Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, we form a select few still in the Chamber. I remind noble Lords that the Child Poverty Act 2010, which established the Child Poverty Commission, was passed with cross-party support. We believe that there is now similar support for the proposal to expand its remit to deal with social mobility. We welcome that move. However, our Amendment 62F seeks to ensure that the commission has a duty, an obligation and a right to advise Ministers so that the fruits of its expertise, research, understanding and work are put at the heart of decision-making. This is not to replace the Government’s role in decision-making but to input at the appropriate level into the intelligence available to the Minister, as strategies to tackle child poverty are developed and implemented. Amendment 62CZA seeks to ensure that the child maintenance and enforcement policies similarly do not fly in the face of objective, evidence-based advice. The Child Poverty and Social Mobility Commission may be a very valuable think-tank, academic centre of excellence and great publishing venture but without this duty to advise it will not be guaranteed a voice in Whitehall.

We naturally warmly welcome the Government’s Amendment 62JA, which appears to meet our request in Amendment 62K, and which enables Ministers to provide the commission with any resources, including research, which Ministers think are required for it to carry out its functions. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that this will enable the commission to request research directly where it believes that there are important gaps in the data available to it. Will the Minister also outline what might happen if the commission believes that such research is necessary but the relevant Minister does not? While we are delighted that the Government have seen the need for such research, it would be useful if the Minister could also say when exactly he expects the new commission to be established, as we need its input. These amendments are needed to strengthen the role of the Child Poverty and Social Mobility Commission. Amendment 62F is central, not an add-on, to the work of the commission. It would restore the duty for the commission to give advice to Ministers on the preparation of their strategy. The DWP note states:

“The Government believes that policy development should be the responsibility of Ministers … and should not be delegated to arm’s length bodies. The Commission’s current advisory role inadvertently provides a route for Ministers to avoid accountability if the Strategy proves ineffective by shifting responsibility to the Commission”.

It goes on to state that the commission will henceforth only be able to give advice on technical issues around the measurement of poverty and social mobility.

We welcome the strengthened accountability whereby the annual report of the commission will report on progress towards the target. Far from being incompatible with the commission providing advice on the strategy, part of that advice comprises being able to input into Ministers’ thinking on matters beyond just technical issues around measurement. A serious commission with quality members and staff will be hard to establish if it is denied the existing duty of advising Ministers. What, after all, will be the point of it as opposed to having this work done by a university department? There is no chance that Ministers would simply delegate development of a strategy to an unelected commission. It is clearly Ministers on whom the ultimate duty to eradicate child poverty falls, and who will be answerable in this House and elsewhere for the success of that strategy. Placing on the commission the duty to give advice to the Government would strengthen its role and status, allowing it to provide the independent scrutiny, intellectual challenge and source of expertise that were envisaged in the original Child Poverty Act, which passed with cross-party support. I beg to move.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment of my noble friend Lady Hayter. However, her case was made on the assumption that the commission will have expertise. The original requirement that commissioners must have expertise relevant to the work of the commission has been taken out by this legislation. Apparently, the Government have argued that, because the commission will be a reviewing rather than an advisory body, the expertise requirement is no longer needed in the schedule. However, as End Child Poverty points out, this makes no sense. Reviewing requires just as much expertise as advising.

I should therefore be grateful if the Minister could give a rather better explanation as to why that provision has been taken out, because it is in danger of weakening the commission. I understand that the commissioners will be appointed through the non-departmental public body appointing process. Can the Minister explain how the process will work in this instance? What type of expertise do the Government believe is necessary for the commission, taken as a whole, to have? How will the NDPB appointment process ensure that the commission has such expertise? We are of course talking about expertise on both child poverty and social mobility. It is perhaps also worth considering not just traditional academic forms of expertise but the expertise born of experience.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, at the start of these two groups of amendments on the child poverty commission, I want to make it clear that this Government are absolutely committed to tackling child poverty. Our child poverty strategy, published in April last year, set out the package of reforms that we are implementing to ensure that no child faces a life trapped in poverty. As part of this, we want to create a new and more powerful commission that can assess the progress made as reforms are implemented.

