New Clause 6
Welfare Reform Bill
12:30 pm
John Mason (Glasgow East, Scottish National Party)
Thank you, Mr. Hood; you are very generous.
I asked the Barnardo’s representative in our evidence session where this would leave families and children. The answer seems to be that the extended family will help the children to eat, that the parents might be out stealing, or that people will just not be eating at all. The constituent to whom I referred told me that he had gone three days without eating in the previous week. That is the kind of world in which, I am afraid, we are still living.
I am not against sanctions per se, if people have extra income above the amount that they need to live on. However, the benefit system is not exactly generous and does not give people a lot of leeway to meet such sanctions. New clause 8 proposes a means inquiry, which would help to re-emphasise that we must know people’s real circumstances—not theoretically or on paper—when we are talking about moving into sanctions.
Clearly, we are living in a society with many different kinds of people. There are people who try to screw the system to get every penny they can get and who contribute absolutely nothing to society. It is those people who the Government are probably seeking to target through the Bill. I am not opposed to that, but I urge them to think of the people in society who are struggling, who are scared of this House and of bureaucracy, and who find it difficult to read and write and to take part in our incredibly complicated system. I appeal to Ministers to consider how we can better protect these people, and I would suggest that these new clauses would help to protect them.