Universal Credit
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the combined impact, to date, of the payment of universal credit monthly in arrears and the seven-day waiting period before it can be claimed.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)
I recognise the concern about impact, especially about arrears, as we discussed last week, but many claimants come to UC with final earnings to support them until their first payment and often find work quickly. Waiting days apply to those most likely to find work and various claimant support initiatives are available, including advances, dedicated work coaches and budgeting support. DWP is keeping a close eye on this area and hopes to publish data later this year.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, in the survey of council home providers to which my noble friend Lord McKenzie referred last week, 100% of respondents cited the six-week wait for the first UC payment as a key factor in rent arrears. It is also a factor in food bank referrals. Will the Minister now, as a first step, remove the seven-day waiting period, as called for by the National Federation of ALMOS and ARCH, bearing in mind that his department’s data show that lower-paid workers are more likely to be paid weekly and not have savings to fall back on?
Lord Freud
I am looking at this area. The figures have to be looked at very carefully to see what they are really showing us. We are looking at a group going to UC who are changing their circumstances. The difference between what happens to them as they go on to housing benefit compared with the legacy benefits is not as great as I initially thought. But I am taking this seriously and I will look at it personally with the department to ensure that we get the right answer.
Poverty
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for pursuing this important issue so single-mindedly, building on what he achieved with the Big Issue. Recently, in his Big Issue column, he distinguished between poverty advocates, of whom he was rather critical, and poverty dismantlers. I suspect that he would classify me as a poverty advocate, but I believe that this is a false dichotomy because most poverty advocates also want to dismantle poverty and agree on the need for upstream measures to prevent poverty in the first place. We also believe that we must do what we can to ameliorate poverty in the shorter term, to relieve human suffering, which is very real in this rich country of ours.
Of course, we all agree that we need to tackle the causes of poverty, but there is less agreement on what those causes are, and whether we should seek them primarily in individual agency and behaviour or in structural, societal, economic and political forces. For all their talk of tackling root causes, the Government, who emphasise individual behaviour, tend to conflate and confuse causes, consequences, symptoms and risk factors, and to ignore the distinction between underlying causes and proximate risk factors. So, for example, family breakdown, which the Government often cite as a cause, is a risk factor, but the extent to which it causes poverty varies between societies, reflecting, for instance, labour market, childcare and social security policies.
It has become fashionable to reject the idea that lack of money causes poverty. Of course, it is not an underlying cause. It does not explain why someone has an inadequate income. Nevertheless, money matters. With regard to child poverty, a Joseph Rowntree Foundation evidence review concluded:
“There is strong evidence that households’ financial resources are important for children’s outcomes, and that this relationship”,
is causal, and that even small income changes can have a large cumulative impact over a range of domains affecting children’s well-being and development, including education, which has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords.
Another JRF evidence review challenges the Government’s contention that addiction and debt are significant causes of poverty. It found that,
“the problem of addiction, while severe for those affected, is not common among those that are in poverty—only a small fraction are affected. … Overall … general patterns of drug use and alcohol consumption exhibit little correlation with poverty or social class”.
While there is more of a problem at the extremes, the evidence suggests that disadvantage and exclusion precede severe addiction problems.
Similarly, with regard to debt, the review found that persistently low income and,
“structural features—in particular insecure and low-paid jobs alongside low benefit levels—are important factors leading to indebtedness”.
It also challenges the assumption underlying much policy that so-called welfare dependency is a key causal driver.
An ethnographic study of a food bank that I helped to launch recently puts flesh on these abstract arguments. The author, Kayleigh Garthwaite, observed that,
“for most of the people I met, the reasons that kept them returning to the foodbank were long-term, embedded structural factors such as low income, insecure work or problems in accessing or sustaining their social security benefits”.
And she witnessed the shame and humiliation that they felt at having to go to a food bank to meet their most basic needs.
In emphasising structural causes, I am not denying the agency of people living in poverty, as exemplified by the hard work involved in getting by and/or trying to get out of poverty. I second what the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, said about listening to people in poverty and acknowledging the expertise born of experience. However, an acclaimed cross-national analysis of the causes of poverty by the American sociologist David Brady concluded that, ultimately, poverty is the result of political choices. To quote his final words:
“As long as debates about poverty are more about the poor than about the state and society, poverty will continue to haunt the economic progress of affluent Western democracies”.
So, in taking note of the case for tackling the causes of poverty, we need to look not to the actions of the poor and the powerless—and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby talked about the importance of power—but to the actions of the powerful. Here I welcome very much what the new Prime Minister said yesterday on the doorstep of No. 10.
Poverty Programmes: Audit
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Freud
My Lords, that question goes along exactly the lines that we are going along in trying to transform the welfare system. We aim to create programmes that promote independence among people and the centrepiece of that is universal credit. Within universal credit we have developed what we call a test and learn approach, which monitors the behavioural responses very closely.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister referred to work as the best route out of poverty. Can he explain how salami-slicing financial support for low-income workers, including in the flagship universal credit scheme, is contributing to reducing poverty through paid work, noting that the welcome increase in the minimum wage will not and cannot compensate for such cuts?
Lord Freud
The design of universal credit, which the noble Baroness is looking at, is very different from existing legacy benefits. It incorporates real incentives to work more and we are already seeing people who are on universal credit looking to work more, looking to do more hours and looking to earn more in a way that they were not on legacy benefits. At the same time as we have those reductions to which she referred, we are moving the basic national living wage up and increasing childcare very substantially in order to go to a low-welfare, low-tax environment.
Welfare
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Freud
We were told by Paul Gray, who did a study of this, that there was something going wrong with the way that the aids and appliances element was adding up. There were eight different categories and the points were tiered up. He thought that that was not going right and that a large number of people were getting PIP purely on this one category—that the figures were adding up in an odd way. That is what the consultation was about: it was driven by the need to make sure that it worked. When it got wrapped up into a debate on savings, that was not the driving force and it became something that was not acceptable to Conservatives in the Commons. It was decided, therefore, that we would not go ahead with it. That is the honest and full answer.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s Statement. When he said that there would be no further social security cuts looking ahead, does that mean that there will be no further cuts for the lifetime of this Parliament, as was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor? Having paid tribute to his former boss, could the Minister say whether he agrees with him that the reduction in the welfare cap following the election was arbitrary and that therefore he—Mr Iain Duncan Smith—no longer could support it?
