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Jobseeker’s Allowance (Skills Training Conditionality Pilot) Regulations 2010

My Lords, I support the amendment that has been so capably moved by my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester. Before I do anything else, I should just remind the House that I am a non-executive, non-remunerated director of the Wise Group, a job-provider in Glasgow. I also start by saying that I think the work that has been done by the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Merits Committee on these regulations is, as ever, immensely helpful. My previous incarnation was in another place, where a merits committee just does not exist, and it should take a tip—it should take many tips—from what happens in this place. The Merits Committee is extremely important and particularly at this time because there are so many statutory instruments coming through. I do not need to tell the Treasury Bench that because it has to do them all. Trying to make sense of the volume of stuff that comes out, particularly from the Department for Work and Pensions, is very hard. I am deeply grateful for the work that the Merits Committee and the Social Security Advisory Committee do in trying to interpret the importance and significance of the content of the policy that they contain. I, together with colleagues who have already spoken, am very nervous about these regulations, and part of that nervousness derives from my experience in the Wise Group in Glasgow. One thing that training providers tell you is that they are loath to get involved in dealing with conscripts. My noble friend mentioned that. There could be a situation where people join training groups simply in order to shelter from the conditionality regime contained in these regulations. If you are to be successful in training, you need an engaged group of people who are willing not just to turn up but to switch on their brains and think carefully about what they are being told and to do the necessary follow-up homework, whether it is English classes or anything else. If two or three people in a small group of students or clients are there merely because they are sheltering from their benefit reductions, that will create a very unhappy situation because the training group will suffer as a result. I do not think that that has begun to be understood in these regulations. However, I absolutely understand the need for conditionality. To use a very inelegant metaphor, it is a bit like manure. If you spread the conditionality at the appropriate dosage over the appropriate surface, it will work and be to everyone’s benefit, but if you pile it on in a corner, then people will get hurt—the plants will be destroyed. I am sorry; I should have thought about that metaphor earlier.