Public Spending: Barnett Formula

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, your Lordships might normally expect me to speak in a debate on the Barnett formula, but when I realised that my noble friend Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill was giving his maiden speech tonight, I immediately put my name down. It is a great privilege to follow my noble friend; I very much enjoyed listening to him speak, and I look forward to his contributions on many areas which I also care about.

It was wonderful to hear about my noble friend’s passion for public transport, which I also share. I am sorry to say that I have never had the chance to drive a London bus, but maybe this is my chance to put in a bid to do so. Due to my board membership of Transport for London, where my noble friend was the commissioner, I have worked on a gate line at London Bridge Tube station and made platform announcements—they let me do it only for a few hours, but I learned a lot along the way.

I would like to go back a little further to when I first met my noble friend. We were both at an event in the lead-up to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Fairly quickly, we started talking about accessible transport. He asked me whether I had ever been on a bus. I replied that I had not as I did not think they were accessible. I knew that my noble friend was involved in transport, but I am not sure that at that point I realised he was the commissioner. Once I realised that he was in charge of transport in London, I was more than happy to be proved wrong about access and I have been a bus traveller ever since. His knowledge of bus routes and their numbers is second to none and is better than any website or app I have ever found.

I would also like to echo other noble Lords’ thoughts on the leadership he showed up to and beyond the 2012 Games. The fact the public transport system worked so well in 2012 was one of the things that significantly contributed to the success of the Games. I was also privileged to work with my noble friend at the London Legacy Development Corporation, which is incredible. It shows that Britain can win, design, build and do legacy really well on big projects—as long as it has the vision. He now has a role at Network Rail—I am sure that Network Rail hears from me slightly more than it would often want to. My noble friend’s support for disabled people travelling on public transport is very welcome.

When I first came to your Lordships’ Chamber, I was given some very welcome advice, which was to come into the Chamber and sit and listen. I remember an early debate that I came into; it is fair to say it was quite technical, about the Barnett formula. When I left the Chamber and went through Central Lobby, I met a member of the public who had come to listen. He stopped me and slightly harangued me about one particular Member who had such strong views on it. I am very happy to say that it was Lord Barnett himself, so he was quite within his rights to have strong views.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, gave a very eloquent speech. As someone who was born in Wales, works in Wales and lives in the north-east of England—actually, I live on the Stockton and Darlington line in a train station—I believe that maybe it is time that we think differently about what we do.

I am very pleased that my noble friend Lord Hendy raised HS2. It would be remiss of me not to highlight my wish for greater accessibility on trains and other modes of public transport and perhaps some of the missed opportunities we might be seeing to make HS2 step free. I know that it is not necessarily part of this debate, but we need to think about what more we can do with HS2 in terms of opening it up. Modelling from WPI Economics shows that inclusive transport brings significant advantages. A fully accessible network could help some of the 51,000 individuals with work-limiting disabilities to find employment, even more so and more importantly with the Government’s proposal to change the work capability assessment process.

HS2 is not cheap but, through many conversations with my noble friend, he has convinced me that it is the right thing to do. Rethinking how it will work could have a positive, tangible effect on the Treasury’s finances. A step-free rail network could deliver £450 million into the coffers of the Exchequer and produce an economic output boost of around £1.3 billion—all a valuable contribution.

This might be the last time I take part in a debate on the Barnett formula. After listening to the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, maybe in future we could be talking about a Greenhalgh formula.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Friday 7th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly pick up on a few points that my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff raised, and on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, on stereotyping. Quite rightly, we are spending a lot of time thinking about the process of the Bill. It is absolutely important that we get this right. However, we also have to think about what someone’s end of life may be.

I have never met anyone who wants to talk about their own death or think about the process of dying. The purpose of the noble and learned Lord’s Bill is for people to die without pain. However, we also have to remember that death, in some cases, is not a stereotype. It is not always a Hollywood death, whereby people just slip away. We have to be very careful of that.

A German documentary was shown in August 2004 about the scandal of Auhagen’s death, in which the man in question wanted to use a machine to end his life, not wanting any assistance from another person. He was hooked up to the machine, and 24 hours later, he had not died. The nurse who was with him said:

“The machine … couldn’t pump all the poison into his system. The man was partially poisoned, in agony and thrashing around in a coma, frothing at the mouth and sweating”.

That cannot be allowed.

