Housing Benefit (Transitional Provisions) (Amendment) Regulations 2014

Baroness King of Bow Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I think I am the only serving, elected councillor who is likely to speak in this debate, unless the noble Lord, Lord Tope, in his declining days as a councillor—I believe he is standing down shortly—joins in to proclaim the new, belated Lib Dem policy on the bedroom tax. I bring a snapshot from Newcastle, where 5,400 households are affected, at an average cost to each of them of £13.47 a week. If paid, that represents around £3.75 million to be taken out of the local economy, so there is a knock-on effect, quite apart from the housing effect, on that economy. Just under one-quarter of those are working households, one-third have children and, as we have already heard, many have disabled people in them. In my own ward, there are 315 such households.

As has already been pointed out, it is not a simple matter to transfer into a smaller property. In Newcastle, we have 3,558 people seeking one-bedroom accommodation. The average number of available one-bedroom properties per year is 64. It would take a generation or more to accommodate those people. Some 615 are seeking to move down to two-bedroom accommodation. There is, admittedly, a slightly higher availability of this—all of 101 a year. Any effect on the private sector, which in Newcastle is largely taken up with students, will drive up rents. Landlords are increasingly reluctant to take tenants who are on benefits of one kind or another. This policy is not only cruel and inefficient; it is based on a complete misunderstanding—to put it generously—of what happens in the social housing market. It is damaging people’s lives.

I conclude with an anecdote about meeting a couple of people in their fifties—not in my own ward—who benefited from the decision which required the Government to effectively refund the amount paid because of the length of their tenure of the property. I was able to tell them they would be getting the money back but I also had to give the bad news that the Government were seeking to ensure that the money returned to them was spent on paying the bedroom tax. Here were two disabled people, living in a house for just under 30 years, with one of their grandchildren staying with them when I called. This just illustrates the cruelty and incompetence of the measure and I congratulate my noble friend on bringing this Motion of Regret.

[Baroness King of Bow (Lab)]

My Lords, when I saw that the Government were introducing an amendment to the bedroom tax, I mistakenly assumed they wanted to put right the wrongs visited on tenants by this unjust law. Instead, they want to close loopholes and increase the number of people victimised. As one housing expert said:

“This is a shambles caused by the DWP failing to understand the significance of their own legislation”.

This is an extraordinary failing by the Government that disproportionately burdens the most vulnerable, two-thirds of whom, as we have heard, are disabled. These people will have to wait for a Labour Government to abolish the bedroom tax—unless the Minister would like to tell us something quite unexpected today. One way that Labour will fund the reversal is to abolish the Government’s tax cuts for hedge funds. I have nothing against hedge funds—I want to see the City of London thrive because our economy depends on it. However, I do not want it to do so on the backs of the poorest and the disabled. I have rarely heard anything so perverse.

Austerity demands choices: choices reveal priorities. The Government’s priorities here are absolutely shameful. Why do they not concentrate on closing loopholes to end tax evasion by the richest instead of closing loopholes that hurt vulnerable people so much? I urge the Government to abolish this tax.

Olympic and Paralympic Legacy Committee

Baroness King of Bow Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness King of Bow (Lab)]

I begin by declaring an interest as Channel 4’s diversity executive and I am incredibly proud of Channel 4’s legacy as the Paralympic Games broadcaster. I echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, about Channel 4’s achievement in changing attitudes towards disability, not least the “Meet the Superhumans” trailer, masterminded by Dan Brooke. It was nothing less than a game-changer. So, too, was the entire legacy promise of London 2012. No previous Olympic Games had ever put legacy at the very heart of the bid. Our legacy promised,

“nothing less than a healthier and more successful sporting nation, open for business, with more active, sustainable, fair and inclusive communities”.

The key question was posed by one of our veteran 2012 medallists, the rower Greg Searle. He said: how do we turn all the national pride generated in all corners of the country into producing not just the next generation of Olympic gold medallists but the next generation of good citizens? How do we inspire a generation, make Britain a more active sporting nation and, through the Paralympics, give every disabled child the same chance of engaging in sport as their able-bodied counterparts? Our report considers those huge questions, and how we can fulfil the legacy before it is too late.

I will start with the most obvious and urgent legacy: a healthier, more active nation. Why is it so important? The answer is simple: it is a matter of life and death. Is this an exaggeration? It is not, especially if you live in Tower Hamlets. I will come to that shortly. The obvious starting point is the well documented obesity epidemic facing Britain. Data from the Health Survey for England show that by 2050 fully one-quarter of young people under 20 will be obese. Today only one-third of boys and one-quarter of girls achieve the recommended 60 minutes’ physical exercise a day. That means that two-thirds of boys and three-quarters of all our girls are setting themselves up for health problems in later life, including but not at all limited to heart disease, diabetes and cancer. In other words, they are setting themselves up for premature death.

