Welfare Reform Bill

I am very happy to support the thrust of the amendment so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. It is a crucial and core element in the successful deployment of this policy. My difficulty is that if you look at the report of Professor Gregg—it is supposed to be all about that—and if you believe that the report is to be translated into operation, some of these concerns may fly off. People may say that that is a naive view, but I remind Members of the Grand Committee that the third sentence of Professor Gregg’s personal statement, which prefaces his report, states: ""In addition, and central to this Review, it should where possible give a voice to the claimant in designing support services"." Although the report deals with very difficult issues of penalties, conditionality and so on, on page 53 it talks about encouragement, agreement and co-ownership of the policy. I suspect that if the Minister could persuade the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that those two conditions were to be fulfilled in the reality of the rollout of these programmes, he might withdraw these amendments with some degree of confidence. However, the problem is that none of us, at heart, believes that the rest of the Bill will deliver that. I have seen for myself that children can often benefit very much from parents at work in a whole variety of ways if the circumstances are right. I have also experienced in an international context, particularly in Scandinavia and in the Netherlands, a public policy programme which makes the fundamental well-being of the child involved in any decision of this kind paramount. It is a key condition and it is built into the public policy programmes of sister European nations; so it is possible. Professor Gregg seems to be trying to get there but I do not think that this Bill does it. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, makes an absolutely valid point that there are no guarantees that we shall get to where we want to be, given the way in which the Bill is drafted. These amendments capture of all that. The only difference, although this is a trite way of putting it, is that sister European nations invest money that we cannot envisage into these systems. We have no way of knowing. There are all sorts of financial difficulties facing this country, going forward; everyone understands that. David Freud, soon to be Lord Freud of DEL and AME—I hope he chooses his title with care; I am going to suggest that one to him—won the argument. The Government are to be congratulated on accepting the fact that you can, in certain circumstances, if you are careful, spend to save. The right to bid is already in some of the Flexible New Deal and the welfare-to-work agenda. If you can demonstrate that by drawing down some public expenditure and investing it wisely, with the children at the heart of the investment decision, everyone benefits. The question is how you contrive the legislation to provide the confidence that the Committee is seeking. I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, regarding this area. There is work that we can yet do, in spite of the Minister’s helpful approach to proceedings in Committee. He has to think about it seriously, because we are not there yet.