Amendment 62F seeks to ensure that the commission continues to provide advice to the Minister as to how to eradicate child poverty. As noble Lords are aware, the new Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission differs from the original child poverty commission in a number of important aspects. First, it will have a broader remit that will encompass social mobility as well as child poverty. Secondly, it will for the first time have the power to publicly assess government progress. The previous child poverty commission’s role was simply to provide advice to government. The new commission is required to produce an annual report that assesses whether the Government are taking the steps that they said they would in their strategy, and it will therefore have the opportunity to hold the Government to account for the steps that they are taking and point out where they are falling behind. This will ensure that Ministers are still responsible for developing the strategy, as is right, but that there is external examination to ensure that it is being implemented.

Finally, the commission will no longer play a direct role in the development of the Government’s child poverty policy. This third change is crucial if we are to maintain our commitment to ensure that unelected public bodies are not established unless there is a clear need for their work to be carried out independently of government. This is one of the three key principles of the review of public bodies carried out by the Government last year. It is the role of the Civil Service, directed by Ministers, to develop policy. This is not a job for external bodies.

We cannot justify establishing a public body to provide advice when there is already a wide variety of ways in which government can access such guidance. Indeed, many of the organisations that we might expect to see represented on such a body provided recommendations on the current child poverty strategy via our extensive consultation exercise. Giving a single public body a statutory power to provide advice to government on child poverty policy also risks undermining ministerial accountability. It offers a degree of scope for Ministers to shift responsibility for their policy to an external body. When publishing its report each year, the commission will have the opportunity to advise the Government on steps that they should be taking to implement the strategy. As an independent body, the commission would be able to respond to government consultations and put points to Ministers, alongside other organisations with an interest. It is a fundamental principle of this Government that Ministers are accountable for the policies and strategies they put forward. Therefore, while we will continue to consult widely on this policy area, we do not believe that the commission should be given a special, statutory role in providing advice.

I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that we are committed to establishing the new commission as soon possible, once the necessary legislative changes are made. That means, given that I need to define “as soon as possible”, that as soon as the amending legislation has been passed we will begin to put the new commission into place.

If the commission thinks research is required but the Minister does not, whether or not a particular request is granted will be a matter for private discussion between the Government and the commission. The commission will be able to request research directly; there is provision for it to do that.

On the issue of the expertise on the commission, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, we intend that it have the appropriate balance of expertise in child poverty and social mobility and we agree that a commission without specific expertise in these areas would not be effective in carrying out the functions set out in the Bill. How will we conduct the appointment process? All members of the commission, including the chair and the deputy chair, will be appointed using a fair and open recruitment process which meets the standards required by the office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

I am sorry to interrupt, but I also made a point about expertise born of experience. I sat on the Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power, half of whose members had experience of poverty. It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career, because the insights of those with experience of poverty were such that I could not bring to the subject. Will the Government be open to such expertise?

[Lord Freud]

Yes, my Lords. I hope that I was making clear that our intention is to get people who are experts in the area. It is hard to overspecify what that means, but people in that category could provide a powerful insight. I am not going to write the job spec in detail tonight, but clearly those would be attractive sets of experience for the commission.

Amendment 62CZA would require that any steps taken in relation to collecting child support maintenance should be consistent with advice given by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission. I will stick precisely to the point in relation to the commission rather than straying back into some of the discussions we had earlier this evening. Our view is that the commission should not be involved in developing policy. From that it follows that we do not think that it should develop policy on child maintenance. That is something for which Ministers alone should be responsible—or perhaps responsible for alongside the House of Lords.

Moreover, where payments are reliable and regular, child maintenance provides parents with care with a separate income stream that may improve the lives and life chances of some children in or near poverty. We have concluded that child maintenance payments are estimated to have a small, non-reportable impact on the number of families living in relative income poverty as currently measured and with current data sources.

Amendment 62JA, the government amendment, and Amendment 62K, would both create an explicit provision in the Bill for the Government to carry out research at the commission's request if it so wishes. We addressed that issue briefly in Committee. I gave assurances that having that provision in the Bill is unnecessary. The Bill already enables Ministers to provide the commission with any resources, including research, which Ministers think are required for the commission to carry out its functions. However, given that the issue has arisen again, we decided to table an amendment to allay any remaining concerns. The government amendment provides that Ministers have the power to carry out or commission research at the request of the commission if they so wish.

