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Welfare Reform Bill

—or buy a washing machine. However, the grinding awfulness of poverty, week in, week out, should and does concern us. My noble friends Lady Lister and Lady Sherlock and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made the point that minimum income standards are needs-based, and based on people’s perception. That seems hugely important as well. There is no easy answer to this, but the fundamental proposition being asked for is that we should calibrate what minimum income standards are, and have regard to those or have them to hand when benefit levels are assessed. That does not seem unreasonable. It is a world away from saying that benefit levels should be at minimum income standards, for all the reasons that we recognise. I am sure that the noble Lord will touch on the deficit and how it has to be addressed; perhaps he will not—