Mesothelioma Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Donaghy(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Donaghy
My Lords, briefly, we are being presented with the alternatives of finding the paperwork, in which case the process is dealt with in one way, or not finding the paperwork, in which case this new levy will apply. As a fully paid-up administrator, I think there is a range in between about the effort that is put in to find the paperwork. If we are talking about incentivisation, I would argue for 130% instead of 70% because that might make some people try a little harder to find the paperwork. I really should have put an amendment in to make it 130%. I believe that there should be some incentivisation but I would turn the argument on its head: we should try to persuade the insurance companies to try a bit harder to find the paperwork.
Lord Freud
My Lords, the amendment seeks to set the rate of payment at 100% of the average civil award amounts. Many noble Lords expressed opinions about this at Second Reading as well as today. I know that I have the support of all present today in wanting to guarantee the maximum payment possible for those people who, through no fault of their own, cannot bring a case against a specific employer or that employer’s insurer.
To tidy up some of the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, on the tariff tables, I think he caught that they were published in an ad hoc statistical report only today. I apologise that it is so late; we will circulate all of that to Peers tomorrow. It is based on a survey of civil compensation undertaken between 2007 and 2012 registered with the Compensation Recovery Unit, so it is a broad mix of cases. That is what the figures are based on.
To make a point that is really at the heart of this, and as many noble Lords have pointed out, if we were going after the people who should pay the money, it would be a very different proposition in terms of justice as opposed to our asking for money from a group of insurers that may or may not have been doing this business during the time. We are actually asking a group of active insurers to carry a particular burden when we know that of the industry as a whole, 40% are in run-off, including many of the biggest ones involved in mesothelomia. If one looks at insurance as one industry, all in one category, that is one way of thinking; if one starts to individualise what different insurers are doing, it becomes a different debate.
Jobseeker’s Allowance Regulations 2013
Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Donaghy(11 years, 3 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, I can confirm that, in my view, the statutory instrument is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. These regulations are designed to work alongside the introduction of universal credit by removing all the existing income-related provisions from jobseeker’s allowance. They also work alongside the Welfare Reform Act 2012, which removed the existing income-related provisions from other Acts.
Under JSA, there are currently two elements—namely, a contribution-based element and an income-based element. The first element is for people who have paid sufficient national insurance contributions. The second element is for people who have low or no incomes. From this April, the income-related elements of JSA will gradually be phased out for any cases where universal credit has been rolled out. The new regulations will remove the income-related elements and make provision for an award of JSA based solely on national insurance contributions.
In addition, to further align with universal credit, the regulations will introduce revised conditionality and sanctions regimes into JSA. We have of course already largely aligned the JSA sanctions regime with the universal credit sanctions model. Noble Lords will recall that last October, we introduced a number of changes to JSA, including sanctions of up to three years for those who persistently fail to comply with the most important job-search requirements. The changes we made last year have helped staff and claimants to prepare for the introduction of UC and for the revised JSA regime. These regulations now complete the alignment with universal credit.
However, beyond these changes people will find that the effect of the existing JSA benefit regime is unaltered. Noble Lords may find it helpful if I provide more detail on how these changes will be applied. As noble Lords will know, JSA is a benefit payable to people who are out of work and seeking employment. The work-related requirements in these regulations will apply where the claimant claims only jobseeker’s allowance. Where a claimant receives both jobseeker’s allowance under these regulations and universal credit, the work-related requirements provided under the universal credit regulations will apply. That will ensure that even where a claimant is in receipt of the two benefits, they will have only one clear set of requirements placed on them at any time. As these regulations align JSA to UC, there will be little difference between the respective conditionality regimes if they move between the two benefits.
People claiming JSA under these regulations will, as with UC claimants, generally be expected to be available for full-time work immediately, depending on their commitments and capabilities, and to treat their day-to-day work search as if it were a full-time job. This means that they will be expected normally to demonstrate that they are spending 35 hours per week finding a job. However, requirements can be tailored to meet a wide range of circumstances. For example, their requirements can be reduced if the claimant is a carer or disabled, or has recently been a victim of domestic violence.