Lord Freud
The Statement said—and I think I need to stay very close to the Statement—that there will not be any further welfare savings. That is the Statement and I will leave it at that. What happened with the review of the level of the cap was that it came down post-election. However, that was not arbitrary: it reflected the level of welfare payments in those categories and was fixed at that level with a projection that ran the same way. If that sounds complicated, it is because it is quite complicated.
Housing: Underoccupancy Charge
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Freud
We keep this under review and, as I said, we have increased the amount quite substantially for the next five-year period. Currently, local authorities have been somewhat underspending and we get a small return of the money that they do not spend. The bulk of local authorities, at the halfway point of the current financial year, have been spending under 50% of their allocation.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, two-fifths of local authorities whose policies are online make it clear that payment is short term, while nearly a third specify a fixed period for discretionary housing payments. The Minister’s own evaluation report warned that,
“this funding is by its nature short term and offers tenants little certainty over their future”,
which is particularly relevant to disabled people and domestic violence victims. How much longer will the Minister pray in aid discretionary housing payments to justify an unjustifiable policy?
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Manzoor (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for bringing forward his amendment, and I am pleased that the Government have seen sense on the need to publish these important measures. They will help policymakers and others better to understand the issues affecting child poverty and the levers that may be used to help to lift children out of poverty. The argument with the Government was never really about their life chances measures, which it is clear will provide an important point of reference for policy interventions in the incredibly complex and multifaceted problem of child poverty. It was about understanding that, while child attainment and parental worklessness are important to understanding the problem, the money in a parent’s pocket is still important to understand when seeking to help to lift children out of poverty.
I understand the Minister’s concerns that focusing entirely on income risks the “poverty plus a pound” approach to policy. However, I equally understand that, for example, an intervention in the cost of transport may help to boost attainment, because you can understand that the cost of the bus for extra classes costs more than most of the families that you are trying to help can actually afford. That means that you must have access to data on income; that is important. These four additional measures will help, and not hinder, the Government’s attempt to take a more active approach to this issue. I am particularly pleased with the inclusion of the long-term poverty measure in subsection (1)(d), and I suspect that there may even be policy officials within DWP itself who will find that measure helpful in developing interventions.
This is a good compromise and I am pleased that the Minister has been able to achieve it. Thank you.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I warmly welcome Amendments 1B to 1D, and I offer my thanks to various people, at the risk of sounding a bit like an Oscar winner, which I am not. First, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who spearheaded the original amendment and made such a powerful speech on Report and again today. I thank the Minister for listening, hearing and bringing forward what I agree is a pretty fair compromise at this stage. As he said, it gives legal status to the commitment to continue publishing the very important HBAI statistics. Also, there was a letter to the Times last week from nearly 180 academics, including those at the forefront of child poverty measurement, including Professor Sir Michael Marmot—I declare an interest as one of the signatories in my academic capacity. Despite what the Minister said, I think that they will see this as recognition of what was said in that letter: income and material deprivation should be at the heart of child poverty measurement, because such indicators are vital to our ability to track the impact of economic and policy change. I thank Dr Kitty Stewart of the LSE, who organised that letter, and all those who signed it, along with the voluntary organisations that have worked tirelessly to achieve something like this outcome.
Last, but by no means least, I thank Rebecca, a mother of two who, off her own bat but with the help of CPAG, launched a petition to keep the measures and collected 50,000 signatures in less than a month. Writing in the latest edition of CPAG’s journal Poverty, she said that she had been very moved as she read through many of the words written by people explaining why they were supporting the petition. She concluded that we should make sure that all children who are living in poverty are counted in the measures so that we can really see if things are getting better for them. She wrote:
“Children in poverty already feel poor and disadvantaged, why should they also be unnoticed?”.
Amen to that.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)
My Lords, I have been studying these figures for as long as anyone. I start by acknowledging that I do not think the change would have happened without the direct personal intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Freud. I am very grateful to him, as the whole House should be, because he has the weight to be able to do these things and has the knowledge and understanding of what it means to people.
This gives me a lot more confidence that policymakers within the Conservative Government are not running away from the extent of this problem. I never really believed that that was the case, but this change means that they are not giving the impression that they do not want to see any of these figures published. Individually, these figures—they are relative, and there are well-recognised problems about relative measures—establish trends over time. That is important. Sixty per cent of national median income is perfectly well understood. It is a bellwether figure which we must all bear at the front of our minds as these policies unfold in future.
I remind colleagues that in the last figures the HBAI produced, in 2013-14, something like 17% of British children were in poverty. That is a ballpark figure of 2.3 million in all. That is a serious situation. If that is not difficult enough looking back, looking forward, the best estimate that I can find—the most accurate, up-to-date figure—is the projection that that figure might rise from 2.3 million to 3.8 million by 2020. That is the biggest increase in my generation and an issue of some concern. Obviously there are very difficult financial circumstances, and austerity has to be factored into the policy mix, but it struck fear in my heart when, speaking from Hong Kong, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that he is looking for further savings in public expenditure. Looking forward to 2020, I think the pupil premium will help a lot in England, and the educational attainment and childcare provisions will help, but I do not think that the Government’s life chances strategy, as currently set out and planned, will deal with the projected increase in child poverty. That is serious and it is what we should be spending time on.
Having said that, reassurance will be provided by the Government accepting these figures and adding persistent poverty, which is a particularly important indicator, although it should be rebased, and I understand the technical need for that. This is a good and welcome step but, more than anything else, I want to acknowledge that it would not have happened without the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Freud.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, perhaps I may respond briefly to the points that we have heard in the last three speeches, which I listened to with great interest and respect. The points fall into two categories: one is on the substantive issues about the benefit changes; the other is the argument about the procedural changes mentioned in the amendment.
On the substantive changes about whether ESA claimants in the WRAG should have their benefits realigned with those on JSA, with comparable changes to those on universal credit, the reality is that these changes have been debated extensively by both Houses. They were debated most recently last Tuesday in the other place, where after a three-hour debate the House of Commons insisted with a majority of 27—above the Government’s national majority—that the changes which we made should be resisted. The time has come to recognise, as I think the noble Baroness has just indicated, that we should respect the view of the Commons on this.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, said that the Government lost the argument but won the vote. Whether one has won the argument is a subjective decision and I happen to take a different view. Whether one won the vote is not a subjective decision, and that is the basis on which we should proceed. I hope that those who have expressed anxieties have been reassured by what my noble friend Lord Freud said in introducing this debate. There is the increase of £15 million for the flexible support fund, aimed at those with limited capabilities for work and enabling them to attend job interviews and training courses. I hope that that reassurance and the extra resources will allay some of the concerns that have been expressed.
