Employment: Job Creation

Lord Garel-Jones Excerpts
Thursday 17th March 2016

(8 years, 9 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Freud Portrait Lord Freud
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There is a huge misapprehension about the cost of PIP, which has been going up rather than down. These are not cuts: on the present trajectory the figure is moving up to £12 billion, and when we discussed it during the passage of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill there was an expectation that in the key 2019-20 year it would be £9 billion. We are reducing a rapid growth and adjusting how to get PIP because clearly we are getting much higher figures than originally expected through the use of those aids and appliance measurements.

Lord Garel-Jones Portrait Lord Garel-Jones (Con)
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Does my noble friend accept that, contrary to what the noble Lord opposite said, it was not Prime Minister Gordon Brown who kept us out of the single currency but Prime Minister John Major? Gordon Brown simply stuck wisely to that Conservative decision.

Lord Freud Portrait Lord Freud
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I am very happy to accept the correction.