Housing Benefit
Baroness Keeley Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Rachel Reeves
We have been very clear about how we would pay for this policy, if indeed it costs as much as the Government have said it will: we would crack down on bogus self-employment in the construction industry, reverse the tax cut for hedge funds introduced in the Budget earlier this year and cancel the Chancellor’s failed “shares for rights” scheme. We have called this debate to bring the Government to their senses and to ask Members on both sides of the House to consult their consciences and their constituents and call a halt to the havoc this heartless policy has unleashed.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Is not the essence of that heartlessness the extent to which the policy affects carers? Carers UK has said that three quarters of the affected carers it surveyed were cutting back on food and electricity as a result, and one in six face eviction. How do the Government justify that?
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, because many of the spare bedrooms are used by carers supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our constituencies. We think that the time is now right for each and every Member of this House to show where they stand, because we know the facts. Stories of the hardship and heartache that the Secretary of State is causing are streaming in from every part of the country and every constituency.
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bolton North East (Mr Crausby). In my five minutes, I shall explain why what is going on in Labour-run councils is so different from what is going on in Conservative-run councils. I had the honour of being the leader of South Derbyshire district council when the Conservatives took control from the Labour group in 2007. In 2008, we implemented the Labour policy of the local homes allowance and we managed fine. That is coming along, and I am delighted to say that the present leader of the district council is my beloved husband. He is also managing fine. In our retained stock, 318 families are affected by the measure, and we have immediately adopted a policy of appointing a specific officer to talk to each of those 318 families.
Heather Wheeler
I am not giving way; I have only five minutes.
The important issue is what we are doing about under-occupancy and what we are doing about the 1,700 families on the huge waiting list as a result of no new properties being built. I can say that in South Derbyshire—
Heather Wheeler
No, I will not give way to the hon. Lady.
We saw this policy coming along in South Derbyshire for some time. What did we do? We built 88 new units of one and two-bedroom properties. Immediately, the council was able to swap 18 families, and Home Swappers was able to swap a further 86 families. We are proactive in South Derbyshire. We saw what was coming and we talked to the 318 families. The amount is £11.88 a week. Some 44 of the 318 families have said that they want to pay that £11.88.
Heather Wheeler
No, I am not giving way to the hon. Lady.
That is what a proactive council does. I ask Labour Members: what are you doing talking to your Labour leader; what are you doing talking to your housing chairman; what are you doing talking to the Homes and Communities Agency; what are you all doing? The answer is, “Not enough”.
Heather Wheeler
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I apologise. What are Opposition Members doing about it? Clearly not enough.
I shall finish. This motion is despicable. Thank goodness for the reasoned amendment, which I shall vote for with great pleasure.
Heather Wheeler
I will not give way.
Mr Deputy Speaker said that everyone in this Chamber is responsible for what goes on in their constituencies. For goodness’ sake, Labour Members should start leading in their constituencies.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
The bedroom tax hits Wales the hardest, which is why it is good to see so many Members from Welsh constituencies on the Opposition Benches; I see that, on the Government Benches, Wales is represented by the lone voice of the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies).
Barbara Keeley
I thank my hon. Friend, but it is a pity that the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler), who put questions to Labour Members, did not let any of us intervene. In my constituency, 280 households affected have been able to move—close to the hon. Lady’s 318—but 85% of affected households, which means 4,500 in Salford, cannot move. The hon. Lady should think a bit more about those figures: 300 is nothing in comparison with the work load of Opposition Members.
Jessica Morden
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and she is exactly right. The bedroom tax particularly hits people in Wales—a point to which I shall return. The policy affects proportionally more housing benefit claimants in Wales than elsewhere in the UK, with 40,000 households affected by the bedroom tax—46% of working-age social housing tenants, when the UK average is 31%, and 25,000 of those have a disabled person living in the household. These are huge figures.
A little under a year ago, social housing tenants in my constituency received their letters telling them that, thanks to this coalition Government’s changes, they would have to pay more rent or move home—that is effectively their choice. Opposition Members warned then of the terrible impact the bedroom tax would have on some of our most vulnerable families, and of the fear and uncertainty it would bring. I hope the Minister does not underestimate in any way the palpable fear and anxiety felt out there among the disabled communities and families with small children.
Andrew George
I will not give way again on that point.
The debate has thus far largely focused on talking about a ghetto—or, rather, reservation—of people who live in social rented accommodation. It is, however, important to place this debate in the context of the way in which the whole housing market works and the important role social housing plays in relation to that.