Amendments 8B and 9B seem, briefly, to be going in exactly the opposite direction to that in which the House wanted to go in the context of the debate on my noble friend Lord Strathclyde’s report where, by and large, we wanted more done in primary legislation and less in statutory instruments. In that debate, I urged the Government to set the tone for constructive discussion by not using SIs where primary legislation is more appropriate. These amendments go in precisely the opposite direction to what I think the majority of the House wanted by putting the substantive change not in the primary legislation but in the statutory instrument. That would deny the opportunity for a conversation, which the House has always preferred, because the SI would not allow that. In effect, the amendment would give the House of Lords a veto over this part of the legislation, which the House of Commons has approved, and we would be back in the same territory as we were last October. I, for one, do not want to be back in that debate again and I hope, for those reasons, that the amendment will be resisted.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I strongly support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston. He has made a strong case today, as he and other colleagues have made consistently, yet the Government continue simply to repeat that the original clauses will improve work incentives and somehow provide more support for disabled people moving into work, without any convincing evidence. Indeed, in the Commons the Minister fell back on the assertion that the Government strongly believe that this is the right thing to do. However, she did not even convince all her own Back-Benchers. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, a number of them had grave reservations about steaming ahead without the kind of evidence that is being sought, never mind the reservations and concerns of the wider constituency of disabled people and disability organisations.
However, the main point I want to make is the one that I and the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Thomas of Winchester, made on Report, which was brought to our attention by Sue Royston. Because the limited capacity for work element acts, in effect, as a gateway to the extra £30 in universal credit to cover the additional cost for disabled people in work, abolition means significant future losses for the very group the Government say they want to support. When the three of us made the point on Report, the Minister did not provide any substantive response. I did not receive the letter until just now, so it is possible that I have not read it properly. I have a horrible feeling that it might be languishing in my junk email folder, because a number of previous letters from the Minister finally turned up in that folder—I do not know what my email knows.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, in responding to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, I do not want to go over the debate we had last time, although I pointed out then that in the survey to which he referred, the policy implication it was drawing out more was the need to improve in-work benefits. Since that debate, it has been drawn to my attention that the loss of the limited capability for work element of universal credit will cut the benefits received by disabled people in work. I cannot believe that this is the intended consequence.
This matter was brought to my attention by Sue Royston. I will simply read out what she sent me, as otherwise I could get it wrong—welfare rights can get a bit complicated. She wrote:
“Under Universal Credit, the main additional financial support for disabled people in work to cover their extra costs in work is the limited capability for work element. Any person requiring additional support because of a health condition/impairment will therefore have to take the work capability assessment … and be placed in the limited capability for work group (WRAG group) even if they are working more than 16 hours a week. Anyone on Universal Credit who qualifies for the limited capability for work element currently receives an extra £30 in their Universal Credit regardless of the hours they work.
The limited capability for work element and for some disabled people additional support through the disabled person’s work allowance is meant to replace the additional support disabled people in work of 16 hours or more receive in the current system through the disabled workers element of working tax credit …
Removing the limited capability for work element in Universal Credit will … reduce substantially the additional support a disabled person in work can receive to help with their additional costs … 116,000 disabled people currently receive the disabled workers element in tax credits”.
I cannot believe that this is an intended consequence.
I support the amendment but I hope that, if it is unsuccessful, the Minister will look at this matter. It completely flies in the face of what is said to be one of the purposes of these provisions. Perhaps we need to come back to this on Third Reading because we did not look at it properly in Committee. Only the experts in welfare rights pick up something like this and draw it to our attention. It is a very important point that rather undermines the argument that this is all about improving work incentives, which the noble Lord, Lord Low, had already pretty well destroyed as an argument.
Finally, I do not think that I have ever said that paid work is a cul-de-sac. I have said that the danger is that it becomes a cul-de-sac and that depends on what happens to people who are in paid work. If I said it, I certainly did not mean it. It is the danger that we cannot assume that paid work is a route out of poverty. It certainly will not be a route out of poverty for disabled people if we cut their income by £30 a week.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, as I said in Committee, if this reduction in benefits for the disabled is about incentivising work rather than simply cutting costs from the benefit budget, I support the Government’s intention. However, the way in which they are going about the task to cut ESA WRAG and its universal credit counterparts is misguided. Clearly, other noble Lords agree with that. For that reason, I am inclined to support the removal of Clauses 13 and 14.
A number of noble Lords have spoken about this stubborn disability employment gap—this sad indictment on a society that has perhaps for too long been willing to ignore the aspirations of the disabled to engage fully in society through work. Reference has already been made to the Government’s impact assessment, which found that 61% of those in the work-related activity group want the opportunity to earn a living. It is quite right that the Government have committed to halving the disability employment gap. The problem is that this is a complex issue. Some have a physical disability, others a mental disability. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Manzoor and Lady Meacher, said, people with chronic illnesses are also lumped into this group.
I declare an interest, in that my sister works for the motor neurone disease charity, which has met with me about this. It is deeply worried about this. This is a disease the progression of which is so rapid that many people would be way beyond any possibility of doing any work even before they get any sort of assessment. It is vital for people with this devastating diagnosis—many are young with children—to have all the support that they need immediately.
However, if this cut continues under the Government’s strategy, I fear that it will be a poor strategy. Indeed, I fully concur with the review into these clauses, published by the noble Lord, Lord Low, which found that,
“the Government’s impact assessment of the removal of the ESA WRAG component is lacking in depth and quality”.
It may be that the case for a cut in benefits will act as an incentive to encourage the fully able to find employment, but I have still to see the evidence that that will apply for the disabled. By removing nearly £1,500 from the future budgets of those who join ESA WRAG or those receiving universal credit limited capability for work, it seems that all the Government are likely to succeed in doing is push more disabled people into poverty, and, as others have said, probably destroy what little confidence and hope that they have as they want to get back into work. Those in this group are not in the same position as fully able JSA claimants and should not be treated as such; many are likely to remain in the WRAG for an extended period and their benefits situation must reflect this reality.
Like many noble Lords, I have met people who are disabled who are longing to get back to work. I do not believe that the basic problem is one of incentivising them. It really is a different problem—one of perception. I remember when I was an archdeacon many years ago and we made some major steps when legislation first came through to get ramps for every one of our churches. We looked at these problems and thought, “How on earth are we ever going to do it?”. Actually, there was a massive change of attitude, partly because we insisted that some of the people who argued against it got in wheelchairs and got themselves into churches. They discovered just how difficult it was. I have to confess that I had a change of perception; I had not got my mind around it.
