Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I fully understand the desire of the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham, and others to ensure that affordable housing is not lost to an area, and the concerns raised by the right reverend Prelate and others relating to rural issues.
Extending right-to-buy discounts to housing association tenants was a manifesto commitment taken forward through a voluntary agreement with the sector. This is about opportunity—social tenants having equal access to the opportunities for home ownership. I am sure that noble Lords agree with that. The other place was supportive of the agreement. The National Housing Federation and the housing association sector came to government with this offer. It is entirely voluntary and represents 96% of stock.
Under the terms of the agreement, housing associations will deliver an additional home through new supply nationally for every home sold under the voluntary right to buy. This will increase overall supply and housing associations will have discretion not to sell particular properties, including where those properties would be difficult to replace. As a number of noble Lords said in Committee, to legislate would go against the voluntary nature of the agreement and introducing controls would present a classification risk.
While I appreciate the strength of feeling on this issue, the Government cannot accept Amendment 51. Placing restrictions on housing associations in implementing the voluntary right-to-buy agreement by requiring replacements to be of the same tenure and in the same area would, we believe, fetter their ability to deliver housing in accordance with local need. Under the terms of the voluntary agreement, housing associations will have the flexibility to build replacement properties where they are needed. Governments should not instruct them where to build replacement homes, nor specify what tenure the replacement should be. I pay tribute to housing associations, which have a history of delivering new housing supply that this country needs. Setting arbitrary rules without any reference to local conditions is likely to hinder not help them in delivering new affordable homes. They are best placed to determine what type of housing is best suited to a community and it is only right that decisions on tenure be taken locally.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, raised the issue of Section 106 properties. We are engaging with the sector on the implementation of the voluntary right to buy, including what is provided under Section 106 agreements. He also asked about monitoring. Regular statistics are published about property sales by councils under the existing right-to-buy scheme. Clause 64 allows for the monitoring of housing association sales under the voluntary agreement and I can confirm that replacements will also be monitored.
The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, asked about engagement with charities. I can confirm that officials and the National Housing Federation have held working groups with charities to work through the issues that he raised. My noble friend the Minister and I would be very happy to meet further on this matter. I can also confirm that almshouses are exempt from the right to buy.
Amendment 52 relates specifically to rural areas and would require at least one replacement property in the same or an adjoining parish as the property sold. I completely agree that we should support strong and sustainable rural communities. As my noble friend Lord Young rightly said, the voluntary agreement, as well as giving housing associations the flexibility to build replacement properties where they are needed, already gives them discretion over sales of properties in rural locations. My noble friend Lady Williams will shortly talk in more detail about rural needs. It is clear from our engagement with the sector that associations are intending to exercise their discretion not to sell properties in rural areas where they would be difficult to replace. These are organisations that have well established and supportive relationships with the local communities that they serve and, as the noble Lord said, often have charitable status that ensures that they will deliver housing that the community needs. However, they also have to operate within the confines of what is practicable—for instance, in terms of land assembly and planning permission. They need the freedom to find the best opportunity available for delivering for local housing needs.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, asked what happens when a housing association has not signed up to the agreement and all its properties are in a rural area. As I have said, the deal is voluntary; housing associations, whether signed up to the agreement or not, do not have to sell any home, whether rural or not, where this is not in the interests of the area. She also asked about exercising discretion and the portable discount. Where a housing association exercises its discretion not to sell a home, the housing association will provide an alternative from its own stock or that of another housing association. Housing associations would work together to develop joint arrangements to enable this to happen.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I thank the noble Baroness for her comments and for allowing me to intervene. I am still puzzled. If a housing association is entirely rural, is not signed up to the deal and therefore does not wish or feel it is appropriate to lose or sell any of its stock, has no property to which it can attach a portable discount for one of its existing tenants to move to, and does not necessarily have a collaborative arrangement with another housing association—why would it?—what happens then?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
As I have said—and I am afraid I can go no further than what I have said—properties in rural areas, or indeed any other area, do not have to be sold where this is not in the best interests of the area. However, it is right that this should be a local decision.
