Clause 19
Welfare Reform Bill
6:45 pm
Anne McGuire (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Disabled People), Department for Work and Pensions; Stirling, Labour)
The purpose of the amendments is to ensure that the contributory and support allowance treats the additional statutory paternity pay in the same way as other similar statutory payments made by employers, such as statutory maternity and adoption pay. The amendments set out in detail the relationship between the contributory employment and support allowance and statutory payments.
The additional statutory paternity pay is a new statutory payment paid by employers to employees which was introduced by the Work and FamiliesAct 2006. A decision on when the new scheme will be introduced is yet to be made, but we need to ensure that the ESA can take account of that. The regulations that we will make under the clause will provide that where a claimant is receiving one such payment from their employer, it will be deducted from the contributory employment and support allowance under the overlapping benefit rules. Those arrangements arethe same as those for incapacity benefit. I therefore ask the Committee to accept the amendment.