Jobseeker’s Allowance (Jobseeker Mandatory Activity) Pilot Regulations 2005

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for explaining these regulations so fully. I confess that, although I am not known as a conspiracy theorist, when I first looked at this measure and before I received the Explanatory Notes and the very helpful letter about them from the noble Lord, I wondered whether they were hitting at the right target. Almost 600,000 people over the age of 25 are on jobseeker’s allowance and we know that something like 1 million people who wish to work are receiving invalidity benefit. So my first question is: why is this pilot not being extended to them? I accept that there are obvious medical difficulties with invalidity benefit and that therefore super checks would have to be made. None the less, given that we know that the longer people are out of work the less likely they are to find work without extra help, I feel that something of this sort would be appropriate to people on invalidity benefit. But I suppose that we have to wait yet again for the Green Paper and, indeed, from what I read in today’s newspapers on the subject of invalidity benefit, for the scaling-down of the Green Paper. On these regulations, I understand that under Section 29 of the Jobseekers Act 1995, pilot regulations such as these can test whether a specific change in social security regulations is likely to encourage people to find work or to improve their chance of doing so. Last week, I spoke briefly about the dignity of work and anything that can be done to help people into work is clearly a good thing. One wonders, from studying these regulations, whether the Government have discovered that New Deal—in other words, intervention after 18 months—is not going quite as well as they would like and that is why they are testing this particular scheme. The Minister mentioned the figure of 31,400, which compared with 595,600 does not appear to be a lot. I became rather confused in listening to that passage of his speech. Am I to assume that 31,400 people would be helped in the 10 pilot areas or does the figure of 31,400 apply to some other group of people? Perhaps he can explain that. On the detail of the regulations, I have two points. Regulation 3 talks about the Secretary of State considering it appropriate for certain people to be on this mandatory pilot scheme. One wonders what is intended by the word ““appropriate”” in paragraph (2) of that regulation. Secondly, very widespread and disparate areas have been chosen. I can well understand why the spread has been chosen. People, even when unemployed, still move around the country, so what would happen if an unemployed person moved from, say, Biggleswade to Macclesfield, which is quite a distance? Would the appropriateness come into the decision about whether to refer him, or would he be in default and, therefore, liable to lose his benefit for a week? Those are all the points that I have on these regulations. In general I welcome them.