Welfare Reform Bill

Focusing on rehabilitation is rather to miss the point. If these resources are available, they should be applied to help people before we get to the desperate situation where they are actually being evicted. I question the whole structure of co-ordinators, evictors and respect areas we are now hearing about. What on earth is a respect area? Are we not meant to have respect in other areas? This is all about something dreamt up by the Government spin merchants and then trying to fit everything into that category. It will not have the effect of helping the people who need it. On the specific point of Amendment No. 105, I was pleased to hear the Minister say that we would need to limit the coverage to specific areas of the health service. As he read out the list of the various members of the health service who would be affected as the amendment is drafted at the moment, it sounded like the definition of a healthcare professional we discussed yesterday. However, I fully accept it and I am delighted at the Minister’s offer of help. We would be more than happy to withdraw our amendment if he would like to bring forward a government amendment incorporating those changes. I tried to cover in detail what the Minister in the Commons said and how we were changing our sunset clause to deal with that. However, I am afraid I did not hear him deal with what we consider to be a genuine attempt to bridge the gap with a compromise that would allow the pilot to go ahead but with the control still firmly held here, which we do not believe would be the case with the statutory provisions in regulations as he proposes. I did not hear him address those suggestions. I am bound to say that while I will withdraw the amendment now, I look forward to introducing something very similar on Report.