I am sorry to say that in Tower Hamlets we have already reached the future predicted for England in 2050. Today, on average, women in Tower Hamlets already die 18 years earlier than their counterparts in Richmond. Men in Tower Hamlets can worry a bit less: they die only 15 years earlier than their counterparts in Richmond. You lose approximately a year of life for every stop on the District line as you move from Richmond to Tower Hamlets. In Tower Hamlets, more than one-quarter of all children leaving primary school are clinically obese. If you add together the children leaving primary school in Tower Hamlets who are both overweight and obese, the figure is over 40%.

There are two things that will stop those children dying younger. It is not rocket science—we know what they are. One is increased activity and the other is better nutrition. I will leave better nutrition for another day, although I confess to being slightly obsessed with it, because too often I spend the morning at the school gates in Tower Hamlets watching children eat crisps for breakfast and drink fizzy cola. I will concentrate instead on increased activity and grass-roots participation in sports. That is why the committee’s recommendation to improve PE teaching is so important. In our report we state that,

“PE needs a greater emphasis in the school day … Improving PE is fundamental … and we call on the DfE and Ofsted to take more active roles in making this change happen”.

I endorse everything that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said on this issue. If we need to lengthen the school day, let us lengthen the school day. Surely it is better than shortening children’s lives. I also endorse the excellent report by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, calling on the Government to give PE greater priority in the school curriculum.

It is absolutely critical to improve the link between primary school and secondary school sport. My noble friend Lady Billingham has already spoken about the sad demise of the school sport partnerships. The problem with the current system is that money goes to individual schools but does not support the sporting infrastructure between schools that promotes competitive sport.

A related problem that we have already heard about in some detail is the negative impact on team sports of the “No Compromise” approach. The focus on medals above all else has damaged funding opportunities for team sports. Team sports are the ones that kids are most likely to play—football, netball, volleyball, basketball, rugby and hockey —the sports we all remember playing as kids. They are the sports where you get the most bang for your buck in terms of grass-roots participation. They are the sports kids want to play. These sports will arguably do most to keep the London 2012 flame alive. How perverse would it be for our elite medal quest to reduce the sporting participation of British kids and shrink our sporting talent pool?

I understand that our approach has had huge success and I would be the first to say that I was filled with enormous pride at our medal haul. To come third in the world behind only China and America is extraordinary. The mountain we climbed was perilously steep, as we have heard, from being ranked 36th in the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 to coming third overall in London 2012. But the one thing that would be even more extraordinary and make me even more proud of this country would be a 2012 legacy that inspired a fitter, healthier country. It would be seeing Britain climb the league table to become the healthiest and most active country in the industrialised world. It would be to see our children living longer and having more active and meaningful lives.

That is the thing about sport: it creates this magic thing that politicians and policy wonks call social cohesion. We all remember the Oldham riots, where Asians and whites fought running battles in the streets. What was the one thing, the only thing, that the council could find that represented a bridge between the two communities? It was football, and that is because sport is a universal language.

London 2012 also made sport more inclusive, particularly for disabled athletes, as we have heard, but also for women. Women in the Olympics have come a long way. The founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, is similar to many great men in history. His achievements were, well, great—and his belittlement of women was even greater. At the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, which de Coubertin arranged, 245 men took part, representing 14 countries, competing in 43 events. No women took part because de Coubertin said their presence would be,

“impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and incorrect”.

You wonder what he would have said about the Paralympics; it does not really bear thinking about.

In 1912, women were allowed to compete in swimming for the first time, but none of those competing was from the USA, because the USA banned its women from entering events without long skirts. I am not talking about Saudi Arabia; I am talking about the USA. That illustrates how far we have come. We have come so far, in fact, that, today, the words “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and incorrect” would probably be a fair way of describing our men’s football team in London 2012, but not our women. I salute all the British women who performed so magnificently and I look forward to the Minister securing equality of funding for women’s sports.

On the subject of fairer funding, we should also look at who gets to represent Britain in the first place. Elite sport is dominated by those who are privately educated—that should not be such a surprise, because everything is dominated by those who are fortunate enough to have a private education—but it is still staggering, even though we know that that is real world, to find, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, first pointed out to me, that more than 50% of the medals won in 2012 went to British athletes who were privately educated. Why should we get so exercised about that? Well, it is about the talent pool, stupid, because that means that more than 50% of our sporting talent is drawn from less than 7% of our population—the 7% of British children who go to private schools.

