Benefit Cap (Housing Benefit and Universal Credit) (Amendment) Regulations 2016

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an interesting debate, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for his introduction to it and to all noble Lords who have contributed.

First, the good news. I am certainly glad to welcome the good bit of the regulations. As one of a number of concessions won by hard work in this House across the Benches, the regulations exempt from the benefit cap people claiming guardian’s allowance, carer’s allowance and the carer’s element of universal credit.

I have a couple of practical questions for the Minister before I move on. I understand that, because the regulations took effect yesterday, anyone in receipt of one of those benefits will be automatically exempted from the cap. That means that any such person who is already capped will have it automatically lifted, and their next payment will reflect that fact. Similarly, anyone whose case is flagged up as otherwise being caught by the new lower cap but who is in receipt of, or entitled to, one of those benefits will automatically be exempt. Can the Minister confirm that that automatic exemption is the case, and that the claimant will not have to do anything to ensure that they are exempted when they should be? Will he also confirm that his department has communicated with those claimants to let them know what is happening, so that they will understand the change in their circumstances?

On to the bad news. I will not rehearse the arguments made eloquently by many noble Lords about the impact on housing and homelessness—points made very well by the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Shipley—and on children, a point made by my noble friend Lady Lister and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds. His predecessor the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds and I made an attempt right at the beginning to exempt child benefit from the cap. Sadly, we were unsuccessful, but I am glad to see the right reverend Prelate keeping up a fine tradition of speaking up for the children of Leeds; I hope that one day, he will not have to. If his sermons are as commendable, pointed and brief as his speeches here, may people flock to his cathedral in time to come.

As has been pointed out, the cap will change significantly. We heard about the large number of people who have been brought into it, but there is also the size of the losses. Households already capped could lose another £3,000 a year in London, or £6,000 elsewhere. The Government estimate that newly capped households will lose an average of £2,000 a year. The profile will change dramatically. No longer can Ministers pretend that the problem is people living in Mayfair or having 17 children; the problem will now be right across the country, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. That was never really the issue, but in future, just 22% of affected households will be in London, whereas the figure had been 42%.

For me, the telling point is that in the north-east, where I live, the number of households affected will jump from 600 to 4,000. There are not that many very expensive properties in the north-east—certainly not that benefits pay for. This is now being spread right across the country. Nor can the Minister complain that it is just about large families. Under the new cap, a single mum with two young children sharing a room will be capped if she is living, not in Mayfair, but in 19% of areas in the country, including Basingstoke or Reading. If those two children are in different rooms, we are talking about a third of the areas in England. This is becoming really significant.

What is it about? Is it about saving money? Points were made by a number of noble Lords. I have been through the impact assessment again, and it is now clear that the savings from these regulations will be £540 million in total over five years. Over that period the Government will spend £870 million in discretionary housing payments. Clearly, not all of that will go on the benefit cap. It also has to cover the impact of the bedroom tax, LHA cuts and the general misery caused by the Government’s social security policy. In the current year, more than a quarter of DHP money went on the benefit cap victims, and we know that the number will go up significantly—more than threefold. Can the Minister tell us how much the Government expect to save from these regulations after deducting an appropriate proportion of the costs of discretionary housing payment money?

We have heard that the options for somebody who is capped are to accept the cut, move somewhere cheaper or get a job for at least 16 hours a week. Let me run through those very briefly. These are cash cuts and they come in overnight. If a family faces an annual benefit cut of £6,000 a year, can the Minister say whether that means it is possible that someone’s housing benefit could be cut by £115 a week from one housing benefit payment to the next? If that is the case, how could anyone absorb that kind of cut?

Another option is to move somewhere cheaper. But where can they move to? The cap spreads right across the country, so what will happen? There are no cheaper places to move to, and the only reason for the handful of places that are cheaper is that they are the kind of areas where there are no jobs and there is no transport to get there even if there were jobs. What is the point of sending people to live there?

