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Welfare Reform Bill

I regard this group of amendments as making the best of a bad job. The provisions relating to drug and alcohol addiction are offensive and authoritarian, and it would have been better to take them out of the Bill altogether. The amendments make things slightly less bad, but the pilots will prove that we have an awfully long way to go before we get an effective response to the issues of drug and alcohol abuse. I agree with the Minister that doing nothing is not an option. However, there is an incredible paucity of services, particularly for alcohol abuse, but in many cases for drug abuse too, and a lack of support for substance abusers and their families. There is a huge proactive, positive, supportive agenda that could have been implemented first. Then we could have returned to considering what threats and sanctions to apply to those who do not comply. Returning to sticks and carrots, there is an awful lot of carrot yet to be chewed on—to mix my metaphors. The Minister used an interesting phrase. Once again, we are guilty of weasel words: he said that those who refuse to take a voluntary drug test will be mandated to do so. That does not sound terribly voluntary. If Ministers just come clean and say, "We are going to force people to take a test, and if they do not take it, we will take money off them", that is fair enough. That is a legitimate position—it is not one that I share, but it is one that the Government take. It is always striking, however, when the Government refuse to describe accurately what they are doing, perhaps because they are embarrassed about it. If the Government are confident in the rightness of what they are doing, they ought to call a spade a spade. They ought to be clear about what they are doing. Let us consider the idea that it would be helpful for drug addicts to have less money because they will not take a test or accept treatment. We all know the consequences of people with persistent drug addictions not having as much money as they used to. Far from being tough and effective, that will create new victims of crime and will be an entirely negative and regressive step. We certainly welcome the amendments to the extent that they soften measures that ought never to have been passed into legislation in the first place, but that is about all we can say for them.