Tim Boswell (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Daventry, Conservative)

I have a few points to make about the clause. The more that I look at the Bill, the clearer it becomes that the next few clauses hang together and cannot be construed in isolation. I wish first to put on record my appreciation that, in this case, the Government have provided us with draft regulations and, as they refer to the substance of the action planned that we shall be discussing again in respect of clause 13, I shall at least touch on some of those issues.

As is evident from the existence of regulations and the absence of specific amendments, the clause is not particularly contentious. It gives rise to several points that I hope that Ministers will bear in mind when they work out the administrative arrangements and that relate to the reassurance of customers and the avoidance of a lot of appeal or difficulty when carrying them out subsequently.

It is clear, by definition, that the purpose of a work-focused interview is that it results in something positive. It is action directed towards the return of the person, the customer or the claimant to work, which is an entirely acceptable principle. Although I do not wish to go on as much as I did on Tuesday about such matters, my experience of looking at the pathways to pilots in Derbyshire confirmed that that approach is being taken, and I welcome it.

Within those pilots, there is no requirement for particular activity; the obligation is to appear for the interview. As we debate clauses 12 and 13, we will see that there is at least the potential of a specific obligation, albeit not necessarily to carry out a particular piece of work-focused activity, but, as it were, the noose is tightening on the claimant to do something about it. We could argue endlessly, but it would not be in the spirit of this Committee for me to suggest that that has a malicious or unpleasant overtone about the motivation of people who are claimants or customers. It is worth recording that figures I have seen from Jobcentre Plus suggest that, under the present pathways, 23 per cent of claimants never actually make the work-focused interview.

On a “saloon bar” interpretation, this could simply be because the claimants have not got a case and they do not turn up. More realistically, it may well be that, for many of them, the condition has worked its way out and they are perfectly fit and able to return to work. We celebrate that. There may be a variety of reasons, but clearly the work-focused interview is a something of a milestone along the way.

There are some interesting issues about the timing. If we take the pathways experience, my understanding is that the interview takes place in the eighth week of claim. That is over and beyond the six months of statutory sick pay, so it is quite a long time from the incidence of the condition or the initial incident. There may be a reason for not attending the interview, and some people would take the view that the system needs time to settle down and for some people to return to  work. This is defensible, although my hon. Friends and I will be arguing later in a different context that there is a strong case for earlier intervention in the whole process when the condition establishes itself, even within the statutory sick pay period, but we will not get into that debate today. However, Ministers owe it to the Committee to say something about the optimum time or how flexible that can be in relation to the individual. I think that it is good to connect with people earlier in the process rather than leave them to nurse their difficulties until it is too late to find a remedy for them.

There are issues, which we will return to in later clauses, about the nature of the interview and the basis of the action plan. I cannot help, if only by consanguinity with a member of my family and the sort of discussion we tend to have, although I cannot say we spend our whole weekends discussing the Welfare Reform Bill—

David Ruffley (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Bury St Edmunds, Conservative)

Speak for yourself.

Tim Boswell (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Daventry, Conservative)

I am delighted to hear that my hon. Friend thinks of nothing else.

I am inclined to look at what may be termed the hard case, or the judicial case—the moment when somebody says I have not been treated fairly and I am going to appeal because they are stitching me up. In constituency traffic, that is the kind of thing we get asserted to us by constituents even if it is not the case. To avoid any doubt, that is not the sort of approach to this process that the pathways officers I saw were taking. It is not a penal process and nobody here wants it to be.

Even within the narrow terms of clause 11, which is about the rules for interview, and paves for the draft regulations that I mentioned, there are some interesting issues. What is an interview? What is co-operation with an interview, which is required under section 6 of the draft regulations? It is to talk about assisting and encouraging the person to remain in or to obtain work and about identifying activities the patient may undertake to make that more likely.

As we have said extensively in this Committee, many of the claimants may well have mental conditions, attitude problems and feelings about themselves that are probably not objectively justified, but we do not want to penalise people if they do not quite fit in the interviewing officer’s book. On the other hand, if someone sits in the interview in what used to be described in the armed forces as a mode of dumb insolence and refuses to answer any questions or to co-operate with the interviewer, one could reasonably argue, and the regulations appear to argue this, that they have not had an interview at all. They may have attended, but they have not played their part. There are some issues about how that is to be defined.

