Welfare

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

We were told by Paul Gray, who did a study of this, that there was something going wrong with the way that the aids and appliances element was adding up. There were eight different categories and the points were tiered up. He thought that that was not going right and that a large number of people were getting PIP purely on this one category—that the figures were adding up in an odd way. That is what the consultation was about: it was driven by the need to make sure that it worked. When it got wrapped up into a debate on savings, that was not the driving force and it became something that was not acceptable to Conservatives in the Commons. It was decided, therefore, that we would not go ahead with it. That is the honest and full answer.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s Statement. When he said that there would be no further social security cuts looking ahead, does that mean that there will be no further cuts for the lifetime of this Parliament, as was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor? Having paid tribute to his former boss, could the Minister say whether he agrees with him that the reduction in the welfare cap following the election was arbitrary and that therefore he—Mr Iain Duncan Smith—no longer could support it?

[Lord Freud]

The Statement said—and I think I need to stay very close to the Statement—that there will not be any further welfare savings. That is the Statement and I will leave it at that. What happened with the review of the level of the cap was that it came down post-election. However, that was not arbitrary: it reflected the level of welfare payments in those categories and was fixed at that level with a projection that ran the same way. If that sounds complicated, it is because it is quite complicated.