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The Employers Forum on Disability has pioneered the auditing of disability standards for employers. The Government should consult on a duty for larger employers to carry out such audits because, as the forum makes clear, this should not be seen as a burden. After all, disabled people are customers, employees, stakeholders, partners and competitors, and 82 per cent. of customers with disabilities surveyed recently have taken their business to a more disability-confident business competitor in the past 12 months. Each year, 25,000 people leave work due to injury and ill health, but this drain of talent is unnecessary. Forty-three per cent. of European workers say that they could work if employers made adjustments.
I hope that the Minister will
also take the opportunity that the Bill provides to pick up the idea
proposed in a 10-minute Bill by the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West
(John Robertson). I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will say much more
about that in his speech, and I do not wish to steal his thunder.
However, his proposal for rehabilitation leave is a significant one, and
it could make a real difference.
I now turn to the Bill’s proposals on housing benefit reform. The proposed local housing allowance has some positive features, but the evaluation has shown that although some benefits have emerged, there have been fewer than had been hoped. The Bill provides welcome simplification of the process of obtaining extended payments when a claimant enters work or has a significant rise in income. The Liberal Democrats welcome the steps to encourage greater financial responsibility. I am pleased that the worries about increases in rent arrears—which the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) mentioned—and about evictions have so far not been realised in the pilots.
The evidence from the pilots also suggests, however, that the objective of simplifying the administration and reducing administration costs has been undermined because the new vulnerability assessment—which I welcome—is needed to help people who cannot manage direct payments. So the savings that will be made by administering the new benefit will have to be balanced against the increase in administration needed to make the vulnerability assessment work properly.
There has been a welcome fall in the number of people facing a shortfall in their rents in the pilot areas. However, this depends on how the local housing allowance rates are set. They are set according to broad rental market areas, and are based on the local market rent. Different outcomes can therefore be found in different areas. In Conwy, for example, Shelter found that only 10 per cent. of property was affordable for local housing allowance recipients, whereas the figure was 55 per cent. in Edinburgh. Perhaps rent officers should be guided by the statutory minimum proportion of affordable property in each broad rental market area when establishing those areas. Given the housingand benefit provision duties of councils, it would be reasonable to require the rent service to consult them on the setting of broad rental market area boundaries.
The pathfinder areas were given significant extra financial resources to provide financial advice and help to those who had not received direct payments of housing benefit before. I hope that the Minister will make it clear that that will continue as the new system is rolled out across all the local authorities, because in many areas, help such as that provided by Citizens Advice was crucial in preventing the short-term drop-off in payments and subsequent rise in arrears and evictions that the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge mentioned.
The Liberal Democrats have always opposed the single room rent, as did the present Secretary of State, and the Prime Minister, when the Conservative party introduced it. It will continue under this Bill, however, in a slightly different form—the shared room rate. While the shared room rate is slightly more generous, the basic unfairness and large rent shortfalls will continue. We will introduce amendments to scrap it, which we hope will have the support of all those who voted against the single room rent when it was introduced in 1996.
I now turn to the provisions relating to antisocial behaviour. Liberal Democrat Members bow to no one in our determination to deal with antisocial behaviour, as the performance of Liberal Democrat-run local authorities across the country will show.
Mr. Khan: Say it with a straight face.
Danny Alexander: I did say it with a straight face, because it is true. However, the people who suffer from antisocial behaviour want measures that work on the ground, not just on the front page. We will need to examine in Committee whether the proposal will deliver a real benefit, or whether it is just a gimmick to provide headlines for the Government.
Mr. Greg Hands (Hammersmith and Fulham) (Con): My impression has been that the Liberal Democrats have pretty much opposed every piece of antisocial behaviour legislation. Can the hon. Gentleman go into a little detail about why he opposes this measure? It seems to me that it is removing housing benefit from people who have already been evicted for antisocial behaviour, and is essentially designed to get such people to undertake a rehabilitation course?
Danny Alexander: I am grateful for that intervention, as it gives me the opportunity to point out that, as my colleagues reliably inform me, Liberal Democrat and Conservative Members have been in the same Lobby on most votes on antisocial behaviour. We will not take any lessons from the hon. Gentleman on antisocial behaviour. If he is interested in discussing antisocial behaviour, he might care to reflect on ideas such as acceptable behaviour contracts, which have been pioneered by Liberal Democrat councils such as Islington, and which have even been celebrated by Government Members; perhaps when they did not realise that they were Liberal Democrat ideas. If he had listened carefully, he would recall that I said that the measure would need to be examined carefully in Committee to see whether it will deliver a real benefit.
