Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

Kinship care and private fostering and adoption provide huge savings to the public purse and better outcomes for children. Relatively small numbers are affected and any money saved here will be offset by higher costs elsewhere in the system. Can the Minister tell the Committee what attempts the department has made to assess whether the effect of this Bill will be to deter families with children from adopting more children? What assessment has the department made of whether it is likely that sibling groups will be less likely to be adopted as a result? Has the Minister discussed the impact of this change with his DfE colleagues? Finally, what assessment has he made of whether costs will increase elsewhere in government? I hope the Minister has some information for us because, if he was simply to say that no attempt has been made to consider those impacts, that would obviously be irresponsible. I know he is not an irresponsible Minister, so I look forward to hearing his reply.

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches also agree with kinship care as an adoption exemption. According to the Children’s Society, kinship carers support an estimated 200,000 children across the UK. These, as we have already heard, are families who have taken in children, often in difficult circumstances, out of love and kindness. They could find it all the harder to do so if they are unable to access any additional support through the tax credits system. Although the Government and David Cameron personally have said that they want to dramatically improve the adoption process, stopping child tax credits and universal credit for those who adopt or take in family members or friends runs counter to what they have said in the past. Can the Minister say what has changed?

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendments 1 and 16 in this group. First, can I make an apology to the Minister and the Committee? On Second Reading, I feel I was rather too soft on the Government. I commend the Government for their achievements in terms of employment, but there are several areas in this Bill that cause me real concern the more I contemplate them, and I should have said more about them at Second Reading.

I agree with the right reverend Prelate—if I may agree with him—that it would be unwise for the Government not to pay full attention to these amendments. I was speaking to a kinship carer earlier today. She was a godmother to a child. About six years ago, the child’s mother came into difficulties so she became a kinship carer. It was very challenging for her because local authorities do not offer much support at all for such carers. The child must have been about 11 when she came into the godmother’s care. Over the last six years, the girl has done well and done well at school. About a year ago, the carer adopted the girl. Currently, the girl is making applications to university and it is very good to see how well she has thrived, first under the kinship care arrangement and now under the adoption arrangement.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said, people in care often lack stable relationships and the only one they may have is with their siblings, yet it can be difficult to find a foster carer or an adoptive parent who will take on a sibling group. We should be very careful to avoid any disincentive to potential adopters to do that. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of Delma Hughes, a care leaver herself, who never got to know her five siblings. As an adult with care experience, she set up a charity called Siblings Together, which she has now been running for about 10 years. It provides holiday gatherings for siblings in care and opportunities for them, for example, to go to the Young Vic and perform in plays together or to go off to write poetry together, which bring together separated siblings and are immensely important for them.

I am sure the Minister will give a very sympathetic response to these concerns, which I look forward to. I also thank the Family Rights Group, which provided a very helpful briefing for this amendment on kinship care and has been working in this area for many years. I very much value its work, as I am sure all those in this area do.

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Moved by

[Baroness Manzoor]

2: Clause 11, page 13, line 12, at end insert “, or
“(c) subsection (3C) applies.”

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 2, I shall speak to Amendments 4, 7 and 12 in my name. As we have heard, the Bill introduces a two-child limit on receipt of child tax credits for children born before 5 April 2017 and the child element of universal credit for families making a new claim, whether or not the child is born before April 2017.

My Amendments 2, 4, 7 and 12 are about introducing exemptions. On this, I concur with my noble friend Lord Kirkwood because I understand the budget restrictions that the Minister is facing in relation to the welfare budget. My exemptions also highlight the importance of sensitivity in implementing these provisions. Many exemptions are needed. There are groups of people who cannot make rational decisions—or rational choices, should I say? The problem is about determining whether these exemptions are met, which can be very difficult.

Amendment 2 is an enabling amendment to Amendment 4, which addresses the need for exemptions for,

“the person or persons claiming an individual element of child tax credit”,

if the person,

“has been a victim of rape … is a kinship carer”,

which we have already discussed. Again, I concur with what the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, said so well. Exemptions would also apply to an individual who,

“has previously claimed tax credit as a single parent but is now part of a stepfamily, or a cohabiting multiple family … has fled domestic violence, or … has suffered a bereavement of their husband, wife, civil partner or cohabiting partner who is the parent of the child or children for which an individual element of child tax credit is being claimed”.

Families are complex units. If two single-parent families, each with two children live together, they are entitled to retain or claim the child tax credit but not if they marry. This is because their change in circumstances mean they will fall under universal credit and the two-child limit. Transitional arrangements are supposed to ensure that existing claimants are unaffected by these changes. However, households in receipt of child tax credits and which are migrated into universal credit will be protected only in so far as they maintain their current claim—in this case, if they stayed single.

Iain Duncan Smith has talked about encouraging dual-parent families but this Bill, as I said previously, runs counter to that. However, let us be clear. We on these Benches do not necessarily agree that two-parent families are in some way better, as Iain Duncan Smith effectively believes. All family types are valid and important. In my view, not exempting families where single parents come together is difficult to understand, given the commitment made in other statements.