I believe that we have an even bigger leap to take now. The vast majority of disabled people will need customised, individual help. That is part of the issue and the problem. What is needed is not so much carrot-and-stick incentives, but a wider strategy that helps disabled people to overcome the many challenges that they face in entering, or re-entering and staying in, the workplace. We need programmes and interventions designed to help these groups into employment, not arbitrary cuts to the living standards of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
“( ) in section 14 (claimant commitment) after subsection (5) insert—“(6) In preparing a claimant commitment for a claimant, the Secretary of State shall have regard (so far as is practicable) to its impact on the wellbeing of any child who may be affected by it.””
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, Amendment 44A is in my name and the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, who tabled a similar amendment in Committee. We return to the issue because we were not satisfied with the response in Committee to what we believe is a strong case for explicitly writing into the claimant commitment a provision to ensure that regard is had to the best interests of any child cared for by the claimant, in line with Article 3.1 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Thus the aim of the amendment is to ensure that the well-being of any child is taken into account when a job coach agrees a claimant commitment, which records a claimant’s responsibilities and the agreed actions that they will take to seek and find work. This is something that the Office of the Children’s Commissioner has pressed for as well.
The other reason for returning to the issue is to ask what has happened to a similar provision that was inserted into the Welfare Reform Act 2009, as Section 31, during its passage through your Lordships’ House. I am sure that my noble friend Lord McKenzie will talk about this as well, because he was responsible for adding that section in response to a series of amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, which had the support of the Conservative Opposition, whose spokesperson was the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, made a very telling point:
“A work action plan would not be worth its salt if it harmed a participant’s children in some way, through unsuitable hours or a lack of suitable childcare. I suspect that the Minister will resist these amendments by saying that of course we would expect any back-to-work plan to take into account the needs of children. If that is so, he should not be afraid to accept these amendments, or ones very similar to them, as a confirmation of that”.—[Official Report, 11/6/09; col. GC 167-8.]
I am tempted to leave it there and say, “I rest my case, my Lords”. However, there is a bit more to be said, and before turning to today’s amendment, I want to ask the Minister why Section 31 has not yet been brought into force seven years later. When Emily Thornberry MP asked a Question about this recently in the other place, the Employment Minister responded:
“There are no current plans to bring into force Section 31 of the Welfare Reform Act 2009”.
Why not? The case for it is all the stronger today, as conditionality has been ratcheted up with its gradual extension to parents with ever younger children, so that under this Bill parents of children aged three will be expected to move into paid work.
When we debated a similar amendment in Committee, the noble Baroness replied pretty much on the line anticipated by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, back in 2009. She painted a rather idealised picture of the kind of conversation that work coaches have with claimants, not recognised by organisations such as Gingerbread working in the field. I should say here that I am grateful to Gingerbread for its help with this amendment. She suggested that the aim of the amendment was,
“achievable through existing legislation and it would be unduly burdensome to set out this level of detail in primary legislation”.—[Official Report, 9/12/15; col. 1664.]
However, this is not about some technical detail; it is about a basic principle enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the Government have signed up. In what way is it burdensome? The implication is that it would be burdensome for job coaches always to ensure that regard is had for a child’s well-being. To repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, said, a claimant commitment,
“would not be worth its salt if it harmed a participant’s children in some way”,
for instance, through unsuitable hours or unaffordable or inaccessible childcare. I know that Ministers think that parental paid work is intrinsically in the best interests of children, but, as I said in Committee, the evidence from academic work is actually more nuanced than that. The evidence also shows that the existing guidance for parents of young children is too often not followed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, spoke in support of what became Section 31 during the 2009 debate. She was also part of a 2015 inquiry into women on jobseeker’s allowance, the launch of which I attended. That found evidence of divergence from the guidance in the claimant commitment that parents were asked to sign. This included a survey of lone parents that found that nearly a third of them stated that their commitment was written entirely by their adviser without any input from them and did not take account of their need also to care for their child. It is a common theme on Gingerbread’s helpline each month that parents of young children have been given inappropriate instruction that did not take account of the well-being of their children.
I will give just three examples from within the past six months. A parent with a two year-old child was wrongly told by her adviser that she needed to look for paid work. She is currently not required to do that until her child is five. A mother of a five year-old child had to sign a claimant commitment to say that she had to look for full-time work. She should have been able to look for work during school hours only. A caller with a 20 month-old child was wrongly told by her adviser at the jobcentre that she had to look for work or do courses, or her benefit would stop. These are just examples of what we described in Committee as the “parallel universe” occupied by claimants and their advisers on the ground, so different from the one described by Ministers.
The noble Baroness the Minister also said:
“It would also not be fair only to prescribe that claimant commitments must contain information relating to the well-being of children”.—[Official Report, 9/12/15; col. 1664.]
Could she expand on that, please? In what way would it not be fair to ensure that regard is had to the well-being of children in drawing up a claimant commitment? The intention is not that the commitment has to contain information about any child’s well-being; we are not looking for a survey of how children are doing, or the kind of survey that my noble friend Lord McKenzie was talking about the other day in relation to well-being. It just needs to show that regard has been had to it in a way that was clearly not the case in the examples cited.
Once more I refer back to the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, when he was speaking for the Conservative Opposition: why, if a child’s well-being is being taken into account by work coaches during the drafting of agreements, would the Minister be afraid to have this written into legislation? I urge the department to bring Section 31 of the Welfare Reform Act 2009 into force without further delay and to accept this amendment, or bring forward a similar amendment, at Third Reading. I beg to move.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. The noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, asked what there is to object to. It is a good question. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, gave a very good example of what happens when a child is unwell. But the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, in a sense finished off the argument by talking about the implications of the well-being of the child not being taken into account in a culture where many people are sanctioned—and, as the evidence from her inquiry showed, sometimes sanctioned for the wrong reasons.
I am again disappointed by the Minister’s response. It seemed simply to repeat the arguments that were made in Committee and did not really engage with the counter-arguments that I put. She said that Section 31 applies to JSA ESA. Yes, many lone parents are still claiming those benefits and will be for some time. As we know, universal credit is being rolled out slowly and the more complicated cases will move on to it more slowly, so why is it not being introduced in the mean time? I find it very sad that the good work of my noble friend Lord McKenzie is gathering dust. In fact, it was the good work done by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that started it all, because it was his amendments that triggered this section, but nothing has happened. Therefore, I am afraid that the fact that it is JSA ESA is irrelevant.
