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Lord Hendy
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report UK Poverty 2025 published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on 30 January, particularly with regard to in-work poverty.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government value the insights provided by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and its recommendations will be taken into account in the ongoing work to develop a child poverty strategy. Supporting people into good work will always be the foundation of this Government’s approach to tackling poverty. Our proposals and plan to make work pay—including increases to the national living wage and the Get Britain Working White Paper—will increase the number of people in work, help them to progress, improve job security and raise living standards.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her Answer. Some 68% of working-age adults in poverty and 50% of children in poverty live in a household with at least one wage earner; 38% of those on universal credit are in work; and half the working population of 32 million earn less than the UK median wage of £616 a week. It is plain that the problem is that wages in the United Kingdom are too low. Does the Minister agree that, in the absence of the mythical trickle-down effect, the only realistic way of increasing wages is near universal coverage of collective bargaining?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My noble friend knows more about collective bargaining than anyone in this House, I suspect, and I thank him for that question. He is absolutely right to highlight the scandal of in-work poverty. We should not be in a position where somebody goes to work full-time and cannot support their family. The Government are absolutely determined to do something about this. Our strategy is about trying to get people into good jobs and keep them there, and that they develop in them. For that to work, we have to make sure that all the parties are involved.
We are very committed: do we want an era of partnership that sees employers, unions and government working together in co-operation and through negotiation? For example, we are going to start by establishing a new fair pay agreement in the adult social care sector, consulting on how it will work, learning from economies where it has worked effectively, and then assessing to what extent those kinds of agreements could benefit other sectors and tackle labour market challenges. We all have to do this together. Work should be the way out of poverty, but it will take action to make sure that it is.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, in the press release on the report, the JRF chief executive warned that the social security system was pushing some people into deeper poverty through cruel limits and caps, and that any credible child poverty strategy must therefore include policies that rebuild the tax and social security system after a decade or so of cuts—not further cuts, but actions to ensure that social security provides genuine security and meets people’s needs. Will my noble friend relay that message to her government colleagues, especially in the Treasury?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I always make sure that the comments of all my noble friends—and, indeed, all noble Lords—are conveyed to those down the other end. I absolutely agree with my noble friend that it is incumbent on this Government to do what they can to tackle poverty. One of the things I like very much about the way that the Child Poverty Unit is developing a strategy is that it recognises that we have to do this on more than one front. It is trying to use all the levers available to it, looking at four different areas: how we increase incomes; how we drive down essential costs; how we get interventions, especially at a local level; and how we make sure that we use the whole economy and all the tools available to us across government to tackle poverty and get people into work. I will make sure that her views are heard by those making the decisions.
The Lord Bishop of Bristol
My Lords, JRF has been publishing its analysis of the incidence and impact of poverty for more than 100 years. I have reason to be grateful for its analytical work, but I also see the impact of poverty in my own diocese: in our food banks, which continue to need to grow and are dependent on the voluntary efforts of so many; and in our schools. Our children are going hungry because insufficient income is coming into their homes. Can the Minister elaborate on steps the Government are taking to address the issue of food provision, such as raising household incomes—particularly in the context of the current discussion on benefits—and working with agencies to ensure that emergency food provision, which has sadly become so prevalent, is still available as a last resort?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question and pay tribute to those not just in her diocese but across the country who are working so hard—volunteers and organisations, including churches—to support those who need help. The Government are committed to ending mass dependence on emergency food parcels. We recognise that there will always be times when people need emergency help, but I am interested in seeing that there is a wider range of support available.
For example, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has previously described, you can get better support for people so that they can make different choices and move on. The Minister for Employment is today attending the opening of the West Midlands Multibank to learn about the range of support that can be given; for instance, business surpluses are used to support people. In the end, however, the right reverend Prelate is correct: we need to drive up household income so that people do not need to do this. A key way to do that has to be to get people into good jobs, and to support them so that they stay in them and develop in them. We are determined to do that.
