Poverty Reduction

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure and privilege to follow the right reverend Prelate, who is leaving not only this House but his job as Bishop of Durham. I value both aspects of his ministry. Today, he has again shown that he does not shy away from speaking truth to power. That is one of the things we really value him for. His work in the north-east has been tireless, tackling all of us on what we are doing about the most vulnerable, particularly children, and his work in the House on the impact of legislation has been outstanding.

The right reverend Prelate has referred to the two-child rule in universal credit. His work, attention to detail and recognition from his ministry of the challenges for families, and his determination not to let go of issues simply because they are not the issue of the day, have been a real lesson to all of us. The role of Bishops in this House is never one that lacks controversy, but he has conducted himself in an important way throughout, drawing from his faith and from his pastoral activity the lessons that we need to listen to and learn from—as he has demonstrated this morning.

I also have particular reasons to be grateful for his pastoral work. He of course lives in the traditional seat of the Bishop of Durham, Bishop Auckland. When his schedule allows, he worships at the Anglican-Methodist Church in Bishop Auckland, on Woodhouse Close Estate. He and his wife have been very active there; of course, there are members of my family who have been active in that almost since it began. The support of Bishop Paul and his wife for my sister-in-law and her family during my brother’s illness, and subsequent death last year, will never be forgotten by us. We all wish you, Bishop Paul—I am not supposed to use that language in here, but I am going to today—the very best in your retirement. You should know that you go having served this House well, but also the people of Durham and the most vulnerable in our society. Thank you.

I now turn to the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, a very important debate about poverty. As Bishop Paul has said, he and I have worked together on the North East Child Poverty Commission, whose report was published last Friday. If the Minister has not seen it, I will happily send him a copy. The commission was established to look at what had happened with our ridiculous rise in child poverty since 2014, which is bigger and deeper than anywhere else in the country.

The person running the commission and several others had thousands of conversations, roundtables and so on to hear what people had to say about poverty in the north-east. The Government’s figures show that 27% of the north-east’s children are living in material deprivation, the highest in the UK. Some 69% of north-east children are living in families with zero or little savings to shield them from economic shocks—again, the highest in the UK. Almost one in five—18%—of children in the north-east are living in families that are food insecure. Again, that is the highest in the UK.

One thing we found in our conversations that is particularly relevant to this debate is that there is a clear evidence base on the links between low income, food insecurity and inequalities for children. The report of the Child of the North All-Party Group says that:

“Research shows that children experience a range of immediate, as well as long-term and life-changing harms from a poor diet and broader experiences of food insecurity, including: lower life-expectancy, weakened immunity, poorer mental health and emotional wellbeing, poorer physical health across a range of health outcomes (including general health ratings, more emergency visits, asthma)”,


diabetes, and so on, and

“poorer educational outcomes (including lower reading and maths scores, more days absent from school)”,

and so on.

In those conversations we also discovered—or had reaffirmed—the vast amount of time, energy, capacity and resources that organisations are having to spend on dealing with the impacts of poverty. It was clear from all of our discussions that there is a vast amount of valuable time, energy, capacity and resource in our region focused every day on dealing with the impacts of poverty and hardship on a growing number of children, young people and families. This includes by organisations specifically set up to do so, like food banks, baby banks, and so on, but also those whose work is being exacerbated and made much more difficult by the impacts of life on a very low income, including social workers, health services, voluntary and community groups and local authorities, as well as some businesses. There are also those whose ability to focus on their core business is being undermined or made more challenging by poverty, such as schools, colleges, youth provision, sports groups and so on.

Beyond the immeasurable costs for individuals, we are therefore talking about a failure for whole rafts of our community and society. It is not just that it affects the individuals—we have heard enough, I hope, to make all of us ashamed about that—but it is those wider issues. It is apparent that the scale of hardship in our region is being masked because much of this work is being undertaken by individual organisations, on their own initiative, using their own increasingly limited budgets, all of which are acutely aware of the resource and capacity they are now allocating to addressing this issue. We talked to schools who are having to wash uniforms at the weekend, because families have no facilities to do so. We talked to schools who are having to give additional support because families do not have heating or food for their children. Schools are doing this from their resource and that is not why they get their money.

