Welfare Reform Bill

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 10th November 2011 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I have a quick question for the Minister. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for giving us the opportunity for this short debate. I wanted to ask the Minister about mentors for these individuals—what one finds, for instance, in the National Grid programme for young offenders, which has been so successful in rehabilitating young offenders. A key factor in that is the use of mentors in the workplace.

In the Youth Justice Board they are finding a great deal of success, again by using mentors in tandem with accommodation charities, and so on. In the past, the mentoring work of YoungMinds has identified that long-term relationships with a mentor have positive outcomes for young people. One of the very effective charities working with children in schools, Volunteer Reading Help, has volunteers who commit to at least a year’s work with the children.

Given the importance of mentoring, and my sense from discussions on apprenticeships that not much thought has been given to developing and training those individuals in the workplace who provided mentoring for apprentices, I would be interested to hear from the Minister now, or perhaps to have a note from him later, about how they intend to develop mentors for individuals caught by this clause in the future.

[Lord Skelmersdale]

My Lords, these are all clearly very relevant questions, but I would like to ask the Minister whether he construes “work experience” or “work placement” in the same way as he does “work preparation requirements” in proposed new Section 11(3)(c) in Clause 56?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

I, too, oppose Clause 57. I have not got a great deal to say on it. I agree very much with what the noble Baroness has just said. We have had debates about this on various Bills in the past, but you cannot discuss this without also considering what arrangements are made for child support. It is all very well to get women back into the workforce, and many women would like to go back into the workforce as soon as they feel that their children are able to be looked after, but you cannot look at one thing without also looking at child support, and I am not certain that this Bill in any way makes sufficient arrangements with regard to child support. Leaving out Clause 57 will give us time to think again. There is quite obviously a difference between seven and five. It gives a little more time to think about it in the way that the noble Baroness has just indicated.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I am reminded of an article recently published on the BBC website reporting on a survey about children reading with their parents. It reported that:

“For the majority (71%) reading with their child is one of the highlights of their day. But the poll of over 1,000 parents found 18% felt too stressed to do so. Two-fifths (41%) said that a child's tiredness stopped reading together being fun, while 30% cited their own tiredness as a problem. More than a third (36%) of the 1,011 survey participants said they were too tired to spend longer reading”.

Teachers were also surveyed:

“Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed (72%) attributed developed language skills and more advanced reading levels to those children who regularly enjoyed a shared book time with parents at home”.

The evidence is very clear that the home environment is the key experience for children in getting the best outcomes for their education, so we need to think about parents not having the energy after a long day’s work to spend that important time, particularly, perhaps, at the ages of five, six and seven, reading with their child.

I refer to an e-mail sent to me today by a primary school teacher. She wrote:

“Commuting up to ninety minutes a day would mean that I would have to leave my son in childcare and school from 7.30 am to 6.30 pm everyday … I am a primary school teacher in London and I see the affects of long term childcare on children. Some only see their parents for an hour each day or only at weekends!”.

The last time I worked with children—in a summer play scheme five years ago—what was particularly striking was that there were children who arrived early at the play scheme for breakfast and there were those who stayed until the end. These children in particular seemed a bit tired, a bit down and flat, so I can understand the concern that as the Government are implementing this, the adviser should very much keep in mind not only whether the parent is working but whether the parent will have a long commute there and back and the child will have a very long day at school, starting early and finishing late. Advisers should keep this in mind when they are considering whether a person has to take a job.

I am sorry to take so long, but to round up, I share the concerns. If there is anything that can be done to mitigate the impact on lone parents with children of this age, I would welcome it. There is a real question about the quality of childcare available. Research has shown that parents have traded quality off against affordability. They have understandably been so desperate to find childcare that the pressure to raise standards has not been as high as it might have been. In the current economic climate, with the great need for childcare, the Government have understandably been lowering the requirements for the education and training of managers of children’s centres, for instance. There is this constant pressure: we need more childcare places, so there is pressure to lower standards. One should listen very carefully to parents who say to their adviser, “I don’t have faith in the childcare in my locality”. One needs to give that weight, particularly in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, where the Childcare Act 2006 does not apply and they have not necessarily got the push on greater provision that we would want. I hope that the Minister can give some reassurance on these points, and I look forward to his reply.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak but, listening to the debate, I think that the opposition expressed by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, would provide the necessary time to reconsider the effects that the Bill will have in this respect. I also agree with my noble friend that the business about child support is a problem. Quite apart from the cost, the quality has come under quite a lot of doubt recently. The major point that I want to make is about stress on parents. I invite your Lordships to think about how stressed all of you have been by the extensive amount of work we have all had to consider recently, and bear that in mind when you come to consider whether or not to support this amendment.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, with regard to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, on how we could take it slightly easier, I regret that I cannot apply it to myself because my children have gone way past that age, although they do not seem to be any less stressful.

