Welfare Reform Bill
2nd Reading 24 July 2006
House of Commons

John Robertson (Glasgow, North-West) (Lab) I know that my right hon. Friend is coming to an important part of his speech. Many people who have been long-term recipients of incapacity benefit have received doctors’ lines time after time without any form of investigation into their illness. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that the new system will ensure that that can no longer happen?

Mr. Hutton: Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. It will be important that, apart from having access to the support group, people have a regular face-to-face medical examination of their condition, so that we are able to provide them with the right measure of help and support that they need. This is a failure of the present system. I know that there are some of my own constituents who have not seen anyone for some considerable time, and that is not an acceptable way to run our welfare state.

My hon. Friend said that I was coming to an important part of my speech. I am not sure how he knew that, but I have been trying to get to it for quite a while. I would like to remind people of what I was saying about the design of the new personal capabilities assessment. We have created review groups, involving both technical and stakeholder experts, to look at the mental health and physical components of the assessment. We intend to complete this work by September so that we can provide a clear view of the new assessment during the Bill’s Committee stage.

The new personal capability assessment will identify those who are capable of undertaking work-related activity and the support and interventions that will be necessary to help them get back to work. It will identify separately people who are so limited by their illness or disability that it would be unreasonable to require them to undertake any form of work-related activity.

John Robertson: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there should be rigorous testing of GPs and the way in which they examine some of their patients to whom they give sick lines so readily?

Danny Alexander: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which the Minister should address. There is also a problem with appeals. Roughly 50 per cent of GPs do not reply to requests for information for the first medical assessment. It is only when the appeal phase is reached, and the GP then provides information, that the appeal is successful. There may be a link, which the Government should explore, between those factors.

John Robertson (Glasgow, North-West) (Lab): As a fellow Celt, the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) will appreciate that I do not give a jot about what members of his party think of my contribution. Someone from Glasgow, a city that may contain the largest number of people on benefit, will consider it important to look at exactly what the Government is trying to do. Their attempt to place 80 per cent of the population in employment suggests a taxing target, to say the least, but an honourable one, which I hope all Members will support. We have already observed a degree of consensus tonight.

We ought to remember that, in the 1980s the Tories took people off the unemployment list and put them on benefits. At one stage, fewer than 60 per cent of Glasgow’s people were employed; the rest were either unemployed or, in most cases, claiming benefits. In cities like Glasgow, it has been hard work to return people to employment. It is difficult to believe that our city contains third generations who are incapacitated. I do not understand how it is possible to be on incapacity benefit without having had a job in the first place, but it happens. In cities such as ours, there is a great deal of work ahead of us.

Reforming incapacity benefit and income support is very important to those who, we hope, will eventually be given work. Thanks to Pathways to Work, people in Glasgow have returned to employment, and not just cheap employment: a number have obtained first-ever jobs paying over £15,000 a year, so there is hope. Nevertheless, the Trades Union Congress, among others, has concerns about, in particular, employment and support allowance. As far as I know, there has as yet been no mention of ESA rates, which makes it difficult to calculate the number of people who will be better off or, in some cases, worse off. I shall reserve judgment until we see the figures.

The Bill states that new claimants will receive an ability assessment within 13 weeks of their claims, but Citizens Advice rightly fears that that is not achievable. It is unacceptable that families on low incomes having to adapt to new or worsening health conditions should have to survive on jobseeker’s allowance for more than 13 weeks through no fault of their own. Can the Minister comment on the idea of backdating entitlement if the target is not met? Backdating does not mean that such people should not be employed, but it might help them by confirming that although their health is bad, they want employment. It would help them to feel part of the system.

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier, pathways to work has been a highly successful pilot scheme. I see the positive results in my constituency. The scheme was launched on 31 October, and was designed to help people claiming incapacity benefit to return to work. About 9,000 pathways to work interviews have been conducted, and, as has been said, the average national rate of voluntary participation is 8 per cent. I am proud to say that in Glasgow the figure has reached 20 per cent.

Before the introduction of pathways to work, 1,760 claimants were in receipt of incapacity benefit or income support. Those people have now moved back into work and about 74 per cent of them—1,300 people—are in receipt of return to work credit: £40 a week for 42 weeks, before moving into full-time incapacity benefits. My concern over pathways to work is about the lack of training of advisers, so will the Minister assure me, my colleagues and people who work in the Department that advisers will be properly trained? I have not found any reference to that in the Bill, but it should be included. Advisers should also be fully trained in mental health issues. I shall not go into further detail on that, as many hon. Members who have much more experience than me have already dealt with it.

The Minister should also be aware of the half-truths spread by the media. Some might say that there is nothing new there, but the media seem to imply that the Government is forcing people into work. Will the Minister assure my constituents that that is not the case and will he dispel the propaganda of the populist press?

The role of the new deal in getting people into work is important. The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), who is unfortunately not in his place, described the new deal as an expensive flop, yet 310 young people, 250 under-25s and 400 lone parents in his constituency have benefited from it.

We have done a similarly good job with tax credits. The shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) said:

“I do not acknowledge that the present tax credit system has helped in the reduction of child poverty”

Will the Secretary of State confirm that the tax credit system has helped bring 700,000 children out of poverty? I wonder whether the hon. Member for Tatton is going to remove the credits from the 5,500 families in his constituency who benefit from the system.

Pension credit is very important to my constituency, which has many elderly people. Pension credit claims are worth about £47 to pensioners in my constituency. Yet the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) claimed:

“Pensioners I meet don’t want the extra fuel allowance, the free television licence, and all of the other condescending handouts from Gordon Brown: they want back more of the money that they paid in tax all their lives, in the form of a higher basic state pension.”

So much for a caring, cuddly, hugging leader. In his constituency, 3,730 pensioners receive pension credit; there are 3,300 in the shadow Chancellor’s constituency and 3,210 in the constituency of the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge. That amounts to 7,240 pensioners—the poorest pensioners—who will not be getting a hug from the Tory party, but a slap in the face. In supporting the Bill, will we see yet another flip-flop from the Tories? To vote for or not to vote for——that is the question.

Before finishing, I want to mention my ten-minute Bill on rehabilitation leave. I hope that the Minister will carefully consider the points that I made in that Bill and seek to incorporate some of them into the excellent Bill before us now. My Bill provides a statutory right for newly disabled employees to have their employment capacity and support needs properly assessed and addressed—as far as I am concerned, that fits into the present Bill—and, where necessary, to have a period of leave to adapt or undergo rehabilitation and retraining before returning to work, which is another theme that runs through the Bill.

Recent figures from the CBI show that 84 per cent. of businesses now offer rehabilitation schemes to help people back into work, so that must be cost-effective for them, but businesses say that they need more support from employees’ GPs to allow them to offer more rehabilitation to employees before returning to work.

In 1972, the Secretary of State for Employment in Edward Heath’s Conservative Government, Robert Carr, believed that employers were too wise and astute to let apprenticeships fail. That resulted in the Conservative Government getting rid of the training incentives needed to develop apprenticeships, and the skills shortages that we have today are the result. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to consider the people who need training—young people—and that elderly people could be used to help to train them.

What the Government proposes in the Bill is a fundamental change, like those that we have proposed already in relation to tax credits and the new deal. It has already been shown to be good for Glasgow; it will be even better in the months and years ahead, and I hope that that will be the same in the whole country.

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