Welfare Reform Bill

Again, I wonder whether my noble friend can help us. Are we still eliding the distinction between progress to work and employment? Where we are dealing with employment, we are dealing with children whose youngest age is seven. Therefore, they would fall within the school day. It may well be that the child is tired and does not want to stay on for an elongated day and so on. That seems to be very different from issues about childminders et cetera. Where you are talking about progress to work and a child aged between three and seven, we know that at the age of three the child is able to go into part-time nursery school. I know of no parents who refuse that offer. They are delighted that their child is making that step. We might need assurance from my noble friend that the regime of progress to work and the amount of activity it engenders is such that it can be perfectly reasonably done within that sort of part-time care provided by nursery schools, kindergartens and so on from the age of three, of which every parent I know is delighted to take advantage. It becomes oppressive or unreasonable only when you have to find additional care beyond that, with which the parent is uncomfortable because they feel that it is inappropriate for their child. That does not seem to be necessarily the situation with progress to work.