In my constituency, many properties are sold as recreational investments to wealthy investors to be used as a second home or holiday home. Meanwhile, some hard-working, low-paid families will be evicted from their council houses because the Government believe they have one more bedroom than they deserve. I voted against this policy previously and my opposition to it is, if anything, even stronger now that I have met many of my constituents who are affected by it.
This policy will not increase the stock of desperately needed affordable homes for local people. The spare room penalty or bedroom tax victimises the most marginalised in our communities, undermines family life, penalises the hard-working low-paid for being prepared to stomach low-paid work, and masks the excessive cost and disruption to the disabled who have to move from expensively adapted homes. It is, in my view, Dickensian in its social divisiveness. It is an immoral policy.
Barbara Keeley
The hon. Gentleman is making a good speech and I am glad he will vote with us tonight. Does he agree that one of the most vindictive aspects of this policy is the way it penalises carers? I have mentioned the Carers UK research on how carers are being affected. It found that among the households affected, one in six carers—people who cannot get more hours of work because they have given up their jobs to care—had rent arrears and faced possible evictions.
Andrew George
The hon. Lady makes a very good point. I think this policy has been introduced in such a headlong rush that some of the inconsistencies and consequences have not been thought through carefully enough. The issue has been approached from entirely the wrong angle. If there is a problem with the housing stock, it is wrong that people in the social housing sector who are apparently over-housed should, in effect, be blamed by people elsewhere in the local community who are rather under-housed. They are being blamed for the effects of the failure of successive Governments to build enough affordable homes of sufficient size to give communities the flexibility to be able to ensure that local families have accommodation of adequate size and to meet the range of needs that exist.
The Liberal Democrats have proposed a mansion tax. That has been opposed by some people with large mansions who are quite happy to impose a bedroom tax on people who are clearly going to be severely affected by that. Furthermore, in rural areas like mine, many of the people who are affected and who are prepared to uproot themselves and move—in many cases from long-standing family homes to a smaller property—cannot find a property within 20, 30, 40 and sometimes 50 miles. In order for many rural areas to be able to comply with this policy, people have to uproot themselves from their community and place of work, their children’s schooling, their church, and their social and family networks—from everything—and go to alien places. Even in Cornwall there are places which many Cornish folk would find alien to them. That is the only option for them, however, other than having to face extremely penal charges in order to carry on living in their current home.
I was involved in building affordable homes for local people before I was elected to this place. We tried to introduce new schemes with sufficient three and four-bedroom accommodation to ensure that the community would in future have the flexibility to meet the range of needs that might arise. That was important because these properties would be available for decades. This tax will discourage housing associations and others who want to build housing in years to come from making sure they build a broad range of properties and thereby provide the flexibility to meet future needs. They will instead build smaller properties, which will result in increased overcrowding in future. If we go in that direction, we will end up with further ghettos. The ghettos of the future will be built as a result of this policy. That will be the consequence of going forward on this basis. If this policy is not based on a prejudice in respect of some of those who are marginalised, many of whom do not vote, I am sorry to say that it is based on an indifference to the most vulnerable families in our communities.
Mr Howarth
Absolutely, I applaud what is happening in Northern Ireland.
Since the introduction of the bedroom tax, rent arrears in Merseyside have increased by £2.2 million—not to £2.2 million, but by £2.2 million—representing a loss of income that could have built 125 houses in the region, creating jobs and bringing all the other consequences. Some 60% of those in the Liverpool city region in arrears because of the bedroom tax are in arrears for the first time. It is not a habit of theirs, but a direct consequence of the bedroom tax.
Barbara Keeley
We have some frightening statistics in Salford, too, but those are very large numbers, particularly the loss of spending power. Do those figures cover the Minister’s constituency and will she be explaining to people in the region how these things came about?
Mr Howarth
They do indeed. I hope the Minister will respond to these statistics, because her own constituents will be interested to hear.
We have experienced a 30% increase in void—empty—properties, including a 130% increase in three-bedroom houses. This is not, therefore, just a matter of releasing unused bedroom space for those on the waiting list; there is no demand for three-bedroom properties, which is why they become void properties. Staggeringly, the result has been a loss of rent to local landlords of £616,622 per month, compared with £397,000 in the same period last year. Those are the direct consequences, in one city region, of the bedroom tax.
Where are our people supposed to go? In my city region, we have an excess of three-bedroom properties and a shortage of two and one-bedroom properties. We can debate all day who is responsible for that, but it is a fact, so where are people to go? There is a shortage of social housing for them to scale down to. Interestingly, York university’s centre for housing policy report, which has been referred to frequently in this debate, concludes that 41.5% of people losing money because of the bedroom tax and having to move will enter the private rented sector. That is the conclusion of an unbiased, peer-reviewed report.
