Benefit Cap

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The department pays out a lump sum of discretionary housing payments that local authorities apply to the various policies that they are tackling. There is a specific amount, £110 million, that goes to this particular policy although actually, when you look at the analysis of how local authorities attribute the spend, it is rather less than the amount attributed to the benefit cap. The total AME savings set against that are £225 million. As I said, the importance of this policy is that it sends out a message about the direction of travel, which is that the way to get people out of poverty so that they have proper support is to get them into work.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister complimented himself on always trying to answer the question. Of those people that he has referred to, how many of them have gone into full-time employment on a living wage? Will the Minister, who has refused to consider studying those people who go to food banks to survive, have a meeting with the right reverend Prelates, who know more than he does because of their involvement in food banks, about the very people that he is not counting?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we do not collect information on the living wage within the working tax credits. We have a policy in universal credit to ensure that people have enough to live on however much they work, which is a transformation. I am pleased to say that I am in regular dialogue with the Archbishop on this matter, particularly with regard to the initiative that he is running, and which we are talking to him about, of supporting the credit union movement.