Welfare Reform Bill

There are a number of amendments in this group, but before I start perhaps I should take this opportunity to tell the Committee that I said that I would make arrangements to have a full presentation on the IT side of universal credit and we have managed, at last, to get a date, which is 3 November. I will e-mail everyone with the precise time. As is always the way, it is a question of finding the room and finding the date and that is the reason it has taken a little time. I will go through the system, show the system, get some officials in and take everybody through it. I know that the cost of that will be that I will have a whole load of Peers designing the system. In that last debate, I could hear how enthusiastic a number of Peers are to help me. I enjoy hearing all the questions and issues raised, not least by the two people who used to sit in my chair in the department: the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. These are complicated issues of delivery. Will noble Lords forgive me if I do not go through them? If I started, I would spend hours going through these delivery issues. On 3 November, we will have a chance to go through them. We are trying to deal with the legislative stuff here. I will pick up the specifics. I will not go through some of the real detail of the delivery here. Let me move on to housing support, which is clearly a critical part of universal credit because it ensures that claimants receive a single payment to cover a range of needs rather than the current confusing patchwork of benefits and tax credits. Bluntly, taking housing out of that would leave a huge hole in the concept of the universal credit. The support must be affordable to the taxpayer. We have probably had enough discussions on the reforms to housing benefit. Clearly, paying universal credit through a single agency will reduce administration costs and simplify the experience for claimants.