Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Yes I do, and I will come back to that if I may, because a whole series of questions was raised about transitional protection, which I need to deal with comprehensively.

Our impact assessments made clear that, overall, families are more likely to be better off on universal credit. In addition, departmental modelling estimates are that the impact of the reform of disability payments on the number of disabled children living in relative poverty will be negligible. We must remember that support for families with disabled children is provided by the universal credit package as a whole.

On the absolute figures of support, under universal credit, an out-of-work family with a disabled child will receive just over £8,000 a year in benefits for their child once universal credit has been introduced. That compares to just over £4,000 for an out-of-work family with a non-disabled child and about £1,000 for a family who receive only child benefit. The figure for a child on the severely disabled level is £12,000. That is the order.

Let me now turn to the really important point raised by many noble Lords about taking money away from families who have learnt how to build their lives around it. That is exactly why we have introduced transitional protection. My noble friend Lord Boswell has referred to an assurance on no losses for years one and two. The way transitional protection works is that where circumstances remain the same, people’s payment level is protected on a cash basis. That means that families currently receiving child tax credit will not see a cash reduction at all as a result of the move to universal credit, and we will provide cash protection for as long as the universal credit award is less than the previous benefit entitlement. I hope that represents a level of ring-fencing that the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, will recognise.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Perhaps I may ask the noble Lord about cash protection. Does that mean it will or will not be inflated each year by CPI?

[Lord Freud]

No, clearly there is an erosion factor. Cash protection does not also inflate it. But the point about the universal credit is that it is structured to provide adequate support for families overall, and on top of that where there are differences we have a reasonably long period of transitional protection.

We simply cannot maintain the existing rates for disabled children if we are going to increase the rates for severely disabled adults. I know it is hard to absorb lots of figures at once, but let me just try and capture it. What we are looking at is fundamentally paying a severely disabled child or adult £77 once the universal credit is introduced. That is a big leap for severely disabled adults today who are on £32.35. That is where we are trying to move to, and that is where we are trying to put our resource.

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Moved by

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

5: Clause 8, page 4, line 9, after “costs)” insert “and council tax benefit”

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I am moving this amendment precisely because I strongly support universal credit. If the House agrees with me in supporting universal credit, I suggest in all decorum that it should also support this amendment.

At the moment, council tax benefit is a social security benefit—a national benefit—which responds to local need. The DWP reimburses local authority spend. If, for example, a factory closes, the need for council tax benefit in that community may increase, and that need is met because the benefit is national and needs-led. Sensibly, therefore, it should be part of universal credit, along with JSA, housing benefit, ESA and so on, because the need for council tax benefit runs alongside those other benefits and should be related to family need, as universal credit will be. Instead, the DWP’s need to include CTB within universal credit appears to have been trumped by the demand of the DCLG and other departments that it form part of a completely separate agenda—the localism agenda. These agendas—universal credit versus localism—clash, and so far the wrong decision has been made.

What is DCLG proposing? In future DCLG will award a fixed-rate grant to local authorities from which it will have to construct its own council rebate scheme. What is wrong with that, your Lordships may think? Quite a lot, and there are three reasons in particular. First, instead of one national scheme that is common across the country, understood by everyone—claimants, local authorities, staff and advice centres—there will be 400 different schemes. There will be a separate and different scheme for every local authority in the country. Norfolk, for example, will have seven schemes that are all different.

Think of the staff resources involved, when we are trying to save money, in constructing and running such schemes, especially when local authorities already outsource much of their work. Think of the complexity of giving advice to people who come into, say, the Norwich Citizens Advice office from all over Norfolk, trying to understand UC and then having to add on seven different taper arrangements according to which district council they come from within Norfolk. All of the admirable simplicity of UC goes out the window. Think of the possibility of underpayment, overpayment, error or even fraud because there is no standard scheme. Given that there will not be enough money to go round, why would any local authority encourage take-up? They will not.

We in this House are rightly building these problems out of universal credit, and the Minister is to be congratulated on that. But we will be building them back in again if this amendment is not accepted. DCLG has balkanised council tax benefit in the name of localism. It recognises this, and now DCLG urges local authorities to do the opposite of what it was calling for—to share common schemes—in which case, why balkanise it in the first place? It will be financed by a fixed grant and will not be needs-led in future. If a factory closes and local need increases, the grant will not go up. Presumably everybody gets less. Or, it will have to be topped up by the council tax that is already suffering 30 per cent cuts in services and a freeze. Think, my Lords, for a moment if that applied to jobseeker’s allowance, and that what you have if you are unemployed in your district depends not on your needs, or on any national standard, but on the needs of everyone else in your district. Your payment would go up and down according to local employment or unemployment figures in your district.

DCLG in its consultation paper recognises this risk, so it suggests—hopefully, idealistically—that local authorities should voluntarily help each other and bail each other out. Oh yeah? Why balkanise, as DCLG requires, if local authorities are too small to bear the risk, as DCLG recgonises? Worse, that fixed grant will be cut by the DCLG by 10 per cent, perhaps more in future. There will be a 10 per cent reduction in council tax benefit per head, but pensioners are to be protected, so the cuts that fall on others will be 20 per cent. However the council, under pressure from local charities, could decide to protect, say, disabled people—I could understand why they would—and give them the full CTB. The more vulnerable families you protect in devising your own local scheme, the more that families in low-paid work—the last man standing, so to speak—carry the cuts.

