Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, a Division on a similar amendment was lost by two votes. We must all remember that we have here a compromise that would mean that at least some of the huge number of children would not be as severely deprived of the many things that they need in their lives as otherwise. It is also a question, as we have heard graphically spelt out, of many single parents, mainly young mothers, coping on their own with all these additional burdens and the need to stretch the money in ways that your Lordships have read about day after day in the pleadings that come through to us all. I ask the Minister to give serious consideration to whether a compromise of some sort would do. Personally, I would prefer the amendment as it is to be passed in full; it is about the maximum that any reasonable, fair-minded person would be happy to receive.

The amendment tabled earlier by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, was passed. If the Minister cannot give us sufficient reassurance and this amendment is voted on and passed, the other place will have an opportunity to see just how widespread is the support for it across all Benches, as we saw with the noble and learned Lord’s amendment. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will think very hard about accepting this amendment, which was so brilliantly moved by my noble friend Lady Meacher.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, it has been said that the mark of a civilised society is the way that it cares for its most vulnerable. I remind the Minister that the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, encapsulated the societal burden of a failure to demonstrate that we are a civilised society.

I wish to put some figures on the table which have not been mentioned in the debate to date. The Family Fund is a charity that provides grants to low-income families caring for severely disabled children. In 2010, it had to pay out to a range of families, 64 per cent of whom had a child who was not receiving the higher rate of DLA. Recent figures from the Social Fund found that 69 per cent of families with disabled children are worried about their financial situation, with 61 per cent of those struggling to pay monthly bills and three-quarters believing that the high costs of caring for a disabled child are the cause of their financial situation. Other children in the family will suffer as a result of that, probably disproportionately greatly, because the psychology of a parent caring for a disabled child often dictates that that child becomes a focus of disproportionate attention.

Research by CLIC Sargent found that on average parents spend about £367 on extra expenses a month following a child’s cancer diagnosis and treatment, resulting in an annual spend of about £4,400 for parents of a child with cancer. When these families, whether suddenly or gradually devastated by illness, do not have the money they need with which to pay not for luxuries but very basic things to enable them to provide care for the disabled child, the other children in the family, the health service and society as a whole end up paying a higher price in many domains.

The amendment was eloquently introduced by my noble friend Lady Meacher. I urge the Minister to accept it, thereby removing the need to test the opinion of the House.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I support this amendment, but in so doing I understand the position in which the noble Lord finds himself with a set of sealed envelopes. Like many other noble Lords, I encourage him to go back to the Treasury, or at least to have a look at how the available funding can be properly distributed. After all, this is a compromise. Personally, I would like us not to be in this position at all but rather to ensure that we do not make any cuts, because these are cuts—unlike some of the other reforms—to the budgets of families with disabled children.

I do not want to repeat the eloquent speeches that have already been made but to make three brief and, I hope, slightly different points. First, the Government need to take the long view as regards financial management. If we take the short-term view, we will find that many of these families will fall into even more disarray than they are in already. We should remember that, as has been said—I reinforce this point—the majority of these families are single-parent families looked after by mothers. These are not women who have had a child for some feckless reason, as is often portrayed in the newspapers, but women whose husbands cannot tolerate the pressure of having a disabled child in the household and have simply gone out of the picture—so these women are alone. Often that means that they cannot support their child’s situation, which results in many children going into care. I shall not quote more statistics, but noble Lords know that there are large numbers of disabled children in care at the moment and placing them in foster homes is very difficult; in fact, to get them adopted is almost impossible. The state’s burden of caring for such children is huge; the costs per week of caring for a disabled child can run into thousands. In taking the long view, we have to remember the number of children in care.

My last point is that, as several people have said, if we are a civilised society, we want children to grow up to be active young people and to have a proper transition into adulthood. I declare an interest as the president of Livability, a charity which looks after young people in schools, in colleges and through into adult care. I understand the need for that transition. If we are to do that and if we are to ensure that such families have a proper life, appropriate funding is crucial. Noble Lords may have disabled children but, if you are trying to bring them up on the kind of money that these families have and in the housing conditions and relationship situations of these families, funding is absolutely crucial to underpin the care, love and continuity that these children desperately need. I ask the Minister to look in his envelopes again to see whether there is not some way in which the money can be redistributed to ensure that that does not happen.