Under these regulations there will be three levels of sanctions in the JSA regime—high, medium and low level. These sanctions will broadly work in the same way as equivalent sanctions within the universal credit regime. The universal credit sanctions regime, which is mirrored in these JSA provisions, is designed to provide greater clarity for claimants and to ensure that there are proportionate consequences for failing to meet requirements, especially repeat failures. For example, to act as a deterrent, the sanction periods escalate where a claimant repeatedly fails without good reason to comply with a reasonable requirement. This more robust but proportionate model is designed to be more effective in encouraging claimants to engage with the requirements which help them to move into or to prepare for work.
It is important to remember that our focus will not be on imposing sanctions but on ensuring that claimants meet the requirements that will support them into or towards work. The requirements expected of claimants should be reasonable and will help claimants to understand and meet the requirements so that they can move into work as soon as they are able to do so. Using the claimant commitment, we will clearly communicate both requirements and the sanction consequences of not meeting them. Only if they fail to meet a suitable requirement without good reason will a sanction be imposed.
These regulations were subject to statutory formal consideration by the Social Security Advisory Committee. The committee decided that formal referral was not necessary but raised a number of points, all of which were considered, and changes were made where appropriate. As the sanctions and conditionality rules for JSA were being brought broadly into line with universal credit, these regulations were included as part of the Social Security Advisory Committee’s wider universal credit consultation exercise.
Therefore, the views expressed during the consultation period regarding the proposals for the universal credit conditionality and sanctions regime also applied to the reform of JSA. Those views were considered and changes were made. For example, we decided to remove a reference to long-term impairments in Regulation 9 of the JSA regulations. This change takes into account a range of physical and mental impairments that a claimant may have when considering any limitations that may be placed on a JSA claimant’s work-related requirements.
I should also like to thank the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its earlier consideration and analysis of these regulations. As noble Lords will be aware, the committee drew attention to the importance of guidance for our staff in operating a fair and effective conditionality and sanctions policy. Therefore, we have placed in the House Library copies in draft of key chapters of the guidance covering approaches, including that for good reason for sanctions. Today we have published a draft of the claimant commitment.
In conclusion, I can assure noble Lords that, beyond the changes I have outlined, the rules for the new-style JSA will be very similar to the existing rules for the contributory element of JSA. In particular, there have been no changes to the national insurance contribution conditions which need to be satisfied to qualify for entitlement and the fundamental structure of JSA remains untouched. I seek noble Lords’ approval of the regulations and commend them to the House.
Baroness Donaghy
The Minister will remember that I raised a number of issues in the debate on 17 January concerning the self-employed and the quasi self-employed. These were mainly around the requirement for monthly reporting, the burden of different systems being applied for tax and benefit purposes, and the need to recognise that not all self-employed people were in a position to choose their employment status. If I had had time, I also would have raised the problems caused by the different criteria used by HMRC and the DWP for claiming reasonable expenses, as well as the need to recognise seasonal variations for those working in agriculture and preparation periods for freelance writers.
I made the point that under generally accepted accounting principles, a true and fair statement of how a business is doing involves accounting for business receipts and expenditure over a period to which they relate. The huge advantage of working tax credits was that this principle was also adopted, enabling claimants to draw up one set of accounts that keeps administration costs down and matches the support given by the benefits system to the actual state of the business. The universal credit regulations have departed completely from these generally accepted principles by requiring a month by month reporting system and not allowing any carryover of a previous month’s loss. This artificially short period does not present a true and fair picture and does not allow for events beyond the claimant’s control.
No provisions have been made in the regulations for seasonal gains and losses or periods of economic difficulty, and there is no recognition that a business may experience low or no profits. Added to this, there is no facility for carrying forward a loss made in one month to subsequent months. This is a fundamental flaw in the design of the regulations for the self-employed. The Government see the need for this facility, but have not made any changes, because the IT system has not been designed to allow carry-forward. In reply to the point about carryover in January, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, assured the House that,
“I am aiming to introduce something for that to work efficiently; that will be in time for when the people who need it will be using it”.—[Official Report, 17/01/13; col. 832.]
