Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
My Lords, once more we are looking at the problems faced by carers. This amendment would ensure that the full benefits of people on very low incomes who are regularly and substantially engaged in caring rise in line with inflation. As we have heard, Clause 9 proposes that the rates of certain working-age benefits will be frozen for four years at their 2015-16 rate, while Clause 10 makes equivalent provision for certain tax credit elements. The freeze excludes carer’s allowance, attendance allowance and certain disability benefits, but despite their exclusion, we should remember that many carers receive other means-tested benefits as a significant or major part of their benefits package, and as a result will not be protected from the real-terms cut. For example, research shows that half of carers claiming carer’s allowance also receive income support because they are on a very low income. The Government have announced that the carer addition top-up to income support would rise with inflation, but this does not mean that carers are protected. The main chunk of these carers’ benefits will face a real-terms cut of 4.8% over the period 2016-17 and the year after as a result of the freeze. This is on top of previous below-inflation increases of 1% since April 2013.
By 2019-20, carers will be receiving nearly £190 a year less in income support alone than they would have if the whole benefit was uprated in line with CPI. For carers who receive a wide set of means-tested benefits in their households, the cumulative cut in income due to the freezing of numerous benefits will be substantial. Even protected benefits such as carer’s allowance have been the subject of recent real-terms cuts as the indexing base has changed, something with which noble Lords will be familiar. The freezing of working-age benefits such as income support will place further financial pressure on carers, many of whom are already suffering significant financial hardship.
Evidence collected from more than 4,500 carers in the Carers UK State of Caring Survey this year suggests that almost half of carers—48%— are struggling to make ends meet, as we heard earlier from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. Of carers who responded to the survey, 45% said that financial worries are affecting their health, and of those struggling to make ends meet, 41% are actually cutting back on essentials like food and heating. Some 26% are borrowing from family and friends, and 38% are using up their savings to get by, which suggests that the squeeze on carers’ finances is not sustainable in the long term. As one carer said, “I am already on the edge. How can I be expected to get by with less?” We have to take on board the fact that increasing financial hardship is pushing some carers to breaking point—they may feel unable to continue caring and be forced to seek paid work and relinquish entirely their caring role. It is clear that this makes no moral sense. As my noble friend Lady Hollis would say, it is not decent. Given that carers are saving the nation £132 billion a year, this not only makes no moral sense; it makes no economic sense either. I should have thought the Government would really understand this. I beg to move.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 98 and 99, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, to whom I am once again grateful for his support.
Amendment 98 would delete child benefit from the list of benefits covered by the four-year freeze. Amendment 99 applies to child benefit the triple lock that currently governs the uprating of retirement pensions, a policy promoted by CPAG—again, I declare my interest as honorary president—and End Child Poverty.
Far from a triple lock, child benefit has been the victim of a triple whammy since 2010. It was first frozen for three years and then uprated by only 1%, and now it is to be subject to a four-year freeze. The upshot is that, according to CPAG’s calculations, it will have lost 28% of its value between 2010 and 2020. In other words, it will be worth less than between a quarter and a third of what it was when Labour left office. A graph prepared for me by Professor Jonathan Bradshaw shows how the gain in value under the previous Labour Government has already been nearly wiped out. It also shows how child benefit represented a much higher percentage of average earnings in the early 1980s under another Conservative Government. However, it was then subject to similar treatment to now, until it was rescued by Sir John Major, who understood why child benefit is important and why its value should be protected. Sadly, his successors do not appear to share his understanding.
I tabled these amendments to encourage a debate about the role of child benefit. I quite accept that it is rather ambitious to argue for the extension of the triple lock to child benefit in the current context, but there is a parallel with pensions. One of the justifications for its application to pensions, and for excluding pensions from the freeze, is that pensioners are among those least able to increase their incomes through work. Leaving aside how true this still is of younger pensioners such as myself, it is in some ways even truer of children. I know the response will be that their parents can increase their income through paid work, but as the judges in the benefit cap case made clear, children’s rights cannot be sacrificed for any failing on the part of their parents.
Moreover, one of the reasons why the family allowance—the mother of child benefit—was introduced in the first place was that wages cannot and should not take account of the number of mouths a wage earner has to feed. In the jargon, child benefit enables horizontal redistribution from those without children, such as myself, to those with, and recognition that we all benefit from children being brought up as healthy, thriving citizens. It may be a bit of a cliché but children do represent our future. Of course, as most people do have children, for the majority it in any case represents redistribution over their own life course.
Child benefit thus has an important function in supplementing wages without the drawbacks associated with means testing. In particular, it cannot be accused of subsidising low-paying employers and it does not create poverty traps. CPAG’s annual research into the cost of a child carried out by my colleague at Loughborough University, Professor Donald Hirsch, shows how the benefit represents core income, not an extra for families, so perhaps it is not surprising that, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, said in our first sitting about its unpopularity, a recent poll of 1,000 parents for End Child Poverty found that only one in 10 parents thinks that child benefit and child tax credit should not keep up with inflation. As many as two-thirds thought they should be increased in line with the cost of living or more, with virtually no difference between income groups. As I said, most people are parents at some point in their lives, and many grandparents will share these concerns about decent benefits for their grandchildren.
Moreover, because it is paid to the so-called “hard-working families” beloved of politicians, child benefit can act as a work incentive. It therefore makes no sense to freeze it when one of the primary objectives of the freeze, according to the impact assessment, is to increase work incentives, and it makes every sense to uprate it in line with average earnings. There is also a strong case for uprating it in line with personal tax allowances.
Those of us who have been in the game for a long time, such as my noble friend Lord Kirkwood, will remember that child benefit replaced child tax allowances as well as family allowances. At the time, there was a cross-party consensus that they should therefore be treated as akin to personal tax allowances when it comes to uprating policy. Unfortunately, that consensus soon broke down, but it does not invalidate the argument. For a Government who purport to care about child poverty and making work pay, it makes no sense to sink huge amounts of public money into raising tax allowances while freezing child benefit. Apart from anything else, the latter reaches parents in work earning below the tax threshold who gain nothing from further increases in personal tax allowances. Also, low-income parents earning above the tax threshold lose most of any gains from an increase in the personal tax allowances through cuts in means-tested benefits—a drawback that will increase under universal credit.
A constant thread running through our deliberations these last few days and weeks—however long it has been—has been how, despite government protestations, the best interests of the child have not been a primary consideration, as required by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I fear that this Bill will be used as evidence against the UK when its record is interrogated by the UN committee next year. If at the very least the Government were prepared to remove child benefit from the four-year freeze, it would represent a degree of mitigation.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I will not detain the Committee long as I made clear the Opposition’s approach to the uprating of benefits on the last group of amendments.
Amendment 97 would allow benefits claimed by carers to be increased in line with inflation. My noble friend Lady Pitkeathley once again outlined very powerfully the problems faced by carers. I commend her brilliant, long and persistent attempts to put these things before the public and Ministers.
As the Committee heard in previous debates, there must be a real danger that the state will start to penny-pinch its way into driving carers out of caring, leaving those for whom they care to be the responsibility of the state. Throughout this Bill there seems to be little attempt to try to assess the costs to the public purse that might accrue to other parts of government, national or local, as a result of savings in the social security budget. My noble friend Lady Lister, in moving her amendment, advocated a triple lock for child benefit. I very much appreciated the history lesson for those of us who remember going back to where that is. The CPAG warned us that during the last Parliament child benefit lost 13% of its value against CPI, and 16% against RPI. Of course, that is far from the only cut affecting children. The levels of benefits and tax credits for children have faced repeated real-terms cuts.
I am using this amendment to ask the Government to do something very specific that they keep refusing to do—namely, to provide a cumulative impact assessment of the effect on particular categories of people of the changes that they are making. Whenever we ask them to do this, they put up two defences. The first is that it is all a bit complicated because everybody’s circumstances are different, so they cannot be expected to produce a single cumulative assessment. Well, somehow the Treasury and the IFS have managed for years to assess the impacts of measures on categories of people, if necessary by modelling them in relation to different household sizes and compositions. We would be happy to get that.
The Government’s second argument is that you cannot just consider benefits, you have to consider all the other wonderful things the Government are doing, such as the national minimum wage and tax allowances. That is fine. Include those in the models as well and we can all see who will be better off and who will not as a result of the combination of all these effects. A variation on that defence is that it is too hard because of the dynamic effects of the Government’s wonderful welfare reforms. Translated, that means either the Government reckon that universal credit will make people better off or that they are going to make them so desperate that they will have to work because they will have no other choices. In neither case have the Government produced enough evidence, let alone hard evidence, that can be included in modelling and put in the impact assessment, because the evidence is not there—so they just say that it is all a bit hard.
I have tried repeatedly to get the Government to do this, as have other noble Lords, and we are getting nowhere at all. But there comes a stage where if the Government keep bringing forward legislation which repeatedly attacks the same people, and do not do this, there is a significant democratic deficit. It is hard to know how this House can begin to understand the implications of what is being done when the Government simply refuse to give us the evidence to do it. So I urge the Government to take advantage of this debate to agree at last to address the gaping hole in the evidence and commission some cumulative impact assessments.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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“Review of application of sanctions
(1) The Secretary of State must, before the end of the financial year ending 31 March 2016, provide for a full and independent review of the sanctions regimes attached to working-age benefits, including but not limited to jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance and income support, to determine whether they are an effective and proportionate means of meeting the Government’s objectives.
(2) The terms of reference for the review must include consideration of—
(a) the application of sanctions to lone parents with dependent children;(b) the application of sanctions to claimants who are disabled;(c) the effectiveness of sanctions in moving claimants into sustained work; and(d) any other matters which the Secretary of State considers relevant.”
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 57, tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton, and with the support of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor. Its purpose is to provide for a full, independent review of the operation of the sanctions regime, to determine the effectiveness of sanctions in moving claimants into sustained work as well as any adverse impact on particular groups. It echoes a recommendation made twice by the Work and Pensions Committee but rejected by the Government.
The Government gave three main reasons for rejection in response to the committee’s recent report on sanctions. First, they wanted the improvements already made to bed in. Welcome as the improvements may be, they do not meet all recommendations from either the committee or the earlier Oakley review. There is evidence from many quarters that problems persist. Secondly, the Government argue that international evidence is clear that benefit regimes tied to conditionality get people into work. Last week the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, pointed to how the international evidence is not unequivocally in support of the value of sanctions and getting people into sustained work and achieving positive, longer-term outcomes. In any case, I do not see the relevance to the case for a review of this sanctions regime. Similarly, the Government point to wide agreement that sanctions play a vital role in supporting conditionality—up to a point, provided they are,
“applied appropriately, fairly and proportionately”,
to quote the Work and Pensions Committee. But the whole point is that few agree that they are. That is why we need an independent review that goes beyond the narrow remit of the Oakley review, helpful as that was.
Last week the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, referred to the toxic effect of sanctions. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, cited some of the evidence, drawing on her experience as a member of the Fawcett inquiry into the impact on women, particularly lone mothers, rather spoiling the rosy picture painted by the Minister on Wednesday night.
There is also evidence from a wide range of organisations, such as Gingerbread, Citizens Advice and local advice agencies, including an Advice Nottingham report I helped to launch the other day. More evidence has emerged since our last sitting from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger and Food Poverty, in the foreword to which the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed shock at sanctions’ contribution to widespread hunger and reliance on food banks; and from Crisis, which published a study from Sheffield Hallam University that found that sanctions were leading to homelessness and exacerbating the situation of those already homeless, particularly those with mental health problems. I do not have time to document this evidence, but I want to interrogate some of the department’s responses to the Work and Pensions Committee’s recommendations, drawing on an analysis by Dr David Webster of Glasgow University, to whom I am indebted, as I am for his regular analysis of the sanctions statistics. I am glad to say that these show some improvement recently, but the rate remains well above the pre-2010 rate.
The response to the committee’s report was perhaps spun to give the impression that it had conceded rather more than it had. In particular, what was dubbed acceptance of a yellow-card system looks more like a deferred red card to allow for representations to the referee. I am sure my colleagues know that I do not normally draw on football metaphors. The recommendation was that the:
“DWP pilot pre-sanction written warnings and non-financial sanctions”,
for first-time incidents of non-compliance. The response was to,
“trial arrangements whereby claimants are given a warning of our intention to sanction, and a 14-day period to provide evidence of good reason before the decision to sanction is made”,
and to,
“provide further evidence to explain their non-compliance”.