Our manifesto commitment to extend right-to-buy discounts to housing association tenants is being taken forward through a voluntary agreement. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said in Committee:
“It is in the nature of a voluntary agreement that it is very hard to build in statutory protections without taking yourself straight back to the issue of regulation. That is the problem: in a sense, we are trying to put statutory protections into a voluntary agreement. In the end, this is a voluntary agreement that is going to have to rely on a great deal of trust”.—[Official Report, 8/3/16; col. 1212.]
I think that noble Lords would trust housing associations to have the best interests of their tenants and local communities at heart and to build replacement properties where they are needed. To legislate would go against the voluntary nature of the agreement and restrict housing association decision-making on what is best for its organisation and local communities.
To introduce controls and restrictions in legislation would also present a classification risk. The noble Lord, Lord Best, raised this concern in Committee, when he said that,
“we are not out of the woods entirely on this aspect of the reclassification issue. The case still has to be made to the ONS that housing associations are genuinely independent of government control over the sale of their homes. The ONS must not be faced with a statutory right in all but name. Therefore the more that is left to the boards of housing associations to decide, and the less that is set out in statute, the better”.—[Official Report, 8/3/16; col. 1203.]
On the basis of the comments that I have made, I ask that the noble Lord withdraws his amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, I was not proposing to speak on this, but I want to support strongly the point made by my noble friend Lord Beecham and, to some extent, by the noble Lord, Lord True.
My home city is Norwich, which has tight boundaries. It is not parished. It has wards—obviously—and a strong network of community groups, such as housing associations, residents associations and so on. Part of that is because all the people of Norwich own the city centre as well as the community in which they live. That is fine, but in over 25 years in local government I had, I think, three ombudsman’s rulings against me and possibly one or two JRs. I won the JRs. All of them involved planning. All the cases—certainly those involving the ombudsman, which was why I was aggrieved—were seen as an issue of the individual in their own home being against the nasty local authority stopping them doing something.
Actually, it was the local authority wearing a planning hat trying to hold the ring permanently between the local particularised interest and the wider city interest. Sometimes it might be elderly folk against having a children’s play area near them which would produce noise and possibly ball games. It might be that residents wanted a road closure, nice culs-de-sac or chicanes in the road to keep traffic out or slow it down, against the need to have through roads, otherwise the roads down which the traffic went became intolerable for other residents—it just pushed the problem along.
I remember being involved in building a site for Travellers and the outrage associated with that. I put it down near an allotments area because it was in an outer area of the city, but all the allotments were raided and that produced quite a lot of problems for me. The biggest problem was trying to get social housing, particularly sheltered housing for the elderly, in owner-occupied areas where owner-occupiers believed that they had bought not only an owner-occupied house but an owner-occupied street, park, church and school.
On another occasion I was trying to put halfway houses across the city. I reckoned that no street could take more than about two halfway houses. Some of the houses were for people who were overcrowded or were desperate or suffering from domestic violence; some were for people coming out of Nacro homes and care homes. There was one home for anorexic young women and the residents fought it tooth and nail and would go to the ombudsman if they could. I was having to say that there was a wider community interest involved. I would meet them, talk to them and try to persuade them. On other occasions we were having to demolish something—whether for city widening or because the housing was unfit—and the residents, owners, perfectly reasonably did not want this to happen in their area.
While I hope that I have never gone ahead bulldozing my way through, in a mental sense, none the less you cannot always expect people to have the wider community interest at heart when their own personal interest will be affected by a decision. I probably would not. I am not trying to be superior about it. That is how it is. We had three ombudsman decisions. I think that we won two and lost one and in all cases the ombudsman was wrong in that they saw it as a bipartite city council versus the individual issue, rather than the city council trying to be the umpire in planning disputes.
