Disabled People
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, for her important debate, which I am pleased to take part in. I also warmly congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London on her inspiring maiden speech.
I shall talk about the challenges that deaf children face in education. There are more than 50,000 deaf children in the UK, but it is what is sometimes called a low-incidence disability, meaning that many parents and teachers will come across a deaf child only occasionally. Indeed, more than 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents who have no prior experience of deafness. Around 80% of deaf children attend mainstream schools, where they may be the only deaf child enrolled. It is because deafness is a low-incidence disability that local authority specialist education services for deaf children play such an important role. These services employ teams of teachers of the deaf who can work flexibly and go where the need is. In particular, they can ensure that families and teachers have the specialist advice and support they need so that deaf children can develop good language and communication skills.
The National Deaf Children’s Society has raised with me a number of concerns about the future of these services. First, there is concern about the impact that funding cuts are having. Its analysis has found that over a third of local authorities are planning to cut funding for specialist education services for deaf children. These cuts amount to £4 million in these areas. It has told me of its frustration that the Government continue to maintain that funding is at a record high. This may be so, but it does not allow for funding pressures on local authorities also being at a record high. For example, we are seeing a growing number of children with special educational needs and disabilities, many of whom need a placement at a special school. I hope the Minister will take away the message that there is a need to do more to ensure that funding is adequate, both now and in light of the Government’s spending review next year.
Secondly, there is concern about the sharp decline in the number of teachers of the deaf. Research shows a 14% decline over the past seven years. Many services report that they cannot recruit new teachers of the deaf. It seems clear that there are systemic challenges around how teachers of the deaf are trained and recruited. I would be grateful if the Minister could let me know of any plans to address this. Will the Government consider introducing a bursary scheme, for example, to fund the training costs of new teachers of the deaf?
On a related note, I understand that the Department for Education has commissioned a review into teachers of the deaf qualifications. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that this review will look at the totality of the work of teachers of the deaf, including with families in the early years. I would also be grateful if she could confirm that families will have an opportunity to feed their views into this review.
Thirdly, there is a concern about how local authorities are held to account for the quality of these specialist education services. It seems unfair to many that parents of deaf children receive so little information about the quality of the support their child receives. Ofsted inspections of local area provision for children with special educational needs, introduced in 2016, have started to address this. However, the National Deaf Children’s Society advised that these inspections do not look at services for deaf children, or indeed for any other group of disabled children, in any great detail. Will the Minister agree to look at ways of addressing all these things, perhaps by introducing new ad hoc inspections that look at different services for disabled children?
I conclude by saying again that specialist education services for deaf children play a vital role. A failure to protect these services will put the future of deaf children at risk. I very much hope the Minister will respond positively and constructively to the concerns I have raised.
Family Relationships (Impact Assessment and Targets) Bill [HL]
Baroness Howe of Idlicote ExcerptsFriday 23rd February 2018
(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I am very pleased to be part of this interesting debate and, in particular, to speak in support of the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. The value of happy families is hard to quantify. Although it extends far beyond mere economics, it none the less has a profound impact on our economic life. The cost of family breakdown, for example, is extraordinary and continues to increase, as documented by the Relationships Foundation, rising from £37 billion per annum in 2009 to £48 billion in 2015. That, as we have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, is equivalent to £1,820 per taxpayer.
In that context, quite apart from broader well-being considerations, it makes complete sense that the Government should take care that the policies and legislation that they develop do not have negative unintended consequences for family life. Indeed, such is the importance of this commitment that it should be not merely an aspiration but a fundamental discipline of government.
Mindful of that, I was delighted when on 18 August 2014, as has already been referred to, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, announced the introduction of the family test. He stated:
“I said previously that I wanted to introduce a family test into government. Now that test is being formalised as part of the impact assessment for all domestic policies. Put simply that means every single domestic policy that government comes up with will be examined for its impact on the family”.
In Answer to a Written Question in the other place in October 2014, the then Education Minister, Edward Timpson, said:
“In addition, the new Family Test, announced by the Prime Minister on 18 August 2014, will also mean that every new domestic policy will be examined in terms of its impact on families”.
In another Written Answer given in the other place in the same month, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland stated:
“‘From October 2014, every new domestic policy will be examined for its impact on the family”.
