that govern the UK welfare benefits system, but it is often necessary to make specific provision so that it is clear which rights and responsibilities attach to each party to the relationship.

It is our aim that each member of a polygamous relationship should be subject to the conditionality regime appropriate to their individual circumstances. We will allocate each person to one of the three conditionality groups recommended by Professor Gregg, and expect each person to undertake the appropriate actions.

For example, a man claiming employment and support allowance has two wives. With one of these wives he has a child aged six months, and with the other, a three year-old. Wife number one is in the “no conditionality” group and so will not be mandated to any work-related activities. However, wife number two is in the progression-to-work group, and we wish the provisions of this clause to apply to her. Regulations under new Section 2D(4)(e) will make clear what obligations are to be placed on which individual in these complex arrangements.

The noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, asked what would happen if they did not know about each other’s existence. That is an interesting point but it does not obviate that approach. These are issues around the circumstances of each individual. I do not know whether in normal circumstances two or more partners of a polygamous marriage would know of each other’s existence; I imagine that sometimes they would, but presumably sometimes they would not.

What happens in the cases of strictly observant Muslims where it is impossible to get to the household to find out what is going on and it is impossible for the women to get anywhere to state their aims? That seems to be discrimination on the grounds of their faith. Is that addressed?

There are issues about which benefit people are seeking to access and the process to access it. Presumably, if a man seeks to apply for jobseeker’s allowance or ESA and states in his claim that he has two wives in a polygamous marriage, that will start the process of information being collected and he will have to provide that information for the claim to be successful. There are other issues about when conditionality kicks in and the sort of support that is available to individuals before you get to the sanctions process, but at the start of a claim the individual making it would be required to provide full information. If full information is not provided, that could affect the claim; it could certainly affect the amount because the level of personal allowance is driven by the composition of the household.

If the amendment were to be accepted, it would not be clear how the DWP could decide which partners to select for work-related activities and, indeed, whether it would be possible for all the partners to be required to take part in such activities. New Section 2D(4)(e) is therefore necessary in order to provide the mechanism whereby an appropriate level of conditionality could be applied to different partners in such relationships in a consistent manner.

We do not know how many people in receipt of benefits are in polygamous marriages, but we believe that the numbers are extremely small. Anecdotal evidence indicates that there are fewer than 1,000 polygamous marriages in the UK, and the number is decreasing. Only a very small proportion of these are receiving benefits. The Committee may be aware that since the Immigration Act 1988 came into force, people have been unable to form polygamous households in the UK. Under that Act the law ceased to recognise virtually all marriages celebrated under systems recognising polygamy.

I turn to the second of the amendments. Clause 4 makes provisions with regard to couples where one member is capable of work. Along with Clause 2, this forms part of the legislative changes needed to introduce the recommendations set out in Professor Paul Gregg’s review. Clause 4 introduces provisions that will deny access to income support and income-related ESA to couples where one member is capable of work. Such couples will still be able to access help via income-based JSA, but the work-ready member will be required to look for work. Only the person who is work-ready will have to look for work and we do not intend this provision to apply to couples with a child under the age of seven.

Clause 4(2) inserts two new sub-paragraphs into paragraph 6 of Schedule 1 to the Welfare Reform Act 2007. We spent many happy hours debating that provision, and who knows whether next year another one will come along? The new provisions will enable regulations to be made to define classes of couples who are not entitled to receive income-related ESA.

I thank the Minister for his comments. This has been a useful debate. Obviously, these are probing amendments and we are not seeking necessarily to remove these clauses. They will be interesting to study in the light of the Minister’s contribution because this is an extremely complex issue. I made light of the complexity but I am well aware that, from the department’s point of view, this area is extremely complex because the traditional patterns of relationships do not apply nowadays. Even polygamy may well be considered to be a fairly rigid form of relationship which may not fit in with other couple-type arrangements which I expect would be covered by the regulations, which the Minister has not really addressed in his response. I hope that I am right to say that relationships where a man, for example, is the head of household in two entirely different families without one family knowing about the other, will be covered by this clause. I hope that the Minister can confirm that that is the case.