Our policies for lone parents are based on the key principle that work is the surest and most sustainable route out of poverty. In June last year we announced our intention to align the age at which lone parents could reasonably be expected to work with the time their youngest child enters school. Current legislation, yet to come into force, provides that income support must be made available to lone parents with a child under the age of seven. This clause lowers that age to five so that lone parents with children aged five or over will no longer be entitled to income support solely on grounds of lone parenthood. We would effect this change through regulations, and implement it drawing largely on the experience of having progressively lowered the age from 16. Support for these lone parents will be available through jobseeker’s allowance or employment and support allowance if they meet the relevant conditions of entitlement, or through income support if they qualify on grounds other than lone parenthood, most notably if they are carers.

We want to encourage lone parents to enter work but not at the expense of the crucial role they play as parents. We intend to carry forward the current safeguard that allows those with children aged 12 or under to restrict their availability for work to school hours. It is worth reminding noble Lords of the powerful impact that this policy has. When the age was brought down to 12, 16 per cent of lone parents leaving income support went straight into work and 56 per cent went on to JSA, many of whom will have subsequently gone in to work. We estimate that bringing the age down to five could lead to an extra 20,000 to 25,000 lone parents in work. Children in workless lone parent households are almost three times more likely to be in relative poverty than those where the lone parent works part-time, and five times more likely to be living in relative poverty than children of lone parents working full-time.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked about flexible work. The Government are keen to promote flexible working and have a strong commitment to greater family-friendly working practices. We have committed in the coalition agreement to consult on extending the right to request flexible working to all employees. The public consultation process ended recently and we intend to respond to the comments by the end of the year. We understand that stimulating real culture change to make flexible working practices the norm across the whole labour market requires more than just regulatory change on the right to request. There also needs to be help for employers to operate in a more flexible way and demonstration of the benefits it can bring to them and their employees. The Government have a role in leading culture change. This is why we are working with business leaders and employers to promote the business case for flexible working and ensure that employers know where to go to find support to implement practices in their organisation.

This clause also amends Section 8 of the Welfare Reform Act 2009, which relates to the possibility of requiring work-related activity from certain lone parents with children aged under seven. Section 8 as it stands would require regulations in this respect to be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. This clause lowers that age from seven to five, in alignment with the lowering of the age for withdrawal of income support on grounds of lone parenthood alone. The key question asked by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, was whether it is right to make this change now rather than waiting for the introduction of universal credit. Introducing this change before introducing universal credit will help more lone parents into work, with knock-on reductions on child poverty.

A recent evaluation of lone parents’ experiences of moving into work also found that working had had a number of positive effects on their children, both direct and indirect. These range from children having the opportunity to go on school trips because of extra family income to observing the good example of a working parent and greater independence, both financially for the parent, once in work, and for the child, in terms of their role in the household. Help with childcare costs is currently available through tax credits and the flexibilities in JSA mean that childcare responsibilities are taken into account. There are a range of flexibilities available: lone parents with a child aged under 13 can restrict their job search and availability to their child's school hours, while lone parents will not be sanctioned for failing to meet requirements if they had good reason for the failure. Access to appropriate childcare will be taken into account before a decision is made.

