Personal Independence Payment: Mobility Criterion

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, for moving this Motion and for explaining carefully the nature of the problem that we address tonight. I am also grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, many of whom I have heard address the same issue repeatedly. It is very good to hear them again tonight and I pay tribute to them and to the noble Lord, Lord Alton—he is in his place but has not spoken tonight—who again has been tenacious in his support of the issues around Motability for some time.

I hope very much that the Minister has come here tonight in a constructive spirit and ready to listen, because she has heard stories from people who know a great deal about this, have a great deal of experience and who know whereof they speak. As we have heard, the shift from DLA with its qualifying threshold of 50 metres to PIP where 20 metres became the new rule for the enhanced component has been very controversial from the outset. The change was hugely unpopular. The Disability Benefits Consortium reminded us in its briefing for this debate that when the Government consulted, 914 of the 1,142 respondents indicated a clear preference for extending the qualifying distance for the enhanced rate from 20 metres up to 50 metres. The arguments were compelling. As my noble friend Lord McKenzie has just made clear, 50 metres was a widely recognised, established benchmark based on research used by many other government departments and other measures around the world. It is clearly a sensible choice. By comparison, no case was ever made for 20 metres. It became increasingly clear to all concerned that in practice what was sought was a criterion that more people would fail, and that would therefore result in less money paid out. It was designed to save money, or more precisely to transfer money from disabled people to the Exchequer.

This is a significant loss. The noble Lord, Lord Low, pointed out that some half a million people could lose money and that this could be over £30 a week. But I want to reinforce the point that this is one of those benefits explicitly designed to deal with the extra cost of disability. We really risk losing that dimension of social security at our peril. This is not simply a handout: it is about recognising that for disabled people to do the things that other people take for granted—to take their children to school, have a social life and have a job—they need access to transport that is not provided for them by the state. There are two ways that we can deal with this. We can make our public transport system dramatically more accessible and cover the entire country or, for a fraction of that cost, we can carry on making payments to enable disabled people who qualify for this to go to Motability or elsewhere to get access to transport.

I pray that the day will come when the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, will never have to drag herself on to a train again. Only she could manage it: those who are not Paralympic athletes might struggle. But I hope very much that that will not be the situation for very much longer. In the mean time, people need access to vehicles.

Crucially, we have already heard that some 14,000 people have lost their Motability vehicles after being reassessed for PIP. That is cracking on for half of all the reassessments, so there are some significant losses ahead of us. Also, we have heard compelling cases from various noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Brinton, of cases where the assessment has gone spectacularly, farcically wrong. When the Minister comes to respond, I am sure the temptation in the brief at this point will be to say that these are isolated cases and things can always go wrong, but if they can go that wrong, something has gone wrong with the quality process somewhere down the line. It means that something systemic has to be addressed. The reality is that the system is not working. It is broken. Disabled people have suffered significantly already. They have suffered very badly from social security spending cuts in the last Parliament and in this one. While the U-turn in the Budget on PIP was very welcome, the Government are still cutting spending on disability benefits by £1.2 billion by the end of this Parliament.

I have some questions for the Minister. How many people does she now predict will lose the higher rate mobility component by 2020? How many will lose their Motability cars as a result of the PIP reassessment? Is she satisfied with the way that the “moving around” assessments are conducted? Finally, is she happy with the outcomes of the reduction to 20 metres? Is it working as the Government planned? I asked the Minister on 7 March how she felt the loss of Motability cars and other access to support would help the Government to tackle the disability employment gap. She reassured me that the Government were committed to halving the disability employment gap and said that the PIP approach was more consistent and fairer than DLA. The Government, we understand, will produce a White Paper on disability. If they are serious about tackling the disability employment gap and increasing opportunities for disabled people to participate fully in our society, they have to do something about this. I am pleased to support this Motion.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Altmann) (Con)]

My Lords, I first assure the noble Baroness and the House that this Government have always been, and continue to be, fully committed to engaging with disabled people and organisations such as Disability Benefits Consortium and Disability Rights UK. I know that the Minister for Disabled People met the noble Baroness on 18 April to discuss the very issue raised in this debate. I also echo the sentiments of the Secretary of State during his Statement to Parliament last month. We are a one-nation Government committed to supporting everyone to achieve their full potential and to live independent lives.

Integral to that vision is ensuring that those with the greatest need are supported the most. We introduced the personal independence payment because disability living allowance was no longer fit for purpose. Under DLA, we assessed people purely on the basis of a disability, rather than considering individuals’ needs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Altmann]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. I can assure him from my own experience that it is important that we have any statistics properly verified before they are released as official statistics. We will release relevant data, and if we have any further information, I will be happy to write to the noble Lord with any other data we can provide.

As regards the information that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, asked for on the amount of money spent on mandatory reconsiderations and appeals, we will provide written details of those costs.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, when the Minister was describing the 20-metre rule and 50-metre rule, I could see a lot of puzzlement around the Chamber. It may just be that I was not keeping up with her, so will she indulge the House for a moment and clarify that? I understood from the Government’s justification, included in the House of Commons briefing on Motability, that,

“We recognise that people who are unable to reliably walk more than 50 metres”—

and it goes on to say that they will get the standard rate, which will go,

“to those who cannot reliably walk between 20 and 50 metres”,

and the enhanced rate will be for below 20 metres. Therefore, can the Minister explain to us whether what I have described is not true? That is what the House of Commons briefing on this says.

