Welfare Reform Bill

From these Benches we support this large group of amendments. I shall speak specifically to Amendment No. 35 and then to Amendment No. 36 onwards. I shall address the notifications point first. It is a truism, as the noble Baroness said, to say that people with severe mental illness have particular communication needs that must be respected to ensure that they receive the information they require and to ensure that unnecessary stress and anxiety are not caused by DWP communications as that may lead to relapse. One claimant commented: "““In fact, the DWP kept me in the dark, delaying my benefit without telling me why””." Another example is the Saturday problem. People with mental illness report that receiving a letter on a Saturday causes particular problems because offices offering support are closed on Saturdays. Poor communication was identified in some of the Pathway pilots. Turning to the ““good cause”” provision, we come to a particularly important part of the Bill. Amendment No. 36 simply states that the reason certain actions have not been carried out might be due to a person’s limited physical or mental functioning. The whole concept of ““good cause”” needs to be thoroughly examined. It is an extremely worrying aspect of the Bill. In Committee in another place, it was said that the Government intend to set out in regulations the matters that will be taken into account when determining whether a claimant has shown good cause, although the list will not be exhaustive. Although flexibility is welcome, some factors must be taken into account. As the noble Baroness said—I am repeating a lot of what she said—people with mental illness may not open letters or answer the telephone, due not to ill will but to forgetfulness, anxiety or fear, some of which may be associated with the side effects of medication. They may thus be unaware that they should attend a medical examination, or they may be particularly unwell on the day on which they are supposed to be examined. Both Rethink and Mind are emphatic in their belief that regulations should specifically exempt people from having their entitlement revoked due to non-attendance, if this is due to a health condition. If this does not happen, and such a person is sanctioned, it is more than likely that that person’s health will worsen through worry and stress about income, moving them even further from the labour market. There is also a concern that DWP staff are not necessarily good at recognising people with mental illness, and they may dismiss such people as lazy rather than in need of understanding and support. We are calling not for a long list of conditions defining good cause but for the basic principle to be acknowledged that a person’s non-compliance with conditions of entitlement may be due to his or her mental illness.