Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I will speak briefly. Points have been made very eloquently by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and others. There is a common concern that this should be got right. Perhaps there is a slight subtext that if this is the nail in the shoe that gets the whole thing discredited because it does not work or gives rise to disturbing social consequences, we will have lost the great prize of universal credit that many of us want. For the reasons that my noble friend just enunciated, there is an argument against complexity and having a double system. We have heard about the difficulties of having weekly, two-weekly and monthly payments. It could make things difficult and give rise to error and potential arrears, for example. We do not really know what will happen before we undertake this. One has to judge whether to go ahead and see what happens. If the Minister can explain with sensitivity how he intends to introduce safeguards, I am with him. The most important point is picked up in Amendment 28. We need to have a mechanism, as I suggested at Second Reading, for assessing after the event whether this works—and, if it does not work, which we hope it will, for applying the brakes and changing it without loss of face. It is worth looking at this. There may be good reasons for doing it, but if it puts undue pressure on some of the most vulnerable people and their families, we should recognise that. In a wider context, it would not be worth saving small sums if we found that we could not deliver our intended objectives.