Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): There is nothing that attracts more robust debate than when we are debating issues around social welfare social development and our children. Today's Committee stage of this particular bill has been no exception. We have heard some very interesting calls come from across the other side of the Chamber.There are a couple of points I want to make particularly with regard to evaluation and evidence. We have heard that the Youth Service has had no significant evaluation. We do know that young people particularly young people who have had difficult backgrounds and need some intervention to ensure that they can become better parents and much more fully contributory to society in general do need some help. With regard to this particular bill and this particular service what we have not heard is the evidence that this bill—that this plan—is actually going to make the kind of difference that the Minister for Social Development claims it is going to make. That is where we do not have sufficient evidence because there has been no evaluation and yet we are going down the line of more resource and more support into a service. We have no idea that it actually makes the kind of difference that the Minister is claiming.Pilot programmes we know are resourced to succeed. And this is one such case—where this programme has been resourced to succeed. When we get to fully rolling out this programme—when the resources actually do fall away—that is when the wheels start falling off these types of things. When a pilot programme has been resourced to succeed and we have done no evaluation around whether it will continue to succeed when it is fully implemented why are we subjecting our young people to this?My colleagues have made some very useful contributions on this. How does it impact on the children? For me particularly one of the most abhorrent aspects of our current social welfare system is the process of sanctions where money is taken out of the households of parents of young children. We have had lots of discussion—Mr Ngaro was quite vociferous about this point—but I challenge Mr Ngaro to go into a house where a beneficiary has been sanctioned and watch the impacts of halving that person's income on their children. I challenge any member on the other side of the Chamber to actually look at the impacts that sanctions have on our children. It is completely abhorrent that we would use that as a mechanism to try to encourage young people to be better parents"—where they watch their children actually having to starve. I do not normally get emotional about things but this policy is wrong it is bad and it should never happen. There is a lack of evidence around why it is that we are requiring young parents in the Youth Service to have work obligations when their youngest child is 1 year old or—if there is a teen parenting programme—when that child is 6 months old. That is completely at odds with any other obligations for any other parent who has a benefit. Looking at the Support for Children in Hardship Bill which was recently debated the discussion was around reducing the age from 5 to 3—when your youngest was 3 years old that would be when your work obligations would kick in if you were a beneficiary. When we heard the officials at the select committee when that bill was being heard there was no evidence provided to justify the age of 3. There was no evidence provided except to say that that was the age where most parents returned to work—when their youngest child was aged 3. The obligation on most parents is a financial obligation; they need to go back to work so they can continue to pay their bills. There was no evidence provided by the Minister in that regard. There is no evidence provided by the Minister in this regard that forcing young parents—"