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Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, like other speakers I support Amendment 50ZB. Very few police officers have not come across the fleeing mother with her children. There is no more desperate person imaginable. However, that is not the point I want to make. My point relates to a longer-term issue, and is about making sure that this funding goes towards the long-term prevention of crime. The connection between criminality and having been in care, between criminality and homelessness, and between criminality and having been already in prison is so clear that money spent here and accounted for by the local authorities, as the noble Lord, Lord Newton, has just said, is money well spent. This money should be spent on this, and to have it spent on other things would be a great shame.