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Welfare Reform

I welcome the hon. Lady's backing for our support measures, the new funding mechanism and the simplification measures. We are, of course, happy to continue to reflect on proposals for a single working age benefit, but I think that the Liberal Democrats have to say how they would achieve that. Which benefit rates would they cut in order to have that harmonisation; or, if they are not proposing to cut any benefits, where would they find the extra money to lift everybody up to the level of the highest benefits within the system? [Interruption.] I note that the hon. Lady says that she is happy to have that conversation and I would happy to hear her set out her proposals. It is also important to say that we want to give greater discretion to our advisers. They already exercise quite a lot of discretion, but we want to go further—for example, by giving them more time to discuss issues with people who may need half an hour or a bit longer, so spending correspondingly less time with those who are already looking for work and may need only a couple of minutes to arrange the next interview. We also want to give more discretion to our providers. That is why we are following the so-called black-box approach, where we set the outcomes and the results we want to achieve, but we also free up the people involved to determine how they actually achieve those ends. Where the private and voluntary sector is concerned, it is important that we do not curtail discretion with too many centralised rules. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that the third sector and social enterprise have a vital role to play in the delivery of services. Indeed, they already do so, and we are determined that, as we bring in these prime providers, that will be a way of improving our work with the third sector. That is exactly why I have asked the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations and Tony Hawkshead from Groundwork to lead a taskforce looking specifically into this issue. If the hon. Lady has any suggestions, we would be happy to consider them. The hon. Lady is wrong to say that the Green Paper does not mention the important issue of mental health. It says specifically that our interventions with pathways for people with mental health problems have not been as successful as others. They have had some success, but we want to look at how to make them more effective, how we can dovetail that with improving access to the psychological therapies roll-out—the roll-out of talking therapy led by the NHS—and how we can work with local areas to improve the co-ordination of mental health and back-to-work services. Work is often the best way of helping people to improve their mental health. We also need to work with employers to change the culture of stigma that too often still applies to people who have mental heath problems. The hon. Lady asked about child poverty, and we all agree that its eradication is an important goal. I am not sure that she agrees with us, however, on the target of eradicating child poverty by 2020. [Interruption.] I am glad that the Liberal Democrats are now formally committed to the 2020 and 2010 targets. [Interruption.] I am not sure that their commitment is entirely clear. I am interested in how they could achieve that commitment given that their leader wants to cut £20 billion of public expenditure. It will be hard for her to square that circle. I look forward to her trying to do so, but also to working with her on those parts of the Green Paper on which we agree.