The third option is to get a job. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Damian Green, has said that the benefit cap is a real success. Based on the fact that the IFS found only 5% of people in the past who had got a job, the Minister may have to work on defining his terms. Let us look at what happens now. The Government think that if they cut it far enough, eventually people will get a job, but let us see who is being affected. I am particularly concerned about the effect on parents with young children. The benefit cap has already particularly affected single parents with very young kids. Most of those capped have a child aged nought to four. DWP statistics show that 11% of households affected by the current cap are single parents with a child under one. I want to look at that a bit more.

Let us imagine a single mother with young twins who are six months old, living in Basingstoke on basic out-of-work benefits. Let us call her Susan. Susan will be hit by this new cap. If she cannot find a cheaper flat—and she will not, because the housing benefit limits have been pushed down so far that she is already at rock bottom—the only way to escape the cap is to work 16 hours a week. The Government have been getting tougher and tougher on conditionality on single parents, but even they do not require parents of babies to work If you have children of that age you would not be required by the DWP to work.

Even if Susan wanted to leave the babies and go out to work, she would have to find a suitable job. She is not eligible for any of the job search programmes because she is not required to work. I understand that government guidelines to local authorities on the implementation of the benefit cap is that someone who is already capped and will be hit again by the lower cap will be entitled to 40 minutes in total with a work coach to help them to find a job. Can the Minister tell me if that is correct? What help will be provided to a single parent being capped for the first time?

Secondly, where will Susan get childcare from to be able to go out to work? A survey just out from the Family and Childcare Trust found a huge problem of insufficient childcare in many local authority areas. Fewer than half of local authorities in Great Britain reported having sufficient childcare for nought to two year-olds. The Minister will probably talk about the Government’s free childcare offer, but let us remember that that is only for three and four year-olds. It is only 15 hours a week which is not enough to enable parents to get the kids to a nursery, get to a job for 16 hours and back again. The much-vaunted extension of that will not come until next April whereas the cap is already in place. Evidence shows that there is not enough childcare provision now, never mind when it is extended.

Parents like Susan, with children under three, have no entitlement to free childcare at all. They could claim help within tax credits or universal credit, but the limit of how much you can get is so small now, as it has not been raised for so long, that it falls way short of actual childcare costs. The Family and Childcare Trust says,

“there are 11 local authorities where the average cost of part-time childcare exceeds”,

the working tax support cap completely,

“leaving the poorest working parents having to pay an average of”,

£81 a week out of their own pocket. Where is Susan going to get that kind of money? Care for babies is especially expensive. Even if she could find somewhere suitable and a suitable job, she may not even be able to afford the deposit on the first month’s nursery fees, which are usually required upfront. Can the Minister at least assure the House that any parent of young children, who has to take a job because they are capped, can claim the full costs of the deposit for childcare from the flexible support fund his department operates? I ask that because Gingerbread has been getting reports that job centres do not want to use this fund, which is meant to remove barriers to work for childcare, even though childcare is a really obvious barrier. Can he reassure us on that point?

However, let us remember that these are parents whom the DWP does not normally require to work. The only reason that that mum is having to go to work—despite the fact she has only two kids, does not live in an expensive area and her only income is basic benefits and tax credits—is because her rent, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, has said, is at a level where she cannot reasonably pay it without help from benefits. There are Susans all over the country.

As the IFS has pointed out:

“It is possible for the benefit cap to quickly affect many more out-of-work families in an area, once its level falls below the sum of the HB cap in that area for the family type in question and the other (nationally-set) benefit entitlements”.

Once it happens, all those families are going to be chasing the handful of cheaper accommodation and none of them will be able to cope. What do the Government think will happen? Where are these families going to live? The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, is that this is driven primarily by a housing crisis. Is not the problem that the Government have failed to invest in housing and are therefore simply trying effectively to shift the problem on to the poor, who are the victims of the rent rise which they have not been able to address?

