Benefit Cap

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Well, my Lords, my job at the Dispatch Box is to answer questions from all Peers. I hope that I have established a track record in answering questions with as much properly sourced information as I possibly can.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

Very often, those who are out of work are suffering from other problems as well, often drink or drug addiction or a very poor education. Can the Minister say what is being done to help with those issues?

[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.