I just hope that we do not believe in neighbourhood planning without this understanding that the whole city owns the city centre, the city’s traffic network and the city’s housing development and that the whole city owns the community pressures for halfway houses for disadvantaged and vulnerable people and that you must try to scatter them fairly across the community and so on. If we accept that there is always going to be tension, the one thing that I would not want, at any stage, is to devolve decision-making to a body that, by virtue of being a parish with formal electoral position, had extra leverage in this over and beyond that of appropriate, proper and decent discussion, debate, communication and consultation. I have seen in rural Norfolk the implications of nimbyism. I fought that off in my city and I do not want to see nimbyism come in through the back door due to any proposals like this.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
My Lords, a number of amendments have been proposed to give additional rights and powers to neighbourhood planning groups and communities, and requiring the promotion of neighbourhood planning. I support the intention of the two amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Shipley, aimed at increasing the promotion of and support for neighbourhood planning, particularly in urban areas. In relation to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, about how many of the 1,800 communities are not parishes, we do not have exact figures but estimate that around 90% are and, therefore, that about 10% are unparished. That 10% is rising, but obviously it reinforces the points that have been made.
A legal duty to promote neighbourhood planning, either on local authorities or the Secretary of State, is unnecessary and can be achieved by other means—we need to maintain a balance. We recently launched a £1.5 million mobilisation programme to promote neighbourhood planning nationally. This includes capacity-building projects to train community organisations and community organisers in urban and deprived areas. These organisations and individuals will lead and promote neighbourhood planning in areas of lower take-up. This summer we will launch our first-ever national advertising campaign to raise awareness of neighbourhood planning and its benefits through local newspapers, posters and social media. These activities are in addition to our £22 million My Community support programme for neighbourhood planning.
This three-year programme confirms that the Government are financially committed to supporting neighbourhood planning and also recognises that urban or unparished communities face additional challenges in producing a plan and provides additional support to them. Forums in unparished areas can apply for up to £15,000 in grant, compared to the £9,000 available to parishes, as well as specialist technical support from planning consultants. It is up to the community how they use the grant to progress their neighbourhood plan, and we have seen lots of innovative community engagement as a result. Online resources, examples and case studies are also available on the support programme website that highlight the benefits of community planning to help inspire further communities and equip them with the necessary information and skills.
It is important, however, that we do not compel local authorities to duplicate existing work or bind them into promoting neighbourhood planning in perpetuity where members of a community may have decided that it is not for them. Furthermore, local authorities already have a legal duty to give such advice or assistance as they consider appropriate to facilitate neighbourhood planning. Our planning guidance underlines:
“A local planning authority should … be proactive in providing information to communities about neighbourhood planning”.
Therefore, Amendment 87 would duplicate this existing legal requirement.
It should also be recognised that a number of other organisations also promote neighbourhood planning and are well placed to provide advice and information to communities, such as the Royal Town Planning Institute and Planning Aid, the Prince’s Foundation, the CPRE, the NALC and ACRE. Plus, as the noble Lord, Lord Foster, said, we have established a network of over 120 neighbourhood planning champions who voluntarily promote and support neighbourhood planning across the country. These are enthusiastic and experienced individuals, and we are supporting them with resources and training in order for them to share their expertise widely. A statutory duty, either on local authorities or on the Secretary of State, to promote, inform and finance neighbourhood planning is therefore unnecessary as it is already our policy and practice.
The noble Lord, Lord Foster, asked about the 23 pilots. They are currently under way and are due to completer this summer. They include Horsham Council, which is exploring opportunities for the devolution of planning functions to town and parish councils; Cotswold Council, which is piloting an approach to involving communities in setting infrastructure requirements; and Milton Keynes Council, which is pioneering an approach to involving communities in strategic housing land assessments. We will be sharing the learning from these pilots when they complete later in the year. I hope that with these reassurances the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.
I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for raising the issue of making it easier for neighbourhood forums to become parish councils through Amendment 88. We are keen to enable more forums to become parish councils where they wish, so that local people can play an even stronger role in serving the community. However, we do not feel that the amendment is necessary. As he will know, last March the then Government introduced new measures that made it easier for communities to set up new town and parish councils. We believe that it is important for these measures to bed in before any further review is considered.
