Welfare Reform Bill

May I join in welcoming the new shadow Secretary of State to her position? She has certainly increased the comedy element, and I hope that she spends many years in that position. I also welcome the return of the eternal hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb), who has spent a long time dealing with this issue. I welcome the broad thrust of the Bill and the proposals in it, not least because most of the ideas were originally suggested by the Select Committee on Work and Pensions—at least, all the good ones were. In the limited time available, I want to pick first on the issue of simplification. I know that the Secretary of State is wedded to the idea of simplification—simplifying the benefits system has been the holy grail for the past 60 years—but I caution him to go slowly and carefully along that route and to bear in mind that a consequence of simplification is the diminution of the rights and benefits of women. There are very serious issues to do with that. In recent years, the amount of money lost to fraud has plummeted, but the amount lost to error has stayed more or less the same as a consequence of some of the complexity in the system. The Secretary of State knows that I am a good friend of his—I do not like falling out with him—but I do not think that removing a benefit and then having three different categories of benefit to cope with that removal is a process of simplification. That is a problem. Sadly, people's lives do not fit into neat boxes. When we are considering simplification or reform, we should understand that creating three categories of jobseeker's allowance to cover such a change is part of the issue of continued non-simplification. I think that everybody would welcome any progress, but the Secretary of State needs to take a cautious route and to be aware of the consequences of such changes. Despite the valiant but unfounded efforts of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) to state otherwise, there has been significant welfare reform over the past 10 years. We now have an extremely active welfare system instead of the extremely passive system that existed in the past. Many of the provisions in the Bill for an active welfare state should be welcomed, but they are heavily dependent on two things: resources and extremely good personal advisers. I know that the Secretary of State has recently been very successful in getting additional resources despite the economic situation, but there is a danger that the psychology of asking why we should do that when there are no jobs takes over. We have heard some of that today, but the idea that there are no jobs is a myth in itself. Apart from anything else, about 800,000 people retire every year, which means that jobs automatically become available. The churn every month is in excess of 200,000. There are still lots of jobs and job opportunities out there, and even if somebody cannot get a job today it is right and proper that the state should prepare them to get a job tomorrow, next month or in three months' time. It should not wait until the jobs are allegedly available.