Welfare Reform Bill

The amendments are concerned with the requirements on third parties to provide the Department for Work and Pensions with information. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, has proposed amendments inserting a power to impose duties on third parties to provide the department with relevant information and evidence to support the PCA process. We already have legislation which imposes duties on general practitioners and employers to provide information in relation to claims for incapacity benefit. GP obligations to provide information are contained in their contract, the content of which is set out in the National Health Service (General Medical Services Contracts) Regulations 2004. We will make appropriate amendments to these regulations to provide for employment and support allowance. Meanwhile, we will be amending Sections 130 and 132 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 to include employment and support allowance, ensuring that a duty is imposed on employers to provide us with information. On the points the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, made in moving the amendment, we recognise that a minority of GPs do not provide the information required, but we are working to explain the importance of this information and that it is in their patients’ best interests that they provide it quickly and accurately. We are also working to improve and simplify the forms and processes used to ease the burden on GPs, as they have an enormous work commitment. We do not think that the amendment adds to what is already in place, but we understand the concerns behind it. There will be customers about whom we wish to request information from health professionals other than GPs, such as community psychiatric nurses, community-based physiotherapists or healthcare professionals working in clinics such as pain clinics. That important new development could be helpful to customers, particularly as experience has shown that those professionals are willing to supply that information when requested. In many cases, they will be better placed to provide updated information on their patients than the patients’ GPs, for the reasons that have already been stated. We do not want to be prescriptive about how this information is gathered and we want to retain the freedom to contact different individuals and organisations in different ways, depending on the circumstances. It would not be possible to cover all eventualities in regulations, and doing that would restrict our ability to gather the information in the most appropriate and effective way and in the best interests of the customer. Furthermore, when considering the duties that we impose on third parties, we always need to balance the need for information against placing undue burdens on healthcare professionals or businesses. I hope that I have given some reassurances to Members of the Committee on the matter and that they will not press their amendments.