Baroness Sherlock
My Lords, this has been an interesting brief debate, introduced by my noble friend Lady Lister with her now characteristic blend of expertise and passion. I am sure that we are all grateful to her for opening up the question so well. The quotes that she shared with the Committee about children arriving hungry at school and mothers missing meals and going without themselves to protect their children from the effects of poverty were, on one level, not a surprise to any of us, but they are still shocking. They should be profoundly shocking.
I found the point made by the right reverend Prelate very interesting and I understand why he would like those assurances from both sides of the Committee. My noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton made Labour’s position clear at the beginning of our first day in Committee. It is this: if we were in government right now, we would be uprating benefits in line with inflation. However, we cannot make a commitment at this stage for the next Parliament. My view is that that is not a good idea anyway. We are fundamentally opposed to the whole principle in the Bill of fixing the levels of uprating for a period. We have perfectly good mechanisms for uprating benefits annually in line with inflation in the light of prevailing economic circumstances. To be honest, I would not want to be tempted into anything other than maintaining that position, but I fully understand why the right reverend Prelate is pressing the concerns that he is pressing.
I also found the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, very interesting. He drew in the spatial dimensions of poverty and the wide-ranging regional issues. That is something that we may come back to. I particularly agreed with his point about the need to monitor what is going on. The next amendment that I shall move encourages the Government to look specifically at the impact on child poverty. I also support the noble Lord’s point about the need for a cumulative assessment of all the changes between 2010 and now—a point made very strongly by my noble friend Lady Hollis at earlier stages of debate.
Since the Bill cannot help but drive down standards of living for families, what assessment have the Government made of the likely impact on the well-being of the poorest adults and children of what is effectively a real-terms cut in benefits and tax credits, not just over the year ahead, but over the three years covered by the first uprating and the two years of this Bill? It would be very helpful to the Committee to understand what assessment the Government have made. At a time when three new food banks are opening every week and even families in work are finding it a struggle to make ends meet, the state needs to take particular care to demonstrate that resources are gathered and distributed in a way that is fair to everyone. In the light of that, I shall be very interested to hear what the Minister has to say.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for moving this amendment and explaining her thinking. Of course, I recognise the serious issues that she and other noble Lords have raised during the course of this debate. I would not claim first-hand experience of living on benefits, so I do not bring to this debate any presumption about those on benefits finding what we are doing anything other than difficult, but is an inescapable fact that when setting benefit levels successive Governments have sought to strike a balance between the needs of claimants, maintaining work incentives and affordability.
Indeed, the current uprating legislation recognises this explicitly. The Social Security Administration Act 1992 requires the Secretary of State to make his annual review of benefit levels based on the increase in prices. He is then given discretion as to how to uprate certain benefits, having regard to the national economic situation and any other matters that he considers relevant. Parliament therefore requires the Secretary of State to take certain issues into account when considering the level at which the benefits in question are set. In bringing forward this Bill, we have considered these issues carefully and struck a balance between providing a cash increase, protecting certain key benefits and making necessary savings.
Benefit levels also have a significant bearing on work incentives. The complexity of the current system largely arises from successive Governments’ attempts to balance benefit income against work incentives. That is why universal credit is such an important measure as it applies a single set of rules focused on maintaining the incentive to take up work or more work. In response to some of the points made in this debate, I shall say something that I know is shared around the Committee. This Government believe that work is the best route out of poverty, and that is why we are focused on making sure that work pays.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I have laid out for the Committee the measures that are there and have been put forward by the Treasury. The noble Baroness wants to put forward some alternative statistics. Let me get back to the point I was making about the arrangements that are being put in place to ensure that, when we move into the implementation phase, support is available for those who need it, if there are any people who are not properly covered by the changes that we are making.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, referred to local authorities when he was talking about this. The local authorities and the Scottish and Welsh Governments would get £178 million to deliver new local welfare provision. They will develop local schemes to help those facing a crisis or short-term unavailable need. On the arrangements for people moving from weekly receipt of payments to monthly receipt, a whole range of different programmes is being put in place to support people in budgeting and making sure that they have the support that they need to manage the changes that are being brought about—changes that we believe will have the right effect in ensuring that this is a much simpler and more effective welfare system.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, also referred in this context to food banks. I point out to noble Lords that one reason why there has been an increase in the use of food banks is because the Government were clear that we wanted Jobcentre Plus advisers to be able to signpost their availability to claimants. For reasons that noble Lords on the other side of the House will presumably be able to explain, this was not possible before. The Trussell Trust director has said that he thinks that there has been a need there for a while, but the growth in the number of volunteers and the awareness that you can get this help if you need it explains the growth in this area.
