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Employment and Support Allowance (Limited Capability for Work and Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity) (Amendment) Regulations 2011

My Lords, this is an important opportunity to discuss the regulations. A lot of points have been raised and I will try to deal with as many as possible. However, I take this opportunity to lay out the position coherently. I take the criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, that communication has been less than perfect. I shall try to describe what is happening to reinforce that communication programme and I commit to ensure that it is maintained. There is still a lot of misunderstanding about the assessment and what we are doing to make it fairer and more effective. The first point to make is that these regulations seek to take the first step in improving the work capability assessment. They were developed in conjunction with technical experts and with considerable input from specialist disability groups. As noble Lords have acknowledged, they will ensure that individuals awaiting, or between courses of, certain chemotherapy will be placed in the support group without face-to-face assessment. They will expand the support group to cover people with severe disability due to mental health problems and communication problems—that includes people with autistic spectrum disorder, about whom the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, was concerned—and they will ensure that the descriptors take account of someone’s adaptation to a condition or disability so that we can provide them with the right support. Before proceeding to debate the finer points of the regulations, I would like to put the reform into a context. The legislation before us today is part of a far broader commitment by the Government to tackle worklessness and intergenerational poverty. This is a very real and very urgent problem for us all, especially given that there are now 2.6 million working-age people claiming incapacity benefits, of whom some 850,000 have been claiming for a decade. This is a massive brake on the economy, costing the taxpayer billions of pounds every year, but that is not the most important point. The true cost of this level of inactivity is paid for by individuals left languishing on long-term benefits without hope or opportunity for a better life. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, said about the scourge of inactivity. If we abandon these people, we fail in our duty as Members of this House. For too long, too many people have had to pay for our failure to act. Before the recession, there were 63 consecutive quarters of economic growth—that is the longest growth period the economy has enjoyed, as historians can best work it out—and the economy created 4 million additional jobs. Yet under the previous Government—I am not being political—just over half those jobs went to foreign nationals. The result was that, even before the recession hit, we still had 4 million inactive people. Millions of people were without jobs in a growing economy, yet the system was trapping them. That is why we were sucking labour from abroad. The system offered too few people the opportunity to escape and to make a better life for themselves. We must not fail them again, because the country cannot afford it, and neither can the individuals, their families or our society. Studies have shown that welfare dependency, social isolation and lack of purpose in life have a debilitating affect on individuals. Decades ago, the late Aaron Antonovsky argued that the purpose in life—what he called coherence—was crucial to understanding human health and well-being. More recently, Waddell and Burton’s excellent review of the issue, written four and a half years ago, reinforced the evidence that showed that work is generally good for you. There is ample evidence that prolonged periods of inactivity and unemployment contribute to declining mental health. That is why the welfare reforms that we are introducing are so important, and that is why the regulations are such an essential element in transforming the lives of millions of people at risk of being abandoned to welfare dependency. These reforms are the key to providing the lost with a path out of the cycle of dependency and poverty, and helping them on to the path to new opportunities. That is why we are embarking on a large-scale re-evaluation of those on incapacity benefits through the work capability assessment that will take in some 1.5 million people—not the 2.6 million on incapacity benefit who the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, mentioned —over the next three years. It is also why we are introducing the universal credit to make sure that work pays, and why we are introducing the largest welfare-to-work programme that this country has even witnessed. This is designed not to badger or bear down on the vulnerable but to give them a road map to a better life. It is only by tackling welfare dependency and starting to dismantle the benefits trap that we can help people escape the huge social costs of worklessness, social exclusion and intergenerational poverty. Many noble Lords will know how difficult it is to wrestle with the issue of child poverty without this kind of route. Those who cannot work will of course continue to get the support they need. However, for those who can make the journey back towards the workplace, we will offer them structured support to become work-ready. This will provide real help for many of those who have previously been abandoned by the system—those who were simply labelled as incapacitated and largely ignored, whether they wanted to work or not. The work capability assessment was introduced in October 2008 as a key part of the assessment process to determine entitlement to employment and support allowance. It replaced the personal capability assessment and represented a significant and overdue change in assessing an individual’s ability to work. It was developed in conjunction with technical experts, along with considerable input from specialist disability groups. However, it was clear from the outset that, unlike the PCA, the WCA should be subject to an ongoing process of review, evaluation and refinement. Indeed, it was this House that passed the amendment that introduced the requirement for an independent review of the WCA for the first five years after its introduction—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. It was the only amendment from this House that made its way into the original legislation for the work capability assessment, and it received support from all sides. That was slightly before my time, but I know many noble Lords will remember it well. It was this House that called for, supported and enacted the requirement for continuous review and refinement of the work capability assessment. Through these regulations, we are doing exactly what the House asked for. Therefore, perhaps it is counterintuitive for some noble Lords today to suggest that we should wait until the whole process of continuous improvement has been completed. That was not the intention of the House, as the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, effectively pointed out—if I may paraphrase her point. The internal review of the work capability assessment, which led to the amendments to the regulations that we are considering today, was undertaken with significant input from technical experts and specialist disability groups, in the same inclusive way that we used for the original work capability assessment. We recognised the concerns of disability groups and undertook significant work with them to refine the assessment. The outcome of this layer of work was published as an addendum to the report, and the regulations before us today fully reflect those refinements. This Government are committed to continuously improving the work capability assessment to ensure that it is as fair and as accurate as possible. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, that we are also committed to working closely with disability groups in that process. I also reassure the noble Lord, Lord Low, who made the same point. The regulations that we are debating today are the first step on that continuous journey.