The commitments made between August and October 2014 quickly broke down. It was later in October 2014 that the Department for Work and Pensions issued guidance on the family test for the whole government. It highlighted two crucial failings, one of which was the narrowing of the scope. In the first instance, the Government U-turned on their commitment to review every domestic policy. The guidance stated:
“Policy makers need to make their own judgements about how they apply the test in a sensible and proportionate way at each stage of the policy making process ... While public policy by definition impacts the lives of individuals, families, communities and society as a whole, there will be policies, which do not have any impact at the level of the family per se, or where the impact is small and indirect, or temporary in nature. Where that is the case it may not be sensible or proportionate to apply the test”.
Central to the rationale for the family test was the idea that, because the family is at the heart of the social environment, policies that are not developed with the family in mind can none the less end up impacting it. To this end, I am concerned that the guidance rather infers that it is obvious when the family is engaged and that, where the impact is small and indirect, it can be forgotten about. This is clearly seen in the Answers to Written Parliamentary Questions in which entire departments suggest that the policies and legislation they are working on are such that the family test is not engaged. The only department to provide detail about the implementation of the family test is the Department for Education in relation to policy areas that so obviously impact the family one is tempted to say that it should have been thinking of the family anyway, even in the absence of any new family test discipline.
The second area is optional testing and recording. DWP guidelines make it plain that the family test will be optional, that there is no requirement to conduct it and that there is no penalty for not doing so. The guidance, however, encourages the recording of assessments when they take place. It states:
“It is important that the application of the Family Test is documented in an appropriate way as part of the policy making process. Where a detailed assessment is carried out, departments should consider a standalone document to bring together their analysis. Departments should consider publishing assessments where they are carried out, and where policy is being submitted for collective agreement through the Cabinet Committee process, the assessment should be included alongside other policy documentation”.
However, once again, there is no legal requirement to record an assessment and no legal requirement to conduct it.
Answers to some of the most recently asked Parliamentary Questions make it clear that, for the most part, no records of when or where the family test was conducted are published. Interestingly, the Answers all contain identical words, suggesting a cross-departmental stonewalling policy. One Answer stated:
“The Government is committed to supporting families. To achieve this, in 2014 the Department for Work and Pensions introduced the Family Test, which aims to ensure that impacts on family relationships and functioning are recognised early on during the process of policy development and help inform the policy decisions made by ministers. The Family Test was not designed to be a ‘tick-box’ exercise”—
we have heard that mentioned before—
“and as such there is no requirement for departments to publish the results of assessments made under the Family Test”.
When introducing the family test guidance, the Department for Work and Pensions stated:
“It is important that the application of the Family Test is documented in an appropriate way as part of the policy making process”.
It is striking, therefore, that even that department now provides Answers to Parliamentary Questions that excuse the absence of any published reports, with the statement that,
“there is no requirement for departments to publish the results of assessments made under the Family Test”.
On 14 December 2017, in the very week that some of these Answers were provided, breaking new records in government opacity, the Minister for the Constitution issued a Written Ministerial Statement in the other place, which the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, provided to us. The Statement began:
“Since 2010, the Government has been at the forefront of opening up data to allow Parliament, the public and the media to hold public bodies to account. Such online transparency is crucial accountability for delivering the best value for money, to cutting waste and inefficiency, and to ensuring every pound of taxpayers’ money is spent in the best possible way”.
The Statement also refers to “the sunlight of transparency”, and critiques,
“more bureaucratic processes … which were time consuming for public servants and opaque to the outside world”.
It goes on to describe how,
“Single Departmental Plans … allow the public to track the Government’s progress and performance”.
Of course, the strength of the sun’s light differs year-round, and so, it seems, does the Government’s commitment to transparency. I have seldom encountered a less transparent process than the family test.
If one takes time to scrutinise the Answers to Parliamentary Questions, one is left with the question: is the family test actually happening? I have to tell the House that, with the exception of the Department for Education which has published four reports, your guess is as good as mine. This is surely no way to conduct government in the 21st century.
To this end, I strongly welcome the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, which makes conducting the family test and publishing its outcomes a statutory requirement. It is a very moderate piece of legislation that does not hold to the original “every domestic policy” commitment. Clause 1 gives departments the opportunity to determine that some policy initiatives are sufficiently removed from the family and that the family test should not be applied. Crucially, however, thinking the issue through is required and any decision not to apply the family test must be accompanied by a published reason for not applying it.
If it becomes law, the family test will be bathed in the sunlight of transparency, as it should. If it does not, I fear it will become little more than a joke. That would be funny if it was not so serious. I hope very much that the Government will support the Bill, because the current arrangement is completely unsustainable.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I, too, support the Government’s aim of getting people out of unemployment and back into employment and I am grateful to the Minister for his clarification in Committee that reporting on the disability employment gap will be included as part of the Government’s overall employment reporting. However, like other noble Lords, I fear this commitment may not go quite far enough.
