Family Test

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, as I said, the family test is not a tick-box exercise. Policy is always about trade-offs, but the family test ensures that family impacts are explicitly considered when making those trade-offs.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, we spent quite a lot of time yesterday looking at issues affecting the family through the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. My noble friends Lady Lister and Lady Sherlock in particular pressed the Minister time and again as to whether these proposals in the Bill passed the family test. Answer came there none. Can the Minister tell us in what way, explicitly, the proposals in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill have been subjected to and evaluated against the family test and whether they have passed it, as she has told the House today?

[Baroness Altmann]

I can only repeat to the noble Baroness that the family test is not a pass or fail exercise. It is right to make our welfare system fairer for the working families currently paying into the system to support others, and the family test has been explicitly considered in the new policies and trade-offs necessary in all policy-making.