I am a little more concerned about the nature of the record and we may need to return to this on clause 13. An action plan ideally should be consensual and signed by both parties. It should say, “We have discussed your case. We realise that you have these problems which  have been identified by the work-focused health-related assessment, but nevertheless we think that you could try to do this”, and the person will undertake to do so. There is also the question of a record of what is to take place. That is specified in the draft regulations.

As the Minister said the other day, the benefit situation for the individual should be incorporated in some way into the action plan. It is a little bit more than an action plan. In financial planning, if one went to an independent financial adviser, one would call it a report and a series of recommendations or agreed undertakings. It will be quite a complex document.

Some of these things may be done for good reason over the telephone. There is always an evidential problem. There is also a serious issue—again, I do not want to get at officers involved—concerning the appropriate bag of qualifications for the individual conducting the interview. What was immensely impressive about pathways to work was that the personal advisers clearly knew what their job was. They were highly motivated and in certain cases rather movingly so. I watched them from across the room carrying out interviews. When going into institutions one looks at the body language and it looked like a positive interview, with no lurking behind a screen and telling people to account for themselves.

To do what they will be asked to do, for not great remuneration, these officials need a full bag of qualifications. They have to have reporting skills. Something has to be written down. They have to have the personal adviser skills to try to tease out what is possible. The main point for the Minister that concerns me is that they have to have an understanding of the benefits situation because that is clearly relevant to the action plan. All my experience of the Department is that people can be very good on the benefit that they are administering, or they may be good at getting people back into work, but they are not omnicompetent.

Some of the difficulties arise where people are operating in silos. One person will understand the disability living allowance very well. I see the Under-Secretary of State is nodding. Another will understand the linking rules, someone else will know what the local employment position is for the person being coaxed back into work and someone else will have an input into the health-related assessment. That is all perfectly sensible but it all comes together in an action plan which has to be competent. It has to be authoritative because it can give rise, at least in principle in later clauses, to sanctions.

Unless I have grossly oversimplified the pathways pilot model, personal advisers on the benefits side talk primarily about the return-to-work credit, which is relatively straightforward and part of the whole complex, but not the overall bag of benefits. A benefits adviser would be brought in if necessary. We are asking a lot of these action plans. They are meant to advise and to help individuals. I am sure that that is the intention. They are meant to cover a lot of ground with people who have quite a lot of difficulties. It is important that they are well conceived and defensible—if necessary, in a tribunal—because we do not want people being given low-grade action plans that do not cover their needs, might contain factual errors or give rise to other arguments further down the chain when, for example, things do not turn out to be feasible. In this clause, we need to make  certain that the work-focused interview is prescribed a proper gateway to action, that it can all be dealt with in a professional way and will not be skimped on or hurried through, which can give rise to difficulties. We will no doubt want to explore this matter seriously in other clauses. I do not find anything personally objectionable in the structure or regulations at all, so there areno amendments on it but Ministers do need to think about it.

David Ruffley (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Bury St Edmunds, Conservative)

I endorse everything that my hon. Friend has said. I would like to add a further point. This clause underpins the rights and responsibilities agenda, which both the Government and Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition support. As with anything to do with rights and commensurate responsibilities, there is a fine balance to be struck. This clause seems to be about encouraging people to find out more about the support that they can get. The work-focused interview is a good thing. It is designed to showcase the types of support that are available to the customer. However, it must not frighten people off. There is always that tension throughout all these reforms.

Mind and the Child Poverty Action Group have raised a point about some of the literature that customers have been receiving in pilot areas, regarding their attendance at work-focused interviews. They have evidence—I am not going to quantify it—that a threatening tone has been deployed, threatening withdrawal of benefits for non-attendance. I am not suggesting that that is widespread at all, but CPAG wants a review of some of the language used. It quotes a standard letter sent to claimants regarding their attendance at a WFI in a pathways pilot:

“As your adviser, I need to meet with you to discuss how we can improve your chances of finding work, now or in the future. We want to make sure that you are getting the right support and are claiming all the right benefits. It is important that you attend and participate in this interview. If you do not, your benefit may be affected.”

I am used to the rough and tumble of politics. I used to be, when I had a proper job, a lawyer—[Interruption.]I was going to say that I earned an honest living as a lawyer—well, a living anyway. To many in this room, that kind of language may seem straightforward and factual. It touches all the right bases in one respect: it talks about the right support and making sure that people get the right amount of benefit. However, it has affected some customers. Sue Christoforou, the policy officer at Mind, said in evidence to the Select Committee for Work and Pensions earlier this year that, after receiving such letters, some of Mind’s clients had

“gone out immediately to get a job because they feel that is what the letter is saying to them, completely inappropriate jobs and after a number of days that job fails.”

