Welfare Reform Bill

I am grateful to my noble friend, as ever, for her explanation of her engagement in this at an earlier stage. In February 2004 the DWP published an independent evaluation of the community sentences on withdrawal-of-benefit pilots. The evaluation highlighted a small increase in the number of people who complied with their community sentence because of the sanctions policy, and it was agreed that the length of the pilot would be extended to test the scheme further, looking at any lessons learnt before making a decision to roll it out nationally. The introduction of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, to which my noble friend has just referred, brought new rules to manage the breach. Any need for the pilots to continue was effectively ended by the measures introduced by the Act to address breach; the Act replaced existing community sentences with a new community order, which was implemented with effect from April 2005. The Act removed the court’s discretion on whether or not to punish breach, which meant that a court then had to take action. Will we learn the lessons from this? Yes, of course. We hope that piloting an evaluation will always lead to learning lessons, so that we can ensure that we put into effect in future policy development those things that we have learnt. A Statement was made by the right honourable Jack Straw in February this year indicating that the pilots would be brought to an end, so that is already on the record. I am happy to make details of that independent evaluation available to the noble Lord.