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The Economy

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments. He knows better than most what a difference our welfare system and, indeed, the Department for Work and Pensions and its phenomenal staff can make on the ground. I know that he will join me in welcoming not only the increase, temporarily, that we have put on universal credit for this year, providing almost £1,000 extra to those who are in receipt of it, but our further increases in and generosity with the local housing allowance and the provision of hardship funds to those struggling to pay their council tax bills, distributed through local authorities. In some areas, that represents a significant amount of support for the most vulnerable in our society—a point that was borne out in the distribution analysis that we published this summer, which showed that the most vulnerable in our society had benefited the most from our support.