If this does not say that poverty affects the economy of a whole region, I do not know what does. That is essentially what today’s debate is about. The economy of our country is diminished and is not growing, largely because—in my view—of the rise of poverty and inequality. Unless we address those, we will not get the growth and development that we need in our private or public sectors. That is the challenge that I am afraid the Minister faces, and that I suspect other Ministers after the election will face. This is the worst crisis that I have known in my political career, and I hope that the Government understand and recognise that they need to take action now.

Cost of Living Support

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

As I said earlier, the £150 should be taken at face value, and I think I made the point that there are a number of other initiatives to help those who are disabled. It is important, as the Minister in the other place said on Tuesday, to look at the total package, including the £150, that we have in place to help those who are disabled.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. However, neither his remarks this morning nor the Statement acknowledge the real size of the problem that we now have. I am almost sorry for him that so many things have happened since the Statement was first made on Tuesday, one of which was yesterday’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation report showing that 5.5 million people in lower-income households did not have food last year—they skipped meals and had poor meals, which of course affects their health—while 4.5 million lower-income households are now in debt, many of them to people who will then demand very high rates of interest and so on. They cannot get credit in the way that he and I could get it, at lower interest rates—although all the interest rates are going up now. These are really scary numbers, and the JRF has shown that this is now embedded across our society.

I talked this morning for an hour and a half with organisations in the north-east that are working with the most vulnerable families. I came off that call really scared about the future, because of the numbers involved. Does the Minister understand that this is far more serious than the way we have paid attention to it so far suggests? We really need a serious, overarching strategy to tackle poverty and improve public services, so that the most at risk get the best and the most help, which they cannot get at the moment.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I hope the House will recognise that I am certainly not playing down the seriousness of the position at the moment. I am very aware, as the House is, of the further interest rate rise today. The Government absolutely recognise the pressures that people are facing and have acted, providing total support of over £94 billion, which I mentioned earlier, over 2022-23 and 2023-24. I have already mentioned the uprating, which I will not go over again, and that we will be making further cost of living payments totalling £900.

However, there is more to say, given the noble Baroness’s question. I have already mentioned that the Chancellor is meeting mortgage lenders tomorrow to see what more can be done, but he has already met the Competition and Markets Authority, to be sure that there is fair competition between the supermarkets so that we make sure that food prices come down. As we are all aware, food inflation is still far too high. It was 19% last month; it has now nudged down a bit but it is still far too high. That is really important, particularly for those who are the most vulnerable. I reassure the noble Baroness that we really do take this seriously. I think we all know that it is a defining moment.

Benefit Changes: Vulnerable People

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, on securing this debate and thank every noble Lord who has spoken. They have raised many of the issues that I would have liked to. However—and I do not apologise for this—I am going to concentrate on one group of people. Once again in this Chamber, I will speak about the most vulnerable of women: those who are likely to have experienced violence and abuse, and have complex needs.

My last job before I left the Government in 2008 was Social Exclusion Minister, so I spent a fair amount of time on this during that period. Since then, I have been involved with Changing Lives, a charity based on Tyneside, but now working on a wider basis. It started as a homeless organisation, but now works with people with complex needs, both men and women. I chaired the organisation until last December, but still work with it, particularly with Laura Seebohm, who has briefed me for today. She has overall responsibility for the work with women. It runs five services across the north, supporting people involved in what we now term “survival sex” and sexual exploitation. I want to concentrate on that group of people.

Changing Lives and I have a real concern that, in the past few years, the number of women getting involved in survival sex, as a direct impact of welfare policy, is increasing. We find this shocking, as I am sure noble Lords will. The women typically experience multiple and complex needs: mental ill-health, homelessness, drug and alcohol misuse, contact with the criminal justice system, and family breakdown. But childhood sexual exploitation and trauma is also a common experience for the women, and it is often compounded by traumatic experiences in adulthood. One problem faced by the women whom Changing Lives works with is that they are homeless or sofa-surfing. They have limited or no digital literacy, and limited or no access to a computer or smartphone—that will also mean that they have no bank account. They lack all the tools and skills that they are expected to have to claim universal credit straightforwardly. From the moment that they are transferred to universal credit, they are at an absolute disadvantage, with everything from proof of identity—as many of them will not have a birth certificate or passport—to receipt of payment because they do not have a bank account, practically impossible.