Lord Martin of Springburn
Is it not a sad day when a government Minister has to stand up and say that food banks will be made available? Our children should not have to depend on food banks in this day and age.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
It is a sad fact that people should have to rely on food banks; I absolutely acknowledge that point and do not dispute it at all. The point I am making to the Committee is that Jobcentre Plus staff are now permitted to signpost the fact that they are available, whereas previously they were not permitted to do so. I am not suggesting that the fact that they exist is to be applauded at all, but it would be wrong for Jobcentre Plus staff not to be able to say that they are there to people who might be able to take some advantage of them just because we do not want to make that facility known.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
The Minister is speaking as though the only people using food banks are those who go to the jobcentres. Surely, from my experience and that of other noble Lords, many of the people who are now using food banks are actually in employment. As things like the bedroom tax bite, more people in employment will lose out on what benefits were available to them.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, to add to my noble friend’s point, my obviously localised and limited experience of food banks has been that before about 2010, in so far as they were in play, food banks were mostly drawn upon by young people. These were very often young men aged under 25 who were getting the shared rate for housing benefit in the private rented sector and found, as Shelter and others have told us over the years, that it did not match the rent they were required to pay; it was a very discrete group. They, in my localised experience, often had to turn to food banks to cope. Now the Government have extended that limitation on housing benefit from 25 to 35, while producing additional pressures right across the benefits spectrum, as my noble friend Lady Farrington has said. It is a disgraceful aspect of the fifth-richest nation in the world that so many of our people have to make recourse to food banks because our benefit system does not sustain them in the way it should.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I do not for one moment suggest that food banks are something on which anybody would want to have to rely. I completely agree with the noble Baroness in that regard. My point is simply that the fact they exist—
Lord Martin of Springburn
I suggest to the Minister that we should be ashamed that this is happening. I was brought up in the 1950s in a family of the poorest of the poor, and my parents would not have dreamt of going to a food bank. All these years later, we are talking of parents and children having to go to a food bank. If this so-called facility exists, the Government should do something to eradicate the need for food banks.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, food banks have existed for a long time. They have not been introduced in recent times—that was the point I tried to make by quoting the director of the Trussell Trust. I am not trying to make any point about this whatever. I do not for one moment suggest that anybody in this House should feel anything other than great disappointment that anybody should have to use a food bank. I am making a simple point. All noble Lords have been clear about their views, and certainly I am not here to disagree with the arguments they made. Let me move on.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, while accepting the need to strike a balance, argued none the less that a report into the adequacy of benefit levels would be useful, as it would help people better understand where benefit incomes sit in relation to the rest of society, and so would help inform the debate. This approach relies on the idea that we could produce figures that would concretely situate benefit incomes in relation to an objective adequate level. The desire to draw conclusions on the adequacy of benefit levels has always been fraught with technical difficulties. In 1985, the then Government looked at this issue and concluded that,
“it is doubtful whether an attempt to establish an objective standard of adequacy would be fruitful … all such assessments would themselves include judgements on the standards to be achieved”.
This view was echoed in the previous Labour Government’s consultation exercise on measuring child poverty, which concluded that,
“despite a wide range of research into budget standards, there is no simple answer to the question of what level of income is adequate … Different research methods tend to make different assumptions that are essentially subjective”.
Similarly, during her time as Minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, the right honourable Margaret Hodge said, when asked what assessment the Government had made of the minimum income a household needed to live on:
“Our concerns about research on minimum income standards have been well documented. What people need to live on varies greatly depending on their needs and a range of factors. Different research methods tend to make different assumptions and generate a range of estimates”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/2/06; col. 1163W.]
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, also raised the issue of minimum income standards, and suggested that this metric could be used as a measure of benefit adequacy. We will continue to take note and look carefully at the evidence from research on minimum income standards. However, I do not believe that minimum income standards provide an appropriate comparator when considering the adequacy of benefit rates.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s minimum income standard is a relatively new metric—the first report was in 2008—and there is no international consensus on how this should relate to setting benefit standards. Minimum income standards are informed by public perception so can change even if prices do not. For example, the rate for a couple with two children increased by a third between 2008 and last year—more than twice the rate of inflation. Moreover, it is important to remember that most working-age benefits are intended to provide temporary support during periods of interruption to employment, whereas the minimum income standard is focused on more long-term living standards. The Bill does not, of course, affect long-term benefits, such as those paid to pensioners or those relating to additional needs arising from disability.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, the Minister seems to imply throughout her speeches that there is a distinction between those receiving benefits and those who are in work, and that you have to maintain that gap to produce work incentives. That seems to be her argument. However, she knows that two-thirds of the current expenditure on housing benefit and tax credits goes to people in work on the minimum wage to make that wage adequate to enable them and their families to survive. Therefore, will she please refrain from talking about the need to maintain work incentives when the only way that there is an incentive to work is when it is underpinned by benefits?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
With the introduction of universal credit, we will make sure that that is always the case. Therefore, I do not disagree with the noble Baroness at all.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to the Government’s decision to move from RPI to CPI as the appropriate index of inflation. The Government believe that CPI is a more appropriate measure than RPI when considering the impact of inflation on benefits and pensions. It is worth saying that the judicial review of the switch from RPI to CPI found in the Government’s favour and we continue to believe that CPI is a more appropriate index. As an example of the costs involved, uprating the benefits and payments in this Bill by earnings would reduce the savings by £1.8 billion of the total of £1.9 billion in 2015-16 and, if we did so by RPI, would wipe out all the savings and cost an additional £700 million in 2015-16.
As regards paragraph (b) of the amendment, while I cannot predict the decisions that will be made by future Governments, once the provisions in the current Bill cease to have effect, the default position will be for uprating decisions to be made in line with pre-existing legislation.
In referring noble Lords to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, during last week’s debate, I was going to mention his reluctance to say what his party would do if it was in government. Indeed, he was even more than reluctant; he refused to say what it would do. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has commented on that point today.
For social security benefits and statutory payments, the default position will be for uprating decisions to be made under Section 150 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, meaning that the Secretary of State will make an annual review of benefit levels to see whether they have kept pace with the increase in the general level of prices. If prices have increased, he will then make a decision about how he should uprate the benefits covered by the Bill, based on the national economic situation and other factors he considers relevant. For tax credits, the default position is that the Treasury is required under Section 41 of the Tax Credits Act 2002 to review the amounts of certain elements of tax credits each year to determine whether they have retained their value in relation to the general level of prices.
Before I conclude, I refer to the question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, about an assessment of the changes that we are making via this Bill on the well-being of adults and children. In response—and it was a point that I made in Committee last week—this Government publish cumulative impacts of government policy at every major fiscal event. We did so at the time of the Autumn Statement last year. Those assessments include the effects of any changes in welfare and ensure that the other positive measures being introduced in relation to tax rates and so on are taken into account. That represents an increase in transparency when compared with what was in place hitherto. The assessments are publicly available on the Treasury’s website.