In Oregon, some of the data have shown that in the last few days of life patients who have requested assisted suicide go through more pain than they did before the legislation was introduced because the palliative care is not there. If the Bill progresses, we cannot allow it to happen that, if someone wants to end their life, goes down the path of requesting suicide and then goes through the cooling-off period, the proper and appropriate palliative care is not there to support them all the way through.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, I will make three points, which are important at this stage of the debate.

First, I very much deprecate the frivolity with which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, answered my question about the time involved in producing an independent expert’s report. It is quite wrong to be frivolous about such a very important subject. Clearly, there has been a tendency to put forward a number of amendments in this group, all of which would increase both the time and the cost required to enable someone to benefit from the new regime brought in under the Bill. It is quite wrong of us in this Committee to underestimate the fact that if we passed these amendments we would add a considerable degree of cost and time. There would be the need to go to a coroner, the need for an independent medical expert, and for another independent expert who would be supposed to collect the drugs and oversee the process, and so forth. All that would mean more people, that arrangements would have to be made—in practice they cannot be made in a second or two—and that reports would have to be produced. We all know that people take some time to produce written reports, and on a matter of this kind one would take particular care to get every word in the report right. Therefore, I was not wrong to raise the issue of time and cost.

On costs, we heard with great relief some of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, about the possibility of using legal aid, but we know that, however generous the Government will be, not all the costs involved in this process will be defrayed from public funds. Therefore we do not want to produce a certain situation but, as a matter of fact, we already have a situation whereby if you have enough money you can go to Zurich and solve the problem that way. There is a significant gulf at present between those who have greater financial means and those who do not as regards the choice they have as they reach the end of their lives and how they want to go. We do not want to exacerbate that, and by increasing the cost we are doing so. We simply have to take that into account and it should not be frivolously dismissed, as it was this morning.

Secondly, I want to pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, a moment ago. I see no reason why palliative care should not be continued until the moment when the patient decides to exercise his or her option to terminate his or her life under the procedures laid out in the Bill, if it becomes law. I see no reason why there should be any need to withdraw palliative care some days or weeks beforehand. That seems to me a problem that should not arise at all.

Finally, I want to address the point made by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, whose main objection to the Bill seemed to be that the medical profession should not be involved in decisions about the deaths of patients. That is a very serious point; I made a point along those lines at Second Reading. At present, what most of us face if we have a slow death is palliative care, which generally ends up with palliative sedation. That means that the patient is put into a medically induced coma and all means of life support, including food and liquids—not invariably so but certainly in many cases liquids as well, so that the patient is dehydrated—are withdrawn, along with any life support in the form of oxygen and antibiotics. If the patient has had kidney failure and been on dialysis, that is withdrawn, so the patient dies from blood poisoning. The patient dies in a coma, which takes a great deal more than the 25 minutes that is the average in Oregon, when people use that regime for the right to die. It takes many days, in many cases; I have known at least one case when dehydration took two weeks to kill the patient, who of course did not awaken from the coma during the whole of that period. That is the reality: every day of the week and every hour of the day, doctors and nurses take decisions determining the timing and cause of their patients’ death. They are taking the decision to withdraw antibiotics and life support, putting the patient into a palliative coma.

It is the alternative to that regime that my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer is proposing this afternoon, so that people have a choice. The whole object of the Bill is to give the patient a vote. At present, in many cases, the patient does not even know about the decision being taken by doctors and nurses, which will determine the precise means and timing of their demise. Under the Bill, undoubtedly the patient would be in the front line and the driving seat, taking the key decision, and the doctors and nurses would respond to a decision made explicitly by the patient. That seems to me an enormous improvement. I hope that even those of us who do not want this particular regime and would not want to use it ourselves will not want to deny others the opportunity to have a choice between death in a palliative coma and death as it could be chosen under this Bill.

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[Baroness Masham of Ilton]

My Lords, I support Amendment 71 in the name of my noble friend Lady Hollins. As in the case of those with terminal illness, we know that identifying depression is particularly challenging in some other groups, such as those with physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities or autism spectrum disorders.

