Baroness Sherlock (Lab)

My Lords, my noble friend raises some interesting points and I am grateful for the welcome she has given to some elements of our reforms. On the question of adequacy, it may be—in her words—modest but this is actually a significant above-inflation cash increase in the standard allowance of universal credit. It means that by the end of this Parliament, people will be £14 a week, or £775 a year, better off. That might be modest proportionally; it is significant and will make a difference to people’s lives. But the real way that we will make a difference to people’s lives, in so many cases, is by helping them to move into work. There is only so much that the benefit system can do. There are those who cannot work and have severe needs, and the benefit system must always be there to support them. But for those who can, there is so much more out there that we could be doing and we simply have not been doing it. That is really one of my hopes. We will deal with poverty in other ways. Just so my noble friend knows, the impact and equality assessments will be published next week alongside the Spring Statement. In the long run, this is not about simply tinkering around the sides of a system. We are not just doing blanket cuts. We are doing two things: trying to put this system on a sustainable basis, so it will still be there for the future, but, much more than that, trying to reform it so that people genuinely can get into work who previously have been given no help and been abandoned. That way, we can really make a difference to people’s lives.