Benefit Cap

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

One of the things that we are doing is reforming the whole of the welfare system in order to find out the barriers to going to work that people have and helping to address them. In the particular case of the introduction of the benefit cap, we had an enormous initiative to work with those individuals through Jobcentre Plus. We wrote to them, talked to them and provided intensive employment support. We worked with local authorities to help them with budgeting, housing and childcare. In this particular case we worked hard, and that seems to be an effective set of interventions.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, how much has been spent on discretionary housing payments to those affected by the benefit cap and what impact has that had on the planned savings from the policy? So, for 2013-14, how much was spent on discretionary payments, to what extent has that reduced the savings for central government and what impact has it had on local government?

[Lord Freud]

The department pays out a lump sum of discretionary housing payments that local authorities apply to the various policies that they are tackling. There is a specific amount, £110 million, that goes to this particular policy although actually, when you look at the analysis of how local authorities attribute the spend, it is rather less than the amount attributed to the benefit cap. The total AME savings set against that are £225 million. As I said, the importance of this policy is that it sends out a message about the direction of travel, which is that the way to get people out of poverty so that they have proper support is to get them into work.