Welfare Reform Bill

May I add to that? I was going to wait until the Minister finished, but I wish to add two points which are germane to this discussion. First, the noble Lord is assuming—I absolutely understand why he would—that people respond rationally to sanctions. However, the group with whom he may well be dealing are those whose lives are feckless, chaotic and without much shape. In my experience, those people are semi-literate and probably do not understand what is going on when the sanction is imposed. It is just one of those things that happen to them in a passive way, which means that a high obligation is placed on staff, with the aid of easy-to-read literature and all the rest of it, to make very clear what is going on and what the nature of those sanctions are. My experience of people who have been sanctioned is that they do not know why they have been sanctioned. Secondly—I was waiting to hear the noble Lord refer to this but he has not done so, so perhaps he will go on to do so, in which case I apologise for anticipating him—we have always had a hardship category in relation to sanctions. For example, if you have dependent children the level of sanctions is limited so that, because of your hardship, you are not sanctioned all the way. Disabled people and those with a mental health problem would in my view come into the category of vulnerable people entitled to a hardship adjustment so that their benefit is not completely wiped out. Again, this requires high levels of training and support from the very people who the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, identified; namely, the disability employment advisers in Jobcentre Plus offices. Perhaps the noble Lord can reassure us on those two points. First, can he assume that people with such chaotic lives will understand the rationality of a sanctions system? Secondly, will the hardship regime apply to some of the people who were identified by previous contributors to this debate?