Care Sector: Minimum Wage

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, in the period since 2006 there have been nine prosecutions. The policy on prosecutions was set by the previous Government and is based on the concept of selective and exemplary cases. That is why the number of prosecutions is relatively low, whereas the amounts of arrears collected and the number of employers who have received penalties are significantly greater. The number of employers who received a penalty in the past financial year is 708.

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned stakeholders. I believe the Government are committed to seeing service users and patients as the most important stakeholders in service provision. Since care workers often have the first and the closest contact with such service users, does the Minister believe that the way we value and support such workers is of the utmost importance? Does he further believe that the current problems with local authority budgets are bound to have an effect on both the number and the quality of care workers?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I certainly pay tribute to the work done by care workers. Obviously, local budgets are constrained. However, to the extent that local authorities are commissioning care, they have an obligation to ensure that their commissioning is done in such a way that the people providing it are not in breach of the conditions on low pay. One of the key points in this area is the provision by HMRC of a free pay and work rights helpline for people who feel that they may be suffering because they are not getting the minimum wage as a result of things such as the travelling time problem that we discussed earlier. The helpline is heavily used, but everybody who rings it will have their case looked into.

Families: Cost of Living

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on securing this debate and on her excellent speech setting out the problems relating to the rising cost of living. There is very little to add at this stage, and my two main points are the same ones that many noble Lords have put forward.

First, it is not so much cost of living that is the problem, but the level of income. When we go to Scandinavia, we find the cost of living there tremendously high, but it is not a major problem for them, because their incomes are adequate and sufficient. For most people, incomes in this country are both inadequate and static.

The other major issue which has been referred to several times today is that this is not a problem for everybody; we are definitely not all in this together. The disparity between those who are barely coping and those who seem to be more prosperous than ever is what rankles. This was encapsulated by what was overheard in a north London supermarket: “Darling, do we need parmesan for both houses?”. This is not the big society about which we were promised so much; this is not even a halfway decent society.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation study, which has updated the minimum income standards first published in 2008 to this year, shows that the continuation of several trends has made it harder for households to make ends meet. Increasing prices, especially in childcare, social rents and public transport, as well as in food and energy, have pushed the minimum cost of living up faster than the average cost of living. These increases show no sign of abating, while cuts in benefit entitlements both to those in and out of work are going to continue. We must remember that so many benefit recipients—some surveys say the majority—are actually in work. These discrepancies will continue; the report concludes that the minimum amount that households without children need to earn rose about in line with inflation, but for families with children this amount continued to rise more steeply. The people for whom rising prices for food and fuel are the problem are those whose wages are static or whose benefits have been cut. These people literally have to make that decision which I never thought I would see again in our supposedly decent society: whether to have food or the means of keeping warm.

Nowhere is this more acute than with those who are disabled and living—through no fault of their own—on benefits. Let me give a specific example. Beverley Smith is 47 and severely disabled.

“She’s tetraplegic and largely bed-bound. Most of her £174-a-week benefits income goes straight into her social care costs, leaving her with £71 a week for food, bills and any other expenses. In April this dropped to £55 when she had to make up a £16.55-a-week housing benefit shortfall as a result of the bedroom tax … Because of her condition she needs the heating on constantly, all year round, at a cost of around £108 a month. Two years ago it was around £80 a month. Her basic income has barely gone up since then, but now, she says, her gas supplier thinks she should pay £120 a month. ‘I can’t afford it now. How am I going to pay that?’”.

She has had to ask for help from a charity and gets food parcels from a local food bank. I join with others in condemning the Minister’s contention that people go to food banks because they are there. Beverley’s friends help out occasionally but she says,

“I miss out meals. Some days I might have some … toast, and some porridge, and that’s it”.

Beverley is one of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people—particularly older people, people with a disability or families of low income—who face that heat or eat dilemma. Imminent energy price rises, soaring food bills and shrinking or static incomes have played havoc with budgets that were already tight. Many people are really in fear of what the winter will bring.