That is a welcome improvement but I am sure noble Lords can spot the difference. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, himself, in a previous role, called for first-time non-compliance to be met with a written warning rather than a sanction. The Oakley review called for the trial of non-financial sanctions for first-time failures. SSAC, too, favours such an approach.
In eliding it with a recommendation for an independent review, the department also rejected without explanation the call for an evaluation of the efficacy and impact of the four-week minimum sanction period under the 2012 Act, compared with a minimum period of one week. Perhaps we could have an explanation now.
The current chair of the Work and Pensions Committee has written to the Secretary of State to express his disappointment at the refusal to accept the recommendation on monitoring the destination of sanctioned claimants. As he argues:
“Monitoring employment outcomes is surely fundamental to understanding … the ultimate aim of getting claimants back into work and out of poverty”.
The Secretary of State’s response to this crucial recommendation referred simply to quality-assuring universal credit statistics, with a reference to other unspecified factors that might affect claimant destinations, which was not very encouraging. Surely the department wants to know whether sanctions are moving claimants into sustained work and what happens when they are not. The Crisis study found that, perversely, sanctions were pushing some of those affected further from the labour market and that homelessness service users were begging, borrowing and stealing to meet their daily need. Indeed, some actually said that they were trying to get put into jail because it would be better than destitution. Surely the department wants to know the impact on the health and well-being of those sanctioned and their families, which, again, the Crisis study and others have shown can be very negative. These are all issues that an independent review would address and that I really believe that the department itself surely wants to know the answer to.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response on vulnerable groups, the mentally ill and others. Perhaps in the letter that the noble Lord has kindly offered to send me on care leavers, he can confirm that care leavers were flagged up in the welfare system and will get this special consideration before any sanction is made on them—and whether he might consider extending that. Currently, if a care leaver is participating in work or education, up to the age of 25, they are flagged up in the DWP system and special measures can be taken for them—but if they are not doing that, they do not get that support; it finishes at the age of 21. So 21 to 25 year-olds not in education or training are missing out. I encourage the Government to think about extending the kind of considerations to vulnerable groups that she was just describing to care leavers who are not in education or training but who would be called care-experienced adults. In a sense, they are the most vulnerable, because they are not in education or training but have been in care and face all the difficulties. I am sorry to speak for so long—but in that letter, I would appreciate some comments on that.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I am very grateful to noble Lords who have spoken, particularly those who spoke in support of the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made the very important point that we need to be clear about this before universal credit is rolled out any further. Increasingly, I feel that we are in two parallel universes—the universe of those on the ground and the voluntary organisations and the universe of Ministers and officials. I am very glad that the Minister said that they are meeting to talk but, unfortunately, it seems as if they still operate within these parallel universes, where there is a completely different understanding of what is happening. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord McKenzie for the very comprehensive and thorough case that he made for an independent review. I am grateful, too, to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, who said that he was not opposed in principle to reviews. Perhaps we could look again at his criteria.
My noble friend made the point about timescale—that people suffering as a result of sanctions need this review now. However, I am a very reasonable person and I accept that, by the time the Bill becomes law, it will not leave very long between that and the timescale in the amendment. I would be very happy to discuss with the Minister perhaps a more realistic timescale.
On the remit being too narrow, I say that the whole point of the criticisms of the Oakley review was that it was too narrow. Indeed, Matthew Oakley himself acknowledged the narrowness of his remit and suggested that perhaps something broader was needed. So I am delighted that the noble Lord would like a broader remit than the one suggested in the amendment. The point about the term “sanctions” has already been addressed, but I just wonder how many times the Minister actually used the word; it was probably at least as many times as in the amendment itself. Perhaps, given that the noble Lord does not oppose in principle the idea of a review, he might help me to produce a better amendment for Report, if we decide to come back to this issue.
I am grateful, too, to the Minister. She started by saying that she was not sure whether the proposal was necessary. That seemed a rather tentative statement about something so important because, on this side of the House, we are sure that it is necessary. We have heard from my noble friend Lord McKenzie and others why it is necessary. She did not seem to have taken on board what I said about the yellow-card system. I welcome what is proposed, but it is not exactly the original Work and Pensions Committee recommendation. I was a bit disappointed that she did not explain why there had been that unacknowledged shift from what had been recommended. Perhaps she could write to me, and pop the letter to other noble Lords who have spoken on the specific question that I asked, about why the Government have rejected the Work and Pensions Committee recommendation that there should be a specific evaluation of the efficacy and impact of a minimum of four weeks’ sanctions. That was rejected without any explanation in the response to the report. I asked for an explanation and would be very happy to have one in writing. That said, I am grateful to her for her response. I do not think that it will satisfy the kind of organisations mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, or the people living in the universe that is engaging on a day-to-day basis with claimants suffering as a result of sanctions. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to speak in support of Amendment 59, to which I was happy to add my name. The work allowance was one of the jewels in the crown of universal credit, heralding a shiny new era of improved work incentives and making work pay. How quickly it has turned into the Cinderella of the social security system: first frozen, then cut in real terms, frozen again, and abolished altogether for non-disabled, childless households. When I questioned the Minister on this in an Oral Question on 27 October, he justified what has happened by referring to the experience of single people, arguing that they do not in fact need the work allowance for the incentives. I have since read the Resolution Foundation analysis and I accept that there may be a case for abolishing the work allowance for this group, but the foundation recommended that that should be in the context of the need for improvements elsewhere—in particular, an increase in the work allowance for lone parents, who are very responsive to such incentives, and a shift in the balance of the allowance between the first and second earners in a couple, with a new work allowance for second earners in families, just as some of us argued for during the passage of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. The foundation went on to say that that is a,
“crucial step in making UC pro-women, a test it currently fails”.
The Social Security Advisory Committee picked this up in its report, Universal Credit: Priorities for Action, and agreed that second earners need further attention, and it recommended further consideration of the Resolution Foundation report to the Government. I would be grateful if the Minister told us what consideration has been given to that report.
The Resolution Foundation also emphasises the importance of uprating policy and argues that cuts in income tax should be passed on in full to families on universal credit via an equivalent adjustment to work allowance; otherwise, people on universal credit will not get the same benefit from an increase in tax allowances. Other analyses by the Child Poverty Action Group—I declare my interest as honorary president—and the TUC show that it is much more cost-effective to raise work allowance than to increase personal tax allowances in terms of getting parents into work and addressing child poverty.
In his reply to my Oral Question, I felt that the Minister tried to brush the cuts in work allowance aside as somehow inconsequential. The noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, has spelt out just how consequential they are for new claimants of universal credit. In his oral evidence to the recent Work and Pensions Committee’s inquiry into tax credits, Torsten Bell of the Resolution Foundation said:
“That work allowance change is so large that our view is that it to a degree fundamentally changes how universal credit is going to feel for people on low hours”.
He gave an example and said:
“Before the Budget a single parent on the minimum wage could have worked 22 hours under universal credit before she had any of her universal credit entitlement taken away. After both the reduction in the work allowance, which falls to £5,000 for her next year, and the increase in the national minimum wage”—
I would say, the so-called national minimum wage—
“if she is on that, she will now only be able to work 10 hours before she starts to see quite a significant, 76%, tapering of her entitlement. It is exactly that kind of incentive that the welcome purpose of universal credit was aiming to get around”.
I think that he means disincentive. Picking up on the point made by the noble Baroness, Torsten Bell continued:
“When we are talking about these work incentives, more of the debate should be focused on what we have done to the original purpose of universal credit in these drastic cuts to the work allowances, in particular for single parents”.
I know that the Minister cared passionately about that original purpose of universal credit and I cannot believe that he is happy about what is happening to work allowances. I would welcome a more considered response than it was possible to give in Oral Questions, now that he has more time to give such a response.
The Earl of Listowel
I will speak to Amendment 62D in this group and apologise to your Lordships for giving so little notice of it. The issue was only drawn to my attention on Friday. I felt that it was important and timely so I asked for a manuscript amendment. I am very pleased to see that the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, has attached her name. Unfortunately, she cannot be here. I have not had the opportunity to thank the Minister for saying that there would be a life chances strategy and I am sorry that I was so pessimistic. I was very pleased to read the comments made last week by Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, about the success of the economy in terms of employment and improving productivity. The Minister may feel that this is recognition of his good work and that of his colleagues in these areas.
This amendment was brought to my attention by the Family Rights Group and is supported by many other children’s charities. Its purpose is to ensure that lone parents under the age of 25 who are also care leavers continue in the same system under the new arrangements, so that they will be £780 a year better off. I very much welcome the extremely good work the Government have done and are doing for young people leaving care. The strategy has been a great success. Many people recognise that it is very difficult to get different departments to work together. Through the strategy, the DWP identified care leavers and can give them the additional support they need. Other departments also are aware of that. Staying Put has been a very important step forward. It recognises that young people leaving care should have the right to remain with their foster carer until the age of 21 where both parties agree. Some 50% of children in the general population stay with their parents until the age of 22, so these children should also be able to remain.
However, there is much further to go with these young people. Ofsted has recently started assessing care-leaving services. Its most recent report found that, of the local authorities it examined, 63% of the care-leaving services were inadequate or needed improvement. There is a very long way to go.
The Centre for Social Justice has done some important research on births. There is a much higher likelihood of teenagers leaving care becoming pregnant. One in 10 young people leaving care between the ages of 16 and 21 have their child removed. Often, they have been in care and then lose their own child. It is important that these lone-parent care leavers get all the support they can. This additional cash would be very important for them. They do not have the family network that many of our children have to support them. I hope the Minister is prepared to accept this amendment, and I look forward to his response.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s response and for the work which the Government do to support care leavers. I omitted to say why Amendment 62D was timely: today, research from the University of Lancaster highlighted a huge leap in the number of newborns being taken into care. In 2008 it was about 800, in 2013 it was over 2,000; a very considerable number. Some of that is down to better early intervention; taking children very quickly out of damaged families. However, Nicky Morgan, the Secretary of State, is concerned about this and it suggests, again, that we need to be even better at supporting these vulnerable families. I hear what the noble Lord has said and I will look carefully at it.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
Will the Minister say when, roughly, he expects to be publishing the transitional regulations? Will he, in his normal helpful way, commit to publishing a draft of the likely contents first, so noble Lords can discuss them, rather than just be presented with the actual regulations?
Baroness Manzoor
My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 65. I recognise that my proposed new clause may be imperfectly drafted, as the word “disabled” should perhaps have been defined. As this is a probing amendment, I hope the Committee will make allowances.
My amendment is pretty self-explanatory, in that it requires the Secretary of State to,
“lay a report before Parliament annually on the progress which has been made towards halving the disability employment gap”.
It also requires that,
“the report must set out how the Secretary of State has interpreted ‘disability employment gap’ for these purposes”.
I would like the report to include,
“an assessment of the sectors in which disabled people have primarily secured jobs … an assessment of the type and level of jobs primarily secured by disabled people, and … an assessment of the progression of disabled people within the job market”.
My amendment will help to improve the transparency of employment outcomes for disabled people and allow monitoring of the Government’s target.
I am, however, rather concerned because we have asked the Minister for reviews of sanctions, conditionality criteria and so on. From my perspective, we have not had an answer that might have given us some hope. However, I hope the Minister will give this measure careful consideration because, across the Committee, I see there is some support for it.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of Amendment 64 in the name of my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley, an indefatigable champion of the rights of carers. I also express my support for other amendments, particularly those concerning the disability employment gap, on which we heard very eloquent arguments from the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton.
It is very welcome that the constraints on labour market participation created by the care of children are much better recognised now than they were in the past, but we still have a long way to go with regard to carers, who are an increasingly important part of the labour force. I hope that the carer strategy the Government are working on will address the need for policies that make it easier to combine paid work and care, such as the statutory paid care leave for just a few days a year which many other countries provide. I have argued for this very important policy in relation to a number of Bills going through your Lordships’ House. We are becoming a laggard compared with other countries. We can learn a lot from them.
As care is such an important part of the economy, the amendment underlines the case for reporting on the position of carers and former carers in the labour market as part of any duty to report on employment trends. I suggest that it might go a bit further, so that any such report includes information on those who combine paid work and care and those who have had to give up paid work to care, as well as former carers.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 67 in the name of my noble friend Lady Campbell of Surbiton. I wholeheartedly support the Government’s laudable aim to halve the employment gap. Leonard Cheshire has called it the most ambitious and exciting commitment to disabled people in the last decade. However—I am sure that the Minister was expecting a “however” from me—without reporting it becomes just awareness. Awareness will not do it. There has been awareness-raising for as long as I can remember. There is a moment of “wake up”, when people realise they should be slightly more open to disabled people, but then they forget what they are meant to do. Charities such as Scope, Mind and Mencap, to name a few, have had amazing public campaigns to raise awareness. There is a host of such organisations. Disability Confident is a bit of a step forward, but the shift in attitude is minute. We know that because the employment gap still exists.
