Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

11. What estimate he has made of the number of households to which the benefit cap no longer applies.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

19. What estimate he has made of the number of households to which the benefit cap no longer applies.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

The benefit cap is having a long-term and positive effect on those who are trying to find work, and on people’s lives generally. More than 60,000 households have been capped since April 2013, and as of May 2015, more than 40,000 households were no longer subject to the benefit cap. Of those, 16,300 households have moved into work.

[Andrew Bridgen]

I have good news from North West Leicestershire, where two thirds of the households to which a benefit cap applied are no longer subject to that cap. Does that show that the Government are successfully targeting taxpayers’ money in a way that encourages benefit recipients to seek work and reorder their finances, in exactly the same way as those in work do?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yes. The benefit cap is introducing fairness, and the claimant count in my hon. Friend’s constituency is down by 54% since 2010, and the youth claimant count by 64%. We want even more people to benefit from the financial and wider rewards of employment, and that is why we are reforming welfare and getting on with the job.