If the Government are to stay true to their commendable aim of halving the disability employment gap, detailed data and thorough reporting are absolutely crucial to achieving it. Particularly important is the breakdown of how unemployment rates differ across disability groups. If the government reporting looks only at the disability employment gap as a whole, it will be extremely difficult to see which disabled groups are making progress and which are not. I am concerned that this would make it possible for the employment gap to drop significantly through government interventions targeting only those with the most limited impairments.
We know anecdotally that those with physical impairments tend to find it easier to return to work than those with mental health problems and learning difficulties. While it might therefore make economic sense to target programmes and interventions at this easier group, I am sure the Minister will agree that this will go against the spirit of the Government’s manifesto commitment. Any government reporting needs to look at the range of barriers faced by those in all disability groups and work to combat these barriers across the board.
We need work programmes that are properly targeted to address the needs of all those who are seeking employment across different disability groups. Statutory reporting of the disability employment gap, using the metrics outlined in this helpful amendment, would put such programmes on a clear footing and will provide a clear rationale for the way forward. Anything less than this would be a missed opportunity for the Government. I hope the Minister will consider carefully the points that have been raised.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, in supporting the amendment so ably spoken to by my noble friend Lady Campbell, I will speak to my Amendment 42, which seeks to make changes to the Welfare Reform Act 2007.
The amendment would much improve the support provided to help people with mental health problems into work. It would add people with mental health problems in the ESA work-related activity group to the list of those currently exempt from the higher levels of conditionality introduced in the Welfare Reform Act 2012.
We all want the same thing: to help more people into work. We are also far more frequently discussing in your Lordships’ House the importance of better supporting those with mental health problems. My amendment speaks to both of these motivations.
The types of conditions that people in the ESA work-related activity group experience are more complex than those experienced by people on jobseekers’ allowance. We can easily imagine how people’s symptoms could be exacerbated when they are required to attend activities in order to qualify for their benefit. However, we also know that many of the activities are not tailored to their individual needs. People with social anxiety disorders can be mandated to attend confidence-building classes with 20 other people who do not have a mental health problem, and many people talk of being sent to health and safety courses. Often nothing is offered to address their real barriers to work.
The individual placement and support model is currently being piloted by the department to support people with mental health problems into work. This approach has been shown to work. At WorkPlace Leeds, part of Leeds Mind, 32% of its clients secured employment through voluntary support last year. That is a far higher rate than the 9% achieved through the Government’s Work Programme nationally.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, my Amendment 51 would amend the Welfare Reform Act 2007 to include people with mental health problems in the ESA work-related activity group on the list of those exempt from the higher levels of conditionality introduced in the Welfare Reform Act 2012.
Research shows that people with mental health problems have a high “want-to-work” rate yet a high unemployment rate. Almost two-thirds of people with severe mental health problems are unemployed. Conditionality—that is, mandating people to take part in generic work-related activity such as CV-writing classes—has become an undisputed part of back-to-work support. Yet the use of the conditionality for this cohort of 250,000 people who are unwell because of a mental health problem is based on no evidence at all. The current schemes are clearly not working for people with mental health problems and the use of conditionality is not balanced with effective support. Less than 9% of people with mental health problems have been supported into work through the Government’s flagship back-to-work scheme. The evaluation and report by the Department for Work and Pensions, as well as much independent research, shows that support is not tailored or personalised, and people with mental health problems are not supported as they should be. As well as being ineffective in helping people back to work, these mandated schemes make people’s mental health worse. Mind’s survey of more than 400 people with mental health problems showed that 83% on the Work Programme or with Jobcentre Plus said that it made their mental health worse or much worse.
My amendment would take away the conditionality part of support for people with mental health problems which requires them, under threat of sanction, to attend support whether or not it is effective or appropriate. Removing this pressure would mean that providers and Jobcentre Plus must give better support, relationships between claimants and advisers—so vital for successful back-to-work programmes—would improve and those with mental health problems would feel less pressure, which ultimately helps in their recovery.
Some may question how by removing the conditionality regime from people with mental health problems their employment outcomes will improve. The rationale here is that schemes which are voluntary for people with mental health problems have far better success rates at supporting them into work than the generic back-to-work schemes. If we want to halve the disability employment gap, we should create systems that work. To take one example, there is WorkPlace Leeds, which is part of Leeds Mind. It works solely with people with mental health problems. No conditionality is used and the support is linked with people’s health as well as employment outcomes. Crucially, the advisers have a real understanding of mental health, the type of symptoms people experience and their specific barriers to work. In 2014-15, the programme secured paid employment for 32% of its clients, some of whom had not been in work for many years before starting the scheme. That is a far higher rate than the 9% achieved through the Work Programme nationally.