The noble Lord made a similar remark earlier this evening. I believe that the Minister is looking for a solution, but it is not yet there and I have a number of real concerns.
My first concern is the Minister’s statement that, “It will be in time for when the people who need it will be using it”. I am not so sure that the Government have the luxury of the six months’ grace or the year’s lag. What happens if the wife or husband of the self-employed person puts in a claim for universal credit first? Surely the information on the self-employed person’s earnings will be required straight away. Secondly, the regulations could have a damaging impact on particular industries. I use the example of farmers and the farm industry, although other examples could be writers and actors. A farm could have a negative cash flow for eight or nine months a year, as cited in the Social Security Advisory Committee’s recent report, and its entire income could be concentrated in a three or four-month period when the farm’s produce is sold. Even a quarterly reconciliation would not work in these cases, let alone monthly assessment.
There are also a range of factors beyond the farmer’s control, such as the weather and inability to move stock, which would affect the profitability of a farm. In answer to a Parliamentary Question on 28 February last year, we find that in excess of 90% of farmers in England and Wales are self-employed; and between 31% and 43% of all farmers earned less than the national minimum wage over the past five years. Imagine the scene at the assessment interview, where there is a framed motto on the wall which reads:
“Universal Credit should support people to be self-employed but only insofar as self-employment is the best route for them to become financially self-sufficient”.
This is a point that the Minister has already raised. I realise that it is a long motto to have on the wall, but it is important to quote the Government’s response to the Social Security Advisory Committee in full.
So the farm worker, possibly self-employed or technically self-employed, is sitting there and told by the assessor that his way of life is not “the best route for them to become self-sufficient” and that he should go back and look for work. Remember that 60% of farmers’ income already comes from taxpayer subsidies. That is the self-employed in the farming industry down the pan for starters. Obviously we should not accept that a third of all farmers should seek alternative work without considering a number of factors, many of which I have mentioned. How qualified will the assessors be in making these judgments, and how detailed will the guidelines need to be to ensure consistent standards of application? The Government have apparently turned their back on a pilot scheme, which is regrettable.
A third concern is the construction industry, where bogus or quasi self-employment is anything from 40% to 90%. It suits the contractor because it gives flexibility to hire and fire and it sometimes suits the individual for tax reasons. Other workers accept self-employed status as the only way to get a job. Contractors must submit monthly returns detailing all their subcontractors’ pay during the tax month and certifying that none of them is an employee. The view of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee in 2008 was that,
“the questions asked of a contractor to establish whether any of their sub-contractors are self-employed, are remarkably similar to the criteria used for identifying direct employment”.
As I said in my report on the underlying causes of fatal accidents in construction, the current system,
“relies too much on HMRC monitoring and enforcement resources which are likely to come under pressure in any economic down-turn”.
Welfare Reform Bill
Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Donaghy(12 years, 3 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, before I speak to the specific amendment, I would like to make some general points about the rationale for the household benefit cap. First, there is a principled point that households should not be able to receive more on benefits than the average working family in Great Britain earns in work. Secondly, people on benefits should face the same choices as working families, including about where they can afford to live. Thirdly, someone in work should always be better off than someone on benefits. The proposed cap of £500 a week is equivalent to an annual salary of £35,000 a year before tax. We have set the cap at the median earned income for working families after tax and national insurance. We think this is a reasonable representation of average household earnings.
I ask noble Lords to consider how well these principles are received by the public at large. They will have seen press reports of a YouGov survey that found that 76 per cent of the public are in favour of the benefits cap. The overwhelming majority of people think there should be a limit to the amount of benefit those out of work can receive. We have received many representations that we are pitching the level of the cap far too high. In fact, only 7 per cent of respondents in today’s YouGov survey think that the cap should be higher than £26,000. Another 9 per cent think there should be no cap, so of the people who answered the survey, 69 per cent thought that the cap as we have set it or below that amount is the right figure. Of those who expressed an opinion, the figure is above 80 per cent, or above four-fifths. The truth is that people do not understand why we pay claimants more money when they are out of work than they could reasonably expect to earn from working full time.
