| Draft Social Security and Child Support (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2000
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Angela Eagle: Yes. Mr. Pickles: That puts my mind at rest. I now deal with regulation 20 and the provision to inform the claimant that payment of benefit has been suspended as soon as reasonably practicable. I would like the Minister to put it on record that this is not designed to give the Department or officials a catch-all and that when benefits are suspended, claimants are advised as quickly as possible. For example, administrative delay or a backlog in cases should not be a reasonable excuse. The provision of such information should be a clear priority. My main concern relates to regulation 24(8), which deals with medically qualified appeal members. It states:
That is a little narrower than what the Minister said in her introduction. I refer the Committee to the Select Committee on Social Security report of 12 April which dealt with the subject of sessional doctors sitting on appeal tribunals. Current practice in the appeal service is that sessional doctors who examine claimants for the all-work test do not sit on appeal tribunals hearing incapacity benefit appeals, but that sessional doctors who carry out disability living allowance and attendance allowance examinations are allowed to sit on such tribunals. The Select Committee was not very impressed by that, and suggested that it might be a contravention of article 6 of the European convention on human rights. The argument was that a doctor doing sessional work and being paid by the various companies that carry out such work might be less inclined to disagree with the assessment of colleagues who are doing sessional work for the same company than a doctor who was not. Equally, the fact that a member of a tribunal which was hearing an appeal against a decision of the Benefits Agency was also receiving payment for doing work carried out on behalf of the Benefits Agency gave the appearance of bias and undermined the independence of the tribunal. The president of the appeal tribunals appeared before the Select Committee. He thought that that was not a problem, but said:
The Select Committee said that that was not good enough, and recommended that the Government take legal advice. There will have been little time to take legal advice before the new regulation is laid. Can the Minister say whether the new regulations are the product of legal advice? Angela Eagle: indicated dissent. Mr. Pickles: They are not. Does the Department intend to take legal advice? As I, and the Select Committee, read the regulations, they appear to be in breach of the convention. I would like the Minister to respond to that latter point, but I am reasonably happy with the remainder of the regulations. Mr. Andrew George (St. Ives): Like the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles), I consider these to be largely uncontroversial, technical, tidying-up regulations and therefore welcome them. I read the document once and was not much the wiser for it. I read the explanatory notes and was slightly wiser, but not a lot. The Minister's introductory remarks today were helpful. I did not expect to be entertained at this Committee, although the hon. Gentleman, who is one of the more entertaining speakers in the House of Commons, did a very good job of it. Several of these measures are particularly welcome. As the explanatory note states,
As I understand it, if a non-resident parent is making payments to a parent with care and is unaware of, or is wilfully obstructed from finding out about, when that child leaves full-time education, the change in circumstances is deemed to have begun on the date of the event itself rather than at the time when the non-resident parent found out about it. That is a welcome change. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar has identified some points which need clarification. I shall not detain the Committee any longer. Mr. Pickles: May I draw the Minister's attention to page 2 of the regulations? I am worried about paragraph (17) (c), which talks about the claimant not havng been awarded a qualifying benefit. The legal officer of the Child Poverty Action Group has identified a problem with the application of that paragraph to income support. He argues that income support would not be transferred on the grounds that the claimant had not been awarded a qualifying benefit, but because the income was not sufficiently low. The lack of a qualifying benefit would mean that their applicable amount was lower—for example, because they had not been awarded the disability premium. However, a person might not benefit from the linking provision, because the regulations refer to a situation which, on a strict interpretation of paragraph (17) (c), would not apply. I would be grateful for the Minister's response to that point.
4.53 pmAngela Eagle: This is a complex area of regulation, and I shall do my best to deal with the issues that hon. Members have raised. On regulation 14, my briefing note on ``official error'' contained the same priceless phrase as the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) read out. When I had finished reading it, I was none the wiser either, but perhaps I can reassure him about the effect of the change. The differences between ``offical error'' and ``error of law'' relate to circumstances in which the law is reinterpreted at commissioner level. It becomes something that it was not thought to be previously in a lead case. But that is a red herring. Perhaps I can try to explain the effect of this change. One of the major new flexibilities that we put into the regulations for decision-making and appeals related to the supersession of decisions at the first tier of appeal before an appeal is lodged. One reason why we rewrote the regulations was that we wanted many more initial errors put right before they reached the appeal system and clogged it up. We inherited a system in which the average time for an appeal to be heard was seven months, and many people were not obtaining justice because it was too long delayed. The idea of the first tier of appeal was to put a mistaken decision right informally. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar gave an example of the sort of case which this change is meant to cover. There is a case before the commissioner or court, and an appeal in a lookalike case is stayed pending the outcome of the lead case. The lead case is decided in the claimant's favour, and the lookalike case has to be treated in the same way. This is about the way in which sections 9 and 27 of the 1998 Act work. It is possible that someone with a similar case could have it resolved without the need to go to appeal and therefore would not be included in the implications of what is happening to the lead case. The new regulations ensure that such a person does not lose out. It is a way of ensuring that the more informal mechanisms used at the first tier of DMA do not disadvantage a person with a lookalike case who, under the previous system, might have benefitted. That is as simple as I can make it. Regulation 20 deals with suspension. I reassure the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar that individuals will be notified if benefits are suspended. That changes to the regulations in paragraphs 16 and 20 are intended to clarify and tidy up existing provisions. Cases sometimes have to be suspended while a lead case is investigated to ensure that the system does not descend into total anarchy and that contradictory decisions are not taken. Mr. Pickles: That was not quite what I asked. In relation to the phrase ``as soon as reasonably practicable'', I wanted the Minister's assurance that an administrative backlog, for example, would not get in the way of letting claimants know quickly. It is a top priority to let them know. Angela Eagle: It is a top priority, but there are work loads in every organisation and the phrase ``as soon as reasonably practicable'' is a way of taking that into account. The aim is to let them know as soon as possible. I do not know what other assurance the hon. Gentleman requires, but the answer is yes. Mr. Pickles: Yes is good. The vigorous nodding from officials is also reassuring Angela Eagle: It is particularly reassuring to me. The hon. Member got the wrong end of the stick in relation to regulation 24 (8). The regulation is there to remove any issue of bias or conflict of interest on an individual basis. If Dr. A has produced a report on the medical condition of a particular claimant, it is wrong that, at a later stage in the appeals process, he should be the medical adviser on a tribunal hearing that person's case. That is the only circumstance which the new regulation is intended to clarify. It does not deal with the interesting and important issue that the hon. Gentleman raised. We always check whether our regulations are ECHR compliant; it is a process that continues as does breathing. I hope that the Committee accepts that it is right to clarify that a doctor who has been involved with a client at an earlier stage should not become the medical expert in any later tribunal. Mr. Pickles: Why does regulation 20 (8) use the words ``upon any person''? That suggests more than the individual applicant. I took it to mean a person with a similar sort of alleged disability. Angela Eagle: I cannot say why the word ``any'' is there; some lawyer drafted it that way. Our understanding of the meaning is as I have set out. It is not meant to be a comment one way or the other on the interesting and important issue that was raised by the Select Committee, to which we—or the Lord Chancellor's Department, which has the lead in the area of tribunal composition— will be responding in due course. I welcome the support of the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. George) for the regulations. He is right to say that they are purely technical and beneficial to the claimant. I must disappoint him, however, in relation to regulation 13, which is merely a clarification of existing drafting and does not affect the issue that he mentioned. It ensures that the superseding decision shall take effect from the date of decision or date of application after a change in circumstances. That would not encompass his broad welcome for something entirely different.
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