Mr. Love: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct that the rehabilitation courses suggested will need to be considered carefully. As I understand it, however, the Government are suggesting that there should be a number of pilots over two years. Is not it sensible to wait for the results of those pilots?
Danny Alexander: I am aware that the Government have said that there should be pilots for the measure. Ministers, although not the Secretary of State, have also said that the number of occasions on which they expect it to be used is very few—
Mr. Laws: Tiny.
Danny Alexander: As my hon. Friend says, the word used was “tiny”. What we will learn from the pilots I do not know. As I said, we will need to scrutinise the proposal carefully in Committee.
Mr.
Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich, West) (Lab/Co-op): Given the
hon. Gentleman’s declared Liberal
Democrat opposition to this policy, will he say whether any Liberal
Democrat councils will agree to be part of the pilot
scheme?
Danny Alexander: As a good Liberal Democrat, I take the view that democratically elected councils should be in a position to decide such things for themselves. I do not share the authoritarian tendencies exhibited far too often both by Ministers and by Conservative Members. If the hon. Gentleman had listened carefully, he would know that I have not declared stringent Liberal Democrat opposition to the measure. I have said that it needs to be considered carefully in Committee. I was also about to make clear—this point may be of interest to some Members who intervened earlier—that there are still real concerns about the impact of the proposal on families with children. Who is being asked to take the punishment for antisocial behaviour? Is it the children of an antisocial tenant, or perhaps even the parents or siblings of an antisocial teenager? We need a lot of answers on that point. I look forward to debating the matter in Committee. [Interruption.] I am not sure whether that was an intervention, so I shall press on. Perhaps an acceptable behaviour contract would be appropriate.
In relation to the provisions on compensation for mesothelioma, I welcome the Government’s steps to expedite the issue. It is important, however, that we get a proper answer to the point that the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) made in an intervention. Can the Minister ensure that the compensation process is as rapid as possible, and that it will extend to partners suffering from those diseases, such as wives exposed to the fibres while cleaning overalls? The issue has been much debated, and it is important that we press on, as time is of the essence.
The objective of the Bill is to help more people off incapacity benefit and into work. We support that objective. I hope that the Bill will receive its Second Reading tonight, so that it can proceed to Committee and the issues and flaws that I have identified can be addressed. We will work constructively to improve the Bill. Whether we support it when it returns to the Floor of the House, however, will depend entirely on the extent to which Ministers are willing to listen to the many concerns that exist both in the House and outside.
6.55 pm
Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North) (Lab): All-party consensus usually makes me a little nervous. On a topical note, the high degree of consensus in relation to the introduction of the Child Support Agency should act as a salutary reminder that the fact that we all agree with something does not mean that we have got it right. Undoubtedly, however, the thrust of this Bill is right, sensible and carefully balanced. Both current and recent Ministers should be congratulated on tackling an issue that only a few years ago was toxically controversial, and producing a package of proposals that can command broad support, subject to debate about a number of specific and detailed issues of implementation.
I want to spend most of my time
talking about the housing benefit elements of the
proposals—housing
benefit is an issue in which I take an almost unhealthy interest. Before
I do so, I want to spend a few minutes on incapacity benefit,
especially as it relates to my community. As my hon. Friend the Member
for City of York (Hugh Bayley) was saying, just as national trends in
incapacity claims tell us a great deal not just about the claimants but
about the labour market, social and even cultural context, so local
trends can alert us to something important going on, and warn us that
we need to take action.
In my constituency, the leafy-sounding Regent’s Park and Kensington, North, 11 per cent. of the working age population are on incapacity benefit—more than the number of people who claim incapacity benefit in the Rhondda, the equal highest percentage in London, and a higher percentage of the working age population than many areas traditionally associated with high IB levels, such as Barnsley, Bradford, Chesterfield and Clwyd. In addition, my constituency has 1,100 more claimants than in 2001, making it one of the largest increases in benefit take-up in the whole country. Therefore, something important is going on. We have some understanding of what is happening, but not necessarily of why it is happening. The message, of which I ask Ministers to take due note, is about the dynamic of London and London poverty, and not only about incapacity benefit. It requires us to take a much more robust approach to the analysis and treatment of such problems in London than has hitherto been the case.
Justine Greening: As a fellow London MP, I am listening to the hon. Lady with some interest, and she has a very good point. Some of the incapacity benefit claimants who come to my surgery are highly skilled people who, for one reason or the other, have ended up on that benefit. The current system is not really structured to help them to get back into work. For example, they might be ex-IT consultants who were offered what, for them, would essentially be remedial, basic IT courses. Perhaps she has experience of a similar group of people.
