Stephen Timms
Main Page: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)Department Debates - View all Stephen Timms's debates with the HM Treasury
(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberIn the spending review, we took a number of spending decisions that will support social mobility. We chose to invest in early-years education for disadvantaged two-year-olds—a new investment—and to maintain the 15-hours entitlement for three and four-year-olds, something that was introduced under this Government. We chose to invest in a pupil premium that will give additional support to the most disadvantaged children. In tough financial times, that is the strongest investment in social mobility made by any Government in this country for many a long year.
The White Paper last week stated that HMRC will be taking on new responsibilities in collecting and processing real-time pay data for the calculation of universal credit. How much has been allocated for the IT to deliver that change?
The response to the consultation on real-time information—the next stage of it—will be published shortly. We will outline the details in that, but additional sums have been identified as part of the spending review process to pay for the real-time information project.