If you look to the situation of a household involving polygamous marriages, the level of a claim that that household would make is actually less than would arise if, say, one of the wives were not treated as being part of that household and she claimed separately. I think that that is the situation.

That makes sense. It had occurred to me that it might well be the case that there would not be an incentive when claiming as a couple and that a single-member household would be more likely to be affected. However, these are complex matters, so if the Minister has something to add, it would be useful to hear.

I have another point to add. It would obviously be fraudulent if someone put in a claim for two households.

I have to say that the complexity of the issue is profound and it is useful that the Minister has been able to address it. The verification of a claim will also be difficult in certain households, as we have learnt. It would be useful if the Minister could come back to us in writing with further explanations on this issue. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

This amendment and the ones grouped with it are about the importance of Jobcentre Plus staff making sure that they have taken enough steps to ensure that claimants under this part of the Bill—that is, lone parents in the progression-to-work group and the partners of certain claimants who are on JSA or ESA and in the progression-to-work group—are contacted before any sanctions can be applied following a claimant’s failure to attend work-related activity.

What are “reasonable attempts”? In my view, reasonable attempts to contact a person should not just be by automated letter which could easily not be understood to be specifically about a claimant’s case, or it could be delayed or lost where, for example, the post for various flats is not sorted out properly. It should be followed up with at least one telephone call. The Minister may say that this is done now, but are we sure that it happens in every case? Is it written down anywhere in guidance as a requirement? This would also ensure that the recipient properly understands what is happening—something that I have been concerned about for some time, given the relatively large number of sanctions that are imposed and on which my noble friend gave a rather alarming figure last week. I wonder what language Jobcentre Plus staff use. I hope that they use words other than “sanction” and “conditionality”, and that they manage to communicate that if claimants do not take certain steps, their benefit will be reduced.

The grouped amendment states that the prescribed period before a sanction is applied should be 10 and not five days. Five days is a very short time. For a start, it does not take into account the vagaries of the postal system. Could the five-day period straddle a weekend? That is the practical side of the issue, but even more important is the psychological side. For anyone suffering from, for example, an episode of clinical depression or a flare-up of another mental problem, it is a hopelessly short time in which to respond. A huge number of people in all benefit groups suffer from mild or moderate mental illness and they simply cannot open letters for days on end. In the wake of some tragic suicides in the past, I gather that Jobcentre Plus ensures that vulnerable people with mental health problems on incapacity benefit are spoken to face to face before ultimate sanctions are imposed. Will that be the case with the new and tougher regime for those in the progression-to-work group? After all, some of them will be on ESA, albeit the employment side of ESA. Giving claimants at least an additional week, combined with reasonable but persistent attempts by Jobcentre Plus staff to make contact, would be an important safeguard against the very serious risk of a vulnerable and poor person, perhaps with a child, receiving a sanction unfairly. I beg to move.

I support Amendment 37 and wish to speak to Amendment 86. I should be grateful if the Minister would confirm that on the second day in Committee he gave a commitment that people with mental health problems would not have benefit sanctions imposed unless a home visit had been made. I take it from the noble Lord’s nod that he agrees.

I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify that it applies not only to ESA claimants with mental health problems but also to those who might be claiming other benefits. I am not entirely clear about it, although perhaps I should be. I am concerned that anyone with a mental health problem, for exactly the reasons the noble Baroness indicated, needs to be seen face to face. Indeed, I am grateful to the Minister for making that commitment; we now need to clarify the breadth of it.

I was going to raise a further point in relation to this: does the Minister think it would be helpful if, under the Bill but not on its face, he could make a commitment that attempts would be made to work with workers who are in any way involved with those who have mental health problems? A lot of these people have social workers, CPNs and others working with them, so if the DWP personal adviser cannot make contact, it is likely that one of these other workers could do so. They could agree to phone someone and have a conversation. Although I understand that it would not be reasonable to put this kind of detail in the Bill, a commitment from the Minister for guidance along these lines could ensure that this aspect of the legislation would operate far more effectively than in the absence of such a provision. We discussed these issues on our second day in Committee and I do not want to prolong the debate except to seek clarity on these two particular issues.