[Baroness Altmann]

To reiterate for the noble Baroness, if a claimant cannot walk up to 50 metres safely, reliably, repeatedly and in a timely manner, they are guaranteed to receive the enhanced rate of the mobility component. Therefore, there is not a strict 20-metre rule. There is discretion, and an individual assessment is made. We take into account whether the person is in pain and whether they can reliably walk or manage on their own.

I can also reassure noble Lords that our door is open. We are happy to engage. The Secretary of State and the Minister for Disabled People regularly engage with disability groups. We would like to continue to do so. Clearly, we want to make sure that this new process is working. As far as we can see at the moment, it appears to be.

Children: Parental Separation

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, the department is working with other departments in a cross-government strategy to support children, with a lot more funding for mental health issues and co-operation between the various departments.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, “so far” is a telling phrase. The Minister talked about the CSA but the Government are in the process of shutting down all CSA cases and telling parents that if they want to apply to the new scheme they have got to hand over one-fifth of all the money to the DWP in fees. However, they are allowed to apply to the new scheme only if they first ring a phone line and let someone on the other end of the phone try to talk them out of it and tell them to go away and make a deal with their ex directly. Mrs Thatcher set up the CSA to make sure that parents pay for their kids even if they are separated from the other parent. If there are any grounds to the growing concern that parents will end up paying less money to children than they have in the past, will the Minister accept that the strategy has failed and needs to be reviewed?

[Baroness Altmann]

The noble Baroness clearly has significant expertise in this area, but I have to say that the current system, which was set up in 2012, does not automatically take 20% of the payments. As I say, the point of the new system is to encourage parents to make their own arrangements. It is only if they do not use the direct payment method that they will pay the additional premium for that service.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has reminded me—

[Noble Lords]

No!

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I am sorry. It is a declaration of interest. I apologise to the House. I should have declared a historic interest in that five years ago I was a board member of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission. That is all I wanted to say.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, it is obvious that children who are not informed about what is happening to their parents when they are separating do much less well than those who are kept in the loop. What will the Government do to make this one of the really important aspects? Parents must let their children know, even at an early age, what is actually happening and make them part of the decision-making, or at least give them an understanding of what the future is going to be.

Welfare

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating that Statement and for advance sight of it, and I welcome unreservedly the Government’s dramatic change of heart on this matter. However, I would like to know how we got to this point. Last Thursday, at Questions, I asked the Minister specifically about the fact that the single biggest revenue raiser in the Budget Red Book was a £4.4 billion cut over five years in personal independence payments awarded to people who need aids and appliances to get dressed or manage their continence. The Minister defended it, claiming that those people did not in fact have extra costs and, anyway, it was not really a cut because the total cost of PIP was rising, even though 370,000 people would have lost up to £3,500 each per year as a result of the change. Of course, the total cost of any benefit is a combination of case load, value and running costs. If the total cost starts to rise but a Minister then decides to change the rules so that some people will not be eligible any more, thereby saving £1.2 billion a year on the anticipated bill, that is undeniably still a cut, not least for the 370,000 disabled people affected.

However, everything has changed since our debate last Thursday. What a difference a weekend makes. Since then, the boss of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, Iain Duncan Smith, has resigned as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, saying that repeated cuts to working-age benefits,

“just looks like we see this as a pot of money, that it doesn’t matter because they don't vote for us”.

I will not even start on what his junior Ministers said about him, or indeed about each other, with the notable exception of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, who has behaved with considerable propriety in this. The House should commend him for that. However, to offer him one small piece of advice, it might be wise to stay indoors during break time over the next week—just until the storm passes. I hope that he is having an entertaining time in the DWP at the moment, if not an easy one. Joking apart, caught in the middle of all this chaos are some confused and worried disabled people, in work and out of work, who depend on PIP, so I hope that we will be able to get some clear answers to questions today.

First, does the Minister now accept that it was wrong to propose taking £4.4 billion from disabled people to fund tax cuts that mostly benefit those on higher incomes and those with much greater wealth? Secondly, disabled people will be relieved to hear that the cut in PIP announced by the Government has been cancelled, but I think we all want to know where the money will come from to plug the £4 billion hole in the budget that it leaves. Can the Minister assure us that it will not be taken from anywhere else in the DWP budget? I am very glad to hear that it will not come from benefits, but will he assure us that it will not come from the department’s budget elsewhere—for example, from the Work Programme, or other important activities the department will undertake? Also, the Minister has been trailing for a long time a major White Paper on disability. Can he confirm that this Statement means that no changes to benefits payable to disabled people will be considered in that White Paper?

The Statement says that support for disabled people rose in the last Parliament. It does not say that spending on disabled people is falling in this Parliament. The IFS says that it has fallen by 3% in real terms, and House of Commons Library research shows that, taking all disability benefits into account, the fall is over 6%.

Disabled people have suffered greatly at the hands of this Government. They remain among the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the country. If the new Secretary of State is indeed a one-nation Conservative and committed to helping disabled people to thrive, should he not start by reconsidering the repeated cuts that his predecessor made to their benefits? Perhaps he could help those who have lost their Motability cars, those suffering because of the closure of the Independent Living Fund, the two-thirds of bedroom-tax victims who are disabled, or those who will get £30 a week less in ESA in future because of legislation that we recently passed. I welcome this change unreservedly, but until those questions are addressed, it is very hard indeed to believe that we really are all in it together.

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, I wish the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions every success in his new role—I mean that sincerely—and I am sorry that the Government find themselves in a difficult place. In fairness, however, they have had significant notice that there was much wrong with the way the welfare reforms have been tackled and are to be implemented.