In domestic violence cases, a woman—it usually is a woman—with more than two children who flees a violent relationship must know that she will be able to afford to care for all her children so that she is not trapped into staying in a violent or abusive relationship due to financial hardship. It is also clear that if a working husband or wife dies, the income in the family will fall. It is logical that these families should be exempt from the two-child tax credit limitation.

The Bill also impacts on many families who already have three or more children if they make a new claim for universal credit as a result of common, but unpredictable, life events. Anyone can lose their job at any time; we can all get sick; we can all have a disability in the future. So this is totally unfair and unreasonable. The DWP’s own analysis demonstrates the risk of child poverty, which is already significantly higher among families with three or more children: 35% compared to 25-26% for families with one or two children.

Other noble Lords will, no doubt, speak on these important issues. As has already been identified, other exemptions may need to be applied in areas such as private foster care arrangements and disability. This is why I have put down Amendment 4, proposing that:

“The Secretary of State may, by regulations, make further provisions relating to the operation of subsection (3C).

The main point of my amendments is that there are lots of complex family situations and many areas could be considered for exemption. However, the ability to exempt these people requires knowing what exemptions they meet. Some exemptions will be easier to assess than others, but how will DWP caseworkers assess if a child is born as result of rape? How intrusive will the questions be and what evidence will caseworkers look for? As we know, many people sadly do not report rape and, when they do, convictions are low, so that will not help. The Minister has already stated that cases of rape will be exempted. How will the DWP know whether a claimant’s child is indeed a result of rape? The only way would be to ask, and I shudder to think how deeply upsetting and totally inappropriate it would be for a caseworker to venture into such traumatic, deeply sensitive and personal issues.

Therefore, although the Government should include exemptions in the Bill, they will also need to consider how exemptions will be assessed and applied. To safeguard against deeply intrusive questioning, Amendment 7 would insert in the Bill the provision that the DWP must,

“have regard to the importance of the person’s right to respect for private and family life”, under Article 8(1) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms as set out in Schedule 1 to the Human Rights Act 1998”,

and should not,

“in seeking to determine whether the exemption applies, request any information about the claimant’s private medical or sexual history”.

I turn to Amendment 12. As the Bill stands, Clause 12 will mean that families with children born before April 2017, making a new claim under universal credit, do not receive the same protections as those available to claimants of tax credits and may have their child additions within universal credit limited to two children. This seems totally unfair and I do not understand the reasoning behind it.

My Amendment 12 would afford the exempted people I have previously identified, such as people who have been raped and single parents, the same protections once universal credit comes into force through the child element in universal credit. Proposed new subsection (1C) in Amendment 12 states:

“The Secretary of State may, by regulations, make further provisions relating to the operation of subsection (1B)”.

This is a very difficult and sensitive debate. I listened carefully to the discussion on kinship carers and concur with everything that was said. For many of the categories that we have outlined this is not about rational choice. People sometimes find themselves in certain circumstances for the right reasons—for example, the joy of bringing an additional child into a family. However, circumstances such as rape are not so pleasant or nice. I think that noble Lords around the Committee want the Minister to commit to look at exemptions very carefully. As has been outlined by other noble Lords, I want to avoid unintended consequences. I cannot believe for one minute that the Government want such unintended consequences to arise. I believe that they want to do the right thing. Putting exemptions on the face of the Bill will give many people in our country great hope. We are talking about a lot of people—millions, in some cases. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendments 4 and 12. It is a privilege to follow the eloquent noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, and I shall concentrate on one or two aspects of her comments. As regards the need for these exemptions, someone commented to me that the poor have always had the largest families. The austerity that we are experiencing is due in large part to the fact that some vastly wealthy people made some very poor choices. Yet today we are looking to penalise the poorest in our society, and most especially their children, by taking money away from them. Therefore, I support very strongly the noble Baroness’s call to make the exemptions as wide as possible.

Last Friday a report on the education of children in care was launched at the Nuffield Foundation. The Children’s Minister, Edward Timpson MP, addressed the launch. The report highlighted the fact that the educational performance of children in care was still a long way behind that of the rest of the general population of young people. That is a matter of concern. However, children in need who have stayed with their families and not been taken into care, fostered or taken into a children’s home do far better once they are taken into the care of the state than those children who have not been subject to intervention by the state. We all know that due to pressures on local authorities, the threshold for being taken into care is quite high. Many more children in need live in fairly dysfunctional families but those families are not dysfunctional or abusive enough for the children to be taken into care, and those children are struggling. We need to think about families in which the parents grew up in deprivation, not just financial but emotional deprivation. Often the parents will have had issues around drink and drugs, and have not been able to show the children very much love.

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[Lord Freud]

We can cut through debating this by getting the facts, which I shall get to noble Lords.

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating and passionate debate and I thank noble Lords who have taken part. I particularly thank the Minister. I know that he is a kind and caring man and I have spoken to him about some of these issues. But I want to bring him back to the exemptions, which are really very important. I hope that he will forgive me if I did not hear him correctly. I assume that he was saying that other regulations addressed some of the issues that noble Lords and I raised. I will certainly read what he said very carefully to see if that is the case. If those regulations do not apply elsewhere—and they cannot, because we are talking about tax credits and universal credits limited to two children—would he please think again very carefully about these exemptions? It really will make all the difference to some of these very hard-working, low-income families we all want to support and help. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.