Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

The hon. Lady is right that we did not reverse Labour’s planned cut in the winter fuel payment. What we did is reverse Labour’s planned cut to the cold weather payment, which pays £25 a week every time the temperature falls below zero—and we ended up paying more than £400 million to cold, vulnerable pensioners, which is money that the Labour party would not have spent.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

T3. In the context of the big society and mindful of the need for a variety of provision, what evidence is there that bidders for the Work programme have come from the voluntary sector and social enterprises?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

There is a huge amount of evidence. Two of the main providers are voluntary sector based, and getting on for half of all the subcontractors in the programme will be from the voluntary sector. This will be the biggest boost to the idea of the big society. Now that we hear Labour Members are rethinking on welfare, we hope that they will have some good things to say about it.