Local Welfare Assistance

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, what the noble Earl has said about family breakdown and what this leads to is quite right. Indeed, that is why we have a strong focus now on the family parental conflict programme, to which we will be contributing £30 million in the coming two years. We have also invested up to £200 million in universal support, which provides budgeting advice and digital support to claimants, delivered by local authorities. This support is tailored to local needs and our work coaches, who gauge claimants’ financial needs from their first interview. We are doing a variety of things to help people at a local level. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, shakes his head, but we are doing an awful lot more than his Government ever achieved. I am proud of what we are doing.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, will the noble Baroness please have another go at answering the question put to her by my noble friend Lord Howarth? Can she confirm that local authority budgets have been cut by 40%, and if she cannot, what figure does she think is the right one? Can she further say whether she thinks that—if that figure or anything like it is correct—it is at all likely that there has been no major impact on services that were previously provided?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, it is a great shame that under the Labour Government so much taxpayers’ money was wasted, leaving our local councils bereft of funds. We have worked hard to ensure that there are emergency provisions in place. Although there may be cuts to local authorities, we are ensuring that there is proper provision, but we are leaving it to local authorities to decide the best way to provide for the needs that people have at local level.

Mental Health at Work

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I hope that we can continue to use this report and the response to the review as part of building awareness of that. The right reverend Prelate is absolutely right. We understand more than in the past that mental health conditions are a barrier to work but, if we can help more people into employment, work can be part of the solution for many. I very much take on board his suggestion that workplace chaplaincy is an example of where people can seek guidance and help. Sometimes it is important to think about whether it can be done very quietly and anonymously. There is a lot to think through. The review is an enormous step forward. We want to become one of the leading nations in the world in supporting mental health.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that in particular sectors it is sometimes the actions and behaviour of government itself that brings about stresses that some people in certain areas find very hard to cope with? I am thinking in particular about education, which was mentioned by my noble friend in his Question. A constant barrage of change and new requirements is very difficult for people who are already working under very high pressure to accommodate. Will she say whether her department or any of her colleagues’ departments take this into account when they assess how they bring new requirements to bear on the people who depend on them?

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question and say straightaway that in the Department for Work and Pensions we have introduced a new system of line managers so that people always have someone they can go to immediately for help. The truth is that people in both the public and private sectors are under enormous pressures off and on in their lives, as we have said. The reality is that people face pressure, whether from government or through family crises. A lot of it begins at home and we know that conflict in the home can lead into the workplace and affect people’s ability to cope. We need to focus on the coping strategies, whether in the workplace or elsewhere. This review is about supporting people into work.

Employment: Universal Jobmatch

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

That is one of the specific areas in which our terms and conditions rule out going on to Universal Jobmatch. We will look at those jobs and employers and suspend them and withdraw those jobs.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister did not answer my noble friend Lord Davies on the subject of prosecutions for age discrimination. Does he have that information?

[Lord Freud]

I do not have to hand how many prosecutions we have made, but I will of course write when I know that information.

Pensions Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I need to announce a correction to the voting figures on the first Division this evening, which was on Amendment 23. The correct figures were Contents 210; Not Contents 251.

Schedule 20: Pension Protection Fund: increased compensation cap for long service

Amendment 32

Moved by

Pensions Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that in the event of a Division in the Chamber, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes from the sound of the Division Bell.

Clause 2: Entitlement to state pension at full or reduced rate

Amendment 9

Moved by

Benefits: Sanctions

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the relative figures are that since 2010 the volume of sanctions has run at between 3% and 5.5% whereas between 2005 and 2010 the rate was running between 2% and 4%. One of the most encouraging elements of the new regime is that the proportion of people on high-level sanctions has fallen quite steeply and is now down by 40% from 10,000 per calendar month to 6,000 per calendar month.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister tell the House whether the officials working in the DWP are working to targets, and whether this has any impact on the number of sanctions that are applied?

