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I appreciate the importance of the matters before us and understand the interest of noble Lords, but the amendments would provide an unprecedented level of scrutiny for social security legislation and undermine the very reasons that we seek to use secondary legislation in the first place. Drafting of the Bill follows the precedent in social security legislation by setting out the overall legislative framework in the Bill and providing for regulations and orders to set out matters of detail. That approach will not be unfamiliar to noble Lords and is one accepted by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, acknowledged that. The committee states:
“Many of the new powers conferred in Part 1 reflect existing powers already in force in relation to other benefits, and many other provisions of Part 1 amplify existing powers slightly or adapt them for modified purposes. This is particularly true of the additional provision for piloting new benefit arrangements (clause 23) and of much of the provision in clauses 1 - 6 and 17 — 26 and Schedule 1. We conclude therefore that the House can regard most of the delegations in Part 1 and their associated scrutiny procedure, as unexceptionable”.
Then the committee identifies five areas for comment, and we are seeking to bring forward amendments to address each of those points.
This approach to legislation provides the Secretary of State with the necessary flexibility to make changes in the light of operational experience, new evidence and changing circumstances. This practical approach
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We have already started to consult on the detail of the progression-to-work pathfinders. We issued Realising Potential:Developing PersonalisedConditionality and Support: A Discussion Paper on Next Steps in Implementing the Gregg Review in January this year and have held two meetings with interested groups on parental employment issues, so that process is already under way. The department also works very constructively with the Social Security Advisory Committee which, if it thinks it is necessary, has the ability to consult on secondary legislation made more than six months after commencement of provisions. This is a significant control. Adding a further statutory duty is additional bureaucracy that risks distracting us from the delivery of these important pilots. A formal consultation could also politicise what has previously been a constructive process designed to ensure that regulations are fit for purpose. While I cannot accept the extra parliamentary scrutiny proposed in Amendments 22 and 66, I am not seeking to remove this scrutiny altogether. That is the reason I cannot agree to Amendment 23.
It is neither our intention, nor the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s recommendation, that “work for your benefit” regulations are all subject to the affirmative procedure. Therefore, I think it is important that Parliament retains the ability to annul regulations made relating to “work for your benefit”. Given these arguments, I believe that these amendments are unnecessary and I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw them.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester: I thank my noble friend Lord Kirkwood and the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for supporting this very modest proposal. My noble friend talked about scepticism among people outside regarding how the Bill will work. That is absolutely true. A lot of groups have expressed their unease about the way the Bill will work. How many groups responding negatively to the consultation by saying that they do not like the Bill at all will it take for the Government to think twice about how they are going to put it into practice?
The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, referred to 387 regulations in the Bill and said that it represented a blank cheque, which is just about right. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, asked whether the provision would apply to Clause 2. It would indeed. I have tabled another amendment in this group to Clause 2. However, I was not surprised by the Government’s assertions. I was given some draft groupings which
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Since the Bill was published, Parliament has undergone an earthquake. Now we are being told that Parliament must be strengthened. The Prime Minister himself has said it. Constitutional renewal has been in the air almost since the Bill’s Second Reading. I am not surprised—given the document I have—but I am saddened that I will not get anywhere with this amendment. We shall have to go on trying to tease out what the regulations will say. I hope that before any of them are published, the DWP will give us full impact assessments on all of them. Can I have that assurance? I refer not to the equality impact assessments but to the proper full financial impact assessments, which are quite often left out. If the noble Lord can give me that assurance, I shall be very glad to hear it.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: Yes, I can.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester: In that case, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
22A: Clause 1, page 3, line 47, at end insert—
“17C Regulations pursuant to sections 17A and 17B: consideration for wellbeing of child
Regulations made pursuant to sections 17A and 17B shall be so drafted to ensure that any job seeking conditions, work-related activities, schemes, plans, sanctions or consequences referred to in those sections are applied with due consideration for the wellbeing of any child whose life may be affected by them.”
Lord Northbourne: Since they came to power, this Government have put a lot of effort into addressing social and family problems in our society: school exclusions, poor school outcomes, drug and alcohol abuse, teenage violence and child poverty. Behind this Bill I see an excellent intention to reduce child poverty and, in particular, to reduce the number of children growing up in families that, from generation to generation, have not had any members in work. I congratulate the Government on these ambitions, but I fear that the Bill as drafted lays wide open the possibility, perhaps even the probability, that it may have unintended and undesirable consequences for the children and young people of parents who become subject to the plans and directions that jobcentres are going to persuade them to accept or, if necessary, to impose on them.
So far the debate has focused on children in the 0 to 6 age group, and I defer to no one in my support for family and parental care for children in those early years; it is most important. The emotional and social development of this age group depends crucially on secure attachment to caring parents or indeed to surrogate parents when appropriate. Good quality childcare and nursery education have their place, but they can never be a total substitute for the time, love and care given by parents whom the child loves and trusts.
