Welfare Reform Bill

I have pleasure in responding to this very productive and, on most occasions, constructive debate. Opposition Members have spoken from a sedentary position about angry exchanges during our conversation on this group of amendments. However, for the record and for the benefit of the many people who will read our debate, I do not think that anyone would describe this conversation as anything other than reasonable and relatively well informed. When it came to my intervention on the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley), not only did I intervene but, with your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I intervened at some length to enable him to find his reference point in the Bill. That is far from an angry intervention or exchange. That is help and assistance to inform the debate. The nearest that we came to an angry exchange was when the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), again from a sedentary position, chuntered about the resources to enable the fulfilment of the provisions of the Bill. We have said repeatedly that we will fund the national roll-out of pathways using a similar model to the one that already exists across 40 per cent. of the country. It is a bit rich for those who voted against every penny of the money invested to enable that 40 per cent. roll-out of pathways now to say that it is not enough. Their argument at the time of the vote in the House was not that the funding was not enough; it was that they were against every single penny of the investment. That is a matter of public record in Hansard and in the votes of the House. I agreed with the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds about our communications. He made an entirely fair point, as have others, about the nature of our communications with our customers, particularly those with a mental health illness or a learning disability. That is why we are finding ways to consult those with mental health illnesses and others about how we can improve our communications with those client groups. When we have an additional set of responsibilities, along with rights, it is important that we get the tone and content of our communications exactly right. The one proviso is that it is difficult to construct a legally based letter in gentle prose in every circumstance, so there will still be aspects of these communications that seem difficult or impenetrable to some people, but that is because it is necessary to set out certain legal responsibilities. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds has, throughout these proceedings, shown himself to be well informed, connected to the issues and phenomenally well briefed on the detail that he has brought to his observations in Committee and, thus far, today. Unusually, however, the main burden of his argument on clause 11(1)(b) is based on a misunderstanding of the Bill. There is a power to sanction only those on whom the requirement can be imposed, and because of clause 11(1)(b), that does not apply to members of a support group. There is no power to sanction anyone in the support group. That is explicit in the Bill, and it will be explicit in how the Act operates, and in how advisers and decision-makers, both in the public and private and voluntary sector, operate. I hope that that provides reassurance. Let me confirm to the House that, as I said in Committee, someone’s well-intentioned desire and determination to volunteer would not change their entitlement to be in the support group; only a change in their medical circumstances or condition and a new PCA would do that.