Offensive Weapons Bill

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th February 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments from the Government, because we have to send a message out there for young people. While I respect all noble Lords who talk about criminalising young people, I stand with several hats on here. I have worked with young people in prisons and with a YOT, and have gone around to find out evidence. The main thing that worries me in all this is that we can put prevention orders up—we have to send a message; we owe that to the rest of society, who do not feel safe—but I want to prevent the young people I have spoken about having to carry a knife to feel safe. We need to stop them early, saying that it is not really right for them. Some young people in gangs have said they do not want to do it but have no choice.

There are several messages here about young children. I have three young daughters who saw their father murdered by hands and feet; they have suffered and could have gone down the criminal route. It would have been justified to put them in that box and to say that there is a reason why they do it. It is the same for a knife. These young people will carry knives to protect themselves, but do not want to. So we have to have something there—a message for communities and young children to feel safe. I am very grateful for the Centre for Social Justice briefing on this. It welcomes the process of the order, but is concerned about the mechanisms of how it will be carried out.

The whole point here is protecting the child. We are hearing much about criminalising a child but not about looking after the child’s welfare. I ask my noble friend the Minister, as did the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, whether we could make it a weapon-neutral offence that sends a message to all those carrying blades, knives and everything. Making it specific to a knife or blade does not really have the effect we want. We need to send a generalised message to help protect young people. I am concerned that we are not standing up here and protecting young people in the first place. We are looking at criminalising young people when they have been caught with something on them. We have to protect the people I have been speaking to, because they are really scared to come out of the school grounds. They go home to protect themselves. We are not looking at that niche of young children.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I support many of the comments made by other noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham and in particular the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle. There are many problems with these prevention orders. We may need orders of some sort, but surely not these. I hope we have a really serious discussion about how to protect children. In subsection (5) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 73A, the reasons accepted as good reasons for carrying a knife do not include a fear of harm. Yet, as other noble Lords have said, this is probably the most common reason. I regard it as utterly right and proper; we do not want kids carrying knives, but if you are terrified of being attacked you should not be criminalised for carrying a knife in your pocket to protect yourself. I hope that before Report the Minister will give serious thought to including at least that—that is just one tiny bit—in the reasons accepted as good reasons.

A second problem is that, according to subsection (1) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 73C:

“An application for a knife crime prevention order … may be made without the applicant giving notice to the defendant”.


The police can impose an interim knife crime prevention order, and the same requirements may be made under that interim order as under a full knife crime prevention order. Yet the defendant does not even know this is happening and has not put their side of the story or explained, for example, that they were carrying the knife only because they were petrified of the three boys who live down the road who were trying to get them involved in a gang. What is going on? I am terribly worried about that bit of it.

Others have mentioned the standard of proof— the balance of probability—when these kids go into criminality. Surely that cannot be right. However, there are many more general concerns about the imposition of yet more criminal deterrents on children as young as 12. I have read some briefings carefully and I want to refer to the one from the Children’s Society. According to its Good Childhood Report 2017, an estimated 950,000 children aged between 10 and 17 had experienced crime. No wonder crime is often cited as the reason children carry weapons. This problem is rife and of course we all want something done about it, but are we really tackling it in the right way here? I do not think so.

We know that for two decades the Government have attempted to deter violent crime and anti-social behaviour through the imposition of criminal and punitive civil deterrents. So far, such deterrents have not had a substantial impact on reducing the level of youth crime and youth violence, but that is what we all want—we certainly do not want knife crime. Of course we want violence to be reduced, but these approaches have been shown not to work. As we know, the level of knife crime has risen sharply. There is a body of evidence to show that criminalised interventions do not lower crime rates. I referred in an earlier debate to the meeting in which we listened to Neil Woods. After years of working as an undercover officer and catching people involved in criminal gangs and so on, he realised that he was making not a jot of difference to criminality and violence. He threw it all up and has now written books on the subject. He knows that he has not made any difference, having put his whole life on the line and having been in considerable danger for many years. We need to listen to people like him.

