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Welfare Reform Bill

Ministers are very capable of setting out their own figures. I do not have, at the top of my mind, all the detailed figures the right hon. Gentleman wants, which are properly things for Ministers to report to the House, but they have detailed the total savings overall and they are trying to live within that budget. As has rightfully been reported to the House today, they have given up some of the savings to accommodate the transitional period. It is entirely fair to ask the right hon. Gentleman, who is a specialist, as is the Minister he shadows, to tell us how much difference there would be in his proposals. Clearly, Labour has not yet thought through what the total should be. There is another, very difficult, issue to consider with regionalism: there are big divergences in house and flat prices within, as well as between, regions. We should recognise this point, which in some ways makes this policy a bit easier to stomach than some on the Labour Benches suggest. I heard a former Westminster councillor saying that she had done some work on the situation of families who would be caught by the cap in Westminster. Naturally I was worried and wanted to hear what her answer was. She said she had found a considerable number of properties that she thought would be suitable for those families, quite close to where they were currently living, which happened to be rather better value than those in which they were currently living, supported by benefits. That seemed rather good news to me. Members from London constituencies will know that within London there is a huge variety of cost in property—often street by street, not merely borough by borough—so I do not think the proposal is quite as penal as some on the Labour Benches suggest. That makes it quite difficult to set a regional cap because such a cap might be no more appropriate as an average than the national cap.