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Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I was the Minister responsible for those reports at that time, and I have to say to him that they did not apply to people with lifetime conditions. People with lifetime conditions should get lifetime awards. Clearly, if someone deteriorates, they or their carer may apply further, but the information on DLA that the Minister referred to was either about people with fluctuating conditions or about people who had become better but had not realised that they might no longer qualify as a result, and so on. We had no argument with the need to continue to review DLA for people whose conditions may change quite rapidly over a period of time, particularly if they have been recovering from an accident, and so on. We are talking here about lifetime conditions in which it is therefore decent to give lifetime awards. I can assure the noble Lord that the statistics to which he referred do not refer to that group.