My Lords, once again I find myself stepping into the shoes of my noble friend Lord Storey. Regardless of how comfortable those shoes are, I will do my best. This is something where we are saying that the Government have done something pretty well and asking if they will carry on doing it—that is the essence of what is in front of me. The Kickstart scheme seems to have started well and at the right time because, when any job market goes into a state of convulsion, the people who are shed are the young and less qualified. You take a chance on people coming into the job market, but you might not want to take quite that degree of chance.
Kickstart seems to have done well. It is not perfect, but it would surprise nobody who has been looking at this for any length of time that, when a new government scheme comes in, smaller firms have trouble accessing it. We would expect that, to be honest. Things like this are smoothed out by planning them, looking at them and making sure they go on. If the Government are not prepared to do that, we need an explanation of why because, with the job market in flux, as I said before, we will need things like this to get people involved. If the Government do not like what they are seeing in this scheme, they should tell us why. It was supposed to end in December, but I think we have 150 jobs promised, from the information I have. The CBI has come out and said that it is a good scheme which it likes, and others have said that before. So why are the Government not taking that on board and improving it? We could use it for a little longer.
The amendment itself basically just calls for the Secretary of State to review and consider the Kickstart scheme:
“The review under subsection (1) must consider … extending the lifetime of the current scheme; and … extending the criteria of those eligible to benefit from the scheme beyond those receiving universal credit.”
The Government had a good idea and did some good work. It seems to be working, so can they now build upon it, not stop it? That is essentially what this is about. I beg to move.