It is important to look at the reality of how this changes for specific impairment groups. We are not one homogeneous group. We are not “the disabled”; we are disabled people. Different solutions will be required for different people: two wheelchair users do not require the same solutions, let alone the difference between me as a wheelchair user and somebody with a learning disability. We can all be treated and discriminated against in very different ways. With changes to things such as disabled students’ awards and Access to Work, which is too complicated and inflexible—it takes too long to apply to get support—and the other changes that have come in, a number of people have written to me to say that their access to work has been cut with extremely short notice. They have gone from full-time support to suddenly having 12 hours a week. They are then pushed out of work. Instead of helping them it is making their lives far more complicated.
Disabled people are tired of awareness; we are tired of waiting. Disabled people just need a bit of help. The biggest change will come if we move away from awareness. If the Government are really serious about closing the employment gap, the tone must come from this Chamber and the other place with them accepting the amendment.
Baroness Manzoor
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 68. The only thing that I wanted to add—all other noble Lords have eloquently put forward the reasons why there should be reporting obligations relating to apprenticeships—is that I note that gender is missing from the amendment. It was an oversight, rather than because we did not care passionately about this particular issue. Once again, I am pleading with the Minister: we really need to be able to differentiate between the different groups to see where apprenticeships fall and who is getting what apprenticeship. The noble Baroness, Lady Nye, made a very important argument relating to young women, but the same applies to disability, race and so forth. There are variations that we need to bottom out so that employers can then have appropriate strategies in place to address the anomalies.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of my noble friend Lady Nye, who has made such a good case about gender. She made most of the points I want to make, but I have been sent information by City & Guilds, which has done research into careers advice, which shows how gender-biased careers advice is channelling young women into a very gender-biased labour market. So it is being reinforced. It is crucial that the apprenticeship system does not reinforce and aggregate that gender bias which we have heard about from my noble friend. As other noble Lords have said, it is about not just quantity but quality. From a gender perspective, quality is about the sectors within which young women and young men are being channelled.
The Lord Bishop of Durham
My Lords, in the north-east I get to see apprentices in the car industry, the subsea industry, traditional industries such as stonemasonry, farming, and all kinds of sectors in schools. It is brilliant to be able to see them face to face, to meet them and talk to them. There are brilliant apprenticeships and we need to grow them. Therefore, the 3 million target is fantastic, but I have to say that where the Bill refers to,
“information about the progress made in the reporting period towards the apprenticeships target”,
which is simply the figure of 3 million, that does not give the information about the types of apprenticeship that there are. In the light of the previous comments, I add that in two particular manufacturing industries I went to there were fantastic apprenticeships with brilliant young men, but no young women at all. I am told that there have not been any. We need this kind of information to ensure that apprenticeships are of the quality and standard needed. Because of the lateness of the hour, I will stop at that.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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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 24 and speaking to Amendment 26, I also make clear my support for Amendments 25 and 46. I may well intervene later in support of maintaining the existing income and deprivation measures.
The purpose of Amendments 24 and 26 is to balance the obligation introduced by Clause 4 to report data on children in workless households with a similar obligation with regard to children in low-income working households. Whether the primary concern is life chances, as in the Bill, or child poverty, which Ministers assure us the Government 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 a parent is in paid work. The Resolution Foundation points out that,
“worklessness has become less associated with poverty in recent years”—
which is to be welcomed—but it also warns that measures in the Bill are likely to strengthen the link again. At the same time, it observes that,
“children in poverty have become increasingly likely to come from working households”.
In his letter to your Lordships, the Minister stated that,
“Our evidence review, published in 2014, supports our approach”.
Up to a point—like my noble friend Lady Hollis and the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, I have read the review of the drivers of child poverty, and it continually brackets together parental worklessness and low earnings as the key factors for child poverty now, with implications also for life chances. The review found that childhood poverty itself is one of the factors increasing the risk of a poor child growing up to be a poor adult. The review spells out explicitly that the “main factor” making it harder to exit poverty is,
“lack of sufficient income from parental employment, which restricts the amount of earnings a household has”.
It underlines:
“This is not just about worklessness, but also working insufficient hours and/or low pay”.
Parental worklessness and low earnings are together the key factors in whether children are, as the report puts it,
“likely to be stuck in poverty for longer”,
with implications for outcomes and the,
“risk of becoming poor adults”.
In sum, the review makes clear:
“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. As would be reasonably expected, results from numerous studies of poverty statistics and dynamics clearly demonstrate a strong link between earnings and poverty levels”.
Forgive me for quoting at such length from the review, but given that the Minister himself has prayed it in aid and given that, I assume, the analysis was commissioned to throw light on what Ministers refer to as the “root causes” of poverty, it does seem bizarre that they now deliberately ignore a root cause or driver, the importance of which is demonstrated by their own analysis.
Moreover, a more recent departmental analysis of child poverty transitions between 2009 and 2012 shows that a rise in earnings or an increase in the number of hours worked are key events related to exiting child poverty, with exit rates virtually the same as those associated with moving from worklessness to full-time work. Given all this, and other evidence, it is not surprising that the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s response to the Government’s latest child poverty strategy argued that the strategy should:
“Focus more on tackling in-work poverty”.
Although getting more parents into work is a big step forward, it does not automatically bring reductions in child poverty, because in too many cases it simply moves children from low-income workless households to low-income working households. Too many parents get stuck in working poverty, unable to command sufficient earnings to escape low income, and cycling in and out of insecure, short-term and low-paid employment with limited prospects.
It is also worth making the point that worklessness is not a measure of child poverty as such. A decent social security system would protect children from poverty in households where there is no working parent. Not surprisingly, the analysis by Kitty Stewart and Nick Roberts of CASE at the LSE found that the great majority of those who commented on it in the 2012 consultation on child poverty measures rejected the inclusion of a worklessness measure. Not only did they consider it an inappropriate measure of poverty but many also pointed out that it was misleading, given the high level of poverty where a parent is in paid work—a point also made by some of the minority who supported a worklessness measure.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a thoughtful and extensive debate. Amendments 24 and 26 in the name of my noble friend Lady Lister and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, would cause data on low-income families where one or both parents are in work—that is, in-work poverty—to be reported.
We support these amendments. We know, as we have heard, that some two-thirds of children living in poverty are in working families and that whatever the climbdown on tax credits, the Government have in-work support in their sights. If we are concerned with measures that look at the current experience of poverty as well as the risk of poverty, there seems no logic in including out-of-work but not in-work poverty, although the policy levers may be different.
Amendment 25 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, seeks to retain the current income measures in the Child Poverty Act. We, of course, support that. Our Amendment 46 does the same but retains that Act’s targets as well.
The absence of income measures cannot be justified and runs counter to pretty much all the evidence or views of those engaged with child poverty. The Government’s suggestion that income measures are a symptom of poverty, rather than a cause, is too simplistic. My noble friend Lady Blackstone gave us a great example relating to educational attainment. If people are poor they do not have the same opportunity to have the same equipment at home; they do not necessarily have books at home and they do not necessarily go to school with a meal inside them so that they can be more attentive at school. It is simplistic to say that one is looking at the experience of poverty and that it is not a symptom of poverty.
In its July 2015 response to the Government’s child poverty statement—a number of noble Lords referred to this—the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission stated:
“The commission has argued in the past that a more rounded way of measuring poverty—taking … account of causal risk factors—is sensible. The life chances of children, the poorest especially, depend on many things … It is not credible, however, to try to improve the life chances of the poor without acknowledging the most obvious symptom of poverty, lack of money”.
Pretty much every noble Lord who has spoken in this debate, with the possible exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, agreed with that proposition. She asserts that looking at simplistic measures of income contains a number of flaws, but my noble friend Lady Hollis made clear that the Child Poverty Act 2010 had four measures. You need to look at the circumstances in aggregate, not just at one snapshot in time.
CPAG says:
“We believe that poverty is a condition marked by a lack of adequate resources, some of which may not be financial. Nonetheless, an inadequate income remains the decisive characteristic of poverty and must remain central to any poverty measurement”.
A number of noble Lords referred to the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the LSE and the work that it did. It looked at the responses to the DWP’s consultation on child poverty measures, which sought to test the level of support for replacing the existing measures with new dimensions, including those provided for in the Bill. As we have heard, the research shows that there is a very high level of support for the existing measures in the current Act. Most wanted no change and those who countenanced additional dimensions saw this as supplementary information, but not as measures of child poverty itself. Most respondents were of the view that lack of material resources— income—was the very core of child poverty. We agree with that. It is suggested that respondents to the consultation saw the proposals to change the measures as bringing to an end the official measurement of child poverty in the UK. How does the Minister respond to that? He will doubtless tell us that the HBAI figures will still be published as now, but we know from our prior deliberations—the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, made this point—that what gets reported under Clause 4 will be the focus of the Government’s attention. That is why they are approaching it this way.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I am sorry to intervene, but I wanted to ask the Minister whether he could answer a specific question relating to that. I know that there are some fears about this among academic social scientists and the voluntary sector. I absolutely accept the Minister’s assurances that the households below average income statistics will continue to be published, but will he assure the Committee that they will be really clear and published in an accessible form, not just as a load of Excel tables that some of us will not be able to understand? It is very important that we have that assurance on the record.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I thank my noble friend for that intervention. I doubt there is much that she does not understand or is incapable of understanding, but she asked a highly relevant question. I hope that the Minister will give that assurance.
We have had a number of contributions to this debate. My noble friend Lord Liddle took us back in history but stressed the importance of the work that went into developing these measures in the first instance, enjoining the skills of Tony Atkinson. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham recognised the value of having worklessness and educational attainment as part of a measure. However, he said that that was not sufficient; there needs to be a focus on income if life chances are to be influenced and addressed.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, supported the existing measures in legislation. I think that the Child Poverty Act was the first legislation that the Minister worked on in opposition when he joined this place. At the end of the day, I thought that we had pretty much cross-party agreement, although it is fair to say that the Minister said there were other aspects of poverty which he thought should be reported as well. However, I do not believe that is the same as tearing up the Child Poverty Act, which is what this piece of legislation seeks to do. This is a very important issue because, unless we look at income, we will not address the here and now of poverty. It is all very well looking at some of those factors which have medium and long-term effects on people’s life chances, but we also need to address how people without resources exist today. That is why we need these amendments.
Lord Freud
I actually think the difference between us here is not as great as it might look. The division is between the income measures and targets. A legal target is, as I said, financially terrifying but we will publish income measures. This issue was raised by—
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
Given what the Minister just said, will he now accept the case for keeping the income measures in the Bill even if he abandons the targets? As my noble friend said, the argument has really been purely about targets. I thought targets were quite helpful for the same reason as the noble Lord—my noble friend—Lord Kirkwood, but if that is what frightens the Government and there is really not much difference between us, then okay. What is stopping the Government keeping the measures supported by 99% or whatever of the scientific community that responded to their earlier consultation on child poverty that they seem to have completely ignored?
The Earl of Listowel
Before the Minister replies, it might be helpful to remind him that the amendment on targets is in the next group. I quite understand why he might choose to address it here but the amendment he is addressing that I and my noble friend tabled is simply about the measurement. I think the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, began the argument on targets but my amendment was intended to be strictly on the measurements.
Lord Freud
I will write, because the issues that the noble Earl raises are genuinely important and difficult. We are all struggling with them. As we develop the life chances suite, we need to bear in mind the particular problems for those people, because as a group they have much poorer outcomes than they should.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. It has been a remarkably well-informed and genuine debate, where Peers have responded to what others have said. Sometimes it does not work like that. I think the message that has gone to the Minister has been pretty overwhelming. I thank him for genuinely engaging with noble Lords in his speech. However, I have not heard one convincing argument from him about why income and deprivation measures should not remain statutory. I heard his arguments for why targets should not be statutory; I do not agree with them, but he made an argument, and that is fair enough, but he has not responded convincingly to my noble friend Lady Blackstone or anyone else who made that case. We have heard such strong argument on that, but I have not heard one convincing reason why an in-work poverty measure should not be in the Bill. We can trade statistics until the cows come home. I have seen the recent transition statistics, and they support my case as well as the Minister’s, and actually they are irrelevant. The point is that we need to know what is happening to those in work as well as to those out of work. There has been no convincing argument from the Minister in response to the very well-informed points that have been put by noble Lords.
