My Lords, following that speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, I support these amendments. I want to reinforce something that my noble friend Lady Kramer said earlier. Language is very important in this context and the amendment addresses that perfectly. We have to be careful how we use language in terms of social security and social protection, above and beyond some of the specialisms familiar to some of the noble Lords who made powerful speeches on this amendment.
I want to add something to the definition of people in vulnerable circumstances. A couple of weeks ago, I was interested to read some remarks from Mr Frank Field, who as noble Lords will know is the chair of the departmental Select Committee covering the DWP. He said something that I recognised, which is new to me and him, about what we as a country are facing immediately and over the next two or three years, with the conjunction of interest rates, a freeze in benefits and other things, together with the administration of the ultimate safety net that now resides in some but not all local authorities after the abolition some years back of the Social Fund and community care grants. Frank Field characterised that as families falling out of stable situations into destitution, particularly in relation to three very normal things. Their electricity is being cut off; they are being evicted, because their rent is not being kept up, and there is the dimension of universal credit implementation in relation to that in the short term; and there is food poverty. In these three circumstances we are seeing for the first time in this country, certainly in my experience, these things coming together and ordinary families suddenly finding themselves falling out of financial security and stability.
We have nothing. The previous set of social security provisions always had a residual safety net. I am concerned now that that is absent, particularly in certain local authority areas. I hope that we can find some way to capture this, if not by this amendment then with something that captures the sense behind it. There is a timing issue here. Over the next two or three years, we need the Bill to pick up people who have faced the conjunction of circumstances that Frank Field described and embrace them. If it is not done by this amendment, it should be done by something else.