Why would my amendment work? Being placed under pressure and burdened by the fear of sanctions has a negative impact on people with mental health problems. When we think about the types of symptoms such people experience—intrusive thoughts, fear, distress, hearing voices, low mood—it is clear that the additional pressure and stress of being mandated to attend certain activities is particularly difficult, especially when these activities do not address the individual’s mental health condition, as is often the case. By removing conditionality, people with mental health problems will gain more choice and control over the back-to-work support they receive. This is one of the most basic principles of supporting people with mental health problems, as outlined in NICE’s guidelines, which say that shared decision-making should be a key part of any service. It does not seem to make sense to have guidelines based on evidence about how best to support people with mental health problems but then ignore them and look to something else.
As I said earlier, people with mental health problems have a high want-to-work rate and there is no evidence to show that conditionality achieves success at supporting them into work. We all want the same thing: to help more people into work. This amendment would provide a real opportunity to transform realistically the support into work offered to people with mental health problems. I hope that the Minister and the Government can accept my amendment.
Lord Layard (Lab)
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 52, the purpose of which is to remedy an extraordinary anomaly. We have nearly a million people on ESA due to depression or anxiety disorders, which are extremely treatable conditions. However, only about half these people are in any form of treatment. Most of them have never even had a diagnosis. None of this makes sense and the solution is obvious: we must help these claimants into treatment if we possibly can.
The key services here are those belonging to the national system of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, otherwise known as IAPT. Last year, these services saw and assessed 900,000 people and roughly half of those treated recovered during treatment. The average cost of treatment was about £1,000, which compares strikingly with the cost to the Exchequer of a person being on ESA for a year rather than working, which is £8,000. Obviously, we want as many as possible of these claimants to enter into treatment with IAPT, for both their sake and that of the taxpayer.
Amendment 52 proposes that as soon as claimants are awarded ESA by virtue of mental illness, they should immediately be referred by the jobcentre to the local IAPT service for assessment and treatment—unless they are so ill that they need to be referred to step 4 care, in which case they should be referred to secondary services. The proposal does not involve compulsion. It says that the claimant should be offered assessment and treatment. However, if this is organised in a friendly way which assumes that this is simply what happens next, most claimants would accept it—though they should be offered the opportunity to say no.
Let me review a number of possible problems that have arisen in the discussion of this proposal—the proposal is not new. First, why is the referral to a psychological service rather than to something else? The answer comes of course straight from the NICE guidelines. Those say that all people with depression and anxiety disorders, which are the most common forms of mental disorder, should be offered modern, evidence-based psychological therapy. Clearly, that is what we need to bring about. The secondary mental health services are too busy with people who are more severely ill to be able to provide that to the vast body of people suffering from depression and anxiety disorders. That is the reason why IAPT was created and why it should have a key role in helping mentally ill people to get better and back into work. People can self-refer into IAPT, so there is no problem in having the jobcentre facilitate that without delay.
State Pension: Equalisation
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Baroness Altmann
My Lords, as I have said, this matter was properly and thoroughly debated by Parliament. All those arguments were put to both Houses of Parliament and a majority voted for the legislation more than four years ago. This afternoon, I checked quite carefully and it is clear that this issue was missing entirely from the Labour Party’s manifesto before the general election. No party committed to doing anything about the billions of pounds that it would cost to change any of these plans.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I hope that the Minister will forgive me for going back, as I do, a long way in the history of equal opportunities for women. I would like to press her once again on this point. Does she really believe that MPs would have voted for the accelerated rise in 2011 had they known that many women had not been notified or given sufficient notice of the rise in the state pension age under the Pensions Act 1995? This really has not been a fair process all the way through, and women have been disadvantaged at an amazing number of levels.
Baroness Altmann
My Lords, I have also been checking up on this point. I am assured by the department that any woman who had asked for a state pension statement since 1995 would have known what her pension age had been changed to under the Act. Given the uncertainties around the amounts of state pension that any woman could receive under the very complex system that we have at the moment, if a woman had planned her retirement on the basis of that, she would surely have got a pension statement and known about her state pension age change.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, it would be wrong to discuss the measures in this Bill without highlighting the disproportionate impact the changes would have on people with mental health problems, and I am very glad to say that a number of your Lordships have already raised this issue as important. Just like physical health, we all have mental health. More of us are speaking out about mental health than ever before but, as has been mentioned, there is still a long way to go.
