Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments and National Insurance Funds Payments) Regulations 2019

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his introduction to the orders. The freezing of working age benefits means that tax credits increase benefits only for workers and children who are disabled. This excludes a whole range of benefits which are crucial to many of the poorest people and families. The Resolution Foundation states that the four-year freeze on working age benefits has been,

“one of the most vivid examples of austerity in recent years as it represents a … real-terms cash loss for millions of low-income families”.

Among the poorest families, the average single parent will be £710 worse off, which amounts to between 3% and 7% of their income. The freeze looks set to cost working-age families £4.4 billion in 2019-20.

I noticed from the Explanatory Memorandum that no consultation was thought to be needed. Last year when these orders went through, the Minister was asked about an impact assessment on child poverty but he said that there was no need as this was done when the freeze was announced. However, we are now entering the fourth year of the benefits freeze. Is it not time an impact assessment was made in relation to the most vulnerable and poorest groups? This is particularly important, first, because the circumstances of these groups need to be taken into account when the migration to universal credit takes place and, secondly, in the light of the evidence of so many reports—for example, by the Resolution Foundation, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Trussell Trust and many others—which draw attention to the poverty and suffering being caused to people and working families at the lower end of incomes.

Does the Minister consider that disabled workers who benefit under the second statutory instrument will be at risk when the Government migrate them to universal credit? Will the Government look at the risk of that process to this vulnerable group? Will they use the forthcoming test-and-learn pilot of managed migration to trial a system where benefit claimants are moved automatically to universal credit so that their income is protected?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for that introduction. As we have heard, the purpose of the first set of regulations is to make changes to the rates, limits and thresholds for national insurance contributions and provide for a Treasury grant to be paid if necessary. Given the impact of inflation on household incomes, coupled with the poor wage growth over the last decade, we are of course supportive of measures that will ensure that NICs thresholds increase in line with inflation.

But I want to spend a bit longer on the second of these measures, whose purpose, as we have heard, is to uprate the guardian’s allowance and the few elements of tax credits fortunate enough to have escaped the brutal benefit freeze which has been applied across the board—that is, the disability elements for families with disabled children who get child tax credit and disabled workers in receipt of working tax credit. These are to be uprated by CPI, the 12-month measure which was 2.4% to last September. Obviously, that increase is welcome but, as we have heard, it does not cover all the major elements of child tax credit or working tax credit. It does not cover the single parent, couple or 30-hour elements of working tax credit or the child or family element of child tax credit, which is the bulk of the money—all these are frozen. Many of the people who get the tax credits that are being uprated are also in receipt of other benefits such as child benefit, JSA, ESA or housing support, which are frozen as well. This is really quite damaging.

We should not allow an occasion like this to pass without establishing for the record that this is not the way that Parliament traditionally goes about doing this business. The reason that social security benefits and tax credits are indexed to inflation is so that they keep their value. Before 2011, they were linked to the RPI or Rossi, a variant on RPI. When the Government decided to shift that and link them to CPI, it saved the Treasury a lot of money; of course, it cost the same amount to those who were on the benefits. That shift was strongly contested, but at least it retained the aim of ensuring that the value of the benefits stayed at the level determined by Parliament. When the Government made the switch, they claimed it was because CPI was a better measure. But the report published last month by the Economic Affairs Committee of this House pointed out that the Government are not above inflation-measure shopping. For example, when the Treasury is paying out benefits and tax credits, it uses CPI; when consumers are paying student loan repayments or facing increased rail fares, it uses RPI. The coalition Government ditched even CPI, limiting most working age tax credits and benefits to a 1% annual increase from 2013-14. The current Government went further still and froze those tax credits and benefits at their 2015-16 levels until 2020.