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Welfare Reform Bill

Subsection (5) is a technical provision and ensures that there are no loopholes for members of joint-claim couples who do not participate in "work for your benefit". It is important to ensure that the new provisions we are introducing for "work for your benefit" do not have undesirable and unintended effects elsewhere in social security legislation. Removing the entire subsection would mean that if one member of a joint-claim couple is sanctioned for not participating in "work for your benefit" and the other claimant is subject to a sanction for benefit fraud, JSA could still be payable. That would undermine the incentives to participate in the programme, and create an inconsistency between "work for your benefit" and other employment programmes. As the noble Lord just identified, Amendment 25 is a government amendment which deletes part of this subsection, and I shall come on to why we need to do that when I speak to that amendment. However, to delete the entire subsection would have the effects that I have outlined. I hope that the noble Lord will not press his amendment. It may be helpful if I place on the record a rather convoluted technical description, so that the noble Lord and others may be able to peruse it at their leisure. Clause 1(5) amends Section 63(2)(b)(i) of the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 and Section 8(2)(b)(i) of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 by inserting after "is", "or is treated as being". The purpose of this subsection is a little convoluted, as the noble Lord noted, but it is essentially consequential on new Section 17A(7) of the Jobseekers Act 1995, as inserted by Clause 1(2). New Section 17A(7) is about sanctions for persons who fail without a good cause to turn up for a "work for your benefit" session where he or she claims jobseeker’s allowance as a member of a joint-claim couple. New Section 17A(7) states that in those circumstances the participant is "to be treated as" subject to sanctions for the purposes of Section 20A of the Jobseekers Act 1995. In other words, it switches on the provisions of Section 20A, which is an existing provision of the Act. Section 20A concerns sanctions for a member of a JSA joint-claim couple who fails without good cause to comply with a jobseeker’s direction or to attend a training scheme or an employment programme. If only one member of the couple is subject to a sanction, a reduced amount of JSA is payable to the couple for the period of the sanction. If both members are subject to sanction, payment of JSA is suspended altogether. Section 63(2) of the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 and Section 8(2) of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 apply where a sanction is imposed on one member of a JSA joint-claim couple who has breached a community service order—this is the provision that we are going to remove—or been convicted of benefit fraud and the other member is already subject to a sanction under Section 20A of the Jobseekers Act 1995. In these circumstances, benefit is stopped altogether until the earlier of the two sanctions expires. Clause 1(5) therefore ensures that Section 63 of the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 and Section 8 of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 would work properly where one member of a JSA joint-claim couple was sanctioned for a breach of a community service order or for benefit fraud and the other member was sanctioned for failing to turn out for "work for your benefit". That is the logic of the technicalities behind the provision’s original construction. Perhaps when I move the next amendment I can explain further why we believe that part of it should now be deleted.