I have raised some of the problems affecting children growing up in very disadvantaged areas. These problems, which lead to nothing less than premature death, require structural change. One small yet decisive structural change in government that would support London’s 2012 legacy is our committee’s proposal to have a Minister for the Games Legacy. I have one simple question for the Minister: what harm could it do? It could no harm, yet it could secure immeasurable good. It would make current plans more coherent; it would give added impetus at a government level. It would cost nothing—zilch, zip, nada—not even a newly minted 12-sided pound coin, not even a threepenny bit. If it is so cheap at the price, why are the Government so resistant to considering it? It would be fantastic to get a considered reply and not just a restatement of government policy, although experience tells me that that is probably the most the Minister will be able to achieve—but I live in hope.

As our report states, and as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who so ably chaired the committee, stated, we hunted for white elephants but we did not find them. What we found, despite the resounding success of London 2012, were myriad missed opportunities. Some were modest, some were galactic—such as the missed opportunity immediately to harness the enthusiasm of the volunteers—but the biggest missed opportunity would be a failure to nurture increased sporting participation. Given the link between sport and social cohesion, between sport and good citizenship, and between sport and living longer, it would be an unforgivable failure of the promise of 2012 if that legacy was not realised. I therefore urge the Minister to heed the report, which states:

“We are unconvinced that the Government’s current oversight arrangements represent a robust way to deliver the legacy”.

For that reason, I ask the Minister to give a more positive response to the committee’s well researched and evidenced recommendations than we have thus far received from them.

Media and Creative Industries: Equality

Baroness King of Bow Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness King of Bow]

My Lords, I declare an interest as Channel 4’s diversity executive. Further to the earlier Question, I wondered if the Minister was aware of the lack of social diversity in terms of social mobility and social background in the media. Will she support broadcasters that are going out beyond non-traditional backgrounds, and particularly beyond non-media hubs, to find young people from those backgrounds who are not so much involved in the media industry at present?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I share the point that the noble Baroness has raised. I am aware that the BBC, which is the main public service broadcaster, has the largest responsibility to ensure that it is reaching out to new people in terms of its workforce. There are a couple of schemes that the noble Baroness may or may not be aware of. A BBC apprenticeship scheme has recruited over 50 apprentices in the past 18 to 20 months, 30% of whom were from the black and minority ethnic communities. The BBC’s work experience scheme has ensured since January 2011 that 60% are from BME backgrounds, and of those 21% have secured paid work at the BBC. The latter scheme has been recommended for an award for extending diversity in the workplace.

Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness King of Bow Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness King of Bow]

My Lords, we all believe in welfare reform, making work pay and simplifying the benefits system; and I am sure none of us envies the Minister his job. However, these reforms cut benefits to the point where they undermine the principles of the welfare state and remove the final safety net from some of the most vulnerable people in Britain. I confess I am shocked by the Bill’s consequences as it currently stands. I also have another confession: I am one of those Labour politicians who knows there are genuinely enlightened Conservative politicians. That is something I simply would not have believed as a child. Lib Dems, of course, have often espoused the same progressive social policies that I believe in. In fact, I remember many occasions when Lib Dem MPs stood alongside me and other Labour Back-Benchers between 1997 and 2005 to challenge our Labour Government’s record on housing—in particular they lambasted Ministers for not doing enough to support private tenants, especially those on housing benefit.

What are we to make of those same Lib Dems now backing Tory plans to drive a coach and horses through the housing safety net? This Bill will, in effect, drive the poor out of inner London; it will leave thousands facing eviction and homelessness. Do not take it from me: research done by the University of Cambridge for Shelter found that cuts to LHA will lead to 134,000 households either being evicted or forced to move. Or take it from Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson, who was moved to describe these cuts as “Kosovo-style social cleansing”. I thought that was taking it a bit far, but DCLG seemed to back up some of his concerns. Its modelling calculated a likely 20,000 extra homelessness acceptances as a result of the total benefit cap—and that comes on top of the 20,000 additional acceptances already anticipated as a result of the other changes to housing benefit. DCLG helpfully summarised the situation, saying that,

“it is likely that the policy as it stands will generate a net cost”.

So there we go. Not only is it going to cause untold human suffering by forcing people out of their homes, but it is going to cost us money. It just does not add up.

This dose of truth obviously did not go down too well at the DWP. The Minister even took the trouble to write to my own local newspaper, the East London Advertiser. I am sure he was writing to local newspapers up and down the country, but none the less the East London Advertiser got news, fresh from the horse’s mouth, that:

“Scare stories that housing benefit changes will force thousands of London families from their homes are nonsense and are causing unnecessary distress”.