Depression is more common in those with physical disabilities arising, for example, following a stroke, spinal cord injury or as a consequence of multiple sclerosis. Research shows that that is particularly so when factors including chronic pain, reduced mobility and poor social support are present. Identifying and treating depression and attending to contributory factors can improve both mental and physical health, but depression is difficult to detect in those with physical disabilities. That is because symptoms of the underlying disability can overlap with symptoms of depression—for example, fatigue, lack of interest in previously enjoyed activities, difficulties in sleeping and emotional lability. Depression can be missed by doctors who are not experienced in assessing mental disorders in the context of physical disabilities. Specialist assessment is often required.

Similarly, people with autism spectrum disorders may have characteristics such as social withdrawal, impaired communication and sleep and appetite disturbance which can mask symptoms of depression. Depression often manifests differently in those with intellectual disabilities compared to the general population.

Furthermore, detecting mental disorders in people with autism or intellectual disabilities, as well as assessing their mental capacity to make specific decisions, requires an understanding of their communication needs and how they may differ from the general population. For example, some people with intellectual disabilities may find it easier to communicate using pictures rather than words; others may demonstrate acquiescence, or a tendency to repeat the last words spoken to them. A doctor who has not had experience of or training in assessing mental disorders and mental capacity in people with autism or intellectual disability may be unable to identify the presence of disorders such as depression and may struggle to optimise the person’s decision-making capacity. Again, specialist assessment is vital.

Those vulnerable patient groups are not adequately protected by the Bill as it stands. That is even more reason to introduce a process to make specialist assessment of mental disorder and end-of-life decision-making capacity mandatory. Disability is very complicated, and everyone is an individual.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, I speak in favour of the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Hollins. I felt, coming into the Bill, that I needed a much deeper understanding of mental capacity because my only personal experience of dealing with psychiatrists and psychologists goes back to when I was 11 years old. I have to thank my noble friend Lady Warnock for that because of her incredible work on special educational needs. At the time, I was not allowed to go to a mainstream school and my only gateway into it was going through mental capacity tests.

I have read so much on this but one article that I found stood out to me. It was written, I accept from a very particular point of view, with reference to Herbert Hendin MD, who is CEO and medical director of Suicide Prevention Initiatives. He is also professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College. He stated in congressional testimony in 1996 that,

“a request for assisted suicide is … usually made with as much ambivalence as are most suicide attempts. If the doctor does not recognise that ambivalence as well as the anxiety and depression that underlie the patient’s request for death, the patient may become trapped by that request and die in a state of unrecognized terror”.

The article also said:

“Most cases of depression … can be successfully treated …Yet primary care physicians are … not experts in diagnosing depression. Where assisted suicide is legalized, the depression remains undiagnosed, and the only treatment consists of a lethal prescription”.

We have heard a lot about the difficulties of diagnosis. My noble friend Lady Hollins mentioned the 6% of doctors who are confident that they can diagnose depression. If we look at the figures from Oregon, which the Bill is based on, back in 1998 31% of patients underwent psychiatric evaluation. In 2003-04 it was 5%, and in 2007 no patients underwent psychiatric evaluation. There is the case of Michael Freeland, who for 43 years had diagnosed mental health issues and suicidal tendencies—this was all recorded. He was able to obtain the drugs.

Several studies have shown that incidences of psychiatric illness, particularly depression, are linked to 30% of people with a terminal illness. We have to make sure that these safeguards are included. In my mind, we must make sure that anyone who wants to go down this route has to be evaluated in a clear manner by people who understand mental capacity.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 66 because, as I said at Second Reading, I am concerned that there are not sufficient safeguards in the Bill to ensure that the mental capacity of the terminally ill person has been correctly assessed.

In subsection (2) of the proposed new clause, the emphasis is on the doctor not to countersign the declaration of intention,

“Unless the attending doctor is satisfied that a person requesting assistance to end his or her own life has the capacity to make”,

that decision. I listened carefully to what my noble friend Lady Hollins said about psychiatrists not necessarily being brought in. However, I should like to think that we can rely on the professionalism and training of our doctors and that if they were in any doubt at all, they would call in a psychiatrist to make this assessment to reach that very high level of satisfaction that the patient has the mental capacity.

