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Welfare Reform

I congratulate the Minister on the Statement, particularly on him and his team securing £2.1 billion of expenditure to overhaul a system that has had many epithets, including ““complex””, ““cumbersome”” and ““inefficient””. I am sure that if we wrote a dictionary of the problems of the current system, we would see the need for making progress towards change. I am keen to explore the key area of the Statement—that 850,000 people in our land will be lifted out of poverty as a result of these measures. That would be a tremendous achievement for the Government, one which we have not seen in the past. Can the Minister explain how that figure is arrived at and the Government’s direction of travel? It is an aim worth achieving in itself, although it is not the only ambition they have. Given that there will be a long period of transition, how will the existing benefit structure begin to look to the new benefit structure? Clearly you do not want to continue the old system and change rapidly; you will need to ensure that the sense of direction is towards the new structure. I am sure the House will wish the Government every good speed in doing this, but ““crawling”” is not the epithet that I would use at the moment.