Welfare Reform Bill

I am extremely grateful to the Minister. I appreciate that I asked a long list of questions, some of which dotted around the surface of the Bill. For future reference, if the Minister has his editor’s pencil with him, at the moment none of my amendments is intended to alter the Bill at any stage. However, when we reach Report, and after I have studied the Minister's words of wisdom, the situation may change. At the beginning of his answer, the Minister referred to the pilot Access to Work schemes—on which all this is predicated, is it not? Some time ago, I asked the noble Lord's predecessor a Question for Written Answer. I asked how many people who had been on these pilots had not volunteered. I will not read out the whole Answer because I knew what it was when I asked the Question. The Answer is ““none””. Therefore, in encouraging disabled people to have access to work and to discover what work is all about and so forth, I find it odd that pilots are relied on. Pilots do not prove anything; they merely show that there are volunteers who have had gainful employment and think that they have the opportunity of gainful employment, but they do not do much for the great bulk of people on IB with whom we are concerned.