Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Turner for giving us the opportunity to come back to these issues and put something clearly on the record. Indeed, I am most grateful for the vote of confidence from the noble Lord, Lord Freud, that we will deal with these things appropriately. Amendment 30 refers to the categories of people who are currently prescribed under Section 124(1)(e) of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992—in other words, the categories of people who are entitled to receive income support. The amendment would ensure that we could not move specified categories of people off income support until the Secretary of State thought it no longer appropriate for them to be entitled to income support—that is, until those groups had appropriate alternative means of support. My noble friend tabled a similar amendment in Grand Committee, when she eloquently expressed the fears that some groups, such as carers and pregnant women, had about being moved from income support to a regime where they had to commit themselves to work-related activity or some sort of waged employment. I have previously assured noble Lords that our intention in abolishing income support is to simplify and to streamline the current complex benefits system and to make it more sensitive to people's needs.