Clause 28
Welfare Reform Bill
3:53 pm
Anne McGuire (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Disabled People), Department for Work and Pensions; Stirling, Labour)
I thought I had dealt with that matter in my opening comments about the series of issues that we want to look at in the piloting process. The amendment is unacceptable to us. In some respects, that is because of the way in which the parliamentary process operates. However, I thought it was important to deal with some of the points raised in the debate. Obviously, there will be a right of appeal against the imposition of a sanction, as there has been in relation to all areas of sanction.
I need to be clear: we do not want people to be sanctioned and we do not want to impose a sanction on housing benefit. It is important to emphasise that we want people who have been evicted for antisocial and unacceptable behaviour to be offered the option of looking at that behaviour with a view to going back into housing benefit. The policy will be successful if it encourages people to take up rehabilitation. If no sanction is imposed, we will consider the policy to be successful.
We are asking the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey to withdraw his amendment because we intend to commence the pilots for the proposal as soon as is practical—in the winter of 2007-08. I assure hon. Members that we are considering pilots of two years only. At the end of that time, we will decide whether to roll out nationally on the basis of a full evaluation of the effectiveness of the scheme, using the criteria that I have indicated. That evaluation will include a full regulatory impact assessment for the proposal. If the hon. Gentleman’s amendment were to be agreed, the difficulty would be that there would be no flexibility as to the start time. He is asking for a sunset clause at a time when, because of the parliamentary process, we cannot be definite about when we can start the pilots. However, I can tell the Committee that we are looking at two years only, and that when we come to discuss the regulations we will have a much clearer idea as to when the pilots will commence and, therefore, end. The hon. Gentleman would be proposing a sunset clause without knowing when sunrise was going to take place, so I ask him to withdraw the amendment.