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Welfare Reform Bill

In an attempt to stop the Minister having to pop up and down, I think that I am right in saying that he has not responded to my concern about the effects of this proposal. Whatever the figures turn out to be, there appear to be some ““losers””. What are the effects of this? What steps will be taken to protect or to provide transitional measures? We are talking about sums of money that are significant to people who have not got very much. We have to keep that in mind all the time. The Minister has obviously had his ears bashed enough and no one thinks that we will press the amendment, but we hope that he will think about it. On carers, I listened with mounting horror to the fact that we shall not know what the effects will be by the time we return to this. If among those 652,000 so-called losers, or whatever number it is, there are a number who also lose carer’s allowance, we are talking about a number of households which will lose serious amounts of money in relation to their income. We need to know what is happening in order to make a judgment about these proposals. I do not expect the Minister to say anything else but he needs to know that this former Secretary of State recognises some concerns.