Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, let me try to pick up some of those points. Picking up the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, I hope that she is hearing that I am sympathetic to this point. I hope that noble Lords have heard that this is about money. We do not have this money. We have a very sharp choice to make, about whether to reduce workless households or to look after second earners with a disregard. We have taken this decision, and we have also taken a decision, when we do find some more money, to do something about childcare, which is another issue that I know greatly concerns noble Lords. There are two clear issues when we look to improve this system, as we see dynamic effects coming through which are provable. We had a debate the other day on why we need to test things. Two of the obvious things to test will be second earner disregards and taper. Those are the first two things that everyone in this room, I think, would like to know about as we get the system under way. Therefore, to the extent to which I am being asked ““Will we look at it?””, yes, we will be looking at this. I am not going to make any assurances, because we should find the answers, but that is exactly the kind of question we want to have answered. I shall take up the points of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, on MDRs. You can freight all kinds of things on to MDRs if you want to, with different costs, and I am sure that you can create a position where the overall costs come up to high MDRs. The simple point that I would like to make is that with the universal credit itself, the MDRs come down. On whether we will force people to take a job which leaves the household poorer, we made the point when we discussed this that we take these things into account when we set up the obligations of claimants.