Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I thought that this started off as a relatively straightforward debate, but I am delighted that it has expanded into a huge philosophical debate which is very important. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken at least in support of the opposition to the clause. I think that some would go quite a bit further but there are important issues around childcare, the time spent with children, the propensity of the mother to want to work and the quality of substitute childcare. In one way or another, each of those has been touched on by noble Lords. I think that it was the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, who expressed the view that she was not totally signed up to the concept of lone parents in work when their children are as young as five, and I acknowledge that. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, made the point that the thrust of the policy rests on the fact that helping lone parents into work is generally their best route out of poverty, is good for their self-esteem and all of that. We are signed up to that. Indeed, it was our Government, possibly with advice from the noble Lord, who started us down the path of reducing the age. My opposition was quite specific. It was not about changing the age of five—there may be arguments for that, and that may be something that people will wish to return to later in our proceedings—it was simply deferring its implementation for two exceptionally sound reasons. One is that there has to be another transfer to universal credit before too long anyway, so why go through those two administrative processes with all the upheaval and costs that must be associated with them? The other is related to issues of childcare. The Government have introduced, or are going to introduce, improvements in some respects, so why not transfer parents from JSA when those improved childcare arrangements exist? Why push them through two different sets of arrangements? As for available jobs, there is always churn in the job market. If the figure is down to 275,000—I can remember days when one would routinely quote 400,000 as the number of vacancies available through Jobcentre Plus at any point in time—the noble Lord must accept that there is a very restricted labour market out there at the moment. Forcing something like 100,000 lone parents to confront that, we would suggest prematurely, does not seem particularly wise. I think that we have taken the debate as far as we can today. I am sure that it will be returned to at Report, and possibly more robustly than merely seeking the deferral which this clause suggests. If the Minister wants to quit while he is ahead on this and not face that, I invite him to do so here and now. Clause 57 agreed. Clause 58 agreed. Clause 59 : Claimants dependent on drugs etc Clause 59 : Claimants dependent on drugs etc Debate on whether Clause 59 should stand part of the Bill.