These changes followed two public consultations.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I thank the noble Lord. Yes, I can confirm that what he said is absolutely right.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Just to be clear, my Lords, I have no problems at all where a city has a tradition or a history of having parish councils and wants to use those as the vehicles for neighbourhood planning. All I am saying is that where this is not part of that authentic, organic texture of a city, but where there is a network of other forms of civic groups, community groups and so on—particularly where you have cities with very tight boundaries and very constrained lines—there can be tensions. If Exeter has overcome those, that is great. All I can say from my experience of 25 years of local government is that some of the most difficult decisions concerned precisely those tensions. Obviously one would work with them, and I agree that the neighbourhood planning councils would have to have planning proposals that conformed to the city-wide ones. I accept that, but one should not underestimate the locality—ward councillors and so on, as many of us have been—when it comes to how those tensions can occur. All I am saying is: by all means encourage local authorities to go down this road where there is already a history of parishes of this sort, but do not assume that this is the answer to the deeper problems of keeping a city alive, vibrant and able to respond confidently to new challenges. That is why I have some reservations about trying to suggest that it should apply across the board and that we should be actively encouraging it where people do not want it.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I want to follow up my noble friend’s well-spotted point that I had not picked up on. Clause 84(5) says:
“The regulations may provide for assumptions to be made in making a calculation, whether or not those assumptions are, or are likely to be, borne out by events”.
Likely to be borne out by events? Can I just ask the Minister a very simple question which I think might allay our fears? If the Government have got it wrong, do they reimburse local authorities?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I have already given the answer to the noble Lord. I will write to him.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I am sorry but this is a subsection of Clause 84 and we do not know what it means and what the implications are. This Bill has gone through the House of Commons at great length and Ministers cannot tell us what it means?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
We fully intend to reimburse local authorities for reasonable costs and need to establish which costs are relevant. We would not expect the Government to write a blank cheque. We expect that some local authorities may be more efficient than others. To reiterate, we will reimburse all reasonable costs.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Yes, I am happy to clarify. I have talked about a lot of notices and warnings; perhaps it would be better to put it in writing so that it is clear.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Under the provisions for universal credit—it is something that I regret very much, although it is a structure that I very much support—you are not allowed as a social landlord to start alternative payment arrangements in which there is direct payment to the landlord until there is at least six weeks’ non-payment of rent. It looks to me as though a private landlord can start possession behaviour faster than a social landlord can seek direct payment of rent to the landlord.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions, and I shall begin by addressing Amendment 23. The Government, too, support a better and more sustainable rented sector which offers all tenants quality and choice. Parts 2 and 3 of the Bill demonstrate our commitment to this. I have listened carefully to the arguments this evening, but I remind noble Lords that the Government already produce the English housing survey and the Measuring National Well-being: Life in the UK index annually. We believe these can achieve what noble Lords are suggesting.
The English housing survey includes narrative chapters and data on the financial circumstances, satisfaction and well-being of householders. This covers private and social renters, and owner-occupiers. Currently our analysts do not look directly at the link between rent arrears and well-being, but we will publish a housing and well-being report in the summer. The analysis for this is about to start. Our intention is to include the impact of rent arrears and housing insecurity more generally in this analysis. I trust this will help inform the House about the impact of arrears on well-being.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Will the Minister ensure that a letter is sent to all those who have taken part in the discussion tonight, outlining the terms of reference of that working party and saying when it is due to report, what it will look at and when we can expect to see its findings?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Yes, I am happy to commit to do that. I can also reassure the noble Baroness that the DCLG and the DWP will communicate on the cross-departmental issues that she raised.
The other document I mentioned, Measuring National Well-being: Life in the UK, 2015, reports on well-being in relation to where people live and how they cope financially. As well as those two reports, the European Commission produces Quality of Life in Europe: Subjective Well-being. In that report, housing security is measured by the question,
“How likely or unlikely do you think it is that you will need to leave your accommodation within the next 6 months because you can no longer afford it?”