I remind the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, that when the Prime Minister was leader of the Conservative Party he welcomed this. He said:
“We need to think of poverty in relative terms—the fact that some people lack those things which others in society take for granted. So I want this message to go out loud and clear: the Conservative Party recognises, will measure and will act on relative poverty”.
How can it if it does not have the measures in the statutes as they now exist?
I will withdraw the amendment, but I think we will want to come back to this issue on Report because it is so important. Perhaps by then, the Minister will have come up with some rather more convincing arguments than he has done hitherto. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“A1AD Improving children’s life chances
The Secretary of State must publish and lay before Parliament a report setting out the measures that the Secretary of State proposes to take to improve children’s life chances, as understood with reference to section A1A(1).”
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, it is me again. I shall speak also to Amendments 36 to 45, 47 and 48 and make clear my support for Amendment 32, which makes explicit mention of child poverty. I shall also oppose Clause 5 standing part of the Bill.
I am grateful to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for help with the amendments. In its Second Reading briefing, it pointed out that the requirement in the Child Poverty Act 2010 for the Secretary of State to consult on, review, lay and publish a triennial child poverty strategy is one of the casualties of Clause 6. It therefore called for a new statutory requirement for the Secretary of State to develop a regular life- chances strategy. Amendments 31 and 32 are alternative ways of implementing that recommendation. I prefer Amendments 47 and 48 because they are closer to the original and make explicit reference to the effect of socioeconomic disadvantage on children’s life chances while decoupling the strategy from the income-related targets—the Minister will be pleased to hear that—which the Government have unfortunately abandoned. They are clearly decoupled.
At present, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is required to work with the Department for Education and the Child Poverty Unit to produce a child poverty strategy. The publication of the strategy provided a very useful focus for civil society and academic engagement with the Government in developing their thinking on child poverty. Among the many helpful and illuminating responses to the last document published after a period of consultation were those from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and the JRF. All three were pretty critical, and I cannot help wondering whether the Government are trying to avoid such criticism by repealing the duty to produce any sort of strategy.
The JRF argues that a statutory strategy would help to focus the Government’s action on their stated desire to improve the life chances of households and give the Secretary of State the impetus to drive this agenda across government and to challenge other departments to commit resources to this end. I would have thought that would have been quite attractive to the Secretary of State. But the most important reason it gives for writing such a strategy into legislation is that it would increase the opportunity for scrutiny of the Government.
The process of drafting a strategy would require public consultation followed by the publication of a clear plan for the improvement of life chances over a three-year period. This document would therefore be a means by which the Government could be held to account by the electorate, opposition parties and other interested organisations. In case the Minister refers to the reporting duty in Clause 4 and the commitment to report on further non-statutory life chances indicators, I point out that reporting on data does not constitute a strategy. Reporting on data, important as it is, is backward-looking. Publishing a strategy is forward-looking and provides a framework within which and a benchmark against which to assess the data.
Lord Freud
I apologise to the noble Baroness for not dealing with the matter earlier, and I am pleased with the outcome.
Amendments 47 and 48, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, would prevent the repeal of the duty to publish and lay a triennial UK strategy. In practice, I dealt with that when I was describing in an earlier amendment what our approach would be. Amendment 49, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, would place a statutory duty on local authorities in England to,
“prepare a joint child poverty and life chances strategy”.
While commending the noble Earl for his focus in this area, the Government do not believe that burdening local authorities with a one-size-fits-all strategy requirement would help to transform children’s lives on the ground. Local authorities will have the freedom to determine the approach they want to take in their area, building on the partnerships already in place. The Government will look to local authorities to use this freedom to take effective action to tackle the root causes of child poverty and improve children’s life chances. We will continue to support local authorities in tackling child poverty and improving life chances in their areas by providing data to inform them of their progress and where best they can focus their resources. This includes publishing local level life-chances data on children and workless households and educational attainment for all children, particularly disadvantaged children.
Local authorities can make decisions at the local level to ensure that actions are complementary and fit with local timetables and circumstances to deliver maximum effect. That is something that the centre cannot do. When looking at low-income measures in relation to local authorities, their unpredictability, which as I said is so difficult for central government, has the same volatility for local government, making it spend money on action that does not produce the best outcomes.
Clause 5 will reform the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission to become the Social Mobility Commission. Some noble Lords have indicated that they do not want Clause 5 to stand part of the Bill. The Government want to galvanise action on social mobility which calls for concerted effort by the Government, business and the third sector, operating alongside our focus on improving children’s life chances. The Government’s reforms to the commission will add impetus to its efforts to promote and improve social mobility and strengthen and expand its remit in this important area. The reformed commission will perform a key role in ensuring independent scrutiny of progress to improve social mobility in the UK. It will promote social mobility in England and, on request, provide advice to Ministers—I am not quite sure whether I can blame the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for this, but I am checking—on how to provide social mobility in England. The commission will be an integral part of the Government’s drive to promote opportunity and remove barriers to progress towards a society where everyone is able to play their full part and realise their potential regardless of their background.
The reformed commission will no longer be tasked with tracking progress against the current set of income-based measures, and will instead be able to focus single mindedly on the crucial role of improving social mobility. The commission will build on its history of insightful work and continue to publish robust evidence-rich publications not only for the Government but for employers, schools, parliamentarians, parents, families and citizens of this country. Its publications have been instrumental in moving forward the debate on social mobility in this country, and I look forward to it continuing to do so. I particularly want to thank the commissioners who have volunteered their time freely to carry out this vital role, and the leadership of the commission’s chair, the right honourable Alan Milburn and its deputy chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard of Northwold.
Amendments 36 to 45 seek to rename the commission as the life-chances commission rather than the Social Mobility Commission. They would also amend the duties placed on the commission, including placing a statutory duty on it to provide advice to Ministers on social mobility in England, whether or not at Ministers’ requests. I shall turn to Amendments 36 to 40 and 42 to 45 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, which would rename the commission and amend the duties placed on it to promote and improve life chances instead of social mobility.
I have already set out the importance that the Government place on social mobility and the commission’s role in its scrutiny and advancement. It is the Government’s view that the reformed commission should have the single-minded focus on social mobility. Our proposals will strengthen and expand its remit on this important issue. The commission’s independent scrutiny of social mobility will help to build a society where someone’s starting point does not determine their end point. Our proposals will give the commission a clear remit and focus that will enable it to fulfil these new duties effectively.
Alongside the commission’s scrutiny role, our new statutory measures on worklessness and educational attainment will bring greater transparency to the Government’s actions to improve children’s life chances. As I have explained, we will have an annual report on progress in that area, which will allow anyone to scrutinise and hold the Government to account.
Amendment 41 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, would require the Social Mobility Commission to give advice to a Minister of the Crown about how to improve social mobility in England rather than to do so on request. The commission already has a statutory duty to publish a report setting out its views on the progress made towards improving social mobility in the UK. It is implicit that such reports can provide and offer advice about areas for future action as well as assessing past progress. That is certainly the way in which the commission has interpreted its remit in the past. It is not appropriate for the Government to start dictating to the commission as an independent body how it should discharge its functions in future.
Every year the commission undertakes a number of research projects, publishing reports and recommendations and developing the evidence, based on a range of subjects relating to social mobility. Through these research projects and its annual report, the commission provides a wide range of evidence-based analysis, all of which is published and available for anyone to see which can speak powerfully to government and other players.
The provision for the commission to provide advice to a Minister of the Crown on request serves an important purpose. It enables the Government to draw on the commission’s expertise in areas that particularly matter to it beyond those already covered in the commission’s reports, and it is important that we do not lose this provision. Noble Lords should note that the current provisions relating to the commission are amended as a result of repeals set out in Clause 6 and amendments to its name and functions set out in Clause 5. Should Clause 5 not stand part of the Bill —some have indicated that they intend to vote against it—the commission would cease to exist entirely. I look forward to working with the reformed commission in the coming years to make further progress in transforming social mobility.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I asked a specific question about the future of the Child Poverty Unit. Would the Minister answer that before I wind up?
Lord Freud
We will ensure that there is a full range of Civil Service support to drive forward the agenda. We will set out arrangements for the Child Poverty Unit in due course. With that, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment, and other noble Lords not to press theirs.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, particularly the right reverend Prelate, whose argument was far better than mine on life chances. What better argument is there than using terms that children themselves can understand? Starting at the end, I am desperately disappointed by the Minister’s response. He simply has not addressed the arguments as to why “life chances” would be a better title for the commission than “social mobility”. I am very disappointed by that. I thought he might be able to go away and say, “Yes, perhaps there’s something to be said for that”. Instead, he has said that they will expand the remit of the commission, but he is actually narrowing it. Which is it: expansion or narrowing? It is not at all clear. Why drive on social mobility rather than on life chances, which still allows you to talk about social mobility but has the advantages that I set out and as the right reverend Prelate did in his killer argument—if he does not mind me calling it that? We have had no answer to those. As I say, I am desperately disappointed.
The Minister kindly said that he thought he would please me with his response on strategy. I appreciate that, but I am afraid I am not that easily pleased. Again, there is that key word, “statutory”. On the previous group of amendments my noble friend Lady Blackstone explained why that word is important: Governments and Ministers change. Given that the intention is to produce a life chances strategy, why not make it statutory? There is no argument about targets. We are agreed on it. Again, I am rather disappointed that the Minister has been unable to say that the Government will think about it and that it would perhaps be good to have a statutory duty. I am talking not about tick-boxes or anything like that, but about the kind of strategy that he is talking about.
Again, we may have to come back to these questions on Report because we have not heard convincing arguments in response to a very strong set of arguments from a number of noble Lords. Having said that, I of course beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has made a very powerful case as to why cutting benefits actually makes it harder for people, particularly disabled people, to find work. That has also come out in other research. For example, Community Links has said that if you push people into survival mode, then they just have to focus on surviving.
I want briefly to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who talked about the incentive structure. We have heard a lot about the famous OECD quote, which has been bandied back and forth. I thought it might be worth reading out the paragraph from which that quote came:
“A policy of no welfare would be the best solution to maximise labour supply, if equity issues were not a concern”.
I shall miss out the next sentence, but it does not change the meaning:
“distributional issues are a primary concern when designing policies to help people return to self-sufficiency through work and, in this context, studies show that in-work benefits can maximise social welfare”.
The message coming from the OECD report that has been quoted so often is in fact that the answer lies in improving support for those in work—which, of course, the Government are making worse—rather than cutting benefits for those out of work.
Another OECD report that came out only two years earlier, on incapacity benefits—so I am surprised the Government have not mentioned it—called Transforming Disability into Ability, refers to the benefit traps and incentive problems that the noble Lord talked about. However, it said:
“The evidence concerning such types of benefit traps is inconclusive”.
I suggest that it remains inconclusive, and the evidence prayed in aid by the Government does not support the case for this really quite savage cut in benefits for disabled people.
Lord Freud
Clauses 13 and 14 remove the work-related activity component and limited capability for work element for new claims for ESA and universal credit. These clauses do not affect the support group component, the UC equivalent or the premiums that form part of income-related ESA.
ESA was introduced by Labour in 2008, and the work-related activity component was originally intended to act as an incentive to encourage people to participate in work-related activity and therefore return to work quicker.
The original estimates were that far more claimants would move into work. Indeed, the White Paper Raising Expectations and Increasing Support: Reforming Welfare for the Future, published in 2008, stated that the then Labour Government aimed to reduce the number of people on incapacity benefits by 1 million by 2015. However, only around 1% of people in the work-related activity group leave the benefit each month, so clearly the existing policy is not working as intended and is failing claimants.
While financial incentives are only part of the answer on what impacts on claimant behaviour, they are an important part. This has been recognised for a long time. Going even further back, a Green Paper, A New Deal for Welfare: Empowering People to Work, published in 2006, highlighted that most people who came on to incapacity benefit expected to work again but many never did; that the longer a person remained on benefit, the less chance they had of leaving; and that incapacity benefit reinforced this by offering more money the longer that someone was on benefit. I am sorry to say that although that Green Paper was talking about incapacity benefit, a similar sentiment could now be expressed about ESA. Too many people with disabilities and health conditions are still being excluded from the world of work and not fulfilling their ambitions. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lansley for pinpointing this issue.
I turn to the international evidence on incentives that we have been bandying around. The OECD report argued:
“Financial incentives to work can be improved by either cutting welfare benefit levels, or introducing in-work benefits while leaving benefit levels unchanged”.
The findings cover the whole population, and although not specifically focused on the disabled population, do not indicate that such incentives would not apply.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I just read out the whole paragraph that that quote is taken from, which makes it quite clear that it sees the answer as lying in improved in-work benefits, not in cutting out-of-work benefits.