I accept that arguments can be made for special treatment for a whole range of groups and benefit payments. Indeed, many such arguments were eloquently expressed previously in Grand Committee, and this amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, is an example. However, we must be wary of such arguments clouding the bigger picture of the need to reform a complex benefits system, which is failing those people on benefit who want to work but, equally importantly, is placing a costly burden on the taxpayers in work who pay for it.
We have today published an updated impact assessment with more detailed and robust estimates for the numbers and characteristics of people who may be affected by the cap. The high-level figures are broadly in line with the figures in the previous assessment, but there are some important differences. In particular, we now estimate that in nearly 40 per cent of households the claimant will be subject to JSA conditionality. We also estimate that the proportion of social rented sector households is 44 per cent, which is substantially less than we thought previously. The new figures are derived from the administrative records held by the department on benefit recipients. Thus, they are much more robust than the previous survey-based estimates. They provide a much firmer basis than before for considering transitional measures. Crucially, the methodology here means that we know who is likely to be affected by the cap and can start working with them and local authorities to minimise the problems for individual households when the cap is introduced.
Amendment 58C would require us to disregard payments of industrial injuries disablement benefits when operating the benefit cap. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, has argued that these payments are worthy of special consideration because they take the form of compensation payments in lieu of injury or disability caused at work. I recognise the nature in which these payments are made, but I am afraid that I do not believe that it should override the need for a limit to the amount of welfare payments households should receive. Disregarding payments of IIDB would serve only to undermine that fundamental principle and create a precedent for others to argue for such special treatment.
We have previously been asked to reconsider the position of IIDB recipients in light of the fact that we have announced that we will fully exempt from the cap recipients of disability living allowance, personal independence payment, attendance allowance and constant attendance allowance. I have to say that I do not find these groups analogous. DLA, PIP and equivalent benefits are paid to people to help with the extra costs arising from their disability. Their receipt provides an appropriate means of identifying those disabled people who should be exempted from the cap. Many people receiving industrial injuries benefits will be exempt because they get constant attendance allowance as part of their industrial injuries entitlement or DLA.
I take the point about vaccine damage payments raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy. These lump-sum payments will be taken into account as capital and not income in assessing means-tested benefits. In other words, vaccine damage payments are not comparable to weekly income payments through IIDB. But, as has been said in debate today, the basic IIDB payments are compensation payments and do not reflect whether the disability or illness necessarily brings extra financial costs. I cannot agree that there is any reason to provide an automatic exemption in these circumstances.
On the disincentive to work, any IIDB recipient in work who is entitled to working tax credit will be exempt from the cap, as will any households in receipt of working tax credit. The cap of course will not apply to pensioners. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Donaghy
I thank the Minister for that reply. I was beginning to think that he had moved straight to the big picture and that my interval was not even going to be considered—that we were all off buying our popcorn and he had started the big picture. At least the last few minutes of his reply tackled the subject that I have raised. As I have said, this amendment is about signals and hard-working people who, through no fault of their own, have been injured at work and, with the support of unions and employers, have been given compensation. I do not suppose that that would have been easy to achieve or that the bureaucracy is particularly easy. Having achieved that compensation those people will now be told that it will not be exempt from the cap.
With all due respect, I think that the Minister is so concerned about undermining the principle of the big picture that these people are being victimised. I do not believe that any precedent whatever would be set as regards the debates that are going to take place later. They would probably be only too happy to go back to work, having spent their lives in work. If only the YouGov survey to which the Minister referred had asked a question about industrial injuries benefits, we might have got a clearer picture of what people really felt.
I am aware from a previous reply that there will be an opportunity to talk about regulations at some stage. In the circumstances, I shall withdraw the amendment, but we will come back to the issue when it comes to discussing regulations.
