Improving Lives: Green Paper — House of Lords, 2016-10-31
Topic: Labor
William David McKenzie (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I start by thanking the Minister for repeating the Statement, although it is a Statement that is, frankly, thinner than we would have hoped We support the ambition to halve the disability employment gap, the clear pathway to its attainment, and the proposition that we have debated on endless occasions that there should be work for those who can, support for those who could and care for those who cannot. That has characterised labour market approaches from several Governments over recent times. I found on my shelf a booklet entitled Improving Health and Work: Changing Lives, from 2008, at about the time the Minister was an adviser to the then Labour Government. We have a shared ambition and recognition of those issues. The challenge is to convert the intent into policy and the policy into action that can be delivered. That needs resourcing. I do not think the Minister said much about the cost of his proposals; it would be good if he could give us an indication There was a suggestion that too many people were taken off the books, as I think was the expression, in 2010, but that does not give proper credit to the work undertaken at that time. There was a gradual realisation of the importance of the Waddell and Burton thesis, which characterised much of the work of the Labour Government, the coalition Government and this Government So far as the welfare measures are concerned, we have not seen the detail, but we can see the innate merit of a personalised support package for disabled people. As for community partners, can we know the basis on which they are likely to be allocated across jobcentres? I think the figure was 200 of them; I guess they would be spread fairly thinly across those centres. The Minister said there is to be a consultation on further reforms to the WCA. Can we hear a little more about the thrust of this consultation and what it will entail So far as health is concerned, we had a revolution announced—a new era: there will be some joint working between the Department of Health and the DWP. Of course, that is to be welcomed. The idea of ingraining the concepts of work and health in training is something that again we can see the merits of and would support. We certainly would need to understand the basis of any review of SSP and the fit note, which has had a patchy existence since it was changed from the sick note, but the underlying concept that it should focus on what can be done, rather than on what cannot, is right and something we would support The Minister asserted that universal credit always makes work pay. Would he care to write to us on that proposition with the evidence, taking account of the work of the Resolution Foundation and its recent pronouncements on it, and the cuts to the work allowance? Universal credit started life with a very clear ambition to do exactly what the Minister said. Successive cuts to the programme have certainly impaired that ambition and that outcome. We should be clear on the basis of the Government’s assertion that work will always pay Finally, the Disability Confident business leaders’ group seems a worthwhile development. We need to understand how it would be funded and the extent to which individuals would engage We see in the Statement a good deal of consultation, further work and quite proper engagement with a range of people, particularly disabled people themselves and their carers, but that is a long way from having a clear, funded policy to make a real difference to the lives of the people we are talking about today.