Welfare Reform Bill

I shall pose a couple of questions on this important group of amendments. They relate to the experience garnered from the pilot Pathways to Work projects. How did the exercise of discretion work in these circumstances? Has any knowledge gained from how that discretion was used been brought to bear on the proposals going forward? It is important to know whether there is enough statistical data from which to make sensible predictions. In my experience, the case loads that personal advisers are dealing with lead them to conclude that everybody gets the same kind of treatment. Discretion takes extra time and involvement and the caseloads that the advisers are dealing with, even in the pilot projects, are stretching. That is bound to get worse as the programme unfolds across the rest of the country, and this is potentially a particular vulnerable group of claimants and clients that needs very special consideration. Has anybody done any risk analysis or cost-benefit analysis of what it would cost to issue the blanket exemption that Macmillan is asking for? I do not think that it would add up to an amount that would make a significant strategic difference to the implementation of the proposals in the Bill. The Committee might like to have some sense of it. It might be difficult to pin it down to a specific sum of money, but the department must have a ballpark figure that would give it a sense of what it would cost to concede this amendment. If I am wrong about that and it is a strategically large number, the Committee would want to look at it again. The case that has been made to me is persuasive. Failing safe with this client group is the right thing to do, and I would need powerful evidence to suggest that the Government should do otherwise. I hope that the Minister will look carefully at this group of amendments and will go back to his advisers and ask them more questions, particularly about the cost and the capability of caseworkers who are handing a big case load to apply discretion in the case of this vulnerable client group before he can be satisfied that the clients will not suffer at the hands of this new system in an untoward way.