Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I am utterly delighted to hear the enthusiasm of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hollis and Lady Meacher, for the early activation of lone parents. We agree, although we want there to be protection against the full weight of financial penalty in that early activation. The Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, made much of the fact that by having this protection at the age of five we would in practice be forced to compress all the activity in the five-to-seven period, but the gap is clearly not as big as two years. Even the whole process of a sanction regime as described by the Minister, in which there are written warnings, visits and so on, takes up time. We are not talking about a huge gap of time or halving the four years, which the Minister sees as preparation for work. I was challenged by the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on what on earth the sanctions might be. The Minister described two: written warnings and visits—visits are hassle. There are, however, several others. Clearly, taking people’s time is effective and I suspect that there are ways of doing that even under present legislation. Making the way in which money is collected rather more inconvenient is effective. Controls on how money is spent and in what form are another. It has always seemed somewhat illogical to us on this side of the House to come in with the full force of financial sanctions against a community that subsists on the breadline in many cases. What are you doing? Are you taking their money away? Do you expect these people and their children to starve? It is illogical. There must be more imaginative ways of running a sanctions regime and I hope that the amendment will force a little bit of creativity on the other side of the House in managing that sanctions regime. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, asked whether the amendment would apply purely to the JSA or to the ESA. I should make it clear that I have been corrected by my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale, who is a total expert in the technology of these Bills and who has pointed out that, according to new Section 6B in Clause 4(1)(b), it will cross over from the JSA to the ESA, so it will cover both of those. Let me deal with the other accusation, which is that there is an anomaly in having financial penalties in the WFI regime and not in the ready-for-work regime. The first regime is very light; it has been established and seems to be operating. We are now introducing extremely rapidly a whole new system that in this country is quite revolutionary in that it brings the age down. Last year, the child of a lone parent only had to be 16 for there to be virtually no interaction with state except for WFIs. If we are to change that system quite so radically and quite so speedily, we obviously need to put a safety break into it so that no one who has a youngest child under five—in other words, under school age—will face financial sanction.