Welfare Reform Bill

The Secretary of State has just hinted at precisely why he is not able now to offer the greater support that those 1.2 million people on incapacity benefit aged over 50 need. The reason is that the Government are being too timid in another area of reform, which is the issue of funding for the additional back to work places that will be needed following the assessments of those on incapacity benefit. By not fully implementing the changes to the Treasury rules to allow money saved in, and here we get into the jargon, the annually managed expenditure budget to be spent on the departmental expenditure limit budget—the so-called DEL-AME switch; put simply, it means taking the savings from taking people off benefits and into work and enabling them to be used to provide the programmes that support that process—the Government have limited what they can do on welfare reform. They have limited themselves to pilot projects in five areas without any chance of expansion until 2013. There is where the problem lies with what the Secretary of State is proposing.