This has clearly been a serious debate and I am grateful for the opportunity to respond. I hope that in future debates I am able to expand a little further on some of my comments because I am concerned that in some of my points I was not as clear as I intended to be. I will ensure that when I speak in later debates I am much clearer about the importance we place on ensuring that proper consideration and monitoring are taking place in the implementation of all these changes. If any additional measures are required to support people who are affected in a way that goes beyond that which we are expecting, we will make sure that they have the support they need.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
My Lords, following the Minister’s final comments, can I check that the default position after 2015-16 will be that there would be CPI increases based on the lower level that benefits will have reached by then?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
It will be based on the benefits that exist at that time.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I start by thanking the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds for supporting the amendment so powerfully. He asked for a sense of direction. I fear that we have a sense of direction but it is not one that either the right reverend Prelate or I feel happy about. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, who, as ever, has brought important issues to light. I also thank my noble friend Lady Sherlock who again made a powerful speech. I also thank the Minister, whose attempt to deal with the issues raised by the amendment I acknowledge and appreciate. She was given rather a hard time but I am sure that she will understand because people feel strongly about the implications of the Bill and the effect it will have on benefits. I should like to address a number of her points.
First, my noble friend Lady Hollis picked the Minister up on this mantra that work is the best route out of poverty. Of course we all agree with that, except that work is not always the best route out of poverty because some people are going to work and are in poverty. As well as the point made by my noble friend, there seems to be an assumption that if we depress benefit levels we are somehow making it more likely that we will push people into paid work. I always remember work on lone-parent families carried out by another poverty guru, Alan Marsh of the Policy Studies Institute. He pointed to evidence that,
“a malign spiral of hardship, poor health and low morale … builds up its own barriers to work”.
He found that those in severe hardship were three to four times more likely to suffer low morale, compared with those who were not in hardship. He very wisely commented:
“It is quite hard to contemplate work if you are that demoralised and hard up”.
That is why we must not assume that keeping benefits low is necessarily going to improve work incentives.
The Minister made a point that I found quite chilling. She said: “It has never been the intention to alleviate poverty through benefit payment”. That is not my understanding: I thought that the whole point of benefits was to try to alleviate poverty. I am dismayed by that statement.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
What I said was that we believed it was misguided to try to lift people over the 60%-of-median-income line through benefit increases alone, because this would not change their lives or their children’s since it would not tackle the reason they found themselves in poverty in the first place.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I accept that, but I wrote down what the noble Baroness said. She said: “It has never been the intention to alleviate poverty through benefit payment”. I wrote it down. If she wants to retract that statement, I would be delighted.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I think it was at the point when the Minister said that unemployment benefits were only intended to be temporary while people were in between work, and that therefore they were never expected to address poverty as such. That is the problem that we are worried about.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
This is a debate about the adequacy of benefit rates, not about benefits in a package of what people receive. The difference here is that if somebody is in receipt of a combination of different benefits—housing benefit, jobseeker’s allowance and so on—I can absolutely see the point that the noble Baroness is making. What I am saying in the context of a debate about how to set the rate of a benefit is that benefits alone do not alleviate poverty.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I thank the Minister for her clarification. I think I can take it that it is not the Government’s position that benefits are not there to alleviate poverty; I hope that is right. The noble Baroness must remember that not everybody can take the route into paid work: there are some people of working age who will be on benefits for a considerable length of time and we cannot just say, “Oh well, they don’t matter”.
There was quite a lot of discussion about food banks. It just so happened that I chaired a meeting the other week for a group called Just Fair, where the director of the Trussell Trust was speaking. He pointed out the exponential increase in the number of food banks over recent years. The increase is huge. That meeting was addressed by the UN rapporteur on the right to food. He made it very clear that he did not see food banks as any kind of solution to the problem of food poverty. I accept that the Minister was not saying that she was happy about the spread of food banks, but I think she was, perhaps, underplaying the extent to which they have spread recently. I do not think it is simply because Jobcentre Plus is now acting as a signpost.
I was disappointed that the noble Baroness was referring back to quotes from 1985 about the difficulties of establishing the adequacy of benefits. Research has become a lot more sophisticated since then and there is a growing consensus—although clearly not on those Benches—around the work done on minimum income standards. When my noble friend Lady Sherlock asked about impact, I do not think she was asking for the same kind of impact statement that we have been talking about—the numbers and so forth. She was asking for an impact on well-being. Local authorities are now supposed to address the well-being of everyone in their areas. What impact is this Bill—together with all the other things that are happening—going to have on the well-being of children and their parents? This goes back to what the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, was saying about monitoring. Monitoring is not simply about numbers: it is about what it is going to mean to the lives of some of the most deprived members of our community.
I am disappointed that the Minister is not prepared to accept an amendment which is not about spending money; it is about trying to let us better understand the principles that should govern our social security system when times are easier. However, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Bates
That is a more reflective point; it is just not exactly what the amendment before us today actually refers to. It refers to the financial measures of “absolute low income”. Is that the one that is based on 1998-99 and uprated for inflation in a direct line?
My point is that there is an absolute crying need, of which we are all absolutely aware. There is child poverty out there and we need to strain every sinew to ensure that we tackle it. Also, we have no doubt that on the current measure there is no question that it is going to increase. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s figures forecast that as the recovery gets under way, private sector earnings will increase by 4.6% per annum. It does not take a great mathematical mind—which is fortunate for me—to figure out that with what we are dealing with today, as well as the likely increase in private sector incomes, we are going to see the gap rising and almost an inversion of what has happened over the past few years happening in the future. But there are more indicators that need to be examined to give us a holistic picture and to ensure that we target scarce resources where they are needed most.
Lord Newby
My Lords, this proposed new clause would require the Secretary of State to lay a report in each of the years in question, assessing the impact of that year’s uprating order on child poverty based on the different measures contained in the Child Poverty Act. I absolutely understand noble Lords’ concern to ensure that we are tracking progress and impacts on child poverty. However, I do not believe that this new clause is necessary to do that.
The Government already publish child poverty figures every year using the households below average income series, which is usually published in May or June and includes details on the areas listed in the amendment: namely, the number of children,
“living in relative low income … combined low income and material deprivation … absolute low income … persistent poverty”.
Moreover, later this year, we will see the first of what will become an annual report from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, chaired by Alan Milburn. It will report on the Government’s progress towards reducing child poverty, in particular meeting the targets in the Act and implementing the most recent UK strategy.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, asked a number of questions about that commission. He asked where it had got to and what it was going to say. The answer is that the Government do not know what it is going to say because it is an independent commission. We await its report eagerly, but we are not attempting to pull it up by the roots to find out what it is going say as it is in the process of undertaking its work. I can reassure my noble friend that there is no drift in the work of the commission. It is a very substantive piece of work and it is therefore not surprising that it cannot do it very quickly. We expect that its report will be available in the late summer. It will report to Parliament and I am sure that we will give considerable scrutiny to it in your Lordships’ House when the time comes—we are already looking forward to it on these Benches, I can tell you.
