Disabled People: Impact from Policies and Spending Cuts

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend that there have been delays, and perhaps I can give a little thought to this. One matter to note is that the Access to Work systems are currently receiving an increased level of applications for support—for example, there are 24,677 cases. On what we are doing about this, DWP has taken a number of actions: all applications for a job to start in the next four weeks are prioritised, renewal applications are also prioritised where possible, and support is approved using a new streamlined process. We have also increased the number of staff working on Access to Work. We are very aware of the delays and are taking some action.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Are the Government minded to implement Section 28(8) of the Equality Act 2006, which would give the commission the powers to bring disability discrimination cases to court?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Although I cannot confirm that, I know that the commission examined whether my department was making reasonable adjustments to its processes for people with mental health conditions and learning difficulties, as required under the Equality Act 2010. As the noble Baroness will know, the EHRC published a statement on 19 April about drawing up a legally binding agreement with the DWP to commit it to an action plan.

Covid-19: People Living in Poverty

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Thursday 30th April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, universal basic income has been mentioned, but it is a panacea which is at best inadequate to meet people’s needs, and in the current financial state in which we find ourselves, with a forecast deficit of 20% of GDP and debt rising to more than 100% of GDP this year, it is completely unaffordable. Therefore, the immediate answer must necessarily be to raise taxes. I urge the Government to look at the experience of the German solidarity tax, which was brought in in 1991 to pay for unification. The only caveat is that if the Government bring in a tax, it must be short-term and time-limited as a solidarity tax, and it must be progressive: the burden must fall on those with the broadest shoulders—in other words, the higher-rate taxpayers. Will the Minister therefore agree to look beyond Treasury orthodoxy to see what other countries are doing successfully to pay for this kind of enormous fiscal and monetary shock?

Arab Spring

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, want to thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield for securing this debate. There are some points that are worth making about the Arab spring in general. The uprisings were not motivated by religious sentiment or indeed through any kind of ideology per se. The report of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the other place on the British Foreign Office’s responses to the Arab spring showed clearly that what the protests did was to unite discontented citizens from across the political spectrum and the economic, class and religious divides, simply in opposition to the long-standing authoritarian regimes that existed in those countries. Irrespective of the subsequent popularity of Islamist parties, as we saw, Islamism was not what those overthrows of government were about.

There was chronic economic underperformance across the region. The United Nations Development Committee reports of 2001, 2002 and, I think, 2004 showed that demographic expansion in the late 1970s has resulted in 60% of the population now being under 25 years of age. High unemployment, rising food prices and a widening inequality with endemic corruption, particularly among the elites of the countries, meant that it was inevitable that any kind of trigger could well result in mass uprisings. It was also predictable that the only organised groups that would have any credibility in protesting against the regimes were those who had made personal sacrifices in the past. They were the Islamists, whether the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the Shia minority in Bahrain and so on. These were people who had credibility because they had worked in towns and villages with the people who had had none of the privileges of the elites that were rising up over the period. As we know, they were elected with great popular support.

With the exception of Turkey with its secularist constitution, there is no tradition in these countries of choosing between different ideologies. The choices are mainly between clan, communal and religious loyalties. Illiteracy among these populations is sometimes as high as 50%. Figures recently released for Egypt indicate that in the rural areas, illiteracy is running as high as 60% or 70%. Half the electorate, notably women, are either excluded or told who to vote for. The only unifying factor across a country as diverse as Egypt or Syria is Islam or variants of it, according to your communal ties.

Religious minorities, just like the population as a whole, tend to opt en bloc for the system that best protects them. While they supported the Arab spring initially, they have witnessed the impact of political Islam on their own survival in these countries. I emphasise that I am talking about political Islam, with its emphasis on “us versus them”, rather than the religion I know, which is about pluralism and respect for other minorities, particularly the Abrahamic faiths.

