Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I would like to intervene briefly in this debate. I think that a household benefit cap is a wholly reprehensible policy device. I am absolutely and implacably opposed to it. However, I know when I am licked and I think that the Government have come a huge way in easing the path of the 67,000 families, although I still have fear and concerns for them. My purpose in intervening is to ask my noble friend to assist me by reassuring me that, with the extra spending envelope, he now has the capability—working closely with local authorities and Jobcentre Plus—to track the destinations of these families over the next few years. Colleagues who have been following debates on social security internationally know that, in America, the changes made in 1986 by President Clinton meant that people fell off the lists in droves and no one could find out where they went. The social security system then spent years trying to pick them up. The fact is that 67,000 is 1 per cent of the case load; it is not a big number of people. I am reasonably assured now that, with the finances available to local authorities and Jobcentre Plus, it should be possible to get a report. When we get this important report—and I, too, agree that that is an important concession—the House will be able to be confident that none of these families has disappeared. I do not want any of these families to be ““disappeared””. I hope that my noble friend can give me that assurance. I do not want this benefit cap to be anything like an accepted part of the landscape in future. I think that it is a sticking plaster and that an entitlement override is wholly wrong. However, I have enough confidence in my noble friend to know that if we get universal credit up and established and running well, and if he switches his attention—as I hope he will—to housing benefit in the context of a proper housing policy, and I would support him in doing that, we can trade our way out of needing a benefit cap. That is the way forward. I accept, however, that in the short term we are stuck with this. I hate it and will be pursuing it in regulations as aggressively as I can. However, as I said at the beginning, I know when I am licked and I hope that the Government will get on and do this properly. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, will not press this idea of having an independent body on the benefit cap. I want nothing to do with independent bodies or anything else of any kind that has to do with the household benefit cap. Therefore, if he presses his amendment, he will find me—unusually, perhaps, in this case—in the opposite Lobby.