Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, like many noble Lords I am a great fan of pre-legislative scrutiny, because I think it improves the quality of the legislation we pass. I also have great faith in this Committee system, because we go through a Bill line by line in order to improve it, amend it, and make good law as a result. I certainly support this amendment, because a trial period does make sense. I look across at my good colleague the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. She and I sat on the Public Accounts Committee in the other place. Time and again we considered reports from the National Audit Office which showed that some great government scheme, some great initiative, had gone billions of pounds over budget, or gone over time. Inevitably we found that these things had not been trialled beforehand, to see if key elements of the proposals would work effectively. Some unfortunate Permanent Secretary would be brought before the Public Accounts Committee, and like modern-day Draculas, we drew a lot of blood in our interrogations. Inevitably, this Permanent Secretary was not responsible for what the department had got wrong, anyway; it was the previous incumbent, but that is by the by. We were seeking to learn lessons, but inevitably it was like closing the door after the horse had bolted. If only more care had been taken, or things had been trialled and piloted beforehand, then things would not have gone wrong in the way that they did. If the Government take this amendment on board, it has the potential to save millions of pounds. If the Bill does not take account of this, then somewhere down the track the NAO will come in, in two or three years, and find that there has been some great failure, or some great cost. The Public Accounts Committee will have to investigate, and the Department for Work and Pensions will be held up again as having failed to pilot or introduce a scheme in a good or effective way, as it promised it would. The amendment makes a lot of sense, and I hope the Minister will see that.