I stress that that evidence undermines neither the propositions in the clause, nor the successes of pathways and the progress that it has made. However, will the Minister commission, or assure us that he will commission, a review, whereby officials continually analyse and perhaps audit such specimen letters to ensure that the language can be tweaked, not so that it loses its force, becomes meaningless prose or is so bland that the customer takes no note of it, but so that it does not threaten clients and customers—not my words—in the ways in which some bodies say it does? One hopes that such cases are in the minority.

Tim Boswell (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Daventry, Conservative)

I am much in sympathy with my hon. Friend. If the Committee needs reminding, many of those people are nervous of any administrative process and they feel that it is to their disadvantage. Does not he agree that, under the review that he is canvassing the Minister to undertake, it would also be wise if officials kept, as I hope they do, a continuing dialogue with the disability organisations, in particular those concerned with mental health, to ensure that such text is run past them to determine whether a better outcome can be achieved?

David Ruffley (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Bury St Edmunds, Conservative)

I was going to come to that point. Taking on board what my hon. Friend said, will the Minister undertake to conduct a review of the language in conjunction with disability and support groups? The review might produce a standard letter, so that its drafting was left neither to individual branches of Jobcentre Plus nor to providers, which might have different takes on it. The Minister could then present the standard letter to the Committee at one of our sittings and after due consultation with outside groups. It might address the point that Mind has raised. We do not want even one person who may be fragile or have mental health problems to be upset by the process. One way of doing so would be with language on which we agree, which would be used uniformly during the roll-out and when the allowance was up and running.

Wayne David (Caerphilly, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman refers to the language that is deployed, but does he accept that often, there is a broader problem with such regulations? In support of my argument, I cite a document that Citizens Advice has circulated about an income support appeal. The decision communicated to the client read:

“The decision disallowing income support does not fall to be revised.”

To most people that means absolutely nothing. It is double Dutch. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a wider problem that we must consider?

David Ruffley (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Bury St Edmunds, Conservative)

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. The problem is about not only language that in the minds of some people may be threatening, but language that is meaningless, unhelpful and opaque. Everyone in this House must take more cognisanceof plain English. In the document that the hon. Gentleman quotes, the language bears no relation to how we talk in the 21st century. Ministers are sensitive to the issue and they are disability-aware, but will the Minister respond to my proposal for a standard letter requesting the work-focused-interview, the subject of this clause, to be made available to the Committee? If not, will he suggest why it is not a sensible proposition?

Danny Alexander (Shadow Minister and Disability Spokesperson, Work & Pensions; Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey, Liberal Democrat)

I endorse the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds, although I think that the Department has set up groups involving bodies that represent disability organisations, which could advise on those matters. It is an important point.

I want to raise a few points in addition to those already raised on clause 11. I join the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) in welcoming the fact that we have draft regulations. A problem with draft regulations is that they sometimes raise more questions than they answer, and I should like to probe the Minister on a few aspects of them.

Draft regulation 6, on page 24 of the booklet, sets out in some detail the requirements that must be fulfilled for a claimant to be regarded as having taken part in the interview. A quite long list of conditions must be satisfied, such as that the person must give information about work-related activity that they have undertaken. However, perhaps the Minister will consider, when he redrafts the regulations for presentation to a Committee—of which we may both be members—after the Bill is passed, the fact that they do not contain, in addition to the obligations on claimants at the work-focused interviews, any reference to what the adviser will do. That is important because, as all parties in the Committee have pointed out, a sense of the reciprocity of responsibilities, and of the fact that advisers have responsibilities, is needed. I agree with the hon. Member for Daventry that pathways advisers seem to take their responsibilities seriously, but it is important to make it clear that the adviser’s role in assisting the claimant is an aspect of the work-focused interview. Ideally, that should be in the regulations.

Tim Boswell (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Daventry, Conservative)

Does the hon. Gentleman also agree with me about a further point, which I notice on looking at the draft regulations rather more carefully than I did earlier? There is no provision for a failure notice when a person has attended an interview but the official does not deem them to have been co-operative. There is no provision to issue a formal notice that states, “You attended the X jobcentre and we were going to have a work-focused interview, but my judgment is that your lack of co-operation meant that we did not achieve one.” Nor is there any evidential basis for being able to establish that, apart from the assertion of the officer concerned.