Now, here is the rub. This measure is supposed to be saving some money. The average rent for a three-bedroom housing association property in Knowsley is £74 a week, compared with £132 for a three-bedroom house in the private rented sector. If someone were to scale down from the three-bedroom housing association property to a two-bedroom house in the private sector, they would be paying £115 a week, compared with the £74 they were paying before.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) said earlier, this policy is morally bankrupt. It is also incompetent. It presumes that people can just move around at will, and that a property that is right for their circumstances exists somewhere in their area. That is not the case. There is growing evidence that, rather than saving money, this policy is costing more.
Kwasi Kwarteng
They still persist in calling it that. We have to remember why the legislation was brought in, and the serious nature of the economic position in which we found ourselves. One of the great things that this Government have achieved is a measure of welfare reform. Labour Members vigorously opposed the housing benefit cap, but it has proved to be an incredibly popular and well-regarded policy. There were prophecies of ethnic cleansing in London and absolute devastation, but the policy has largely worked and welfare reform is on course.
It is a misrepresentation to talk about the spare room subsidy as a tax. It is not a tax, by any definition. There is also a serious problem of overcrowding. About 1.8 million people are living in overcrowded conditions, yet there are literally millions of spare rooms. What are we, as a country, going to do about that? Are we going to continue to subsidise people living in larger accommodation that they do not necessarily need, or are we going to try to achieve a fairer distribution of accommodation?
Barbara Keeley
The hon. Gentleman has mentioned millions of extra rooms and the benefit cap. To many disabled people and their carers, those are not spare rooms. They are needed by people who need to sleep apart, or who have hospital beds or medical equipment. Five thousand carers are being hit by the benefit cap, and a large number will also be hit by this measure. The hon. Gentleman needs to reflect on that fact, if he thinks the measure is working.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Let me begin by informing Ministers here that Islington borough council used all its discretionary housing payment last year and will certainly use all its discretionary housing payment this year. People are under attack not only from the bedroom tax but from the limits on housing benefit, and a large number of those in private accommodation can simply no longer afford to live where they live at the moment. While we try to find them somewhere else to live, they need assistance with their rent, which is paid through the discretionary housing payment. I know that that was a point of debate earlier and I want to ensure that if there is any discretionary housing payment going for a song it is given to us, because in Islington we could certainly use it.
I ask the Minister to imagine living as part of a family of four in a three-bedroom flat. She is unemployed and living on about £240 a week. Her benefits went up 1% this year, and she is now paying council tax for the first time because of changes to the rules. The prices of food, heating, fares and clothing have gone up, and she has the disadvantage of a son who is nine and a daughter who is seven. She had been in a three-bedroom flat, but now she has to downsize; if she does not, she will lose £18 a week out of her £240 benefit. Such people exist: they come to my surgery and ask how they can economise. I would be grateful to hear from the Minister whether she has any ideas.
The bedroom tax affects 3,100 families in Islington. In 2012-13, despite the frenetic building attempts by the borough council, only 609 two-bedroom flats were let through the waiting list, which is already under huge pressure with 19,000 families looking for accommodation through it. Now, many more people need to be moved very quickly as they are being attacked by the bedroom tax. Islington tenants with an additional room, as the Government would say, pay £14 to £20 a week because of the high rents, which causes great hardship, and they face the disruption of moving, which is expensive and stressful.
A fifth of those 3,100 social housing tenants are sufficiently disabled to receive disability living allowance—not the higher-rate DLA awarded for overnight care but the lower-rate DLA. They have special equipment such as hoists and wheelchairs, or they are couples who cannot sleep together because one of them has a condition such as anxiety or some form of disability—it is difficult to sleep with that partner—or perhaps one of them wets the bed.
Barbara Keeley
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most invidious things about this tax is that couples have to declare whether they sleep together? How invasive is that?
Emily Thornberry
In Islington, given how small the flats are, people simply cannot put two single beds in one room, which makes it difficult in those circumstances for couples to be able to cope. One of the unintended consequences of the bedroom tax is additional pressure on the tribunal service. People who appeal their benefits have to wait a year, and another 30 tenants from Islington are appealing the bedroom tax. Our housing system is under huge pressure, and we can do without this.
Of course, people under-occupy—I fully acknowledge that. I was brought up in a council house. When we all moved out, my mum was under-occupying, and she had the great benefit, frankly, of having a professional daughter who bought her a flat. That house was given back to the stock. Many elderly people are under-occupying, and, as I have said throughout the debate, I do not understand why the Government have not augmented the plans of many local authorities. In my local authority, people about to go into retirement are interviewed and are asked whether they would like to move somewhere else, like a flat that is available to them for the rest of their life and that would be appropriate for them. Even though, strictly speaking, they are entitled only to a one-bedroom flat, the council will give them a two-bedroom flat so that they can move out of a house and a family can move in. Indeed, they might be given compensation if they wish to move.
