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Welfare Reform Bill

That is something we need to think rather more about, but unfortunately we have little time to do so. That suggestion might have been helpful, but there is also the problem of the big variety of levels within London. We need to know the extent to which the Labour party wants to validate the current high rents and whether there might be some other solution to the problem of very high rents that lies behind some of this difficulty. The conclusion I must come to is that the best offer on this issue at this late stage is the Government's. Something must be done to move things in the right direction and make it more worth while to work. All of us, on both sides of the House, are extremely concerned that in recent years, under both parties, although quite a lot of jobs have been generated a very large proportion of them have gone to people who have recently arrived, because they think the jobs are good enough and that the pay is high enough. There have been reasons—perhaps very good reasons—why people who are settled here and out of work have not wanted those jobs or been able to take them, but part of the answer must be that we have the wrong balance between benefit and work income, and we need to do something about that.