Clause 33
Welfare Reform Bill
4:30 pm
Danny Alexander (Shadow Minister and Disability Spokesperson, Work & Pensions; Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendmentNo. 259, in clause 33, page 28, leave out lines 21 to 23.
This Committee seems to move in fits and starts: long periods of debate on some clauses followed immediately by periods of dramatic progress. I intend to speak to the amendment briefly, because the issues that it seeks to address have been well aired in earlier debates, not least in remarks made by the hon. Member for Colne Valley on clause 27. However, it gives the Under-Secretary the opportunity to answer some of those points in more detail.
The amendment seeks to probe the circumstances in which the information prescribed in subsection (1) is to be provided for use by the Department. Will the Under-Secretary clarify whether information relating to individual cases will be required to be provided for those five areas listed in subsection (1)? Is the intention to prescribe general information about housing benefit or specific details about a case, relating, for example, to individual child support cases, when such information may be shared? Will she explain the Government’s intentions?