Why not work it that way? If this is really about under-occupancy and over-occupancy and getting people into the right flat, we should work with them. We should not just punish them, which is what the Government are doing. Why does the nation need to wait? We need to build more. Why should the nation wait for my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband)? Why should the nation wait for a Labour Government in 2015, because when we are elected we will build 200,000 homes every year, and we will really begin to address this problem?
Disabled People
Baroness Keeley Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Byrne
What is interesting about the Secretary of State’s response is that he cannot defend his Department’s failure, and he cannot defend his own failure of leadership in not giving us a cumulative impact assessment of these cuts because he fears what that will show. He fears it will show that this bedroom tax will cost more than it saves—and it is just one of a number of changes now coming together to hit disabled people, and hit them hard.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree on these two points? First, this dreadful tax is going to cost more than it saves. It is hitting 2,600 households in my constituency, and City West Housing is expecting arrears of at least £1 million this year. Even worse than that is the effect on choice and dignity: week in and week out, I am now seeing cases in which disabled people have to explain why they cannot sleep in the same bedroom as their carers. They are being assessed on the point of “Why can you not sleep in the same bedroom?” Last week I had a letter about some constituents which stated, “We see no reason why you cannot sleep in the same bedroom.” Case studies that Carers UK has provided to Members today, however, explain why for people with disabilities there is very often a really good reason why the carer cannot sleep in the same room or the same bed as the person they are caring for.
Mr Byrne
Absolutely, and that is why the Secretary of State must produce the impact assessment. All of us are now meeting people who are under such pressure that they are creating more cost elsewhere in the system. I will probably remember for ever the man I met recently in Redcar. The great Anna Turley introduced us, and this is what was said: “Yes, he has a spare room, and do you know what he puts in it? He puts equipment to help him with renal failure.” Now, because he is having to move, that opportunity for home care is disappearing, and the NHS is saying to him “We’re going to have to take you to and from hospital in an ambulance every single day.” That is not a cost saving for the NHS. That is a new cost. It is a straight cost jump from a failure of policy from this Government.
Mr Hoban
The hon. Lady’s intervention was long enough, so I ask her to let me finish making my point. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) called on the Treasury to implement this measure; he, of course, was a Treasury Minister in the dying days of the previous Government. Did they do anything about this? No, they did not. It is a bit rich for Labour, having been in government for 13 years, to come forward at this point to call for a cumulative impact assessment. They never did it when they were in government, and they know that they could not do it now either.
Over the past three years, we have maintained financial support for disabled people despite the fiscal pressures, we have refined benefits to support disabled people and help them into work, we are reforming the care system so it better meets the needs of disabled people and the elderly, and we are using the magnificent success of the Paralympics to transform lives.
Our record on spending on disabled people compares well internationally. We continue to spend almost double the OECD average as a percentage of GDP—2.4% compared with about 1.3%. Of the 34 OECD countries, only Norway and Iceland spend more. In the last spending review, published last month, we demonstrated that even in hard economic times when so many budgets have been subject to significant cuts, the Government continue to make the needs of disabled people a priority and to protect funding for disabled people.
As we know that delivering better, joined-up services for the disabled and the elderly shortens hospital stays or, even better, keeps people out of hospital and in their own homes, we are creating a £3.8 billion single budget for health and social care services in England so that people can work together more closely in local areas, based on a plan agreed between the NHS and local authorities. That shared pot includes an additional £2 billion from the NHS and builds on the existing contribution of about £1 billion in 2014-15. To enable the programme to start, we are investing an extra £200 million in 2014-15 to get this work under way. I believe that that working together will benefit both the disabled and the elderly.
Barbara Keeley
Does the Minister not see that the problem is that £2.8 billion has already gone out of social care? The hundreds of millions of pounds of funding that has been moved across is being used as a sticking plaster to prop up existing care packages, and nine out of 10 local authorities are now only meeting substantial care needs. The situation with social care is deteriorating by the week and it is causing issues in the NHS, such as the recent A and E crisis.
Mr Hoban
But reform is needed, too, to make sure that we spend money carefully. We need to think about how we deliver services. That is why joining up care and health in a single budget is vital if we are to tackle problems on the ground, enable local authorities and the health service to work together, and really make progress.