I am sure the Minister does not want to see parents of young children plunged into crisis. He knows that discretionary housing payments cannot be relied upon because they are discretionary and councils have too many demands on them for help. At the very least, will the Minister pledge to look at how his department can protect parents of young children from the impact of the reduction in the cap? I very much back my noble friend Lady Lister who is pressing the Government to address the question of the family test. Perhaps in doing that, the Minister could also guarantee to report back to Parliament on the impact of this change on families with young children. That is the very least we can expect.

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

My Lords, this Government believe that those out of work should not receive more in benefits than many working families are able to earn. We introduced a benefit cap to encourage people to find work and that is exactly what has happened. The new benefit cap levels continue to provide a clear incentive to work, helping to reduce long-term welfare dependency and ensuring fairness for working households.

Since the original benefit cap was introduced in April 2013, 23,500 capped households have found work. Evaluation has found—this is in response to the query of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell—that capped households are 41% more likely to go into work than similar uncapped households, and that 38% of those capped said they were doing more to find work. A number of noble Lords have argued that the benefit cap is flawed, but it was a manifesto commitment and was extensively debated in this House and in another House.

One aspect that I would like to point out to noble Lords is that there has been a culture change around the importance of going to work. Whatever particular policy has been driving that is difficult to assess, but the figures are astonishingly dramatic. The number of children in workless households now stands at 1.35 million. That is the lowest ever since these statistics started to be collected in 1996. It compares well with the figure at the height of the boom: it is more than 400,000 lower. It was 1.79 million in 2008. It is much lower—almost 1 million lower than it was in 1997.

So there has been a dramatic change in attitudes. We see it in various statistics, including the number of people in social housing now going back to work, which they never did. So there is a structural change. I do not pin it directly on this policy. But I do say that there seems to have been a real change, and that is one of the aspects of it.

The Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, expresses concern that we have not,

“made additional support available to those individuals affected by the benefit cap to find work”.

Actually, there is quite a lot of evidence that the success that the cap has had in helping people into work is partly a reflection of the strong support offer we have in place in both jobcentres and local authorities, which we continue to improve. We have contacted claimants potentially affected by the cap well in advance, giving them an idea what the impact might be on their household income and offering them support to adjust their circumstances. We have also ensured that jobcentres and local authorities are equipped and funded to provide that support.

--- Later in debate ---

The noble Baroness also asked a question about carer’s allowance. The new exemptions apply from 7 November. We run scans every month of all the relevant IT systems and use the information to calculate the overall amount of benefit in payment. Claimants in receipt of a benefit which will exempt them from the cap, including carer’s allowance, the carer’s element of universal credit and guardian’s allowance are excluded at source and are therefore not capped. They are excluded at source so they do not have an issue. There is no point in telling someone that nothing is going to happen to them.

[Baroness Sherlock]

If you introduce this, there will be a change for somebody who is already capped; or they may have previously been told and made a decision not to make an application because they knew of the impact of the cap. I presume the Government have communicated at some point. It was a serious point.

[Lord Freud]

I am sorry. I did not mean not to be serious. My best understanding of this is that where someone has been capped and will no longer be capped then we will inform them of the change. If that is not the case, I will write to the noble Baroness; if it is, I will not. However, I am pretty sure that it is the case.

To pick up on the concern expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, regarding the point made by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, the committee wrote to my colleague the Minister for Welfare Delivery to express concern about the equality analysis. I imagine that the noble Lord saw that letter. Ministers fully considered the equality analysis at the same time as the regulations were made but there was simply a delay in publishing it. Perhaps noble Lords can cast their minds back to the peculiar period in our history following the June referendum, when the machinery of government perhaps was not working quite as smooth as it usually—or always—is.