Before I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment, I make it clear that the Government do not consider any of the amendments consequential. I commend Amendment 62JA.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

69: Clause 144, page 108, line 41, at end insert—
“(2A) Section 57 (entitlement of lone parents to income support etc) will come into force no earlier than 1 April 2013, and not before the implementation of universal credit.”

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, yesterday the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, said to me, “Trust you to have the last amendment”. I am not sure that it was a compliment. Amendment 69 relates to the implementation timetable for Clause 57, which ends entitlement to income support for lone parents whose youngest child is aged five. This is to be introduced as soon as possible after the Bill receives Royal Assent. This modest amendment seeks only to introduce a delay to the implementation of the proposed change to ensure that it aligns with the planned introduction of universal credit, and to encourage the Minister to put on the record some concessions that would ease the situation of the lone parents affected.

Moving an additional 100,000 lone parents off income support and on to jobseeker’s allowance when their youngest child reaches five is a short-sighted measure in the current economic climate. Increased conditionality and tougher sanctions serve only to add unwarranted pressure on lone parents, when suitable employment opportunities remain sparse and access to further education is curtailed by work-related requirements. Critically, lone parents who find work of less than 16 hours per week will be unable to take advantage of the new childcare support provisions for at least 18 months. This potent mix could leave lone parents stranded on out-of-work benefits and unable to secure the foothold they need to enter the labour market on a sustainable basis.

Longitudinal research with lone parents who had elected to move into employment and with their children underlines the importance of such a secure foothold. The research was carried out for the department and was indeed cited in a note that the Minister kindly circulated on the impact of maternal employment on schoolchildren. This note referred to the evidence in the research of how lone parents’ employment can provide a good role model for their children. However, the research also found that that is not always the case. One of the researchers, Tess Ridge of Bath University, writes that,

“encouraging lone mothers into unstable and insecure labour markets runs the risk of alienating children from the values of employment. For these children work had held out the promise of something better and that promise had not been kept, so they also experienced disappointment and for some an apparent loss of confidence in the value of work”.

In light of such findings, my advice to the Minister is: more haste, less speed. The long-term gains associated with requiring the lone parents of younger children to be available for paid work might be better achieved by adopting this amendment.

As I argued in Grand Committee, gaining a level 3 or higher qualification makes a significant difference to the amount of money a lone parent can earn and increases their chances of upward mobility. Work search and work availability requirements will severely limit the ability of lone parents to gain qualifications and skills that could help them find higher paid employment that is sustainable, and to make the most of opportunities to progress once working. Currently, lone parents can receive a fee remission if claiming JSA. However, they are also required to continue to seek work while studying and be prepared to leave a course if offered employment. If they refuse, they face a payment sanction. It seems to me that in these circumstances work-related requirements inhibit, rather than enable, a claimant’s ability to find better paid employment. This is an unintended consequence, I am sure, and is in fact preventable. Previously, lone parents on income support could complete a full-time further education course, up to and including level 3, when their children started school, and crucially before moving on to jobseeker’s allowance—a benefit with significantly higher conditionality.

The prescribed circumstances in Clauses 22 and new Section 6F—inserted by Clause 49—should, I would argue, permit access to further education up to and including level 3, and training for responsible carers claiming JSA or universal credit. This means that, if undertaking a further education or training course, they should be treated as fulfilling work search and work availability requirements until their course ends or their child turns seven. This would allow responsible carers to “skill up” and increase their earning potential when their youngest child starts full-time education. This is entirely consistent with the Government’s anti-child poverty and social mobility strategies, which emphasise the importance of education and training and the contribution they can make to ensuring that paid work represents the best route out of poverty. The Minister expressed some sympathy with the arguments presented in Committee when he was pressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, to write greater flexibility into the Bill. I wonder whether he has been able to give further thought to this and perhaps go rather further than he was able to in Committee.