However, political Islam in government—pace Egypt under President Morsi—finds that it has to overturn the status quo ante: it has to overturn women’s rights and reform the structures of state; it has to challenge liberals and secularists, as it has done over the past 16 months, in order to implement Islamist constitutional processes and norms; and it sees minorities as easy to scapegoat as “the other”. So minority rights and secular space are attacked while only fellow religionists are supported.

Recently I came across an article on Egypt by Yasmine El Rashidi in the New York Review of Books, called “Egypt: The Misunderstood Agony”. It sets the record of more than a year of Islamist government thus:

“The groups that have used religion as their shield and succeeded to attracting the public with their distorted view of religion, came to power and stayed there for a year. It was one of the worst years that Egypt ever went through”.

Being familiar with the excesses of the Brotherhood, I used the opportunity when I was in Egypt in August to raise the plight of Coptic Christians and Shias with the leader of the parliamentary faction of the Muslim Brotherhood, Essam al-Erian. Alas, his response was typical of Brotherhood propaganda. “No,” he said, “no Christians, no minorities, nobody has been ill treated. It is just a western media conspiracy”.

In conclusion, our support for democratic government cannot trump our promotion of core values in human rights. It is for this Government to walk the fine line between supporting democracy and popular will but at the same time reminding the Governments of these countries what their obligations are in universal terms.

Equality: EC Policies on Women on Corporate Boards

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of European Commission policies on women on corporate boards.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, the European Commission has yet to announce its proposed policy for women on boards. The Government agree with the Commission that increasing the representation of women on the boards of UK-listed companies is important. However, we are not in favour of EU legislation or regulation, including quotas. National-level solutions are best, and evidence shows that, following the Davies review that the Government commissioned in 2010, the UK’s voluntary, business-led approach is working.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

I agree with my noble friend that the EU is probably not the body best placed to deal with this problem, particularly as corporate governance varies from country to country. However, does she agree that the real problem is the lack of progress on getting women executive directors on to FTSE 100 company boards? We have had good progress with non-executive directors; we have something like 22% against the Davies targets, which is progress. However, our flagship companies are not nurturing and developing talent to get people promoted from within. What are the Government proposing to do about that?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, my first point is to reinforce what progress has been made since the Davies review on the recruitment of women to boards. Notwithstanding the point that my noble friend made, it is worth saying that the percentage of women on FTSE 100 boards is now 17.3%; that is up from 10.5%. However, my noble friend is right to say that progress in executive ranks is not as fast. More effort is needed in that area, particularly around what is called strengthening the pipeline, so that women are recruited from a wider pool of backgrounds to these executive posts and that we do not rely just on the kind of criteria that are normally placed on men who are recruited to those jobs.

Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a non-executive director of Hyde Housing Association, as described in my entry in the register. I am also a trustee of Hyde Plus, the social regeneration charity established to provide practical assistance to some of the most vulnerable of our residents. We are a large housing association. Nevertheless, my comments tonight will be my own: I will not be speaking for either of those bodies.

Before I begin on the substantive parts of the debate, I pay tribute to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Feldman. As an immigrant who arrived on these shores some 75 years after his grandparents did, I recognise the values he spoke of extremely clearly. They are the values that many immigrants who come to these shores identify with. They will be affected by some of the provisions of the Bill. It was a fabulous maiden speech and I hope that we will retain the values articulated in it throughout our deliberations on the Bill.

This is a radical reforming Bill, designed to leave Britain's welfare state in a better state than we found it. However, its success will be measured ultimately both through its emphasis on an increase in the efficiency of the system—and surely, when one looks at the figures of what we spend, we can come to a consensus, as I think we have today in the House, that there is an element of waste in the system—and on its foundation in fairness. In his book Them and Us, Will Hutton defines fairness in Britain as a belief that one should receive one’s due deserts in proportion to whatever good or bad one has contributed. However, the emphasis must be on proportionality, and that is what on the whole the Bill does, although I have some reservations.

