To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans she has to review social security income-related benefits. [4342]

The Government are committed to a wide-ranging review of social security, including income-related benefits. Its aim is to reward work, savings and honesty.

In the past, the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley) and other Labour Members condemned family credit as a subsidy for poor employers. Do the Government now plan to phase out family credit in the near future?

The hon. Gentleman is wrong in saying that my hon. Friend made any such accusation. A review is under way, but I should be very surprised if that were its conclusion.

Will my hon. Friend confirm that, despite predictions to the contrary, the previous Administration managed to double the number of people receiving benefit? Does he agree that in one in five households where people could work, no one is actually working and that that is one of the worst records in the industrialised world?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. In respect merely of income-related benefits, under the previous Administration the numbers claiming means-tested help rose from 10 million to 15 million. Part of the reason for that is that work is unevenly distributed. One of the aims of our review is to ensure that the benefit system does not act as a hidden hand, ensuring that some households get many jobs and others get none.

In setting out the laudable aims of his review, will the Minister tell us what co-ordination there is with a similar review in the Department of the Environment on housing policy, that, on its own declared aim, seeks to revert to giving priority in two identical cases to someone who is nominally homeless—even with connivance—over those who have honestly taken their place in the queue?

I can happily reassure the hon. Gentleman that there will be close co-ordination between Departments in the review.

But there should not be such close co-ordination at Question Time.