Welfare Reform Bill

Debate on whether Clause 9 should stand part of the Bill. We have covered half the issues to which Clause 9 gives rise, and we still have another batch to go through. I am a little sorry that my noble friend has not talked about the right to privacy under Article 8 in the Human Rights Act when requiring people to answer questions about their drug and alcohol use and to undergo tests with police and probation officers. The Government are supposed to put safeguards into place so that this does not affect a person’s private life and contravene Article 8, but perhaps we can go into this later.