Welfare Reform Bill

This has been a very good debate, with some powerful personal accounts, including the last two contributions. I do not have time to mention all the speeches made, but I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir John Butterfill), who made a powerful speech on behalf of people with sight impairment, which followed an intervention by the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) and was supported by many hon. Members on both sides of the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) made an excellent speech, making a link between work and wellbeing—the benefits of work. My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) also made an excellent speech that raised some very important points about the welfare of people in his constituency and the issue of unemployment there. We heard an authoritative speech from the Chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, who made several important points about giving people skills, preparing people for work, job retention and the point at which people get help. We also heard a very powerful speech from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who was right to remind us of the setting for this debate and the fact that many of our constituents who are out of work are not used to that experience, and we need to bear that in mind. We heard an authoritative speech from the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire) and a considered speech from the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt) about the social fund, which will bear careful analysis later. We had an important contribution from the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg) and from hon. Members who happen to represent some of the poorest parts of the country. Although I did not agree with everything that they said, it was good to hear their voices. The hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) made the point about the need to give people incentives to work and the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Davies), representing another very poor part of the country, gave some striking figures about the present state of employment and benefit receipt in his constituency. He told the House that some 2,600 people were receiving jobseeker's allowance, 6,500 are stranded on incapacity benefit and there are only 218 vacancies. That was a sombre reminder of the problems we face today. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) broadly welcomed the Bill. We want to see the contracting, Freud-style reform of our welfare system, and we look forward to exploring the Bill in detail to see just how far it goes in fulfilling that vision. I make a specific plea to Ministers that was made by many hon. Members on both sides of the House. Much of the Bill is devoted to regulation-making powers. As has been said, regulations are mentioned 387 times in 114 pages. I hope that the Minister, when he winds up, will give us an assurance that the draft regulations will be published in time for the Committee stage, so that hon. Members can do their job and scrutinise the Bill in detail. We may give the Bill a broad welcome, but there are several issues that we want to examine in detail. For example, we need further details about what will be required of lone parents with children under seven. It is right to remind the House of the background to this issue, because the momentum for reform on the issue of lone parents moving from income support to work came from the Opposition, and I pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) in that regard. As I recall, it was not until June 2007 that the Government came round to the same way of thinking—after the proposal had been made by the Conservatives. Up to that point, lone parents of children up to the age of 16 had been allowed to remain on income support without extra requirements on them, but at that point a line was drawn at the age of seven. Not only have the Government now agreed with the proposals made by my right hon. Friend and taken the age limit down to seven, but they want to go further still, which was not in our proposals. We need to look very carefully at just what the Government will require, and we will have a debate on that. It is clear in the White Paper—I hope that the Secretary of State knows what is in his own White Paper—what he is requiring of the parents of children between the ages of three and six as well as those of children from the age of one. I know that the Secretary of State made his name as a baby-sitter, but we want to prevent his being remembered as a baby-snatcher. We want to look at those matters in some detail. We also want to look at the issue of budgeting loans.