The requirement to call in a psychiatrist if the doctor is concerned about the person’s mental capacity was included in the original Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, but is not in this Bill. As my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss said, subsection (2) of the proposed new clause points out that the person should not be,

“suffering from any condition, including … depression”,

which could impair his or her judgment. Recent medical evidence has revealed that the presence of depression in terminally ill patients is much higher than in other patients. In a report in the BMJ, Prevalence of Depression and Anxiety in Patients Requesting Physicians’ Aid in Dying, the authors investigated terminally ill patients in Oregon who requested aid in dying and found that more than 50% met the criteria for depression or the criteria for anxiety that they were depressed. Depression can leave a person with unchanged mental capacity; it can also radically change a person’s mental capacity. There was rather a good article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology entitled “Euthanasia and Depression: A Prospective Cohort Study Among Terminally Ill Cancer Patients”, which discovered that the risk of requesting euthanasia for patients with a depressed mood was 4.1 times higher than that for patients without a depressed mood.

This amendment would put the onus on the doctor assessing the mental capacity of a patient to bring in a psychiatrist if they were at all concerned about this condition. Proposed subsection (3) seeks to set out the criteria for the psychiatrist who is going to be involved. The 2005 mental capacity committee heard from Dr Geoffrey Lloyd of the Royal Free Hospital’s department of psychiatry that in more complicated cases only liaison psychiatrists have the expertise to assess a patient’s mental capacity correctly. The report said:

“There was a general consensus among our expert witnesses on one point—that the attending and consulting physicians who are envisaged as being effectively the ‘gatekeepers’ in regard to applications for assisted dying could not be expected to spot impairment of judgement in all cases”.

Proposed new subsection (4) asks for the psychiatrist also to be satisfied that the person making the request has the capacity to make the decision to ask for assistance with dying. Patients can be very good at deceiving even trained psychiatrists about their state of mind and can appear to be capable when they are not. The same often appears with people who are suffering from dementia. Psychiatrists may need to make another visit, maybe a month or so later, to make a proper assessment of their capacity. I can quite see that this sort of period can make the delay too long for many terminally ill patients. My answer must be that the most important thing is to get the decision right. I hope that this amendment will do just that.

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[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, perhaps I might I try to short-circuit this. I am broadly in favour of having something in the Bill that says, “You should not be making suggestions”. My anxiety is that I do not want to end up in a situation where there is a fine debate in court as to who first suggested it. It may be that somebody would say, “Can anything be done? Can this be brought to an end?”, and the doctors would say, “There are these options”. Would that be in breach? I do not know and I need to think carefully about the drafting in relation to this to avoid that sort of fine, purposeless discussion in court.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, a doctor very explicitly suggesting to somebody that they end their life is one thing. But for me a much greater concern, which has been debated quite a lot already, is about the gentle suggestion that people should consider ending their lives—the arm around the shoulder. I am sitting in your Lordships’ Chamber only because many hundreds of thousands of pounds of NHS money have been spent on putting me back together. I have had some amazing doctors with a dreadful bedside manner, and I have had some doctors with a great bedside manner who have performed procedures that I did not ask for. It was recently reported that a young man, Mik Scarlet, turned down a certain procedure several times. When he was on the operating table, the surgeon completely ignored his wishes and carried out the procedure anyway, and it had to be reversed. He is in a better position now than he was previously. It is a very long and complicated story, which is detailed on the Huffington Post.

For me, this is about the constant drip-drip of “You’re not worth it”. I am a very resilient person. If I got upset every time somebody said to me, “I wouldn’t want to be like you”, I would be depressed. Somebody said to me recently, “Well, I wouldn’t want to be incontinent. That’s my worst thing in life”. I am technically incontinent. If it was not for self-catheterisation, I would probably be dead, because I would have pressure sores; I would not exist. I was having a debate in Central Lobby with somebody who strongly supported my view on where we should go with the Bill. He looked at me and sort of waved at the wheelchair and said, “Well, you must have considered killing yourself hundreds of times”. No, I have not, actually, and I think that it was a bit of a surprise to him. It is that sort of tone, where “You’re brave. You’re marvellous”. People do not realise that they are being demeaning. I think that they genuinely think that they are being empathetic, sympathetic and kind, but, actually, you are constantly being knocked down and told that you have no value and no worth. That is what is of much greater concern to me.

The noble Lord, Lord McColl, mentioned Oregon. In 1994, the Oregon medical assistance programme cut funding to 167 out of 700 health services. Four years later, assisted suicide started being referred to as a “treatment”. On the back of that, funding was cut to 150 services for disabled people. They started limiting funded doses of powerful pain medication and put barriers in the way of funding for antidepressants. Thank goodness we do not have an insurance system like the one they have in the United States. I would be dead because my parents could not afford to keep me alive. For me, the big issue is not the doctor saying that your life is not worth living; it is the arm around the shoulder. It is that constantly being told, “You’d be better off dead”. That is what disabled people face every single day. Disability hate crime figures are the worst they have ever been in 10 years of reporting. It is constant. There is not a group of disabled people and a group of terminally ill people; there is a huge crossover.

