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Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, at the last Conservative Party conference the right honourable Iain Duncan Smith talked about 1 million children in this country being born into families where the parents are either substance misusers or misusing alcohol, so clearly it is key that we address this problem from the point of view of the welfare of children. Perhaps this is a good time to offer my congratulations to the Government’s drug treatment agencies and the UK Border Agency on the reduction in the use of class A drugs in recent years. However, it is still a very significant problem, while of course alcohol figures strongly in incidents of domestic violence, which is terrible for children to experience. So I hope that the Minister can give a strong assurance in his reply that robust mechanisms will be in place to offer help to job applicants who are suffering from these issues because a lot of the current provision is being cut back due to the recession. Particularly, how is capacity in the voluntary sector being harnessed in order to make the best use of those resources? I look forward to the Minister’s reply.