I strongly believe that it is only through such comprehensive reporting, looking at poverty issues in the round, that we can have a meaningful debate about child poverty. As noble Lords have mentioned, we published in response to a Parliamentary Question in another place the expected impacts on child poverty of the uprating measures that we have announced. An additional 200,000 children will be in that category by the end of the period covered by the Bill as a result of the measures in it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked whether we would publish other impacts of the measure. We do not think that it is possible to derive estimates of all the measures in the Bill. For example, impacts cannot be modelled for the persistent low income poverty measure because impact assessments are based on cross-sectional data rather than longitudinal data. In addition, measures based on an estimate of material deprivation are technically complex to model because material deprivation relies on more factors than just income, so impacts have not been modelled for these measures. The noble Baroness asked also about the absolute poverty figure. If she will forgive me, I shall write to her on that separately.
As we have said previously, we believe that we need to be cautious about setting too much store by such individual assessments of impact. These are not predictions of how the child poverty figures will change in the future, as they do not take into account all the other variables which exist. For example, our estimates will change as forecasts of economic growth and average earnings change, and they do not take account of policies which cause child poverty figures to move in the other direction such as universal credit. Universal credit, which has not played much of a part in our debate today, is of course expected to lift up to 250,000 children out of poverty depending on the effect of the minimum income floor. I believe that we can have a meaningful debate about poverty, as we have started to do in the latter part of this debate, only when we accept that poverty goes wider than the measures contained within the Child Poverty Act.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked a number of questions about the work that we are doing on defining poverty and on the consultation. The consultation is finished. She is quite right that a number of people have been very critical of what the Government are proposing and we are now considering how we respond to those criticisms. It is not the case that the Government have made up their mind about the outcome and are going to ignore everything that has been said—that would be ridiculous. I can give the noble Baroness an assurance that we are analysing all the submissions, of which there have been a number, and we will produce our response to the consultation in the summer.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I am sure that the Minister is about to say this, but the assurance that I was seeking was that all the responses would be published on the web. I do not question the fact that the Government are analysing them all—I am sure that they would not ignore any of them—but the public need to know what people were saying about it.
Lord Newby
I am happy, I think, to give that assurance. I say “I think” only because I have not talked to officials. That is the standard practice and, unless somebody for a reason that I cannot immediately think of has said that they do not want their comments to be published, I would expect the department to publish all the comments and representations that we have received.
I want to clarify a few matters that have been put to us on several occasions by noble Lords. First, the Government are committed to the Child Poverty Act; secondly, we are committed to eradicating child poverty; and, thirdly, we strongly believe that income matters and will remain a central part of any new measures of child poverty. Our discussion is about what else one needs to do both to measure and deal with child poverty so that all children have a better opportunity when they are living on very modest means.
A number of noble Lords have cited figures from the IFS and the Child Poverty Action Group which suggested that child poverty levels would rise by between 800,000 and 1 million by 2020. I really would caution against setting too much store by those figures. First, child poverty forecasts are an inexact science. For example, the numbers that the IFS produces do not account for future changes to government policy. It is measuring change at a time of immense fiscal challenge for the Government but cannot know what government policy will look like in four or five years. The IFS core numbers also do not take fully into account the dynamic and behavioural changes that will result from the Government’s reforms. Moreover, even in the short term, child poverty forecasting has proven difficult to get right. The IFS, which I accept is a leader in this area, made predictions in October 2011 of a fall of 100,000 in the figure for relative child poverty for the year 2010-11. In reality, the figure fell by 300,000. It is therefore an inexact science and it is very easy for numbers produced by it to be spectacularly wrong. This does not of course detract from the importance of taking action to reduce the level of child poverty, but it serves as a reminder that we should proceed with caution in making forecasts of child poverty, whether based on measures in isolation or changes over the longer term.
It is important to remember that many figures on poverty are based entirely on tax and benefit changes feeding entirely into the relative income measure of poverty. This measure does not capture the full range of issues that poverty involves. It captures a lot, but it does not capture them all. It will not tell us how many children’s lives will have been changed by 2020 but only how many children have circulated around the poverty line. One way of tackling child poverty is to focus on this line, pushing up benefit incomes to lift people from just below it to just above it. We already know that focusing on the relative income line alone yields perverse results, and people have referred in this debate and earlier debates to the fact that, in 2010, 300,000 fewer children were set to be in poverty because the recession had caused median incomes to drop. Children were set to be pulled out of poverty not because anything had changed in their lives but because the rest of society got poorer.
The alternative path that we are trying to follow in government focuses on the interventions that transform lives. That is why we have protected spending on the education budget; that is why we have invested £2.5 billion in the pupil premium for disadvantaged pupils; that is why we are spending £1.2 billion on capital investment in schools; and that is why we are investing in making work pay through the universal credit, sending out a clear signal that we believe that work is the best route out of poverty for parents and their children. As part of the universal credit, we are spending an extra £200 million to support families with childcare costs and, for the first time, this support will be made available to families who work fewer than 16 hours a week. This will mean that 100,000 working families will be helped with their childcare costs.
As I have said, the Government are currently analysing responses to their consultation on new measures of child poverty, measures which will attempt to capture the wider reality of poverty in the UK today. The Government already produce a number of detailed reports on poverty. I hope that this will reassure the Committee that we will continue to publish vital information around child poverty and to take our obligations around child poverty seriously. This proposed new clause would therefore be an unnecessary addition to the Bill.