Ms Buck: Disturbingly, there seems to have been another outbreak of all-party consensus. That is absolutely true, and I was about to refer to precisely that problem.
In London and in my constituency in particular, there is an even sharper IB profile than can be seen in the country as a whole. The increase in mental illness and mental ill health is evidently a particularly strong driver of IB claims. In my constituency, 49 per cent. of IB claimants have a mental-health problem as their primary disorder, compared with 39 per cent. in the country as a whole. Claimants are younger, and—importantly—much more are black and minority-ethnic. That does not reflect the nature of the population disproportionately, but it demonstrates that we need a more sophisticated package of support than has sometimes been provided.
Mr. Khan: My hon. Friend has spoken of problems that are specific to London. Is she aware that the number of recipients of IB with mental or behavioural disorders increased from 21 per cent. in 1995 to 39 per cent. in 2005?
Ms Buck: I was not aware of that statistic, but it makes perfect sense in the context of what I am saying.
In my inner-city community and, I suspect, in others, we see a peculiarly compounded set of problems, leading to an extremely complex case load. Some people’s first language is not English; some may have physical problems, which may be exacerbated by a range of mental-health problems. Let me return to what was said by the hon. Member for Putney(Justine Greening). The refugee communities in my constituency display all those characteristics, and define the problem very well. They include people with exceptionally high skills, and the level of education among them is significantly higher than that of the general population. Many of them have been victims of torture and have experienced the trauma of exile as well as their underlying conditions; many also have language difficulties. Nevertheless, they could contribute a great deal to the economy if they received the intensive support services that are needed to help them to work.
Let me give some examples. Ali, who was an architect in Sudan, now has to deal with chronic depression—unsurprisingly—and with damage to his back and legs as a result of torture, but is perfectly capable of working as an architect. The amount of help that could help him to use his qualifications is very limited. Fatima, who was a midwife, is also extremely keen to return to work. She suffers from mental-health problems, depression and back pain. She would be able to return to work, but is frequently sent on skills courses and asked to consider employment in the retail industry. She has neither the training nor the application for that.
It is not only refugee families that experience such problems. Dennis, whom I saw a few weeks ago, had a high-powered job in an advertising company until he had a nervous breakdown and was accepted as homeless. He is keen to return to work. Unfortunately, he turned down an offer of permanent accommodation because he was nervous about the area. The council then discharged its duty to house him, and now he is homeless on top of all his other problems.
Historically, we in inner London have not enjoyed anything like the success that welfare programmes have generally achieved in other parts of the country. The new deal has been less successful in inner London, and there has been a much lower take-up of tax credits. A range of excellent programmes, which I strongly support, do not deliver in the area. There is a real danger that that will happen again. If we do not accept the particular complexity of case-load needs and the existence of multiple disadvantages, compounded in many cases by housing problems, we will not be able to deliver the outcomes that we want.
That is even clearer when seen in the context of the London labour market, where we see a projected continued reduction in the level of entry to the lower-skilled jobs towards which so many claimants are directed in the first instance. If we do not raise our game in terms of the quality of skills training offered to those people, we will find ourselves trying to encourage them to return to a market that no longer exists for them.
What worries me greatly is that
unemployed people, those on income support and, indeed, IB claimants
who are anxious to return to the labour market, or at least to be
diverted from long-term benefit dependency, are being leapfrogged by
globalisation. A wider labour market throughout the south-east of
England—and, nowadays, throughout Europe and worldwide—is
taking the jobs that are needed by so many of our disadvantaged
individuals.
Let me say a little about housing benefit. TheBill does not refer to the problems experienced by families in temporary accommodation in overcoming disincentives to work. The Department for Work and Pensions is running a small pilot scheme in Newham, “Working Futures”, designed to help families paying the high rents that are charged for temporary accommodation and treated as if they were standard social housing rents for the purposes of benefit claims. Why is that a tiny single-borough pilot scheme?
My borough contains 3,000 households in temporary accommodation, of which 92 per cent. are not in the labour market. That compares with 67 per cent. of all social housing tenants. We can therefore assume that, almost at a stroke, 1,000 households in a single borough could be encouraged into work if their housing benefit were treated differently. As it is, those people are asked to clear a rent of £400 or £450 every week before they can gain any benefits from working. Given the interaction of the tapers, it is no wonder that most people feel that that is simply not worth their while. There are 100,000 families in such accommodation in the country as a whole. We should be bold and sensible, and roll out the pilot scheme as quickly as possible. The Treasury is spending £400 or £450 a week on housing benefit, which is lining the pockets of private landlords and trapping people in benefit dependency.
