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Welfare Reform Bill

Let me quickly pick up three issues. First, when I talked about clusters, I meant that, where there are clusters and mistakes, something is clearly going wrong with the way in which we are presenting universal credit. In those circumstances, we would look very hard at fixing that problem and we would not be able to accuse anyone of negligence. Secondly, I shall look very closely at the run-in to operating the universal credit system. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on lots of things. She is absolutely right that we cannot have a system that demonstrates problems in its run-in phase. Thirdly, on targets, I need to write to noble Lords. I would not mind forbidding the DWP from ever using those targets in that way—and I could offer it as a deal any day—but a future Government might not want to be so constrained.