One area where people with mental health problems are still far too often unsupported and misunderstood is in back-to-work support. Over a third of people with mild to moderate mental health problems, and almost two-thirds of people with more severe mental health problems, are unemployed. Only 9% have been supported into work through the Government’s flagship back-to-work scheme, yet we know that the majority of people with mental health problems want to work. It is essential that this legislation looks at improving support to help people with these difficulties into work.
One problem is that mental health needs are not properly understood or acknowledged, which leads to the wrong support being provided. This does not help people get into work. The story of Lee, a 38 year-old man with mental health problems including depression, anxiety and a personality disorder, illustrates the difficulties. When out of work, in the employment and support allowance work-related activity group—the ESA WRAG—Lee attended a weekly self-help management course at his local jobcentre, which he had to attend or face his benefit being sanctioned. But the support he was provided with did not take into account his mental health. Lee said that,
“it was focussing more on people in pain, people who had bad backs and first aid ... and I did say a number of times at these meetings that this doesn’t apply to me. I’m not in pain as such, I have a mental health problem”.
Of course, Lee’s experiences are not unique. Another sufferer said that her adviser,
“simply did what I could already do on my own, put together a CV and look for jobs. There was not enough support geared to my specific difficulties. Every task was the same for everyone. Not everyone’s needs are the same”.
In addition, the conditionality and sanctions regime has become an unchallenged aspect of back-to-work support. Research by Mind, which does so much in this field, shows that people with mental health problems are three times more likely to have their benefit sanctioned than they are to be supported into employment. That is a clear signal that the system is not working for people with mental health problems, despite this group making up over half of all people on employment and support allowance.
The changes which this Bill legislates for—namely, reducing the amount people on the employment and support allowance work-related activity group receive by £30 a week—would have a serious impact on people with mental health problems, as others have said. We should all be concerned by the Government’s lack of assessment of the impact that these changes will be having on people and their families. I am pleased to hear about the review being undertaken by my noble friends Lord Low, Lady Meacher and Lady Grey-Thompson, which I gather will look at how the cut will affect the day-to-day lives of disabled people and whether it will help them move closer to work. We know already that 75% of people with common mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression, receive no appropriate treatment, and that many people use their benefit to pay for talking therapy treatments and well- being activities. There is space in this legislation to support people with mental health problems better and ultimately to move closer to the Government’s welcome commitment to halve the disability employment gap.
I end by asking the Minister two questions. One is a repeat of the question that my noble friend Lord Rix asked. The government impact assessment stated that the justification for the £30-a-week cut was to,
“remove the financial disincentive to work”.
Can the Minister present us with the evidence to show that cutting disabled people’s benefits results in more disabled people getting jobs? Secondly, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has said that the impact assessment accompanying the Bill does not,
“fully assess the impact on equality and human rights. This may make it difficult for parliamentarians to properly consider the implications of the measures in the Bill”.
Does the Minister accept this criticism? It would be good to hear his reply at some stage as the Bill progresses through your Lordships’ House, even though I do not expect much of an answer this evening.
Employment
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Freud
My Lords, we now have the real-time information system working, whereby we know what people are paid every month. That gives us a new opportunity with the Work Programme in its next stages to look not just at sustainment in work, which was the key new feature of the original Work Programme, but at progression in work. It will be entirely possible to devise ways to encourage providers to help people make that important progression.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister agrees that many women want to work part-time, because it fits in well with their life plans. Can he reassure me that men have equal chances, in their employment, of getting part-time work? As I understand it, many men are felt to be able to work full-time and therefore not given the other option.
Lord Freud
We have one of the most flexible structures of work in Europe. In other countries you see a huge concentration of people working the full number of hours, whereas here there is a much smoother position. We have systems to support people doing partial and full work hours. In fact, in the way in which it is devised, universal credit will make the situation even more flexible in the future.
Video Recordings Act 1984 (Exempted Video Works) Regulations 2014
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I have a number of issues to raise but, first, I welcome these new regulations. Like the noble Lord, I seek assurances from the Minister about some of the content.
As we know, the Video Recordings Act currently exempts, music, sports, educational and religious DVDs from having to be classified, unless they show to a significant extent certain types of material. Sadly, that approach has opened the door to abuse. Music and sports DVDs, for example, have been found containing adult content and, in that context, it is right that such videos should not be exempt and children should be protected from such content.
