Welfare Reform Bill

There was a question around that, so I will endeavour to supply all the information I possibly can. A sum of £700 a year in addition would cost £240 million; if the disregard were £1,000 a year, the cost would be £350 million. We simply do not have the money in our present envelope. There is no real difference between gross and net in those figures because they are below the personal tax threshold, so there is no tax effect to set off. We are doing all sums on a non-dynamic basis anyway, so there is not a dynamic effect. From the point of view of the architects of the universal credit, we would have liked to incorporate more dynamic effects, but there are certain other interests in the Government that take a very straightforward view of money. Let me deal with the other issue—that making the lack of a disregard for second earners makes the universal credit bad for women. That is the underlying argument here and clearly one that would concern us very greatly. But it is clearly not the case. Universal credit has many features that will improve the position of women, most obviously in support for mini-jobs and childcare. We have a duty, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked, to look at the impacts of policy changes on a range of particular groups, including the impact on men and women, and we are satisfied that our policy here is the right approach and that we can justify the impact. That is why I was able to sign the ECHR statement for this Bill. Our impact assessments and equality impact assessments show that women in general are more likely to gain than to lose from universal credit, that this is also true for lone parents and couples with children and that lone parents benefit the most in both absolute and relative terms from the likely increase in take-up. In terms of work incentives, our analysis shows that female and male first earners in workless households have a similar pattern of PTRs under universal credit, but female first earners see a larger improvement as they have worse PTRs in the current system. Around 1.5 million existing second earners will see an increase in their PTR. However, the mean PTR for this group increases from 30 per cent to 45 per cent, which is still much lower than for many first earners and shows that there will still be considerable gains from work for most second earners. Around 900,000 potential second earners will face an increased PTR when considering work of 10 hours a week. In 83 per cent of cases this is because universal credit is providing more financial support to the couple than the current system. The PTR may be down but the overall financial support is up. Under universal credit, the distribution of MDRs for men and women are fairly similar. Women are more likely to face lower MDRs than men, both now and in the future, but this is partly to do with the fact they are more likely to be working part time and are below the tax and national insurance threshold. The second earners issue is therefore part of a much bigger picture that, overall, is very helpful to women. I add only that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that the trade-off between first and second earners is similar to that faced by the previous Government when they introduced working and families tax credit in 1999. That also strengthened the incentive for couples to have one partner in work and reduced the incentive for both to take employment. I hope this explanation will allow the noble Lord to withdraw Amendment 52C.