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Welfare Reform Bill

You do not when there are caring responsibilities. We have discussed this. There is a responsive set of conditionalities for people who have other obligations. If you exclude people with very few hours—many will do those few hours for rather more than the minimum wage—they are actually much better off than under the current circumstances because we have done it through addition rather than as an extra disregard. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said that an estimated 50,000 carers will be worse off under the universal credit. That is not correct. That figure was an estimate of the number of single and non-disabled benefit claimants who are carers. Only those whose earnings fall within the very narrow band of two to five hours at the national minimum wage could experience a very slightly lower income under universal credit. I turn to Amendment 52DB. The universal credit is designed to help improve work incentives to break cycles of worklessness. A couple will jointly benefit from a single earnings disregard set at the highest amount to which either person is entitled. In practice, this may mean that only the earnings of the first earner are disregarded. Given the financial constraints within which we are delivering universal credit, it is best to focus on the clear aim of reducing worklessness for the household as a whole rather than spreading the available resources among different earners in one household. To revert back to an earlier amendment on piloting, this is clearly something that we can test. If that gets a better result, it can be changed when a Government have adequate money. This is not a matter of principle but of affordability. We estimate that if couples who were both in work were entitled to—