As a result of our debate today, we have asked the department whether it might be possible to pose a similar question in the English housing survey.
With regard to Amendment 32, proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham, I agree it should be easier for local authorities to identify the type of housing in their area, in order to exercise their housing functions better. However, we believe local authorities already have appropriate powers in existing and proposed legislation to seek information on housing tenure, and they can analyse that data to inform their local requirements. We believe that requiring the Government to commission and follow up a central collection and collation of this data would impose an unreasonable cost, in both time and resource, on taxpayers. We are taking the more effective approach of making tenancy deposit data available to local authorities through this Bill, for them to make use of as they see fit.
It also not clear what would be gained by collecting this information at national level. Local authorities, by definition, have localised issues, and housing statistics will only be relevant and meaningful in local areas. Schedule 2 to the Local Government Finance Act 1992 contains provisions for the Secretary of State to make legislation relating to the collection and administration of council tax, and regulations are already in place that give authorities the power to collect information which may include data on tenure in their area. The department has contacted local authorities to remind them of their existing powers. I would also add that the 2011 census provides a full tenure split at local authority level, and some local authorities have updated this record.
In connection with Amendment 33, my noble friend Lady Williams of Trafford and I would be happy to meet the organisations concerned. Perhaps we could have a further conversation following this debate, just to ensure that we invite the right people. With all that in mind, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Lord Flight
The noble Baroness is entirely correct. That is why I asked the indulgence of the Committee quickly to address them now. That is for two reasons: first, they relate to Amendment 21 and, secondly, as I have given notice, I may not be able to be here when they are called later, for some particular personal reasons.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
No, I fear we must stick with the group of amendments that we have.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I am sorry to be a misery on this, but it is rather difficult because, when we get to that point in the debate, we will not be able to debate the amendments. They are quite some distance away; they would have needed to be grouped.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Sherlock and Lady Lister, and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for these amendments. I will first set out why we believe a four-year freeze of certain social security benefits, child benefit and elements of working tax and child tax credits is necessary.
In total, measures to freeze benefits and tax credits are projected to contribute £3.5 billion of the £12 billion welfare savings the Government are committed to by 2019-20. The Government need to make these savings to reduce the deficit and to manage welfare spending. Spending on welfare increased by 54% in real terms between 1999 and 2010, and tax credit expenditure more than trebled over the same period. Despite the progress made in the last Parliament to increase incentives to work and reduce reliance on benefits, there is still more to do.
Some 7% of global expenditure on social protection is spent in the UK, despite the fact that the UK has only 1% of the world’s population. Between 2008 and 2015, average earnings rose by 12%, and the minimum wage increased by 17%. At the same time, benefits such as jobseekers’ allowance increased by 21% and the individual element of child tax credit rose by 33%. The benefit freeze will begin to reverse this trend. However, we are clear that we must continue to protect the most vulnerable. That is why we ensured that certain benefits are exempted from the freeze, such as pensioner benefits, benefits which contribute to the additional costs of disability and care, and statutory payments.
Concerns have been raised about the level of benefit rates after three years of 1% rises, to now be followed by four years of the freeze. Successive Governments have always sought to strike a balance between the needs of claimants and affordability, and I can reassure noble Lords that when introducing this freeze we have had due regard to these issues, but we believe we have struck a balance that protects certain key benefits and generates the savings I have set out.
There are no cash losers with this policy, and the continued growth in wages will help to mitigate the impact of the freeze for working families. The OBR expects wage growth to reach 3.9% by 2020. Around 30% of households will face a notional loss but, as I have said, the other things we are doing in the broader economy should go some way to mitigate it, and I will go through a couple of them in a second. We have also fully assessed the Bill’s impacts on equality and the wider budget meeting our obligations, as set out in the public sector equality duty.
