---

Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I am pleased to add my name to this set of amendments alongside those of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, of the Liberal Democrats and, mostly importantly, the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton. It is a pleasure to support her as she has been such a champion for change in this area. This amendment pulls in one of the most important areas of plannable expenditure on disabled people, in the shape of community care services. It was always most peculiar to pilot a right to control that explicitly excluded this expenditure. An individual needs to have control of the full gamut of services in order to reshape them effectively; otherwise he or she will not be freed from dependency and bureaucracy. In fact, it makes far more sense to base the right-to-control approach on community care services, which are likely to be required on a sustained and long-term basis, rather than on the more transitory requirements surrounding support for disabled people to secure employment, where the Bill was proposing a right to control. The late conversion smacks of the resolution of interdepartmental differences and, perhaps, difficulties in achieving joined-up government—this time not between the DWP and the Treasury but between the DWP and the DCLG. Once again the Minister has come out on the right side. Less congratulatory, I re-emphasise a point that came up last week in Question Time when the Minister asserted that we on these Benches are planning to close down Access to Work as a result of our strategy to streamline welfare-to-work programmes in our work programme. I was able to assure him then that that is not the case. He should really leave the detailed exposition of our strategy to us rather than extrapolating it himself. The key distinction to make here is that the main components of our work programme incorporate mandatory elements, just as the Government’s Pathways to Work and Flexible New Deal do. Clearly, welfare programmes that include mandatory elements are, at first blush at least, unpromising candidates for right to control. The programmes included in the right to control, such as Access to Work, are essentially voluntary, which makes them suitable for this approach. Clearly there is unfinished business here in terms of establishing the dividing line between voluntary and mandatory activity. I shall read with interest the Government’s response to the consultation process on defining the eligibility for the right to control which we are promised later this year. To revert to the narrower matter of the inclusion of adult social care, it would be churlish to complain about the timing of the amendment. The Government have considered the matter and come up with the right proposal, which we wholeheartedly support. I must register our thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, who has worked so hard with officials over the summer to obtain this result.