We debated an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill in 2010 that would have caused similar outcomes to those sought in these draft regulations. The then Government gave an assurance that they would revisit the issue. Since that time, the Bailey review also recommended legislation to close the loophole. The resulting regulations that are before us make it clear that exempted works that depict content such as suicide, self-mutilation and sexual activity that is not deemed to be mild must be rated. Depictions that result in the DVD work losing its licence are listed in the regulations in proposed new paragraphs (a) to (o) and have been explained, but I shall refer to them.
I warmly welcome these provisions, although I have some concerns about the use of the word “mild”. Like the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I believe that there is cause for some concern. The provision states that any exempted work should lose its exemption if,
“it includes words or images that are intended or likely (to any extent) to cause offence, whether on the grounds of race, gender, disability, religion or belief or sexual orientation, or otherwise”.
Why is this cause for concern? Unlike the conditions listed in proposed new paragraphs (a) to (n), “offence” is a very subjective category with a low threshold. Moreover, that is compounded in paragraph (o) by two facts. First, the issue of whether of a work was designed to cause offence is irrelevant. Secondly, it does not matter how minor the offence is—if it causes some offence to any extent, the work loses its exemption.
It seems to me that all religious DVDs would have to be rated. Consider a DVD that includes a hymn declaring that Jesus was the son of God. That would be offensive to Muslims, who believe that Jesus was only a prophet. What about a Muslim DVD that says that Jesus was not the son of God but only a prophet? That would cause offence to some Christians.
The Government seek to reassure us in paragraph 8.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum that there is no need for concern. It states that,
“the BBFC already makes determinations about whether the content is or is not discriminatory for other video works … and it does this from an objective viewpoint and based on principles set out in its classification guidelines”.
However, there is no reference in the Video Recordings Act to the detail of classification guidelines and how they might impact on a particular film or other work. The Government are right that the BBFC guidelines already cover discrimination. Page 5 of the 2014 guidelines says:
“Potentially offensive content relating to matters such as race, gender, religion, disability or sexuality may arise in a wide range of works … the classification decision will take account of the strength or impact of their inclusion. The context in which such content may appear also has a bearing”.
None of this nuance is in the legislation.
The Minister will no doubt respond by saying that such a condition of words and images that may cause offence is already in effect for video games— Section 2A of the Video Recordings Act—and, of course, that is correct. This insertion to the law was made through Section 40 of the Digital Economy Act 2010, the debate on which I have already referred to. However, the Secretary of State can amend these criteria by regulation and under Section 2A(6) these regulations,
“may make provision by reference to documents produced by the designated authority”.
This implies that the classification guidelines produced for video games by the Games Rating Authority—an arm, of course, of the Video Standards Council—could be referenced for exemption criteria for video games in the legislation.
My difficulty is that, as the letter of the law we are asked to sign off today has a different threshold from the guidelines, there would be nothing to stop an easily offended person from going to court claiming that something that had caused them offence should not be exempt. In this context, the judge would have to apply the law as it is set out before us today with its extraordinarily low threshold and find in favour of the person who is easily offended. This would then force the BBFC to change its practice.
In raising this concern I want to be clear that I am not arguing that all religious DVDs should be exempt. My concern is simply that the threshold in proposed new paragraph (o) is so low that we risk moving from one extreme—where all religious DVDs are exempt—to the other where, as a matter of practice, most, if not all, would not be because of their potential to cause offence to those from a different faith tradition or radical secularist point of view.
I also want to be very clear that I am not suggesting that people have such a low tolerance of views contrary to their own that most would claim to have been offended. As the regulations before us today are defined, however, it would only take some to explain why they were offended for a judge to have to rule with the effect that most religious works would lose their exemption. I have a similar concern relating to the robustness of the use of “mild” in the regulations. Of course, I understand that the BBFC has a good definition, but a judge will have to interpret the law and these regulations make no reference to the BBFC’s guidelines.
I hope that the Minister can explain, first, the mismatch between the letter of the proposed paragraph (o) on the one hand and the BBFC’s guidelines and stated intent in the Explanatory Memorandum on the other. Secondly, can he explain the extraordinarily low threshold in (o) where the potential offence is subjective and the intent of the producer and the extent of the said material is irrelevant? Thirdly, can he explain the rationale for allowing reference to guidelines for video games in statute but not video works? Finally, perhaps as a very minimum, can he provide a reassurance that if judges apply the letter of new paragraph (o) such that most religious DVDs, including DVDs of religious services, find themselves having to be rated, the Government will then amend the legislation?