The purpose of the amendments is to replace the freeze with a duty on the Secretary of State to review those benefits, having regard to inflation and the national economic situation. This Government’s overall approach is to give a level of certainty to taxpayers, employees and benefit claimants. As well as setting out the four-year freeze, we have also set out a clear plan to raise the national living wage to £9 an hour by 2020, to increase the tax-free personal allowance to £12,500 by the end of the decade and to double the free childcare available for working parents of 3 year-olds and 4 year-olds to 30 hours a week, which is worth £5,000 a year. The amendments would take away the certainty that we are attempting to implement, and for that reason we cannot support them.
The noble Baroness asked what happens after the four-year period.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
The Minister has said that this is very helpful to benefit recipients because they now have certainty that their benefit will fall in real terms, as opposed to the possibility that it might keep pace with the cost of living. Would she care to correct her statement?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I have said that we have had to make some difficult decisions.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Difficult for whom? To use the phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, I suspect that every Member of this House is protected from the difficult decisions. The difficult decisions will fall on those people who will have to choose whether to turn off their heating or pay their rent.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
As I said, by being upfront about the freeze, we are trying to ensure that people in receipt of these benefits understand that that will be the situation over the next four years. We are taking numerous other measures, including the national living wage and the childcare changes, to try to help these families in other ways. That is what we are doing with this freeze, and I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, the amendment, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, would put into statute an independent review of the sanctions system. However, we are not sure that that is necessary, as the Government already keep the operation of the sanctions system under constant review to ensure that it continues to function fairly and effectively.
There is clear evidence that sanctions are effective with more than 70% of JSA and more than 60% of ESA recipients saying that sanctions make it more likely that they will follow the rules, but, where we identify that there is an issue, we act to put it right. This is clearly shown in the improvements already made to the JSA and ESA sanction system following the recommendations of Matthew Oakley’s independent review last year. However, as I said, we do not stop reviewing the process to ensure that it is fair and effective. That is why we have accepted, or accepted in principle, many of the recommendations made by the Work and Pensions Select Committee’s recent report into sanctions.
The chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, the right honourable Member for Birkenhead, has welcomed our response and our willingness to work with the committee to ensure that the conditionality system works as it should. In our response to the committee, we announced that we will trial a sanctions warning system giving claimants a further two weeks to provide evidence of good reason before a decision is made. We believe that this will help to strike the right balance between conditionality and fairness.
I can confirm to the House that it is our intention that the trial will operate in Scotland from March 2016, running for approximately five months. A full evaluation of the trial will be undertaken, and findings will be available from autumn 2016.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked about the monitoring of the destinations of sanctioned claimants. DWP officials are currently quality-assuring the data for universal credit official statistics. As part of this review process, we will carefully consider the option of including destination data. We are not yet in a position to confirm which statistics will be provided in future.
We are also considering extending the list of JSA vulnerable groups for hardship payment purposes to include those with mental health conditions and those who are homeless. This will mean that these claimants can receive hardship payments from day one of their sanction, provided that they also meet the other criteria.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, also asked about sanctions being applied fairly. Any decision to sanction a claimant is not taken lightly, and there is a full and proper process that includes the claimant from the start. At the start of the claim, as noble Lords will know, all claimants receive a tailored claimant commitment, and the requirements take into account mental health conditions, disabilities or caring responsibilities. Any failure to meet a requirement is always thoroughly considered and claimants are given the opportunity to provide good reason for not complying before any decision to sanction is made by the decision-maker, but I will need to come back to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on the timescales that she asked about, because I do not have that information to hand.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, also mentioned the Crisis report. We absolutely understand that homelessness is a complex issue, and our priority is to ensure that individuals affected get the right support. That is why we have made more than £1 billion available to prevent and tackle homelessness and support vulnerable households since 2010, and we will continue to work closely with organisations such as Crisis to make sure that support is provided where it is needed most.
