Employment and Support Allowance (Work-Related Activity) Regulations 2011

My Lords, these regulations establish a new requirement for some employment and support allowance customers—those who are able to prepare for a return to work—to undertake activity that will help them move closer to employment. The regulations amend current rules to allow people assessed as being able to prepare for work to engage in activities such as training, CV writing or researching local employment opportunities. The regulations are about extending a hand of support and giving a nudge of encouragement to people who have been out of work as a result of a health condition or disability, but who may be able to return to the workplace with the right level of tailored back-to-work support, primarily under the umbrella of the Work Programme. The regulations are deliberately non-prescriptive to allow this support to be adapted to the individual and to ensure that it is flexible enough to deal with fluctuating conditions. The regulations apply only to those in what is referred to as the work-related activity group—people who can reasonably be expected to prepare for a return to work. We remain committed to providing unconditional support for severely disabled people who cannot work, but we have also made a commitment to support people with a disability or health condition who have the potential to work in future. We are convinced that work-related activity should form part of that support. Some noble Lords here for today’s debate met officials from the Department for Work and Pensions and me to look through some of the detail of these regulations. It was a very useful meeting and I hope that the forensic investigation has already gone some way towards allaying concerns. For our purposes, I will take a few moments to set out for the House the history of the regulations. The powers that we wish to enact today are evolutionary, building on the work of the previous Government. They were taken by the previous Government in May 2007 but never brought into force. We believe that it is crucial to enact them as originally envisaged for new customers, but also to extend them to existing customers, providing the same level of support for all. The notion that disabled people or those with health conditions should be able to access support to help them move closer to the labour market was in the Conservative Party Green Paper, Responsibility Agenda, published in January 2008. This paper set out, for the first time, that help should be extended to the existing stock—as it is vulgarly called—of benefit claimants, namely people written off on incapacity benefits, many of whom had received little or no support. The previous Government set about implementing this idea with the introduction of the employment and support allowance in October 2008. This included the intention to provide mandatory work-focused interviews and some work-related support for new customers, but no plan to extend the support to existing customers—the ““stock””. In December 2008, Professor Paul Gregg published a report recommending extending and improving support for all customers and the Government of the day accepted his recommendations. Convinced of the importance of providing back-to-work support for all customers by the summer of 2014, all current incapacity benefit claimants will have been assessed for ESA. Those customers placed in the work-related activity group will, if these regulations pass, be able to access this improved package of support. These regulations make participation in work-related activity part of the mandatory package. Quite simply, the evidence of the beneficial impact of work, even for those with a health condition or disability, is too strong to ignore. The regulations before the House today seek to ensure that, for those who can, taking part in activities designed to help them return to work becomes a normal part of the ESA regime. I stress that these regulations do not apply to all ESA customers. The group we are particularly concerned with are those customers who make up the work-related activity group, who we can realistically expect to return to work at some future point. Once we have recognised that someone is capable of work-related activity, it is vital that we provide opportunities to engage with the labour market and offer support to identify achievable and sustainable work-related goals. These regulations provide for that support to be delivered, empowering individuals so they are able to take real, active steps to improve their chances of securing employment once their health or condition improves and they are ready for a return to work. The regulations do not specify the type of activity that we expect this group to engage in. Indeed, the definition of work-related activity is deliberately broad, covering any activity which makes it more likely that the person will obtain or remain in work. However, there are some absolutes. We will not require customers to undertake medical treatment nor to seek, apply for or take up work. Beyond that, we do not want to be overly prescriptive. The emphasis is on the relationship between advisers and individual customers working together to tailor a plan of action that will always be reasonable, realistic and relevant. Customers who do not participate in work-related activity will be sanctioned, and I know noble Lords have some concerns in this area. In response, let me just say this: there are safeguards in place to ensure that sanctions are not improperly applied. Sanctions will apply only to the work-related activity component of the benefit and will be applied only by trained Jobcentre Plus decision-makers, who will have the freedom and expertise to exercise their discretion. The decision-makers receive comprehensive training to enable them to seek out and assess all available evidence to ensure customers are given a fair hearing. In addition, Jobcentre Plus has a robust appeals process for anybody who is unhappy with a sanction they receive. I set out the full complement of available protections in the letter I sent to Peers earlier this week. The main question that the Merits Committee, which looked at this, was concerned about was adviser training and capacity. JCP will set the standard for employment-related personal adviser services in the UK, and Edexcel has endorsed the learning route ways for personal advisers and assistant advisers. We must avoid the mistakes inherent in previous employment programmes that sought to compartmentalise customers and offered only a narrow range of support options based on predetermined assumptions. Flexibility is the key, and the support provided through the Work Programme will be tailored to individual circumstances, including taking into account any ongoing health issues. We will guarantee the quality of the support provided through the Work Programme by implementing a demanding payment-by-results structure without dictating to providers how those results should be achieved. This will give providers from the private, voluntary and public sectors the freedom to innovate and find out what works best for different customers, enabling them to deliver a truly tailored approach. We know that some customers on the Work Programme will be much closer to the labour market than others. To ensure that providers do not simply focus their efforts on the easiest to help, we have designed the payment structure to give providers greater rewards for supporting those with the greatest barriers to sustainable employment, including some of those claiming ESA. To put it simply, we will pay more to providers who work effectively with the hardest to help. That sum is considerable and can be nearly £14,000 in some cases. Earlier this week, I sent out a schedule of that payment structure for ESA customers. I shall touch on some of those figures. As a reference point, for the jobseeker’s allowance customer group between the ages of 18 and 24, who we know should find work reasonably quickly, the maximum payment will be £3,800 as the contracts start. Within the model, there are now three categories of ESA customers. They are divided between those who are new recipients of ESA and those who have previously received incapacity benefits. For those new ESA work-related activity group customers who have a short prognosis and are required to participate in the programme, we will pay up to £6,500 per person at the beginning of the contract. One can see the step up from the basic £3,800 being paid to the young JSA customers. For the ESA work-related activity group customers who volunteer for the programme—those receiving contributions-based ESA or with a long prognosis—we will pay up to £3,700 at the early part of the contract. We pay those customers less because, as they have volunteered for early access to the Work Programme, they are likely to be more receptive to support and therefore easier for providers to help than customers who are required to participate in the programme. There is also a financial structure behind this around how the DEL-AME switch works. The final group are those who come off incapacity benefit on to ESA, and they will be paid up to £13,700 at the early stage of the contract. Our evidence suggests that these customers will be the hardest to help. Many of them will have spent many years receiving incapacity benefits before they move to ESA. The payments for the groups will change as the contracts develop, during which time we will introduce an incentive structure for some groups where a £1,000 incentive will kick in when the providers start to really perform. The Work Programme is bigger than any previous employment programmes. It will serve a much wider range of customers, including those claiming ESA. Those customers who are self-employed or who have a contract of employment will be supported by Jobcentre Plus. All others will have the option of volunteering to participate in the Work Programme at any point after their work capability assessment. One of the key changes that these regulations would allow is to make participation in the Work Programme compulsory for those in the work-related activity group who have a short prognosis. I am not going to address the work capability assessment at this stage. Perhaps noble Lords will want to raise it, although it has been debated in great depth recently. I suspect that the subject may have been aired well enough already. We believe that, with the right support and encouragement, many more people can and should benefit from the opportunities presented by active engagement with the world of work. Undertaking carefully considered appropriate activity to improve job prospects represents a positive, realistic approach to avoiding long-term benefit dependence. I beg to move.