Welfare Reform Bill

I know that the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) is keen for us to make progress today and was somewhat concerned that we did not complete consideration of all elements on Monday. I will try to address all the issues that I am able to address in a speedy manner so that we can consider things fully. Right hon. and hon. Members who have been listening to the debate thus far will already have a flavour of the complexity of the current scheme. Unfortunately, the scheme is open to widespread abuse, and some of that is driven by the remoteness of the administration of these elements of the discretionary social fund. Just so that hon. Members are absolutely clear, we are talking about replacing budget loans, crisis loans and the community care grant with national payments on account, including advances and alignment payments, and with local authority -delivered local assistance. The bulk of the comments of the hon. Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Westminster North (Ms Buck) were about crisis loans, half of which are alignment payments, which will continue to be paid at national level through payments on account. It is important that hon. Members are aware that to all intents and purposes people will still have access to that money on a national basis. I hope that will reassure hon. Members regarding a number of the issues raised. I do not think that the status quo is an option because of the level of abuse in the system at the moment. First, the number of crisis loans has tripled since 2006, but we do not believe that that increase reflects an underlying increase in genuine need as a result of the recession or anything else. We have looked in detail at the individuals who are causing that increase in demand and our analysis has shown that it is being driven by young single people on jobseeker's allowance, many of whom are still living at home. We should be looking at what is driving that demand and asking whether the money is getting through to the sort of vulnerable people about whom the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is rightly concerned.