Baroness Eaton
Main Page: Baroness Eaton (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Eaton's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(9 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Freud
Well, my Lords, I will talk about universal credit and what it aims to do for the people who need support from the state system. It directs our funding far more efficiently to people who need that support. It produces economic benefits of £7 billion every year and it does so at an investment cost of £1.8 billion. That investment cost is down from the £2.4 billion that we originally envisaged.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
What is my noble friend doing to ensure that the most vulnerable are supported through universal credit?
Lord Freud
One of the things that we need to do with universal credit is to make sure that everyone can take part in it. We are creating a system to do that through universal support, where we go into partnership with local authorities to help people, concentrating particularly on financial and digital inclusion. We then pull in all the other third sector companies, such as landlords, Citizens Advice and credit unions, to make sure that support is holistic.