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Social Security (Students Responsible for Children or Young Persons) Amendment Regulations 2008

My Lords, I regret that I cannot be quite as quick as the Minister has been in responding to what he has said. None the less, we are again grateful to him for explaining the regulations to us. They add another exception to the jobseeker’s allowance rules as far as students with children and young persons are concerned. From now on, they will also be deemed available for work during vacations and will therefore be able to claim jobseeker’s allowance, even though they may be unavailable for work. Rather curiously, the regulations also allow the vacationing student with a child or young person to claim income support. I may have got my ideas in a slight muddle, but I should be grateful if the Minister could tell me how this juxtaposition will work. Has the general rule that no two benefits can be claimed for the same reason been broken, or is it just the additional child income support that is claimable? Or is it to be one or the other? During our discussions on the Pensions Bill, the Minister uttered the expression ““it isn't fair”” more than once. I am afraid that he will say it again in response to my comment that the Government are set to miss their target on the number attending university courses. Rather than half the young adult population attending such courses, new figures from the DIUS tell us that the proportion in higher education has scarcely risen over the past eight years—39.8 per cent of 18 to 30 year-olds were at university eight years ago compared with 39.2 per cent in 1999-2000. At that rate, it will take more than a century to achieve the Government's objective. In any event, thousands are not suitable for such courses, so how was the target arrived at? I suppose that the regulations will help a little in encouraging some students either to start or continue at university, which cannot be a bad thing. But how many of them does the Minister anticipate taking up jobseeker’s allowance with or without income support? By how much will the 39.8 figure rise? Does the Minister anticipate any of them actually coming into employment during their vacations? The Minister must surely agree that all Jobcentre Plus operational staff and decision-makers must be made aware of the changes made by these regulations. How does he intend to achieve that? Indeed, given that the regulations are an anti-discrimination measure pointed out by an appeals tribunal because student couples with the care of children and young persons already get the advantages now being given to single students in the same position, has the Minister calculated how many student couples under the existing regime have been able to start or continue their studies? My last thoughts on the regulations, welcome as they will be for some, is that the new deal for young people is not very successful. Frank Field MP even went so far as to describe it as ““woeful”” no doubt because half of them end up back on benefit within the year—the so-called revolving door syndrome. The regulations will do nothing to help the situation. Indeed, they will make it slightly worse, so how do the Government intend to correct that depressing fact?