Welfare Reform Bill

I trust this information is reliable, but in today’s press there were quite a lot of stories about how long appeals are taking and that the department—or, rather, following Leggatt, the tribunals system—is having to appoint a further 85 judges to sit on appeals tribunals because of the backlog, which is up to 12 months. Can I have an assurance—I am sure that this must be the case—that, while waiting for an appeal, no interest is ticking up on sanctions, penalties, overpayments or anything like that? Secondly, checking with the law on tax credit as opposed to what may be the case on UC, I think that nearly all the difficulties with tax credits were not at the initial point of claim but were changes of circumstance and nearly all of them were associated with childcare changes. Half of all lone parents had more than a dozen changes of circumstances in a year, the system never caught up with itself and the computer nearly toppled. How is this going to work in this situation? People’s childcare circumstances inevitably change over half-term, a Baker day, Easter and Whitsun. By the time you keep reporting them or not reporting them—or feeling that you do not need to report them because there has been no reply to the previous report—you could be in a complete mess. I do not see how the Minister is going to manage this.