Clause 3
Welfare Reform Bill
6:30 pm
Tim Boswell (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Daventry, Conservative)
I think we can readily endorse both the spirit of the amendment and the way in which it has been moved. Many of us in different capacities have campaigned on and off on an all-party basis for greater involvement in public life by disabled people generally. The point is that not only is that part of their civil rights, but it is positively beneficial to the public good if there is active hands-on involvement.
I have a gloss on the points made by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey about participation by disabled people in consultation or advisory exercises on behalf of public bodies. I do not want to rehearse or question your decision, Mr. Hood, but you will have noticed that we tabled new clause 7 on that point and it is germane to this debate. The issue involved the Disability Rights Commission and other disability bodies.
The problem is the overall fear that in some way people on employment and support allowance would be disqualified from participation in any public activity, whether as councillors, Members of Parliament if that were still possible—it is unlikely—or as consultees in a public exercise. A number of recent public measures—for example, on care standards—other related action in the health field, and the whole concept of the new provisions of the public duty on disability actively encourage participation, and those are exactly the people that we want to participate. The particular concerns set out in the new clause were, first, that people who participated as consultees should not, as a direct consequence, be treated as capable of work—that is directly analogous to the point made by the hon. Gentleman on public office.
There is the issue of recruitment of service users as consultees by public organisations. At the moment there is a difficulty, particularly for people on means-tested benefits, who are effectively excluded because there is a fear that they might lose those benefits. The problem is that that immediately skews the consultee sample because only the relatively better-off will be able to take their place as consultees.
There is also a question about preventing designated, reimbursed expenses incurred wholly, exclusively and necessarily as a result of the involvement from being treated as income, so that they are not knocked off benefit.
Returning to the wider point and the fifth part of the new clause that we have tabled, there is a wish to ensure that some people will not be excluded from involvement as a result of benefit laws. The new clause would allow people simultaneously in receipt of the employment and support allowance to choose to volunteer their advice to public organisations. They would not get caught in what might be termed the “notional earnings trap”.
I have said enough to express some of the concerns that were set down in that new clause and they are entirely congruent with the concerns of the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey in relation to public office. Nobody wants somebody to simultaneously claim this allowance and have a huge source of outside income through their public work. That is why, whatever the theoretical possibility, the MPs who are not actually working here—I think they are office holders for that purpose—could not claim the employment and support allowance simultaneously.
However, it is wrong, in the same breath, to make it impossible for people who can make a contribution—who are likely to be either in the work-related component or the support component—to make such a contribution. If we ask the people who know about it, we are likely to get a better answer than if we do not. If we exclude them by the way we set up the benefit rules, we are the losers too.