Lord Freud
I am not now looking at recommendations for action. I am just looking at what evidence we have that incentives either way work for the disabled community because that is the issue that noble Lords are querying. Let me go on. A paper by Barr et al, published by the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health in 2010, asks:
“To what extent have relaxed eligibility requirements and increased generosity of disability benefits acted as disincentives for employment?”.
It finds that eight out of 11 studies reported that benefit levels had a significant negative association with employment. To pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Low, about the level of the evidence, while they state that they cannot quantify the size of the effect, they conclude that there definitely is one. The most robust study in that paper, by Hesselius and Persson from 2007, demonstrated a small but significant negative association. The final paper, by Kostøl and Mogstad from 2012, is about evidence from Norway regarding a positive incentive structure allowing disabled claimants to retain more of their benefits when moving into work, which resulted in more claimants starting work. The study shows the impact of financial incentives on disabled people able to undertake preparation for work or work itself, which is a group synonymous with our WRAG population.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, if I were the Minister, I would grasp with alacrity the olive branch—or is it fig leaf?—that was offered by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope. Personally, I oppose the principle of these clauses, but I will talk about that later. I will speak only very briefly now in support of all the amendments in the group. We have heard some very powerful speeches that show the unintended and undesirable social policy consequences of these clauses, which I cannot believe the Government wish to happen. I hope that the Minister will reflect very carefully on these speeches.
At Second Reading, the Minister gave a little hint that, at least on kinship carers, he might be willing to consider an exemption, although I understand that nothing has been taken forward on that. He also said that the Government,
“will look at the important issues around exemption through secondary legislation and will provide more detail in due course”.—[Official Report, 17/11/15; col. 125.]
As well as adding my support to these amendments, I simply want to ask the Minister what he means by “due course”. We really have to have these details before Report. We should not go to Report until we have these details about exemptions.
I remind the Minister that on the previous Welfare Reform Bill the Joint Committee on Human Rights made very clear how important it is that, even if we cannot have the regulations themselves—I can quite understand why that is not possible—from a human rights perspective we should have full details of what will be in the regulations. I hope that, at the very least, the Minister can give us that assurance today and that he will think hard about the arguments that have been made already.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I want to speak extremely briefly because the speech I might have made has already been made by other noble Lords in terms of detail.
Having listened to the Minister talk in various venues about wanting to ensure that there are no unintended consequences from this legislation, I want him to think carefully on the speeches that have been made and about what basis of philosophy or principle the Government have underlying this legislation. I know the basic tenet is that they want to make sure that parents can work and that all children are able to achieve the best educational outcomes—those are the Government’s own words. But some of these measures will undermine that and take families into greater financial hardship. I am particularly interested in the children, because taking those families into greater financial hardship will reduce the life chances of those children. Those of us who have worked with children down the years have seen the consequences of that, not only the emotional consequences but the financial consequences.
All the arguments around larger families, kinship care, adoption and the very many informal arrangements that families make to ensure that their children are emotionally cared for have been made. Again, I hope that the Minister will reflect on that in the context of his own Government’s policy and objectives.
We are a nation that should care. Indeed, the Minister’s party described itself as a “caring party”. I also admire the Government’s objective of ensuring that children make their own way and are not left in poverty because of parental behaviour. However, we know that you can affect that behaviour, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and others have said, by the kind of care that they receive themselves and are able to reflect with their children. Therefore, will the Minister tell us how he intends to ensure that the Government’s philosophy and principles are reflected in the way that they deal with large families, particularly those from disadvantaged groups?
Lord Freud
That is the point of these amendments, which I am in the process of dealing with, so I will provide the government response to those exemptions.
Turning to the amendments themselves, these are intended to specify circumstances in which the policy to limit child tax credit and the child element in universal credit would not apply. Amendments 1, 9 and 17 are intended to allow exemptions where the child is a member of the household through kinship care or a private fostering arrangement, and Amendment 16 where the child is a member of the household through being adopted. Amendment 10 is an enabling amendment to allow for exemptions to be made in relation to Clause 12.
Amendments 1 and 9 are intended to provide an exemption for particular children who are,
“in the household as a result of a kinship care or private fostering arrangement”.
Amendments 16 and 17 would not apply to particular children or young persons but would exempt households from the limit of two children in child tax credit and universal credit where the specified circumstances applied to,
“a third (or subsequent) child”.
Thus a household with three children, limited to two children, who adopted a fourth child would then receive the child element for the four children. By limiting support to two children in child tax credit and in universal credit, the Government are ensuring that the system is fair to those taxpayers who fund it, as well as those who benefit from it.
The Government do recognise the vital role that kinship carers play. For example, in universal credit, kinship carers will have to attend periodic interviews only for the first year after a child joins their household, which enables the carer to focus on helping the child through this difficult period. To pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, about the Government’s attitude to adoption, the Government take the importance of adoption very seriously. In the summer Budget, the Government provided £30 million to support the creation of regional adoption agencies to help speed the adoption process.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, mentioned the exemptions outlined at Second Reading. The Government have been consistent since the summer Budget in saying that we will exempt a third or subsequent child or young person who is one of a multiple birth where the multiple birth takes the number of children or young persons in a household above two, and that we will exempt a third or subsequent child born as the result of rape. Those are the exemptions that we have spelled out. We have also been clear that the exemptions will be dealt with in secondary legislation and we will provide more detailed information on those exemptions to noble Lords ahead of the next stage of the Bill.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked about the assessment that we have done in terms of the policy deterring adoption and the taking on of sibling groups. That was contained in the impact assessment of 20 July. We have considered the impacts, which in effect meet our obligations set out in the public sector equality duty.
Amendment 10 is unnecessary as regards recognising the need for exemptions to apply in certain circumstances. We have the power in Clause 12(4) to specify exemptions to the limit. As I said, as was set in the summer Budget, we will make those particular exemptions.
Amendments 16 and 17 propose to establish an appeals process. Comprehensive appeals arrangements already exist in relation to social security and tax credits, and these arrangements will apply to any decisions made under the provisions in the Bill, as well as to exemptions set out in regulations. There is therefore no need to establish a new appeals process. For the reasons I have set out, I urge noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
At Second Reading, when the Minister talked about the exemptions that the Government have made clear will be included, he said:
“The situation with kinship carers is similar”.—[Official Report, 17/11/15; col. 125.]
Why is he today saying that he is now not prepared even to consider the situation of kinship carers? What has changed?
Lord Freud
If I misspoke at Second Reading, I apologise to the Committee. I was saying that they were a similarly important group; I was not trying to say that there would be an exemption. I did not make that statement.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I hate to intervene, but I point out that the evidence to which my noble friend referred was the Department for Work and Pensions’ own evidence. However, at this point I will go back to the amendments, which I support, as we will have another chance to talk about the principle of these nasty clauses later. I just want to ask a couple of questions.
In the impact assessment and elsewhere the phrase is used:
“The Government will develop protections for women who have a third child as the result of rape, or other exceptional circumstances”.
We have not yet had any clue as to what those “other exceptional circumstances” might be. My noble friend Lady Sherlock has suggested that domestic violence should perhaps be one of them because of the coercion that can be involved in domestic violence and abuse, which are not just about physical abuse but emotional and financial abuse—a kind of controlling which is very relevant in this situation.
Points have already been made about the potential intrusiveness of the questioning that might be required to decide whether a woman has had a child as the result of rape. Can the Minister assure us that there will be no requirement either for a conviction or evidence of a police report for the claim to be accepted? As I understand it, according to Rape Crisis only 15% of victims of sexual violence make a police report, and we have already heard about the potential intrusiveness of any questioning there might be. I hope that the Minister might be able to tell us a bit more about what will happen.
Can he assure us that Jobcentre Plus staff will be trained to handle any such conversations sensitively and to provide women who report that they have been raped or assaulted with information about available support services? Will lessons be learned from the experience of women who were subject to very intrusive and deeply personal questioning about the paternity of their children when the requirement to co-operate was enforced under the Child Support Act 1991? As I understand it, extensive guidance was developed at the time but this rule was subsequently abandoned as unworkable. I suspect that the same will apply now.
Baroness Stroud (Con)
My Lords, I thought the House might just like an issue to be clarified. I have the document with me which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, referred to. While nobody in the Committee would want any child to be brought up in poverty, the evidence clearly displays that the two key main drivers for poverty in the UK are, first, long-term worklessness and low earning and, secondly, low parental qualifications. Therefore the first key driver is current poverty and the second is a clear indicator of future poverty.
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Baroness Manzoor
My Lords, we on these Benches support these amendments, too—Amendment 3 in particular. The House needs some assurances from the Government that the disability premium for each disabled child in both tax credits and universal credits will be protected, regardless of the number of children in the family. However, the child element in tax credits and universal credit will be paid only in respect of two children in a family, even when the third child is disabled. That is the point. We need to look at those exemptions, so if the Government have already said that there is some protection, surely that same protection should be afforded to the third child who is disabled.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I want to make a brief point in support of the powerful case that has already been made. I believe that the latest HBAI statistics showed an increase in poverty among disabled children. Can the Minister tell us his assessment of the impact of these clauses on the number of disabled children living in poverty?
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, very briefly, I lend my support to these very important amendments. We have heard some extremely powerful arguments. I want to draw attention to one point in Amendment 3, which refers to child tax credits and says that the limit should not apply,
“where one or more of the children or qualifying young persons are disabled”.
I remember vividly a meeting that I attended during the course of what became the Children and Families Act, organised by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley. The very point which she was talking about was the impact on parent carers trying to bring up disabled children. One of the mothers was bringing up three disabled children. I remember that vividly because I think it brought tears to most of our eyes, including those of the Minister. Can the Minister say what the Government’s thinking is about households which have more than one child who has a disability?
Lord Freud
I think I have to fall back on the position that we have produced an analysis that is published and is available to noble Lords. I just make the point that often these statistics refer to households with both a man and a woman in them and it depends on who the recipient is. It is a household payment, not a payment to women specifically. One has to be rather careful of that when one looks at those statistics in the way that the noble Baroness has.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
The noble Lord is correct but women still tend to bear the main responsibility for the care of children, so the impact on a household is borne particularly by the mother.
Lord Freud
We are getting way off but our evidence is that the vast bulk of households share financial resources, so although someone in a household may receive a particular amount of money it does not necessarily mean that they do not share the burdens evenly. One can make a lot of false assumptions out of some of these data if one is not careful. I urge noble Lords not to press these amendments.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I was so disappointed with the Minister’s responses to the olive branch that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, held out and the inflexibility in response to all the suggestions of how these clauses could be mitigated. In support of the contention that these clauses should not stand part of the Bill, I want to address two main issues: one is the mentality underlying the clauses, and the other is the equality and human rights implications.
My noble friend Lady Hollis referred back to the 19th century in her earlier speech. I will go back just one century. The mentality of the Bill was summed up rather well in a letter to the Scotsman in 1931 which was quoted in The People by Selina Todd, which I just happened to read on holiday—it is a very good book. The letter complained that:
“Many of the workless marry and breed families while in receipt of the dole”,
adding to the taxpayers’ “heavy burden”. Nearly a century on, perhaps we are a bit more subtle, but that sums up the mentality. We have this constant false division, referred to by my noble friend Lady Sherlock, between taxpayers who fund the tax credits system and those who benefit from it and references to how families supporting themselves solely through work do not see their incomes increase when they have another child. Who are these families? Apart from the very wealthiest, those families will be in receipt of child benefit, so they are not supporting themselves solely through work. If they have another child, they will get extra child benefit, and rightly so.
The main difference between now and the situation referred to in the letter to the Scotsman is that the Government do not want those in work and on low incomes to breed too many children either, given that, as we have heard, the majority affected will indeed be in paid work. Incidentally, could the Minister tell us what the rationale is for the abolition of the family element and its universal credit equivalent, which I think perhaps we have rather overlooked in focusing—rightly—on the two-child limit? Is that to discourage people in poverty from breeding altogether?
I turn to the human rights and equality implications. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has raised concerned under a number of articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The impact assessment and the Government’s human rights memorandum do not adequately address these issues at all, although I commend the department for providing the latter.
Relating back to the point made by my noble friend Lady Hollis about the gender impact, the legal officer of the Child Poverty Action Group—I declare an interest as honorary president—refers to Article 14 of the ECHR and the disproportionate impact on women as mothers. Indeed, the impact assessment notes that women are more likely to be affected than men. Article 16.1(e) of CEDAW guarantees that women have the right,
“to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and to have access to the information, education and means to enable them to exercise”,
that right. The International Conference on Human Rights proclaimed:
“Parents have a basic … right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children”.