You cannot have fairness without accepting that life deals with us through lady luck. Those who have had the luck of a healthy life, good educational opportunities, and the good fortune to have had economic independence to make the right employment choices, are there to a great extent through their personal capabilities—I am a liberal, so you would expect me to say that—but also because of who they are and where they were born. Recognition of the element of luck in framing our lives demands that we contribute to the ill luck of those who have not enjoyed the things that we have. It was this recognition that led Beveridge—yes, I am from the party of Beveridge—to design a welfare state safety net. In the intervening years, the safety net has turned into a web of increasingly intricate, incomprehensible and untransparent rules that absorb huge amounts of the time of benefits officers, legal advice centres and other bureaucrats, while the people who need the safety net are turned into mere recipients of what are known as “entitlements”.

We know also that capitalism needs to have a relationship with concepts of justice. Just as personal worth and effort cannot be the whole story of success, so, too, we know that injustice is not a given. Much of it can arise from the lottery of life, and it is our duty to act on it and to reduce it. This is why the Bill is so important. We know that it will impact on vast numbers of people, some of whom will undoubtedly be disadvantaged in the short term by its changes. However, moving to a universal credit will be fairer and simpler, thus freeing funds in the longer term to spend more wisely. It will also work to reduce disincentives. I also welcome the change to make payments monthly, which will assist households in budgeting and prepare them for the monthly payment regime of those in employment.

My particular area of interest in the Bill is housing in general, and social housing in particular. In her opening remarks, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, referred to the dearth of small household units. Other noble Lords referred to the overall shortage of social housing. We also know that, because of demographic changes in the composition of households, such as rising population and rising longevity, the pressure for additional social housing located in the right parts of the country will continue. We also need to acknowledge the wasted opportunity under Labour in times of plenty of not addressing the chronic overall undersupply of housing in this country. Housebuilding fell in 2009-10 to its lowest level since World War I —137,000 units. The required supply is around 200,000 units per year, according to the IPPR, leaving a gap of some 63,000 units.

The social housing sector has seen similar underinvestment, with years of diminishing investment by taxpayers in the affordable housing that is an essential element of the safety net. It is against this backdrop of tighter government grants, alongside a tightening of credit in the capital markets, that housing associations are asked to provide more affordable housing. One change—the withdrawal of the payment of housing benefit directly to landlords—will impact significantly on the social housing sector. Arrears are bound to increase with direct payments to residents. The level of risk that housing associations incur will rise. If predicted income is not guaranteed or readily quantifiable, the price of money borrowed by RSLs will also increase. Credit agencies will downgrade our status and borrowing for building in certain parts of the country might rise by as much as 100 basis points. The Government's stated desire to increase the supply of housing—in particular social housing—will not therefore be met.

I understand that the Minister is contemplating reducing the risks to housing associations by stepping in after four weeks of arrears to revert to direct payments to social landlords. This would be welcome, but would entail greater bureaucracy for both RSLs and the DWP. Its impact would have little effect on the capital markets’ or financial institutions’ assessment of risk, and therefore on borrowing costs. Several questions also arise from the proposals concerning choice, efficiency and value for money. I look forward to debating this point with the Minister in Committee.

A further issue concerns the household benefits cap. My noble friend Lord German today set out the relevant figures for households both with and without children. While I understand that the Government arrived at a cap of £26,000 per year on the basis of median income, this is far too blunt an instrument to do credit to what is in many respects a good Bill. We cannot find it fair to use a straitjacket to measure household costs, irrespective of where the household is, how large or small it is or what alternatives its members have to substitute income through employment and related means. I hope that factors such as actual housing and transport costs will also be taken into account to allow for regional if not local variation in the setting of the cap.

This bold Bill, with its radical restructuring of welfare, is very welcome. However, it is in the conviction that the scrutiny of this House will improve it further that I look forward to debating it in Committee.