Clause 3
11:30 am
Jeremy Browne (Taunton, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendment 4, in clause 3, page 2, line 17, leave out paragraph (b).
This is a simple, clarifying amendment. Clause 3 (1)(b) says that
“the person has a connection with the United Kingdom of a kind prescribed by regulations.”
Unless I have not fully understood the nature of those regulations, I am slightly uncomfortable with the vagueness of the phrase, “a connection with the United Kingdom”. I have connection with all kinds of countries without necessarily expecting to be eligible for financial support from them. Subsection (2) lists as specific criteria
“income support; employment and support allowance; jobseeker’s allowance”
and so on. There are seven different criteria of eligibility. If one were eligible under one or more of those seven criteria, one would imagine that one also had a connection with the UK. After all, one does not qualify for JSA in the UK if one has no connection with this country. Otherwise, there would be billions of people getting UK JSA. The point I seek to draw out in this amendment stems from the fact that I do not understand the need to specify the connection with the UK when it is implicit in the nature of the list of entitlements.