Baroness Sherlock
My Lords, we have heard yet again some very powerful and persuasive speeches and it is a very interesting argument. I commend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds for provoking such a good debate on so important an issue. As we have heard, this amendment would remove child benefit, child tax credit, and the child addition to universal credit from the scope of the Bill. Since we on these Benches would like to remove all benefits and tax credits from the scope of this Bill, we are pleased to support it
As we have heard from the right reverend Prelate, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and others, the Bill has a disproportionate impact on children and families. The Government’s own impact assessment shows that two-thirds of affected households are families with children. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, noted in a very powerful speech, the Children’s Society says that while 30% of all households are affected, 87% of families with children are hit.
On one level this is because families with children receive more in state support—of course they do. As the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, pointed out, a household without children is rather cheaper to run than one with children; not to mention a great deal quieter. However, while most parents rightly bear the lion’s share of the cost of raising their children, the state has always contributed—not just in extreme cases to try to protect children from the misfortunes that befall their parents but also because, in general, it is always recognised that children are a public as well as a private good. We all have a stake in seeing the next generation thrive.
Many noble Lords have rehearsed—and I will not repeat them—the concerns expressed to all of us about the impact of these measures on families with children. We have all had briefings from Save the Children, the Child Poverty Action Group, the Children’s Society and others making those points. These are very difficult times to be raising children, as my noble friend Lord Touhig noted in a very powerful speech. As the costs of food and energy have soared, more and more parents are struggling to make ends meet as they spend more of their money on these basic costs.
The right reverend Prelate made a telling point, I thought, when he reminded us that, unlike other areas, we do not have people in here with direct expertise of the matters under consideration. To that end, I liked the quote from Rosemary Keenan, the chief executive of Catholic Children’s Society (Westminster), when she said:
“It is hard for many of us to imagine what it is like for a mother to only have £1 left and know she still has to feed her children before the next payday. Families facing in-work poverty rely upon Working Tax Credits and other benefits to help make ends meet, and will face serious hardship as a result of these restrictions”.
Indeed they will. As we have heard from a number of noble Lords, the Bill comes on top of a series of cuts in the value of other tax credits and benefits. As well as the headline cuts, there have been a series of hidden cuts affecting, for example, tax credits for families with children by changes to taper rates, the treatment of income and the freezing of allowances, all of which sound technical but have in fact saved billions. However, it is not of course money that has been saved, but money that has been taken way from low-income families with children.
I seem to recall that the Government suggested at earlier stages that one of the reasons that so many families are affected is that tax credits go too high up the income scale. The implication, I suppose, is that people would not miss the money. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, described some figures from Citizens Advice. It has given us case studies showing that a couple with two children, where one parent is working full-time on just over minimum wage—getting £13,000 a year—will gain just 76 pence from the personal allowance. As a result, however, they will lose £3.46 a week net. By April 2015, that family on £13,000 a year with two kids will be £12.79 a week worse off. Even if we go nearer to average earnings, Citizens Advice suggests that a family earning £26,000 in similar circumstances will be over £12 a week worse off by April 2015. The sums may not sound like a lot, but they are significant to families on those kinds of incomes.
The Bill, as we have heard, will affect primarily working families with children. I was pleased to hear my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen reiterate the impact of the Bill on child poverty, although I hope to hear something specific about this. I feel that I have probably done it to death, so I shall stop saying it now.
To come back to our core concerns, the Bill is a completely inappropriate way to address the up-rating of state support for families. We have perfectly good mechanisms in place to do that on an annual basis in the light of prevailing economic conditions. To come to the specifics, in trying to circumvent those annual mechanisms, the Government have left me slightly confused. I therefore have two questions for the Minister. First, can he tell the Committee what plans are in place for the up-rating of those benefits, tax credits and allowances which are not included within the scope of the Bill? This was raised at an earlier stage, but I do not think that we got a full answer; if we did, I apologise and will look it up. If the Minister does not know, would he mind writing to me before Report stage?
Secondly, other than those mentioned in the schedule and the universal credit work allowance mentioned in the Autumn Statement, are there any other benefits or allowances which the Government intend to up-rate by 1%? Those two questions together sound quite boring but, in fact, their answers will enable us to understand the parameters of the Bill’s impact. Unless we can get that detail, the Committee cannot properly understand its consequences.
Coming back to our core objections, these are poor choices for the Government to be making. The families who will be hit are not responsible for the economic situation, for the banking crisis or for the failure of the Government to get the economy growing again. They are just doing their best to manage in difficult times. Yet the Government are planning to cut the value of the help they get from the state in order to fund a tax cut for nearly 13,000 people earning £1 million a year. We should not be doing this and are pleased to support the amendment.
Lord Newby
My Lords, I absolutely understand and appreciate the desire of the right reverend Prelate and other noble Lords who have spoken on these amendments to protect and support children; of course, we all want to do that. However, our view is that supporting children is not just about increasing benefit levels. One of the most important things that we as a country can do to support children is to tackle the deficit and restore economic growth. In doing so, we create a future of prosperity, opportunity and jobs for the parents of those children in the short-term and for those children as they grow up. Taking benefits out of the Bill, as proposed by the right reverend Prelate, would take away some of what we consider to be the vital savings required to do this.
The amendments which we are debating now would remove from the Bill the child element of tax credit, child benefit and the lower rate of disabled child addition in universal credit. I assume that the right reverend Prelate’s intention in removing those elements is that they would be up-rated with prices, as was the case previously. If that were the case, I need to remind the House that the savings delivered by the Bill would be reduced by nearly £1 billion. In our view, those savings simply have to be found. If we did not do it through the Bill, they would have to be found from somewhere.
I was extremely grateful to the right reverend Prelate for the fact that, unlike the Opposition, he at least set out how he would raise the money. It was a long and credible list. However, it is not a list with which the Government agree. The Government’s view is that tax credits and child benefit account for over 40% of working-age welfare expenditure. It is not realistic to think that they can be excluded from the need to make savings.
We are attempting to prioritise resources into reforms which can help children in a variety of ways. To repeat some of the points which I made in my earlier speech, I hope not too tediously, we have since September 2010 entitled all three and four year-olds to 15 hours per week of free early education. This is being delivered flexibly to meet parents’ needs. It will be extended to 260,000 disadvantaged two year-olds from September 2013. We are also helping 100,000 more working families with their childcare costs by spending an extra £200 million in universal credit.
