Clause 8
Welfare Reform Bill
2:44 pm
Jim Murphy (Minister of State (Work), Department for Work and Pensions; East Renfrewshire, Labour)
The Bill is of course consistent with previous legislation. It is the Government’s intention, through the Bill’s reference to other legislation, to be able to revise the legislation continually to take account of trends in the insurance industry and in society and of the changing nature of the customer base for the employment and support allowance.
Assessing impairment alone could mean that some customers who were not disabled by their impairments would receive benefits while other customers with more minimal impairments but suffering from severe disability would not receive it. That is not our policy intention, and I know that it is not the intention of those who have proposed amendments today.
An example might help hon. Members to understand the distinction. Someone with multiple sclerosis might have a period of many years’ remission and thus no disablement. Eligibility based on a condition alone would ensure that someone who is fit for work and wishes to work would be placed on ESA.
We also want to include individuals with medically unexplained conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. We recognise that people with such conditions might have minimal impairment but suffer from functional limitations because of the pain and fatigue that they experience.
Amendment No. 10 was also moved by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey. The definition of illness is an individual’s subjective perception of feeling unwell. It is much less specific than “disease”. Not everyone with a function-limiting disabling condition feels ill as a result. For example, people with learning disabilities have a medically diagnosed condition, but they do not have an illness. That is an important distinction, and I know that it is not the hon. Gentleman’s intention to suggest even implicitly that a learning disability is an illness.
To adopt the terminology urged by the amendment would fail to cover many whose conditions leave them functionally limited and needing the assistance of the employment and support allowance and the support available through it and the national roll-out of pathways. It would have the opposite effect to the hon. Gentleman’s stated intentions—it would exclude people, not include them.
Amendment No. 226 was tabled by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds and others. The wording
“disease or bodily or mental disablement”
is very similar to the wording in section 171C(2)(a) of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, which deals with the existing personal capability assessment. The wording relates to the activities that are tested by the PCA. We want to ensure that we are looking at restrictions on a claimant’s abilities correctly and to do so we tie whether someone can manage those activities to a person-specific disease or bodily or mental disablement. It is a claimant’s restricted ability resulting from a condition that makes it harder for him or her to walk or to undertake other activities, not the condition itself. The phrase “physical or mental condition” is too broad to be applied in this context for determining eligibility.
For example—again I say it gently—pregnancy is a physical condition and I know that it is not the intention of Opposition Members for it to be a considered as an entitlement to ESA. However, in respect of the amendments, the physical condition could, and would, be interpreted legally as possibly including pregnancy and other circumstances.
The danger of accepting the amendments as drafted is that they would reinvent some unfortunate aspects of the incapacity benefit system whereby it is the condition that places someone on an inactive benefit rather than the limits that that condition has imposed on their everyday life and their ability to be in the labour market.
We recognise the importance of identifying an individual’s perception of and attitude to their condition, as that can influence how they feel and their attitude to the labour market. That will be done as part of the work-focused health-related assessment which we will discuss later.
The specific words and phrases have an important and internationally recognised legal purpose, and my explanation was, by necessity, slightly technical, but I encourage the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey to reflect on it and to consider withdrawing the amendment.