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Hello and welcome to Coffeyhouse shots. I'm James Heel and I'm joined today by the spectators

Isabel Hardman and Luke Trill and Warren Common. Now Isabel last week the Prime Minister made a big pitch

benefits changes and that's there going to be different ways in which benefits are assessed in future.

Talk us through these changes and whether you think they're likely to succeed in trying to get down some of that welfare bill which built up post-Covid.

Yeah, these benefit reforms have been in the works,

as with a lot of government reforms for a very long time,

and I think there's been three, four different secretaries of state for working pensions. been

working on them over the past couple of years.

So you can see Chloe Smith,

to raise coffee, as well as Mel Stride all having input into this

question of how do you pay and assess benefits for today rather than for the last set of the context of the last

set of welfare reforms around Universal Credit which were obviously started

actually by the Conservatives when they were in opposition in 2009 and our health as a nation has changed and

COVID has I suppose magnified that but it was changing before then anyway and the this green paper, so it's very much the, you know, the

consultative document as opposed to a set of reforms that are going to happen. This green paper

attempts to address some of the questions around whether the personal independence

payment which replaced a disability living allowance which is paid to people

both in and out of work.

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