Welfare Reform Bill

It is not reasonable to go from the Gregg report to this legislation because a lot of the philosophy behind the Gregg report is to some degree misconceived; it is certainly not being taken as a straightforward transposition from the one to the other. I think the noble Lord would accept that. From my experience, every lone parent who is anxious to go back to work, as has been said and as Gregg would encourage—I absolutely agree with that—has nearly always got their childcare sorted, or, if not, they are up to the last point of getting it. Once you have got to that point, it really is easy. The problem is those parents who, often because of misdiagnosed ill-health, moderate depression, lack of skills, lack of self-confidence, feeling battered or low self-esteem, cannot even get the energy going to get into the progress-to-work activity. That, over and beyond poverty, overshadows, very often to awful effect, the quality of life of their children. That is why I asked my noble friend much earlier on for examples of what this would look like. This progress-to-work activity must be a comfortable fit for what the parent with care for fairly small children can manage in the hours during which the child is likely to go to school. Beyond that, it becomes oppressive. A lot of the Gregg report is not terribly relevant because the Bill has gone beyond that; it has gone in different directions from that.