Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, perhaps I may ask a simple question of the Minister, following my noble friend’s powerful argument, and draw on the IFS report. The IFS states: "““Absolute and relative child poverty are forecast to be 23% and 24% in 2020-21 respectively. These compare to the targets of 5% and 10%, set out in the Child Poverty Act (2010) and passed with cross-party support””." As my noble friend stated clearly, the report made clear that the main reason for that is that although universal credit may lift children up, the cap on benefit increases resulting from the change from RPI to CPI will more than outweigh the gains of universal credit. The argument at the time for going from RPI down to CPI, as I understood it, was that the main difference between the two levels of benefit, which would run at anywhere between 2 per cent and 4 per cent a year, was housing costs, that most pensioners do not have housing costs because they are either on full HB or their mortgage is paid, and that working-age people dependent on benefits are likely to be simultaneously supported in their housing needs by HB. The Government’s position was that it was therefore reasonable to go from RPI to CPI. Can the Minister help the Committee by telling us how many people on universal credit he estimates will in future not get any housing help? This may include people with modest mortgages who will therefore be fully exposed to the rigors of CPI for their housing costs, without any protection coming in from the parallel resource of HB.