As the Minister knows, we on these Benches have seen the welfare reforms through the prism of work, so we opposed cuts to tax credits, cuts to universal credit, the removal of support for people with disabilities, and measures that increased child poverty. We on these Benches want to ensure that government policy enables a fairer and more compassionate society, where the weak and the vulnerable are protected and people are supported to work, and supported in work when their incomes are low.

The Government have led us to believe that the weak and the vulnerable are being supported, but the events of the weekend say that this is not only about ensuring adequate support for disabled people but has been—as Iain Duncan Smith’s letter says—about unnecessary cuts to hit a politically motivated target. If that is the case, I am sad to say that the Government may have lost their moral compass. Do the Government accept IDS’s criticism, and do they not therefore owe disabled people an apology for being used as pawns in a cynical political game? I am pleased to note that the reassessment for PIPs will now be kicked into the long grass, but that is not good enough. The entire PIP cuts plan should be stopped. Will the Minister confirm exactly what the intentions for changes to PIP are? Are they to be fully stopped, as the Minister indicated, or just paused for the next six months or so?

Finally, given that the Government consulted on these proposals and until last Friday were saying that they were about giving the right support to disabled people, what is the Government’s actual view on the use of aids and adaptations by disabled people? If they have changed their mind for political reasons, does that mean that the foundation for the Government’s original claims was false, and—as IDS says—just an excuse to cut money? I am concerned about how the Government have treated the consultation process. Should there not be a review into whether they have made misleading claims in order to justify the cut, while ignoring the outcome of the consultation process?

We all have a duty of care to protect the most vulnerable in our society, to preserve their dignity and to help them live full and independent lives. All Governments should take that responsibility very seriously. To that end, I am pleased to note that the Statement says that the Government have no plans to make any further cuts in welfare, but can the Minister confirm that this applies throughout this Parliament? I am also pleased that they are re-setting the conversation, which is vital. I hope that this new conversation about welfare, health and social care will benefit the majority.

Employment: Job Creation

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the rise in employment but I want to ask about the disability employment gap. I was pretty shocked on reading the Red Book to discover that the single biggest revenue raiser was the new decision by the Government to save £4.4 billion over five years by taking personal independence payments away from hundreds of thousands of people who need aids to get dressed or manage incontinence. That is on top of previous PIP cuts, lost Motability cars and ESA cuts. How will that help disabled people into work?

[Lord Freud]

There is a huge misapprehension about the cost of PIP, which has been going up rather than down. These are not cuts: on the present trajectory the figure is moving up to £12 billion, and when we discussed it during the passage of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill there was an expectation that in the key 2019-20 year it would be £9 billion. We are reducing a rapid growth and adjusting how to get PIP because clearly we are getting much higher figures than originally expected through the use of those aids and appliance measurements.

Child Support (Deduction Orders and Fees) (Amendment and Modification) Regulations 2016

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, I have a couple of questions for the Minister. First, there is no mention of CSA arrears in the new compliance opportunity in these 2016 regulations. Will the Minister expand on how those cases will be dealt with? Secondly, what does the Government’s analysis show about subsequent child maintenance outcomes where cases involving children have closed, particularly as the Minister has mentioned that IT systems were providing much better outcomes?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her explanation of the draft order. I remind the Committee of my historic interest as a former non-executive member of the board of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, and my decidedly historic interest as a long-distant chief executive of the National Council for One Parent Families. I am going to raise points very similar to those raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, although, I fear, in rather less concise a manner, so the Minister is warned now.

As I understand it from what the Minister said, these regulations are aimed at non-resident parents in segment 5—people whose cases are facing closure on a legacy system but who are the subject of some CSA enforcement action. The idea is that they will get this compliance opportunity, or chance to show willing. These are people for whom, in the past, we have had to use enforcement, but they will now be able to show that they will do it. Their success in doing so will decide whether or not they end up on direct pay or on what is known as collect and pay under the CMS. I can see the Minister nodding, so I know that I have got that much right. I gather this came about because concerns were expressed about the Government’s original plans to move people on to direct pay; this is a way of testing it out. That seems a sensible idea and we have no objections in principle. However, I do have a number of questions.

The first is a really simple question. I found it impossible from the draft regulations or the memorandum to understand what regulation 2 does. It may be that the last paragraph of the Minister’s opening remarks told me that, but I wonder whether she could clarify it. The EM says of regulation 2 that,

“These provisions are likely to attract minimal public interest”.

That may well be because nobody, myself included, has the slightest idea what the regulations are doing, so it would be helpful if the Minister could clarify that. In particular, will the Minister set out for the record what powers the regulation will give the Government that they do not have now and in what circumstances they envisage using them? If the answer is in her last paragraph, she can point to that. Secondly, will the Minister confirm that all the cases covered by these regulations will still have statutory maintenance arrangements, not voluntary or family-based arrangements?

Next, I want to pick up the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, about arrears under the legacy system. I understand that there is going to be a cleansing process to make sure that any arrears liability that is transferred across to the CMS is solid and accurately recorded. The intention is to move the ongoing liability across first and then to cleanse the arrears; once they have been verified, the arrears will follow. However, the Minister mentioned that the Government have decided to delay the compliance opportunity until the end of the process rather than have it at the start. Therefore, I am worried about whether the Government have considered what will happen. Under the compliance opportunity, the non-resident parent who has previously shown him or herself not to be able to pay without enforcement action will be tested only on their ability and willingness to pay ongoing maintenance liability as determined by the CMS system. Therefore, they will not have been tested on their ability and willingness to pay arrears, which they may or may not be happy to do. Why did the Government make that decision in the light of that? Would it not have been better to leave it right until the end so that, by the time the compliance opportunity came along, the arrears would have gone across and it could then be applied to both? Can the Minister explain that some more?