With regard to families and children, as the Government acknowledge in their human rights memorandum, it may be argued that the clauses discriminate against large families and that large families have status for the purposes of Article 14. They discriminate against religious groups with a conscientious objection to contraception and abortion, which is contrary to Article 14, read with Article 9, of the ECHR. We have heard a lot from different faith groups about their very real concerns about the impact of these clauses.
It is difficult to see how these clauses are in the best interests of children affected, in line with Article 3 of the UNCRC. The Government’s justification in their human rights memorandum is that the articles are,
“justified, proportionate and not manifestly without reasonable foundation”.
That is based partly on all the usual guff about fairness and the encouragement,
“to make the same financial decisions as families supporting themselves solely through work”.
However, we have already heard that the majority of the families affected will be in paid work anyway. The overwhelming response, from a wide range of organisations, suggests that the clauses are not justified, are not proportionate and are without reasonable foundation.
Article 3 of the UNCRC is addressed with what I would call unconvincing arguments in the human rights memorandum, which says:
“The best interests of children … is to have parents in work”—
as we have already heard, the majority of these parents will be in work—
“and work remains the surest way out of poverty”.
These clauses will mean that it is a less sure way out of poverty than it is at present, and that is saying something.
The memorandum says that the savings,
“will allow the Government to protect expenditure on education, childcare and health and the improvements to the overall economic situation will have a positive impact on children and their best interests”.
I draw attention to the arguments of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, in the recent judgment on the benefit cap. She said that,
“article 3(1) … requires that first consideration be given to the best interests, not only of children in general, but also of the particular child or children directly affected by the decision in question”.
I suspect that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, would give the arguments in the human rights memorandum pretty short shrift. She will probably have the opportunity to do so quickly, if this Bill becomes law. I look forward to hearing her judgment on it.
The EHRC is also concerned about the disproportionately negative impact on particular black and minority ethnic groups, which are more likely to have large families. It says that this could be at risk of breaching Articles 2 and 5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The statistics bear this out—of course, those statistics are not provided in the impact assessment, as it would be asking too much to have statistics in the impact assessment. For example, an analysis of the HBAI statistics, pooled for 2010-13 by Professor Lucinda Platt for the Women’s Budget Group, shows that just under two-thirds of children in Pakistani and Bangladeshi families with three or more children are already in poverty. Two-thirds is a staggering figure, and I dread to think what that figure is going to be like if these clauses go ahead.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
My Lords, I will make just two points. First, although it makes me sound old-fashioned, I am in favour of using the social security uprating rules, established over years, for looking at the total spend of the department and what proportion of the national wealth goes to social protection. I am always frustrated and angry when Chancellors of the Exchequer stand at the Dispatch Box. The Treasury knows the square root of nothing at all about social protection. In the run-up to the Budget, we have purdah, so nobody knows what is going to issue forth from the Chancellor’s Budget briefcase. We get things landed upon us that we all have to live with as a consequence.
I want to try to persuade Governments in the future to stick to the established rules, because there are very clear ways of changing rates and benefits. In the annual uprating, Parliament has a chance to look at trends and how things are changing, make decisions and support the Government or make suggestions otherwise. That is a sensible, well-established way of doing business.
My objection to clause stand part, absent any further exemptions, is that we now have a two-child rule. It is a precedent that I believe is very dangerous, because Chancellors of the Exchequer in future could start importing it to other parts of the social security system without let or hindrance. We might start asking ourselves: what are the intrinsic differences between the child element of tax credits and child benefit itself? They are semantic and subtle; we could be entirely wrong. My point is that a clause such as Clause 11, interfering with child tax credits, and the way in which it has been done, leaves the House with some really serious thinking to do about whether this is supportable.
My view is an olive branch, and I will probably be off the Christmas card list of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, as a result of taking this weak-kneed position. But if the Government do not come up with serious responses to the powerful speeches that have been made this evening, it will condition how I will approach any future support for Clauses 11 and 12. Of course, it is technically true that clause stand part is not necessarily available to us on Report or at Third Reading, but there will be ways of trying to address this in other ways. I was put right on that by a stern note from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, a moment ago. She is of course right, as she always is.
I am quite clear about this: it is dodgy procedure and a dangerous precedent. The Minister might be able to sell it to people like me if there is serious consideration of the powerful speeches that have been made. I understand the constitutional context; we are not in easy territory. I am not looking for trouble or to pull the Government down, defeat manifestos or any nonsense of that kind, but I have a conscience to deploy in deciding how to vote on some of these really important things and I will follow my conscience. I am not frightened of constitutional rows, if that is what it comes to. However, we do not need to get into that territory if the Minister carefully reflects, as he has done in the past, on what he has heard this evening and comes back with further and better particulars in terms of exemptions.
Lord Freud
We are going way off the core issues by looking at the times people retire. A lot of things are changing, and it is almost impossible to fine-tune for that.
I will address the challenge set by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, on what our rationale for this is. It is very simple: the Government want to ensure that the system is fair to those who pay for it as well as those who benefit from it. That is the government position. I should add that the Bill should not be taken in isolation. We are introducing a number of measures to support households in work by reducing income tax through increasing personal allowances, increasing wages and increasing free childcare.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, raised the issue of those areas where there is a cultural disposition for larger families. To that, we make the point that all families need to think carefully and ensure that they can afford to provide for a new child in their household.
I make it clear that these changes will not mean a reduction in entitlement for those families already receiving child tax credit for children born before the 6 April 2017. In universal credit, for families already receiving the child element of universal credit, the changes will apply only to children joining the household on or after that date. I think that we have another amendment on which we can go into that in more detail.
Families moving to universal credit from child tax credit and receiving child tax credit for more than two children, and families claiming universal credit within six months of a previous universal credit or child tax credit claim that included the child element, will continue to be able to receive the child element for those children.
On the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on the EHRC, as she knows, the Government set out their assessment of the impacts of the policies in the Bill on 20 July, and the memorandum to the Joint Committee on Human Rights was published on 8 September. Ministers have considered impacts with regard to all the relevant legal obligations when formulating the welfare policies announced in the Bill. The intended impact of these reforms is to incentivise work and ensure that work always pays.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
Subsequent to that, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has produced its own assessment, which says very clearly that it believes that the human rights statement from the Government was inadequate. I welcome the fact that the DWP produced such a statement but given its inadequacy, will the Minister now respond to what the EHRC is saying?
Lord Freud
I believe there has been correspondence with it, which I think is public.
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Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I rise—albeit a little slowly—to move Amendment 11 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton. This is a very simple amendment which would ensure that the two-child limit applies only to children born after 6 April 2017. The impact assessment for this measure states:
“Entitlement will remain at the level for two children for households who make the choice to have more children in the knowledge of the policy”.
That simply is not true. If someone has more than two children and needs to make a claim for universal credit after 6 April 2017, and if they are not getting tax credits or UC and they have not in the past six months, this measure will apply to them. Entitlement will remain at the level of two children for those households, even though they quite clearly have not made the choice to have more children in the knowledge of the policy.
I suppose that it is just about possible that there will be those who manage to conceive and deliver a child between the passing of the Bill and April 2017, though they would have to get a move on, but most of the children affected by this will be living, breathing, existing children, conceived and born when this policy was just a glint in the eye of a cost-cutting Chancellor.
I know that various attempts have been made to get the Government to explain their rationale for this. I understand that it was indicated to Peers during a briefing session that the reason was that, if someone had not needed to claim benefit or tax credits during the past six months, they clearly have enough money to protect themselves against unforeseen events, so should not have access to the full support of the welfare state. I may be mistaken, but if I am the Minister can correct me. If that is right, however, surely that is precisely what the welfare state is for—to protect all of us against unforeseen circumstances.
Let us suppose that a couple have two primary-school children, and then they have two year-old twins. One day the husband dies or disappears or is paralysed in an accident and cannot work, and they turn to the welfare state. Those twins will be invisible for the purposes of universal credit, so you can see that the dream scheme that Ministers have boasted would swing seamlessly into action as soon as someone’s circumstances changed will not help that family feed, clothe and house the twins.
The family will potentially lose £5,560 a year every year until the twins are adults. We are talking about the best part of £90,000. How should the family have provided for that when they did not know they had to? What should they have done? Saved that much when they are raising toddlers? Maybe they should have bought a PPI policy, the cause of the biggest mis-selling scandal in modern financial history—and I should know, since I am the senior independent director of the Financial Ombudsman Service. But even if that were a good idea, why would they do it? They thought the welfare state was there to help them at such times. That was what they had been led to believe when they had those children.
As I indicated in the previous debate, I think that this whole measure is a terrible idea. But perhaps I can pass on some advice to the Minister from the greatest Cabinet Secretary of modern times, the legendary Sir Humphrey Appleby. Sir Humphrey once said to his Minister: “If you’re going to do this damn silly thing, don’t do it in this damn silly way”. If the Minister is going to reduce support for larger families on the grounds that families on universal credit will have to make the same choices as those who are not, he should at least not apply it to people who have already made their choices because their children are already here. I beg to move.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I support my noble friend, who made a very powerful case. The joint briefing from the churches and faith groups that was circulated to all Peers made a very good point. It said:
“A policy designed to incentivise families to make responsible choices, becomes an unavoidable financial penalty for anyone confronted by relatively common life events”.
This amendment in particular puts that quotation into relief. The Office of the Children’s Commissioner has raised similar concerns.
I made the point at Second Reading that this provision sits oddly with the Government’s own emphasis in this and earlier legislation on the importance of a dynamic perspective on family behaviour. Indeed, in a letter of 13 October to the EHRC about impact assessments for the current Bill, the Secretary of State made as his main point the need,
“to take fully into account the dynamic nature of people’s lives”.
So why are the Government refusing to do so now, especially, as my noble friend said, in relation to existing third or subsequent children where there is a new universal credit claim? What is the justification?
As my noble friend said, when this was explained to us I think the way it was put was that there would be an unfair advantage to richer families if they were able to claim universal credit for third and subsequent children. Perhaps these families were not claiming tax credits or universal credit before, but they could still be on a low income and simply not have claimed. We know that take-up is far from perfect. I know that the Government expect take-up to be higher for universal credit, but that remains to be seen. I have been around this game for quite a long time with the expectation that take-up would be improved by various benefits and so forth. However, it remains stubbornly at less than 100% for means-tested benefits. Even if they were better off—my noble friend made a powerful point here—financial circumstances can change very quickly in the event of life events or shocks. So where is the fairness in refusing support to, say, an early teenage child who is the third in the family and who was born many years ago?
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for bringing forward this amendment and I thank the noble Baronesses for making their points so succinctly, but effectively.
This amendment would change our approach to applying the two-child limit in universal credit so that it would apply only to children born on or after 6 April 2017. That effect would apply in existing and completely new claims for universal credit. This reform, which sees support for children in universal credit limited to two children, is primarily about fairness to the taxpayer. The tax credits system has grown unsustainably, and spending on tax credits for the 870,000 households which have three or more children is around £9.4 billion. To accept this amendment would, we estimate, increase projected universal credit expenditure by around £250 million in 2019-20. I am pleased that at least on this amendment I am able to provide the Committee with some costings.
The Government were elected on a manifesto commitment to reduce welfare expenditure by a further £12 billion during the lifetime of this Parliament, as part of the plan to eliminate the deficit and eliminate burdening the next generation with additional debt. There is no strong justification for the taxpayer to provide more generous financial support for completely new claims in respect of children born before 2017 than in respect of those born after that date.
Families already claiming universal credit or child tax credit, whether in or out of work, will not be affected in relation to children or qualifying young persons in their households before the key date while they remain entitled to benefit. Similarly, any household that has claimed universal credit or child tax credit in the past six months will be protected if their previous award included a child element for more than two children or qualifying young persons and they continue to have responsibility for them. I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw this amendment.
The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth
My Lords, I tabled Amendment 21 to highlight the impact of this measure on different faith communities who share our concerns with this part of the Bill in particular. Noble Lords who attended the special briefing we organised two weeks ago will have heard Chaya Spitz, chief executive of the Interlink Foundation, speak passionately about the implications for the Orthodox Jewish community that she represents and is a member of. For her community, larger families are the norm and the central pivot around which everything else revolves. There is a positive, faith-based imperative to have children, to create the next generation in service of God. There is also a commonly held conscientious objection to the use of artificial contraception, except in prescribed circumstances, and to abortion, except in rare circumstances. By limiting financial support to the first two children, this policy is making a judgment that touches on deeply personal and strongly held religious and cultural beliefs about the family, and that threatens the viability of whole faith communities.