On the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, about lone parents being required to come to jobcentres without a toddler, no, requirements to attend appointments at the jobcentre should be tailored to take into account individual claimants’ caring responsibilities, and work coaches should be able to help to make appropriate arrangements, including helping to arrange appointments around childcare. I cannot speak about the range of facilities within jobcentres, but it is within the gift of the work coaches to be flexible in working with lone parents.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
So I have the Minister’s assurance that any lone parent who turns up with a toddler in tow will not as a result be sanctioned?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I have already said that I cannot speak to all the facilities, but as I am writing to the noble Baroness on a previous issue I will include that in that response.
It is important that we focus on ensuring that all the agreed recommendations proposed by the Work and Pensions Select Committee are delivered and can be embedded in the design and delivery of universal credit. To clarify for the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, I say that universal credit sanctions are just on the standard element, not on the whole amount. We believe that a call for a further independent review is unnecessary to embed this in legislation.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
JSA sanctions continue to decrease, and the JSA monthly sanctions rate has slightly fallen—by 15%—over the past year. Each month, on average, 95% of JSA claimants comply with the reasonable requirements placed on them. On average, 5% of JSA claimants were sanctioned each month of last year. We can provide those figures; I will write to the noble Lord.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, asked about the gulf between the department and what charities say about sanctions. I can only attempt to reassure him that officials are working closely with charities to investigate concerns. For instance, we have worked closely with Crisis and Gingerbread on improving communicating sanctions and will continue to do so. I will take the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, back to the department, because I do not have some of the more detailed information that he was asking about.
On the basis of those responses, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I realise that this is a sensitive issue, but the amendment in the name of my noble friend has been tabled for some time on sanctions, time, efficaciousness and the need for a review. I would have expected in the Minister’s brief the detail of how many sanctions for how long, how long the decision-making is taking, the number of people going through as a result to appeal, and the results of the appeals. I would have expected two or three pages in her brief giving her the statistical detail which would empower her to answer many of the questions which, understandably, she is taking away today. I am surprised at that, because the amendment has been tabled for some time. The department will have the statistics, and they should have been made available to us in Committee, so that we have that material here today before we consider what we—and my noble friend in particular—may or may not do on Report.
I am in no sense criticising the Minister, but Ministers are coming to this House woefully underprepared with the information they need, which is of a detailed sort, to deal with the amendments being discussed. Members on the Opposition Benches have a right to expect Ministers to have that at their fingertips.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park(8 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
No, I am afraid I am not making that commitment. I am saying that there are further opportunities for discussion. I apologise for taking so long to explain and respond to these amendments.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
The noble Baroness mentioned earlier in her speech something that made me shudder: the very serious situation in which a lone parent voluntarily leaves her work and therefore has sanctions applied to her. That might make sense for a young single man with no other responsibilities who has not been engaged in work and so on, but not for a lone parent. When a lone parent says that she left her job because her child was X, Y and Z, how does the Minister expect a 22 year-old man in a jobcentre to know whether that did or did not require, and was appropriate for, a sanction? It seems to me that these are different planets. I am baffled that the noble Baroness thinks that such highly sensitive issues, with every child being different in their needs, can be judged by a box-ticking mentality in Jobcentre Plus.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I am sorry, but I will have to get back to the noble Baroness. I urge noble Lords—and noble Baronesses—to withdraw or not press their amendments.
Child Poverty
Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
A lot. Large amounts. I am afraid that I do not have the figure directly to hand, but I can assure the noble Earl that we are focused on ensuring that people can get out of poverty. The best way to do that is to get people into work, which is why our focus has been on improving the economic situation as well as on helping to tackle the root causes of poverty.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, forgive me, but that is simply not the case. It is already true that more than half the children who are in poverty have a parent already in work. Work for them is not the route out of poverty. The obvious response is to seek to increase the minimum wage to a living wage level, but even so, families will still need tax credits to make work pay. Can the Minister not accept that the proposed working tax credit cuts will not only increase the number of children in poverty—the IFS estimates by 300,000—but will absolutely destroy the Government’s mantra that work is the best route out of poverty?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I can say to the noble Baroness that we have halved the tax bill for somebody working full time on the minimum wage and have delivered the first above-inflation rise in the minimum wage since the recession. That is something that we are very proud of.