My Lords, the amendment would exclude guardian’s allowance from the cap. I shall briefly set out the regulations on exactly who gets guardian’s allowance, because I think it is worth doing. You can get it only if you are caring for somebody else’s child, you are entitled to child benefit for the child and both of the child’s parents are dead, or one of the child’s parents is dead and at that time the whereabouts of the other parent is unknown and you have made all reasonable efforts to find them, or one of the child’s parents is dead and the other is in prison with a minimum sentence of two years remaining to serve, following the death of the other parent. People do not get this allowance lightly. It is not paid to foster parents or prospective adopters. My noble friend Lady Hollis, with a precision and a lyricism that I could not begin to match, set out the effects of taking this away from a group of people who are reaching out to some of the most vulnerable children in our country. I hope that that has persuaded the Minister how important this is. But given those effects, and given how few these people are in number, and given how vulnerable the children are, I would like the Minister to explain why they do not fit into the category that he described under the last amendment, when he said that the Government wanted to incentivise work but also to protect the most vulnerable. Why do they not count as the most vulnerable?
In Committee on 21 December I asked the Minister what behavioural incentives the Government were seeking by including guardian’s allowance in the cap. He said:
“Recipients of maternity allowance and guardian’s allowance will be affected by the benefit cap only if they are in receipt of a significant amount of other welfare payments”.—[Official Report, 21/12/15; col. 2378.]
That is not a justification. Either it is right to include guardian’s allowance in the cap or it is not; it cannot be right because you get other benefits as well. So if the Government believe that it is right, can the Minister please tell the House what behavioural response the Government are looking for from people who receive guardian’s allowance as a result of the cap? If he cannot provide one, will he accept that the fact that they will be affected by the cap only if other benefits are also received is not a good argument for guardian’s allowance itself to be counted towards the cap? That argument could be made for any benefit. I look forward to the Minister’s explanation.