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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)
I thank the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) for securing the debate and giving the Government the opportunity to consider some of the details she discussed. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Leigh.
The hon. Lady rightly wants clarification about aspects of implementation, and I hope I can provide that. However, it is important to remind hon. Members of some of the reasons for the importance of reform. Clearly, some financial situations are incredibly difficult to plan for, particularly if a family is already struggling to make ends meet. Various pressures can affect different communities, from the flooding of homes, as happened in the recent storms, to the loss of the main breadwinner’s job, when there is a large family. It is important that the welfare state should have the flexibility to cope with the realities of people’s everyday lives, and the needs of different communities. That is the principle on which our reform is built.
For some, crisis loans have, as the hon. Lady pointed out, made a real difference in times of financial crisis. However, I remind the House that we are retaining the alignment payments that make up the majority of crisis loan payments. In future they will be called payments on account. In relation to the costs that the hon. Lady has been discussing, which arise in situations where people need support and, perhaps, lower-cost loans—or, in the case of budgeting payments on account, zero-cost loans—those payments will continue to be available. The change on which I want to focus the House’s attention is not to those alignment payments, which are the majority of crisis loan payments at the moment; it is to personal payments, which are a minority of crisis loans. It is important for the House to understand that; otherwise the discussion will be confusing.
It is important also to understand that demand for crisis loans has tripled in the past six years. That started well before the current economic downturn. Accordingly to the analysis that we have done, that is driven by young, single people on jobseeker’s allowance, many of whom are still living in their parents’ home. That was very out of kilter with trends in other parts of the benefits system, and that is why we felt it was important to take action. It is clear that for some the discretionary social fund had become something more akin to an open credit facility, with crisis loans and community care grants funding everyday expenditure and not being used to deal with the extraordinary financial pressures that, as the hon. Lady pointed out, were the original purpose of crisis loans. That has meant that availability for others, particularly pensioners, who might benefit from some additional support to smooth financial pressures, was not really considered. Some important groups were not necessarily getting access to the support that could have been helpful to them. Our reforms are intended to simplify the currently complex situation, improve targeting, and remove the element of remoteness that has crept into the system. I shall come on to that because it is important in relation to driving the increase in demand of recent years. We want to ensure that the support is focused on its main purpose, and that it gets to people who really need it.
The hon. Lady talked about the increase in demand among those who were going on to jobseeker’s allowance. In reforming the social fund we are doing two things, as I have pointed out, the first of which is maintaining the national payments of budgeting loans and advances of benefits, which make up more than 60% of the discretionary social fund. The change is in the flexible support. We want to get support to the most vulnerable people and enable them to have support at a local level when they most need it. We will ensure that that flexible support gets through to people via the local authorities in England and the devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales. This new local provision will replace community care grants and crisis loans for living expenses.
For total clarity, we need to ensure that we see the difference between those two budgeting streams. Budgeting loans and advances for alignment payments will continue to be there, and they currently make up the lion’s share—some 60%. The change is in that flexible support, which can be better delivered at a local level. By putting in place such changes, we can improve the support that is available to people who find themselves in difficult situations.
The hon. Lady was rightly concerned about the people who are in financial crisis and who might be seeking short-term loans. As she pointed out, some organisations charge extortionate levels of interest to individuals who have little choice over where they borrow their money. Let me reassure her that the new system will provide no-interest loans to claimants who are suffering financial hardship, especially those who are waiting for their benefit payments. Such a scheme will be developed and delivered under the new universal credit system. Let me also reassure her that since 2011, we have invested more than £5 million in a crackdown on illegal lenders, which has resulted in a number of arrests. Hopefully, she will see that we are as serious as she is about the problems that those sorts of lenders can create for very vulnerable individuals.
Ultimately, these reforms will constitute part of the Government’s wider social justice strategy which will try to deal with some of the root causes of poverty while still maintaining a safety net for the most vulnerable in society.
Local authorities are well placed to provide personalised support. We feel strongly that what has happened in recent years, particularly as a result of changes that were made under the previous Administration, that the allocation of personal funding under the crisis loans scheme has become somewhat detached from communities and that it has been difficult to judge the claims. Councils’ local knowledge, broad responsibilities and experience of benefits administration put them in an ideal position successfully to take on the role of delivering the sort of support that is currently being delivered through community care grants and crisis loans.