I am sure that many people have noticed that my noble friend Lady Campbell of Surbiton is not here today. She has a chest infection. She is watching at home on her ventilator. We all know what a chest infection does for her prognosis. It immediately switches her from being okay to fitting in with the category of having less than six months to live. That is not a situation that I am very comfortable with.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness spoke about the young man who was operated on misguidedly by the surgeon. It reminds me that young people, 18 to 25 year-olds, might be particularly susceptible to this kind of suggestion over time. I am concerned that this particular group, who are not at the end of their lives but at the beginning and who represent a very small group within the group that we are discussing today, should be given plenty of thought, in particular because of issues around their maturity and the trauma that they may have experienced growing up.

We recognise that developmental delay can arise from trauma. We recognise that, while 18 is generally considered the age of maturity, we extend protections up to the age of 25 for young people who are leaving care. That is for a number of reasons, but in part because of the history of trauma that they have experienced. We recognise that it may take more time for them to develop. Where children or young people have not built up such large social networks, they are more dependent on those nearest to them and one should be very careful to avoid a situation in which they are drip-fed the notion that perhaps their life is not worth living and should be curtailed.

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[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I will be very brief. It is admirable how the House has coped with what appears to be slightly confusing. It is wonderful that we have clerks and Whips who understand more than the rest of us do, as it unfolds.

This stand part debate is very important, partly because the two issues of transitional care and the needs of very young adults are critically important, as is the point made about suicide tourism. I am sure that that was never intended by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, but this was the only place that it could come up in the Bill, and I am glad that my noble friend Lady Howe raised it.

I had sought previously to clarify “assisted dying”, and that the first clause should be titled “Assistance with suicide”, because this is about assisted suicide—it is not about physician-administered euthanasia. All the debates that we have had are as such, and I hope that when the Bill is reprinted we will be able to have a more accurate title to Clause 1. It is assistance with suicide, not physician-assisted euthanasia.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, I apologise, but I would like to speak briefly because I had six amendments that dropped out due to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.

[Noble Lords]

No.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

If I can just explain—those amendments that are part of the groups that the pre-empted amendments belong to will occur later on, when we come to them in order.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

I apologise; I did not express myself very well. I thank the noble Lord for that clarification. I agree with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, on coercion. I absolutely endorse what my noble friends Lord Alton and Lady Finlay of Llandaff said about terminology. Terminology is the dress of thought and is incredibly important.

We still have to debate issues such as how, what, when, where and who, which come up in Clause 1. I refer to an issue which I cannot see coming up anywhere else—that is, how somebody who is peg fed may be assisted to die, and where that fits in with what help is actually needed. In the USA, a patient had a peg fitted expressly so that he could be helped with assisted suicide. My noble friend Lady Campbell of Surbiton already has a peg fitted and that is how she is fed and survives. A lot of questions still need to be answered about the administration of drugs. I think it is assumed that a patient may be swallowing some medicine or some liquid, but for some people the situation might be very different.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, I have listened with great interest to the debate so far, and I, like many others, have a number of concerns with this Bill. Capping the uprating of most benefits to no more than 1% for the next three years will mean an exponential increase in the net losses each year. The Government have already reduced the welfare budget for working-age people, so this Bill will be yet another blow for low earners and unemployed, sick, or disabled people.

My first concern is that the impact of benefit uprating changes will swamp any gains from raising tax thresholds for low-income households. Uprating changes are less noticeable than other cuts but over the years can have a large impact on someone’s income. Between 2011 and 2015, the uprating changes to child benefit alone will result in a real-terms cut of almost £6 a week for a family with two children. Child benefit, in addition, plays a role in determining the level of housing and council tax benefit paid to those on low incomes in work. The real-terms cut due to child benefit uprating alone during that period is almost £11 a week.

