Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit: Two-child Limit
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Baroness Buscombe
My Lords, as I have made clear, the Government will be publishing statistics on this policy annually. Children growing up in workless families are almost twice as likely as children in working families to fail at all stages of their education, so our welfare reforms are designed to help people get into work, such that there are now 665,000 fewer children in workless households compared with 2010. Of course we want child poverty to fall, and that is part of our in-depth policy development, which is ongoing.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for raising the important issue of child poverty and development in relation to universal credit. We are the fifth-richest economy, but 4.1 million of our children live in poverty and 2.5 million of them come from families who cannot afford to feed them properly. This cripples their ability to grow and develop. Tomorrow the Children’s Future Food Inquiry, which is the first comprehensive investigation of children’s food insecurity, will be published. It details the devastating impact that has on children’s emotional well-being, their attainment at school and their mental and physical health. What plans do the Government have to strengthen and expand policies which make healthy, nutritious food available to all families on any income, regardless of where they live?
Baroness Buscombe
My Lords, the noble Baroness’s question is across government, but it is important from our standpoint at the Department for Work and Pensions that we concentrate on lifting people out of poverty so that they can support their children and develop as role models. A child living in a household where every adult is working is about five times less likely to be in relative poverty than one in a household where nobody works, so we support parents into work. For example, the Government spend £6 billion on childcare each year, which is not reflected in our poverty statistics, to help parents go out to work, support their families and develop a responsible living situation where they can properly feed their children.
Households Below Average Incomes Statistics
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Buscombe
I entirely agree with my noble friend. Of course this is very important. It is why I welcome a review of low wages. That is why I want to talk about the big picture; we talk in silos, across different departments, about what each department is trying to do to support those who need support, but the reality is that we can do this only if we take time to stand back and talk across the piece. Obviously, much of this rests with the Treasury, which has an incredibly difficult job to do in deciding who receives what from each budget, but the reality is that we need to turn this on its head rather than just trying to increase by increment what people receive to lift them out of poverty.
Attacking the key causes of poverty is terribly important through a good education system and a welfare system that gives people sufficient support so that they can focus on improving their lives, rather than on getting by week to week. All the evidence shows us that the universal credit system will help; indeed, it is already helping—look at the record reduction in unemployment. Under the last Labour Government one-fifth of all UK households in the UK were entirely workless, but we have brought that down to somewhere below 13.9%, although I do not have the latest figure.
The reality is that we believe in having households where people are working and children are in school, and which have the right support systems in place. Focusing on those who are unable to work is of course hugely important, but we are spending more than £100 billion a year on benefits for people of working age. Think what we could be doing with much of that if we could lift those people out of the need to turn to support. My noble friend is right: it is a tough challenge.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, I wish I could believe all the things that the Minister has claimed the Government are doing about poverty at the moment. I declare an interest as a trustee of Feeding Britain and of the Food Foundation. I do not know how many people saw the recent ONS figures about life expectancy, which are completely up to date. They show that the gap between the richest and the poorest in terms of years of life lived with health has widened yet again. In fact, if a woman in this country is poor, she will have 18.4 years of ill health. The richer the person, the longer they will live with health.
Is there any reason for that? Right now—not two years ago or whenever—the poorest 10% of UK households have to spend 74% of their disposable income after rent to afford the Government’s “eatwell plate”. That is not even up to the level of the House of Lords canteen; it is very basic food. If you do not have that food, you are 2.2 times more likely to be obese by the time you are five, and that gets worse. Recent material has shown that children who are badly fed, who get so little, are actually a centimetre shorter. We are sentencing a generation of children, the poorest 20%—one in five of our kids—to a lifetime in which they will not thrive or be equal unless we deal with some of the underlying causes.
I believe there are things that the Government could do. For instance, we could allow universal, free, healthy school meals to all children. We could also bring back meals on wheels for seniors who are struggling. I ask the Minister to think about this.