I generally welcome the roll-out of the standard housing allowance across the private sector, and strongly welcome the decision not to proceed with its extension into the social sector. The fundamental difference is that most private-sector tenants on housing benefit were already subject to shortfalls between rent and housing benefit. That is not the case in the social rented sector, so there would have been a huge number of losers. It would have been insane to proceed, and I am very pleased that the Government saw sense.
I worry about the possibility that the localhousing allowance in high-value areas could result in more homelessness. The pilot schemes show a disproportionate impact in different areas. We may find that it works perfectly well in some parts of the country, but leaves us with a headache in others. I hope that we will watch the situation closely.
I, too, am extremely anxious about the sanctions for antisocial behaviour. I am pleased about the decision not to proceed along the lines proposed in 2003. I acknowledge that there will be pilot schemes, and that the proposal is infinitely better targeted and more carefully drawn up than the original version. I still believe, however, that in what will almost certainly be the majority of cases, because of the profile of families in social housing, families with children will find sanctions locking them further into a downward spiral of homelessness and debt. They simply displace the problem from one form of housing to another, without doing anything fundamental to deal with the problem.
In that context, I am aware of young children with personality disorders, including autism, whose control over their behaviour is extremely limited, but there is virtually no provision for helping families with such children. They are almost entirely outwith the support system. It is right to do what we can to take such families and individuals into intensive rehabilitation. Sanctions in respect of tenancy have to apply, but I believe that this will not be a productive way forward.
In summary, it is an excellent Bill with much to commend in it. I hope that it will be strengthened still further by a constructive set of proposals that will take us through Committee. I remain hopeful that in respect of one or two aspects of the Bill, there is still time for a rethink.
7.10 pm
Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con): I would like to focus on the part of the Bill that deals with incapacity benefit and on the problem of getting people with disabilities into work. A broad range of charities and organisations welcome and support the Bill, but that support is not unqualified. Those organisations and I have expressed many caveats about which we are concerned.
In response to the Green Paper, I submitted a document on the specific subject of Asperger’s syndrome and how to help adult sufferers of it into work. I am grateful that the Secretary of State met me in March to discuss that paper; and that, last week, the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform met me and a representative from the National Autistic Society, who runs the Prospect employment scheme. We discussed how best to interface with the Government’s plans, and particularly how best to get this group of people into work.
Why Asperger’s syndrome? There are reckoned to be about 332,000 people of working age who have an autistic spectrum disorder and are thought to be of average or above average intelligence. Of those who hold down a job, however, only 6 per cent. are in paid employment and among the high functioning end of the spectrum, the Asperger’s group, only 12 per cent. That shows how low the figures are, yet we are talking about a group of people who are capable of education, in some cases right through to degree level.
When I try to
describe Asperger’s syndrome to people, I try to get the mix
right and it sometimes sounds a bit quirky. If we think back to the
second world war and those highly intelligent people who worked at
Bletchley Park and cracked the codes, quite a high percentage are
reckoned to have had Asperger’s. That tells us the level of
expertise and intelligence that those with the syndrome may have. At
the same time, such people can be difficult to place in work. Why? It
is not because they are learning disabled in the recognised sense of
having an IQ of under 70, but because autism often presents problems of
communication and social interaction and difficulties associated with
ritualistic behaviour. That, despite their educational and training
experience, makes them least well equipped for today’s
workplace. Even some of the most basic jobs on offer today demand good,
socially interactive skills. Employers often want people who are good
team players with good communication skills. Even stacking
shelves in a supermarket demands being able to communicate with
customers, to be polite, personally to direct customers to where the
soap powder is stocked and so forth. Social skills are a core part of
just about every job advert and they are likely to be important in the
interview.
Placing those with Asperger’s in work thus needs expertise. Those trying to help them must understand the condition from which those people suffer and must be able to develop their work-ready skills. As we described to the Minister last week, the Prospect scheme run by National Autistic Society could be a valuable resource for the Government.
I want to pick up a point that others, includingmy hon. Friend the Member for Runnymedeand Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), have already mentioned—the fact that what we are talking about is not a cheap option. It is not something that can be read up in a textbook or people briefed about for a few hours on a training course. It is not possible to learn how to help those people on that basis.
