Welfare Reform Bill

Part of Tied Public Houses (Code of Practice) – in the House of Commons at 12:52 pm on 9 March 2011.

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Photo of Iain Duncan Smith Iain Duncan Smith The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions 12:52, 9 March 2011

In a second. I think that Yasmin Qureshi was slightly before the hon. Lady.

The key thing that we are trying to do is to give local authorities an element of control over some of the process, including in particular what I call the crisis loans short-term element—the hiatus moment in the payments,—and some of the community care grants. The point is that, when the fund became only distantly linked to the Department, the telephone concept behind it allowed people to push up the number of claims, because they were not seen or understood, so their cases were not properly known and it was very difficult to decide whether they were true or false. Local areas will be far better able to recognise who such people are, what conditions they are in and what circumstances apply to them. Therefore, localising the process will be very important. Of course, huge swathes of it will remain centralised, but we feel that those two elements in particular will most respond to localisation.