Housing: Underoccupancy Charge
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Freud
My Lords, that is clearly one of the points of getting a better match for our very scarce housing. There are long waiting lists for social housing and substantial overcrowding. Depending on the data at which you look, there are more than 250,000 overcrowded homes in the social rented sector. On the census basis, that figure rises to 361,000.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, can the Minister tell us whether the interim review will include an assessment of how the underoccupancy charge affects people with conditions such as Parkinson’s, which can involve night terrors and uncontrollable movements that make it completely impractical for their partners to sleep in close proximity?
Lord Freud
My Lords, for obvious reasons, I have not seen the report. It will be published but I am not aware of that kind of detail at this stage. Clearly once the report is out we can look at the issues that remain uncovered. There will be a full report, which will be published next year in 2015.
Child Support Fees Regulations 2014
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, I want to comment on Regulation 7(3) of the fees regulations and, incidentally, on Regulation 8(2). I have interests in children’s charities and care organisations, which may or may not be relevant to what I am going to say now but I declare them for caution.
It is rather remarkable that the Explanatory Memorandum comments on this provision and puts the point rather succinctly:
“The introduction of fees is politically significant. Child maintenance elements of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 had a difficult passage through the Upper House and charging persons with care, often single mothers of limited means”—
I do not know how many people are of unlimited means, but anyway it is quite clear that these are people of rather limited means—
“remains a controversial issue for stakeholder groups, service users and the wider public”.
I assume that I am included in the wider public.
I am entirely in favour of everything that can be done, and that this Government are doing, to try to help people who have had a relationship that has broken up. I am familiar from long ago with divorce cases; I did a lot of them but, as the Committee knows, that was a long time ago. However, the difficulties of interpersonal relationships were as formidable then as they are now, and I wish every success to the moves that have been made to try to help people by the Department for Work and Pensions, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Education, which are involved in the Children and Families Bill, which is having its Third Reading tomorrow. I went to a meeting that Ministers organised in connection with that Bill, and I had to remind them that the DWP was also working in this area of trying to help people. Of course, they said that they work very closely together, so I am glad to hear that. The closer they get together, the more chance that their measures will be successful. As I say, I wish them every success in that. Unfortunately, so far those efforts have not produced universal success, and the regulations contemplate at least the possibility that they will not have universal success in future.
The point that I want to stress is that when it comes to the obligation to maintain a child, the parents’ obligation is absolute. It does not matter what sort of dispute they have had with the other party to the arrangements in the past. I accept immediately that there are many different types of squabble that can emerge, and it is by no means clear that the non-resident parent is always fully responsible. I entirely understand that for the question of the break-up of the arrangements, both parties usually have some degree of responsibility. When it comes to the payment of maintenance, though, that obligation is absolute and is not qualified by the fact that the other party to the arrangement has been terrible, difficult or whatever. That is what these fee regulations are concerned with.
The collection fee that I have referred to appears when the collection system comes into operation. That happens only when the Child Maintenance Service, not the other party, is satisfied that without the collection service, maintenance is unlikely to be paid. That is in Section 137 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. The decision that the collection service comes into operation, with its charges, is entirely the responsibility of the Child Maintenance Service and has nothing whatever to do with any responsibility of the parent with care. In that situation, the imposition of the collection charge on the parent with care is unjustified in principle.
Of course, this is not by any means the first time that I have raised this issue, and I thank the departmental Ministers, who have changed over time, for the courtesy with which they have listened to the same thing being said again and again. That has not been an altogether unproductive process, because concessions have been made that I warmly welcome. The concessions are narrated in the Explanatory Memorandum; I will not weary the Committee by going over them but I agree that they are quite substantial. The most recent one was the reduction from the 7% to 12% charge that was originally thought of to 4% in the case of the parent with care. As I say, I welcome that very much and am glad that it has happened. However, as the Explanatory Memorandum says, this charge remains controversial, and I think it is unjustified in principle.
I did not feel inclined to table a Motion of Regret or a Motion to set aside the regulations, for pretty obvious reasons but primarily because the Government know what our House decided about this matter long ago. Of course, it was overcome by the financial protection of the House of Commons and therefore went through. But as the Explanatory Memorandum says, the passage through the upper House was not entirely easy. That vote is there and, as far as I know, opinion on that point remains.
I submit that the review that is to take place 30 months after the matter comes into force will take particular account of this point, which I am sure will remain controversial until the inquiry is completed, whether or not I am here to promote it—although that may be a matter of opinion. I do not intend to weary your Lordships further but I do wish to indicate the principled objection to this that remains.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, your Lordships may remember that I was one of those who supported the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, in the very important amendment that he has just referred to. I, too, remain concerned that despite the concessions made by the Government in reducing the application fee for a child maintenance calculation to £20 and reducing the parent with care collection charge by 4% on every payment—on which I congratulate them—there is a real danger that the effect of the new charging regime will be that fewer children end up with fair and reliable child maintenance.
