Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

T4. In my constituency, a large number of individuals come to my surgeries worried about being passed from pillar to post in the complicated welfare system that we have. Can the Minister give me some reassurance that the reforms are going to make it much simpler, especially in connection with people wanting to establish businesses?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I can give that assurance to my hon. Friend. We have inherited a system that has huge in-built disincentives and perverse incentives for people to do the wrong thing. The idea of this reform—the universal credit, alongside the Work programme—is that people have a clear understanding of what they will earn when they go to work. They will not need to have the brains of a professor in mathematics to figure it out; they will find it out themselves, and that will incentivise them to stay in work and not be put off by having to report to 50 different people.