Welfare Reform Bill

I think we would all accept that there is a difference between this Bill and, for example, a pensions Bill and its draft regulations, on which the Minister, his officials and his staff need to consult what I would call the professional organisations. These are quasi-technical and may be associated with the process; they have their own exchange and interchange of information and of what they flag up, and so on. In other words, there is a professional body of interested but skilled parties who can negotiate with a department on an equal base, and, as a result, draft regulations may be improved before they subsequently become full regulations. The trouble with welfare reform and a Bill such as this is that, apart from the charitable organisations and lobby groups that have a wealth of expertise, for the most part there are not the bodies that the noble Lord and his staff would expect to negotiate with in the same way as he would expect to negotiate with business organisations or the NAPF about pension structures. Therefore, the very fact that there might be 200 regulations coming our way means that Members too find that they have no input from professional bodies that are equivalent to those pension bodies but that deal with welfare, in order to help shape our thoughts and give us an extra resource of experience. This is not necessarily appropriate for Bills for which there are bodies that can serve that function, but for framework Bills and where bundles of regulation are likely to cluster in a particular field—housing here, or the benefit cap there—it would be very helpful for all of us seeking to scrutinise those regulations in due course to have had the input of the SSAC before we commence, because otherwise there is nothing between us, the draft regulations and the framework Bill, and we will not get the appropriate input that we need.