Does the Minister accept that the Home Office needs to make targeting the adults who coerce, control and threaten these kids a much greater priority? Surely Ministers should not target these children with these orders. It just does not feel right and, to be perfectly frank, I do not understand it. Therefore, can we amend these proposed new clauses before Report to ensure that, if we are to have prevention orders—and I think that we probably need them—they focus on positive inputs for children under the age of 18 with the provision of support, treatment in the case of kids addicted to alcohol or drugs, educational guidance and help to secure the safety of the child.

When a child is considered for an order, surely they should be referred to children’s social care for an assessment under the Children Act 1989 or to the national referral mechanism as appropriate. If the child is found to be at risk of exploitation, the police response surely needs to be entirely different from that envisaged in these amendments. I am not saying that there should not be a response but it should be different. As I said in relation to another amendment, we know that short-term prison sentences have very poor results in terms of reoffending. Why would we have more of them? In conclusion, I hope that the Minister will be willing to discuss how the emphasis of the amendments can be shifted from punitive, unsuccessful, short-term incarceration to something that will work. We have quite a lot of knowledge about what might work.

It is difficult to debate these proposals without reference to the huge cuts to youth services in this country. I know that it could be said that this is a political point but I do not mean it to be that at all. It is pretty desperate when £400 million is taken off those services at a time when we want these children to be referred to them for support, and £51 million has been put into the Serious Violence Strategy. That is one-eighth of the cuts—it is a peanut; it is nothing. Local authorities are facing a deficit in their budgets for children’s and young people’s services of £3 billion over the next five years. It seems that spending on police, courts and prisons is fine but spending on real prevention and turning young people around is something that we can dispense with. I say that because it is obvious that we should put money there rather than elsewhere. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, said that because I had made a suggestion about how the amendment might be improved, it indicated a lack of consultation. In fact, one of the amendments was a police proposal which has not found its way into the Bill, so I am re-presenting it. It was not that it not been asked for or shared; for whatever reason, it was not there, which I found odd.

More fundamentally, we have to keep an eye on what the Bill is trying to do. Good parents of young people will either try to stop them mixing with the wrong people or stop them going to certain places where they would get into harm or cause it. That is broadly what the Bill tries to do where a parent cannot or will not: it tries to restrict where people can meet and whom they meet if they are causing a problem.

The right reverend Prelate said that she hoped the law would acknowledge the difference in age. The sad reality is that the criminal law makes no distinction about age other than by criminal responsibility. Murder is murder. Whether you are 16 or 33, it is murder. From 14 onwards, it is absolute liability; from 10 to 14, one has to prove a certain intent. We have to accept that that is true. The thing that concerns me in some of the contributions is that we seem almost to be giving a defence to someone who is terrified—which I accept—that it is therefore okay to carry a knife. That means that the offensive weapon law is useless. I understand that it is a sincere belief—I do not challenge that—but that is what everyone says. Sometimes it is true, and sometimes they are the aggressor. However, even if it is true, unless we are going to agree to people carrying guns and any offensive weapon justified by their fear about defending themselves, it is a real difficulty. It may be something on sentencing, or it may be that you can show reasonable cause—I do not think you can ever show reasonable cause for carrying an offensive weapon—the definition of an offensive weapon is something intended, made or adapted to hurt people. It is important that we keep an eye on that because if we put a defence of that type in, it will be abused.

[Baroness Meacher]

The noble Lord suggests that some of us are saying, “It’s okay to carry a knife”. I want to make it clear that I am not saying that. I have a feeling that noble Lords around us are not saying it either. It is not okay for kids to carry knives. The only issue is what we do to help them not to have to carry a knife.