On the state of the economy, we have to bear in mind that even in difficult times—which I accept that we are in—Jobcentre Plus holds an average of 275,000 unfilled vacancies at any one time, around a quarter of which are part-time opportunities. Clearly those figures are a snapshot which hides the number of new job opportunities that come up all the time. On average, about 10,000 new vacancies are reported to Jobcentre Plus alone every working day, while many more come up through other recruitment channels. It is not worth getting into a huge debate about the meaning of these figures but, as noble Lords understand, much of our approach to the work programme is aimed at trying to help the people who have not managed to get a job reasonably early back into the market. As the numbers of unemployed get bigger, one factor we are looking at is the average length of time that people are unemployed. As I say, there are flows all the time and many lone parents have excellent opportunities to find a job. Even in difficult times, there are still jobs going. On that basis, I commend Clause 57 to the Committee.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his helpful reply. I want to check with him about the question of school hours. Does that really mean “school hours”, and will the adviser take into account that the person will have to travel for an hour or an hour and a half to get to work, and back again at the end of the day, so that it will go over school hours? Does it also mean that if a job requires someone to work in the school holidays as well, that will be seen as an inappropriate job for that person? I would guess that it clearly means that, but I would appreciate a response to my first question.

[Lord Freud]

On working in school hours, it is quite clear that the working includes the travelling time. It is incorporated in that and it is clear in the legislation. To refer back to the noble Lord’s earlier reading of the e-mail, I could not resist making the point that we still remain grateful to the Egyptians for inventing papyrus. Maybe in another couple of years we will have dumped it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sherlock]

I thank the noble Lord for that clarification, if not for the answer, which I am very disappointed with. I accept that the noble Lord does not have research on the question of transition available to him at the moment. I just want to lodge a concern that the point of transition for children either moving into school at all or moving from junior to secondary school is difficult, and there is research out there to support that. The research looks at the impact in later life if those transition points are not well handled. I would be grateful, before we get to Report, if the noble Lord would give some thought to whether he could give us some comfort that the Government would want to give a clear policy steer that they would expect their advisers to look kindly on lone parents who, for good reason, want to support their children during the key transition point into school. I have one final question. If a five year-old were not in school—I will not go into it; there may be reasons why a five year-old may not yet have started school—would that lone parent still be required to go out to work?

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, before the Minister replies, can I say that I am very disappointed to hear that lone parents with a child of six or seven who cannot find a job except one that occupies them during the school holidays as well, will be obliged to take a job under the new arrangement. That was not my understanding from my reading on this and it seems very disappointing that that is the situation. I would appreciate if the Minister would double check to be very clear on this particular matter. If he has done so, and he is clear on it, then in that case I suppose I will have to read Hansard again.

The other matter is about transitions in school. A point that is always emphasised to me is that the transitions into primary school and from primary into secondary school are key to the success of a child’s education. We need to ensure that we do not do anything to make those transitions more difficult. If there is research there that we can identify, maybe the Minister might be able to help with that, or perhaps he could undertake to look very carefully at this particular area. It would be helpful if he could see whether there is any adverse impact caused by the changes in terms of the transitions of children into primary school.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, could I also ask a question, which is to turn the comments and questions made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, around the other way? If a lone parent has found a job as a dinner lady, precisely because her hours fit those of her young children, and she is therefore not being paid and not working over the holiday periods, is she at all exposed to the issue of work conditionality?