Will the Minister tell the Committee whether any arrears still within the CSA which are awaiting transfer across at the end of the cleansing process will continue to be collected by the same enforcement method, whatever may be going on with the compliance opportunity? In other words, will that be enforced in the way that it was under the CSA?

If an NRP passed the compliance test, it seems that they could opt to use direct pay to pay any arrears, as well as any CMS maintenance due. Is that correct? However, given that we do not know that they would be willing to pay CMS, would it not have made more sense, when the arrears do come across, for them simply to carry on with the same enforcement mechanism in the new system as was there in the old system? Since there are no fees for the parent with care for arrears collection anyway, that would not have had any implications for him or her.

On a separate point, will the Minister explain what enforcement methods will be used during the compliance opportunity for the bit that is being enforced alongside the voluntary partial payments? She mentioned using deduction from earnings orders, but there would be cases, such as self-employed non-resident parents, where a DEO was not appropriate. What other tools will be used for the enforcement part of that payment if a DEO is not appropriate? For example, will deduction orders or freezing orders or setting aside of disposition orders be available during the compliance period?

This is the first opportunity we have had to question the Minister about the progress of transition to the new system, so I would like to ask her some questions about how that is going. Can she tell the Committee how many cases have been closed in each segment so far? When does she expect to complete the bulk closure of segments 3 and 4? Can she tell us when the programme of closing all the CSA live cases is now expected to finish?

To come on to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, about child maintenance outcomes, will the Minister tell us how many parents affected by CSA case closure have transferred to CMS or made a private family-based arrangement or made no arrangement? This is crucial information. We want to be sure not only that people have decided not to move across but that they have some maintenance being paid. The figures in the public domain suggest that, up until the end of December 2015, around a quarter of a million CSA cases had received final notice of the ending of their CSA case. However, figures between January 2015—when the case closure started—to August 2015 showed that during that time only 22,000 applications had been made to the CMS from cases affected by proactive case closure, plus another 6,800 from reactive closure. That means that only 28,800 CMS cases had been started from January to August, when around a quarter of a million had had notice of the ending of their CSA case. I hope very much that does not mean that hardly anybody is using the new service, but the noble Baroness will understand why we would like to know that.

--- Later in debate ---

As I said, the outcomes will be evaluated and are being evaluated for the 30-month review. I hope that my explanation has been helpful, but I will reply to any further questions.

[Baroness Sherlock]

I thank the Minister for answering some of my questions but I confess to disappointment that she was not able to provide any figures at all, given that I gave her office a few hours’ notice that I would be asking for that information, which ought to be in the public domain. However, I shall look forward to the letter expressing the figures in detail.

There are two questions which either the Minister did not answer or I expressed poorly—I take full responsibility for her answering a different question from the one I asked. The first question was on the timing of the compliance opportunity. I was not trying to ask her—I apologise if I did—why she was not doing the compliance opportunity on the existing scheme, as opposed to the CMS. What I was asking was: why did the Government not delay the compliance opportunity until the arrears had been moved across as well as the ongoing maintenance, so that the compliance opportunity could then be done on the entire liability of both ongoing maintenance and arrears? She said that it was testing behaviour, but that tests only the willingness to pay a small amount of that, and the arrears may be significant.

As to the second question, I did not quite understand what the Minister said about why the Government did not want to use the compliance tools available to them on self-employed non-resident parents. What is the reason for assuming that they do not need enforcement in the way that employed parents do? She could, I presume, use deduction orders as they are used now. She did not explain why that would not be the case.

[Baroness Altmann]

I will try to be a little more forthcoming with some figures, but, as I say, I will write to the noble Baroness with a more detailed reply. So far, 700,000 to 800,000 segment 3 and 4 cases have been moved across. When all cases are finished, there will be 800,000 to 900,000 cases expected to come over on to the 2012 scheme. I apologise to the noble Baroness that I may have omitted to answer the two specific questions that she asked me. It is not that she was not clear; it is that I was unable to keep up with all the questions.

The timing of the compliance opportunity is partly to ensure that we can successfully complete the migration of the old cases on to the new system in time to be able to close the existing IT systems before they run out of their usable life. There is a timing issue of requiring to get on with the compliance opportunity for segment 5 so that we can meet the end deadline for closing the 1993 and 2003 IT systems without incurring significant extra cost. If we were to delay until all the arrears had been cleansed on the old system, that might well take us beyond the period. By moving segment 5 across slowly now, we are trying to test how this compliance opportunity is working in a small number of cases, as I described earlier, and how the new system is working for those cases before we ramp up with these significant additional thousands of cases that still need to come across and meet the end deadline. This migration and the new system are being very carefully managed. It is a massive undertaking. We know the problems we have had with IT systems in the past, and we do not want those to happen with the new system.

Also, we would have had to either let everyone have direct pay or charge everyone for their ongoing maintenance. That is why we have not used the tools for the self-employed people. We are giving them the opportunity that we believe we have to give them. We cannot collect arrears until they have not paid. As I understand it, the deduction orders and the lump sum deduction orders will help us collect arrears but we cannot consider arrears from the old scheme as arrears in the new scheme, so we would either have to deem all the self-employed as unreliable payers, and therefore we could then enforce collection and charges, or give them the opportunity to prove that they are unreliable before we then take the fees for the collection and charges.

