Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I hesitate to lower the tone after that marvellous exposition by St Sebastian—by the noble Lord. Perhaps the Minister will answer some questions for me. I have been reading the very large and very helpful response to the consultation exercise that the department kindly provided. I wonder whether he would help me with the sums. His Treasury and City background might help me to understand this. I am grateful for the briefing from Family Action and I take that briefing very seriously. I noticed that it had been giving out grants to people in need since 1869—even longer than the Social Fund—so it has some knowledge whereof it speaks. When organisations like that warn that things are about to get very bad, we need to listen, because they know what they are talking about. Perhaps the Minister could help me to understand. I gather that in terms of crisis loans, during 2010-11, £152.9 million will be disbursed, and it is intended that from 2013-14 that will be replaced by the amount of £36 million, which will be transferred to local authorities. I am assuming that cannot literally be a cut of £160 million, or 76 per cent. I presume that there is a gross and net issue here. Perhaps he would help me to understand the effect of that transition. Secondly, will the Minister tell us what work the department has done in estimating the impact of this recession, or other recessions, on demand going forward? Perhaps he could help us by looking at what happened previously. I note that the briefing from the Government in response to the consultation denies that the recession or youth unemployment had any part to play in the increased demand, although the fact that it started in 2008-09 would seem to imply a coincidence because that was around the same time as GDP began to go downwards. I wonder whether he could help us to understand that as well. Thirdly, perhaps he could help me to understand how the new system will respond to changes? For example, how flexible can it be to changes in the profile of need in a particular local authority area? For example, if another of his policies such as the benefit cap were to have the unfortunate consequence of causing significant numbers of poor people to move from one area to another—I am not suggesting that it will, this is just for the sake of argument—how would that be affected by a local authority in that circumstance, or a circumstance like that? I have one final question. Does he have any concerns about the consequences of what seems to me to be a move between what is currently annually managed expenditure to something that effectively becomes—albeit indirectly—a form of DEL? The only reason I ask is because one reason why something like this is part of the social security system is because it responds—and is managed and funded by central Government to respond—to the changing profile of the labour market and the people in need because of changes in circumstances. How will government finances handle that in future?