According to the 2011 census, 52% of Jewish children lived in families with three or more children, compared with a national average of 31%. In Muslim families, the proportion is even higher—60% live in larger families. This measure will have a hugely disproportionate impact on these particular faith communities. Although it is difficult to see how this could be framed as an exemption, the effects will be profound, and I do not believe they have received the consideration they deserve.
A recent report by the Child Poverty Action Group highlighted serious human rights concerns relating to this and other parts of the Bill and argued that the regulations would need to include “extensive exceptions” protecting women,
“family integrity and religious freedom”.
One of the issues it raises is the potential discrimination against members of religious groups who have a conscientious objection to the use of contraception or abortion contrary to Article 14, read with Article 9, of the European Convention on Human Rights. There are other hard cases as well, including situations where women in abusive relationships are pressured into having more children or where a woman uses contraception in good faith but it fails. In all these cases, the assumption that women have a free choice about whether or not to have a child is called into question.
For these reasons, I have tabled this amendment calling on the Government to consult and report on the economic and social impacts, focusing in particular on the implications for family life and for different faith communities. The Government’s own impact assessment is inadequate in this respect, offering only a superficial assessment of the likely effects. To argue, without supporting evidence, that substantially reducing the level of support for larger families will somehow increase their financial resilience and support improved life chances for their children seems wishful thinking at best and requires further investigation. As part of a more rigorous assessment, will the Minister agree to seeing the Government apply their own family test to this policy, using the guidance published by the DWP in October last year?
In an earlier intervention in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Lawson of Blaby, spoke about perceptions of fairness in legislation, citing the example of family allowances. Would the Minister agree that the perceived fairness of these policies will be judged not only by their overall popularity but by the respect they give to deeply held convictions of faith communities that enrich our common life? I seek not an exemption but a clear analysis of the impact.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, in speaking in support of this amendment, I will pick up what the right reverend Prelate said about the inadequacy of the impact assessment. This point was also made by the Equality and Human Rights Commission from the perspective of equality and human rights. It argued that it does not “enable proper scrutiny” or meet the requirements of the public sector equality duty; nor is there an assessment of the “aggregate effect” of the changes on people.
In fact, the impact assessment is inadequate from any perspective. In particular, there is no assessment of the impact on child poverty, despite the Joint Committee on Human Rights recommending that the Government should assess the impact on child poverty of any new law, as child poverty is a human rights issue—I declare an interest as I was a member of the committee at that point. I asked a Written Question about the impact, only to be told to look at the impact assessment—the implication being that I had not read it, which I found rather insulting.
Not only is there no assessment of the impact on child poverty, but this is the quality of distribution analysis:
“The policy has the impact of redistributing income from Universal Credit/tax credit recipients to the Exchequer (i.e. society as a whole)”.
Actually it is not society as a whole, because when I last thought about it, universal and tax credit recipients were themselves members of society. The assessment continues:
“The policy therefore has distributional impacts”.
That is the distribution analysis—and the impact assessment on life chances is similarly risible.
I remind the Minister of what it says in the Companion—that Ministers should be as open as possible in answering questions, because this is inherent in ministerial accountability to Parliament. I therefore ask him again now: what is the department’s assessment of the impact of these clauses on the number of children living in poverty? I simply do not accept that it is not possible to make an assessment. I accept that there might have to be a fairly wide margin of error—we cannot just say that it will be exactly x thousand—but I do not accept that there is no assessment. It is not possible.
The right reverend Prelate also mentioned the family test. That is drawn up by the Department for Work and Pensions itself. It is supposed to be equivalent to the public sector equality duty. According to the DWP, its application should be documented and the relevant department should consider publishing it. Given that this clearly has a family impact, why did the department decide not to publish the family test? As part of its equality statement for reforming asylum support, the Home Office set out very clearly each of the questions that the family test is supposed to answer and gave its answer. I might not agree with those answers, but that was a model of how a department should deal with it.
Will the Minister undertake to provide noble Lords with the documentation of the application of the family test before Report? There must be documentation, according to the DWP’s own guidance. Given that the measure has a clear family focus, can he tell us what additional analysis was undertaken involving stakeholders, as is recommended in the DWP’s own guidance on the test? Finally, will the Minister tell us which other countries restrict payment of benefits for children to smaller families in this way? I am reliably informed that there is no other country, but I accept that I may be wrong. When I last looked at this, I found that countries that cared about family policy and child poverty tended to pay more to larger families, rather than less, but I would welcome elucidation on that.
Baroness Sherlock
My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 21 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth. I fully support the requirement in the amendment to report on the impact on family relationships and functioning, for the reasons that have been articulated in the debates we have been having this evening. Until now we have not discussed in any detail the impact on faith communities, so I am going to concentrate on that.
As we have heard, larger families are strongly prevalent within some faith traditions and cultures, which leads to legitimate concerns about the differential ways this policy will be felt throughout society. There is an issue of equality for children born into families of faith. This measure will disproportionately affect families where, perhaps because of the parents’ faith, there is a devout desire to avoid contraception and abortion. As we have heard and discussed this evening, family planning is not infallible and many people of faith and other like-minded people are concerned that unexpected pregnancies could lead to a rise in the number of abortions. This point was made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth earlier.
As my noble friend Lady Lister pointed out, the most damning evidence about the differential impact of this measure on equality grounds comes from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I declare an interest, in that I am a former commissioner of EHRC. It says:
“The proposed changes may have a disproportionate negative impact on people from particular ethnic or religious groups … The impact assessments and human rights memorandum which accompany the Bill do not assess the effect of the Bill on equality and human rights in sufficient detail to enable proper scrutiny of the legislation”.
It is not kidding.
Disgracefully, the Government have resisted all pressures to conduct cumulative impact assessments of these measures, giving impact assessments only for individual measures. Even within that, however, I was staggered to find that there had been no attempt to conduct an equality impact assessment on the two-child policy. The short section in the IA on the impact on protected groups mentions gender and disability in passing, acknowledges that ethnic minority households may be more likely to be impacted, though offers no detail, but makes no reference at all to the protected characteristic of religion and belief. Can the Minister explain why there is no such reference, when even a cursory glance at the data suggests the possibility for significantly differential impacts on the grounds of some protected characteristics, particularly religion and belief?
Lord Freud
I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for this amendment. On the ECHR point, the Government set out their assessment of the impacts of the policies in the Bill on 20 July, as I think I have already said. It is important to ensure that the dynamic behavioural effects of the changes are considered within that. Many of these analyses suffer from the fact that they are too static when considering gains and losses and too focused on notional changes.
On the question posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on child poverty impacts, I say that the intended impact of our reforms is to incentivise work, ensure that it always pays, and to allow people to keep more of what they earn. That is why, as we will go on to discuss, we are moving towards a life-chances analysis of poverty as our approach.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I am sorry to intervene, but that is no answer, my Lords. I asked a very clear, factual question. At present, the Child Poverty Act still holds; therefore this House deserves the respect of being given an analysis of the impact of the increase in the numbers of children in child poverty on the measures, which are still the law, and which will still be measured under the HBAI statistics, as the Minister has said. I do not expect to have it now, but I hope that the Minister will give us those figures before Report.
Lord Freud
As I said, projections on the HBAI are difficult, and everyone gets them wrong because they are done on a static basis.
I pick up the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis: she will be pleased to know that universal credit does not recognise polygamous marriage.
On the family test raised by the right reverend Prelate, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Earl, it is not a tick-box, pass-or-fail test but is about looking at how policies support or potentially undermine family relationships, and about trade-offs. The family test ensures that family considerations are explicitly considered and recognised when making those trade-offs. These measures will ensure fairness for all families, both encouraging parents into work and giving a fair deal for the taxpayer.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I am very sorry to intervene again. As I said, the Home Office, which is not the author of the original family test—the DWP was—published the questions in the family test and how its policy met those questions. Of course the department must have carried that out not on a tick-box basis—I am not saying yes or no—but by carrying out a considered analysis around these questions. I simply ask why, therefore, the Department for Work and Pensions is not prepared to make available to this House the documentation of how the family test was applied to this clause?
Lord Freud
As I said, the documentation that we have published is the documentation that we need to publish to comply with our public sector equality duties. We have done that, even though the noble Baroness may feel that it is inadequate.
Lord Freud
That is a good point but, in essence, if you are not achieving the target in the earlier stages, you will know you are not going to get to the right point at key stage 4, so I think in practice this is built into the process.
Amendment 28, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, would place a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to publish and lay before Parliament a report on children in care and care leavers. As I think we indicated earlier this evening, we share the noble Earl’s commitment to improving life chances for this particular group. We publish a wealth of information on both children in care and care leavers. There are two annual statistical publications, the first of which provides data on the numbers of children in care and the numbers entering and leaving care. It also includes data on placements, children who go missing from care and outcomes for care leavers, including their economic activity. The second publication deals with educational attainment at both key stage 2 and key stage 4, so I hope that noble Lords will be reassured that we already have the comprehensive data that the noble Earl is looking for.
We are also taking action. We recognise that children in care often need special attention at school. The Government’s own measure of educational disadvantage includes children who have been in care. Children in care also attract the highest rate of funding through the pupil premium plus and, from December, will be recognised in the education performance tables. At a local level, we have given local authorities £44 million over three years to support all young people to continue living with their foster families after the age of 18, helping to provide a stable setting at the key point of transition.
In Amendment 29, the noble Earl looks to do much the same with children who are “homeless” and “at risk of homelessness” every year—in other words to create a duty to lay an annual report. The noble Earl will be pleased to know that I have been a member of the ministerial homelessness committee now for the last five and a half years, so I am absolutely informed in this area. We agree of course that care and attention are required in the case of children who are at risk in this area, and we publish relevant data. Local authorities collect and publish data on the number of households with children who are eligible as homeless and in priority need and data on the number of children in temporary accommodation, which is published on a quarterly basis. I think that the last figures came out in September. This area is a key priority. Since 2010, we have invested over £500 million to support local authorities and voluntary sector agencies to help the most vulnerable back into society.
On Amendment 30, problem debt clearly is a key factor in trapping families in poverty and adversely impacting on their living standards, mental health, family stability, financial inclusion and well-being. This is a well-chosen issue. We intend to develop a range of non-statutory indicators, which will include that one, as well as family breakdown and drug and alcohol dependency, and set these out in our life chances strategy.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I have a couple of points, the first on problem debt. Will the Government also be assessing the impact of the Bill on debt? We have had briefings from a number of organisations that give debt advice, such as StepChange, which are very concerned that the Bill, in particular the clauses we have just been debating on the end of financial support for families with three or more children, are going to increase debt significantly.
I also wondered whether the Minister could comment on another point. He has twice referred now to addiction, which the Government talk about as a sort of root cause of poverty. A couple of years ago I put down a Written Question asking what the Government’s estimate was of the proportion of children living in poverty with at least one parent addicted to either drugs or alcohol. The Minister’s answer was that the Government do not have such an assessment. Drug or alcohol use is not recorded on the survey used for UK poverty national statistics. I wonder therefore—how do the Government know that this is a root cause of poverty, when they seem to have no relevant information?
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
The Minister talked about working with local authorities on child poverty, which obviously is welcome, and I think that he said something about not wanting to do that in a random way—excuse me, it is a bit late so I cannot remember exactly what he said. If that is the case, though, why are the Government removing the duty on local authorities to develop strategies? The letter that the Minister received from the Children’s Commissioners just the other day underlined how valuable that duty has been. I know that local authorities, within the constraints that they are having to work in, have been quite imaginative in trying to think about what they can do as partners of central government in combating child poverty, so I really do not understand why that has been taken away, given what the Minister said about wanting to work with local authorities.
Lord Freud
It is the same answer that I have just given: we want local authorities to focus their time on action to get at the root causes, not at the symptoms.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
But surely the strategy could be a strategy to get at root causes. The Child Poverty Act does not say that local authorities have a duty to deal with symptoms. It says that they have a duty to help to eliminate child poverty, and of course that is about trying to get at root causes.
