Welfare Reform Bill

New clause 7 relates to an extremely important group of individuals: those in the support group, who will enjoy the benefits of the new allowance. They are the most severely in need. They are quite separate from those in the employment group who, under the assessment in clause 9, are judged to be capable of work-related activity—not so support group members. However, even though, under the Bill, support group members are not under any obligation to undertake work-related activity, in a far-sighted and welcome way Ministers have made it clear that support group members may be able to volunteer for work-related activity and all the support and resourcing that comes with the undertaking of work-related activity. We all agree that there will be a fair number of volunteers from the support group who wish to avail themselves of the opportunity to undertake work-related activity. We know that because so many surveys, which Members on both sides of the House buy into, suggest that in the region of 1 million of the 2.7 million fellow citizens who are on incapacity benefit would like to work. They are desirous of working, and wish to make a contribution and to be better off for the benefit of themselves and their families. They want to exercise personal responsibility, which is part of the Government’s agenda, allied with rights. We buy into that on the Conservative Benches as well and we are fully supportive of it. Those people want to get better. They want to get work-ready. We in the House should do everything that we can to help them. That is the purport of the new clause. The new clause provides that support group members should not be subject to the conditions that are imposed on employment group members who undertake work-related activity. There is a reason for that. It is entirely likely that a member of the support group will have severe and challenging conditions—by definition, more so than a member of the employment group. They might have fluctuating conditions. They might have quite a good week after they have volunteered. Things could be going swimmingly. They would be able to tick off securing their first work-focused interview. We hope that they would be enjoying the experience. However—as we discussed in great detail in Committee—with many fluctuating conditions, a claimant can have one really good week followed by one really dreadful week when, through no fault of their own, they are completely unable to face up to or engage in work or even the prospect of work. In that situation, we do not want someone in the support group who is doing something that they are not obliged to do—volunteering for a work-focused interview and, by extension, work-related activity—to be penalised because they have a bad week and are unable to satisfy the conditions of the work-focused interview. Perhaps they do not turn up on time, or do not turn up at all—again, through no fault of their own. We do not want someone to have their benefits docked or reduced in those circumstances, and I am sure that Ministers do not want that to happen, but that is implicit in the sanctioning regime in the Bill. There is a hint that sanctions—benefit docking—might be a disincentive to those in the support group when it comes to volunteering in the first place. Many surveys—one from Capability Scotland has been cited many times—show that at least one in two disabled people do not want to engage in work-related activity out of sheer fear that their entire disability benefits package might be reduced if they show any level of functionality greater than has been previously judged. New clause 7 would allow us to go the extra mile by ensuring that the fear of volunteering for work-related activity that a member of a support group might have, even though he or she would be under no obligation so to do under the Bill, would not put him or her off. Such people should not fear that they would be subject to a sanction if they showed some capability at a work-focused interview but were not able to keep that capability up—because of a fluctuating condition, for example—because they were unable to turn up and do the full raft of work-focused interviews. When we discussed the matter in Committee, the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform was alive to the situation, which arises logically from the Bill’s drafting. He observed—we have no reason to doubt these figures—that only about 1 per cent. of claimants under the pathways to work pilots have been subject to sanctions. Nevertheless, 1 per cent. of the big number of 2.7 million citizens could represent a lot of sanctioning, with some 25,000 people affected. We must remember that some of the people who could be sanctioned will have children. The Minister says that about one in six incapacity benefit claimants have children in their household. We have touched on the fact that sanctioning might not be terribly good news for families around the poverty line and we have all agreed that we would not want child poverty to be exacerbated by a sanction regime that kicked in to dock benefit and thus made a household poorer.