New Clause 11
Welfare Reform Bill
12:30 pm
John Penrose (Weston-Super-Mare, Conservative)
My hon. Friend is exactly right, and his is a good example of a wider issue. If one is going to shorten the times much further, it will not be enough to act like a football coach on the sidelines and just shout louder and ask people to work harder. That will not achieve a delay time of two weeks or less, because other things have to be done too. Among them is a series of efficiency measures, some of which are concerned with the exchange of verifiable information, as my hon. Friend says. In addition, and wherever possible, processes and indeed benefits themselves should be redesigned—as attempted by many measures in the Bill—to make the intrinsic process simpler and faster. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds spoke about attempting to achieve greater simplicity. If that can be designed into the system, it inevitably makes it far easier for the people who are working to achieve such goals.