Amendment 86 would amend Amendment 85. I set out my reasoning when the Minister and I met with the Bill team. I was saying that people with severe or even moderate mental health problems should probably be in a special employment support allowance group where there is no conditionality but there is voluntary involvement in work-related activities and all sorts of other provisions. We know that this group is keen to get back into work if at all possible, but for many it is a rather distant hope. Conditionality provisions are not necessary for this group. People feel excluded and deprived in many ways and they want to get back into what they see as normal society.

That is my basic position, but if it is not possible, surely we have to be realistic and provide a decent amount of time for these people to get themselves together sufficiently at least to be able to pick up the phone. Frankly, five or 10 days are not sufficient. People coming into in-patient units are likely to be in-patients for an average of eight weeks and probably more. It takes weeks for them to evolve from that situation to a position where they can handle the stresses and strains of the benefit system. Twenty days are just about acceptable, but none of this makes sense for those with moderate or severe mental health problems.

I hope that these requirements do not rely on the postal service, of which I can give an example, although admittedly it is rather old now. When I was offered my knighthood, a letter came from No. 10 Downing Street addressed with the wrong postal code. It was 12 days before I received the letter, which said that I had to reply by return. Obviously I thought that I had missed my knighthood. I wrote an acceptance and rushed to the post in my dressing-gown, and it was clear that the neighbours thought I had reverted to type because once again I was without my trousers.

Cap that. I support the rationale behind the noble Baroness’s amendments; indeed, as the Committee will note, I have added my name to Amendment 42. They would ensure that the participant was given a fair and reasonable chance to prove himself to have good cause for failing to uphold his duties under the scheme. If he failed to turn up to the work-related activity, the amendments would make certain that all reasonable attempts were made to get in touch with him, and in any case he would have 10 working days, rather than the customary five, to respond.

The noble Baroness mentioned evidence from a group that has lobbied on this point. I add for my part that I was impressed by the arguments put forward by the Mental Health Coalition that those suffering from acute mental health problems might not have the wherewithal to pull themselves back into the state of mind where they can make a fully justified response—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. The amendments would stretch the period to a full two weeks, which is not a huge amount of time. Given that the penalty for not responding within the stated time frame is the closure of a person’s claim, there are just grounds for extending the period to prevent a person being unfairly penalised for their health condition. It does not really matter whether it is the health condition itself, the postal service or being unable to get through on the telephone to the jobcentre or the contractor that is to blame.

Rethink, the mental health charity, circulated to noble Lords the views of one of its members, David, which I shall recount for purposes of illustration:

“Mental illness isn't like being in a wheelchair or having a bad back—it can take from you the capacity to manage your own affairs. It can mean that you can't summon the mental strength to drag yourself out of bed, let alone open and read a letter, digest the implications and then do the sensible thing and pick up the phone and take the action required. I've got bipolar and by definition it's a fluctuating condition—you have ups and downs. In my case the downs last at least 10 days or two weeks. It's quite possible when things are at their worst when I'm down that I just would not have the wherewithal to respond in time to a deadline from a job advisor. It might be five days later—but that would be five days too late”.

I realise that the time set in the Welfare Reform Act 2007 is five days, and that the noble Baroness's Amendments 85 and 86 seek to change that too. Perhaps this is an occasion where the refusal to take no for an answer is to be commended. Why have the Government chosen five working days? I presume that they have been pressed on this matter by mental health campaigners, if not others. If that is the case, why has the Minister decided to ignore that advice and press ahead with five days? Are there any convincing and persuasive statistics—it is very unlike me to ask for that; it is normally the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas—with which he can blind us which would help us to support the Government's position on this?