[Lord Elton]

If I may go back to the noble Baroness’s speech, I am drawn to my feet simply to endorse her view of the inappropriateness of a short prison sentence and, with juveniles, of any prison sentence. For a time, I was Minister responsible for the welfare of young people, other than their health, at the DHSS, which simply meant juvenile offenders in secure accommodation and keeping them out of it. I then had three years being responsible for prisons in the Home Office. I therefore dedicated the next chunk of my life to stopping young people going to prison. You cannot do it when they are into crime; you have to do it before. You have to see that they are not frightened. They must feel safe at home, at school and on the streets, and you must see that they are not bored. The two spurs are fear—“To protect myself I must be armed”—and, “What on earth am I going to do? Let’s go and make trouble. Let’s take a car that does not belong to us and drive it very, very fast around Blackbird Leys in Oxford”. It is the buzz they have to get. We have to provide that by means other than punitive, by pre-emptive means before the event. We have to engage them. When they are on the edge of the event, we have to try even harder. One good way is to find a group of young adults with enthusiasm for almost anything, but preferably a team sport or team activity; for example, white-water rafting, jazz playing, football, canoeing or rock climbing, give them the small amount of money necessary to set up a group to do that and the bored young and the frightened young will come there in clusters. When we did that when I was in what one might call civilian life, the people concerned learned to get £5 of funding from elsewhere for every pound that my people were able to give them.

What I am trying to preach here is outside the terms of this Bill, and I apologise for that, but we are putting the money, as the noble Baroness says, in the wrong place, too late. If only we had enough cash to do a sensible job for our young people. Many of them have no male adult role model, and it is almost impossible to get male teachers into primary education now because the dangers of being sussed as having improper relations with pupils are so great. It is a risk to cuddle a child if they fall and hurt themselves, and we have the new phenomenon of mobile phones which are distracting young adults so that they do not pay attention to children at all. All of that has got to be remedied by the community acting together to give young people things to do which excite them, in safe places with secure adult supervision. That cannot go into this Bill, but I hope nothing which puts juveniles in danger of short prison sentences will go into this Bill, because that is wholly counterproductive.

Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2015

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)]

I should inform the House that if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call any of the other amendments to the Motion on the Order Paper by reason of pre-emption.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to the amendment that stands in my name on the Order Paper, which would defer consideration of the tax credit regulations. I pay tribute to other noble Lords who have tabled amendments to these regulations today, but I should explain to the House that I told the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, that I had come to a settled view that tabling a fatal amendment in this House was a step too far. The purpose of this amendment is to support the democratic process and to avoid impeding it.

The House of Commons will have a cross-party debate and a vote on these issues on Thursday. I understand that at least eight Conservative MPs have put their names to Thursday’s Motion. It seems, therefore, that the Government no longer have a majority in the House of Commons for the planned cuts as they stand. If we approve the Regulations today, the Commons debate will have been pre-empted. This would undermine the democratic process. If, however, the elected House supports the Government—contrary to my expectations, I have to say—and the Government present a report to your Lordships’ House responding to the Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis, I am sure that I and others will support these Regulations. This will not necessarily be because we agree with them—I most certainly do not—but because we respect the democratic process and the limits of the duties of this wonderful House.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

If the noble Baroness is right that the Government do not have a majority in the other place, why can we not respect the democratic process and leave it to them?

[Baroness Meacher]

I will attempt to answer that question.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

Before she does, may I just ask the noble Baroness a question arising from her amendment? Does she agree that if the Government had, as they should have done, tabled these proposals as part of the Finance Bill, they would have been amendable in the other place and we would not be having this discussion today? Does she agree that the reason the Government are indulging in this sharp practice is that they know full well that, for any reasonable person in either House, these proposals are unacceptable and they would have been defeated in the other place because quite a few Conservative Members of Parliament would have voted against them?

[Baroness Meacher]

I was talking to Jacob Rees-Mogg MP the other day and he said to me that the trouble is that the House of Commons deals with Statutory Instruments extremely badly. Our difficulty is that, that being the case, they depend on this House to do this very detailed work, on which your Lordships do an extremely good job. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, the point is that the cross-party debate on Thursday is not a legislative debate. It would have been right for these matters to have been incorporated in full in a piece of legislation, which would then have been open to proper debate and amendment in the normal way.

