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Middle East: Economic Update

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. We are repairing the public finances. At the time of the spring forecast, borrowing was set to fall more over this Parliament than in any other G7 economy. We are now borrowing below the G7 average, something that was not achieved in any of the 14 years of the previous Government. Just last week, we saw borrowing in the year to February fall by £20 billion compared with the previous year.

The noble Lord is absolutely right, of course, that the welfare system requires reforming. In the last five years of the previous Government, spending on welfare increased by £88 billion so, clearly, reform is necessary. There might not be consensus on what to do about it, but no one would believe that the system we inherited is working. It abandoned too many people to a life on benefits, wrote off too many people as too sick to work and condemned too many children to be too poor to eat. That is not a system that does not require reform, and reforming it we are.

To tackle fraud and error, we are increasing the proportion of face-to-face assessments for PIP from 6% in 2024 to 30%, saving £4.6 billion. We are rebalancing universal credit to incentivise people to work, rather than encouraging inactivity. We are redeploying 1,000 work coaches to support sick and disabled people who were previously left without contact. We are also supporting people to move into work, with £3 billion of investment into the pathways to work employment support and a £1.5 billion investment in the youth guarantee and the growth and skills levy.