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Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, we agree entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, in her attempt to move towards the social model of disability. I shall speak to AmendmentNo. 33 in particular but I will not repeat all that the noble Baroness said. We seek flexibility in the regulations so that the kind of barriers she mentioned will be taken into account as being beyond the control of the claimant. They are just as likely to affect a person’s capability for work as the kind of health-related interventions that the Minister spoke about in Grand Committee. As the noble Baroness also said, the narrow impairment focus emphasises wrongly the start of work-related activity and may alienate disabled people from making the most of the process. No one wants to be categorised as just ““disabled””, particularly if their confidence for work needs to be bolstered, otherwise this is how they will think of themselves. This new Bill gives us the chance to change the climate.