Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

My right hon. Friend made an interesting and important point about eligibility. Does he agree that one of the most pernicious legacies of the last Government was that their tendency to hand out, increase and widen the eligibility for welfare payments has meant that, when the payback comes, the most vulnerable people in our society tend to be hardest hit? We are doing everything we can to target benefits at those who need them most. For example, there are 600,000 disability claimants. Increasingly, we know that small groups of people desperately need the benefits but that many receiving them do not.