Downing Street Says » Prime Minister’s speech on welfare

Asked if the proposals set out in the Prime Minister (PM)’s speech due later today would be implemented before or after 2015, the PMS said that the purpose of the PM’s speech would be to start a debate on some of these issues. The PM would say in his speech that some of these things would be potentially addressed in the next parliament. The PMS pointed out that at the time of the Budget the Chancellor said that if we continued cutting departmental spending at the same rate as we had in this spending review, then we would need to find a further 10bn of savings from the welfare budget and that the purpose of putting that number out there was to allow this debate to happen.

Asked if the exemptions for pensioners would continue beyond 2015, the PMS said that the current spending plans ran until 2014/15. The PM had made clear promises on benefits for pensioners and he would stick to those promises, but clearly there needed to be a debate about welfare reform generally if we needed to find further savings in the welfare budget.

Asked when the promise to pensioners would run out, the PMS said we had set out the policy for a parliament.

Asked if the PM disagreed with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions that all matters should be up for debate, the PMS said that the PM would be talking primarily about working age benefits today.

Asked again if the proposals would be implemented before 2015, the PMS said that the PM wanted to discuss some of these issues with Coalition partners and that it was possible for the Government to make changes to welfare policy at any stage.

Asked whether the driving force behind the proposals was saving money or social reform, the PMS said that we needed to take action to deal with the deficit. We had already made some progress on that, but the projection set out by the Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) at the time of the Budget suggested that if we continued to cut departmental spending in the first two years of next parliament, at the same rate as we had in this spending review, we would need to find a further 10bn in savings from the welfare budget. We needed to look at how we might make those savings, but the PM was also clear that there were certain things in the present system where the incentives did not necessarily work in the right way. We needed to do more to ensure that the incentives encouraged work and got people into work.

Asked if we would still go ahead with the PM s proposals post 2015 if the economy improved and the OBR predicted that the 10bn savings weren’t needed, PMS said that there were two arguments for reform one was the financial environment and the other was that we needed to make sure that the system worked the right way and created the right incentives for people.

Asked if deeper savings would be sought if OBR projections worsen, the PMS said he would not get in to hypothetical questions.

Asked if it was likely that some of these policies would form part of the next Spending Review, the PMS said that the timing of the next Spending Review had not even been confirmed so he was not in a position to say what would be in it.

Asked why the PM had settled on the figure of three children regarding Child Benefit, the PMS said that the PM had not settled on any figures in this speech, he had set out some ideas.

The PMS went on to say that this was a speech that looked at the questions that we needed to consider rather than attempting to set out the answers to those questions. The PMS said that he was not in a position to say what the answers were or what the government might do. Some things were for the future and some things would require discussion within the coalition.

Asked if the PM’s speech had been agreed in advance by coalition, the PMS said that people see speeches in advance so they would be aware of today’s speech.

Asked if the PM should be putting the speech out as a political one, PMS said that it was not unusual for PMs to set out their views on policies for the future and sometimes they needed to talk beyond the next election as some of these issues were long-term issues.

Asked if there was any research that showed that benefits claimants had actively turned down work, the PMS told the questioner to speak to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) or HM Treasury (HMT).

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

» Monday, June 25, 2012

Prime Minister’s speech on welfare

No Comments »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries