Clause 10
Welfare Reform Bill
5:00 pm
Danny Alexander (Shadow Minister and Disability Spokesperson, Work & Pensions; Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, Liberal Democrat)
I am grateful for that intervention, as the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I was somewhat surprised to read those frank comments in the evaluation but welcomed the fact that it included them. Personal advisers said that the quality and level of detail in the capability report was generic, standardised and repetitive, as he said, and some personal advisers said that they were of minimal use—that they did not serve any useful purpose above and beyond what the personal adviser was able to do through the work-focused interview process.
We do not yet have any draft regulations on work-focused health-related assessments, and the details of what is intended in the draft regulations and supporting material are pretty sketchy. Even inthe personal capability assessment report, the developments in respect of work-focused health-related assessments are the subject of six paragraphs. Given all that, it would be useful if the Minister set out in much greater detail than in those documents the natureand purpose of the work-focused health-related assessments, and how the Department has learned the lessons of the pathways evaluation and will ensure that the exercises are useful.
As the assessments are intended, at least in part, to lay the foundations for the conditionality regime that will apply once the Bill is implemented, perhaps the Minister could also clarify when and under what conditions she expects that regulations will be introduced to make the work-focused health-related assessment compulsory. The Committee needs to understand that important point when dealing with the clause.
I draw the Committee’s attention to an exchange that I had with the Secretary of State on Second Readingin which he gave the impression—inadvertently, I believe—in response to an intervention I made on him that it was not the intention to have sanctions or conditionality for the work-focused health-related assessments. He wrote to me about it subsequently, and the letter states:
“It has always been our intention that participation in the work-focused health-related assessments would be mandatory and hence a sanction would be imposed for failure to participate.”
Can the Minister confirm that that is the Government’s thinking?