This is not just one other detail; the best interests of the child is a fundamental principle that policy-making and legislation is supposed to have regard to in this country, or in any country that has signed up to the UN convention. So I am disappointed. Again, we have evidence of a sort of parallel universe where all the wonderful conversations are being had. It is excellent that the training is happening and I welcome that. However, as I understand it, when lone parents had bespoke advisers who understood the issues, rather than generic job coaches, they tended to be treated much better than they are now.
The helplines of organisations such as Gingerbread are constantly showing that the best interests of the child are not being taken into account. When this Bill is out of the way, I wonder whether the noble Lord or the noble Baroness would be willing to meet those organisations to talk about why there is this difference in perception, and perhaps we could have another look at Section 31.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I very much appreciate that. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Family Test
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what impact the Family Test has had on policy-making.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Altmann) (Con)
My Lords, the family test is an integral part of the policy-making process. There is a cross-government commitment to embed the family test in all domestic policy considerations. The Department for Work and Pensions has established a dedicated team to support government departments and ensure that the family test is applied in a meaningful way.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, the DWP recommends, in its guidance to other departments on the family test, that they consider publication of any assessment. However, it has rejected calls from family organisations and faith groups that it should do so itself on the policy in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill to limit financial support to two children. Could the Minister explain why? Will she commit to routine publication in future, in the interests of transparency and of the explicit family perspective on policy-making that we were promised?
Baroness Altmann
My Lords, the family test is included in and incorporated into advice to Ministers on new policy. It is not a pass or fail exercise; it is about helping to make informed decisions about how to support strong and stable families. It is much broader than a tick-box exercise, which seems to be the thrust of the question.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate has made a very convincing, strong argument for retaining income and, as he pointed out, deprivation measures. We talk about income measures as shorthand but it is important to remember that the measures in the Child Poverty Act include a deprivation measure.
The 2012 consultation, to which the right reverend Prelate referred, said:
“There can be no doubt that income is a key part of our understanding of child poverty … Household income has a significant impact on childhood and life chances … The impact of growing up in a low income household can last a lifetime”.
That consultation was premised on income being one element of a multidimensional measure, and it made it clear that the Government are not playing a zero-sum game with child poverty measurement as between income and multidimensional indicators. It is not clear what has changed since then. Why have the Government changed their view on that? Do they no longer believe that income is important, despite the evidence, as the right reverend Prelate said, from their own life chances review, which made very clear the impact of low-income, low-material resources on life chances, and despite the advice that they received from their own Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission? Its response to the consultation was that any new multidimensional measure,
“should be supplementary to the existing framework”,
and it looked to the Government to make clear their commitment,
“to maintain the centrality of income in measuring poverty”.
More recently, it said that it is simply not credible to try to improve the life chances of poor children without acknowledging the importance of income on those life chances and that, without an assessment of income, any measure would be inadequate.
As the right reverend Prelate said, the response to the consultation was overwhelmingly in favour of maintaining measures of income and deprivation. That included a response from the Royal Statistical Society, the academic scientific community and civil society organisations. In Committee, my noble friend Lady Blackstone, who is not in her place today, asked what alternative scientific advice the Government had to, in a sense, overturn that overwhelming response, but I do not think that we heard an answer to that.
It may seem rather academic and people may ask: why are we talking about measures; what does this matter? Actually, it matters a lot, and it is quite significant that a petition has been presented. Over 50,000 people care enough about this, and one woman in the country collected these signatures because people do care. If there is no statutory obligation for income and deprivation measures, it looks as though the Government think it simply does not matter if people do not have a sufficient income to live on.
There is no mention of targets in the amendment, unlike the amendment that was put forward in Committee, acknowledging, as the right reverend Prelate said, that the Government are reluctant to sign up to targets. In Committee, all I heard in response to the arguments put was an argument against targets. I did not hear any convincing argument against low-income and deprivation measures. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will think again and respond positively to the right reverend Prelate’s amendment.
Lord Northbourne (CB)
My Lords, on this kind of issue I am usually very much on the side of those who are sorry for those who have problems. But I think a much stronger case would be made if the amendment could be rephrased so as to take into account the possibility that, at times, the family themselves ought to do more to create the income that they so desperately need. I have not come prepared with any evidence but, being involved in issues around child poverty, I hear a good deal to suggest that a number of families prefer to live on benefits rather than go to work. I do not blame them for doing that, but I think they should share their responsibility in providing that income which, indeed, is so essential.
Lord Freud
The noble Baroness is making a presumption that the suite of four is self-reinforcing and that the weaknesses of one are balanced by the strengths of the others, but I hope that I have been able to describe that there is no necessary reason why they should be self-reinforcing. In fact, they may be taking us all in the wrong direction. That is the presumption that I challenge.
On the right reverend Prelate’s points, the consultation demonstrated support for a wider range of measures of child poverty beyond income. More than 90% of respondents showed support for measures that drive the Government’s action in tackling child poverty. Our new approach—this is a point that the noble Baroness made—has been informed by our evidence review, which underlies the crucial importance that worklessness and educational attainment play in improving children’s life chances.
Poverty is highly complex and affected by a large number of interrelated factors. The evidence review showed that low income is one of several factors affecting educational outcomes, but worklessness is the most important driver of low income. The evidence also showed that the best way to increase incomes and exit poverty is to enter work. We want to drive the action that will make that difference. That is why the two measures cover worklessness and educational attainment.
On the point about working families with low incomes, work remains the best route out of poverty. Around 75% of poor children in families where parents move into full employment leave poverty altogether. We will return to this on a later amendment, so I will not go into it in any more detail.
The income measures that the amendment would introduce are essentially symbolic. It is important that we recognise this for both sides of the debate. The Opposition have laid out their argument of how these measures are a symbol of where the Government should focus their action. However, to us they are a symbol of the old world—of how easy it is for Governments to be incentivised to push people’s incomes £1 above the poverty line without any real transformation to their lives. This is of huge importance to us as we want to move away from these types of drivers and instead focus on the right type of actions.
In response to the concerns from the right reverend Prelate and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, about the information, the Government have made a strong commitment to continue to publish the HBAI figures. I should add that HBAI is a national statistic. That means that it complies with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, which states that it must be produced independently of political influence. That may be a stronger position to protect the statistics than a statutory base. It is hard for them to be removed.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
The Minister says that the figures are independent. What if those producing them are under great financial pressure, and they look around and think, “What measures can we stop? What data can we stop collecting and statistics stop analysing?”. They could say, “The Government show that they’re not interested in these statistics, so perhaps we should stop analysing them”. Whatever the Minister says, without a statutory obligation we cannot be absolutely sure that those statistics will continue to be produced and analysed. That is one reason why we had a bit of a debate on this in Committee. The Minister said that he thought that the only real difference between us was the word “statutory”. That is why we believe that statutory accountability is so important.
