Baroness Pitkeathley
Main Page: Baroness Pitkeathley (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Pitkeathley's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(14 years ago)
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Lord Freud
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that question. The work capability assessment has been looked at once internally and now by Professor Harrington. We are committed to bringing in those reforms as quickly as possible—ideally, all of them by the time we have all the existing IB claimants reassessed with a view to going over to ESA.
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, is the Minister aware that, when it comes to assessing individual needs, the benefits received by carers are of extreme importance to families in need? Some weeks ago, the Minister said that no decision had yet been made about how to treat the carer’s allowance in the benefit reforms. Has any further progress been made towards that decision?
Lord Freud
My Lords, we are working on fine-tuning the whole of the universal credit system. One of the key issues is the design of how carers’ allowances go into that. We are still not in a position to say where we have got to precisely, but we will make it clear pretty soon.