Welfare Reform Bill

I support the speech that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, has just made. The Bill seeks to influence the social norms of our society in relation to work, and particularly to influence the social norms of certain groups in our society who may have got out of the habit of working. I am not sure whether co-ownership of the Bill’s provisions is the right route but we should debate financial penalties. I shall not start that debate now but a number of the briefings that I have received from various organisations are profoundly concerned about financial penalties being imposed on people who are already living below the poverty rate. That is perhaps a separate issue but let us focus our minds on what is the best way to transform the social norms of those who are not working so that they feel working is the normal thing to do, the thing they ought to be doing and the thing everybody is doing. I suspect that carrots are better than sticks for that purpose.