Mr Clarke
There was a time when I was on the Front Bench and I might have been happy to respond to that point. I am satisfied that the Labour party will present to the British people at the election a manifesto that they will endorse. I will fight and fight again, whatever Government are in power, to ensure that this monstrosity of legislation does not remain on the statute book.
Let us examine what the bedroom tax means to ordinary people in our constituencies. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) said, two thirds of those affected by the bedroom tax have a disability. That is absolutely outrageous. How can the Government have seriously considered putting in place such a proposal? According to an estimate by the National Housing Federation, 2,128 households will be affected in my constituency, and according to the Government’s own estimates 1,419 of them—along with 83,000 in Scotland and more than 400,000 throughout the country—are occupied by someone with a disability.
The Government claim that they are putting the housing market in a more appealing position. However, when we look at statistics—indeed, before we even do so—we know that there are simply not enough houses with the right facilities to which to remove disabled people if they have an extra bedroom. I have thought during the debate about several disabled people in my constituency and others I have met throughout the country. Two or three years ago, a young woman in my constituency was dying of variant CJD. She needed her bedroom, and she also needed another bedroom to accommodate the equipment that she desperately needed, including her supply of oxygen. How can we allow the Government to remove disabled people to smaller houses, when we know that those houses are simply not there?
Barbara Keeley
My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Has he encountered in his surgeries a family like I have in mine? They are a disabled couple in their 50s who need to move out of an upstairs flat because it is not accessible. They are being denied homes that would be accessible for them, such as those that already have a stairlift, because of the bedroom tax. The tax means that people have to move, and it restricts future choice too.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am happy to have taken that intervention. The projected figure of £13 billion is more in real terms than the figure in 2009-10 provided by the previous Government. That means not just more money, as my hon. Friend suggests, but more money directed at the people who need it the most. We are trying to reform the system, and we will succeed in doing so. We are taking an adult and mature view of the public finances and trying to direct scarce resources to people who most need them.
It is all very well for Opposition Members to howl, holler and cry about cuts—that is what one expects them to do; they are doing their job—but Government Members have to take a mature and responsible approach to the public finances and introduce meaningful reform that we can afford and which can best help the most vulnerable.
Barbara Keeley
Will the hon. Gentleman explain the economics of the situation to the 10,000 carers who expect to lose their carer’s allowance and who have probably already given up work to care? If they stop caring, there will be no saving in moving from DLA to PIPs and in all those people losing their DLA, because if their carers stop caring for them, they will end up in much more expensive state care homes.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am happy to have taken that intervention, but I must say that Opposition Members have totally ignored this issue of reform. We cannot continue on the basis that nothing has happened, that there are limitless resources and that we can simply give more money to more people; that is completely unacceptable. It is clear from any engagement with the electorate or any look at the polls or surveys of public opinion that the public have had enough. That is one of the problems with Labour’s political strategy. On welfare reform, it is completely incredible.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness Keeley Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Steve Webb
Yes, I am pleased to say that, starting later this year, clients on the 2012 system will have the equivalent of internet banking, so they will be able to log on, see their account and report changes of circumstances. We will close all existing cases over the next few years, and those who want to remain in the statutory system will move on to the 2012 system and they will have that service available to them.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
3. What assessment he has made of the most recent data on the performance of the Work programme.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
Work programme performance has significantly improved; it is working. The numbers of people finding lasting work—at least six months for most people or three months for the hardest to help—has increased significantly from 9,000 in March 2012 to 132,000 in March 2013.
Barbara Keeley
Recent data on the Work programme show that it has failed to meet its minimum performance level in every category, and that the proportion of employment and support allowance claimants achieving a sustained job was less than a third of the minimum. Every week, I hear from unemployed people in my constituency who are desperate to find a job, and they are being utterly let down by this programme. What is the Minister going to do about it?
Mr Hoban
I just point out that in the hon. Lady’s area, the Work programme is exceeding its targets for young people aged between 18 and 24. She should get to grip with the facts on what is happening with the Work programme. It is helping people into work, and particularly in her area. On the point about ESA claimants, she should not forget that when her party was in government, it wrote those people off. This is the first time we have had a major programme to get people who have been out of work through sickness or ill health back into employment. More work needs to be done, but what we are doing is a significant improvement on how the Labour Government abandoned those people in the past.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness Keeley Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Steve Webb
My hon. Friend is right: successive Governments have failed to build enough affordable housing. It is worth stressing that moving is one option, but only one option, for those in work. Just two or three extra hours on the minimum wage would cover this deduction. There are a range of options—going into work, taking in a lodger or sub-letting—and good housing associations are working with their tenants to achieve best outcomes.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
13. What estimate she has made of the number of unpaid carers who will lose carer’s allowance as a result of the benefit cap.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)
No one loses carer’s allowance as a result of the benefit cap for, as the hon. Lady may know, the cap is applied to overall household income.
