Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, at Second Reading I had an opportunity to refer to my and my wife’s personal circumstances. We had two severely disabled children and I talked about the tremendous financial difference that that made—something that we came to realise only after we had lost both boys. At that time, it probably amounted to a difference of £100 a month, which would be at least £500 a month in today’s money. The additional costs very often cannot be easily identified, although several of them have been referred to. There are not only the costs of caring, diet, extra clothing and perennial cleaning but those of helping with siblings, who will not have their parents’ time and attention, the cost of extra transport, which inevitably will be necessary, and the cost of the loss of the opportunity to earn, which is usually incurred by the mother, as was the case in our family. All that adds up, and it was only after our two boys died that I came to realise the enormity of those costs. It was only after that—I had been in Parliament for 11 years then—that I was able to start getting out of the red at the bank. If that was the case in our circumstances—we were very well off in terms of having a parliamentary income, my wife being able to do a certain amount of work on a freelance basis as a musician, and having my parents living next door, who could help us to cope at times when it would otherwise have been impossible—that makes me wonder how somebody who is dependent on benefits can possibly cope with the sort of figures that we are talking about. A moment ago we heard the figure of £26, which cannot start to address that sort of cost agenda. I implore the Minister to look at these amendments, even if the wording is inadequate, and to come back on Report with amendments that safeguard the position of these most vulnerable people.