Mike Freer
Main Page: Mike Freer (Conservative - Finchley and Golders Green)Department Debates - View all Mike Freer's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
The hon. Lady, not for the first time, is completely wrong. The pathfinder was exactly as we set it down. It was always going to deal with single people at the beginning and we have rolled it out as we said we would. I stand by the fact that this pathfinder is the right thing to do. I introduced it back in 2011 and it will help us enormously to develop the IT. That is the way we are doing it and that is the way we will do it.
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)
Having visited the pathfinders with the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, I can reassure my right hon. Friend that both the claimants and the front-line staff were enthusiastic about universal credit and how it is working. Is my right hon. Friend also aware that the Select Committee commented that the Government are making significant progress in making work pay?
Mr Duncan Smith
My hon. Friend is exactly right. All our reforms—reducing the workless numbers and ensuring that the economically inactive are going back to work, saving money for the Exchequer and for taxpayers—are in play. Every one has been opposed by the Opposition and we have had no answer about what they would do instead. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General has said, they dance around on all the issues and the truth is that they have no policy. The welfare party is bankrupt.