I am delighted that postal delays did not prevent the noble Lord, Lord Rix, receiving his just deserts. I thank noble Lords for these amendments, the sentiment of which I agree with entirely. It is right that we make all reasonable efforts to contact vulnerable customers before we sanction their benefit and that we give our customers a reasonable amount of time to show good cause for not complying with the work-related activity requirements. However, I believe that the amendments are unnecessary.

I shall deal first with Amendment 37 and the first part of Amendment 85. Under these amendments a claimant could be sanctioned for failure to comply with the regulations on work-related activity only where the Secretary of State could show that all reasonable attempts to contact the claimant had been made. I assure noble Lords that Jobcentre Plus advisers already make every effort to contact vulnerable customers before a sanction is imposed. It may be helpful if I outline in detail how Jobcentre Plus will inform ESA customers and parents of their new responsibilities and the steps that advisers will take in the event that a customer fails to undertake work-related activity. The process will be very similar to the existing process in ESA if a customer fails to engage in a work-focused interview.

First, Jobcentre Plus will contact all customers to explain what is required of them and book the first work-focused interview. It will also write to the customer confirming the appointment and reiterating these conditions. In addition, two days before the work-focused interview is due, Jobcentre Plus will contact the customer by telephone to remind them about the interview and remind them again of their responsibilities.

Not everyone who is unemployed will have a telephone. They may not even have a mobile phone. How will they be contacted then?

Probably by post in those circumstances.

Perhaps I may open up that issue. Has not a personal visit been considered in these cases? That would seem to be the obvious answer.

I need to check volumes and practicalities on this. I shall do that and revert to noble Lords specifically on that point. I am not sure about the percentage of people, unemployed or otherwise, who have access to a telephone. Perhaps I can get some data on that as well.

As I said, two days before the work-focused interview is due, Jobcentre Plus will contact the customer by telephone to remind them about the interview and again remind them of their responsibilities. At this stage, an interview can be re-booked if the customer has a valid reason for not attending at the time originally agreed. During the initial work-focused interview the personal adviser will, before starting the interview, explain the progression-to-work model and what will be expected of the customer. This will include the work-related activity requirement and the power that the adviser has to direct the claimant to a specific work-related activity in limited circumstances.

If the personal adviser establishes that the customer has a mental health condition, learning disability or other condition affecting cognition, such as a stroke or autistic spectrum disorder, they will make an additional explanation of the conditionality to ensure that the customer understands the requirements. If a customer fails to carry out the work-related activity, the adviser will discuss this non-compliance with the customer at the work-focused interview. This provides the first opportunity for the customer to show the adviser that they had good cause for not complying with the work-related activity requirement.

If the customer fails to show good cause for non-compliance at the interview, we envisage that the personal adviser will hand the customer a letter explaining that they now have five days to show good cause for non-compliance. If there is attendance at the interview, the letter would be handed to someone. If a customer does not turn up for a work-focused interview, and therefore does not show good cause for not carrying out the work-related activity, the customer will be posted a letter outlining the consequences of their non-compliance and will then have five working days to show good cause.

If the claimant cannot speak English well enough to understand what is being said, would it be possible at that point to have some kind of interpretation.

This touches upon the issue generally of someone who has a carer, an advocate or someone supporting them and the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, about whether they could be contacted for help and support. The answer is yes. If the customer has given the adviser details of support workers, the adviser would normally then contact them. However, we need to be mindful of data protection issues and they could not do so without the customer’s consent. I am aware that women from ethnic minorities who do not have English as a first language often rely on daughters to go with them. I know that there are great issues around absences from schools and daughters missing out, but certainly there would be that opportunity for support, subject to data protection issues.

I am advised that we have no information on access to telephones but, if someone has no number, the reminder is dealt with through the post.

I have dealt with the point that if a customer does not turn up to a work-focused interview, a letter will be posted to them. If a customer has a mental health condition, learning difficulties, a condition affecting cognition or autistic spectrum disorder, the personal adviser will arrange for a home visit to take place. This will ensure that the customer fully understands the requirements upon them and the consequences of not complying. The adviser will always attempt to meet the customer before any reduction of benefit is imposed. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, asked if this would apply to non-ESA claimants or whether the assurance that I gave the other day would run more generally. The answer is that if we know that someone on JSA has a mental health condition, the same process would follow. However, I am mindful that we would not always know. If someone comes through the ESA work-focused, health-related assessment, it is much more likely that there will be an awareness of their condition.