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I shall speak to all four amendments in this group. They are relevant to this early-years group only in cases where the jobcentre plan prevents the parent from giving their child the family time it needs. They are particularly relevant to parents with children over the age of six because for that age group the lone or second parent is more liable to be forced by the jobcentre out into full-time work, possibly with substantial travelling time involved as well. It could mean an eight-hour working day plus an hour at either end for travel. Children aged from seven to 10 still need a lot of parental care and a family life for their healthy development. As the child gets to the older end of that age group, more institutional childcare can progressively replace some of the family care, but stress-free time with parents—I emphasise that the time should be stress-free—remains crucial.
Then comes the transfer to secondary school, which is a particularly stressful time for children. Even teenagers need family support, boundaries and guidance, and time to talk to their parents, although often they would rather die than admit it. Time is the language of relationships, and secure relationships within the family are the key to a child’s self-esteem, confidence and social skills, both in their school career and later. I suggest that the Bill lacks balance. It gives the Secretary of State powers to make some 387 regulations that will either direct parents into full-time work, or threaten to do so, or into work-related activities. Yet nothing in the Bill requires the Secretary of State or the jobcentre to have any concern whatever for the effect of these actions on the children of parents who are subject to directions from the jobcentre.
Can this be right from a Government who believe that “every child matters”? The nearest we get to a show of concern about dependent children is in new Clause 2, on page 7, line 3, which states that a direction,
We do not know what is meant by “circumstances” and there is no mention of what the Government mean by that. There is no reference to the effect on that person’s child or children. It is in the national interest that there should be such a mention.
5.15 pm
My Amendment 22A would lay upon the Secretary of State a duty to ensure that all actions taken in relation to a jobseeker are,
This is an absolute minimum requirement to make the Bill respectable in the context of the Government’s policies for children, as set out in Every Child Matters and in subsequent legislation.
My Amendment 22B goes further. It borrows from the Children Act 1989 and uses the phrase,
Are the Government who have given us Every Child Matters prepared to accept that it is in the long-term interests of the nation as a whole that the best interests of our children should, indeed, be paramount?
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Amendment 22C is a long-stop amendment that would put at least some limit on the extent to which the Secretary of State and his jobcentres could damage family life in a labour market where weekend working is often a condition of getting a job. Nearly 50 per cent of jobs involve weekend working as a mandatory condition. That is becoming a serious problem for working parents.
Finally, I regard Amendment 22D as crucial to securing an acceptable balance between the need to get jobseekers out to work and the needs of the nation’s children for parental time, nurture and family life. Unless jobcentre advisers or the person to whom the job of adviser is outsourced, or their decision-makers, understand the dynamics of the client’s family, they will be unable to make an informed judgment about the effect of any work plan on the client’s children; they will be unable to make an acceptable and balanced job plan for the child. I beg to move.
Baroness Meacher: I strongly support these amendments. Our earlier debate on childcare was very helpful, and the Minister understandably focused on the issue of whether the parent or the personal adviser was the person who should make the decision on a childcare facility. We did not address looking through the telescope the other way. The child may be aged three or 10, going to senior school, settling into senior school, perhaps going through a sickness, or perhaps a teenager. They all come under different regulations and systems, which deal, one way or another, with children of different ages. The same principle, wonderfully elucidated by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is precisely right. What, at any point in time, is in the best interest of the child at age three, 10, 11, 12 or 16? We will come back to some of these issues when we debate Amendment 75.
I brought up four children, and I am very conscious that there are all sorts of stages when placing that child in some sort of childcare, even if it is moderately good, might be a disaster for that child.
In addition to the assurances that we had earlier from the Minister, for which, as I said, I was extremely grateful, to have something in the Bill that focused the mind of the personal adviser on the importance in every situation of taking account of the best interests of the child must be something that this House would support. I am not sure that the wording of either Amendment 22A or 22B is exactly right. I would not talk about whether there is a conflict between the interests of the parent and the interests of the child, but it needs to be clear, when considering these matters under any of these schemes, that the first consideration should be that whatever is decided is in the best interests of the child. I simply put that on the table and invite the Minister to consider it most carefully because, ultimately, that is what matters to the nation.
The only other point I want to make has to do with Amendment 22D, on training. The Minister will not be surprised when I again raise my concern that the whole system may well create untold misery and unforeseen consequences if the people making these decisions and giving these directions are not adequately
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Lord Ramsbotham: The Committee is most grateful to the Minister for the help that he has given us today and beforehand in the form of documents and information. In supporting the amendment, I have a question about Amendment 22D. Hidden here is a group of jobseekers who are not mentioned and are not necessarily under the DWP, but may come more under the Ministry of Justice and possibly also the Minister for Children.
I refer to jobseekers—which is what all prisoners are, if we are to believe that the rehabilitation of offenders is all about helping them, and all the talk about jobseekers’ organisations in prisons is meant to be that. What about the jobseeker in prison who has a child aged under 16? Who will help with that? Under the present system, often a prisoner is moved miles away from the home area the children aged under 16. The person responsible for dealing with him on jobseeking may have nothing to do with the children. I wonder whether there have been discussions between the Minister’s department, the Ministry of Justice and the department responsible for children about how that can be managed. I also wonder whether those who are responsible for children aged under 16 in care, as carers in the community, will have the same responsibility laid on them as on those who are parents themselves.
