Clause 4 - Claims: supplementary
Tax Credits Bill
5:15 pm
Professor Steve Webb (Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
I am grateful to the Minister for putting on record some of the strategies that the Revenue will adopt to try to enhance take-up. I am particularly concerned about take-up of the working tax credit, as to some extent we are dealing with a client group that has had no experience of claiming means-tested benefits: the childless or the low paid may never have claimed means-tested benefits. If they have gone through the Jobcentre Plus process, some of the mechanisms that the Minister has described will reach them. I am aware, however, that a proportion of previously unemployed people and people who change jobs never come into contact with a jobcentre. I hope that the Minister can reassure us at some point, not immediately, that other take-up mechanisms for that group, which has less contact with officialdom, are also being put in place.
However, I accept what the Minister said about the specific purposes of this part of the clause and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.