Barbara Keeley
What advice would the Minister give to the 5,000 carers who, as the Government’s impact assessment states, will lose an average of £105 a week through the operation of the benefit cap? Is she suggesting that they give up caring, look for work and ask social services to find a care placement for the person they care for? Why have the Government not thought of exempting carers, who do a wonderful job, from the benefit cap in recognition of their unpaid caring work?
Esther McVey
I would not seek to tell anybody what they should do. We seek to work closely with people to enable and support them as best we can. We are doing that by trebling the discretionary payment to help people into work, because if they are on working tax credits, they will be exempt from the benefit cap.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Baroness Keeley Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Ms Buck
That is correct; I recognise that figure. We have seen from the Bill and the debate behind it a political debate and a set of wheezes that the Government think will pay off for them. The problem with wheezes is that they tend to fracture when they come into contact with reality. The Government cannot make serious money out of an assault on out-of-work benefits, whatever the Conservatives like to say. Just 3% of all welfare spending goes on jobseeker’s allowance. Indeed, all out-of-work benefits account for only 3% of GDP between them. The House of Commons Library advises me that if only out-of-work benefits were subject to the 1% cap, but in-work benefits were uprated as normal, 80% of the proposed savings would disappear. If one factors in the changes to the personal tax allowance, one finds that working people, as the Resolution Foundation demonstrated to us, take 60% of the hit.
If the Bill is passed, 2.5 million workless households will lose out by about £215 a year by 2016, and of the 14.1 million working-age households with someone in work, 7 million will be hit: 30% of all households will take a hit on their income because of this Government’s obsession with the tiny minority of long-term or multigenerational workless.
The distinction between those in and out of work is far less rigid than the Government would have us believe. That is an extraordinary piece of rhetoric, given that the universal credit, the centrepiece of the Government’s welfare agenda, is designed to blur the distinction still further, and it has that one significant advantage of seeking to do that. Millions of our constituents, in Conservative and Liberal Democrat constituencies as well as in Labour ones, churn between those states of being in and out of work. Last year there were between 244,000 and 357,000 new claims every month for jobseeker’s allowance, while between 242,000 and 370,000 left benefit every month.
It is a myth that the welfare reform agenda put forward by the Government is about tackling worklessness. It is an assault on low-income working families far more than on working households. It is an assault on both, and on very low-income families, but it is real and not mythical families who will be hurt as a consequence. It is real children who are at increasing risk of going to school hungry, as teachers unions are already reporting, and it is real children who will return to homes that cannot be heated by parents who cannot manage to balance all the bills.
We live in a country that apparently can afford tax cuts for millionaires but requires low-income, working families to go to food banks and pay their mortgages with payday loans. Every day in London 100 homes bust the £1 million value level, yet 70,000 children were homeless this Christmas. Today we should not be reducing the capacity of 9.5 million families and households across the country to pay their bills.
What the crash and its aftermath demonstrated beyond doubt was that the future cannot be like the past. We want everyone who can work to do so, we want that work to be secure and fairly paid and for the costs that consume an unsustainable element of people’s incomes to be reduced.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Did my hon. Friend notice that the Secretary of State accused Labour of having a new idea with our job guarantee? In fact, the pamphlet produced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) on a job guarantee is dated January 2012. We have been discussing these ideas for more than a year.
Ms Buck
We have indeed been discussing these ideas. The future jobs fund demonstrated value for money in getting people back into work, but the Conservative party, which claims to like evidence, trashed it in favour of the Work programme, which, as we know, has been less effective than doing absolutely nothing would have been.
Without jobs, deficit reduction is doomed, however much the Government cheese-pare away at the income of the poorest. While housing and child care costs consume an ever-larger portion of the incomes of poorer families, work cannot pay and families cannot thrive. It is jobs, fair pay, affordable homes and good affordable child care that will get us out of the trap we are in, whether it is the trap we want to spring to get people into work or the trap of deficit reduction. The trap that the Government are setting today will catch 30% of households in a worsening squeeze on their incomes at the very worst time for them to be facing it.
Welfare Reform (Disabled People and Carers)
Baroness Keeley Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on securing this debate and on the way in which he opened it. In the little time I have, I want to focus on the carers of people with disabilities.