Lord Freud
We have made this commitment to continue to publish the HBAI figures. They are national statistics and part of what is almost a huge industry of measurement around the world, as countries do it in the same way. It is always conceivable that that outcome could happen, but in the real world it is almost unthinkable.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
If countries around the world are doing it in the same way, does that not suggest that it is the right way?
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
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“( ) children in low income households where one or both parents are in work.”
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 8 I shall speak also to Amendment 11. Once more I have the support of my de facto noble friend Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope. I am also grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who expressed his support when moving his amendment. These amendments bring up the rear of his amendment but complement and cement it. We do not know what will happen to his amendment in the other place but, because it is partly based on the need to take account of what is happening to children in working families as well as in workless families, it is important that we still debate it.
The purpose of these amendments is to balance the obligation introduced by Clause 4 to report data on children in workless households with a similar obligation in regard to children in low-income working households. As I argued in Committee, whether the primary concern is life chances, as in the Bill, or child poverty, which Ministers assure us they are still committed to eliminating, it cannot make sense to exclude from reporting obligations the two-thirds of children living in poverty in households where at least one parent is in paid work. Indeed, in the mean time the Prime Minister has repeated his welcome pledge of an “all-out assault on poverty”. Surely an all-out assault has to include this group. It is therefore appropriate that the poverty and disadvantage experienced by families with a wage earner should be included in the life chances reporting obligations.
The fundamental importance of the issue to the Government’s life chances strategy and assault on poverty is one of the reasons I return to it on Report. Its importance is underlined by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission in its latest State of the Nation report. It states:
“A One Nation country would be one where work offered a guaranteed path out of poverty”,
and it documents how it fails to do so. As I said in Committee, the amendment has the support of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and End Child Poverty.
The other reason I am returning to this issue is that I was not satisfied with the Minister’s response to the arguments put in Committee. For instance, I specifically asked him to answer a question posed by my noble friend Lady Hollis of Heigham at Second Reading: how will the Government account for the poverty among children of working families? His response had been to refer to the continued publication of the HBAI statistics, which was welcome, but he did not give an explanation of the lack of any reporting obligation on this matter to ensure accountability with regard to in-work poverty. He still did not provide a satisfactory explanation under questioning in Committee.
The Minister pointed out that the current situation of the majority of children in relative poverty living in a family where at least one parent is in paid work,
“has developed over the past couple of decades due to the improved progress in tackling poverty in workless families”.—[Official Report, 9/12/15; col. 1586.].
That is fair enough up to a point but is no answer to the question in hand, nor is the fact that the risk of child poverty remains higher among workless households. Whatever the trend or the reasons for it, and whatever the relative risks, it does not absolve the Government of the responsibility to report to Parliament and the country what is happening to children in poverty, regardless of their parents’ employment status.
If the Government are reporting only on children in workless households, they will distort the overall life chances picture and the policy responses. Given that paid work is held out as the route out of poverty and the universal credit’s objectives, surely the Government will want to know what is happening to those who have set out on this route and to analyse any obstacles they encounter.
In Committee, we engaged in a textual analysis of the Government’s own publication An Evidence Review of the Drivers of Child Poverty worthy of an academic seminar. In the end, it all seemed to come down to whether, in its reference to “low earnings”—I note that the Minister carefully omitted reference to that part of the report yet again in his earlier responses—as a key factor, along with worklessness, that impacts on children’s life chances, “low earnings” was in brackets. The Minister seemed to suggest that, because it was in brackets, that meant low earnings “out of worklessness”. I was not sure what he meant by that. I have gone back to the original source and it is clear that the key passages contain no brackets.
To recap, the table on page 6 listing “Relative influence of factors on length of child poverty spell” is headed by “Long-term worklessness & low earnings”. The review spells out that,
“lack of sufficient income from parental employment … is not just about worklessness, but also working insufficient hours and/or low pay”.
Page 9 states:
“The key factor for child poverty now is parental worklessness and low earnings”.
Page 56 summarises the key finding:
“Long-term worklessness and low-earnings are principal drivers of child poverty and the key transfer mechanism through which the majority of other influential factors act”.
Note the “and” and the “and” and the “and”.
The significance of what we, in shorthand, call “in-work poverty” is not surprising, given the nature of the contemporary labour market. A new analysis of the Poverty and Social Exclusion survey by Professor Nick Bailey of Glasgow University shows that,
“one in three adults in paid work is in poverty, or in insecure or poor quality employment”.
Using various measures of in-work poverty, he found:
“one in six is in poverty on the low income measure, one in three on the deprivation measure”—
we spoke on a previous amendment about the measures being about deprivation as well as low income—
“and one in six on the combined PSE poverty measure”.
Professor Bailey wrote:
“It is particularly striking that a large minority of the working poor are working full time and/or live in a household with near full work intensity so that it is hard to see how more work can be the solution to their problems”.
He also notes that, for a substantial minority, what he terms “exclusionary employment” is an “enduring condition”.
Surely this is the kind of analysis the Government would want to draw on to balance and contextualise their focus on worklessness, not least given the extent to which parents on low income move in and out of paid work and worklessness in what has come to be known as the “low pay, no pay cycle”. Indeed, the fluidity of the dividing line between paid work and worklessness, which universal credit in effect recognises, makes a nonsense of a life-chances measure that ignores one side of the disadvantaged labour market position of low-income parents.
When I withdrew my amendment in Committee and warned that I might return to it on Report, I finished by saying that perhaps by then the Minister would have come up with some more convincing arguments than he had done hitherto. However, I realise that I was being rather unfair to him, because I do not believe that there are any convincing arguments, so how could he be expected to do so? Instead, it would be refreshing and welcome if he were able now to accept this amendment—which, after all, allows the Government to define their terms—or, if he prefers, to undertake to bring forward a government amendment at Third Reading to achieve the same end. I beg to move.
Lord Freud
It may have made work pay for some people, but it had the effect that, while it was possible, through income transfers, to drive down the out-of-work poverty of children, which is what they were designed to do, it had virtually no impact on in-work poverty. That brought that policy to a reductio ad absurdum: you could not do it without undermining your work incentives because you were raising the level of the benefit structure and it was beginning to knock up the income scale. That was the problem; that is what the data show.