If further clarification is required, I will write to the noble Baroness. However, as I understand it, those are the bare bones of the issue. We can expand on that.

I thank noble Lords for their contributions to the debate and for their constructive approach to today’s proceedings. This Government are committed to ensuring that those parents who choose to apply to the statutory 2012 child maintenance scheme benefit from a successful and stable arrangement for payments in the interests of their children. Introducing a compliance opportunity will ensure that non-resident parents with a history of non-compliance should not access the direct pay service unless they have demonstrated a change of behaviour. This aims to help parents with care have confidence that their new arrangement will suit their circumstances and work in the best interests of supporting their children. I commend this instrument to the Grand Committee.

Motability

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, the time taken for appeals is being reduced. Certainly the first step is mandatory reconsideration, which in general takes place before the Motability car needs to be returned, as there is a seven-week period. However, the long-standing policy of the department is that if it is assessed that somebody is no longer entitled to a car, it must be removed pending appeal.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister thinks that the system is working better. One must ask: for whom? The BBC reported in February that 14,000 disabled people had had their Motability cars taken away from them, which is 45% of the 31,000 who had had an assessment. If that scales up, we will see hundreds of thousands of disabled people not having access in future to a Motability car. So I ask the Minister again the question put to her by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester: how does this contribute to the Government’s aim to halve the disability employment gap?

[Baroness Altmann]

The Government are absolutely committed to halving the disability employment gap and we understand that being reassessed for any benefit can be a challenging time. That is why, after discussions with my department, Motability announced a £175 million package of transitional support. Those who lose their cars can get £2,000 for a new one or can buy their old car, and are given time to adjust. But the idea of the reassessment is that the DLA was inconsistent—many people had lifetime awards—whereas PIP offers a more consistent and fairer approach.

Housing: Underoccupancy Charge

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Sherlock]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect disabled people and victims of domestic violence from the effects of the under-occupancy charge.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

We have already taken steps to protect disabled people and victims of domestic violence by providing local authorities with £560 million in discretionary housing payment funding since 2011. A further £870 million of discretionary housing payment will be provided over the next five years, which will allow local authorities to make long-term or indefinite awards so that people in difficult situations such as these are protected.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. The Government are spending a quarter of a million pounds appealing two bedroom-tax cases in the Supreme Court this week: one from a rape victim who had had a panic room installed by the police and the other from a family caring for their severely disabled grandson. I intuit that the Minister will not want to comment on the cases specifically, but he mentioned discretionary housing payments, which are always the Government’s defence when the bedroom tax comes up. But the Government’s own evaluation found that a third of people hit by the bedroom tax did not even know that the payments existed. Can the Minister tell the House what he is doing to improve the situation for disabled people and rape victims and how people will know about the discretionary housing payments?

[Lord Freud]

To start with, roughly 40% of people knew about the discretionary housing payments—that figure has now increased to 66%, I think. So there is information out there. I thank the noble Baroness for making the point that the Supreme Court is looking at this area right at this moment—today; I am necessarily more circumscribed than normal in some of what I can say on this area in the next few minutes.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 29th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome this change of heart from the Government, and I thank the Minister for bringing forward his amendment. It is good to know that we can guarantee that in future robust data will continue to be published about the incomes of poor children so that we can see what is happening to child poverty in Britain. I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham on his leadership on this issue and, like all other noble Lords, I thank the Child Poverty Action Group and the End Child Poverty coalition for their work. I thank noble Lords who have supported us on this issue through their words and their votes as the Bill has moved through this House.

I regret that we could not persuade the Minister to carry on reporting on child poverty, but I reassure anyone listening outside this House that we will continue to use these data as they are published to hold the Government to account for the consequences of their policies, particularly should those policies contrive to increase the number of poor children in Britain. I fear that I share the view of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham that it is most likely that that will take place.

I was not going to get into the area of poverty measurement but I have been tempted. I say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth that while I have given up sugar for Lent I am not going to give up politics as well, so I hope that he will bear with me for just one moment. Since the Minister took the opportunity of saying why the Government do not want to be in the business of counting the incomes of poor children, I should say that no one has ever felt that it was just about money—but it is not not about money. I am still proud that the last Labour Government lifted 1 million children out of poverty. The Minister may not think that income transfers make that much difference but they really do to the families involved. Labour tried very hard not to focus on tipping people over some imaginary poverty line. Instead it invested child tax credits for all families; it put in place the New Deal to help parents into work; it created tax credits so they could afford to take their jobs; it gave them childcare so that women could afford to go out to work; and it created Sure Start to ensure that the children developed. Therefore I fully support his agenda to look at poverty across the piece. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham did a nice job of explaining the different kinds of poverty and wealth. However, in the end, if you cannot afford to feed your kids, money matters. I apologise to the right reverend Prelate but now I am back on track.

The particularly important thing about these data coming out is that there is very strong evidence of the scarring effects of living for a period of time on low income in childhood and what that does to children’s life chances. Therefore I hope that as the Government publish the data, because the data will then be available to them they will also influence policy-making. However, given all of that, the House of Lords has done itself proud; I am grateful to have been part of a process during the passage of the Bill where the House of Lords has been able to scrutinise the evidence and the Minister has been willing to listen. I thank all noble Lords and I thank him. I am grateful for this concession, which is important, and we are pleased to support the Motion.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions and thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who led in this area. I will make just one or two short points. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, I remind him that the forecasts of what happens to this measure of relative income are notoriously difficult to get right. I have been in this House on several occasions when there have been dire warnings that child poverty is about to go up over the next two years, but when you get to the figures two years later, it has not happened. I therefore hate having to defend myself against things that do not happen—it is bad enough having to defend myself against things that happen.