When we consider the difficulties such individuals and families now face, we must not forget that they are not only strapped for cash at present but also building up poverty for the future since they can make no possible provision for pensions from their current budgets. As our population ages, this will become more of a problem. I sincerely hope that the Government’s consultation on the deferred costs for care will clarify the position about how much in the way of resources you can have and still be eligible for the scheme. If the cap stays at its current level, the coalition’s much trumpeted reforms of care will mean very little to those in need of it.

One more issue, mentioned by the right reverend Prelate, is the effect of rising prices, especially of fuel, on community groups. Our local village hall in Herefordshire, a community hub if ever there was one, is a centre of not just leisure activities but vital links and social contacts, especially for the older people in the village who without it would be socially isolated. It is struggling to pay its heating bills, maintain the building and keep the rates for the breakfasts and lunches it provides at an affordable level for those who need it so much. This story will be repeated throughout our country, in towns and cities as well as villages. We often do not value such community hubs until they disappear but we should try to remember how vital they are in maintaining links and contacts. Such organisations and charities always work as hard as they can to ensure their services continue, often via the personal sacrifice of the volunteers in charge. Helping them invest in fuel-efficient heating, insulation, solar panels and so on can be useful not only now but as insurance for the future. We simply cannot afford to let such services close. We should remember that although volunteers are very good value, they are not cost-free.

So what must we do about it? First, as we have heard, we must enable people to maximise their incomes. Better access to benefits and no bedroom tax would be a good start. We forget, in the stigmatising of benefit claimants which seems to be de rigueur now, that huge amounts of benefits actually go unclaimed. We must also strengthen the powers of the Low Pay Commission, and I endorse what others said about the living wage. Better childcare and support for carers would also enable many who wish to undertake paid work but are currently prevented from doing so.

Secondly, we must ensure that instead of focusing on fraud in the benefit system—which is a tiny amount of the whole budget—we focus on fraud of all kinds in the tax system to target the rich as well as the poor. We must also do better with controlling prices of food and fuel. I hope that the Minister will not just say that the Government take those issues seriously but indicate what action they are committed to in order to address those most pressing problems.

Scotland Bill

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2012 Lords Chamber

Clause 27 : Taxation: introductory

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley)]

I should tell your Lordships that if Amendment 15 is agreed to I cannot call Amendment 16 for reasons of pre-emption.

Amendment 15

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Scotland Bill

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

Does the noble Lord wish to move Amendment 54? It needs to be taken before Amendment 54A.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley)]

It may be of assistance to the Committee if I point out that Amendment 54A comes after Amendment 54ZA, which in turn follows Amendment 54, which is the amendment that I thought the noble Lord was speaking to.

Impact of Government Policies on Family Budgets

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Knight for initiating this important debate. I wonder how many of your Lordships know what it is like to live on the margins. I am not referring to those who live outside the norms of society, to those who break the law, have a drug or alcohol problem or are homeless. I mean those who are just about coping, either financially or emotionally, and often both. I well remember a time, as a single parent, when I was just about coping financially, when I would go to sleep every night and wake every morning wondering how I could balance my income with the demands on it and constantly juggling the importance of paying this bill while putting off paying another. I am glad to say that that was a long time ago and now I feel confident enough to know that I have some leeway, some cushion to protect me if disaster strikes, if I become severely ill or if the roof blows off. I suspect that most of your Lordships are the same, but for millions of people, that is not how it is. They live just coping, because of a network of factors, financial, social and emotional, which, if they are kept in balance, allow them—just—to cope.

I want to talk about the experience of two such families. First, take the experience of Annette, a single mother of two children, newly divorced from a violent husband. She has an almost full-time job in a supermarket and receives tax credits, help with childcare and child benefit, all of which are now being reconsidered and are likely to disappear or be reduced. At present her children go to a breakfast club two mornings a week, to an after-school club once a week and to a play day at the local library on a Saturday morning. This helps her with her shifts at the supermarket and with the food bills. Every other Saturday the children have a supervised contact session with their father at a local children’s centre. Midweek, she and the younger child attend a Sure Start centre where she meets others and receives help and support. She greatly values the social contact this gives her and the friendships she has made.