Lone parents require jobs that allow them to be there for their children when they need them. With only one parent to do the school run, care for children when they are ill and support them with their school work, jobs with flexible working patterns are absolutely vital, as is access to affordable, high-quality childcare. On this point, the announcement that the Government will extend support for childcare costs to those working under 16 hours is very welcome. This is due to be implemented as part of universal credit from October 2013 onwards. The demand for jobs of less than 16 hours per week, so-called “mini jobs”, is likely to increase as lone parents of five and six year-olds look for work that dovetails with their caring responsibilities. The extended help with childcare costs will be of particular benefit to this group of lone parents. However, unless the implementation of Clause 57 is delayed, 100,000 lone parents of younger children will be unable to access it for up to a minimum of 18 months, if offered a job of less than 16 hours a week.

Finding the money to pay for childcare can be a significant hurdle for lone parents and is often the straw that breaks the camel’s back when it comes to making work pay. Until very recently, responsible carers in short-hours jobs could access financial help towards childcare costs. Prior to April 2011, a time-limited discretionary in-work childcare subsidy payment was available for lone parents and partners on the New Deal and who worked less than 16 hours. This provision has since been abolished and incorporated into the flexible support fund. This is a generic pot of money for discretionary use by advisers to cover a wide range of claimant’s needs and is available only when all other avenues of possible financial support have been explored.

Might I suggest that introducing an interim payment akin to the previous in-work childcare subsidy would be a positive work incentive for this group of claimants during the interim period? I am sure that Gingerbread, to which I am grateful for help with this amendment, would be keen to discuss the possibilities with the Minister, who has said that he always has an open door.

To conclude, there is a strong case for delaying the implementation of this policy to coincide with the introduction of universal credit in order for the Government to achieve their objectives. However, if this policy goes ahead as planned, it would require the kind of additional interventions that I have outlined, and I therefore hope that the Minister will look favourably on them and at the very least make a commitment to give them serious consideration. I beg to move.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, as noble Lords are aware, our focus is on supporting and helping to lift children out of poverty and improve their life chances by encouraging lone parents to enter paid work. Evidence shows that paid work is good for lone parents and their children in nearly all circumstances. Indeed, just under 80 per cent of lone parents with a youngest child aged five or six are either in employment, looking for a job, or would like to work.

Many lone parents consider making the transition to work when their youngest child starts school, and it is for these reasons that we announced our intention to align the age at which lone parents could reasonably be expected to look for work to when their youngest child reaches the age of five. This means that once a lone parent’s youngest child reaches the age of five we would want the parent to claim jobseeker’s allowance if they are capable of work. If they have limited capability for work, they would claim employment and support allowance, unless they are entitled to income support on some other ground, for example as a foster carer. If we delay carrying out this change and wait for the introduction of universal credit, we delay bringing these lone parents closer to the labour market, delay making any benefit savings but, more importantly, delay lifting more children in lone-parent households out of poverty.

Picking up the point on the current economic situation, it is important that we do not repeat the mistakes of past slowdowns and allow people to slip into inactivity. In fact, one of the best things about this economic slowdown—and there are not many good things about it—is that we have not let more people fall into inactivity. In fact, there is less economic inactivity now than a couple of years ago. Maintaining our active labour market policies will ensure that people, including lone parents, do not become detached from the labour market and are well placed to benefit when the economy picks up again.

As noble Lords are aware, this is especially significant because, compared to a child of a lone parent who is not working, a child of a lone parent who works part-time is almost three times less likely to be living in poverty, and a child of a lone parent who works full time is five times less likely to be living in poverty. While we want lone parents to enter work, we do not want them to do so at the expense of their caring responsibilities. This is why we maintained the right for lone parents to restrict their availability for work to school hours, and we will retain all other flexibilities within jobseeker’s allowance to ensure that lone parents can balance caring for their child while working. I described all those measures in Committee, and I shall not do so again given the lateness of the hour.

I stress that this initiative is an important lever in lifting lone parent families out of poverty. If it were delayed until October 2013, it would result in about 17,000 fewer lone parents being in work, which in turn would prevent increases in household income for up to 25,000 children. However, in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I am conscious of the importance of putting together training and employment strategies. When I wrote my report in 2007, the two strategies were so far apart that they never met. They are moving together, and my view is that we should move them as close as we possibly can, so the door is particularly wide open to discuss with the noble Baroness and, perhaps, with Gingerbread how we can achieve that in the months and years to come.

With that explanation, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 69 withdrawn.