Clause 28
Welfare Reform Bill
4:15 pm
Anne McGuire (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Disabled People), Department for Work and Pensions; Stirling, Labour)
This is the great philosophical argument that we are all going to have to deal with—the rights and responsibilities issue. We cannot say that people can opt out of their responsibilities to other members of their community, and that is not only in respect of accepting a benefit from the state. The hon. Gentleman perhaps answered his question in a previous debate, although a little more starkly than I would have done. I reassure the Committee that if the individual co-operates with the rehabilitation process and the support that will be built into it, the sanction can be lifted at any point. That is what we are seeking to do.
When he returns to Inverness tonight, the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey might wish to reflect on what he will say to the neighbours of the six people who are so bad that Highland council is going to evict them if he will not support the piloting—we are not rolling it out—of the sanction regime. The sanction regime tells people starkly, “We are at the end of our tether with your behaviour. We are still prepared to invest in you and we still want to get you back into the mainstream, but you have to do something too.” The Dundee projects and other projects have shown that that can happen, if there is give and take on both sides by the state and the community and by the individual.
I turn to the issue of resources, which the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds has mentioned. The Government are investing heavily in rehabilitation. The respect action plan announced our commitment to establish a national network of family intervention centres. We are on track to deliver them in 50 areas by the end of 2006.
Mr. Boswellrose—