Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the concession he made, which from my perspective will make life a great deal easier—at least for 12 months. It will encourage our people to get going and become involved in small amounts of work. Without wishing to seem churlish, I wonder whether there is any possibility of some kind of flexibility at the end of that 12-month period, perhaps by starting a period again. I can see the value of having some form of cut-off at which point one might really be putting some pressure on people to get into work, but I can envisage, without any difficulty, a number of people who would clearly be just about managing until that point, but would be some way yet from being able to get into what we would call open employment. I feel that the detriment of the sudden ending of this provision without any kind of flexibility could be very unhelpful, and I would be interested to know what the Minister has to say about that.