Mr. Neil Bruton:

I will respond to Deputy Stanton's question on critical skills and family reunification. It is quite simple: basically at the moment if one has critical skills, one's spouse can come immediately and he or she gets a stamp 1g, which allows him or her full access to the labour market. That is what we want for general employment permit holders too, but at the moment they have to wait a full year and then they have to apply and meet certain criteria and testing to bring a spouse. When the spouse eventually comes, he or she has no access to the labour market. That is the change we want to see for all employment permit holders.

I will quickly bring in my colleague, Ms Korotkevica, who wants to speak about illness benefit, which was raised by the previous speaker.