Carers’ organisations have told me that they fear that the welfare reform measures proposed by this Government will seriously undermine the ability of carers to care for people with disabilities and for older family members. On the reform of the disability living allowance, the Government’s original impact assessment said:
“We expect that the introduction of Personal Independence Payment will not affect the overall size of the Carer’s Allowance population”,
but analysis by Carers UK shows that there will undoubtedly be a knock-on effect on those who claim carer’s allowance. If the number of claimants of the allowance falls, as it moves to PIP, in line with the caseload for DLA, Carers UK estimate that 23,800 carers will be unable to claim carer’s allowance.
On the housing benefit cap, it seems clear that around 5,000 households that will be capped in 2013-14 are expected to contain a carer. Those carers will see an average reduction in income of £105 a week. That is quite clearly at odds with the Government’s stated policy for the cap.
Around 1 million carers have either given up work or reduced their working hours in order to care. An average drop in income of £105 per week is a cruel way to treat carers who have given up their careers. It could also be counter-productive, in that it could make caring for a family member financially untenable and force more people into taking up the option of care homes or residential homes.
Many carers already face financial hardship. A survey of carers by Carers UK found that 45% of them were cutting back on essentials such as heating or food, and four in 10 were in debt as a result of caring. Carers are not choosing to give up work, but being forced into doing so by the crisis in social care. Carers UK found in a survey that 31% of working age carers gave up work or reduced their working hours to care because support services were not flexible enough, the person for whom they cared did not qualify for support, there were no suitable services in the area, or the services were too expensive or not reliable enough. There is not time now to go through how care charges have gone up.
In an earlier debate on social care, I talked about the impact of financial issues on the lives of carers. I have heard of one carer who had to take on a part-time cleaning job in the early evening because money was so tight. She puts her husband to bed at 4pm so that he is safe while she is at work. That is the reality.
Grahame M. Morris
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a case not just of money—pounds and pence—but of the dignity of disabled people?
Barbara Keeley
Indeed it is. The House of Commons has received reports that criticise care agencies for putting people to bed at 6 o’clock or 8 o’clock. This carer has to put her husband to bed at 4 o’clock. How must that feel to her? I have had further evidence that shows that that is not an isolated example. It is very common for carers who can no longer afford respite care to have to leave a person, perhaps wearing an incontinence pad, and hope that they will be safe in a chair while the carer has a hospital appointment or goes to work.
I question whether anyone here believes that it is right or fair to hit carers with further cuts to their income when changes already made by this Government are clearly hitting them. The manager of my local carers centre in Salford told me that, this Christmas, the centre’s staff are collecting and distributing food parcels to carers. That is something that they have not had to do since the 1980s. She said, “This does not bode well.” It does not, and it should not be happening to carers, who already give so much. I call on the Minister for a rethink on welfare reform for carers.
Barbara Keeley
The Minister is right to comment on carers, but does she see how deeply unfair it is to apply the benefit cap to them? They will lose £105 a week. This stuff about households and the way in which they are defined is just nonsense; 5,000 carers should not lose out.
Esther McVey
I will explain to the hon. Lady why the changes have to be brought about. At the moment, there are 1 million spare bedrooms, 250,000 households living in overcrowded conditions and 1.8 million households on the waiting list, so we have a size criterion in the private sector, and we must get this right. We have to support people. We have to work with what we have, and we will introduce the changes because we have to get this right—it has not been right, and the previous Government left it to get into this predicament.
Esther McVey
I will not give way.
Work must always pay more than benefits, and that is why we are introducing the cap on the amount of benefits that working-age people can receive. It is not reasonable or fair that people out of work can get an income from benefits that is greater than the average weekly wage for working households. We understand, however, that disabled people face extra costs, and that is why we are exempting from the cap households receiving DLA, PIP or the support component of the employment and support allowance.
It is fair that the benefits system should support people in public housing in the same way as it does those in private housing, but we have made changes to the housing benefit regulations, in recognition of the fact that some people need an additional room for an overnight carer who lives elsewhere. We have also listened to concerns about disabled people living in significantly adapted accommodation, and have announced additional discretionary housing payment funding of £30 million for 2013-14, to cover both that group and foster carers.
Instead of simply cutting money from everyone, we chose the more difficult but principled option of modernising the benefit and focusing support where it is needed most. PIP will be awarded on the basis of fair, consistent and objective assessments, and such assessments are not in place at the moment. The assessments have taken two years to develop. We consulted with disabled people and made key changes as we received their feedback.
