Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. I know that he is concerned about the immediate, fearful financial position that we all find ourselves in, but, in time, we will move out of this world stagnation. In that future world, there will be fierce competition across the world, and we will need in this country a workforce of young people who are as productive as possible. The evidence is clear: every £1 spent in the early years on early intervention will save £7 in adulthood. We need to think about the short term, but if we are going to be a viable economy in the future, we also have to think about the long term and maintaining as far as possible effective early intervention even in these difficult times. Can we not think about doing practical things? For instance, could not pregnant women have access to free bus passes? I understand from previous discussions that that is not currently the case. In terms of mobile telephony, are there not practical things that we could do to work with the telecommunications industry to ensure that pregnant mothers and lone parents have some special concessions? As a concerned society, recognising as Iain Duncan Smith and others have done that early intervention is crucial to the future success of this country, why do we not try to think of some practical things we can do without producing the disincentives that the Minister spoke about.