Welfare Reform Bill

I agree with the hon. Lady on many things, but I must disagree with her last observation. The purport of new clause 7 is to put in the Bill the very protection that she says is already in place. That protection is not in place. I will explain why I think that she is in error, although I will be happy to allow her to intervene, if she does not agree with what I say. In Committee, the Minister said that there were safeguards. He made it clear on more than one occasion that page 6 of the draft regulations with which he furnished the Committee referred to safeguards before a sanction was imposed. The problem that I have with that—the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) probably should also think that this is a problem—is that the text says:"““The majority of safeguards are not set out in regulations””." The safeguards are not set out in not only the Bill, but the regulations. The document continues to say that the safeguards"““are in operational guidance to ensure that where necessary they can be adapted if evidence suggests that they are not effectively protecting people””." Page 6 of the document to which the Minister referred many times upstairs says that the safeguards are not in the Bill, or even in regulations, but in operational guidance. When the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire made her intervention, she was probably referring to the assurances that were given in Committee about the way in which a volunteer from a support group could not be sanctioned. However, I am afraid that the Minister uncharacteristically missed the point in Committee when he said that in such circumstances it would be quite possible under the sanctioning regime for the sanction—the benefit docking—to be nil. However, that still is not good enough, because it implies that an individual from a support group who has volunteered falls under the sanctioning regime. The Minister also said that support group members who volunteered would have a right of appeal, which presupposes that they would be mired in the sanctioning regime. Such people would get rung up and would need to show good cause. They would have to go through all the rigmarole of arguing the toss about why, under the hypothetical example that I cited, they were not able to turn up for the full raft of work-focused interviews because their fluctuating condition meant that they were okay one week, but not so good in subsequent weeks, which was why they had not satisfied the requirements of the officials handling their case.