Danny Alexander (Shadow Minister and Disability Spokesperson, Work & Pensions; Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey, Liberal Democrat)

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, to which I hope the Minister will respond, about how the regulations will be interpreted when a decision is made about whether someone is deemed to have taken part in an interview, when there is the possibility that they were present but unco-operative. The way in which the decision is communicated is also important. Perhaps the Minister could dwell on that.

Without wishing to pre-judge the debate that we shall no doubt have on a later amendment, tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson), I think it might also be worth providing in the regulations that the work-focused interview should, at least in the first instance, include discussion of access to other benefits that people might get, to ensure that they receive their full entitlement.

Draft regulation 9 on page 25 of the booklet provides for waivers. It is my understanding that in the pathways areas a work-focused interview can be waived—and the pathways regulations specify this—when it would not be of assistance to the persons concerned, or would not be appropriate in the circumstances. However, draft regulation 9 states that a work-focused interview can be waived only if someone is likely to start work. Advisers will be able only to defer a work-focused interview, not to waive it, on the grounds that it is inappropriate or would not be of assistance. This may seem a pedantic point, but it is important because it restricts advisers’ discretion. Given that those ideas depart from previous  practice, will the Minister explain the basis for that change in rationale? What implications does it have for advisers’ case loads and training? On work-focused interviews more generally, what thought has the Department given to ensuring that reasonable adjustments aremade to premises under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 to ensure that claimants can participate fully in the interview?

My last, short series of points relates to the sanctions regime in the clause. [Interruption.] When the Minister gets his pen back, will he briefly set out the rationale behind that regime? The work-related activity component can be subject to a sanction amounting to 50 per cent. for the first four weeks and 100 per cent. after that. What is the rationale behind choosing the50 per cent. figure? What is the rationale behind choosing the four-week period, as opposed to two weeks, six weeks or three months? Why not have more stages of sanction and make the arrangements more progressive, rather than having two rather steep steps?

David Ruffley (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Bury St Edmunds, Conservative)

I just wonder whether more steps would add to the complexity. I thought that the Committee and these proceedings were dedicated to eradicating complexity.

Danny Alexander (Shadow Minister and Disability Spokesperson, Work & Pensions; Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey, Liberal Democrat)

They may well add to the complexity. I was merely trying to encourage the Minister to describe the thinking that went into the provisions. He said earlier that every aspect of the Bill had been subject to lengthy discussion between Ministers and officials. He has no doubt chewed over the issue at some length, so he might be able to describe his thinking on it.

There is also a question about the period after which someone who has been sanctioned, but who has subsequently met the requirements, can have their benefit reinstated. How does that process work?

On the impact of the new sanctions regime, has the Minister made any forecast of how often he expects to use the new powers and how many people will be drawn into the net? He said earlier that part of the idea behind the Bill was to tackle child poverty, so has he made any assessment of the impact that the sanctions—in whatever volume he predicts they will be used—will have on child poverty?

Jim Murphy (Minister of State (Work), Department for Work and Pensions; Renfrewshire East, Labour)

Mr. Amess, I am delighted to see you in your place on this sunny morning. I know that it is sunny because I can feel the sun on my back and see it in the eyes of Opposition Members—at least, I think that that is why their eyes are glinting at me in the way that they are.

I had hoped that we would have finished our conversation/exchange/debate on the clause before our break, but I do not think that that will be possible. Although there are not many amendments, more questions have been posed on this clause than on many others to which more amendments were tabled. I shall try to rush through the points that have been raisedand to make some progress before and after thebreak, because we are talking largely about the draft regulations. They will be agreed later, should the Bill be agreed by this place and the other place, so there will be further opportunities to discuss the specifics.

Let me turn first to the points raised by the hon. Member for Daventry. The difficulty in conversing with him is that he asks a question and then helpfully moves close to answering it. That is not a bad trait; indeed, it is very helpful, because it occasionally saves me from asking officials. He also used the analogy of a saloon bar analysis, and although I have many images of him, I cannot see him in a saloon bar.

None the less, the hon. Gentleman asked several pretty reasonable questions, including what is meant by participating in an interview. That is described in  regulation 6, on page 24 of the draft regulations, which shows that it is not simply a matter of attending. He then asked about enforcing a requirement to participate in a work-focused interview. That appears to be covered by regulation 4(1). Of course, the conversation about the draft regulations will continue as they make their way through this place.