The Association of North-East Councils has calculated that once vulnerable families are protected, other working-age claimants will face cuts of up to 50 per cent in their council tax benefit. Then work will not pay and universal credit will be a waste of time. Severe cuts in other words are being smuggled in under the drapery of localism but are they essential? At the same time DCLG is spending £250 million on reinstating weekly bin collection or £800 million to freeze council tax, so that my council tax bills are protected while those with much lower incomes on council tax benefit will face cuts of 50 per cent.

Finally, what you will get in CTB will, of course, be determined by your income. Families facing the means test of universal credit will now find that they also face a second means test—that of CTB. How on earth will the value of moving into work be calculated, which is what universal credit is all about, when people face two means tests, two tapers—one with national rules and one with 400 separate local rules—that are layered on top of each other? As the noble Lord, Lord German, rightly said in Committee,

“if you believe in a universal credit, and you have a postcode lottery for what that amount of money might mean to you, how on earth are you going to be able to judge whether or not work is beneficial for you?”.—[Official Report, 6/10/11; col. GC 381.]

Exactly so; I could not have put it better.

UC was designed to bring all working-age benefits together into one so that every one of us would know what we would get and why work paid. Under the localism agenda, council tax benefit—a social security benefit—is being plucked out of UC, thereby destabilising it and balkanising the system. Forgive me, but this is administrative madness. All of this is being proposed in the name of localism but do local authorities want it? City authorities, like the one I used to lead in Norwich, hate it, as they will see some of their poorest citizens unable to pay their council tax and facing arrears and debts. Equally, some small rural districts are now wondering where they will get the staff resources to devise and run their own in-house schemes. East Devon district council’s cabinet has said that the scheme means: “costs, costs, costs”. A councillor said:

“This should be strangled at birth. It is a disgrace . . . We haven’t got the resources and we haven’t got the time”.

Nearly 6 million people receiving council tax benefit will in future not know what they will get because they will have no entitlement—just a handout from the local authority whose generosity or meanness will vary from district to district, from factory opening to factory closure, and from year to year. We took social security away from local authorities when we finally abolished the Poor Law after the Second World War. Now one of the worst effects of the Poor Law—the postcode lottery—is being reinstated for council tax benefit under the name of localism. That is wrong. To add extra means-testing on top of universal credit’s means-testing is insane. It will undermine universal credit without a shadow of a doubt. I and almost every other Member of your Lordships’ House want to see it working, so what then is the point of this Bill? Worse, this guise of localism will make poor people poorer, and local authorities, in whose name this is being done, will be powerless to help them. Council tax benefit needs to be brought back within UC. I beg to move.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I shall be brief because I know that the House wants to get on. I am a supporter of the universal credit, so I am opposed to anything that is inimical to its success, and the exclusion of council tax benefit is exactly that; it is totally inconsistent with the Government’s proposals.

It is an open secret, although I do not expect the Minister to confirm this from the Front Bench, that the DWP does not want council tax benefit to be excluded, that there has been a battle with the DCLG and that for the moment, although heaven knows why, the localism agenda has prevailed. When anyone asks about 400 different social security systems, we are told that it will not be allowed to happen—so the localism agenda, we are told, will not be allowed to be localism because the local systems will be made to come into line in some sensible way. That is daft, but it is what we are confronted with.

I have two or three points to make. This is said to be cash limited, and indeed a cut. What is going to happen in an area where there is a big factory closure and the money has already been spread out? Does everyone already on council tax benefit have to take a cut in order to finance those who have just come on to it? In areas where, say, a big Tesco opens and 400 new jobs are created, does everyone get a bonus because a lot of people have been taken off council tax benefit? It is mad.

My first constituency boundaries straddled a parish boundary; number 36 Havengore was in Braintree and number 34 was in Chelmsford, but the houses were semi-detached. Can we really have totally different benefit systems for the people living in those two houses? Again, this is mad. Do the local councils want it? The answer is no, it is a nightmare for them. We should stop it, and if this amendment is pressed to a vote, for the first time today I shall not be able to vote for the Government.

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[Lord Freud]

I am afraid that I do not have any more precise detail but, although I do not think that in the consideration of the Welfare Reform Bill I can say soon, I can probably say that it will be between January and May or June, or something like that. I have no more precise information.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has taken part in this brief expedited debate. I beg your Lordships on the government Benches to hear the words of the noble Lord, Lord Newton, in their ears; namely, that 400 schemes are inane, insane, unwanted and unwelcome, and that council tax benefit should be brought back to where it belongs in social security in order to make universal credit work. The Minister tried to suggest—I would say manfully—that it is too late to change. I do not believe that. That is why we have this House of Lords and this Report stage. Universal credit will not come online until two years’ time in 2013. If your Lordships today support what I believe is the real view of everyone in this Chamber—that council tax benefit should be part of social security—they will support this amendment today. I should like to test the opinion of the House.