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Welfare Reform Bill

I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords in this Grand Committee who have spoken to this first amendment. Most of them were supportive in one form or another—the noble Baronesses, Lady Thomas, Lady Turner and Lady Meacher, to an extent I suppose the noble Countess, Lady Mar, and of course the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, to say nothing of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds. I will start with what I might call the Yorkshire axis between the noble Baroness and the right reverend Prelate. I accept that it is extremely difficult to find jobs at the moment; indeed, I have tabled an amendment on the availability of local jobcentres to access those jobs that are available, which seems pretty deplorable, but we will get to that either later today or on Thursday. I thought at one moment that the right reverend Prelate was going to quote the Jesuits: "Give me a child till he is seven and he is mine for life". Was that not a Jesuit premise? Perhaps that thought subliminally ran through many of your Lordships’ comments on the amendment. I must make it clear that, in the amendment, I was thinking purely and simply about lone parents. Some remarks led me to believe that your Lordships were casting the net rather more widely than I had intended. The Minister told us that I was confused between Clauses 1 and 2, namely "work for your benefit" and progression to work. I got the impression from him that he was claiming that they were mutually exclusive. I do not think that they are; by definition, you start off being on benefit. If you are not on benefit, none of this applies.