To deal with a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, we are taking action to deal with exorbitant practices by payday loan companies and loan sharks. One thing that we are grappling with, with which any Government would grapple, is that many families on low incomes have got very high levels of personal debt. This is not new. When I was Treasury spokesman for the Liberal Democrats about seven or eight years ago I appeared, somewhat implausibly, on the steps of the Treasury with my right honourable friend Vince Cable, bearing an outsized cheque at the point when personal debt in the country reached £1 trillion. Most of this, I accept, was mortgage debt; it is not the debt that we are talking about today. However, some of the biggest increases in personal debt over the past decade have been among people on low incomes. This growth in personal debt was not effectively recognised or tackled in the past. Indeed, our appearance bearing this cheque just guaranteed a huge amount of ridicule for Vince Cable and myself, rather than anybody, including the previous Government, taking the slightest notice of it, which was deeply distressing—or, more importantly, taking the slightest action to deal with the culture with which we are now grappling.
However, both in terms of loan sharks and payday lenders, I hope that we are taking more effective measures, not least through the amendments during the passage of the Financial Services Act, to ensure that people requiring access to short-term loans can, at the very least, do so with companies which will treat them half-decently. The other area which we protected, which is vital to families and benefits those at the poorer end at least as much as those at the upper end, is the support they get through the schools system and the NHS, where the budgets are protected.
The right reverend Prelate spoke about child benefit, which he is anxious to protect. I remind the House that, even after the changes that have been made to child benefit, nine out of 10 households are still covered by it. We are taking the entitlement away only right at the top end. Child benefit continues to be paid to many households which are by no means on low income.
Lord Newby
My Lords, that was not the point I made. I was talking about aligning the uprating of the adult and child rates, not the halving of the amount. I was making a different point.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked about plans to uprate benefits. Benefits not covered by this Bill are subject to existing legislation, so the Secretary of State will review social security benefits annually, after publication of the relevant price figures. He will therefore decide what uprating will take place when he has that information in the normal way. I will write to the noble Baroness with the details of other benefits that are to be uprated by 1%.
As I have said before, the welfare system provides vital support for many families with children. However, government support for children must be about more than benefits. Securing the economic recovery matters to every household in the country, and only by doing that can we create a stable and thriving future for our children. I hope that I have also been able to provide some reassurance to the Committee that this Government are continuing to take action to support families—action that will change the lives of families with children.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and not least to the Minister for his response. I am disappointed that he was not able to respond more to Amendment 17, because it is not an expensive proposal. It will help a significant number of children—real children with real disabilities. I know that money is being provided for disabled people in the greatest need, but the disabilities that are felt and known by those who would benefit from Amendment 17 are real. To accept the amendment would provide real support for a large number of children who could thereby have been enabled to play a greater part in our society, both for their benefit and for the benefit of the rest of us.
I accept that together, the amendments in this group would cost a significant amount of money at £0.9 billion. However, it is not fair to argue that welfare benefits cannot be excluded from the work that we have been doing in order to respond to our fiscal crisis. Welfare benefits have been tackled extensively through the whole welfare reform process. This comes over to me as twisting a knife in a wound. I regret that the Government have felt that this is the area where they have to find that £0.9 billion. I will not repeat the argument that there are other areas where we could have found it.
I am very grateful to all noble Lords who contributed examples of a wide range of people: the corporal in the Army with three children, who will lose £520 a year, the primary school teacher, the nurse, and so on. They showed that a wide range of people will be affected and damaged by the Bill. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for stressing the organisations that support children. It is good to have all the statistics produced, but however many of them there are, the reality comes home to me, not when I read the Children’s Society’s statistics, but when I go to see its work in Leeds and its projects with children who are hungry, who have to cut back on food, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, and whose future prospects are being damaged, as the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, said. We need to do something to look at the ways in which we disadvantage children in practice by so much of the work we are doing.
I hope that we will come back to this issue on Report to see whether there is not something we can do to set down a marker and make a real contribution to the lives and vitality of children in our society. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I start by making it absolutely clear that, contrary to what the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has just said, the United Kingdom has a strong and effective maternity and parental regime. The UK is significantly more generous than the requirements of the EU pregnant workers directive. The directive says that a woman should benefit from 14 weeks’ paid maternity leave; we provide 39 weeks. It also says that a woman should receive at least the amount that would be paid for sickness; our standard rate of maternity pay and maternity allowance is £135.45. This compares very favourably with the current statutory sick pay rate of £85.85 per week.
In addition, the latest available data from the OECD from the previous financial year show that the proportion of our GDP spent on maternity and parental pay is higher than in Germany or France. Moreover, in the past decade, the standard rates of statutory maternity pay and maternity allowance, which is the allowance that is paid to women who are not in work who have children, or who were not in work prior to the birth of their child, have increased by more than 35%, from £100 a week in 2003 to £135.45 currently. So while I accept that the decisions we have taken on statutory maternity pay will mean a slightly smaller increase for people over the next few years, the UK’s strong and effective maternity architecture will remain firmly in place.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, referred to what she described as a mummy tax and to media reports on it. I am slightly surprised that she referred to Mumsnet because when her honourable colleague Rachel Reeves published an article on Mumsnet on what she described as a mummy tax back in December last year, the blog attracted a lot of comment. It is worth highlighting some of the points that were made. Most of the contributors were at pains to say that they were not supporters of, or spokesmen for, the Government, or supporters of either of the two parties in government. One contributor said:
“I despise this latest Labour ‘Mummy Tax’ campaign. For one, the name ‘Mummy tax’ is hugely patronising and sexist for people in a relationship as my husband benefits from maternity pay just as much as me as all our household income is pooled. And let’s be clear although there is a real terms cut due to the rate of inflation, this change is not a tax”.