Two components of universal credit have especially damaging impacts for women at risk of survival sex. First, because all payments have to be made directly into bank accounts, the women with whom Changing Lives works are at greater risk because of financial exploitation. The majority of clients do not have their own bank accounts. However, Jobcentre Plus is not required to verify third-party accounts when nominated and all our services reported instances of women nominating the bank account of a friend or boyfriend to take receipt of the payment. They were frequently pressed into that—to put it mildly—and the funds were immediately stolen. Such financial exploitation of women who are already vulnerable is directly linked to the likelihood of conducting survival sex work and indirect sexual exploitation.

Secondly, advance payments are very tricky when people have real problems with addiction. Once a universal credit payment is set up, the client can be eligible for backdated awards. That often totals significant amounts, for all sorts of reasons. Staff in the organisation repeatedly reported that this process can have a hugely destabilising impact, because clients will often spend what they see as a reward, which, if they do not get rid of it quickly, somebody will come and take anyway. That leads to all sorts of problems.

Changing Lives staff have also observed an increasing trend of women actively choosing not to apply for benefits at all because of the problems with universal credit. One service manager estimated that around 30% of the women whom her team supported do not attempt a universal credit application because of the direct barriers that I have already talked about, as well as the high risk of sanctions for missed appointments or lack of job search. This indicates that not only being on universal credit but the very existence of universal credit are driving more women away from services and into survival sex because it is increasingly perceived to be their only option.

I recently heard about Changing Lives’ first example of a person placed on indefinite universal credit sanction because of a series of missed appointments. The client, who is now living in a Changing Lives property and receiving support from its specialist sex work project, was placed under indefinite sanction in April this year. Our team advised Jobcentre Plus of the cause of her missed appointment, but the decision to place her under indefinite sanction was upheld. She missed her appointment because she had been raped the night before. As I said, these shocking outcomes, which nobody intends, are happening to real people who are the most vulnerable.

What changes to universal credit could help tackle some of these problems and better protect these women? I will raise some specific ones; there are others. The first is removing the wait for the first universal credit payment, which is very important for this group. The second is greater promotion and awareness by Jobcentre Plus staff that payment by a voucher or at a payment point is possible. Many of the staff said that their clients were totally unaware that that was an option; it is just not being used. The third is verification of third-party bank accounts, so that exploitation is cut down. You know who is going to get the money and that they have a good and proper relationship with the person who is entitled to the benefit. The fourth is optional, managed draw-down arrangements for backdated and/or advanced payments and greater flexibility to ensure repayment of debts and deductions, because a large number of these clients will, inevitably, come with historic debts which are likely to be related to courts, rent and so on. That sort of thing has to be done at a rate which is genuinely manageable for clients.

I know Jobcentre Plus workers who really want to do well. Changing Lives has done courses for some of them. They are really grateful because they begin to understand more effectively the needs of the women and how to identify what might come through their door. Changing Lives tells me that it would be so much better if these clients could see consistent, designated work coaches who stayed with them throughout their time on universal credit. This is impossible in the current system. Training and better awareness by jobcentre staff of the available specialist support services was also recommended to me by Changing Lives staff. I would say, from the work I have done in the last year on women who have experienced trauma and violence, that all our front-line workers must be more trauma-aware so that they recognise and understand that when women who have had this sort of trauma present they are not going to be able to deal with all the things put before them in a calm and logical way. None of us would be “normal” in those circumstances.

The introduction of universal credit has increased the prevalence of survival sex, mostly among women. It is a symptom of poverty and destitution. It is hugely damaging to the individual, their families and the community, and also to society as a whole. The loss of support and prevention services is a key contributing factor to this problem. The women affected by universal credit and engaging in survival sex will be the tip of the iceberg. Deal with them and you sort the rest.

