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Welfare Reform Bill

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman, following conversations with my constituents in Broxtowe, that hard-working people overwhelmingly take the view that the long-term unemployed should no longer be better off on benefit than in work. That is not only for the sake of the public purse; it is a result of the compassion that we feel—[Laughter.] Hon. Members should not laugh; they should know better. In the real world, some of the people I used to represent as a criminal barrister were third-generation unemployed. It is for the sake of them and their children that they should be back in work, and that is what these measures have at their heart.