Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Meacher]

1: Clause 7, page 3, line 32, at end insert—
“( ) Regulations must make provision for claimants to require payment of universal credit to be received more frequently than would otherwise be the case under subsections (1) and (3).”

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I think that I owe a rather large apology to the House. I seem to have caused complete confusion, and am deeply sorry. I rise now to speak to Amendments 1 and 2, which, one way or another, would ensure that universal credit could be paid more frequently to claimants. Amendment 1 provides choice. Amendment 2 provides something rather specific.

The Government’s aim has been to encourage,

“out-of-work households to budget on a monthly rather than a fortnightly basis in the belief that it will better prepare people for the reality of working life”.—[Official Report, 10/10/11; col. GC 440.]

Those are the words of the Government. The point is that very many low-income earners are paid weekly or fortnightly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has rightly pointed out. Although two-thirds of tax credit recipients are paid monthly, many of these people will cease to be entitled to benefits in the future. The great majority of universal credit recipients will be very low paid, going in and out of work, as many people do, to weekly or fortnightly payments and then back on to benefit. People certainly do need to be prepared for the world of work—I completely agree with the Minister about that—but they need to be prepared for the world of work that they are actually going to move into. That is the whole point. At a very helpful meeting last week, the Minister seemed to accept that there are differences and that there needs to be some flexibility. Promotion of choice in the frequency of payment is very much in line with the Government’s choice agenda. I am sure that the Minister identifies with that.

In practical terms, it was made clear in Committee that monthly payments will cause very considerable management problems within households, and a dramatic increase in the numbers of people struggling with debts. The fact that applications for crisis loans rose significantly from 2009, when the change from weekly to fortnightly payments was introduced, tells the story. The CAB service saw a fourfold increase in the number of people with payday loans coming to them for debt advice in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period two years ago. The Association of Business Recovery Professionals is the UK’s leading trade association for insolvency and related issues. On Wednesday 7 November, it released a report into payday loans showing that 3.5 million adults are considering taking out a payday loan over the next six months and that 48 per cent of the people who receive payday loans believe that the loans have made their debt crisis worse.

What is the Government’s estimate of the number of payday loans to claimants of universal credit that will be in place within 12 months of the introduction of the new system? This is clearly a matter of very grave interest to Members of this House—we know that such loans have interest payments in excess of 300, 400 or 500 per cent, if not more than 1,000 per cent. We cannot just ignore that problem.

At the meeting with the Secretary of State on Thursday, he talked about the need for a culture change. Indeed, he even implied that this was the only problem—people just need to change the culture within which they live. However, people’s problems in managing money over a month are far more extensive than purely a matter of culture. Numeracy skills are vital if people are going to manage their bills and payments over a month. I understand that the Skills for Life survey found that 1.7 million people had very poor numeracy skills. A further 5 million had poor numeracy skills. All these people’s skills were described as “below functional”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, these amendments intend to provide for universal credit to be paid twice a month or, in Amendment 1, for a claimant to be able to choose to be paid more frequently than monthly. As with existing benefits, we will specify payment frequency in regulations made under existing powers in the Social Security Administration Act 1992. I am, though, grateful for the opportunity to set out why we intend for universal credit to be paid monthly.

We want universal credit to prepare people for work and to encourage them to move away from costly weekly and fortnightly budgeting. The present system does not allow people to take responsibility for their finances as the majority of people in work do, day in, day out. That is wrong. It means that the transition to work is more difficult than it needs to be as people have to adjust to monthly budgeting and managing their own rent payments, often with no support. We want to make the first steps into work easier by helping claimants to switch to monthly budgeting while claiming universal credit. Essentially, we are looking for a more empowering system.

The figures have already been raised in the debate. Some 75 per cent of all those in employment and 51 per cent of those earning less than £10,000 a year are currently paid monthly. It is then right that we help families to deal with the reality of working life, whether they are in or out of work, by paying benefits in a way that mimics payment of a salary.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked the straight question: what is so important about monthly payments? He went on to talk about the exploitation of poor people. That is what this is about. Save the Children has estimated that low-income families can face an annual poverty premium of £253 on their gas and electricity alone. Organisations including Consumer Focus, Church Action on Poverty and Family Action recognise the importance that access to the right banking products and sound advice can make in helping families to make the best use of their income. The simple point is that if you are managing on small gobbets of money weekly, it is very tough to match your budgeting process to utility bills or some of the larger or medium-scale capital items. That is why larger amounts paid monthly help people with this poverty premium.

However, I recognise that many people on low incomes are used to budgeting on a weekly or fortnightly basis and are concerned about moving to monthly payments. We absolutely need to support some families to budget effectively. That is why I am keen to develop effective budgeting support for families in this position. In some cases that is just a question of signposting to existing information and advice, in other cases it may require much more intensive, face-to-face support; but we need to take an innovative approach to these budgeting products if we are to stop the exploitation of the poor continuing, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said.

