Disabled People: Mobility Benefits

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are handling an extraordinarily difficult economic and financial position. As noble Lords are of course aware, we have had a decline in GDP of 7.2% from its peak in 2008-09. That is more or less the same level as what happened in the 1930s. Handling that decline has been enormously difficult and one of the most interesting things about the way we have handled it generally is that, unlike every other developed country, we have spread the inevitable difficulties across the whole economy, rather than, as elsewhere, the poor being hit far worse than the rich. That has not happened in the adjustment that we have made in this country.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, pursuing the point made by the noble Baroness about the role of Atos Healthcare, in confirming the amounts of money that are involved in this process, will the Minister confirm to the House that in the past 12 months alone, £114 million has been paid to Atos Healthcare; that, over the distance, more than £700 million has been paid to it; and that he has had to call in PricewaterhouseCoopers in order to assess its role? Will he tell us what that has cost and when the National Audit Office will now report on the tendering arrangements involving Atos Healthcare that it has decided to investigate?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, that is a series of very specific questions, some of the answers to which are not yet in the public arena. I will have a look at which of those I can answer appropriately in that context.