In this respect, I share the conclusion of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which found that,
“although the transfer scheme may make savings it may imperfectly achieve the overarching objective of providing financial support for children”.
I want to press the Minister for assurances that the Government will closely monitor what happens to maintenance for children whose CSA cases are closed during the next three years. After all, the department has details of the parents and children so can track what happens to them, case by case, in terms of future maintenance arrangements—or the lack of them.
It will not be enough for the Government to congratulate themselves if fewer parents apply to use the statutory maintenance service, unless they know for certain that the parents concerned have made private arrangements for maintenance that result in regular payments of realistic amounts for the children concerned. Similarly, it will not be enough to be satisfied that fewer parents are asking to use the collection service and have opted for a direct payment arrangement—again, unless they know for certain that those direct payment arrangements are resulting in regular payment of the liabilities that have been calculated by the Child Maintenance Service.
In the past, the department has said it can assume that every direct payment arrangement is paid in full and on time because, if not, parents with care would ask to use the collection service. Even if this assumption were true now, it will certainly not be true in the future, given that the collection charges are expressly intended to deter parents from asking to use the collection service, regardless of the circumstances. I therefore seek full assurances from the Minister that the department will track in detail how children fare as their CSA cases are closed down and charges are brought in.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my two colleagues in this important debate. My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay led the House in earlier stages of the Bill in a commanding and profoundly serious way. His weight being added to this question is something to which I hope that the Minister and department will pay careful attention; that is also true of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe.
I underscore what my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay emphasised at earlier stages of this discussion: the fee money that we are talking about is actually the child’s. My noble and learned friend is right to point to the clause in the memorandum that says that this is controversial; that is why it is controversial. This money which is being taken out of the system should be going to the assistance of, mainly but not exclusively, poorly paid families who are doing their best to struggle to bring up children in very difficult circumstances. That controversy is not going to go away. I pay tribute to my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for the work that they have done in the past.
I also acknowledge that there have been concessions, and I do not think that my noble friend the Minister needs an alibi. He has other fish to fry; this is none of his business. It is a very bad change. I actually take a more fundamental view. I have been of the opinion since 1991, when I started on all of this, that charging was wrong in principle. I am long enough in the tooth to remember the period during 1993 and 1995 when we tried charging. I have said this before: it was a disaster. Why? Because nobody collected any money. They were not collecting fees or enforcing debts, so people were saying, “Why are we paying these fees when we are not getting any money?”. The scheme was quickly abandoned. We need to learn lessons about that. I do not believe that even the new, all-singing, all-dancing Child Maintenance Service—while the improvements are welcome—can offer guarantees that the enforcement will be effective.
Changing the balance of my concern, because I have always been really worried about the parents with care more than anything else, some of the charges which are going to be levelled at the non-resident parents are eye-wateringly high. There are a lot of non-resident parents out there who do not understand the difference that will be made with the combination of a recalculation and a collection fee. I wait with bated breath to see where this new co-operation which is going to break out all over the place is going to start. It is fantasy. A long time ago I was a divorce lawyer, and I know what people can do to one another when they separate. It is sometimes quite unbelievable. I am sure that my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, with his previous distinguished legal career and all his work with children’s charities, would reinforce that. I object to fees in principle. I do not think that they will work. I hope that I am wrong, but that has always been my position and it is worth restating.
Secondly, this system that we have used for charging fees is flawed. Again, I agree with everything that my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay has said, but I want to add a point which has been drawn to my attention by Gingerbread, which is right in saying that if the Child Maintenance Service has the weight of decision in testing the question of “unlikely to pay or not”—to allow the parent with care to join or stay in the service—that is a contestable decision. It is an important decision for both parents. It is an administrative decision which is taken out of both their hands. I do not know what assurances have been given, or whether there is anything that I have missed in the regulations which makes it a requirement to explain in detail why that decision has been taken, but it seems to me contrary to natural justice. In any other area of public life where such an administrative decision is made an inbuilt independent appeal is automatically attached to it. That is entirely absent from this new system. I appeal to my noble friend to go away and look at the provisions in the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008, Section 6(5), where, I think, the Secretary of State is given discretion about introducing an appeal. As part of the undertaking that I hope my noble friend will give to the Committee to continue to monitor all this carefully there should be the possibility of the Secretary of State making that discretionary decision, so that we can have an appeal available, if it becomes obvious—as I believe it will—that it is necessary.