In-work poverty, combined with falling levels of children in poverty from workless families, led to a greater proportion of children in poverty being from those workless families. This meant that, from 1996-97 until the end of the last decade, the proportion of children in poverty from working families actually went up from four in 10 to six in 10. That is the reality of the situation today. I can see that there is some ideological difference to be found over that analysis.
The evidence review, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, highlighted the importance of low earnings, but emphasised the impact of working a lower number of hours, rather than the impact of low-paid work. On the question of how we will know about the levels of poverty—in work and out of work—I reassure her, as I already have, that we will have that data in the HBAI. It will continue to be available. Indeed, those in-work poverty figures in the HBAI can always be broken down by whether the family is in full-time or part-time employment.
I described why having two separate systems worked so poorly. We are introducing universal credit exactly to address those disincentives. I can tell noble Lords that I have spent the most enormous amount of personal time trying to get this structure so that we do not have these odd disincentives, which are really undermining for society. Universal credit is the best way to give people the incentive to enter work: it reduces poverty by making work pay and making sure that people do not lose out as they start to earn more, which is the terrible discontinuity in the legacy system. It provides an effective route out of poverty, while supporting the most vulnerable households. We already see the evidence under universal credit that people are working more and are better off in work.
As with Amendment 2, which we discussed earlier, these amendments would reintroduce an income-based relative poverty measure, which, as I have tried my best to explain—perhaps not as successfully as I might—do not tackle the root causes of child poverty. The Government are concerned with focusing our efforts and attention on those areas that will make a real difference to children’s lives, and concentrating on those root causes.
Resources are finite. It is crucial that we prioritise our actions to make the biggest difference for children. Statutory income measures cause the Government to focus their action and resources on direct and incremental increases to family income, but that does not necessarily drive any real change and is detrimental to the things that we think are vital—noble Lords know what I think they are.
Let us focus on the things that matter and drive the actions that will give our children the future they deserve. Let us not be distracted by measures that detract from that aim. As I said, we will continue to publish the HBAI figures so that we will know exactly what is happening. I therefore urge the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke in support of the amendment. I am grateful to the Minister, who at least went into more detail. As he expected, I was not convinced by his arguments, because I still have not really heard a convincing explanation of why there should be no accountability for what is happening. He said that we must focus on the things that matter, but surely what is happening to, for instance, the lady referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, matters? My noble friend Lady Sherlock talked about those who work such long hours that they do not see their children. We know from research at Bath University that children care about that. It talked about children and lone mothers in particular: they are glad when their mother gets paid work, but it affects them. They hardly see their mother. That time squeeze on such families is important. These things matter as well.
I do not necessarily think that this is ideological, as the Minister said. At the beginning he said that it is not the level of poverty that matters, but what is likely to happen to the life chances of children—as if these were totally separate things. The whole point, as the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission and the driver analysis said, is that life chances are affected by income poverty. Therefore, we need to know what is happening to the life chances of children, regardless of the employment status of their parents. I will not go into the detail of the trends; it is pretty much what the Minister said in Committee. I do not think that that is the point; the point is that there should be government accountability about what is happening to those who, as the Minister likes to say, are “doing the right thing”—although I am not so sure it is always doing the right thing—and who are in paid work.
I am disappointed. What the Minister said at the end suggests, if we are focusing on what matters and we do not focus on the poverty of those whose parents are in paid work, that that therefore does not matter. That says volumes. I do not suppose that low-paid parents are sitting at home watching this debate—they are probably out there working—but if they read about it or hear about it, they would say, “Don’t we matter? Don’t the hours I am putting in for little pay matter? Don’t the Government want to report on what is happening to people like me? Doesn’t it matter?”. I think that it matters enormously. However, I will not push our luck and test the opinion of the House, so, regretfully, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendments 15 to 23. I am very grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham for adding his name to them.
The amendments would rename the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission the Life Chances Commission, rather than the Social Mobility Commission, as in the Bill, so as to align the commission’s remit with the new focus on life chances introduced in the Bill and about which the Minister has spoken a lot this evening. I still think that the removal of the words “child poverty” from the commission’s title—after all, it was originally named just the Child Poverty Commission—is sending a message that the Government no longer care about child poverty, which is surely not their intention given that they assure us of their continued commitment to the elimination of child poverty. However, in the spirit of compromise, I realise that the inclusion of the “CP” words might be sensitive, so I have not included them. I return to this amendment because, as I put it in Committee, I was “desperately disappointed” by the Minister’s response, or rather lack of response, to the case we had made.
To recap that case: the amendment would, in my view, better capture the spirit of the new focus on life chances enshrined in the Bill. Thus I was, and remain, genuinely puzzled about why the Government did not use this opportunity to rename the commission the Life Chances Commission. As I said in Committee:
“At Second Reading the Minister underlined that the Government’s new approach is the life chances one, focused on transforming lives through tackling the root causes of child poverty, and he referred to the new statutory measures as key life chances measures”.—[Official Report, 9/12/15; cols. 1592-3.]
This stance was reinforced by the Prime Minister’s recent speech in which he sketched out the principles underlying the Government’s planned life chances strategy, to which the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred earlier, as did the Minister. The strategy that the Prime Minister sketched emphasises, as he put it, “a more social approach” that moves “beyond the economics” and develops “a richer picture”. In other words, it seems to me that the Prime Minister understands that a life chances agenda is less economistic and is richer than a social mobility agenda. Indeed, I suggest that social mobility is an example of the 20th century thinking—that is, old thinking—that he argues we need to move beyond.
Therefore, I welcome the Government’s introduction of the concept of life chances, even if I argue that they should pay more attention to the importance of material resources, as the current commission recognises. As I explained in Committee, I believe that it is richer than the narrower, meritocratic notion of social mobility. I drew on the work of the Fabian Commission on Life Chances and Child Poverty—chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, who is no longer in his place—of which I was a member. As a good academic, I will define my terms. The commission defined “life chances” simply as referring to the likelihood of a child achieving a range of important outcomes which occur at successive stages of the life course. Again, the Prime Minister talked about a life-cycle approach.
Therefore, the emphasis is on a range of outcomes, including health and well-being, as well as those associated with social mobility. Children must be given the chance to enjoy a happy, flourishing childhood, and to continue to thrive as they grow up. Thus, as I explained, it is about caring about children as beings as well as “becomings”, both of which can be damaged by child poverty. I suggest that, again, this chimes with the Prime Minister’s speech, which for instance emphasised factors such as mental health and character and talked about cultural disenfranchisement.
