Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Karen Bradley

Monday 22nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

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

We believe that universal credit will make work pay. We have done some assessment and we can announce that we believe we should reduce by 1.3 million the number of workless households facing a participation tax rate of more than 70%. We also believe that we will improve earnings incentives for some 700,000 people and that we could reduce the number of workless households by about 300,000.

[Karen Bradley]

I thank the Secretary of State for that response. Caudwell Children is a charity that has significant experience in helping the parents of disabled children back into work. Could he give some assurances as to how the universal credit will make that process easier?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I hope and believe that if we implement universal credit correctly, it should allow people with caring responsibilities to meet those responsibilities with greater flexibility in the number of hours they can work. At the moment, it is very difficult for many of them to work the sort of hours they need to work without damaging their ability to fulfil their caring responsibilities. We think that flexibility would be most effective for them and, strangely enough, for lone parents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I always appreciate the hon. Lady’s advice. We certainly keep all that under review and intend to do so all the way through until we introduce the Bill. However, having said that, there is a lot of good evidence out there to show that we have to give people some sort of incentive not to decide to refuse that work. We believe that that is one of the areas where a lot of international evidence shows that such a spur actually helps people to do that.

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

T5. What can the Secretary of State do to assure unemployed people in Staffordshire Moorlands that the Work programme will help them to find not just employment, but sustainable employment?