Lord Freud
What we are doing is working with local authorities to support them in getting at the root causes. That will be our strategy.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, the title of this Bill is a misnomer. It will not enhance welfare in the true sense of, to fare well. Instead, it will undermine the welfare of families with children in particular—already hit hard by a succession of social security cuts—because, unlike the last welfare reform Bill, which included some genuine reform alongside cuts, this Bill does not. In so far as it promotes work, it does so through the punitive Poor Law “less eligibility” principle and the devaluation of unpaid care work. A truer title would be the “denial and aggravation of child poverty Bill”. It effectively erases child poverty from the legislative lexicon, while together with other measures it could mean a further 600,000 children in poverty by 2020, according to the Resolution Foundation. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I was a member, recommended that the Government should assess the impact on child poverty of any new law, as well as its compatibility with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. There is no such assessment, and that with regard to the rights of the child is written in a rose-tinted font.
Instead, as we have heard, the Bill removes all the statutory measures, duties and targets that underpinned this country’s child poverty strategy, which, under the last Labour Government, led to a significant reduction in child poverty. How will the Government now be held accountable for meeting their manifesto pledge to,
“work to eliminate child poverty”?
As for measures, the 2012 consultation balanced a preference for a multidimensional measure, with the statement:
“The Government is not playing a zero-sum game with child poverty measurement”.
This is from the coalition Government, but led by a Conservative in the DWP:
“There can be no doubt that income is a key part of our understanding of child poverty”.
The Government are playing a zero-sum game now. The 2012 consultation demonstrated overwhelming support for the retention of an income measure, as analysis of the responses by Kitty Stewart and Nick Roberts, of the LSE’s Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, demonstrates. They found general agreement that low income/material deprivation are the only factors that are reliably able to distinguish those in poverty from those who are not. In evidence to the Public Bill Committee, respected academics branded the proposal as “silly” and warned that we are in danger of becoming “an international laughing stock”. A systematic academic review by CASE demonstrated unequivocally that family income is a key driver of children’s development and opportunities. As a CASE blog observed, not measuring income poverty while professing concern about life chances is little short of bizarre.
The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission called for,
“a clear commitment to maintain the centrality of income in measuring poverty”.
Perhaps that is why it is now going to lose child poverty from its remit. Will the Minister explain why that is the case? Given the replacement of the Child Poverty Act with a life chances Act, would it not make sense to call it the “life chances commission”, which would signal a broader remit than the narrow, meritocratic concept of “social mobility”?
Why, when the majority of children now live in households with a parent in work, is there to be no measure that can capture this alongside worklessness? Perhaps one reason is that some of the Bill’s measures, together with other tax credit cuts, are likely to aggravate in-work child poverty. In particular, families “supporting themselves through work”, to quote the Minister, could be hardest hit by the removal of means-tested financial support for third and subsequent children because of the interaction with the benefit cap for out-of-work families. The Children’s Commissioner is one of many who have voiced concerns, pointing out that this does not take account of the way family circumstances can so easily change. Yet, when introducing universal credit, Ministers placed such emphasis on the need for a dynamic understanding of family behaviour. Overall, children in black and minority ethnic families are likely to be disproportionately hurt. Their already high risk of poverty will increase, as will that of disabled children.
Another measure that will bear down particularly hard on larger and minority ethnic families is the reduction in the benefit cap. Now that it is being decoupled from average earnings, the rationale for its level is unclear. The original arguments against the cap have even greater force. As I argued when we last discussed the cap, it is unfair deliberately to reduce the amount of money some families will receive to well below the amount Parliament has determined is the minimum required to meet their needs.
It is even more unfair when, as my noble friend Lady Sherlock pointed out, the Government do not compare like with like when contrasting out-of-work and in-work incomes. No account is taken of the in-work benefits received on top of the comparator earnings, in particular child benefit and child tax credit, yet these benefits are included in the cap. This was pointed out in a recent Supreme Court judgment. Three out of five of the judges believed that the cap is not compliant with the UNCRC’s requirement to treat the best interests of the child as a primary consideration. Although the appeal was not allowed, the hope was expressed that the Government would address the implications of this finding when they review the cap—some hope.
One of the justifications for the cap is to increase work incentives, yet the House of Commons Library observes that,
“there is no general consensus”,
that it is,
“proving an effective means of moving claimants into work”.
Instead, a Community Links study found that when you force people into what they call “survival mode”, it can make finding and keeping a job harder and less of a priority because all you can think about is trying to get by. Also, 6% of those already capped are claiming carer’s allowance. Carers UK warns that many,
“are not in a position to pick up work or further work without reducing or withdrawing the care they provide”.
It asks, as the Government have said that it is not their intention to encourage people to stop caring and go into work, why this policy applies to carers. I hope the Minister has an answer. Also, is it reasonable to expect the 15% of capped lone parents who have a child aged under one to work when they are not required to do so even under the Bill’s further extension of conditionality?
Finally, the benefits freeze comes on top of existing cuts in their real value, which is particularly marked for child benefit and has been described by the IFS as “highly regressive”. The impact assessment notes that women are more likely to be affected than men, which is true of many of the measures. Moreover, as the main managers of poverty, women will bear much of the burden, at the expense of their mental and physical health.
I end with two questions. Will the Minister explain how the family test—which the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, assured your Lordships’ House would be “strictly applied” to “all new policies”—is applied to a Bill that will spell disproportionate hardship for families with children? Will he explain how this damaging and punitive Bill, which will increase child poverty, is compatible with the Prime Minister’s pledge of,
“an all-out assault on poverty”?
Families: Work Incentives
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Freud
The target to halve the disability employment gap implies that we need to find work for 1 million more people in this category. We are currently working pretty hard on the strategy for that. It was announced by the Secretary of State in August, and we are now consulting with the various interest groups to find out the optimal way of achieving it. One group that is particularly important is people with learning disabilities; they have had a tough time in the work market.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
The Minister acknowledged that work allowances have “come down” as if that was somehow an act of God. The fact is that the Government first froze them and are now abolishing them for non-disabled workless households and reducing them for most other households. Yet when the Welfare Reform Bill was going through this House, the Minister constantly told us that the new improved work allowances were absolutely key to making work pay. Will he explain why they have been cut back so drastically?
Lord Freud
As the noble Baroness will know, a reduction and a cost saving are going on in this part of the benefits system. We had to make a decision about how to structure that. We decided that the taper was critical because it moved people right the way down at 65%. We have maintained that level. We have taken it out and reduced the work allowances in other areas. In particular, in our experience, for singles the removal has meant that people move straight through the work allowance out of UC. We have tested people carefully and seen a significant, measurable increase in the amount of work that they do and in their earnings. The work allowance impact seems to be less in those areas.
Universal Credit (Waiting Days) (Amendment) Regulations 2015
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)
My Lords, this debate perhaps illustrates why the way in which the House scrutinises important, not to say controversial, statutory instruments is not satisfactory and is rising to the top of the procedural agenda. I know that there is a move afoot for a delaying power; in fact, we now have the Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. I have also put forward what I believe is a better way of debating controversial SIs, with advisory amendments being suggested. But for the moment these two types of Motion, moved by my noble friend Lord German and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, are the best that we can do without killing the regulations. However, I should make it clear that I see no merit in the Government’s proposals at all. It is tempting simply to recommend that the regulations be annulled. The suggestion in my noble friend Lord German’s Motion for removing the housing benefit element from UC waiting days, from the Government’s very own advisory committee, is the very least that the Government should do. However, I will support the Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, as the second-best option after that.
The purpose of the Social Security Advisory Committee is to advise the Government on secondary legislation and to issue occasional reports in this area. Its report on these regulations details what it calls “compelling evidence” as to why they should not proceed, received in response to its consultation. The Government’s reasoning is that the new arrangements refer only to new claims for universal credit made after 3 August this year and do not apply to certain vulnerable groups or those migrating to UC from existing benefits. They therefore believe that those who qualify for UC by a means test are likely to have savings to fall back on because they will be,
“coming from the world of employment”.
In any case, they then say rather vaguely,
“advances of benefit will be available to help those who are in financial need”.
This is a thoroughly misleading sentence which turns out not to be entirely true, as I shall demonstrate.
We are told that the principle behind the waiting days policy in UC is,
“not designed to provide cover for moving between jobs or brief spells of unemployment”,
although this somewhat sniffy comment does not take account of the fact that universal credit, like PIP, is an in-work as well as an out-of-work benefit. I have been very fair to the Minister by spelling out the Government’s rationale for the policy. So why is the policy being questioned by not just the SSAC but our very own Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee? I prefer to call that committee by its old name, the Merits Committee, because the clue as to what it does is in the name. I am very pleased that the chairman of the committee, who has been writing letters to the Minister, is here.
The committee has been like a terrier with a bone. First, it points out that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said, no impact assessment giving costs and savings has been provided, so there is insufficient information to gain a clear understanding of what is going on. I take the noble Baroness’s point that the impact assessment would in any case probably be out of date but that is no excuse for the Government not having done it. The equality assessment is not a substitute for a properly done impact assessment. There is a glaringly obvious example of why an impact assessment is vital. The Government maintain that benefit advances are available for those in financial need, as I said just now. But the SSAC report tells us that the Government admit that advances will not be available to everyone, especially not to those who will not be able to afford the repayment. So what will these people do when they are left with no money for six weeks while almost certainly having debts, being in danger of being thrown out of their accommodation for non-payment of rent and with no food?
No wonder the Government have not done an impact assessment. If they had done one properly, they would have had to admit that there will indeed be extra burdens on landlords, local authorities—particularly if they have to give out loans—housing charities and food banks, and quite possibly the police and health services. But, I hear the Minister saying, “These are people from the world of work, surely not those at the bottom of the pile. They must have some savings, mustn’t they?”. But the evidence provided to the SSAC does not back this up. As my noble friend Lord German said, research by HSBC showed that 34% of the UK population have less than £250 in savings and do not have the means to cover a week’s rent and living costs if the breadwinner’s job were to end. Scottish Widows found that of those with no savings, two-thirds had debts. There are lots of similar comments. We also know what happened when there was a computer glitch at RBS recently: many of its wage-earning customers said that they could not manage to pay their outgoings, even for a very short time.
The SSAC report sums up the argument by saying that the question as to the balance between those with sufficient savings and those without has not been resolved in the supporting paperwork from the DWP. What the Government seem not to have understood is that what they call the “world of employment” might mean a very low-paid job in an expensive place such as London.
Turning to the crucial question of the housing benefit element of UC, the SSAC says:
“The fact that the Committee received so many submissions from landlords and their representatives is an indication of the degree of anxiety that has been generated in the housing market by this proposal”.
The Cornwall Residential Landlords Association is more forthright. It says:
“Many landlords have expressed concern about the payment of Universal Credit at the end of a calendar month leading to late payment of rents and other bills. Adding a further barrier to claimants being able to meet their financial obligations is likely to result in an increase in the number of landlords no longer willing to accept these people as tenants”,
as my noble friend Lord German said. It added:
“The increased risk of homelessness will add to the costs of policing and health services”.
The Notting Hill Housing Trust also makes the point that having rent arrears has the potential to inhibit the free movement of labour, thus hobbling those who are looking for work in as wide an area as possible.
Turning back to the absent impact assessment which should have provided costs and savings, the Minister’s letter to the chairman of our secondary legislation committee gives us more information. It says that the anticipated savings will all be spent in giving additional support for claimants in Jobcentre Plus offices but we have heard before of all the support that claimants are now supposed to be getting from JCP offices. As for the impact assessment not having been done, the reason is given that the legislation does not directly impose obligations on public or private bodies. In other words, it is almost admitted that parts of impact assessments are tick-box exercises, often not worth the paper they are written on. That is something those of us interested in statutory instruments know all about.
However, I am concerned not just with process but with the end result. I fear that the result of the Government proceeding with this arrangement will be real hardship for many of those affected. The Government do not seem to acknowledge that many UC claimants will have been trying to find work before they apply, which makes this proposal particularly harsh. I urge the Government to withdraw the regulations—and if not, to take the housing benefit element out before pressing ahead.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Sherlock’s Motion. However, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, was not able to go ahead with his original fatal Motion, not least because when we debated the earlier waiting days regulations on 19 November, I promised that I would see him on the barricades were he to do so. I, too, oppose these regulations. I will inevitably be repeating some of the arguments already put so ably, but I hope to provide reinforcements in doing so.
I accept that the universal credit regulations will affect fewer people than did those for JSA/ESA, because of how universal credit operates. However, as we have heard, those who are affected stand to be hit harder because of monthly payments and because the universal credit payment includes more elements—in particular housing, to which the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord German, which I also support, relates. The payment also includes childcare costs and children’s allowances.
As the Child Poverty Action Group—I declare an interest as its honorary president—points out in its evidence to SSAC, this means that those with high housing costs and/or with children will be particularly adversely affected. In addition, SSAC points out that carers and lone parents of children aged under three, who do not have to serve waiting days on income support, will have to do so on universal credit.