Welfare Reform Bill
Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Donaghy(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Donaghy
I thank the Minister for that response, and I look forward to seeing the regulations. However, I still have a concern and refer again to my example of a farmer who cannot move his livestock and is therefore getting no income. He is having to work harder than ever but will not be able to get a part-time job.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I forgot to say something. There are two areas where we need to get really smart. One is the start-up period and the other is when a business hits a problem. The questions there are how long the process should be and what one allows. That is another area that we are actively looking at.
Baroness Donaghy
I am reassured by that. I certainly agree with the Minister that this is a very complex area and, as I said in moving the amendment, it involves a very varied set of problems. I look forward to seeing the regulations and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Reform Bill
Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Donaghy(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Freud
I fully accept that point, as I have already indicated. I shall bear that point very much in mind as we go through the next stages.
Baroness Donaghy
My Lords, I deliberately did not intervene on the industrial injuries benefit interval because I did not want to interrupt the flow of the debate. The Minister will not be surprised that I was disappointed by his response to my amendment. This is about signals. I was very moved by the contribution by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on the distinction that people make between hard-working people and so-called scroungers. My amendment concerns working people—of course, not all are still working—who were injured in the course of their working lives. I do not think it is adequate just to say that it is different from disability living allowance.
To pick up a point made by my noble friend, Lady Drake, if the Government are trying to get over messages, they must be seen to support those who have spent their lives working, and even those who have been injured in the course of that work. I ask him whether he would be prepared to reconsider. I am not talking about the amounts of money, as we all know that in this area they are very small, but there is an important point of principle here and this is an opportunity for the Government to reinforce their message.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I will not make any promises on this but I will have another look at it. That is the weakest of possible promises. In fact, I am trying to say that it is not a promise at all. The signal I am giving is that I will have another look at it, but that is no guarantee of anything happening.
Welfare Reform Bill
Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Donaghy(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Freud
Yes, the system is absolutely straightforward for a disabled person who goes into employment, where it is unequivocally much safer. There is a difference in self-employment in that, in cases of low earnings, we will look for an element of potential conditionality and a relationship with that person when they do not want to observe the minimum income floor. You have a choice: either have a minimum income floor and then there is not conditionality; or you come below it and there is a conditionality regime. That does not mean there is an instruction saying, “It is out to work. Stop what you are doing”. It absolutely does not mean that. It means that we know what people are doing and, after discussing it with them, can reach an assessment of what they should be doing. In many cases we will be absolutely happy for them to continue that regime. It offers us an opportunity to know what is really happening out there—I suspect in a way that we do not know now.
Baroness Donaghy
I am extremely grateful to the noble Lords who took part in this discussion—the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and my noble friends Lord McKenzie, Lord McAvoy and Lady Hollis. I have learnt something today. I did not know that my noble friend Lord McAvoy owned a pub. I do not know if that makes him a licensee. I thought that I was the only licensee in the House of Lords. I was one for 16 years. We must obviously now compare notes.
I am also extremely grateful to the Minister. I take assurances from some of the things that he said. He accepted that the self-employed are different and that their situation is complex in relation to this subject. He is determined to produce clear rules—I have written that down: “clear rules”. I do not know if those rules will be as clear as those in Amendment 52B from the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and my noble friend Lady Lister, which was just debated. Let us hope that they are really clear.
I take assurance from the Minister saying that we cannot use real-time information. I am aware that this is work in progress. I have some worries about the when. In my contribution I asked when this information was going to be available. I am pleased that we will have the opportunity to look at this in terms of the affirmative situation to which he referred. We will have another chance to look at the regulations. He acknowledged that specific rules will try to cope with things like the start dates and what happens when things go badly wrong. Again, I welcome the fact that he has tried to cover the entire patch.