To go back to my point, if we approve the Regulations today we are actually undermining the democratic process. If, however, the elected House supports the Government, as I said before, I know that this House will abide by our conventions and vote these Regulations through whatever our personal views of them. I do not personally approve of them, but I would be in the Lobby with the Government. The duty of your Lordships’ House, as we know, is to enable Governments to think again if, in our professional judgment, they are making a grave mistake, and to allow the elected House to hold the Government to account. Noble Lords can imagine that I do not take this action lightly. I am acutely conscious of the threats made by the Government to destroy this House, one way or another, if we proceed. I do not enjoy that kind of pressure.

I will come back to the constitutional issue, but at this point I want to thank the IFS, the Children’s Society and others for their valuable help. Why are these Regulations so serious? The Leader of the House has already made the point that tax credits will be withdrawn from an income of £74 a week, £3 above the jobseeker’s allowance level, whereas in the past the withdrawal has occurred from a weekly income of £123 a week, which is very different. Also, of course, the taper rate—the percentage of every pound earned that will be withdrawn from tax credits— is going up from 41% to 48%. Very low-income working families—the lowest-income families, as I understand it—stand to lose more than £20 a week. For one of us, this can mean a meal in a restaurant. For a poor working family it can mean a pair of shoes for a child who comes home from school crying because their toes are hurting in shoes that are too small, or money to feed the meter to keep the family warm.

The Government plan a four-year freeze on the private rent level covered by housing benefit, so as rents soar—and we know that, day by day, they soar—working families will have to pay more of their rent from a shrinking income. Damian Hinds, Treasury Minister, told me in person that he hopes that families will work more hours to compensate for the cuts they are facing, but many people cannot work more hours. A lady who has cancer and who is working all the hours she can contacted me—the treatment and her exhaustion mean that she cannot do more. The parent of a disabled child, who probably actually needs to be at home all the time, is working as many hours as possible but can earn very little. Indeed, our angelic army of carers of elderly and disabled relatives across our land will be penalised. Some of them will lose more than £40 a week. People with long-term conditions or in constant pain will be devastated by the waves of cuts, of which these regulations are just one. Self-employed people who voted Conservative in May, hoping for protection, but who may earn little or nothing for weeks at a time, will be among the biggest losers. The StepChange Debt Charity says that its clients on average will lose £139 a week, a staggering sum.

All those people have been supported by what I regard as the one-nation Tories of the past. The Prime Minister said in his speech to the Conservative conference:

“The British people … want a government that supports the vulnerable”,

and, he said,

“we will deliver”.

This amendment provides an opportunity for the Prime Minister to honour that pledge. He went on to say that the Conservatives are the, “party of working people”. No wonder dozens of Conservative Back-Benchers—perhaps most of them, in fact—want the Government to think again. They do not want the Prime Minister to have misled the people of Britain. It is this House’s duty to provide that time for a rethink by this Government.

I turn to the idea that the amendment is unconstitutional—and I shall keep this brief. The Cunningham joint committee, as has already been mentioned, made very clear the responsibilities of this House and that we should have unfettered freedom to vote on any subordinate legislation submitted for its consideration. The Motion was carried without a vote and is recorded in the Companion. In 1999, the former Conservative Leader of your Lordships’ House referred to a convention that the Opposition should not vote against the Government’s secondary legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, added:

“I declare this convention dead”.

Finally, I quote our highly esteemed Clerk of the Parliaments, who wrote a clarifying guidance note for the Cross-Benchers at my request. He said: “Procedurally, the Meacher-put Motion is entirely in order under the rules of the House. It is not a fatal Motion because it does not require a new statutory instrument to be laid and taken through both Houses. However, it does delay the approval of the statutory instrument, unlike an amendment which simply expresses regret while allowing the statutory instrument to be approved”.