And yet his own department’s impact assessment tells a different story. It is a story of unnecessary distress, and it will ruin lives. In Tower Hamlets, the DWP impact assessment shows 1,900 households affected by the move from the median to the thirtieth percentile of local rents. In English, that means those households lose on average £20 to £30 a week.

The impact assessment also shows that 970 families were affected by the caps already introduced in April. Those households lose, on average, £20 to £30 a week, depending on property size. I know the Minister has suggested that these families will be able to negotiate a lower rent with their landlord. If he genuinely believes this, I implore him to give us some evidence. If he feels that this may not be the case, that landlords will not will not just throw up their hands and say, ‘Oh, okay, I’ll lower your rent’, I say in all sincerity that maybe he will give those tenants some rights to challenge their landlords, because otherwise he is literally casting them adrift. He might also wish to let them know whether, if they cannot make up that shortfall, they should use their jobseeker’s allowance or child benefit to cover these shortfalls.

The week before the Minister’s letter appeared in the East London Advertiser, in the Answer to a Written Question I tabled on the numbers affected by his reform to the shared room rate of local housing allowance, he stated that,

“320 claimants in Tower Hamlets would have their local housing allowance reduced”,

adding that:

“The average loss per loser is estimated at £109 per week”.—[Official Report, 29/6/11; col. WA 440.]

Can the Minister tell me how someone on jobseeker’s allowance of £65 per week can find an extra £109 per week to pay their rent? With all respect, I truly believe the Minister is not inhabiting the real world. That is the most respectful way I can put that issue. I suspect the Minister may fall back on the usual claim that these single people should all move into shared housing, or that his £20 million discretionary housing payment fund will help them bridge the gap, but neither claim bears scrutiny and if I had more time I would explain why. Should the Minister wish to let me describe the reasons why I do not feel they stack up, I would be delighted.

The Minister has made a small concession to help a few hundred vulnerable, homeless Londoners living in hostels. That is very important, and I welcome it, but again what about everybody else? In Tower Hamlets, the pressure on the discretionary housing payment budget is already so intense that the initial length of awards has already been cut from 10 months to just four months, and that is before a lot of the other cuts have impacted. Whatever its theoretical advantages, the universal cap of £26,000 introduced by Chapter 1 of this Bill will undoubtedly make a bad situation far worse. I recognise that this cap is superficially attractive in its simplicity, and I am attracted to it myself. It is the level of the cap that I disagree with, and as my noble friend Lady Sherlock stated concisely, fairness has been sacrificed for simplicity. It just is not fair that parents will be left with the stark choice of paying their rent or feeding their kids. It also is not fair that Clause 68 increases the local housing allowance in line with CPI inflation, meaning that in real terms the costs of private rented housing will not be covered. That puts claimants on the rack and tightens the screw year on year.

However, there is something in this Bill that I object to even more strongly: the unforgivable scrapping of the discretionary social fund and its replacement with a system of hand-me-down or in-kind charity. As someone who helped many constituents make those applications, I understand the benefits and weaknesses of those schemes but let us be clear that the benefits far outweigh the weaknesses. The reforms which Yvette Cooper suggested last March were adequate to address those problems. Instead, the Bill pushes the poorest further into debt.

The argument should not and cannot be reduced to deficit reduction. I accept the need for deficit reduction. What I reject with some outrage is that the Bill seeks to reduce our national debt by increasing the personal debt of the very poorest. If you are going to take money from people’s pockets, take it from people like us in this Chamber. Do not take it from people who have not got the money to buy a bed, a fridge, a cooker or a cot because if you do, you either force these people to live in conditions that shame this country—like those of the family I visited, where the baby sleeps in the bath—or force them into the hands of loan sharks and an inescapable debt trap. The Government have dumped the responsibility for this on local authorities without any guarantee of funding or any requirement to continue the current eligibility criteria.

I will discard the last page because I understand that I have reached the time limit. I am sorry to get exercised about this but it is like watching a slow-motion legislative car crash. I have not even had time to touch on a plethora of desperately worrying issues: the unfair repeat assessments for the long-term sick and disabled; the impact on foster carers and kinship carers; or the use of a private company, Unum insurance, which was found guilty in America of harassing and defrauding social security claimants.

Putting all that to one side, my final point is directly to the Minister. I am sure that he did not come into politics to disadvantage Britain's poorest kids, force people out of their homes, reduce the childcare support for hard-pushed parents or strike genuine fear and despair into the hearts of disabled people up and down the country—but that is what this Bill currently allows for and it is the legacy which the Minister risks. If safeguards are not forthcoming, social historians may look back on the history of the welfare state and pinpoint this Bill as the tipping point in the slide towards a feral state. I sincerely and genuinely hope that the Minister will take account of the grave concern in this Chamber and make significant changes to the Bill.