I do not want to be discourteous to the Minister. He is much respected in the House, and many of us engaged with him in a very satisfactory way on universal credit. He took suggestions away, he listened, he argued, he produced new evidence which made some opposition Members change their mind. We have every respect for the fact that, as a Minister, the noble Lord is genuinely evidence based—except on this. He has produced no evidence.
What puzzles me is that the Minister has not asked for the evidence to substantiate his two drivers about getting people into work and having fairness between in-work and out-of-work claimants. We know from experience that the noble Lord respects evidence and offers it to us. He has come to the Committee, after Second Reading and three Committee sittings, knowing that we will be looking for evidence to sustain his position—and if he has it, we will respect it—but he has not come forward with it; he has simply repeated assertions. Either the evidence is not there, in which case the assertions have no substance, or the evidence
is there but is not being shared with us, which suggests a level of bad faith that I do not in any way attribute to the Minister. So where are we?