Households with someone working full time on the minimum wage, if there are children, not only will suffer a real-terms loss of £11 a week between 2011 and 2015 but will gain less than £2 a week from the rise in the tax threshold, because a rise in net income means a drop in housing and council tax benefits. Also, the effects of this Bill will not be greatly eased by the change in the personal tax allowance. Low-income households will lose most of the increase in income through a reduction in benefits such as housing benefit and tax credit. Paradoxically, it is the middle and high earners who will receive the full benefit of this measure.

Secondly, uprating changes are not occurring in isolation from other benefit cuts. In considering this Bill, it is important to have in mind the full impact of all the changes. Very few people who rely on benefits or tax credits as part of their income, whether in or out of work, will experience a cut in uprating alone. There have been numerous other cuts to tax credits, housing benefit, council tax support and disability benefits as well as capping. Citizens Advice has analysed the overall impact for a household through a series of changes in circumstances on what we currently know. The analysis demonstrates in a small way the combined impact of the changes on some groups, assuming that this Bill is passed. The example I want to present is not at the extreme end as there will be many people who will be even more severely hit by the cuts and will lose much more.

A couple, Mike and Anne, have two girls aged 12 and seven. They live in a three-bedroom property belonging to a local housing association and are both working full time with a combined income of about £46,000 a year. With this joint income they will be about £17 a week better off from tax and benefit changes in 2015 than they were in 2011. They will lose about £6 a week in real terms from the uprating of child benefit, but they will gain around £23 from the change in the tax threshold, giving an overall gain of £17 a week. However, this position rapidly deteriorates if the family circumstances change for the worse. If, say, Anne becomes ill and is diagnosed with MS, she may have to cut her hours because she quickly becomes exhausted.

The couple split up and Anne becomes a lone parent. She now has earnings of £10,000 a year, but is entitled to some help through benefits, including disability benefits and premiums in recognition of the extra costs she now faces as a result of her illness. Between 2011 and 2015, someone in her position will suffer a large loss in benefits, around £58 a week, while gaining only about £2 a week from the rise in the tax threshold as the gain in net earnings leads to a reduction in benefits. That is an overall loss of £56 a week. This is made up of an underoccupancy charge, loss of lower rate DLA, a £5 council tax payment and about £18 due to all the uprating changes.

That is the loss under the current system. The loss under universal credit will be even greater for someone in Anne’s position. If she moved over to universal credit at the point when her health deteriorated, she would not get transitional protection, and in 2015 would have a real-terms income of £95 a week less than in 2011. This is because under universal credit she will get no more financial support than someone who is not ill or disabled. If Anne’s condition further deteriorates and she has to leave work, she is awarded the middle-rate care component of DLA and is placed in the ESA support group. She now has a great many extra costs.

The overall real-terms loss between 2011 and 2015 for a household in this position is about £34 a week, and that assumes that Anne keeps DLA or the same value in PIP. This loss includes a real-terms loss of about £15 due to uprating changes, despite the protection for disabled people. Again, this is all under the current system. Under universal credit, if Anne does not get transitional protection, she will be £61 worse off in real terms in 2015 than someone in her position would have been in 2011. The extra loss is due to the loss of the severe disability premium offset by the rise in the support element of universal credit.

In summary, between 2011 and 2015, this couple with a joint income of £46,000 a year have a real-terms gain from tax and benefit changes of £17 a week; they would have a £23 gain if they did not have children. A disabled lone parent in Anne’s position who is working will have a real-terms drop of £56 a week overall, despite the gain from the raising of the tax threshold. The drop will be a real-terms drop of £95 a week between the current system in 2011 and universal credit in 2015. For someone in Anne’s position and in the support group, the real-terms loss is £34 a week, or £61 a week if on universal credit.

People are already struggling to manage, as has already been mentioned by my noble friend Lord Adebowale. The numbers going to food banks are rising steeply. These proposed changes impact disproportionately on those with a low income because more of their income goes on buying essentials, and it is these essentials such as fuel and food that are subject to high inflation. For many, this can mean making choices such as whether to keep the house warm or to eat properly. Disabled people who cannot work, those who are unemployed and cannot find work, and those on low earnings who are working are all being affected by other benefit cuts. Decisions on uprating should not be taken without recognising the cumulative impact. Many in your Lordships’ Chamber have asked about the cumulative impact of these changes, and I would urge the Government to look at this again.

I will not repeat the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, but I wholeheartedly support his views. We have to understand where we are going as a society and how we want it to be viewed. In the Welfare Reform Bill, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, said consistently that the most vulnerable should get the most support, but I fear that as this Bill progresses, that may not be the case.

