Welfare Reform Bill

This amendment removes lines 13 and 14 on page 2, which correspond precisely with new Section 17A(5)(c). That allows regulations to be made which suspend, ""any jobseeker’s agreement to which a person is a party for any period during which the person is a participant"." I should like an explanation of this, if the Minister could provide it. If the jobseeker’s agreement is suspended, what happens to the jobseeker? I am not talking about going back at the end of the six months to the beginning of stage 3, but a rather different situation. Is he now unemployed again, or is he deemed still to be in his agreement, pending reinstatement? How will this be recorded? Will this conveniently keep him off the unemployment figures, and what is expected to happen during the suspension? What efforts will be made to keep the participant engaged, which after all is what the whole of this clause is about? Once again we are coming up against the problem of the Bill appearing to be quite innocuous, but the devil, which of course is in the detail, is nowhere to be found. I will have a clearer understanding of this part of the Bill if the Minister were to clear up some of these questions, which, I must say, he has been very successful at doing so far. I beg to move.