I understand why he baulked at mentioning the issue of bogus self-employment. It is a big subject but I must come back to the comment that some of the real abuses are around the edges of the twilight zone of informal economy, bogus self-employment and people who abuse the system—sometimes all three. The sooner we can get some co-ordination in our systems, the better for everyone. I may come back to haunt the Minister about this whole area on another occasion but in the light of those positions, although still with some question marks, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Reform Bill
Debate between Lord Freud and Baroness Donaghy(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Donaghy
My Lords, I would like to raise a philosophical point about the Government wandering into the world of employment relationships. I am not sure whether philosophy is allowed but I will have a go. Employment relationships are complex, and I am not just talking about the legal implications. A bargain is reached between the employer and the employee about how each will conduct themselves. Any external factor can easily upset the applecart. I give a hypothetical example to illustrate that. I know from being a former chair of ACAS that its helpline receives a million calls a year from both employees and employers. ACAS staff outline what avenues the caller can pursue but stop short of giving actual advice. Human nature being what it is, this is often interpreted as strong advice. If the information is used in the wrong circumstances, it can cause trouble rather than solve a potential problem.
We all sift the information that we hear, so an employee who has had a work conditionality interview, as it were, with the local Jobcentre Plus could go straight to their employer and say, “The social says you’ve got to give me more money or increase my hours”. There may well be thousands of philanthropists out there just waiting for the opportunity to pour largesse over their employees’ heads, but this situation could also lead to real difficulties in the employment relationship. Some employees are clinging on to work by their fingertips right now. I cannot help thinking that this measure is a precedent in terms of government relations with the world of work.
I read what Chris Grayling said in the other place and it all sounded terribly reasonable. He said that “they”; that is, claimants,
“would come back into the jobcentre from time to time—periodically, every few months—to talk about their prospects, and that we would seek to put some additional conditionality on them, as and when it became possible to do so, to move to a job with longer hours”.
An example was given where a lone parent could move to a job with longer hours as the children grew up. That was called,
“a degree of push within the system”.—[Official Report, Commons, Welfare Reform Bill Committee, 5/4/11; col. 412.]
How grown up would the children have to be? Would the extent of unemployment in the area be taken into account, as the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, has asked? Is it really the Government’s intention to force people to give up one job to pursue another? How would this affect self-employed people? Would they be in danger if they showed that they had made no profit in a particular year? Would they be advised to give up their business in order to take up higher-paid work elsewhere? I know from my seven years in ACAS that the employment relationship is a very delicate one. I worry about how this issue is going to be handled.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, I wish to pick up the points raised by a number of noble Lords about how we manage ourselves in this Committee. One of the issues is that the briefings that we are supplying are arriving shortly before the sitting when we are debating the relevant matter, so that noble Lords get to see changes and new amendments too late. I will try to ensure that we run background briefings a week in advance, say, of the relevant Committee sitting rather than immediately before it. I think that might sort out some of the problems and maintain the depth of our discussions. I know that that is rather a two-edged sword, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, warned me that it would be, in that supplying more briefing leads to better questions being asked, or at least more questions being asked. However, I accept that that is part of the process.
I turn to the amendment, which I understand is a probing amendment. We believe it is critical that this Bill provides the framework to apply conditionality to in-work claimants. I take this opportunity to explain exactly why that is. One of the things that I know all noble Lords from all round the Committee welcome is that universal credit will remove the distinction between in- and out-of-work benefits. That is at the heart of what we are doing here. In particular, it will remove what have been described by many noble Lords as the arbitrary hours rules, particularly the 16-hour rule in jobseeker’s allowance. Under universal credit claimants will have entitlement regardless of the hours that they work. This is clearly a positive but it does mean that we may be paying benefit to claimants who are clearly capable of working or earning more. We think conditionality can play an important role in encouraging and supporting such claimants to do more to support themselves. In practice, we are looking for conditionality to take up some of the impacts that before we were relying on the separation between tax credits and benefits to provide.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, raised the question of micromanagement. In our briefing on in-work conditionality, we said that we would be guided in the main by claimant choice, in particular whether claimants want to increase their work with their current employer, look for an additional job or look for an entirely new job. It is not about micromanagement of claimants’ careers but about supporting and encouraging them to progress. I would turn round the evidence presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about how, with the right encouragement, people can increase and sustain their earnings, and say that this is the kind of impact that we want. Indeed, when we look later at how this is interrelated with the work programme, there are clearly opportunities in the medium term to help people improve their lives.
