Welfare Reform and Work Bill

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister. I am truly grateful that he has responded in such a compassionate and sympathetic way to the situation of people who are at the hardest edge of kinship care, when bereaved family members are seeking to look after bereaved children. What the Government, and the Minister in particular, have done is remove an additional pressure that we would have been putting on them of financial strain. As I understand it, he has confirmed that not only will such families be exempt from the benefit cap, the entire income, not just the guardian’s allowance, will not come under the benefits cap—in other words, as a group, they will be excluded. That is so important for those families to give the children they are caring for—as well as their own children, perhaps—the stability and security they need if, out of the wreckage of their lives and the damage that has been done to them, they can hope to build a secure future. I am very grateful to the Minister and thank him enormously.