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Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I find to my surprise that I have an amendment in the middle of this group, Amendment 71, which I am sure I conceived of in a reflective moment in my bath a long time ago. The amendment proposes a new clause entitled ““Universal credit: requirement for simplicity””. It says: "““Nothing in the regulations giving effect to this Part shall introduce avoidable complexity to the claiming, calculation or payment of universal credit.””" I do not think that anyone in the Room is in favour of avoidable complexity. However, the point that I wanted to make, as we come to the end of the universal credit part of the Bill, was that, with a bit of determination, for the first time you can achieve simplicity. Even if unavoidable complexity were engrained in the legacy systems and the rest of it, perhaps it would be positive to have a statutory duty. There might be another Government in due course—you never know what might happen—and you could foresee circumstances in which there might be some back-sliding in terms of some of the gains that we have made with universal credit. If it is possible to do it—and I think that there have been signal successes in this direction, and they are demonstrated in the legislation that we have in front of us—maybe it would help to put in perpetuity for future Ministers a duty to avoid unnecessary complexity. It is something that could always be argued if future Governments came up with other unnecessarily complex systems. Perhaps I am talking to myself here, but the point is at least worth considering. This is, rather obviously, a probing amendment, but I would like to hear the Minister’s thoughts: is it a completely daft idea, or might there be some merit in trying to get Ministers—the noble Lord’s heirs and successors—always to think carefully about unavoidable complexity in future iterations and reforms, particularly of the universal credit? It would be so easy to lose a lot of the advantages if we started making it—as we always have done, for the past 30 years—piecemeal and patchwork, with special pleading for special cases. We end up with incoherence, which is avoidable.