On evaluation and the Ipsos MORI survey that the noble Lord talked about, the numbers came about because it was a longitudinal survey to understand what was happening; a lot of different levels of analysis went on, which looked at different outcomes, some of which were done on a quantitative basis, others on a qualitative basis; that was a qualitative one. We are committed to go on evaluating it and now we are developing the plans to understand behaviours and attitudes. The quarterly benefit cap statistics will continue to be produced, and the May 2017 release will be the first to show the impact of the lower levels.

I hope I have reassured the House that the Government have put in place measures that provide significant additional support to claimants affected by this policy to help them adjust, and wherever possible to move into work.

Universal Credit

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

We do publicise them. In UC, we probably do not publicise the advances available enough, and I am looking at making that information more available on screen and automatic, rather than through a conversation—so that is a good point.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

You certainly do not publish them very well. In 2010-11, more than 1 million people applied for crisis loans. In the year to September 2015, that was down to 140,000 people applying for the equivalent advances.

Did the Minister see the research out today by the IFS which showed what the House has been telling him for a long time: two-thirds of the poor are now in households where somebody is in work? If those people are paid weekly, they are already poor. If they lose their job and apply for universal credit, they have to wait six weeks before they get a penny. As my noble friend said, they get nothing for the first week. Can the Minister not see that that is setting them up to fail?

[Lord Freud]

As I said, I am looking at this area. It is not as simple as some of the figures might make you think. I, too, read the IFS research with great interest. Inequality among children has fallen very steeply since the mid-1990s, most of it post the recession. Whenever the IFS says anything nice, I really appreciate it. It said that the important reason was a remarkable fall in the share of children in workless households. Indeed, we have half a million fewer since 2010.

Universal Credit: Rent Arrears

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I congratulate the noble Baroness on her timing with that question. I will not answer it. I am not in a position, however, to commission major research on mental health today.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, exactly a year ago today this House voted for a Motion in my name, urging the Government to delay the enactment of the Universal Credit (Waiting Days) (Amendment) Regulations until UC was rolled out. The Government ignored that, enacted the regulations and, as a result, 79% of people are now in arrears, because when you make a claim for UC, you wait six weeks to get any money and now the first week is missed completely, without any payment at all. On that day, the Minister refused to make a statement but he said that,

“I will come back to the House at the appropriate time”.—[Official Report, 13/7/15; col. 438.]

A year down the road, does he feel that that time has now arrived, and what is he going to do about it?

[Lord Freud]

I have said to the House that I am looking at this, and I hope that later this year we will have some data. I urge the House not to expect too much certainty on this. This is quite a complicated situation—there is a lot happening under this—and I am hopeful that I will be able to explain some of this to noble Lords to their satisfaction.

Poverty

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

That is one of the topics that I and the Schools Minister are talking about. We now have, as a potential option for future use, far more specific measures of real levels of poverty in universal credit which we can use to record poverty, rather than the much cruder measures that we used in the legacy system.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, if the Minister wants to measure poverty he could perhaps look at the official figures that came out this week. They show that while average household incomes are finally back to their pre-crash levels, child poverty has actually gone up by 200,000. It is the first rise for a decade, the largest single rise in one year since 1996, and even more of those poor kids are in working families. Ministers were warned by people around this House that this would be a consequence of government policy but the Minister kept telling us that we were crying wolf. I have rarely been sorrier to be wrong. But now that the warning signs are clear, what will the Government do about it? We have not yet had the effect of the cut in universal credit help or benefits for large families. Will he please urge his new Secretary of State, if he genuinely wants a one-nation country, to go back and reverse that catastrophic decision to cut help for working families on universal credit?

[Lord Freud]

Regrettably, the cry of wolf is wrong in this case. As the noble Baroness knows perfectly well, these statistics are fairly odd on a year-by-year basis. We have had quite a substantial rise in the median income, so the relative figure has gone down—although, I am told, it is genuinely not statistically significant. At the same time, there has been a decline in the number of children living in absolute poverty, with 100,000 fewer. These figures can be pretty odd, and this is another good example of it.

