Under-occupancy Charge
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Freud
We discuss this issue regularly in this Chamber and earlier this week, or maybe last week, we went into how many people have come off the bedroom tax. There has been a 16% reduction in the number on the roll—98,000 at the last figure. Many have done so because they have gone into work. Indications are that people are adjusting to this policy.
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)
My Lords, is it not the case that each of these cases was given permission to go to the Court of Appeal specifically to enable them to go on to join the other cases in the Supreme Court? In those circumstances, is it not a little harsh to criticise the Government for accepting that invitation?
Lord Freud
Yes, that is precisely the point. As far as we can tell, one reason that the Court of Appeal took this decision was to send the cases to join another set of cases that the Supreme Court will look at in March. The Supreme Court will, therefore, be able to take a view and reach a judgment across the piece on these issues and will do so relatively rapidly. So this is really by way of an interim legal position before we have something more definitive.
Personal Independence Payment
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Freud
I repeat what I said: we will continue to support disabled people and the vulnerable through that process.
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)
My Lords, at the end of her judgment, the judge commented that the Secretary of State appeared to be grappling with the situation in a way which was “entirely appropriate”. Does the Minister believe that was a fair comment?
Lord Freud
I think the judge very much took on board the fact that the Secretary of State realised that something that was simply unacceptable was going on and that we took very large measures to deal with it. Those measures included ramping up the numbers—we ramped up the number of health officials by a factor of four—and we had many more places to do the assessments, and so on. That is what has got the situation under control.