Speeches by Bell.

“It is really important. If you are running a local authority, you want to know where your budgets are going—Steve will definitely have experienced this. In the periods where local authorities did have certainty, obviously local authorities always want more money as well, so I am not being naive about it; they want volu…”

“As Danny politely pointed out, I am a Treasury Minister as well, so the formal answer to that is the spending review is happening soon and the Department for Work and Pensions, like every Department, has to have its budgets approved for the next three years. That is a decision to be taken next week, so I cannot answer …”

“I have a lot of anecdotal reports from talking to local authorities, probably the same as you have. I hear some versions of that. Some local authorities have tried to provide more support to pensioners generally; some have tried to do what you are talking about, some have done it in a proactive way and some have done i…”

“I don’t know off the top of my head how many are affected, but that is a reasonable thing for you to ask us to look at, so I can take that away. I am not intending to change that in the near future. It was a change introduced by the last Government. There is no simple way around it. We have household-level income suppo…”

“I have talked to carers’ charities locally in Swansea and nationally about that issue. It is right that it does not feel intuitive to some people that you are applying for carer’s support even though there is no financial entitlement directly that flows from that but it has a big impact. The ordering is to apply for th…”

“There will be some of that. The thing that happens in a lot of cases is that once you start receiving the state pension, you flow off because it is a significantly higher level than income support for universal credit and it is not means tested. The vast majority are flowing into the state pension at that point and the…”

“I have not seen that. That depends what they actually mean. When you are coming to your state pension, if you are moving from universal credit over to the SPA, the main thing you do is apply for state pension. If I look across the Government at systems that work well, this is on the list. It has a high success rate in …”

“That is not the main focus. As I say, the main focus is on the administration of the system and making that as seamless as possible, particularly from the perspective of the individuals. As I say, I will come back and set out the full details when we have them.”

“The straight answer to your question is that by volume the engagement is prioritised on local authorities at the moment, because I want to make sure we have understood the mechanics exactly. Of course we will absolutely engage with the third sector.”

“I will say two things. One is that we will be formally consulting, but I am not waiting for the formal consultation. As I say, we are working with local authorities now. It is not DWP doing its discovery work on what the options are and how to think about it policy wise, then we will announce something and then consult…”

“I am afraid the boring answer is that we will need to set that out properly when we provide you with the update on how we are taking that forward. I will be very happy to come and talk to the Committee whenever you want to do that. You can tell from some of what I have said what I am issues prioritising. I do not want …”

“I want to set out a full answer to you on that at the right time, so I do not want to go into that detail today, but we are considering the full range of how this administration works. Local authorities and DWP will need to keep working together.”

“That is your phrasing, Danny—I might use some other words—but, yes, basically the IT system is important and we need to make sure across the board that we keep DWP moving forward in our transformation programmes, so we have always got better IT. It cannot be that the rest of the world is moving on to new ways of doing …”

“The work is very much under way. We are working to a 2026 timeline for new claims to be covered by a merged administration. When I say work is under way, I mean we are doing our internal work but working closely with local authorities. That is obviously important for understanding how it would work in practice but also…”

“I have not seen that, so I will look through your evidence sessions. I have not read that particular evidence, so I will have a look. Andrew might be able to give you an answer.”

“No. I am not here today to say, “Here is the legislation; here is the brand-new big IT system.” No, that is right.”

“It would definitely make it easier in some cases if you changed the legislation, but there are trade-offs in all kinds of areas and that is for Parliament to consider. Then there are mechanical challenges. It costs money to build a data-sharing system. Andrew can come in, but the last time I saw it, it was about £2 mil…”

“Let me say something broadly and then Andrew, who is much more of an expert, can give you some more detail. While I think we have made some progress—as I said, I think the previous Government made some progress on this—I see three barriers. One is local authorities knowing that there is more flexibility for them to use…”

“No, I do not agree. One, it is not for us to decide what is in the forecasts because the previous Government created an Office for Budget Responsibility and it decides what the budgeted numbers are. It budgeted for quite a large increase in uptake of pension credit in its autumn statement 2024 and spring statement 2025…”

“Luckily I am not dealing with that level of dissonance. The Chancellor has been out very clearly saying we want to get take-up. All I will say is, “Don’t be cynical.” I think that most of us want to see, where Parliament has decided people should be entitled to benefit, people receiving it right across the board. We ar…”