The universal credit and how we flow money to poorer people in our community is the main opportunity that we have to make a real difference for people in this area. We are working with the banking sector, credit unions, supermarket financial services and the Post Office to explore the opportunity to create cost-effective budgeting accounts. I am looking at accounts that my noble friend Lord Kirkwood will not be able to arrest at his whim, because there are some protections in the way in which we devise those accounts. In the next 18 months there will be an absolute focus of intense work to get this right. One example is the housing demonstration project next year, which will help us to understand the demand for budgeting support and the best ways to deliver it. I am not saying that it will all be easy; it is not. However, it is essential that we develop 21st century solutions to these issues and not think back decades and get in the mindset where we did not have these new ways of approaching things.

A simple system of payment on account will be made available to support claimants. Budgeting advances will provide an efficient means for eligible claimants to have access to interest-free credit, providing an alternative for those on the lowest incomes to high-cost, and even illegal, lenders. I must say that I was admiring a Wonga.com advertisement on the side of a bus this morning. In our system of budgeting advances, in the last year already over a million claimants received budgeting loans worth almost half a billion pounds. In the department we have a revolving fund of £1.1 billon, which will continue to be under our control for these purposes.

Clearly there is an issue, which we are addressing, about helping people move from fortnightly to monthly payments. We need to help with that migration period by stretching payment periods and providing the missing funding, if you like, as they move up, and I am looking at a system of doing that over three months. Many noble Lords have made the point that there are people with exceptional circumstances for whom a monthly payment is simply not appropriate. My noble friend Lord Kirkwood talked about the 15 per cent; my noble friend Lord Newton talked about those who will not cope. Clearly there is a group in this category. Where there is a risk of harm to the claimant or the household, we will of course want to make sure that safeguards for these people are in place. Nevertheless, we cannot set up a system to get the bulk of people in control of their finances and then take that control away from them when they can manage it. We need to look at it that way round, not devise a system which protects the 15 per cent of people that my noble friend estimated would be affected. We must not have the tail wagging the dog. We must include support but we must not have a system which stops people going into the workplace when they can. We have begun working with local authorities, housing associations and the relevant third sector organisations to develop guidance around who might qualify for more frequent payments or the direct payment of a proportion of an award to a third party, such as a landlord. Again, the housing demonstration projects will allow us to test the criteria for exceptions.

I appreciate noble Lords’ concerns about protecting claimants who have not previously been required to budget monthly. However, I truly believe that this is a fundamental part of what we are trying to achieve with universal credit. It is an opportunity to change the dynamic to design a system that is right for the majority but takes account of exceptional circumstances by ensuring that we have the means to make payments more frequently.

I wish to pick up a couple of questions. We can make universal credit payable more frequently. I say in answer to the point made by my noble friend Lord Hamilton that there is a small cost to doing it fortnightly rather than monthly but it is very small; it is about a penny. As regards the fallback position, the regulation-making powers which are used to determine the frequency of payment are not in this Bill but in the Social Security Administration Act 1992. The legislation on ESA and JSA, for instance, says that they are payable weekly. However, as we know, they are paid fortnightly. We have complete flexibility to pay as often as we think is appropriate.

[Baroness Meacher]

The noble Lord said that payments can be made more frequently. Will he assure the House that payments will be made more frequently, and that that facility will be available?

[Lord Freud]

I assure the House that where people cannot handle monthly budgeting, we will have arrangements to help them. However, I ask noble Lords not to tie my hands on this. This can make a major difference to poor people by creating banking and budgeting products that will help their lives. Tying our hands on this, particularly mine, will not help. Therefore, I ask noble Lords not to vote against this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords on all sides of the House who have contributed to this debate—the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Labour Party and Cross-Benchers. It has been a very powerful debate and strong concerns have been expressed about the impact of this amendment. The importance of the amendment lies in the mass of cuts to disability benefits, housing benefits—virtually every benefit that one can think of. Therefore, what the House is looking for is some sort of security for these very low income people to ensure that they can try to stay out of the way of these sharks who charge them hundreds and hundreds of per cents of interest over a year. I thank very much everybody who has spoken, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, who rescued the situation that I am afraid I caused.

The Minister referred to people managing small nuggets of money and having difficulty doing that because, of course, there are payments that need to be made monthly. I think the Minister is not familiar with the ways of very poor people in terms of having all their little jam jars on the mantelpiece and putting bits of money in as they can through the month to enable them to pay these bills. Obviously, in the middle classes we do not do that sort of thing. The Minister is shaking his head, but I am afraid this is actually the way things work. Therefore, it is all about the drastic cuts in benefits.

The Minister has referred to 21st century solutions. In fact, driving people into the hands of these sharks who charge them hundreds of per cents of interest is not really a 21st century solution. The Minister talks about the ability to make provision in exceptional circumstances. I am afraid we are not talking about exceptional circumstances; we are talking about huge numbers of people who are going to find it extremely difficult to manage. I do not have a sense of absolute assurance that there will be provision for these people to manage. This is not playacting; these are real concerns about what is going to happen to large numbers of people facing these cuts over the years ahead in difficult times. I know that the Minister does not want me to test the opinion of the House, but I feel an obligation to do that. I wish to test the opinion of the House.