Personal Independence Payment

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

The noble Lord rightly cites that Motability offers a support package. It has volunteered to do so given its financial position, and very generously offered to help those who lose their Motability car. I stress that although some people lost their cars, overall some 22,000 more people now have a Motability car under the PIP scheme.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, when the Minister wrote to me to put the record straight after the debate in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, she conceded that her original statement that there was not a 20-metre rule was wrong. In fact, somebody who could walk 20 metres but not 50 metres could get the enhanced rate of PIP only if there was something else going on; for example, they might have a learning disability and struggle to plan a journey. When we come back to basics, this means that somebody who can walk only a very short distance, the length of two buses, will lose their Motability car simply because they will now fail a test they would once have passed. This test has been used for 35 years, is based on research evidence, and is used for the blue badge, the guidance on the built environment and lots of other tests. The Government got this one wrong. Will they not accept that now?

[Baroness Altmann]

The noble Baroness has significant expertise in this area. Once again, I apologise for the incorrect statement that I read out during the debate. However, I am assured that it is not a strict 20-metre rule and that some people who cannot walk more than 20 metres—of course, the reliability criterion is also important here—will receive the higher rate. I repeat that the aim was to ensure that we support at the highest rate people who are unable or virtually unable to walk. There is no one particular test—the 50-metre test is not a recognised one, either—for someone who is unable or virtually unable to walk. We are keeping this closely under review. It is widely accepted by stakeholders that PIP is now in a settled and improving state.

Life Chances Strategy

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this very interesting short debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, in particular, for the very gracious way in which he introduced the debate and for his commitment and evident sincerity about the importance of this issue.

The depressing thing about having only five minutes is that I would love to take up every point that was mentioned. When the life chances strategy comes out, I think I will sit in the Bishops’ Bar and wait for people to come along and buy me coffee. I would like to have conversations about each of the points made—there is something I agree with in each contribution.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, about the importance of character and opportunity, and with the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about relationships. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, referred to ambition and culture, which are essential to the chance to move on. Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, I feel very strongly about the dangers of food insecurity and what we can do for families who worry about the most fundamental of things: putting food on the table for their children.

The noble Lord, Lord Fink, made some very important points about health, work and worklessness, which I will come back to. I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lupton, on early intervention, although I confess that I disagreed a bit at that point. He runs the risk of one of those irregular verbs, which is that I have common sense and you have party-political propaganda—I may come back to that as well.

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbots, made some very important points about the voluntary sector and commissioning to which I would love to come back. The noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, in a very moving speech about disability, gave some real cause for thought, and I hope his noble friend the Minister is taking very good care of that. I very much thank him for that. The noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, who knows so much about this area, gave us much to think about, as did the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. To the person I am bound to have missed out, I apologise at this point.

I shall focus briefly on just one of those because I do not have much time. I want to talk about work, because a number of us could share the importance of work in trying to tackle the issue of work and life chances. I shall not reprise the occasionally quarrelsome debates we had on the Welfare Reform and Work Bill—for which I take at least half the responsibility, being occasionally a quarrelsome person myself—but one of the questions that came out quite strongly from all sides was concern about the issues of working poverty and work incentives. I want to flag up to the Minister the importance of this and what is happening to universal credit. I do this intentionally in a spirit of friendship. If around this House we support the principles of universal credit, it falls responsibly on all of us to make sure that we protect it from the ravages of the Treasury which, too often, sees it as being a little piggy bank it can raid for other things. So we need to protect it from that.

I should declare an interest, as I was an adviser in the Treasury when Gordon Brown introduced tax credits. The reason why we introduced tax credits was specifically to enable those who wanted to work but who were struggling to afford it to do so. We kept finding people who wanted to work, especially people with children or maybe a disability, who could not earn enough in the hours they could supply to be able to do the essentials, plus deal with the extra costs of disability or childcare. Tax credits were specifically designed to address that problem. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lupton, that one of the reasons why the tax credit bill rose is because at the same time the bill for welfare benefits for those out of work fell. Money was being transferred from one to the other.

