Welfare Reform Bill

In quite a lot of the publicity run in some newspapers preceding today’s debates, there has been—how can I put it—synthetic outrage about the number of DLA awards that have been made for life, as though they are somehow fraudulent, negligent or erroneous, thus apparently besmirching the entitlement of the holder of that lifetime award to it as of right, as though they have somehow manipulated or cheated the system and that the previous Administration has colluded with them at the taxpayer’s expense. That publicity has been extremely ugly and extremely unfair. Whether or not the Minister feels able to accept the amendments—and I hope he does—I hope he will accept that some conditions, on which the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, spoke so eloquently and movingly and of which two other Peers in your Lordships’ House have had intimate experience, do not change except for the worse and for which a lifetime award is a decent, sensible and cost-effective way of proceeding. Could he therefore ask his press hounds to lay off those people who have had them in the past and who ought, in all decency, to go on to enjoy them in the future?