Welfare Reform Bill

It is certainly important and will be part of the contractual arrangements to which providers have to have regard that they make sure that they cater for all customers referred to them under the provisions, as well as fulfilling their ongoing obligations under the DDA. Part of the approach to evaluation—there are noble Lords here who are more able and understand the issues better than me—will be to undertake qualitative research to seek to understand the journey that people have or have not made. We should recognise that we are talking initially about pilots or pathfinders, not national rollout. We envisage that evaluation will not wait for long. When we have developed the "work for your benefit" specification, we will certainly look again at what monitoring requirements ought to be in the contracts. Perhaps I can conclude by giving assurances about the planned evaluation of our contractual arrangements as the right approach, rather than the detailed prescription of what record keeping providers have to undertake. I hang on to the point that although we have made really good progress in supporting people in moving closer to and into the labour market, for some that journey is still a long way off. That is unacceptable and we cannot allow it to continue.