All these services, the things which mean that she just about copes, are now under threat because of cuts to either their voluntary—let us never forget how many of these services are provided in the voluntary sector—or statutory funding. If this young mother were like most of us in this House and had a cushion, even a cushion of £20 a week, this would not be so important, but she does not have that cushion and, as a consequence, she very soon may not cope at all, because this fragile network of support on which she relies is being taken away What will be the result of that? It does not take a genius to see that extra stress on this already highly-stressed situation will have dire consequences down the line. Annette’s mental health is likely to suffer. The children’s relationship with their father may be broken. The nutrition of the children may suffer. Let us not forget that a quarter of Britain’s schoolchildren go to school without breakfast. Annette may lose her job and become entirely dependent on benefits. Need I go on? What is the potential bill for the state then, compared with the small amounts that it is investing in this family now?

The next family to which I want to draw your Lordships’ attention is that of a carer, Shirley. She is aged 55. She is looking after her mother, who is 85 and is disabled by a stroke, which has affected both her mobility and her speech. Shirley’s husband is about to retire but of course his pension is not going to be as much as they had expected. She works very part-time and receives the carers allowance—which, fortunately, is not to be taken into the universal benefits proposals, as was originally intended—but she is increasingly worried about the impact of local authority spending restrictions on the services they use for her mother. One of the day-care centres has already closed. The respite service, which enables the carer and her husband to have a night out once a fortnight, provided by a voluntary organisation, is under threat. The speech therapy group at the local hospital will come to an end next March when the specialist nurse who runs it retires and is not replaced. Shirley, not surprisingly, is very worried about fuel bills as her mother is immobile and some form of heating has to be provided in the house night and day. Her experience is typical.

Age UK says that spending cuts are projected to reduce spending on older people’s care by £300 million over the next four years. Real spending on older people’s care will be £250 million lower in 2014 than it was in 2004, but over the same period the number of people over 85 has risen by two-thirds. In 2005, 50 per cent of councils provided support to people assessed as having moderate needs, but in 2011 the figure has fallen to 18 per cent. As a result, the number of people receiving local authority-funded care at home has reduced from just under 500,000 in 2004 to just under 300,000 in 2009.

A survey in April 2011 of 61 councils by Emily Thornberry MP showed that 88 per cent of them were increasing charges for social care services, 16 per cent were raising eligibility criteria and no fewer than 54 per cent were cutting funding to the voluntary sector, which provides so many essential services. In addition, two-thirds were closing care homes or day centres.

I emphasise that cuts in support to caring families like this are a false economy. If financial and practical support to carers is cut and caring breaks down as a result, there will be a considerable knock-on cost to health and social care services, as well as serious damage to family life. I remind your Lordships, as I often do, that there are 6 million carers in the United Kingdom providing care to a value of £119 billion every year.

Both those typical families are doing their best to cope. They are fulfilling their family and societal obligations lovingly and dutifully, but government policies are having detrimental effects so significant that the end result may be family breakdown, with all its attendant costs to the state and to society itself.

We are all aware of the dire financial situation in which global events have placed the UK, but it must surely make sound economic as well as moral good sense to continue supporting families such as those that I have set before your Lordships. Local authorities and the voluntary sector are having to cut services that provide the difference between people just coping and not coping at all, and we shall all reap the whirlwind from that before many years have elapsed.

May we be assured that the Government, however inexperienced Ministers are in the normal lives of citizens, understand that many of them are just coping and just managing? Can the Minister assure the House that he understands that withdrawing these networks of support will result down the line in fractured and fragmented families which, in the end, will cost us all a great deal more?

Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley)]

My Lords, I remind Members of the Committee that, as usual, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.

Clause 1 : Charter for Budget Responsibility

Amendment 1

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