Lord Farmer
Main Page: Lord Farmer (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Farmer's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(10 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Freud
We conducted a painstaking process of testing how people respond to paying their housing rent directly. We found that there was a three-month adjustment process until people got familiar with it. We are now ensuring that we have the right systems to help people make that adjustment into the monthly payment situation.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, the principles of universal credit are sound, but timings and cost to the public purse are vital considerations. Can the Minister tell us when all claimants will be on universal credit and how much it will cost to reach this point?
Lord Freud
In the last strategic outline business case the costs of the programme to 2023-24 were £1.8 billion. That is down from the £2.4 billion figure that we had in 2011. Under that case, we anticipate that the bulk of the exercise to transfer people on to universal credit will be completed by 2019.