I hope that the noble Lord, the Chief Whip, will forgive me for quoting him here. He urged me to exchange my amendment for a regret Motion. I said, “Oh, come on—that will have no effect at all”. He said, “Well, yes”. My apologies to the Chief Whip.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

I am sorry that my conversation with the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has been quoted. That is not what I said. I made it quite clear to all who came to see me—they included all three protagonists in these debates—that the risk to this House was a constitutional one and that they ought to be aware that in my view to delay this Motion, as well as to vote it down, which is what the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, seeks to do, amounts to the same thing, and that the proper way in which to deal with something with which this House disagrees is to move a regret Motion. It was that to which I referred when I spoke to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher.

[Baroness Meacher]

I think I owe my apologies to the noble Lord. According to the Library just over two fatal and three non-fatal Motions were voted on in each year between 1999 and 2012, resulting in 17 defeats. There is nothing odd or unconstitutional about this Motion. According to the Clerk’s office there is no reason why we should not table a delaying amendment.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)]

Can the noble Baroness say how many of her so-called precedents were budgetary matters?

[Baroness Meacher]

As I understand it, this House has every right to place amendments to statutory instruments on any subject—that was the conclusion of the Cunningham Joint Committee.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Will the noble Baroness answer the very simple question? How many of those Motions were on budgetary matters?

[Baroness Meacher]

None of those Motions was on the Budget. That is the constraint on this House as I understand it. Had these provisions been in the Budget they would have gone through the normal procedures and this House would have had a different role. That is the crucial point—here we are dealing with a statutory instrument.

There are four Motions on the Order Paper today. My Motion clearly leaves the matter in the hands of the elected House. The justification for a delay is that the House of Commons will have a full-day debate and a vote on these issues on Thursday. I understand that dozens of Conservative Back-Benchers are urging the Chancellor to adjust the tax credit reforms to protect the most vulnerable. Yes, there have been three votes on tax credits in the House of Commons, won by the Government. However, Conservative MPs—not me—say they did not have the information they needed when they voted for the cuts. I hear that many of them are now livid about this. The third vote was last Tuesday. Conservative MPs made it clear they wanted adjustments to the tax credit cuts but they kept their voting powder dry anticipating the vote next Thursday.

It is extraordinary that at least eight Conservative MPs—

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, this just is not the case. The fact is that there was a vote in the other place last week. There was a clear majority and not a single Conservative Member voted in the sense the noble Baroness is indicating.

[Baroness Meacher]

I apologise to the noble Lord, whom I greatly respect, but I did not imply that the Conservative MPs had voted against the Government. I was saying quite clearly that they had not voted for an Opposition Motion; they kept their voting powder dry because they knew that a cross-party Motion was being considered on Thursday with a full day for debate and a vote. Even with a majority of 13 after the death of my former husband last week, this wipes out that majority.

[Lord Tebbit (Con)]

I am a little puzzled about the powers the noble Baroness has to understand what Members of Parliament might do next week as opposed to what they did do last week. Are we to guess? I might say that I understand that the Labour Party in the other place is going to vote for the regulations next week. I do not know that, of course, and she does not know what she has just said.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, eight Conservative MPs—some of them senior MPs; former Cabinet Ministers, indeed—have put their names to a cross-party Motion disagreeing with the Government or seeking information that the Government will oppose. The Government majority is 13, following the death of my former husband last week. I am quoting only what I know. I am not quoting what I do not know. I agree that that is extremely important.

I emphasise again that the justification for this amendment is that there will be an opportunity for the elected House to hold the Government to account. It will not be a legislative vote, and that is why this vote is very important. By supporting the Motion this House will support the democratic process. It will leave the situation open. It will leave this set of regulations on the Order Paper—unlike a fatal Motion—and then the Government can listen to the elected House. I am not asking the Government to listen to this House.

[Lord Trimble (Con)]

If I understand her correctly, the noble Baroness is saying that a significant number of Conservative people might support this Motion. This Motion will have no legislative effect and the legislation will continue. What is happening here is of a different order.

