Mr. R?n?n Hession:

I will answer the last question first. Whereas pay-related benefit is a social insurance payment to replace jobseeker's benefit, the working-age payment is the means-tested side. Effectively this would amalgamate jobseeker's allowance and working family payment. To go back to the IKEA analogy, if the pay-related benefit is the mock-up of a kitchen, the working age payment is the picture in the catalogue of the kitchen. In other words, it is a much earlier stage. It is really an outline sketch of the concept. It is behind pay-related benefit in the queue. It is a lot more complex to do. We felt it would be better to give people a sense of what it would look like so they could see it alongside the pay-related benefit and have a picture in their mind of what a coherent version of the future looks like.

When we did parent's benefit a couple of years ago it took us nine months to introduce it. We had to test all of the systems and run it, even with the legislation done. New schemes tend to take nine to 12 months from the decision point, depending on the complexity. Obviously at present we must go back to the Government with policy proposals to be further refined. There is a lead-in time for these. The Minister is very ambitious to get pay-related benefit progressed and we certainly want to try to come back to her on it.