The commission preferred the concept of life chances over the narrower one of social mobility because the latter reflects the kind of economistic thinking rejected by the Prime Minister and does not embrace the idea of ensuring that everyone has the chance to live a full and flourishing life. Moreover, it ignores what happens to those who are not able, or may not want, to climb the education and career ladder. In Committee, I gave the example of someone who devotes their life to caring for others—undervalued, be it on a paid or unpaid basis. As I asked, do we want to say to children that it is an ignoble ambition to care for others instead of climbing the economic ladder? To these arguments the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham added a perhaps even stronger one—that the notion of life chances resonates with children themselves in a way that social mobility never would. I hope that he will expand on that in a moment.
In his response, the Minister maintained that the reformed commission would be able to focus more single-mindedly on social mobility, and that its remit on social mobility would be expanded. However, its overall remit is, of course, being narrowed in a way that I argue is out of line with the much broader life chances approach outlined by the Prime Minister. It also apparently excludes child poverty, which, as the current commission makes clear, undermines social mobility and restricts life chances. I believe that this will diminish the commission’s role and the value of its work. What the Minister did not do was explain why the Government believe that it is better to focus the commission’s remit on social mobility when the whole thrust of the Government’s thinking, as otherwise enshrined in the Bill, is life chances. Therefore, I was left even more puzzled at the end of our debate than at the beginning.
I know that the Minister takes our debates seriously and goes away and thinks about what has been said. Therefore, I end on a note perhaps more of hope than expectation, but I am hoping that he has done so with regard to this amendment and realised that what I am proposing is helpful to the Government’s cause and, indeed, would be welcomed by people in the field, including many who are otherwise critical of what the Government are doing in the Bill, and, indeed, as the right reverend Prelate indicated, perhaps by children themselves. I beg to move.
The Lord Bishop of Durham
My Lords, I support this amendment. Yesterday, I spent a delightful evening with a small number of academics after preaching at Evensong in an Oxford college—Worcester College. It was a very pleasant evening. However, as I sat there, I kept coming back in my mind to today’s debate because I was reminded of the extraordinary privilege of being in an Oxford college and the elite nature of it. This is not to criticise it or put it down; I had the privilege of studying in a private hall in Oxford when I trained for my ordination. However, I found myself thinking about the vast number of children and young people I meet in schools and colleges around the north-east, and have met in other parts of the country over the years, for whom such privilege is not their aim. Most of those I meet do not talk or think about being socially mobile. They do talk, however, about wanting a decent home and growing up and finding a good job on a decent wage. They also talk about having a stable, loving family through their childhood and wanting to create stable, loving families in the future. Those are the hopes and dreams of most of them. I believe that we have a lot more work to do on aspiration levels. I would love more of them to dream that one day they could go to Oxford or Cambridge, and that they can be significant players in their own communities and transform them, because that is where most will do it. Of course, we all know people who make huge impacts on their local community because they believe in it.
Social mobility is simply too narrow a focus. I absolutely support the move to the term “life chances” as a better expression of a broader base on which to think about these matters. I am not a great sociologist, but I went back to Max Weber, who was the first person I could find who talked about life chances and who introduced the concept of social mobility. In that, he talks quite clearly about social mobility being only one of the factors. He also talks about social stability, social cohesion and social integration. These are at least as significant and, for large numbers of people, they matter as much as, if not more than, social mobility.
Life chances around worklessness, educational attainment and, indeed, income are a broader-based way of assessing poverty. They will tell us more about the health of society than simple social mobility. Changing the name of the commission will absolutely reflect more closely the intention of the Government and offer a way of monitoring progress and feeding into it through the commission’s work. It matters and it would be nice to have a commission with a title that children themselves recognise, understand and could talk about and debate in their schools. How much they would, I do not know, but the idea of a title that they relate to is very valuable. This is intended to be helpful. To call the commission the Life Chances Commission fits absolutely with what the Government are aiming at and will help serve that aim better than the simple, narrow focus of social mobility.
Lord Freud
These amendments seek to rename the reformed commission as the Life Chances Commission, rather than the Social Mobility Commission, and to amend the duties placed on the commission to promote and improve life chances instead of social mobility. The two concepts—social mobility and life chances—are different although there are, of course, areas of overlap between the two. The Prime Minister’s speech earlier this month demonstrated the importance this Government place on improving children’s life chances. The statutory measures of worklessness and educational attainment and the Government’s life-chances strategy will drive action that will make the biggest difference to children’s life chances. Together, they will provide transparency and enable anyone to hold the Government to account.
The Government also place great importance on improving social mobility and providing equality of opportunity for all citizens. Our proposals for the reformed commission will enable it to have a single-minded focus on social mobility and play a crucial role in its scrutiny and advancement. That is about ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to realise their potential in life, regardless of their background. Perhaps those in Oxford do not need quite as much looking after as others. The commission will also have a new duty to promote social mobility in England, enabling it to engage with a wide range of partners, including government, business and the third sector. This will be crucial to tackling the institutional biases and cultures that prevent individuals fulfilling their potential. Through our new statutory life-chances measures and strategies and the reformed Social Mobility Commission, the Government will drive action and enable scrutiny on these two vital issues. I therefore urge the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lords who have spoken. I feel slightly embarrassed; I am supposed to be the sociologist but it was the right reverend Prelate who quoted Max Weber. I had better go back and read my old sociology textbooks. I still do not feel that the Minister has given a true explanation. He seems to be making a distinction: the way he and the Prime Minister see it, life chances are about children’s life chances, while social mobility is about everyone—children and adults. However, children become adults and I see life chances as being about the whole life course, from cradle to grave. If that is the case, and the distinction lies in the commission’s focus being more on what is happening to adults, that worries me even more. Let us remember that this started life as a child poverty commission. In the Welfare Reform Act 2012, it became the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission and some of us were a bit worried about that at the time. Were we not right to be worried? Now it is not just child poverty that has been dropped, but children, too. Apparently it is not now supposed to be interested in children at all. I am not so much puzzled now as quite worried about what this means for the commission, because the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has produced very valuable reports about what is happening to children in this country. The Government no longer have a statutory obligation to report on children in poverty, other than in relation to worklessness and educational attainment. We do not know what will happen to the Child Poverty Unit. It is as though children—and children in poverty—are just disappearing.
I am less puzzled than really upset about what has happened here. The complete shift of focus away from children in this commission is disgraceful. I am not going to push it now, for obvious reasons, but I hope there may be some other way that we can come back to this, though I do not know at what point this can happen or what scope there will be for the commission to try and expand its remit. I find what the Minister is saying quite extraordinary. As he himself has said, we want to focus on what matters: he is saying that children do not matter. I leave it there and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.