Financial Services Bill

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I share the gratitude of the House to the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, to my right reverend friend the Bishop of Durham and to others for bringing forward the amendment, and to the Minister for his response. I could talk about examples in Leeds very similar to those which people have raised. However, I will raise two particular points. The one point at which I was concerned at the Minister’s response was when he talked about the danger—which I acknowledge—of driving people into the murky world of illegal loan sharks. That is true and it can happen, but it is very important that we do not allow it to dominate the way in which we establish these provisions.

Where illegal lending is taking place, it needs to be dealt with by prosecution. We need to encourage the police to take action. That should not prevent us from being very firm in the way in which we—the law—control the debt industry. The Minister cited Japan as a good example of a society where that control appears to have worked. It would be interesting to see what contrasts there are between Japan, France and Germany, to ensure that we provide proper control and do not give in to illegal loan sharks because of their power.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for raising the point that there needs to be credit available. One thing that I have not heard very much about in these debates, although we talked about it often in the past, is the role of credit unions. Those unions seek to tackle debt but their growth has been sadly limited in this country and they appear to be unable to provide the necessary cover to give security to those struggling in our society, although the work that they do is excellent. I hope that as we go forward in discussing the issue of debt, we shall encourage credit unions to play a much greater part in providing a way forward and one answer to the major issues that we face.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, I very much welcome the words of the Minister as I, too, put my name to the amendment. It is essential that we get this right because it is about people who are already in very difficult financial situations. The UK has one of the largest consumer lending markets in Europe, alongside those of France and Germany, but they have their rates capped. I will say a few words on the scale of the issue, which is important. There are 1.75 million people without transactional bank accounts and 7.7 million accounts without credit facilities, so it is very easy to see why people resort to payday loans.

One of the starkest things I read was that between April and May 2011 there was a 58% rise in people applying for payday loans via moneysupermarket.com, which means that an estimated 4 million people are using these loans, with the amount advanced exceeding £2 billion per year. In 2004, that amount was £100 million. Nobody wants to see more people in poverty. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, is absolutely right that the devil is in the detail. I look forward to the response of the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell.

[Lord Glasman]

My Lords, I will declare an interest. I was involved in the anti-usury campaign with London Citizens after the crash of 2008. I very much want to acknowledge the work of Stella Creasy in intensifying and continuing the campaign, which was based on the common good—on an alliance between the secular and those of faith to talk about a basic issue. Before we get too carried away, I will say that not since 1854 have there been any statutory constraints on interest rates. Everything else was voluntary but, in 1854, Bentham’s influence led to that. It followed the changes in abolishing usury laws in the Long Parliament in the 1630s, so we have to say that we are at an absolutely exceptional moment. There is a consensus on a cap on interest rates, which has not existed in our country for 400 years.

What it brings to our attention, and what I wish to share in honouring my noble friend Lord Mitchell for raising this historic amendment and the Government for responding to it, is the terrible condition of the poor. To quote someone who has not always been popular in this House, the Pope, usury is a way in which the rich prey upon the misfortune and troubles of the poor. I want to share with your Lordships that this is urgent; it is happening again and Christmas is coming. Overwhelmingly, it is not the unemployed but the working poor who are taking these loans.

I will raise two issues for future discussion, as we have reached such a fantastic moment of consensus. The first is in relation to credit unions, which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham mentioned, and regional banking. The proposal that London Citizens put forward, which I do not think sounds outlandish now, is that 5% of the bailout should be used to endow local, non-usurious lending institutions. The way in which the burdens of the crash have fallen on the poor is indecent, and we have to look at credit arrangements. I acknowledge what the Government have done in freeing up credit unions, but they do not have adequate resources or reach, and the establishment of new, non-usurious lending institutions in the regions of our country is the only way forward.

The other important issue—if I might interrupt the Minister’s conversation—is that data show that there is more illegal lending in Britain than in Germany. There is a 20% cap in Germany. I am not going to be bounced into any position, but it is still the case that if you put any constraints on the power of money, it automatically leads to illegal lending.

The other thing that we need to address is a living wage. When people work, they should be paid enough not to have to go into poverty. We have to build on this and intensify the conversation and the common good between secular and faith institutions. I commend the lead taken on this because the fundamental issue of our time is that the biggest growth area in our economy is debt, and overwhelmingly it falls on poor families. We need to address it as a matter of intensity and urgency.

