Benefit Rate Freeze

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, we do care, and that is why we are incentivising people into work. All our research shows that workless families are most likely to drive children into poverty. In terms of our reforms, we introduced 15 hours of free childcare for working families. From September this year, we have doubled that from 15 to 30 hours a week in England, worth on average up to £5,000 a child. Since April 2016, the universal credit childcare element has covered up to 85% of eligible childcare costs compared with 70% with working tax credits.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, these benefit freezes are not reforms; they are simply a cut. Benefits used to rise in line with inflation every year until the Government decided that in future they would not. They have been frozen in cash terms, so all that happens is that people have the same amount of money to pay for food and rent in 2020 as they did in 2015 while inflation goes up. That simply cannot be right. These are people who are too sick to work, who have small children or who are in work but cannot earn enough to pay for the running costs of their household. Therefore, I ask the Minister again: do the Government care about the poorest in our society? If they do, what are they going to do about it, because fine words butter no parsnips?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, as I have said to noble Lords opposite, we do care, but we are absolutely clear that work is the best way to get children, in particular, out of poverty. That is why we want to incentivise work, which is the best route, but we need to focus on making sure that people see their wages rise and take home more of their pay packet once they are in work. Our reforms include increasing the national living wage for workers aged 25 and over, cutting income tax for over 30 million people and extending free childcare for working parents.