The second issue is on transition. Again, speaking from personal experience—and we all brought our children through school—many children sail through and love that first year of school. However, many children who suddenly go into what they regard as “big school” can find it very stressful. They revert to bed-wetting, have disturbed nights, are fearful, actually hide under the table when the school bus comes, and so on. In those situations, the lone parent needs to be on hand and available to go into the school if necessary, to collect the child from the school, during that first year of settling down. Most of us can talk from personal experience in that respect. The noble Lord would be very wise to listen to the point about transition—whether it is for one year, or ideally for two years, before the full conditionality comes in.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, at the last Conservative Party conference the right honourable Iain Duncan Smith talked about 1 million children in this country being born into families where the parents are either substance misusers or misusing alcohol, so clearly it is key that we address this problem from the point of view of the welfare of children. Perhaps this is a good time to offer my congratulations to the Government’s drug treatment agencies and the UK Border Agency on the reduction in the use of class A drugs in recent years. However, it is still a very significant problem, while of course alcohol figures strongly in incidents of domestic violence, which is terrible for children to experience. So I hope that the Minister can give a strong assurance in his reply that robust mechanisms will be in place to offer help to job applicants who are suffering from these issues because a lot of the current provision is being cut back due to the recession. Particularly, how is capacity in the voluntary sector being harnessed in order to make the best use of those resources? I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, Clause 59 repeals provisions introduced by Section 11 of and Schedule 3 to the Welfare Reform Act 2009. These provisions would have applied to claimants of jobseeker’s allowance and employment and support allowance where their dependence on alcohol or drugs affects their prospects of finding or remaining in work. The regulation-making powers inserted by Schedule 3 to the 2009 Act could have been used to require JSA claimants to undertake a range of activities, including answering questions about whether they are dependent on or at risk of misusing drugs, and attending drug-related assessments or drugs interviews that would involve testing unless the claimant agreed to provide a sample that could be tested. Claimants could then enter a voluntary rehabilitation plan which might involve treatment. If claimants did not agree to enter the voluntary rehabilitation plan they could be required to enter a mandatory rehabilitation plan. Although a mandatory rehabilitation plan would not require a claimant to undergo treatment it could, for example, require the claimant to attend an educational programme or take part in interviews and assessments. These provisions also extended to alcohol dependency. Equivalent provisions were introduced for ESA claimants who are members of the work-related activity group. The mandatory requirements would have been enforced by using regulation-making powers to sanction a claimant’s benefit if they failed to comply.

These provisions, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, suggested, have never been commenced. The previous Government produced draft regulations for a pilot scheme to run for two years from October 2010. Those regulations were considered by the Social Security Advisory Committee in March 2010. The committee’s report, published in May last year, raised significant concerns. It recommended that the pilot scheme should not go ahead as drafted. The committee considered that the pilots were unlikely to be effective, contained a number of significant flaws and would not produce robust results. Having listened to SSAC’s concerns and having undertaken their own work on drugs, in December last year the Government published their drugs strategy, Reducing demand, restricting supply, building recovery. The strategy recognises that work is a key contributor to sustained recovery from addiction, but we also recognise that the previous Government’s approach of mandating drug testing and assessments, and requiring claimants to undertake a rehabilitation plan on pain of losing benefit, is not the right one. We say it is not the right approach in particular for the following three reasons.

First, it mandates claimants to do something, such as being tested for drugs, that is not directly about helping people to approach the labour market. That does not mean that entering treatment is not the right approach to help many claimants who are substance dependent to address their barriers to work, but—and this leads to my second reason—claimants enter treatment for a series of complex reasons, and whether or not they succeed also depends on a series of complex reasons. Forcing claimants to answer, for example, questions about possible drug use, requiring them to attend substance-related assessments about drug use and insisting that claimants enter a mandatory rehabilitation plan if they decline to enter treatment voluntarily would be asking them to do something a large proportion of them would not want to do. If we took the approach of the previous Government, we would create a high risk of those claimants immediately failing these requirements and having to be sanctioned.

Perhaps I could pick a trick that the Opposition have enjoyed using on me on occasion. I am aware that there may have been some differences within the previous Government regarding their attitude to this legislation. I am enjoying watching on the faces of some of the people opposite a similar smile to the one that I sometimes have to use.

Finally, we consider that the previous Government’s approach towards substance or alcohol-dependent claimants would be one that all the evidence from treatment providers and agencies who are experts in this area, as well as SSAC which consulted with those organisations, say would not succeed.

On the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, about our alcohol strategy and what service will be available, the Department of Health will be publishing a new alcohol strategy early next year which will set out what services we plan to have available.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, there has always been a tension within social security, as David Donnison spelled out many years ago when we had what was then called supplementary benefit, between standard, national, no-postcode-lottery funding and payments, and the need for discretion. The Social Fund as it has become has that element of discretion and flexibility, which is why it would be madness to go to a call centre and think that you can do the thing that most requires discretion by telephone. I entirely sympathise with the Government’s wish to move away from that procedure.