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but this is an important point. What if the person cannot read? A significant number of children leave school functionally illiterate, and we have immigrants and the wives of immigrants who do not speak English at all, and indeed many who cannot read. What happens then? The Minister is outlining a most threatening situation for those sorts of people.

The fact that someone may not be able to read should be clear to Jobcentre Plus because we are dealing here with processes where someone has accessed the system.

I am talking about the initial approach when the letter arrives. People look at the thing and have to be given time at least to go to the citizens’ advice bureau to find out what it is about.

The fact that someone has a reading difficulty or cannot read and speak English should be known to Jobcentre Plus because people come in for an interview with their adviser. It is only down the track that we are talking about sanctions. We consider sanctions if someone accessed the system in the first place but did not turn up for a work-focused interview or undertake a mandatory work-related activity. They would follow on from that. A degree of engagement with Jobcentre Plus would already have taken place. Indeed, some of the work-related activity might well be focused on language classes and support for people with literacy needs.

It is the initial contact which is troubling me: the first contact when the jobcentre tries to make contact.

The initial contact is effectively brought about the other way around. It happens when someone calls a contact centre or presents themselves to Jobcentre Plus seeking to make a claim. At that point it should be obvious if someone has difficulty with the English language, although it would be less obvious that they had a literacy problem. The role of the adviser should be to try to identify what barriers to work and employment someone has and therefore we would expect these issues to be identified along the way. Once it is established that there has been a failure to undertake work-related activity and the sanctions regime is involved, Jobcentre Plus should be well aware of the individual circumstances.

One cannot guarantee that this will work perfectly in all cases, but protections are in place. Again, I have a letter ready to go to the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, who is not with us at the moment. It picks up on a point she raised on the first day in Committee about the support available to those from ethnic minorities who do not have English as a first language and the ability for people to have advocates with them at their interview. I can say specifically that Jobcentre Plus has experience of providing jobseekers with interpretation services. We can extend the experience so that that which operates for JSA could be built on for progression-to-work.

Will the Minister address the language question—not whether the claimants speak English but whether the English in their communications, particularly the letter, is clear and does not use words such as “sanction”, “conditionality” and “direction”?

The noble Baroness raises a good point. Generally, the department seeks to ensure that these things are dealt with as straightforwardly as possible. We have a Crystal Mark process for all our communications, which I am sure is highly meaningful to the noble Baroness; I think it comes from the Plain English Society. Notwithstanding that accolade, we need to be perpetually vigilant on these issues.

If memory serves me right, the Plain English society has annual awards. From what year is the award that the Minister is referring to?

Perhaps I can write to the noble Lord, in English, on that matter. I understand why these amendments have been tabled but I do not believe that they are necessary. In some cases they could undermine the sanctions regime and confuse claimants. However, I hope that I have been able to demonstrate that there is a genuine raft of protections and that this is not about penalising people but genuinely about supporting people in moving them further towards the labour market.

I thank all noble Lords who have supported the amendment. I was particularly taken with the idea put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that Jobcentre Plus could perhaps make contact with a social worker, or someone who might be helpful, to explain what is going on to a person who is undergoing some kind of trauma in their lives.

I am disappointed that the Minister is not going to move on the issue of the five days. However, he gave us a very full reply as to what the steps would be. I was very interested in the story of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, concerning the postcode. I find that if someone gets the postcode wrong, a letter takes a month to reach me, but if they do not put a postcode on at all, the letter is there within a day or two. That is quite important. In London, if someone puts SW12 instead of putting SW1—I have had this happen—a letter could take a whole month to arrive. If someone says to Jobcentre Plus staff, “I didn’t receive this letter”, the response will probably be, “That’s a good try-on”. Therefore, there are some concerns because five days is such a short time.