Dr Whiteford
Let me reiterate the question that I posed during my own remarks. Will the local authorities and devolved Administrations receive funding to help them implement and set up this new system? If so, how much and when will it come on stream?
Maria Miller
I can reassure the hon. Lady that any administrative costs will be covered outside the budget that is there for supporting vulnerable individuals. I do not have the details of what those budgets will be, but I can write to her with that information.
We are working closely with the Scottish Government as we develop options for the successor scheme. They also agree that local authorities are best placed to deliver the new provision and have agreed with local authority leaders in Scotland that they will work with councils on the replacement scheme from April 2013.
On the Budget, the hon. Lady is right to ensure that funding is available. The Department for Work and Pensions’ current annual funding allocation of £178 million for the discretionary fund will be passed in full to the devolved Administrations and the local authorities. As I have said, any administrative costs will come on top of that.
The Department is basing the division of this £178 million allocation on the amount spent in 2012-13. It is important that the hon. Lady notes that because spend on the crisis loan element of the discretionary social fund is being managed back to 2005-06 levels—the levels before the significant increase that resulted in the change of process. We will be managing this particular aspect of the funding back to those sorts of levels.
As I have said, crisis loan awards have almost tripled since 2006. There were 1 million such loans in 2005 and 2.7 million in 2010. Such an increase can be directly linked to the structural changes that were introduced by the previous Government and not to the recession.
Maria Miller
If the hon. Lady could let me finish this point it might help her understand why the changes were so large. We moved from a controlled administration of this benefit to a remote telephone application, which allowed people to push up their number of claims. Claimants were not seen and their cases were not properly known about, which made it difficult to decide whether the loans were accurate or needed. Local areas will be far better able to recognise who requires this support, what conditions they are in and what circumstances apply to them. Localising the process will be a very important part of ensuring that money is getting to people who need it the most.
Dr Whiteford
I take on board the Minister’s argument, which I have heard from the Government many times before. However, I just do not accept that this is about process. Evidence that was found through a freedom of information request showed that the spending prior to that had remained remarkably stable. It really was not fluctuating. It went up one year and down another year. I am no economist, but I cannot help thinking that it has more to do with the state of the wider economy than with the change of the telephone system. I wish the Government would be more honest in facing up to that.
Maria Miller
The hon. Lady needs to accept that if we open up the benefit gateway in such a way as to make it difficult to manage or police, it is entirely unsurprising if we see a significant increase in the level of demand. I take her back to one of my earlier comments about the nature of that increase. It is among a very distinct and particular set of people. It is not at all representative of any increase or changes in the nature of those claiming benefits in total.
In 2011, some 17,000 people received 10 or more crisis loans in a 12-month period. Crisis loans are about preventing serious risks to health or safety or about an emergency. Is it entirely possible that an individual could be in such serious risk and danger over such a prolonged period of time? The hon. Lady must agree that some urgent change is required here. As this is cash limited, any shortfall that is created would have had to be met from the budgeting loan scheme, which would have meant less money for those people who were trying to regulate their borrowing in a responsible way.
Mr Andrew Smith
In the time that remains, will the Minister address another important point that the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) raised about what safeguards there will be to ensure that vulnerable people who need this support actually get it from local authorities and that other local pressures do not absorb the money?
Maria Miller
The right hon. Gentleman neatly brings me on to my next point. Although there is no need for any new statutory duties on local authorities and the money will not be ring-fenced, the money will be sent out via a specific identifiable grant and it will be accompanied by a settlement letter that will set out what the funding will be used for and the underlying principles, and it will describe the outcomes that must be achieved. The funding will concentrate on providing resources for those facing the greatest difficulty in managing their income and it will enable more flexible responses at a local level. The letter will be explicit that the funding is to provide a replacement provision for community care grants and general living expense crisis loans. It will set out the sort of detail that the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Lady are looking for to ensure that the most vulnerable people in our society get the support that they need.