UK Parliament / Open data

Welfare Reform Bill

Proceeding contribution from Lord Freud (Conservative) in the House of Lords on Monday, 14 November 2011. It occurred during Debate on bills and Committee proceeding on Welfare Reform Bill.
My Lords, as I said earlier, the history of this is that only 30 per cent of the gain that we have seen in recent years has been due to demographics. The rest has been the result of a drive in demand. I do not think that there was any assumption of a huge change in expectation in the projection. I am sure that once she has gone through Hansard, the noble Baroness will work it out. I shall take the question on transitional protection put by my noble friend Lord Newton that I failed to answer. He had to ask it again, and I apologise for that. We do not have any plans to introduce such protection for people who currently receive DLA and may not be entitled to PIP. While I accept that they may have been entitled to it for some time, it would be strange to continue to pay a benefit to people who no longer meet the entitlement criteria. So there is no difference between this and the similar 2004-05 exercise where 12 per cent of people were found no longer to be entitled. I turn now to the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on the difficulty of working out what the assessments we published on Friday mean. That was an exercise in showing the weightings and how the criteria might work to prioritise relative need. We know that there are strong views on these relative weightings. That is why we have published them: so that we can now discuss and fine-tune them to the extent that we need to. As I said, we will be able to move on this when we come to these clauses on Report, having done the exercise and worked out what it means in terms of entitlement thresholds.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
732 c188-9GC 
Session
2010-12
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords Grand Committee
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