You only have to think about this for a few seconds to realise what the issue is. Once we have got rid of the distinction between in-work and out-of-work benefits, if there was not some kind of conditionality regime, we could get into a position where a claimant who is doing literally one or two hours of work but who is capable of working full-time would receive their benefit condition-free. This is obviously way softer than the current regime. The current regime means that you can work up to 16 hours maintaining full conditionality and losing all the extra hours. It is not surprising that not many people actually do that. That is the issue.
The question then becomes when conditionality should cease. With no break between the different benefits, there is no obvious point for this to happen. As noble Lords know, we have published a briefing note explaining how we intend to set those conditionality thresholds, and we are defining those by the number of hours we expect each individual in a benefit unit to work, taking account of their particular capability and circumstances, and multiplying it by the relevant national minimum wage. Otherwise, we are left with the tyranny of an hours rule and all the complications of reporting, testing and checking, and the intrusiveness of that, which is why we as a department have gone towards doing it in this way as a clean earnings figure.
For a single claimant who we expect to work full-time, this would give a threshold of around £210 per week. For a lone parent, who we might expect to work only 20 hours a week because of caring responsibilities, the threshold would be around £120. To pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on lone parent conditionality, already with JSA lone parents must be available for work for as many hours as their caring responsibilities allow. If their child is in school we would expect this to be something like 20 or 25 hours. For lone parents with a child over 12 on the universal credit, full-time work will be the default as now, and we will allow limitations to this on a case-by-case basis, as required by the claimant’s circumstances.
I shall pick up the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, on self-employment. If a self-employed claimant falls below the threshold, then we will expect them to take steps to increase their earnings and reduce their dependency on benefits. How we do this will in large part depend on the claimant. If they want to focus on their self-employed business, we expect to give them an appropriate time to do this; alternatively, we may expect them to look for employment to supplement their earnings. As with all such issues, this is an area we continue to consider and develop.
Where the benefit unit earns more than the threshold amount, we will not impose work-related requirements on either member of that benefit unit. Where earnings are lower, we will have the ability to do so. This means that we will be able to impose work-related requirements on claimants working less than we could reasonably expect in benefit units falling under the threshold. We believe this is the right approach and the right way to define the cut-off point for conditionality.
In answer to a question put by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, I say that we have chosen gross earnings because that is easily understood and simple to assess. If we were to take off elements such as pension contributions, that would only add to the complexity of the system. That said, we are only too aware what a difficult area this is. It is worth stressing that although we will be able to impose conditionality on those in work, we will not be obliged to do so. Clearly, that is important. Although we believe conditionality can play a key role in getting in-work claimants to progress, we do not yet have a final view as to how or when this is best done.
As noble Lords clearly appreciate, there are a range of complicated issues to work through. Critically, we will need to build our understanding of what can help claimants progress—when we should require claimants to look for more work and what role other interventions, such as skills assessments or career advice sessions, can play.
I turn now to the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, on the work programme and the conflicts there. I can assure him that it is not the case that, by setting a higher threshold, we make the current work programme structures invalid. The programme can continue as now, looking to move claimants from being out of work into some work. Once claimants have left the work programme, we could then look to continue working with them to help them progress. We are currently considering the interaction with a future work programme and the timing of migration. That will be an area of considerable opportunity when we have the system in place and we start rolling over to the second set of work programmes.
Clearly, we need to look at the skills and training our advisers will need. Indeed, we need to consider whether there is a role for third-party providers. To respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, I say that we will need to consider what we can afford in that area. We recognise that the circumstances in which we could require a claimant engaged in some work to move to a new job are particularly sensitive. We are clear that any actions that we impose will be reasonable and proportionate. We have made a public commitment that advisers will take into account other benefits of the claimant’s current employment before imposing any requirement to take an alternative job. This is especially important where those benefits are particularly relevant to the claimant's circumstances: for example, where someone with caring responsibilities has an existing flexible working pattern or where someone has built up a significant pension entitlement. We are developing our proposals in this area and in due course we will provide more detailed guidance on how the system will operate in practice.