Although they are different assessments that will work in different ways, we have learned from the experiences of the work capability assessment—something that the Opposition brought in—and we had to introduce Professor Harrington, who produced recommendations that we are still working through, to get this right. That will enable us more accurately and consistently to ensure that support is targeted at those who face the greatest barriers to leading independent lives. More than a fifth of PIP recipients will get both of the highest rates, worth £134.40 a week, compared with only 16% of those who are on DLA at the moment.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness Keeley Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is important. As we heard earlier, for some people the cost of travel is a barrier to employment, and I am delighted that the major bus companies have worked together to provide free travel in January. That is on top of the additional support that Jobcentre Plus and Work programme providers offer to ensure that we get as many people as possible into work.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Yesterday on the Directgov website, DWP job ID 438253 advertised for female presenters for Loaded TV working at home on internet babe chat. The advert has now been removed from the website, but does the Secretary of State think that DWP should be accepting and promoting jobs for internet babe chat? What does it say about this Government’s values on work?
Mr Duncan Smith
I remind the hon. Lady that it was this Government who changed the rules: under her Government, it would have been wholly acceptable, I suspect. The new system is in its national pathfinder and will, I hope, be rolled out before Christmas. We already have checks in place: more than 6,000 jobs, 60 attempted employer accounts and 27 bogus employers have been blocked so far, and we act swiftly if complaints are raised. I remind her that, on average, more than 5 million daily job searchers are working on this system. It will be a massive improvement and will benefit jobseekers, so the hon. Lady should not carp about the odd difficulty that arises. We get rid of the bogus jobs.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness Keeley Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
7. What plans her Department has for a gender audit of public spending on sport.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Maria Miller)
The Department measures sport participation by gender via the Taking Part survey. In addition, Sport England’s Active People survey provides more detailed data on sport participation. Together, those provide a good understanding of the gender implications of public spending on sport. The Department has no plans to undertake a specific gender audit.
Barbara Keeley
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. The Active People survey shows that more than 2 million fewer girls and women than men take part in sport, at both weekly and monthly intervals, but 12 million say that they want to take part in sport. Is not it time we had a full audit of public spending on sport to find out what it is spent on and why so many fewer women than men take part?
Maria Miller
The hon. Lady puts her finger on it. We know that there are participation issues, so rather than simply continuing to audit it, we are taking action. We already have our £1 billion youth and community sports strategy, which is looking at ways of ensuring that girls take part in sport, and the Active Women programme, a £10 million lottery programme aimed at getting women into sport. Of course, the most important audit of all was the Olympic games this summer, in which the very first gold medal was won by a woman, as indeed was the last. That is evidence that things are moving in the right direction, but clearly there is still more to do.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness Keeley Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Maria Miller
I thank my hon. Friend for her question and say to her that we absolutely share the objective of ensuring that the people with the severest challenges in living independently in our society do not receive undue assessments. At the moment there is no in-built reassessment under disability living allowance. She put her question in the present tense—I am not sure whether she was referring to other things for which people are assessed. I reassure her that under PIP, we do not intend to have fixed annual reassessments. They will be made based on individuals’ personal circumstances.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
In their report “Responsible Reform”, disabled people and carers analysed the responses to the Government’s consultation and raised many issues about the replacement of disability living allowance. Carers UK has also expressed deep concern about the impact on carers of cuts to disability benefits, yet today we learn that 5,000 carer households will be hit by the mean reduction of £87 a week as a result of the benefits cap. Will the Minister now publish an assessment of the impact on carers of all the Government’s cuts?
Maria Miller
To give the House total clarity I should say that the report that the hon. Lady references was highly selective. It examined only about 10% of the responses that we received on the DLA and PIP consultation.
I will answer the hon. Lady’s question about carers directly as she, like me, wants to ensure that carers get the support that they need. We have already made it clear that carers will be eligible for carer’s allowance as a result of the person for whom they are caring being in receipt of either level of PIP.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness Keeley Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Chris Grayling
I absolutely agree. One of the most important steps the Government have taken has been significantly to increase the number of apprenticeships available, particularly for young people. It is absolutely clear under the Work programme agreement that a successful placement in an apprenticeship counts as a job outcome under the Work programme. I hope that will mean there is a clear link between the two.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Steve Kerr of the London Voluntary Service Council has questioned whether the Work programme
“will succeed…or simply make matters worse through sidelining the voluntary sector.”
What action is the Minister taking so that the voluntary sector does not continue to feel sidelined through the Work programme?
Chris Grayling
The hon. Lady is absolutely wrong. The voluntary sector is not being sidelined. On Friday in Stafford I visited the Shaw Trust—a major voluntary sector organisation that is already delivering support to people under the Work programme. There are many other organisations such as Groundwork delivering support right across the spectrum and there is specialist help available from some of the specialist groups. The Work programme has been designed to attract best practice, of which there is much in the voluntary sector. That is why it is such an important part of the Work programme.