We have had a very useful debate on this area in this House. The point is that the debate succeeded in unpicking the concerns that noble Lords had, which is why we were able to find common ground. We are not in agreement in this area in our approach but we have found common ground here, and I hope both sides will be able to live with this amendment. However, I want to give some reassurance. One of the reasons we have brought forward this amendment is because we wanted to reassure the House and other people around the country that we take this whole issue seriously—that we have an agenda and we want to do something about this. We did not want to leave this issue with the impression that we were not taking it seriously. I can agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, that I am convinced, as she is, that the publication of the HBAI will not go by without comment by someone on each occasion.

I will pick up on the point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, although I need to give him a two-handed answer. As I said when we went through this, we have separate arrangements—a specific set of payments—for bereavement. However, on domestic violence, which we dealt with specifically when we discussed it earlier, the right reverend Prelate has made reasoned arguments; I repeat my acknowledgement that this will remain an area of interest, at least for them, and anticipate the natural corollary of that. With those few words, I urge noble Lords to agree to the Motion.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I am sorry that I cannot join totally in the congratulations, although obviously the noble Baronesses, Lady Pitkeathley and Lady Hollis, have achieved great things. However, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and I were very keen that those adopters of difficult children who join their families should also be excluded from the cap. In his reply, the Minister accepted that, where sibling groups were adopted, that would be an exclusion, but where there was one child, his words were, I think, that they would be not unlike any other family.

I suggest to the Minister that any adopted child is not like any other family. Children in care who are going to be adopted are not sweetness and light on the whole. They have had very difficult childhoods and are going to need extraordinary care. I express my disappointment. We have written to him to say that we are disappointed that adopted children have not been included in the list. Having said that, I am extremely grateful for those who are.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Government for the concessions that they have made, and I share the view expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, that, on this occasion, when a good argument was mounted, it was listened to. However, I say to the Minister that, if he liked those, I have plenty more where they came from, so I look forward to future useful conversations. I also promise him no vituperation at all. Perhaps he will permit me a mild sulk when I come to the third of his amendments, but I promise to be gentle about it.

I welcome wholeheartedly the decision to exempt all those in receipt in carer’s allowance and also to go a step further and not just to exempt guardian’s allowance, as had been hinted at at a previous stage, but in fact to exempt all households containing someone claiming guardian’s allowance. That is a generous response to the pressure from this House. In particular, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley for all the work she has done on carers, of whom she is such a tireless champion, and to my noble friend Lady Drake for emphasising the position of carers of different kinds.

I have certainly raised the question of guardian’s allowance to precisely no effect whatever, but when my noble friend Lady Hollis gave a speech and made a report, the Minister ran the white flag up the flagpole at once, and said, “I now know how to deal in future with matters on which I have good arguments.” I commend him for having listened carefully to that one.

The question on which I am still a little unhappy is related to government Amendment 3, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. As the Minister said, I pushed on this on Report, and I would have brought another amendment back, had I been permitted, but I am afraid the Companion does not allow me to do it. I am glad the Minister has explained why the Government took the view to accept only in part the recommendation made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. However, I think it is worth while reminding ourselves that the committee could not have been much stronger. It actually said that it considered it inappropriate,

“for this Bill to confer the highly significant regulation-making powers in Clauses 7 and 8 without the application of the SSAC scrutiny requirement”.

When the Government decided not to accept that in full, that is quite a strong statement. It is worth remembering why. Although the benefit cap is a matter for Parliament, all regulations are a matter for Parliament. All that happens is that they go there via an expert Social Security Advisory Committee which will then give advice to us and to Ministers about the way in which the Government should proceed. The Executive are entirely at liberty to ignore that advice and to press ahead, but they really ought to listen.

The reason that the level of the cap is important is that it is not just a matter for the economy. For example, it would be perfectly possible for a Minister to bring forward regulations saying the cap should be set at £500 a year. I am not suggesting they would, but they could. In doing so, that would render completely pointless the entire array of social security legislation, specifying the entitlement people have to a range of benefits by simply saying, “You may be entitled to all of those—however, anything over £500 we just will not give you”. I am not suggesting the Government would do it, but that is an extraordinarily important power, and therefore a very good reason that the SSAC should have been invited to use its powers in scrutinising it before the Government were able to go ahead and do it. However, all I can do at this point, as I say, is sulk mildly, register my disappointment and urge the Government to go away and think again, because I would not want to break the mood of general congratulation, in which I share.

I take the opportunity to ask the Minister a couple of practical questions. He mentioned that the Government will be bringing regulations back later in the year to legislate for those parts of the concessions that are not covered by the amendments today. He has explained he would do that in relation to the amendments on the benefit cap. Will the Minister also tell the House when and how the Government will legislate to deal with their concessions in relation to the two-child policy for kinship carers and adoptive carers? I understand that the regulations will be subject to the negative procedure. Is that correct? If so, will he commit to publishing draft regulations before anything is laid in Parliament? A lot of debate has gone on and in the light of that debate and, indeed, in the light of the comment that he made on Report to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth in relation to domestic violence, it would be helpful to the House if he were willing to offer that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Low, has asked for—a meeting on this matter. Of course I would be pleased to meet him, and other colleagues, to discuss this as it wends its way back to the Commons, and perhaps back to us, depending on what happens.

