Pre-Budget Report
5:18 pm
Lord McIntosh of Haringey (Deputy Chief Whip (House of Lords), HM Household; Labour)
My Lords, the first question which the noble Earl asked is about the cost of the minimum income guarantee. He asked me to estimate its future take-up. Clearly, two factors will affect the take-up, neither of which we can fully assess. The first is that the increased generosity of the minimum income guarantee will encourage more people to take it up; the other is that any improvements which we can make in relation to simplicity--we referred in the Statement to being able to make an application by a phone call--also may increase the take-up. But we cannot say precisely how much that increase will be, so I am not able to answer that question at the moment.
I am afraid that I did not understand the noble Earl's second question at all.