I shall study what the Minister said with great care. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I hope that we can complete this in seven and a half minutes, but we shall see. Judging by our rate of progress so far, perhaps I am being optimistic, but I hope not.

Amendment 43 seeks to remove the words “or remain in” from the list of definitions in subsection (8). The definition of “work-related activity” includes that which apparently allows a claimant to remain in work. I expect that I will be told by the Minister that this means equipping the claimant with the necessary skills to hold down a particular job. That, of course, is to be praised, but how will it be measured? How can you anticipate it? It seems to me that the likelihood of holding down a job depends on a number of factors, including the attitude of the claimant, how he applies himself to his work and also outside factors such as market conditions. How can any of us guarantee that someone is likely to remain in work? How can the Minister, after 1 June, guarantee that prospect? If the Government’s recession had turned into a depression, as some had feared, it would perhaps have been likely that not everyone could remain in a job.

Does the wording of the Bill not open up the risk of instilling unrealistic expectations? If a claimant has been deemed likely to remain in work and subsequently finds himself out of work, will he have some recourse by using the words of the Bill as his proof? How, in practical terms, will a person be deemed to be likely to remain in work? Will it depend on the personal adviser’s opinion? Will it depend on the claimant’s enthusiasm, as I said, or perhaps on appraisals or even paper qualifications to show that he has ticked all the right boxes which make him likely to remain in work?

I do not wish to seem nitpicking but I want to see, as I am sure all noble Lords do, that the measures in the Bill have been carefully thought through to their conclusion. I beg to move.

Preparing for work is only the first step. Once a person has entered work we want to ensure that they remain in work. That is why we have introduced tax credits, the national minimum wage and, more recently, rolled-out in-work credits and the in-work emergency discretionary fund nationally to ensure that work pays.

It is not only financial support that will help people remain and progress in work but access to the right support at the right time to help them identify, update and develop the skills that they need to succeed in work. That is why we have invested heavily in the Learning and Skills Council and Train to Gain, as well as working towards introducing a new integrated employment and skills service that puts the individual at the core. That is why we recognised that we need to adopt a broad definition of work-related activity, one that encompasses both more traditional training skills and job-related support, and wider socially inclusive measures such as volunteering, undertaking parenting programmes or visiting a debt adviser. All of these will help a person make the transition to work.

However, once they have made that transition, we also want them to stay in work and not rapidly return to benefits, so it is important that we take the opportunity, while preparing people for work in the progression-to-work pathfinders, to try to ensure that they have the skills and ability to remain in work. That is why we think it is important that the actions included in an individual’s action plan should include measures that will help them with the transition into paid work and provide them with the tools to remain there.

In response to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, no one is guaranteeing that this process will enable someone to remain in work. The test ultimately will be whether someone does remain in work. This is about focusing on work-related activity and the barriers that people face, not only when getting into work but remaining and progressing in work. Identification of those issues could make a difference and, if they can be addressed, it will help people to get into and remain in work. This is not about the contracting arrangements and the providers but about the agreement that is reached in co-operation between the adviser and the claimant in relation to what activity will help move them closer to the labour market. This is not only about the activity which will help them get through the door and into a job, but about the barriers and the other matters that need to be addressed in order to help them make progress. That is why the Bill is drafted in the way that it is; that is the purpose of this expression. It is not meant to imply that people will be guaranteed a job for life or progression in a job.

I am grateful for that information. I had occasion, I think on Thursday, to comment when I saw two Clerks sitting at the table here. There is a training technique, which is operated very often by employers, that is known as “sitting next to Nellie”—in other words, training by example. My noble friend might or might not illustrate the point that I am making.

However, a person remaining in a job is less a feature of the Bill—although I would not disagree for a second that it is desirable—and more a feature of the new employee’s relationship within the organisation in which they are employed. Sometimes the employer can help significantly in keeping that person in a job. However, it is difficult to see what the outside adviser, whether a contractor or someone from Jobcentre Plus, can do to add to this process. But now is not the time to develop that thought and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.