Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I turn to the example raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. With great skill she has found precisely an area of loss within a general position of substantial improvement. Let us take a single non-disabled carer. If they work between roughly two and five hours at the national minimum wage, they may have a marginally lower net income as a result of this structure. The maximum possible reduction in those circumstances is around £4.25 a week, which is in line with the noble Baroness’s example. But at only marginally higher earnings, work incentives increase significantly under universal credit. For example, at only eight hours a week, such carers would be over £5 a week better off, and at 12 hours a week they would gain nearly £15. So there is a stronger incentive to get back into work than the flat £20 flat disregard in income support. I shall pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter—