Welfare Reform Bill

That argument suggests that if a person stays on benefit for 25 years, they will still be subject to no compulsion. That is nonsense. There must come a point when, for the benefit of the individual—never mind the benefit of the taxpayer—we do something different for them. The Bill is offering six weeks of work experience—it could be called a work trial, but it cannot be called Workfare—for four days a week, with the other day allowed for job searches, skills development and other top-ups to the assistance that those people have already received for two years. It is not Workfare. If people are going to carry on calling it that, they ignore the evidence. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington quoted the Select Committee's report, but he did not finish the quotation, because the report stated:""We welcome the Secretary of State's emphasis on the difference between 'workfare' and the 'Work For Your Benefit' pilots proposed in the Welfare Reform Bill and we urge the Government to ensure that the piloted approach does not negatively impact upon the employment opportunities of those on the programme. We ask the Government to publish a full evaluation of the pilot and we recommend that it only proceeds with the programme if this appraisal demonstrates convincing proof of success."" That is the basis of my amendments. The provisions should be piloted on a gentle approach because this is new territory for this country. We know some of the pitfalls from the research. Indeed, the person who carried out the research that my hon. Friend quoted was the specialist adviser to the Committee's inquiry, so we had his advice at first hand, and he was able to give us a detailed insight into the systems operating in Australia, Canada and the US. He was adamant that what is being proposed in Britain is not Workfare. Let me correct another quotation. It was suggested that we questioned or doubted the efficacy of the flexible new deal. The Committee actually said:""The Committee has endorsed the principles of"" the flexible new deal""in this report. As a programme that provides more personalised support delivered through large-scale, longer contracts it has the potential to offer better support for the long term unemployed than is currently available."" Mention has been made of Mr. Freud—David Freud, that is, not the other one. I wonder why he has acquired such a Svengali-like reputation because there was nothing revolutionary in what he said. He came up with two key principles, and, again, they were nothing new. The first was that when people had been long-term unemployed, they had to have much more intensive and expensive support to help them back into work, and that the best way of doing that was to transfer the risk of the cost to the private sector. The second was that the way to fund the first proposal was to use the benefit savings to pay the private contractor. That was absolute anathema to the Treasury and ever since David Freud's report came out, the Treasury has been resisting it, because it does not want the report's proposals to be accepted. One pilot is underway now—I forget where—and we will have to see what the outcome is. Some of the pathways to work pilots were partly funded by benefit savings and it is clear that there are benefits arising from the private and voluntary sectors carrying out employment programmes. That is nothing new. It has been going on for about 25 years. The truth is that Jobcentre Plus can offer very little to people who have been on benefit for a year, but it offers a superb service in the early days of unemployment, and especially in the first six months, as it can get about 65 per cent. of people back into work in the six months after they first claim. The staff at Jobcentre Plus perform extremely well. What is being proposed would be a completely new area of activity for them, but it is something of a misnomer to say that something that is not happening at the moment is being privatised.