[Baroness Meacher]

That is exactly the point I just made. The important point is that if we pass these regulations the debate in the House of Commons—the elected House—will be an irrelevance. The Government can say, “We have got our regulations. We can press ahead with our cuts. The elected House can say what it likes, we will not have to listen to it”. I am not saying they will say that, but they certainly could say that. The important point is that we need to protect the democratic process. The only hope for the Government is that the bullying tactics may persuade Conservative MPs and our colleagues to avoid defeat. At the moment, the situation in the elected House is that eight Conservative MPs have put their names to a Motion which means that the Conservative Government do not have a majority in the other House.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, does my noble friend not find it interesting that the Government are currently taking a Bill through this House that will remove the democratic choice of local people about whether their local school should become an academy? Indeed, during the introduction of academies, academies were taken out of the responsibility of local authorities and placed with the Secretary of State. In this Bill, in future local people will not be able to vote on whether they wish to have their local school turned into an academy. This is a very substantial change because, as I understand it, they are so concerned that the education of our children is so important that no coasting school should be allowed to continue. Therefore, they will take all means possible to ensure that our children get the best education possible. In this case, my noble friend is not asking for that change. She is asking merely for a delay so that the other House can think again. That is a much more minor change to make. Does she agree?

[Baroness Meacher]

I thank my noble friend Lord Listowel. I should mention that a petition signed by 270,000 members of the public over the weekend was handed to me this morning. There is huge fear and anger about these cuts. I am very grateful for the support of the public and the media—believe it or not—and their appreciation of the efforts in this House, although I personally never sought any of it. That is a rather important point to make: I am really not here to grandstand.

I support the Government’s raising of the tax threshold, the increase in the minimum wage and free childcare for three and four year-olds, but those measures will not protect the most vulnerable. The Institute for Fiscal Studies makes clear in its analysis that the biggest losers from the 2015-16 tax and benefit changes, even by 2020, will be the poorest working families. The very poor will hardly gain at all from the increase in the minimum wage or the national living wage. Very poor self-employed people will not gain at all from the increase in the minimum wage. I have had a pile of emails from self-employed very poor people. The biggest gainers from the increase in the income tax threshold and the higher rate threshold will be those earning £43,000 to £121,000 per year. We seem to have a massive redistribution of income here, but it seems to be going the wrong way.

The Government have for five years urged unemployed people to take a job. The sanctions regime has been extremely brutal, but having said that, it is, of course, much better for people to work, if they can, than to remain unemployed. The main justification for the Government’s policy has been that work pays. Yes, and working tax credits achieved that objective. Working tax credits prevented unemployment soaring in the recent recession.

Finally, I repeat that the aim of this amendment is to support the democratic process to enable the elected House to hold the Government to account. That is the duty of this House. If we cannot do that, we might as well not exist.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, on the amendment standing in my name, two issues concern this House. The first is whether this amendment improperly challenges Commons financial privilege—a constitutional issue. The second is whether this amendment improperly challenges Government cuts to welfare—the policy issue.

Let me address the first, on constitutional propriety. As the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said, when we have framework Bills on childcare and social security, all the serious detailed work is done, rightly, by regulations—that is, SIs. We can amend Bills; we cannot amend SIs, yet often we do not know the Government’s intent until we see the SI itself. We then face either a draconian fatal Motion or a lamenting regret Motion that changes nothing, so instead this is a delaying amendment. It is not fatal, as the Government know. It was drafted with the help of the clerks and it calls for a scheme of transitional protection before the House further considers the SI. Essentially, the cuts would apply to new claimants only. Frankly, that new SI could be drafted in a week and implemented next April exactly as planned.

However, does it none the less break convention by trespassing on Commons financial privilege? No. The advice from the Clerk of the Parliaments—and he has seen and confirmed my words on the specific issue—is that Commons financial privilege is exercised in two ways. We can amend an education Bill, say, but the Commons can reject our amendment if the Speaker certifies that the Commons has financial privilege on this issue. Secondly, says the Clerk, the Commons can pass a supply or money Bill, which we cannot amend. He goes on: financial privilege does not extend to statutory instruments—it simply does not. Nor are statutory instruments covered by the Salisbury/Addison convention. The more so, I would add, because the Prime Minister ruled them out himself, and he did because these layered elements to tax credits are all affected by the taper and the cuts.