The comments continued and attracted quite a lot of support. Another contributor responding to the post on Rachel Reeves said:
“I’ve had no pay rise for the last 3 years and we are getting nothing this year and told to expect the same for the next 2-3 years—is that a tax? No, it’s just the real world and I have to get on with it. I’ve had a child during that time and we had to work around what we could afford with regard to length of maternity leave and to be honest £180 would have made no difference whatsoever. I despise the term ‘mummy tax’—it’s a patronising media friendly sound bite, which creates a hugely distracting perception of the middle class having to cut back on cappuccinos whilst on maternity leave which removes debate from the real issue. I would like to see the labour party setting out what it would do in power and challenging the government instead of wheeling yet more spin and inaccurate bluster”.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness. I accept that that must have been said on Mumsnet and I have to admit that I do not particularly like the term “mummy tax” either, but does she accept that while it is the case that the mother who posted on Mumsnet pooled her income, research that I and others have carried out shows that for many women having a benefit in their own right is important to them psychologically? They receive money over which they have control, whether or not they then pool it in the household. Not all households pool their incomes. Some do and some do not.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
That is a fair point. The people who were posting on the internet at that time were responding to the comments of Rachel Reeves about the proposals having a disproportionate impact on women, and only women.
Away from the debate on Mumsnet, the Government are committed to make this architecture for women stronger. The provisions in the Children and Families Bill, which had its Second Reading in another place last week, will allow working parents to choose which parent takes parental leave and pay to care for their child in the early years. This will give mothers real choice over when and whether they return to work. This is helpful in two big ways—where the woman is the higher earner and in starting to chip away at the inequality that some women face at work just because it is assumed that they and only they will take a break in their careers to have children. Our proposals will start to make a big difference.
It is also important to remember that the Government have introduced other reforms that will help to offset the impacts of these changes. For example, a woman working full time at national minimum wage for six months of the tax year, who then receives statutory maternity pay for the next six months, will still be better off overall as a result of changes to the income tax personal allowance. The introduction of universal credit will also provide a big boost for many mothers and lone parents, with 2.6 million women and 700,000 lone parents expected to gain through increased take-up and improved financial incentives to work. In addition, as part of the introduction of universal credit, £200 million extra is being spent to support families with childcare costs. For the first time, this support will be made available for families who work less than 16 hours a week. This will mean that 100,000 more working families will be helped with their childcare costs. That is important, because it means that even if someone is able to take on only a small amount of work, they will get that support for childcare costs to which they previously would not have had access. In another move that will be helpful to mothers and parents, as my noble friend Lord Newby mentioned, we have committed to introduce 15 hours a week of early education for 40% of two year-olds, starting with the most disadvantaged.
The Government will also continue to make extra support available for mothers on low incomes to buy the basic goods that they need. We have a programme called Healthy Start, and the Sure Start maternity grant—a lump sum payment of £500—is available to help parents with the costs of having a new child. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said that this is now available only to parents who have a child and no other child under the age of 16. However, this support is additional to the money that parents receive through their statutory maternity pay. Bear in mind that if there is another child in the home, some of the initial substantial expenses of having a family often are not repeated if they have a second child.
The amendment would reduce savings from the Bill by around £50 million in 2015-16. None of the decisions contained in the Bill are easy. I recognise that the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, would prefer that we did not include statutory maternity pay in the Bill. I would like that, too. I would love it if we could say, “Let’s exclude this or that”. However, as my noble friend said in our previous debates, every time we say that we will not include something in the Bill, we have to look somewhere else for the money. That £50 million is not a small sum and is equivalent to more than 20,000 part-time nursery places for three to four year-olds. This is money that will cover substantial support that rightly we provide to mothers and families in other ways.
I hope that I have been able to demonstrate that there is a strong architecture to support women when they have children. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, the Minister regularly makes the point that if we do not have these savings the money must come from somewhere else, such as nurses’ salaries, teachers, the NHS, schools or whatever. I hope that she appreciates that most of us on this side believe that the Government are making a political policy choice. It does not have to fall on children, disabled children or statutory maternity pay. As some of us argued at Second Reading—there were different shopping lists—we are spending £32 billion on tax relief for private pensions, of which £8 billion goes to subsidise the tax relief that higher-rate taxpayers currently enjoy. To continue that is a political policy choice. The money would pay for most of these cuts twice over.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
As I have said on several occasions, these cuts are necessary because of the financial situation that we found ourselves in. They are not something that we want to have to do, but we believe that these are the right cuts to make because we have made sure that we have, wherever possible, protected those who are least able to increase their income by different means. While these are not cuts that we want to introduce at all, we think that we have done so sensibly and by addressing people in the right way, as anybody would expect us to do. That is the situation that we have found ourselves in and the decision that we have made.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I do not think that anyone doubts the Minister’s good will, integrity or concern about these issues. That is not the issue. All that I am saying—and she has not answered this—is that those cuts could fall elsewhere, and she, on behalf of the Government, is choosing for them not to fall elsewhere on people who could afford to pay for them.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I would say to the noble Baroness that while she and the right reverend Prelate are willing to put forward their alternatives on where they would target cuts if they were in a position to make those decisions—and I respect them for doing that—her colleagues on her own Front Bench have so far refused to do so. We have made these decisions in this area. We have done so in a way whereby we have protected those who are most vulnerable. We would much rather not have to do this but we believe that it is necessary because of the economic situation that we find ourselves in and because we think that this is, in the end, the right thing to do to secure a strong economy for the future.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Lister for displaying yet again her knowledge of and passion for a very important subject and I pay tribute to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate for their work on the cross-party inquiry. Some important issues have been raised, such as that of asylum seekers not being able to access paid work as a route to dealing with the circumstances they find themselves in, worrying reports about 10,000 children and extra costs that are imposed on public services such as the NHS, which were identified by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. Clearly, that report is a telling report but it is a report currently for Government. However, we, too, will have to reflect on it as well.
The principle here is that we must be able to provide support to those in genuine need but must do so in a way that minimises incentives to economic migrants who could undermine public support for genuine refugees. There is an issue here that we need to be frank about. There is a balance between dealing with the issue of benefit tourism and separating that out from the needs of genuine asylum seekers. It complicates the picture. An important issue has been raised today and an important report has been prepared. It is currently for the Government to give their views on it, but we will have to reflect on its contents.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, the purpose of this schedule is to set out benefits, payments and tax credits to which the Bill provisions apply. Paragraph 1 refers to sums of social security benefits, payments and child benefit covered by Clause 1. Paragraph 2 of the schedule sets out the relevant amounts of tax credits covered by Clause 2.
