Work and Families (Increase of the Maximum Amount) Order 2009

I thank the Minister for introducing the order. We on these Benches are acutely aware of the effect that redundancy can have on people, and we have great sympathy with anyone made redundant. This order increases the weekly limit for a second time in six months; it has gone up since 1 January this year by over 15 per cent. It also removes the annual reassessment of the weekly cap, due in 2010, as the Minister said, when a fall is forecast in the RPI. So we think that there is a real risk that employers will in future have to make more redundancies than they would otherwise have had to in order to make the savings that they need to avoid being pushed into insolvency. That seems to us to be of questionable wisdom on the part of the Government. Furthermore, the Government have created an additional real and unnecessary problem for the many employers who offer enhanced redundancy schemes, which are based on a multiple of statutory redundancy pay. So what are the Government, who have created the problem for them, planning to do to assist them? With this order, the Government, in their anxiety to please their paymasters, are doing something that they may later regret.