From my own experience of working with and advising adults with Asperger’s, I am aware of current problems. Some are already engaged in the process of trying to get into employment through job centres and other organisations, but the weakness is that much more time needs to be spent on developing their skills in preparing them for interviews or preparing a CV, for example. All of that is pretty routine, but the vast majority really need someone present with them during the interview process. That means that the employer as well as the potential employee need to be coached and prepared for the interview to come. That is necessary if people with Asperger’s are to get a fair chance to be considered for a vacancy on the same basis as everyone else.
All too often—this is the key weakness—all the different stages are gone through with all the boxes ticked on job preparation, job coaching and preparing for the interview, but the problem is that those people seem to be left on their own to find the job in the first place. They are almost abandoned at that point. Finding the job is one of the hardest parts of the whole process, because in the main, we are talking about people who have great difficulty, if it is not within their own experience, in imagining what a job would be like. I recall one young man who repeatedly declared that he wanted to be an astronaut. It was totally unrealistic, but because he had seen it on television and identified what the job was, he felt quite safe and secure in saying that he wanted to be an astronaut. He could relate to that, but the truth is that he would have made an extremely good accountant.
We know
from the people with Asperger’s who get into work that they are
extremely reliable. As with other conditions, however, such as mental
health problems or learning disabilities, they present certain
challenges from the employer’s point of view. Sometimes they
take up management time once they are in post. That is why helping them
into a sustainable job involves more than just helping them to find the
job or getting them through the interview process. It is not about
having someone to do the job for them—they can do it
themselves—but having someone to troubleshoot on their behalf
once they are accepted into the workplace. Occasionally, things can
happen
that are quite difficult for the staff to deal with, but if someone
comes in to troubleshoot the situation, it is much easier to solve the
problem so that the individual can stay in the job.
As to how this particular group can benefit from the changes that the Government have outlined in the Bill and presented today, I am reassured that Ministers are now well versed about this condition and have a good understanding of what is needed. The challenge is whether they can procure enough specialist advice around the country to help that group of people access opportunities for work along with everyone else. The vast majority are desperate to work. Some may realistically be able to sustain their attention span only for part-time work, but whether it is just a few hours a week, whether it is part-time or full-time, those people deserve the same chance as everyone else.
I welcome the Bill, which I view as a huge opportunity and step forward, so long as the Government are able to provide the necessary specialist support. That will require resources, but we discussed with Ministers how specialist provision—it is already there, albeit through limited providers—can help us to roll out help nationally. We should be able to ensure that within any county, district or area, however divided up, at least one disability employment adviser is peripatetic. If job centres knew that, perhaps on a Wednesday afternoon, the person who specialised in Asperger’s syndrome would be available in the region, it would be a huge step forward in helping those people into work.
I shall repeat one or two of the things that I included in the paper that I submitted to the Government, because they are important if the policy is to be successful. The worst thing that we can do is to set people up to fail. The impact on their mental well-being if they keep on trying and nothing happens cannot be overstated. However the Government approach that group, right from the beginning, they must distinguish those who cannot work from those who can, however limited the work, because for some people within that definition, as with those who have mental health conditions or learning disabilities, it would be grossly unfair to put them through the process of getting into paid work when that might not be the answer. They might, of course, benefit from doing voluntary work to which they do not have access now, so I would not want any of them to be excluded—to use the Minister’s words—but identifying who can and who cannot benefit will be very important.
Clear information is needed on what happens to people who go through the process, but for whom work ultimately fails. We must know how we will pick up the pieces, or we will leave behind more damage than we started out with. Some thought must be given to what happens if work fails, although I hope that that would involve only a small minority of people.
Mark Pritchard: My hon. Friend makes her points very well indeed. Does she agree that, if someone is employed and it does not quite work out, it undermines employers’ confidence in perhaps considering other people in the future?
Angela
Browning: Yes, my hon. Friend is exactly right. That is
why the schemes that work for people
with Asperger’s involve briefing the employers and having a buddy
in the work place who can help to broker some of the day-to-day
problems that occur. Those problems can be very simple. For example,
people whose behaviour is ritualistic might be prepared to eat only
between certain times of the day. I know of one person who will only
eat between 1.15 and 4 pm. So if such people are put on the 12 to 1
lunch shift, they go to lunch, but they do not eat. They do not say
anything and cannot communicate the fact that they are under stress.
They come back to work, and they are clearly in state of great anxiety
in the afternoon. It is easy-peasy to sort out that problem—it
can be done as soon as someone knows that that is the problem. Those
are the sort of things that need to be taken into account in briefing
employers, so that they know what the difficulties are, so that they do
not occur in the first place. Where the system works and works well, it
is a delight to see, but that group of people need special treatment
from the beginning.
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