Sunday Trading (London Olympic and Paralympic Games) Bill [HL]

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, I start by declaring my relevant interests in this debate. I sit on the Diversity Committee and the Athletes’ Committee of the London 2012 organising committee, also known as LOCOG. I also undertake other work for LOCOG that is listed in the register. However, none of it is linked to the topic of this debate. I also know that the noble Lord, Lord Coe, is disappointed not to be here this evening to take part in the debate.

With 94 days to go to the opening ceremony of the Olympics, I have to admit that I am in somewhat of a quandary. I have always said that we should maximise the opportunities of the Olympics and Paralympics—not just the sporting ones—because the Games will happen on home soil only once in our lifetime. However, I also feel passionately about protecting the hours of Sunday trading. The briefings that I have received on this topic put forward a very persuasive argument for opposing the Bill and extending Sunday trading hours. The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers has said that 73 per cent of its members believe that longer Sunday opening hours will lead to more pressure on them to work on a Sunday against their will. It is very important that we protect shop workers. The Federation of Small Businesses has also cited Sir Stuart Rose as saying that longer trading hours will not increase consumer spending, although in very different circumstances from what will happen during the Games.

On a personal note, I have to say that I like a day that is different from the rest of the week, and I think that the hours that are currently available for shopping are adequate. However, while I fundamentally oppose long-term change to Sunday trading laws, my quandary is that I recognise that during the Olympics and Paralympics it would make a great deal of sense for there to be increased flexibility to allow those visiting the Games or the general public the opportunity to spend their money at what will be an unusual and different time in the UK.

I have been to six different Games—to five as an athlete and I was working at one—and while each city and country hosts them in a different way, we should not underestimate the excitement, fervour or feel-good factor that occurs at Games times, and we should be ready for that. During Games time, there will be a significant number of different people, as compared to the usual tourists, who will visit not just London but cities around the UK. They will be visiting the live sites and there will be many different ways that families will gather together to support our athletes and the Games, and watch the events. They will not just be people who have bought tickets for the Games.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, raised a valid point about whether the provisions of the Bill should be available to all shops. I considered this carefully, because my original reasoning was that it would make sense for the Bill to affect only shops around the Games sites or live sites. However, considering the way that families will experience the Games, there might be people in all the different parts of England and Wales who will want to buy paint or clothes at different times. Where I live in the north-east of England, the shops in the nearest towns—we do not have many shops in Eaglescliffe —do not open on a Sunday; they are all shut, apart from two weeks before Christmas. I take note of what the noble Lord, Lord Bates, said regarding shops being open if they have customers. That is incredibly important, and I really hope that the decisions taken by the shops will be based on their specific circumstances and that they do not feel forced to open.

I also considered whether, rather than having just a block of opening, it might be useful for the provisions to extend just for the Olympics and Paralympics. However, between the Games there will be a massive turnover in the city. The people who may have escaped London because they do not want to be around during the Olympics might be coming back. Athletes are in and out, people choose to stay on at the end of the Games, and people come in early for the Paralympics. Although I am reluctant to say it, having the whole block of opening is probably the most sensible way forward.

What I feel strongly about is that the Government have said:

“Should the Government ever decide that it is appropriate to look again at the possibility of a more permanent relaxation of Sunday trading restrictions a full consultation would be undertaken”.

That is important to reiterate. We cannot use Games time in any way as an accurate trial of the circumstances. These Games are completely and utterly exceptional. In the cities that I have been to during the Olympics and Paralympics—Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens and Beijing; and I have spent an extensive time in each of those cities, leading up to the Games and afterwards—there is such a different atmosphere that I do not think we can use this in any way as a trial.

However, we have to be aware of the effect on small businesses during these specific circumstances. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, referred to whether people choose to do work on a Sunday. Possibly because I do not have a life, I work on a Sunday, but that is my choice. An awful lot of people who work in shops will not feel that they have that choice. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, about people having the opportunity to opt in, rather than out, is important because a lot of those workers will feel a certain amount of pressure to work.

Having said all that, London and the UK have consistently said they are open for business. The Olympics and Paralympics are a massive opportunity to benefit the whole UK. In this case, and in these very particular circumstances—and for a time-limited period, according to the sunset clause—the Sunday trading laws should be a little more flexible.