Universal Credit

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, we should not do this in haste. The reality is that Scotland has proposed split payments and is going to implement them. We would much rather watch what Scotland is doing—this is known there. Meanwhile my colleague in another place, whom I have already referenced, is working with various stakeholders on how we can improve support for those victims of domestic abuse through the welfare system.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I currently chair a commission which is looking at services and support for women who have experienced violence and abuse. Through that, I have met many of the women whom other Members here have been trying to alert the Minister to. I am sure that the Minister has every good intention, but I have to tell her that these women really do feel that they cannot disclose what is happening to the DWP and why they need separate payments. Even if they did, their partner would then be so angry that they would suffer. Will she therefore agree to meet people who are working on this to hear of direct cases, which I do not want to put in front of the whole House, so that she hears about the concern, fear and anxiety, and then the mental health problems that come as a result?

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. We take this extraordinarily seriously. I have already met representatives of Women’s Aid and Refuge, but it is important, as the noble Baroness will appreciate, that split payments in universal credit cannot be the solution to what is ultimately a criminal act. Domestic abuse is still a huge problem in our society. The solution to it is complex and should be delivered through the judicial system. If they feel it is appropriate, anyone in a joint claim, including individuals suffering from domestic abuse, can request a split payment, but I should add that we now have more and more work coaches in jobcentres who have not only been through the mandatory training but are specialists in understanding and detecting domestic abuse. We are learning as we are going on, and we are continually working hard to improve the system, bearing in mind that as at August this year only 20 people had requested this.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to speak in support of Amendment 38 and the other amendments in this group, having spoken on the matter in Committee. In the interests of time, I will focus on two of the proposed exemptions set out in Amendment 38, but I make the point that I consider all five exemptions equally deserving.

On the issue of disabled children, which has already been set out powerfully by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Government have framed the two-child limit as being about choice, but no parent makes a conscious choice to bring a disabled child into the world—a point already made powerfully in the debate today. It is not something you plan for. If that unforeseen event happens, however, surely that child deserves our help to ensure that they can be a fully functioning member of society. Research has shown that raising a disabled child can cost three times as much as raising a non-disabled child. Surely that is part of the rationale for this exemption.

Turning to the proposed exemption when new families are being formed, in a speech last year to the Relationships Alliance the Prime Minister thanked relationship support organisations which help to keep families together and, critically, to bring new families together. I declare an interest as vice-president of the charity Relate. The Prime Minister said that,

“government should do everything possible to help support and strengthen family life in Britain today”.

In fact, he even criticised the welfare state, saying that it was,

“incentivising couples to live apart”.

How, then, can it be that the Government have brought forward a Bill which says that if two lone parents come together to raise a family—one of them having possibly suffered bereavement—their child tax credit will be cut? Surely, creating that incentive in the benefits system would accomplish exactly the opposite of what the Prime Minister wanted to achieve, as I understand it—that is, giving children the right to live in a two-parent household and providing the stability that that often achieves. In saying that, I do not mean any detriment to single-parent families, who do a very good job of raising their children. However, we know that half of all single-parent families find a new partner within five years of their previous relationship breaking up, indicating that cuts in this area could affect as many as 500,000 people. This is not an insignificant matter.

To conclude, we have heard much debate on how these proposed changes will impact vulnerable groups. I think we can all agree that it is better to be pound wise than penny foolish. As such, we need to look at changes holistically and ask whether they help individuals who can work to seek work and whether they help to ensure that the next generation is healthy and ready to contribute to society. How do we ensure that the vulnerable in our country do not start behind and get left further behind? Amendments 38 and others in this group are necessary to ensure that the vulnerable, especially children, do not start behind because of their failure to choose the right parents.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to intervene briefly. I spoke in Committee about kinship carers. Therefore, I support Amendment 40, which relates to kinship carers and adopters. One reason I take such a strong interest in kinship carers is that the north-east, where I come from, has one of the highest proportions of kinship carers in the country, along with London. I meet, and have met, numerous kinship carers in the region who will be affected by this measure.