[Lord Freud]

We are not working to targets. We have made it absolutely plain that that is not our policy. We have had a study done on that by the head of JCP, Neil Couling, which reported in May and found that we did not run targets. Obviously, we collect management information, without which we could not give out the kind of data that is requested.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Grand Committee

Relevant documents: 9th and 10th Reports from the Delegated Powers Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that, in the event of a vote in the Chamber this afternoon, the Committee will adjourn for the duration of that vote. If it occurs while the Committee is debating the first two matters on the Marshalled List, we shall have to adjourn until the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, returns from the Chamber, where she will be a Teller, which may take slightly more than 10 minutes. If the vote or votes occur at another time, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes from the sound of the Division Bell.

Clause 57 : Equality Act 2010: third party harassment of employees and applicants

Debate on whether Clause 57 should stand part of the Bill.

Education: Conservatoires

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Lipsey both on securing this debate and on his recent appointment, which I had not known about and am delighted by.

I remind the House of my own interests. I have spent all my professional life working with people who have come through conservatoire training; I have observed them, employed them and advised them and for a short while I was in charge of them as, briefly, principal of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Furthermore, both my children are conservatoire-trained, so I think I may say that I have seen this kind of education close up, and these are some of the things I know. First, conservatoire training is intense and rigorous, and requires tremendous dedication. For musicians in particular, the road is not only hard but long. Secondly, it is therefore expensive to deliver. Thirdly, students who secure the few available places do so in the face of fierce competition and are often highly skilled before they even start. Fourthly, conservatoire graduates are central to the continuing worldwide success of UK arts and culture, which is critical to our economy.

There is currently, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Lipsey and others, a damaging degree of confusion and uncertainty about whether the necessary special funding for conservatoires will be properly secured. I should like to quote from a letter I received recently from the principal of one of our leading conservatoires in this country. He puts it thus:

“What we have at present is a cocktail of inadequate formula funding with various stop-gap supplements plus an institution-specific supplement that is subject to review every four or five years. It’s a mess. HEFCE do a really good job of making do and mending but ... this has never been translated into the price group structure that has underpinned HEFCE funding for many years. They allocate conservatoire training to a low price group and then wonder why the fee plus teaching grant doesn’t meet the costs and needs a supplementary discretionary top-up”.

He goes on to say:

“What we need is a structure that recognises ... the legitimate high cost and length of training required”.

Of course that is what we need. Why can we not do this when we can do it for other disciplines such as medicine, which also requires long training and high-cost teaching?

The noble Viscount, Lord Younger, is, I know, something of a performer himself. I am sure he perfectly understands these issues, and I hope that when he winds up, he can give the conservatoire sector some hope that they may be resolved.

Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I am grateful to the Minister for that statement; I take a degree of comfort from it. It is a pity that he cannot speak definitively, because that might have truncated some of our discussion. Notwithstanding what he said, I will deliver my script—or bits of it, anyway—because others want to contribute to the debate. Do the Government accept the conclusions of the report by the noble Lord, Lord Low?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall)]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt but before a debate begins the amendment needs to be proposed.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

In which case, I beg to move Amendment 86DD.

Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

No, they are not behavioural.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt but noble Lords will see that there is a Division in the Chamber, so the Committee will adjourn now and resume in 10 minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Drake]

I do not accept that defence because tax relief on pension savings is not taking money away from people; it is giving them their tax back.

The other point is that even on ISAs, those who are well off can take every member of their family, their spouse and children, and give them ISAs, thus taking taxpayers’ money for the incentivised advantage that that brings. So the taxpayer supports all sorts of people, some of whom are more worthy than others. On that basis, if the exam question is whether the taxpayer should support someone who has £50,000, I should like to get the whole list of incentivised savings and do some comparative analysis.

The effect of this policy is that people in hard-working families will be disincentivised to save and will face greater risk in managing a labour market that the Government themselves want to deregulate further but do not want to support people in managing that deregulated labour market. As my noble friend Lady Sherlock has said, there is not just the issue of the £16,000. For all those low and moderate-income people who have more than £6,000—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness again, but a Division has been called in the Chamber. The Committee will now adjourn, and resume in 10 minutes.