As has been said, if the Government wanted financial privilege, these cuts should be in a money Bill; they are not. If they wanted the right to overturn them on the grounds of financial privilege, they could be introduced in the welfare reform Bill on its way here; they did not. So why now should we be expected to treat this SI as financially privileged when the Government, who could have made it so, chose not to do so? It is not a constitutional crisis. That is a fig-leaf possibly disguising tensions in the Commons between members of the Government. We can be supportive of the Government and give them what they did not ask for—financial privilege—or we can be supportive instead of those 3 million families facing letters at Christmas telling them that on average they will lose up to around £1,300 a year, a letter that will take away 10% of their income on average. That is our choice. Those families believed us when we all said that work was the best route out of poverty and that work would always pay. They believed the Prime Minister when he promised that tax credits—and they are one package—would not be touched.

But why do people need tax credits? There is a lot of misunderstanding about this. If the House will allow me, consider two women in a call centre: one is single, working 35 hours a week, who from April earns £13,000 a year for herself, and the other, a deserted mother with two young children, managing 25 hours a week, earns £9,000 a year for the three of them. The Government are completely right that we should certainly not subsidise employers’ low pay, but no employer could pay the deserted mother twice as much per hour as the single woman on the next phone in the call centre to make up for her family’s circumstances. The employer cannot do that and it is not reasonable to ask it to do so. That is the job of tax credits. They reflect family circumstances, which an employer cannot reasonably do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

I shall not contest the precedent given by the noble Lord, which I have not myself considered. The amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, is, transparently, a fatal one; she agrees with that—and, in my view, it is outside your Lordships’ constitutional role. I note that my noble friend Lady Meacher agrees with that view. The amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and my noble friend Lady Meacher, raise a more subtle issue. They are not fatal, but they seek to defer our consideration of the statutory instrument until the Government have done certain things specified in the amendment, including, in the case of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, surrendering some of the savings that would be achieved by this measure. But they are still blocking amendments. I can best demonstrate that by the following question. What happens if the Government refuse to do what the amendments demand? Will your Lordships then refuse to consider the statutory instruments for ever and a day? In that case, these amendments would block the statutory instrument indefinitely, which in my view is not within the—

[Baroness Meacher]

I point out to my noble friend Lord Butler that the House of Commons has a very similar request for Thursday: that House also wants more information, because Conservative MPs even now do not feel they have enough information to understand the full implications of these regulations. If the House of Commons votes for more information—in other words, says not to go ahead until we know what on earth is going on—would my noble friend then agree that that should be provided not only to the House of Lords but to the House of Commons?

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

If the House of Commons asks for more information, it should be provided. But the constitutional position is that the House of Commons has passed this statutory instrument, and it cannot go back on that. Now what is at issue is whether the House of Lords should pass it, and however much sympathy the House may have for the objectives of those who have moved these amendments, it would be a constitutional infringement of great gravity to pass the first three of them. It would be wrong on three counts. First, this is a budgetary matter. It may be a welfare matter as well, but it is certainly a budgetary matter. Secondly, it is crucial to the fiscal policy that was explicit in the manifesto on which the Government were elected only a short time ago. Thirdly, the statutory instrument has been passed by the House of Commons, which has that responsibility in our constitutional arrangements. It has been passed not once but three times. I am afraid that I cannot find myself persuaded—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, the privilege falls to me, as Deputy Leader, of winding up this debate, which has proved to be a remarkable one. In many ways, it has been a landmark in the proceedings of the House. We have been treated to some extremely powerful contributions, both for and against the draft regulations, and both for and against the amendments that have been tabled. I listened with care to them all. I suggest to your Lordships that there are, in essence, two aspects of the matter that we are here to consider: the content of the regulations themselves and the issues which, for want of a better term, I will call the constitutional questions that arise out of three of the amendments before us.