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
We will hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, please.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her acknowledgement of the work we do at Feeding Britain—I say this with my Food Foundation hat on. Our recent report The Broken Plate estimates that people who are among the lowest fifth in terms of income would have to spend 45% of it in order to eat a healthy diet, a figure that rises to 70% if the household has children. One thing the Government could do is to ensure that everyone can enrol on the Healthy Start scheme and receive vouchers. They are not that much, but they make a difference because they have to be spent on decent food. At the moment, this does not happen and about 800,000 people are not getting a support that is already there. Can the Minister look at co-ordinating the different systems to make this happen automatically?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for that question; I will certainly look into that and see what else the Government can do. There are a number of programmes, which are not always well known. For example, the holiday activities and food programme, which the noble Baroness will know about, provides in its broadest sense healthy meals, enriching activities and free childcare places for children from low-income families. Bringing together those schemes helps their health, well-being and learning. Also, the Government are committed to developing free school meals. The noble Baroness will know that from this April, free breakfast clubs will be rolled out. We have already picked the first 750 early adopters, which means that more than 180,000 children will begin to benefit—time together in schools learning, and also eating and being ready for the next day.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, the personal independence payment is a benefit for disabled people as well as for those with long-term illnesses, including those who are in work, and it helps with extra living costs. Have the Government formally assessed the impact of any planned changes to PIP on in-work disability poverty? Can the Minister confirm whether freezing PIP will increase poverty levels among this group?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness has been around the game long enough to know that no matter how she tempts me to comment on speculation out there in the papers, if I did that I would at the very least be sacked, if not actually transported. So I hope she will bear with me when I say that the Government will always be aware of and consider the impact of their actions on people across society.
Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, what is the Minister’s response to findings in the report that the two-child limit is the biggest driver of rising child poverty in the UK today? Scrapping it would lift 300,000 children out of poverty and mean that 700,000 children were in less deep poverty. Does she agree that voters in the last election reasonably expected a Labour Government to end this catastrophic Conservative policy, and, if she does agree, when are they going to get rid of it?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, Labour voters in the last election did not expect this Government to inherit the mess of an economy that we did.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I did not say “£20 billion”; bear with me.
The noble Baroness raises an important point. The Child Poverty Unit is looking at the full range of tools available to it, and it will look at depth of poverty, different family types and all the different levers out there. The noble Baroness will understand that I am not in a position to make any commitments today, but we are absolutely determined to produce a child poverty strategy that will, over time, address the range of challenges in our economy and try to move us towards a sustainable alternative. We need to lift children out of the poverty into which so many were driven in recent years. We have to begin addressing this, but in a systematic and sustainable way.
Lord Katz (Lab)
My Lords, as my noble friend has just said, the JRF report makes clear not only the lamentable performance of the previous Government over 13 years in reducing child poverty, but the importance of housing costs and especially social rents in ameliorating poverty among those in work and out of work. Does the Minister agree that the Government’s noble ambition of building 1.5 million more homes is important, and can she tell the House how they are going to prioritise affordable and particularly social housing as part of that measure?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that excellent question. He has hit on something quite important. If we are going to try to tackle poverty, tackling the cost of housing in our society is fundamental to that, because the housing market is essentially broken. My noble friend mentioned that the Government are committed to delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation, but key within that is prioritising the building of new social rented homes. We also need to do more to protect the stock of existing homes, which we are going to do by reforming right to buy.
There will be a housing strategy from this Government which will set out a long-term vision for a housing market that works for communities. It will go through the new actions we are going to take, as well as what we have done. But I can reassure my noble friend for the moment that support is available in the short term from my own department to help those who are struggling with their housing costs. For example, discretionary housing payments can help with advances, shortfalls in rent and rental deposits. We are going to tackle this, short and long term.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
My Lords, that concludes Oral Questions for today. It may be for the convenience of your Lordships if I allow a slight pause before the next business—but that is not a reason for leisurely conversations going in and out of the Chamber.