Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)

I thank my noble friend; I realise that it was not possible for him to cover everything in his response. A follow-up letter to everyone who spoke would be very helpful. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Blower who, like many noble Lords, supported the right to work and talked about the impact on children. I am pleased that my fellow terrier the noble Lord, Lord Russell, raised the question of age assessment. I should warn noble Lords that another group of terriers will in the new year be chewing away on the question of age assessment, so they have that joy awaiting them. I loved the point by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford that a grace period is never for a limited pilot period and that a true period of grace would be permanent. I hope that will be taken back to the Home Office; even for those such as myself who do not have faith, it was a very telling point. My noble friend Lord Davies asked about research. Will the evaluation try to find out the time that it takes to move on? I have noticed that a point that has not been made by Ministers recently, but that used to be made, is that somehow it is all the fault of the refugee because they do not move fast enough and do not get on with it. That is partly why I chose the particular case study that I did. Here was a young man who did everything he was supposed to do at once and ended up homeless, sleeping in the car park of the asylum hotel he had been in. Moving on to the noble Lord, Lord Murray, I have been reliably told that, during the period that he was Home Office Minister, there was a 302% increase in the number of refugee households in England owed either a relief or prevention duty after leaving Home Office accommodation. The noble Lord might have wanted to reflect on whether the 28-day period was working satisfactorily. I do not care who introduced it. I am very critical of a whole lot of things that my party introduced—I think it took away the right to work, but that does not make it the correct thing to have done. I am sorry that he did not reflect on that. The noble Lord talked about costs. As I said, the research suggests that this would save money and achieve net savings. The amount is not huge, at probably £4 million to £7 million a year. The question is who bears the cost. Is it the Home Office? Is it individual vulnerable refugees? Is it local authorities? Is it the voluntary sector? It is a question of where the costs are borne; it is not an extra cost at all. I will continue to argue, and I think noble Lords agreed, that, welcome as this interim scheme is, the assumption should be that it will be permanent. If it all goes pear-shaped then it may be that we will want to look at it again, but we need to think about how we make it legally permanent. I intend to continue to press the Bill. If the Minister wants three cheers from me, it is a question not just of the right to work but of accepting the Bill. Although he very kindly said that he would be pleased for the terriers to continue to chew at his ankles, I would much prefer not to have to chew at ministerial ankles. I want an outcome—I do not want to carry on chewing, despite the change of Government. I will leave it at that. I commend the Bill to the House.