Some very powerful arguments have been made today and in our previous debates on this topic. If I were the Minister, I would want to take account of two issues. First, the best outcomes for children are undoubtedly achieved when they are with kinship carers or adopters. Secondly, the Government would show that they are on the side of taxpayers if they exempted kinship carers and adopters from these provisions. I could say a lot about the other proposed exemptions but I have concentrated on kinship carers and adopters in the past and therefore, for consistency, I shall do so again today. When we last discussed this issue, it seemed that the Minister listened to the very strong arguments that were made. My noble friend Lady Drake has reiterated many of those powerful arguments. I felt that after our previous debate the Minister was thinking about those arguments. Therefore, I hope he will have better news for us today.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendments 1 and 16 in this group. First, can I make an apology to the Minister and the Committee? On Second Reading, I feel I was rather too soft on the Government. I commend the Government for their achievements in terms of employment, but there are several areas in this Bill that cause me real concern the more I contemplate them, and I should have said more about them at Second Reading.

I agree with the right reverend Prelate—if I may agree with him—that it would be unwise for the Government not to pay full attention to these amendments. I was speaking to a kinship carer earlier today. She was a godmother to a child. About six years ago, the child’s mother came into difficulties so she became a kinship carer. It was very challenging for her because local authorities do not offer much support at all for such carers. The child must have been about 11 when she came into the godmother’s care. Over the last six years, the girl has done well and done well at school. About a year ago, the carer adopted the girl. Currently, the girl is making applications to university and it is very good to see how well she has thrived, first under the kinship care arrangement and now under the adoption arrangement.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said, people in care often lack stable relationships and the only one they may have is with their siblings, yet it can be difficult to find a foster carer or an adoptive parent who will take on a sibling group. We should be very careful to avoid any disincentive to potential adopters to do that. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of Delma Hughes, a care leaver herself, who never got to know her five siblings. As an adult with care experience, she set up a charity called Siblings Together, which she has now been running for about 10 years. It provides holiday gatherings for siblings in care and opportunities for them, for example, to go to the Young Vic and perform in plays together or to go off to write poetry together, which bring together separated siblings and are immensely important for them.

I am sure the Minister will give a very sympathetic response to these concerns, which I look forward to. I also thank the Family Rights Group, which provided a very helpful briefing for this amendment on kinship care and has been working in this area for many years. I very much value its work, as I am sure all those in this area do.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, support these amendments, although as I have a debate tomorrow in the dinner break on kinship care, I will not detain the Committee at great length. As my noble friend on the Front Bench said, both the outcomes for kinship carers and the financial issues point to the Government needing to think again.

Kinship care is, by any measure, the most successful means of looking after vulnerable children who cannot live with their parent or parents. All the evidence points that way. However, the evidence also shows that more than 70% of kinship carers are technically in poverty. I know that there will be arguments about what that means, but the reality is that these families struggle. They do this because they want the children to have the very best opportunities, but when people become a kinship carer, as my noble friend and the right reverend Prelate said, they take the family on immediately. Very often, the children whom they are now taking care of will be traumatised and have real challenges. That also means that many of them are unable to work—certainly until they have got the children settled and the children are strong and resilient enough to be able to manage with their carer at work.

The costs of care are enormous, both in terms of the outcomes for children and financially. Have the Government considered, across government, the financial burden that they will be putting on to families that may then break down because kinship carers will not be able to maintain the care of more than two children? Have they considered the emotional and other burdens that they will also be inflicting on those kinship carers who end up having more than two children to care for? They have not sought this or set out to have two children: they do it because arrangements with the parents, for whatever reason, have broken down. I hope that the Government have thought about this and realised that this is an area that they really do have to exempt.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

I know that the noble Earl is very concerned in this area of the care leaver and I understand exactly where he is coming from. Clearly the Government have a great deal of concern about some of these outcomes for young people in care—the noble Earl touched on some of the figures—but the choices, rational or not, should not be different from those of people who have to support themselves. I know that we will come back to this issue slightly later so I will stop on that particular point because we are dealing with another one today.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand where the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, is coming from and, indeed, I talked about the outcomes for the individual children. On the financial side, have the Government considered the expenditure that other departments will now—or would probably—have to make if this provision goes through as it is currently drafted? My noble friend Lady Sherlock asked the Minister about that and I do not think that he addressed it. While the Department for Work and Pensions may save, other departments will then have to pay more—and the cost of care, of course, is much greater than the cost of tax credits for kinship carers. Have the Government built in the assumptions around that, which are clearly very important?

