Clause 17
Welfare Reform Bill
5:00 pm
Anne McGuire (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Disabled People), Department for Work and Pensions; Stirling, Labour)
The amendments enable a person to be disqualified from receiving payment of a contributory employment and support allowance if they are absent from the UK or in prison, unless regulations provide otherwise. Although they will be disqualified from receiving payment, they will still be treated as being entitled to benefit, and we need to be clear about the difference between entitlement and payment. The flexibility to make exceptions in regulations would allow us to continue to pay someone a contributory allowance where they were, for example, absent from Great Britain only temporarily.
The clause and the regulations will allow people who are absent from Great Britain for short periods, and prisoners who receive short custodial sentences, to continue to be entitled to ESA while disqualified from payment of ESA, so they will keep the underlying entitlement. That will enable us not to stop and start claims unnecessarily, wasting the time and resources of claimants and staff. We intend to make provision through regulations to limit the period of disqualification to six weeks, after which a person will be treated as no longer being entitled to the benefit.
The policy intent for prisoners is clear: the state should not maintain someone who is in prison through benefits. The provision allows us to disqualify such people for payment purposes for short periods, rather than to disentitle them. In that way, we will not waste resources by stopping and starting claims when people serve only a short sentence. Where someone is in prison for longer, however, we will use powers in paragraph 1(a) of schedule 2 to remove their entitlement to benefit altogether.
Once the period of disqualification ends, as set out in regulations, entitlement to ESA will cease altogether if the claimant is still abroad or imprisoned. However, if they are no longer abroad or in prison, the provisions will enable benefit to resume without the need for a fresh claim. Exactly the same provision applies to incapacity benefit, and it has been a feature of the contributory benefits system for many years.
We strongly believe that the benefit system should not support people who are in prison or abroad, except in specific circumstances, as they should be supported by other means. The ability to disqualify the payment of benefit when entitlement is retained is important to protect public funds.