May I take this opportunity to place on formal record my thanks to noble Lords throughout the House? They have discharged their duties to look at the Bill really conscientiously, and have worked hard on some difficult and sensitive issues. They have brought out some unintended consequences, and they have described them and expressed their case in calm, clear language, which means that we can take the points and aim to address them. Indeed, both today and on Report we have tackled some of them.

The Bill has been insulted by one or two noble Lords. I have to reflect back that it has raised some profound issues around what the benefit and welfare system does and how it works. Pinpointing where it affects the most vulnerable and how we can ameliorate that and sort it out has been really valuable.

I thank the Bill team, a handful of whom are in the Box now. They have been formidable in supporting me all the way through the progress of the Bill. I know that they have also been assiduous in briefing noble Lords, because we set up the system, which I have used with previous Bills, whereby there is a briefing ahead of Committee stage, so that when we debate these issues we do not waste time but are able to deal with the issues. The Bill team have done a really good job, and I believe noble Lords think so, too. I am sure I express the view of the whole House in thanking them for all their support.

[Baroness Sherlock]

May I, on behalf of the Opposition, thank the Minister for giving us access to his officials? I thank the Bill team and some very impressive policy people who have been briefing Peers from all over the House. We appreciate his generosity in giving us access to them, and their expertise and willingness to explain to us patiently—sometimes, if necessary, more than once —precisely how the Bill works. We are grateful for that. They have also been helpful in working with the wonderful Muna Abbas, from our Whips team, who has done a brilliant job in supporting us from this side.

We have not been persuaded by the Minister that this is anything other than a bad Bill—but now, as a result of what this House has done, it is less bad than it was. I pay tribute to Peers throughout the House, who have shown the House of Lords doing what it does best—being a revising Chamber which, even when it does not like legislation, focuses its attention on improving it and sending it back to the other place much better than it was. Long may we do so.

Amendment 5 agreed.

Housing Benefit (Abolition of the Family Premium and Date of Claim Amendment) Regulations 2015

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s enthusiasm to respond to the challenges put to him, but I regret that I am going to add to them, if he can bear with us for a little bit longer. I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for giving us the opportunity to debate these regulations and for having gone into some detail about the process questions. I very much share his concerns. We have concerns of substance on these Benches, but the process should be of concern to all Members of the House, irrespective of the view that they may take on these regulations. I hope that the Minister gives some satisfactory answers on that.

As we have heard, these regulations do two things: they remove the family premium from claims to housing benefit from April 2016 and the backdating of housing benefit, to which I shall come in a moment. Existing claimants will also be affected if their circumstances change, such as if they move or if a child reaches the age of 18. When it is lost, it will be lost almost exclusively to working families, because households where someone is claiming an out-of-work benefit will automatically receive the maximum possible housing benefit payment. The Social Security Advisory Committee report cited an example from the Peabody Trust of a single parent in part-time work, caring for her disabled adult son. Should she need to make a new claim for housing benefit following the removal of the family premium, she would lose around £572 a year, compared to what she would get currently—a lot of money for someone in those circumstances.

My noble friend Lord McKenzie asked a very good question about the admin costs. It is hard to believe that simplification is the reason; one could always simplify benefits by abolishing them. We really have to have better arguments than that.

The DWP claims that withdrawing the family premium in HB will “promote better work incentives”, but, as the SSAC points out, some HB claimants will permanently lose the premium if they temporarily increase their hours and therefore could be deterred from doing so. Equally, some will be deterred from moving address to secure or look for work if it means a drop in HB, or could be discouraged from taking short-term work over Christmas, for example, if it means a drop in housing benefit. Will the Minister comment on that?

The SSAC was also very critical of the Government’s refusal to adopt linking rules. It gives the very serious example of domestic violence victims who need to be rehoused and points out that if somebody moves outside a local authority area, they lose the entitlement. The SSAC points out that some local authorities and social landlords have a deliberate policy of moving domestic violence victims to a different local authority area to minimise the risk that they would run into their assailant and to protect them. It states:

“Those organisations now face a fairly stark choice in terms of whether to keep the existing policy in the knowledge that the victim is likely to be financially worse off, or to rehome them within the existing local authority area where they may be at greater risk”.

The Government’s only response to this is to say:

“Since 2010 our policy has been to move away from building new linking into our reforms to Housing Benefit”.

That is not a reason. That is basically saying “The reason for our policy is that it is our policy”. I hope the Minister can give us the reason behind the policy rather than telling us that it is the policy. The Government go on to say that they do not think linking rules are the most appropriate way of supporting vulnerable cases, but they do not explain why. The only alternative they can offer is our old friend the discretionary housing payment, which has already been offered as an answer to almost every problem created by welfare change since 2010, from the fallout of the welfare Bill to the benefit cap.

The SSAC also points out that universal credit will allow linking and continuity of claim where there is a temporary increase in income or relocation to another local authority area, but they will not be available under these HB proposals which it says will have a negative impact on work incentives and will raise issues around income stability and security.

I now come to the backdating change which other noble Lords have commented on. A number of NGOs and charities have said that limiting backdating to one month will have a significant impact on vulnerable renters, a point made very clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Low, and my noble friend Lord McKenzie. As we have heard, the SSAC recommended that the Government should not proceed with the reduction from six months to one month. It is interesting that the committee expressed disappointment at the lack of proper consultation with local authorities, landlords and voluntary and charitable bodies which will be impacted by these changes. I hope the Minister can explain why that consultation was not done.

