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Mr. Ian McCartney: Has the hon. Gentleman read them?
Mr. Duncan: I am asked whether I have read them and the answer is yes. There are 200 pages of regulations and I have taken the time to read them all. They did not make the most exciting reading, and are slightly more expensive than Mogadon, but I have gone through every page. I even read the printing error. The Opposition made heavy weather of the printing error, but the format of the equation is obvious further down the page. I am glad that the Minister and the Opposition spokesman have reconciled their differences and reached an accommodation to allow the regulations to continue.
I am concerned that the regulations are so extensive. I have an innate objection to regulations and, wherever possible, would like fewer, simpler, easier and less complicated ones. I rather feel for the employee at the Benefits Agency who has to administer this rather complicated, long and extensive series of documents--the regulations that we are debating today.
There is much to grasp and many rules over which there is bound to be dispute. When regulations are so complicated and designed by the best brains in the civil
service in an attempt to cover every eventuality, there are bound to be problems. However, they are worth swallowing--albeit they are a lot to swallow--to deliver the benefits that Government policy rightly considers will work to the advantage of those who are unemployed and seeking a job or income support.
Although Conservatives take the view that Government involvement in such matters should be as limited as possible, the Opposition do not appear to share the same restraint. Opposition Members should realise that were regulation--in this case, properly designed for a good cause, so I welcome it--applied to other areas of Government and policy, it would produce a bureaucratic nightmare. It is in the nature of the beast that state involvement will produce just that, and the less of it we have, the better.
I confess that I would like the language and the drafting of the regulations to be much plainer and simpler. The House should address with a great measure of concern and concentration the fact that the convoluted language that bedevils so much of our legislation is translated into practice not by lawyers, but by people making decisions about delivering benefits to people in genuine need. Inasmuch as the regulations have been drafted with that in mind, those who produced them have done a good job, but we must be watchful in trying to work out the detail. The devil is in the detail and regulations should be as simple and practical as possible.
The regulations are an improvement on what went before. I found, from my heavy reading of them and my study of the Act on which I spoke, that they remove some of the distortions that have crept into the labour market and the housing market to the disadvantage of those who genuinely seek work and to the advantage of those who wish to make the most of the regulations and claim money from the state in return for no work at all.
Whenever the state becomes involved, the labour market faces certain distortions. We judge that the distortions that are caused by paying unemployed people are worth while in order to alleviate the pain of unemployment, but we have to beware of further distorting the labour market. The combination of benefits in the regulations draws together the incentives and disincentives in a far more practical way, to the advantage of a freely working labour market.
I draw attention to the regulators relating to housing costs, which does the same in the housing market. Contrary to what the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase) said about the grave distortions introduced in the housing market by the housing benefits system, the way in which the regulators will apply to younger people represents an improvement. Otherwise, there is an incentive--that also applies to regional variations--for people to take the most and for rents to rise to the level of the benefit available, which ultimately does no one any good.
One effect of any package of such regulations is that people learn how to use them. Regulations are constructed on the assumption that people will behave decently and claim only when they genuinely need to do so. Nevertheless, when state money is available, some people will realise that there is a way of getting some of that money and will use regulations and the system to get money for nothing if they can. The detail in the regulations is effectively designed to ensure that risk is
minimised. I commend that approach because whereas the Department of Social Security properly wants to attack fraud, it has been cleverer of late in designing regulations that can be practically applied, to ensure that a system designed to help people in need cannot be abused.
Ms Liz Lynne (Rochdale):
I will concentrate mainly on the jobseeker's regulations because they are the most controversial, but I will speak briefly to other regulations as well.
The Employer's Contributions Re-imbursement Regulations are welcome but are likely to get an insufficient number of long-term unemployed back to work. Unfortunately, most long-term unemployed are perceived by employers to be a liability. I doubt that the average of £375 per employer will encourage many employers to take on that many unemployed. A proper benefit transfer scheme is needed, which would get the long-term unemployed back into work.
The Housing Benefit, Supply of Information and Council Tax Benefit (Amendment) Regulations are also welcome. They recognise the difficulties that confront unemployed people when they take a job, such as the extra money needed to travel to and from work and other difficulties experienced in the first few weeks of employment. The Social Security (Back to Work Bonus) Regulations are welcome but do not go far enough, and how they work in practice remains to be seen. I imagine that they could create an administrative nightmare, and we will have to monitor those regulations carefully.
The most complimentary remark that I can make about the Jobseeker's Allowance Regulations is that the Government had the good sense to delay implementing some aspects of them until October--those relating to the computer system and staff training in particular. Anyone who followed the fiasco of establishing the Child Support Agency's computer system can only welcome that decision. I hope that the computer system will be got right in this case. Otherwise, the jobseeker's allowance will risk being in the same mess as was caused by the implementation of the Child Support Act 1991.
The Government are not delaying the majority of the jobseeker's allowance provisions--such as the non-means-tested reduction in payment from 12 months to six months, which will go ahead in April. Partners of unemployed people, usually women, will be encouraged
to leave part-time employment even sooner, to ensure that their husbands or wives have entitlement to benefit. Even more important is their entitlement to passported benefits. Many people entering employment discover, having lost passported benefits, that they were better off out of work.
At the heart of the regulations is the desire to coerce people back to work. Since 1986 the Government have introduced stricter tests and more benefit sanctions. In 1986, the sanction for leaving a job or being dismissed for misconduct was increased in terms of non-payment of benefit from six to 13 weeks, and doubled in 1988 to 26 weeks. Stricter measures affecting availability for work were introduced, and now the Government have introduced the jobseeker's allowance. We have seen one stricter regulation after another.
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