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Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, we support the government amendment, which offers additional protection for victims of domestic violence. We accept the concerns raised in Committee and elsewhere as perfectly valid. It would be desperately difficult for someone in that position—perhaps having to flee their home and possibly living in sheltered accommodation provided by charities, with any number of practical problems to overcome, let alone emotional ones—to fulfil all the welfare requirements being put in place. Amendment 58, which grants an exemption of 13 weeks to victims of domestic violence, is a demonstration of how a welfare system can allow room for compassion. We congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, on bringing it forward. We have one quibble, which is not with the policy or the purposes of the amendment, but with the parliamentary procedure involved. I refer to the most recent report—