One thing we must do is address making work pay. The Resolution Foundation’s recent report on universal credit did a lot of detailed work on modelling this. It flags up that there is a real danger that universal credit, because of the last round of cuts, will succeed in merging benefits but destroy the very point of UC, which was to make work pay and make progression through work possible. It said that quite specifically. It also said that,

“even some of the welcome progress made over the last 15 years under the tax credit system in reducing worklessness—particularly among single parents—is at risk of being dismantled. Improving financial incentives to start work alongside gradual labour market reform over the last two decades have underpinned the strength of recent employment performance”.

Those are the Government’s stated aims, with which we agree. We want to increase employment, cut the disability employment gap, reduce the number of workless households and make work pay. Universal credit has a real contribution to make but can only do so if properly funded. It was originally going to be able to do that job; I fear it no longer will.

Normally when I raise this, somebody will get up and point to tax cuts or the national living wage, but the Resolution Foundation modelled those as well, looking at those changes alongside universal credit. It found that 3 million working families who get tax credits now, or can do, will not get any help in future. They will lose about £42 a week. Another 1.2 million families will still get universal credit but will lose about £40 a week. Crucially, only around 200,000 families who lose universal credit will still be better off as a result of the tax cuts and increased national living wage. These things are welcome but do not compensate for the cuts and we should not kid ourselves that they do. It really matters, and families notice the difference.

We are tackling problems with the incentives to enter and progress in work. The results are that the gains from work are much lower than anticipated when UC was designed. That is especially true for second earners. Because of the loss of the work allowance in universal credit, if you are the second earner and you are a parent who goes into work and earns £5,000, you will keep only £1,750 of that—and that is before you pay your childcare. It is not worth it. What are we doing?

Some noble Lords might say, “Don’t worry, one parent can choose to stay at home if they have kids”. That is true, but it is only a choice if you can afford to do both. I work with single parents. A lot of them wanted to work part-time when the kids were young and to keep a hand in the labour market so that, when the kids were older, they were able to get back to work. Pre tax credits, I met lots of single parents who, when they got divorced or separated, had to give up their job and then really struggled to get back into work because they did not have recent work experience. I urge the Government to look carefully at this.

The last Budget cut down things specifically aimed at working families. This House persuaded the Chancellor to reverse the cuts in tax credits, but they were not reversed in universal credit. I ask the Minister just two questions. First, what urgent action has her department taken to address specifically work incentives within universal credit? Secondly, will she in due course respond to the Resolution Foundation recommendations? There is a lot of very sensible, thoughtful work in there.

I am sorry I have been able to focus only on one aspect of poverty but it is incredibly important. If work is not a route out of poverty, frankly we are offering a hollow victory to those people who manage to obtain it.

Poverty Programmes: Audit

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I am really pleased to confirm that universal credit is now a national programme right across the country. We have real evidence that it achieves its aims: 13% are more likely to be in work at the nine-month point than if they were on JSA. It is already a good benefit by international comparisons. Many more of those in work are looking to do more hours, and many more are looking to increase their earnings than would be the case if they were on JSA.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister has read the report just out by the Resolution Foundation, which is chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts. Universal credit was meant to tackle working poverty by making work pay. However, the report found that more than 1 million working families will lose all in-work support, and that that will not be made up by tax cuts, living wage rates or childcare. The report said that the cuts,

“risk leaving UC as little more than a vehicle for rationalising benefit administration and cutting costs to the exchequer. Any ambition for supporting and rewarding work and progression looks very hard to achieve”.

It is now rolled out around the country. It has cost billions, and wasted billions. Was it worth it?

[Lord Freud]

I am absolutely confident that the core architecture of universal credit is doing what it is designed to do, which is to encourage people to move towards greater independence. I simply do not agree with many of the conclusions of the Resolution Foundation.

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.