The debate has of course been about asylum seeker benefits. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, acknowledged in her opening remarks, asylum seeker benefits fall under the remit of the Home Office and the UK Border Agency and are not part of this Bill. As has been said, there is an ongoing review of our approach to asylum support. In response to a question as to when this will conclude, we expect to finish conducting our inquiries before the end of the financial year. As the review is ongoing, there are some questions that I will not be able to answer, but I am none the less grateful for this opportunity to lay out how support for asylum seekers is provided.
As noble Lords have acknowledged, there are two types of support. First, there is support provided to those people who have made an application for asylum that has not yet been decided. That is provided under Section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act. People in that context are usually described as people under Section 95. Secondly, there are people who have been found by the UK Border Agency and by the courts not to need protection in the UK, but who cannot return home due to a temporary problem. They are provided for under Section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act. That is the Section 4 to which several noble Lords have referred today.
As noble Lords are aware, the support provided is expressly intended to meet people’s essential needs. By that we mean their food, toiletries and clothing. As an example, a family of four receiving Section 95 support while the decision on their application is pending is given £178 per week to cover these essential costs. The same family receiving Section 4 support is given £151 per week. The levels of support provide for the fact that asylum seekers have, as has been acknowledged by noble Lords, fully-furnished, rent-free accommodation with household equipment, utilities and council tax included. This support is temporary in its nature. It is true to say that the allowance is less than income support equivalents but that is because the recipients do not have to pay for other things such as utility bills or other costs associated with running a household.
Likewise, new mothers receiving asylum support do not have to buy a cot or things of that kind because sterilising equipment and such things are provided. They are given a grant to help pay for a pram and clothing. Healthcare and schooling are also provided. In addition to the weekly subsistence rates, families receive the following benefits. A single one-off payment of £300 may be provided to asylum seekers to help with the costs arising from the birth of a new baby. This is different from the maternity grant provided by DWP as recipients will not need to cover the costs of a new cot, stair gates and sterilising equipment. Pregnant women and young children aged between one and three each receive an additional £3 per week, and babies under one receive an additional £5 per week. Assistance with travel costs to medical appointments is available on application.
For those receiving Section 95 support, children receive between 80% and 90% of the equivalent mainstream benefits. Children on Section 4 support, which is intended to be temporary while their parents arrange travel home, receive over 60% of equivalent mainstream benefits.
Lord Avebury
This is the third or fourth time that my noble friend has mentioned that the arrangements under Section 4 are temporary, but will she acknowledge that some people remain on them for many years? In one case that we were told about, I think it was seven years.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I was going to refer to the complaints that have been made about delays in dealing with Section 4 cases. These problems have been acknowledged by the department. Efforts have been made to address the causes behind those delays and there have been some improvements.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said that disabled people receive no additional support. If asylum seekers have higher needs, they are supported by their local authority under an old Act, the National Assistance Act 1948. My noble friend Lord Avebury asked whether disabled children would receive higher value support. Again, that is a matter for individual local authorities, which will have considered the needs of the child and conducted a relevant assessment. My noble friend also asked whether these arrangements are compatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the answer to that is yes. The UK Border Agency is bound by its Section 55 duty to consider the best interests of children. As I have said, fully furnished free accommodation, education and healthcare are provided, plus an allowance to meet the need for food, clothes and other essential items.
Although I acknowledge the strength of feeling that has been expressed by noble Lords about the difficulties that inevitably are faced by people who come to this country seeking asylum, when comparing asylum support rates across Europe, our research shows that the UK is comparatively generous in family cases, providing more to an asylum-seeking family of four than countries like Sweden or Denmark. Further, as I have mentioned, there is an ongoing review of our approach to asylum seeker support and we expect to finish conducting our inquiries shortly. We are taking account of the views of partners, including the recommendations of the Children’s Society. We will want to ensure coherence with the mainstream benefit system and the financial constraints being faced. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked for further details about the evidence that is being considered in the course of the review. I shall see whether I can write to her with further details on that.
It is worth saying that there is no statutory obligation to carry out an annual review of asylum support rates. Instead, Parliament has set a clear benchmark that the support provided must meet the “essential living needs” of recipients of Section 95 support and that it must provide “accommodation” to recipients of Section 4 support. It would be wrong to raise expectations in this area given the current constraints on the funding available, but we are committed to an approach to asylum support that is fair, reasonable and balanced. No one who has sought our protection need be destitute while waiting for an application to be decided, but if the application is refused and the decision is upheld by the courts, we expect people to return home. Perhaps I may add that if someone is granted asylum, if they are in need of benefits they will transfer on to the domestic regime, which ensures that they receive the same benefits as anyone else in this country under the normal rules that apply.
If I have failed to address all of the detailed questions put by my noble friend Lord Avebury and, indeed, if there are any others, I will follow them up in writing. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for the opportunity to set out the support that is provided and I hope that I have been able to reassure her and other noble Lords that the Government continue to take this matter very seriously. I hope that she will withdraw her objection to the schedule.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and the right reverend Prelate for their powerful support in this debate, and I thank my noble friend Lord McKenzie for accepting that perhaps our side will have to reflect on the findings of the inquiry. That was very welcome. I also thank the Minister for her full reply and for the good news that the review is expected to conclude by the end of this financial year. That is one good piece of news. When she writes to noble Lords, perhaps she will also say whether the review will be published so that we can read the full results.
I want to make only one point because I am conscious that noble Lords are waiting for the next debate. I turn to the question of “temporary”, which was picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. I would point out that a Written Answer in the other place last week stated that the average time spent on Section 95—not Section 4—was 525 days. That is a long time to be living on such a low income.
It has been useful to have this debate. Although I cannot welcome everything the Minister has said, I do welcome her acknowledgment of the importance of these issues and the fact that the review is about to conclude. I do not intend to oppose the schedule.