Clause 1
Welfare Reform Bill
4:00 pm
Jim Murphy (Minister of State (Work), Department for Work and Pensions; East Renfrewshire, Labour)
Thank you for calling me, Mr. Hood. I congratulate you on your appointment to the Chair—co-Chair, lead Chair or whatever—of our proceedings. The Clerks or Mr. Amess might have informed you that we had a relatively well-informed debate in good tone while trying to work our way through some important details of the Bill. At the start of our second of 16 sittings, I seek to continue that approach.
I was responding to a point about migration raised by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander). I said that the migration strategy will be based on the premise that those who have been out of the labour market for the shortest time will be migrated first, simply because those people have a greater chance, based on objective analysis, of returning to the labour market.