My noble friend Lady Lister and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, have eloquently explained the need for the Social Fund. I do not want to rehearse that, although if I had my way I would treble the money going into it because of its value to people. Indeed, the people who need it are not there because of financial mismanagement, let alone scrounging. They are there for the most part because of absolute, desperate, grinding poverty, having come out of care, prison or a refuge. They are the ones we seek to help.

Instead, I want to talk about something more mundane: the process proposed for the handling of Social Fund moneys, particularly community care grants, in future. Where that money is going to a local authority that is a single-tier unitary authority, I have no reason to think that it will not be able to get its act together because housing, social services and advice services are integrated on one level. However, it will be catastrophic for the shire counties where there are two-tier structures. I shall explain.

I come from Norfolk, a county which is about 60 miles by about 40 miles. When I was a county councillor representing Norwich I was closing schools that I had never visited and putting yellow lines on roads I did not drive on, and we called it “local government”. I have to say that the Jobcentre in my district had more local knowledge than most county councillors had outside their immediate patch. Under this proposal the money will go to a county council that has no local experience or knowledge. I do not in any way mean to criticise social workers who are doing a heroic job, but the council has none of the local knowledge at councillor or policy-shaping level that is required.

A second problem is that in a county council like Norfolk, there are a number of rural districts within which there may be small pockets of acute rural deprivation—even though they may contain thatched cottages covered with roses—but there is also the deprivation of Great Yarmouth, King’s Lynn, Thetford and some of the poorest estates in the eastern region, in Norwich. If the county council decides to go on a format allocation, it may send money to rural districts that do not need it as their pockets of rural deprivation have been resolved because those people have voted with their feet—I know this to be the case—and have come into the nearest urban city area. I have known good social workers give them the bus fare to do so, and quite right too; I would do the same in their situation. So the first problem with sending the money over to the county council is that they do not have local knowledge, but the second problem is that there is a huge variety of circumstance in an area as large as Norfolk, and I have no confidence that that will be recognised in the use of that money by the county council.

The third issue is what we call ring-fencing. If I were a county councillor with this money and I was seriously worried, as most county councillors are in good faith and decency, about child abuse protection, I would regard this as a fund to plunder. I would regard other priorities as being of more urgent need. I am therefore not in any sense confident that that money will be spent where it should be.

For several reasons, I want to see instead, and I hope that this will happen, the money in two-tier authorities going to the local district council. First, the local district council should have much more intimate knowledge of its locality and local needs. If localism means anything, it does not mean distributing down to a county council, half of whose councillors have never visited the village or the area where the deprivation is concentrated. You might just as well have the money coming from London or indeed from Scotland. It has to go down to the local district council.

Secondly, over and beyond local knowledge, if we cannot have ring-fencing—I hope we do, but I will come back to that—then at least it should be integrated with the fact that it is those same lower-tier authorities, the housing authorities, that are going to be responsible for the discretionary housing allowance and for the development of this absurd structure of individualised council tax benefits. Okay, it is an absurd and foolish system but it looks as though we may be stuck with it for a while until better sense prevails and we can reintegrate council tax benefit into universal credit. This means, though, that district councils on the ground have to have the staff, the resources, the local knowledge and the detailed experience of those same client groups for discretionary housing awards and for council tax benefit. They should ally to that the grants and some of the loans of the Social Fund because often they are dealing with the same client group, and often for the same purpose.

We have heard that a high proportion of community grants are spent in securing rent access to the private rented sector. It means that discretionary housing allowance—two funds, in future on two tiers—will be doing the same thing for a local community. This is absurd. If we cannot have a ring-fenced fund, then at least the money should go to a district council which can see the best way of meeting the needs of young people coming out of care or of ex-offenders. It may be that more money should go into discretionary housing and less should go elsewhere, but you can meet the service in different ways. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, that you then need to make sure that there is an effective reporting and monitoring regime so that local authorities at the district level are accountable for how they have spent the money. There is more than one way to meet a need, and that is why I am not always supportive of ring-fencing. Local authorities can often meet a need in a better and more effective way—you only have to see the difference between residential care and domiciliary services to realise that there is not just one way—but they have to have retrospective, so to speak, supervision and control by virtue of inspection and monitoring.

