Benefit Rate Freeze

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, as I have said to noble Lords opposite, we do care, but we are absolutely clear that work is the best way to get children, in particular, out of poverty. That is why we want to incentivise work, which is the best route, but we need to focus on making sure that people see their wages rise and take home more of their pay packet once they are in work. Our reforms include increasing the national living wage for workers aged 25 and over, cutting income tax for over 30 million people and extending free childcare for working parents.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, the Government never anticipated that inflation would be double what it was when they originally introduced this freeze on working-age benefits. If they are prepared to look again at public sector pay, why will they not look at working-age benefits?

[Baroness Buscombe]

I think I said that we are already spending over £95 billion on benefits for people of working age, but we have to ensure that that is fair also to the taxpayer and that it encourages people into work. Before we brought in the Welfare Reform and Work Act, the inflation rate, for example, for most working-age out-of-work benefits, such as jobseeker’s allowance, went up by 21% between 2008 and 2015, while earnings rose by 12%. We want to incentivise work, which we know is the best route out of poverty.