Schedule 1
Welfare Reform Bill
4:00 pm
Jim Murphy (Minister of State (Work), Department for Work and Pensions; East Renfrewshire, Labour)
I beg to move amendment No. 78, in schedule 1, page 49, line 2, after ‘Act,’ insert—
‘( ) a contributory allowance,’.
I am slightly worried about saying it, but this should be a brief debate on the amendment, which involves a drafting omission. As Committee members will be aware, schedule 1 is duplicated from existing income support and incapacity benefit legislation, but we omitted to include the phrases contained in the amendment.
The amendment extends the definition of “benefit” given in paragraph 1(5) of schedule 1, which defines what is meant by “benefit” for the purposes of paragraph 1(4) of schedule 1. We use the current regulations to relax the first contribution condition so that it can be satisfied if sufficient contributions have been paid in any one tax year, not necessarily one of the previous three tax years. We want to be able to do the same in future for people who have been entitled to contribute to ESA and to do so we must ensure that to contribute to ESA is defined as a benefit in paragraph 1(5). I apologise for that drafting omission.