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Welfare Reform Bill

I do not believe that anything in the provisions would prevent any provider—this is confirmed in a note from the Box, I am pleased to say—seeking to offer loan facilities to an individual. Part of what we are trying to achieve through financial inclusion and education is to help people to move out of the Social Fund environment, and be able to engage with more traditional financial transactions, such as borrowing, having bank accounts, and so on. It is one of the benefits that we hope to get from these arrangements. Reverting to what my noble friend Lady Hollis said, rather than bore the Committee by reading out a whole raft of statistics, the annual report includes a summary of reasons for initial refusal of budgeting loans to applicant groups. Some of these are to do with not being on the relevant benefit, or not being on a qualifying benefit for 26 weeks. There is another category but I do not know, at a glance, how much detail we have beneath that. I am certainly happy to write to my noble friend about it. I also do not have details of what would happen about repayments and bad debts under the loan scheme. Obviously, for people on benefits, recoveries are routinely made through deduction from those benefits and would therefore be secure. When somebody moves off benefits, that repayment schedule may not be complete. I will see if I can help my noble friend and get some further detail on that.