The SSAC’s view is that the position faced by HB legacy claimants, especially the more vulnerable, is substantially different and more challenging than the position following migration to universal credit. It pointed out that in the absence of a robust impact assessment the case for simple alignment was not there.

The response from the Government to the SSAC report was so slight as to be almost rude. Their only argument is to say that the policy intention is to align the housing benefit treatment with that in universal credit. Where is the rush? As the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, pointed out, it is not as though the entire population is about to land on universal credit. I know that back in November 2010 the DWP believed that everybody would be on it by 2017, but we now know that it is going to be at least 2020, possibly 2021, and maybe some way beyond that. We are years away from everyone needing housing support getting it entirely through universal credit. There could yet be millions of people who could come on to housing benefit, get it, move into work, come off it, come back on to it and still not be on universal credit, so there is a significant issue. I hope the Government will tell us their real reasons. It cannot just be that they want to be in exactly the same position on universal credit and on legacy benefits; otherwise they presumably would not have allowed the situation to develop where two people in identical circumstances, one on tax credits and the other on universal credit, could find themselves with a difference of £3,000 a year in entitlement. Will the Government tell us what the real reasons are?

To summarise I would like the Minister to answer some questions. I will be interested in his response to the process points made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. He referred to the Minister’s letter of 11 January to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, saying that he had instigated a review of the way the DWP produces explanatory memoranda. Will he tell the House when that review is likely to report? Will its findings be published? If they are not going to be published, how will the House get reassurance that his department will be able to do this job better in the future than it has in the past? Will he tell us why the Government did not consult properly before issuing this instrument? Will he explain the reasons for opposing a linking rule in the family premium? In particular, will he tell us why he has rejected the SSAC recommendation of three months if the Government are not willing to go all the way to six months? I look forward to the Minister’s answers.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I ask noble Lords to forgive me for not keeping up with the exact floating role of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, as he moves forward and back on the Benches. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions which, as one would expect, covered a number of issues.

I start with the family premium, which will align housing benefit with universal credit, which does not have this process. As noble Lords will be well aware, it applies to new cases only. It will therefore not affect people in receipt of family premium on 30 April this year. They will continue to receive the family premium until they are no longer responsible for any children or young people under 20 or make a new claim for housing benefit. To avoid people dying at the stake for the sake of these premiums, I remind noble Lords of their very complicated history which started in 1988. With the reform of tax credits, they were removed from income support but not from housing benefit. I know there is a lot of historical nostalgia for bits of the benefit system, but this one reminds me more of an appendix than of anything else: it had a purpose at one time, but it is pretty odd to remember what it was and it can cause you problems, as I am discovering.

On the linking rules, where claimants are in receipt of housing benefit and subsequently move house into a different local authority, they are required to make a new claim for housing benefit. That has always been the case and the policy does not seek to change it. If the claimants were in receipt of the family premium before their move and they move after 30 April, they will no longer receive the family premium in their new housing benefit claim from their new local authority. That responds to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. I know that the noble Baroness likes to stretch out the period for which this will last, but universal credit will be coming in for new cases reasonably soon. It is simply not feasible to introduce linking rules for these cases because that really would introduce a level of complexity and cost.

I regret that I cannot answer the precise question from the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, on the administration costs saved. When you go through the sums of how you reach that family premium amount and then do the taper with it, and you have to do that differently through every local authority, I have to believe that it genuinely saves some money. However, I cannot put any amount on that.

On the point about work incentives made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, the loss of family premium would be one factor among many others, including the financial gain and development prospects that would come from entering work. It is important to mention the likely behavioural change that could result from this policy, as the potential reduction in benefit may make claimants more likely to find work or increase their hours. Indeed, you see evidence of that in some of our welfare reforms already.

I turn to the issue of backdating, which noble Lords touched on. This change introduces equality for working-age claimants by aligning housing benefit rules with those in universal credit. Under current rules, as noble Lords have pointed out, the working-age housing benefit claimants may have their claim treated as made from a date up to six months before they actually make the claim. The backdating period will apply from the date of claim and is not dependent on the time that it takes to process claims. Our rationale is that the one month provides a reasonable period to seek assistance or to get claimant affairs in order for those who can demonstrate good reason as to why they did not claim more promptly. While claimants still receive legacy benefits before migration to UC, there is sense in preparing them for the transition to UC by, so far as practicable, equalising how they are treated. The other factor that is useful when we look at this is that our administrative data show that more than two-thirds of backdating claims for housing benefit are awarded for one month or less.

The noble Lords, Lord Kirkwood and Lord Low, asked why we rejected the three-month recommendation —although, interestingly, the numbers between the one-month figure and the three-month figure are actually not very great. We are aiming to change behaviours. If people want to claim benefits, one month allows sufficient time for them to register a claim in the first instance. It does not matter if it is a more complicated process, because the processing and getting the detail does not change the date of entitlement, which is established on the initial claim.

To respond to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, who as usual has excruciating detail at his fingertips, I confirm—and I am impressed that he has looked at this—that where a claim for housing benefit is linked to a claim for one of the legacy income-related benefits that applies the three-month backdating rule, entitlement to housing benefit will be linked back for the full three months if it is made within one month of the award for legacy benefit. So he got that spot on.

On the point from the noble Lords, Lord Kirkwood and Lord Low, we do not anticipate pressures on the homelessness front. I am slightly influenced by the fact that every time we make such a change we are warned about that but so far it has not come through.