Welfare Reform Bill

I am now completely baffled. I thought the argument was that if somebody had not exhausted their time on the contributory basis and had, for whatever reason, been able to get back into work, which then collapsed or folded, they would be able to get back into the support group using some of the contributions that were still available. The noble Lord ran against this the argument that this might be five years away and was therefore unrealistic in terms of connection. The point that I was going to press was that, in that case, the Minister was saying that one of the easements that we currently have is the 12-weeks’ linking rule. I was going to come back and suggest that in these circumstances it would be sensible to have something more like a 12-month linking rule so that there was a realistic time in which, if either the job or the person’s health folded again, they could come back and use up their unused period of contributory benefit.