Lord Lucas: I have an interest in another subset of jobseekers—home-educating parents. Amendment 74 is in my name and I imagine we shall come to it in several days’ time. Today, DCSF published a long report on home education and it is quite clear that, at last, the Government will take proper cognisance of their duties to ensure that such children are properly home educated, and that parents who are home educators fulfil their duties, which will necessarily entail large amounts of time during the week spent looking after their children and educating them. That will have to be taken into account by the mechanism being set up in this Bill; otherwise the two will crash irreparably.
Many children who are being home educated have become frightened of school and schooling as a result of their experiences. They will not be exactly friendly company in a jobseeker’s interview. It is already the experience of many home educators who are placed in
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Amendment 22D in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, very much bears on the need for understanding and knowledge in these matters. Without wishing to go into the particular requirements of home educators, which I shall come on to on Amendment 74, I should very much like to know the Government’s general approach.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope: I am very happy to support the thrust of the amendment so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. It is a crucial and core element in the successful deployment of this policy. My difficulty is that if you look at the report of Professor Gregg—it is supposed to be all about that—and if you believe that the report is to be translated into operation, some of these concerns may fly off. People may say that that is a naive view, but I remind Members of the Grand Committee that the third sentence of Professor Gregg’s personal statement, which prefaces his report, states:
“In addition, and central to this Review, it should where possible give a voice to the claimant in designing support services”.
Although the report deals with very difficult issues of penalties, conditionality and so on, on page 53 it talks about encouragement, agreement and co-ownership of the policy. I suspect that if the Minister could persuade the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that those two conditions were to be fulfilled in the reality of the rollout of these programmes, he might withdraw these amendments with some degree of confidence.
However, the problem is that none of us, at heart, believes that the rest of the Bill will deliver that. I have seen for myself that children can often benefit very much from parents at work in a whole variety of ways if the circumstances are right. I have also experienced in an international context, particularly in Scandinavia and in the Netherlands, a public policy programme which makes the fundamental well-being of the child involved in any decision of this kind paramount. It is a key condition and it is built into the public policy programmes of sister European nations; so it is possible. Professor Gregg seems to be trying to get there but I do not think that this Bill does it. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, makes an absolutely valid point that there are no guarantees that we shall get to where we want to be, given the way in which the Bill is drafted. These amendments capture of all that. The only difference, although this is a trite way of putting it, is that sister European nations invest money that we cannot envisage into these systems. We have no way of knowing. There are all sorts of financial difficulties facing this country; everyone understands that.
David Freud, soon to be Lord Freud of DEL and AME—I hope he chooses his title with care; I am going to suggest that one to him—won the argument. The Government are to be congratulated on accepting
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If you can demonstrate that by drawing down some public expenditure and investing it wisely, with the children at the heart of the investment decision, everyone benefits. The question is how you contrive the legislation to provide the confidence that the Committee is seeking. I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, regarding this area. There is work that we can yet do, in spite of the Minister’s helpful approach to proceedings in Committee. He has to think about it seriously, because we are not there yet.
5.30 pm
Lord Skelmersdale: Although my name does not appear on these amendments in the Marshalled List, as I got in touch with the Bill Office too late for it to be printed, I nevertheless confirm my support for the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. The amendments make the well-being of a child an essential, if not paramount, consideration when implementing new Clauses 17A and 17B. The noble Lord has defended the interests of children resolutely, and this follows on rather naturally from my opening amendment on Tuesday, to which I was pleased that so many noble Lords added their support. In this case, however, we are dealing with a much greater age range.
The issue is simple. We all accept that getting an unemployed person back into work is a priority. It is not, however, an overriding priority; it should not be enforced when to do so would cause some kind of harm to the dependants of that person. Indeed, over the past two days the Minister has made similar points. The harm that can be inflicted on children is not just financial, although the consequences of child poverty are many. A dependant is by definition reliant on the parent for all kinds of support. Many who are parents with children in their 30s, 40s and 50s would agree with me that parenting responsibility never ends. I have a 30 year-old son who at the moment is totally dependent on me, and the reason why I keep my cell phone on a buzzer is so that he can get hold of me in the Chamber, Grand Committee or wherever I am.
I do not propose for one moment that we should send out a signal that having a child is a passport to sitting back and doing nothing—quite the opposite. We have heard from many sources, including from a meeting convened by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, some weeks ago, to which, unfortunately, I was unable to go. I understand, though, that formerly unemployed people said that being able to pull yourself together and find work is an extremely boosting experience. Work engenders self-reliance, confidence and security. These benefits are as applicable, if not more so, to the families as to the individual. It is my view that a family with adults in employment is the best situation to start from. It should be our aim to help families to secure their own need. However, that must be balanced by an overall consideration for the needs of any children. A work action plan would not be worth its salt if it harmed a participant’s children in some way, through unsuitable hours or lack of suitable childcare.
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I suspect that the Minister will resist these amendments by saying that of course we would expect any back-to-work plan to take into account the needs of children. If that is so, he should not be afraid to accept these amendments, or ones very similar to them, as a confirmation of that.
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