[Lord Freud]

My understanding is that when we do these assessments we look at all of these aspects. But I have now been asked this question twice and I will go back and double check in this area and write to noble Lords on exactly how we did that set of calculations.

Employment

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

I certainly agree with that. The Government are on the road to achieving their target of full employment. The employment rate is at a record high, and there are nearly 740,000 vacancies in the economy, which is much higher than before the recession. We therefore have a record to be proud of in this regard.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps I can assist the Minister by giving her the opportunity to acknowledge that the Labour Government actually introduced the minimum wage—let alone anything else—and when we introduced it, we were told it would finish off industry because companies would not be able to afford it. However, I want to push her on other things she has been talking about. I agree that economic opportunity is at the core of good family and community life. Redcar, which we have been discussing, is in the north-east, which still has the highest unemployment in the country and will suffer, I suspect, more from changes in the tax credit regime—whatever they are—than anywhere else in the country. The Government are therefore piling on top of each other lots of things that will bring my region real problems. What are she and the Government going to do to tackle them?

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, as I said, the Government are rolling out their policies, which have created and will continue to create new jobs at a record rate. The northern powerhouse will be powerful in ensuring that the benefits are spread more widely. As to the initial point, we were talking here about the national living wage rather than the minimum wage.

Employment: Young People

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, one of the most serious problems that we inherited was around long-term youth unemployment; that was structural rather than cyclical. The measures that we have been taking are to get the education and training base for youngsters right. As I have told noble Lords in the past, I thought that the Alison Wolf report on dealing with this issue was most remarkable. We are pushing that through at every level.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister tell us how many young people in the north-east have benefited from the measures that the Government have put in place to tackle youth unemployment?

[Lord Freud]

In the north-east, the number of youngsters—those under 24 years old—who have been claiming as unemployed has gone down by 27%; that is by 7,500 to a figure of 20,000. One of the interesting things about the unemployment figures is how broadly based they have been. If you take the four most northern regions of the country—the north-east, the north-west, Yorkshire and Humberside, and Scotland—they have in combination reduced their claimant count by 43,000 youngsters to 118,000. That is, interestingly, rather more than London and the south-east.

Employment: New Jobs

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister reconsider his views about all of the regions? I come from the north-east and I go back to the north-east every week. I have invited him to the north-east to see what is actually happening. The north-east has lost a significant number of public sector jobs. Yes, it has seen the creation of part-time and full-time private sector jobs, but it still has double-figure unemployment rates.

[Lord Freud]

Clearly, my Lords, there has been the most enormous recession, and that was built under the previous Government. To remind noble Lords, the latest ONS figures for the 2008 recession show that GDP fell from top to bottom by 7.2%. That compares with the 1930s, for which the NIESR show a fall of only 6.9%—it was worse than the 1930s, a terrible smash. We are pulling it back and the figures in the north and round the rest of the country are showing an improvement. In all of those regions the private sector improvement well outweighs the necessary reduction in public sector jobs.

Mental Health: Cost of Living Support

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I will look at that point—but we are making real efforts now to join up the provision by the DWP and by the Department of Health. I am working very closely with Norman Lamb in this area. We have put a lot of effort into signposting, and into training our teams in the DWP and the Work Programme providers, who have put in a toolkit to help. However, I will certainly look into whether I can do more.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister acknowledge that when dealing with people with complex needs, which include mental health and also usually addiction, expecting them to get back to work within three months is absolutely unrealistic? I know a man who is working exceptionally hard to get ready for work; he volunteers with our organisation. Twice in the past year he has been denied benefit, then a judge at a tribunal and an appeal reinstated it. I heard that this week he has again been denied benefit and that the department is again appealing against what was said. He is doing remarkably well, but this is knocking him day in and day out. If he has to go back into treatment it will cost the Government more. Why do the Government not listen to organisations that are telling them that three months is not long enough?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, if the noble Baroness will write to me with the details, I will look into it. We do not have a rigid three-month rule like that, but I will look at the particular circumstance that she is so concerned about.