Welfare Reform Bill

Local authorities will be free to consider whether they need to set up their own service locally or use the local government ombudsman. It really is for local authorities to look at the most effective way of dealing with levels of fraud or with any dissatisfaction with the way in which they are delivering services. The amendments do not really grasp the premise behind the Government's proposals. We want to move to a situation in which local authorities are looking at the gaps in their services locally and are able to use the funding that is forthcoming as a result of these changes to fill those gaps and pull together the sort of service that is required by vulnerable groups such as those we have been discussing. Crisis loans for alignment purposes and budgeting loans will be replaced by new national provision. As I have said, that accounts for half of all current crisis loan applications. That provision will be delivered nationally by the Department for Work and Pensions. The ending of the discretionary social fund and the implementation of replacement schemes, both nationally through payments on account and locally by local authorities and the devolved Administrations, is the best way to approach the reform. Amendments 53 and 54 would prevent those reforms from taking place and would leave us with an out-of-date and inefficient discretionary social fund scheme which would soon be unworkable with the introduction of the wider benefit reform we have already outlined. Amendments 39 and 40 would impose criteria set by central Government on arrangements to replace the discretionary social fund if it were abolished. Some of the requirements in amendment 39 are activities that we are already undertaking in our work on the replacement of the discretionary social fund. Other elements in the amendment would not be helpful to what the reform of the social fund is trying to achieve. As I said, in some ways the amendment misses the point of the reform, which is that local authorities are better placed to understand the needs of their local communities and to make sure that the money is getting through to the right people for the right activities.