I am hoping that the Minister will respond positively to this and say that when dealing with two-tier authorities, the shire counties, where the document says that the money is going to the upper tier, he will give a commitment, as far as he can, that there will be a letter of guidance requiring county councils to distribute and allocate funds based on previous expenditure levels in the district council. Otherwise some rural districts may pocket the money to keep their council tax down while the urban areas that receive people from the rural districts who have voted with their feet will have an even heavier burden to bear on reduced funding. In addition, meeting need should be recognised as a part of a district council’s repertoire. If there is to be an assumption that a local connection should be required, I accept the need for special care, particularly for battered women. Actually, in practice that is the least of our problems because in my experience nearly all local authorities have a very decent arrangement of trading homes so that women coming out of a violent relationship can move on from a hostel to a half-way house and then into a permanent home in a different authority. That works pretty well on the ground, but there are many other groups that, if they can, rural authorities will encourage into urban areas so that their responsibilities are negated. I hope that in that case the money will follow the client. If it does, I have no problem with that at all.

When the Minister deals with the big policy issues raised by my noble friend and by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, I ask him also to comment on the process point and at least give some of us some comfort that this will simply not be exploited, manipulated and abused in good faith by upper-tier authorities to do things that, because of their lack of local knowledge, they regard as more important than this and, as a result, strengthen the capacity of lower-tier authorities which are going to be dealing with discretionary housing allowance and council tax benefit. They will have an additional resource in order to meet the local need that they are best placed to address.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the call by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, to introduce ring-fencing or at least to allow ring-fencing for some time while we go through this huge transition with the introduction of this Bill. I do so for a number of reasons. Listening to the debate I am again reminded of the speech made by the right honourable Iain Duncan Smith at the Conservative Party Conference this year. He highlighted the great amount of debt that this country carries and, in particular, the debt of unsecured loans that people have taken upon themselves. Will the Minister say whether he is concerned that individuals who currently benefit from the Social Fund might turn to loan sharks or take out unsecured loans and expose themselves and their families to risk and threat because there is nowhere else where they can get the support they need?

I have been meeting chief executives, and indeed I recently met a deputy chief executive of a metropolitan authority. After spending the evening with him, what really struck me was the immense burden that he carried. He had to make choices with limited resources. I asked him whether he found himself having to cut back in the areas of child protection and child and family social workers. He said that he and his colleagues were definitely not taking money out of those pots. Then, on meeting a group of chief executives and directors of children’s services in the Palace of Westminster to discuss children’s centres, again we heard that the money was definitely not being taken out of children’s centres and they were really trying to support those as far as possible.

My point is that there are so many calls on the limited resources of chief executives and directors of children’s services in local authorities. The risk is that this money, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has said, will be diverted into other very important provision, but that those families who need this ultimate safety net will lose out under the new arrangements. I look for an assurance from the Minister that this will not be the case. I should say that Barnardo’s, which has so much experience in this area has raised these concerns with me. One should also pay tribute to the Conservative Administration that set this up in the first place and the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, because from what I have heard, it has made a very positive impact on the lives of some of our most vulnerable citizens and families.

The issue of accountability, of how this money is spent, has been aired and needs to be addressed. Should there be minimum standards that local authorities have to meet before they are allowed to use this money as they see fit? I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

I have very little to add to what has been said by a number of speakers this afternoon because they have covered the ground extensively. I was particularly interested in Amendment 86ZZZD because it refers to,

“financial support for applicants fleeing domestic violence”.

We shall shortly be considering domestic violence in another context, that of legal aid, which has some reference to domestic violence. The important thing about this in the local government context is that domestic violence frequently takes place within a family environment. Therefore, the individual against whom it is practised has to find some way of getting out. I am interested that this amendment refers to “applicants fleeing domestic violence”. Very often these women and girls simply have nowhere to go. Therefore, this amendment places a responsibility on local authorities, if money is made available, to provide the necessary financial support for people fleeing domestic violence.

That is very important in the current situation. I have recently attended other meetings in that connection. It appears that probably about one in four women has suffered from domestic violence at one time or another. Very often, of course, it is practised in families against very young people, very young girls. It is very important that there should be some authority and resources given to enable this to be dealt with. It is dealt with quite adequately in this amendment and I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about it.