Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2012

My Lords, I was talking about child benefit, which was an issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. She referred to the relationship between child benefit and tax thresholds. As you move towards the universal credit system, that is the way you keep the incomes of the poorest in line. That can be done elegantly and in a more focused way than by using universal benefits, which of course is what child benefit is—using a lot of money and giving it to all in order to target the poorest. That is certainly the direction of travel that I am taking. We could possibly debate this at great length at some stage, and no doubt we will. I will write to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, on the question of those excluded on the non-dependant deductions. That is a matter for a letter. I will also write on the point about small businesses because I do not have all the information to hand. On the point about passported benefits and savings credit, the 30,000 who will not receive savings credit would actually not have been passported to the full housing benefit or council tax benefit, so they could establish a claim on the ground of low income. However, the £200 million being recycled to the poorest pensioners includes an assessment of the additional cost of passporting more of those pensioners by disproportionately uprating the standard minimum guarantee. As regards the triple lock on guaranteed credit, we are planning to retain the link with earnings. Clearly, our aims are to reduce reliance on means-testing, which is why we are protecting the position of those receiving the contributory state pension. But we do not have the funding to uprate the guarantee credit on the same basis as the underlying state pension. Depending on how we change the system, the basic pension would be larger and protected in that way. This order will provide support for those who have worked hard all their lives, poorer pensioners, people who are not able to work through their disabilities and those who through no fault of their own have lost their jobs and are trying to find work.