Turning first to the policy issues, without unnecessarily going over the ground already covered by my noble friend the Leader of the House, there is one central point to be made at the outset. I make this point given that a number of noble Lords have seen fit to criticise both the intent and the effect of what the Government are seeking to achieve. The Government want a new deal for working people: a deal whereby those who claim either tax credits or universal credit will always be better off in work and always be better off working more. The way in which we are doing this will mean that a typical family man or woman, working full-time on the national living wage, will be substantially better off by the end of this Parliament than at the beginning of it. That is the aim that we have set ourselves and it is an aim that runs parallel with our policy intent, which we have made expressly clear for nearly two years now: that a Conservative Government, if and when elected, would look to find welfare savings of around £12 billion in order to reduce the public sector deficit. I simply say to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, that the proposals that she has very constructively put forward are already built into the assumptions that we made. I am happy to look at her proposals in more detail but, from what she said, the Chancellor has already factored those points in.

Achieving those two policies simultaneously is possible only if a series of measures is taken—measures that will move us from a position in which working households are supported by low wages and high tax credits to one where there are higher wages and lower tax credits. The regulations that are before us today are about only the tax credit element of that overall picture. That is why it is unfair to pick up the report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies and point with alarm to large losses that a poorer working family might incur from cuts in tax credits without also taking into account other vitally important things that we are doing. The counterbalance to lower tax credits is a combination of positives—the national living wage, the rise in the income tax personal allowance and, importantly—

[Baroness Meacher]

The analysis of the Institute for Fiscal Studies is very clear in incorporating the effects not only of the tax credit changes but of the rise in the minimum wage, the move to the national living wage and the increase in the income tax and higher-rate tax thresholds. It makes very clear the redistributional effects of all these things from the poor to the rich.

[Earl Howe]

I do not dispute that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has looked at these things, but the figure of £1,300 that has been quoted is one that does not take into account the positives that I mentioned. Importantly for families with children, the doubling of free childcare should not be overlooked. For many people, although not for all, that will make it possible to work longer hours. Those are just some of the counterbalances. The noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, chose not to mention them.

I cannot pretend that these have been easy decisions. However, I put it to the House that the measures that we are taking are the right thing for us to be doing—right not only for individual working families but for the nation. We are still, as a nation, living grossly beyond our means. Even so, eight out of 10 working households will be better off by 2017-18 than they are now because of the combined effect of the measures that we are taking.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe]

The problem is that the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, holds the Government hostage. It holds them to ransom. We might be able to bring back some different regulations, but what if those were unacceptable to the House? Let us read the wording of the amendment. It puts us on a perpetual treadmill.

[Baroness Meacher]

There is a very important distinction between the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and my amendment. The crucial point about the amendment I have tabled, which is also not a fatal amendment, is that all it asks for is some time and some information. That is a very different thing from asking the Government to spend money on transitional arrangements. I have put down the amendment for only one reason, and that is because the House of Commons has a cross-party Motion on Thursday which they wish to and will debate. It has on it the names of eight Conservative MPs, including those of former Cabinet Ministers. Does the Minister accept that to give the Government time to listen to the Commons is an entirely appropriate duty for this House to perform?

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Meacher]

As an amendment to the Motion in the name of the Lord Privy Seal, to leave out all the words after “that” and insert “this House declines to consider the draft regulations laid before the House on 7 September until the Government lay a report before the House, detailing their response to the analysis of the draft regulations by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and considering possible mitigating action.”

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, you will be glad to know I will speak extremely briefly. I thank many noble Lords for setting out so clearly the consequence of these regulations for vulnerable people and the need for the Government to come forward with mitigating measures. My amendment to defer consideration pending a report, nothing more—no money, nothing unusual—raises no constitutional issues. The evidence is absolutely clear on this from our clerks and from many authorities. I ask the House to perform its duty: to enable the Government to think again and to ensure that they listen to the elected House next Thursday. I want to test the opinion of the House.

[The Lord Speaker]

My Lords, before I put the Question, I should inform the House that, if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call the amendment in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth by reason of pre-emption.