Welfare Reform

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. The House has benefited, as have I personally, many times, from her expertise and the care with which she expresses what she does. I commend her on what she has done personally and express my regret that the pressure on her and so many other carers is as great as it is. She stands as a shining example. The points she makes are really important; I will pick up a couple of them.

First, I should have said in response to the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, and to reassure anyone listening, that we are not making any changes to PIP until we have had the results of the Timms review. Nothing in the Bill when it comes to this House will affect people’s entitlement to PIP. I think we made that very clear yesterday. To be clear, we have tabled amendments in the Commons to remove Clause 5, which said you needed a minimum of four points. That will not happen, so I hope that will give some assurance to people.

I hope that the noble Baroness will see, as we begin to unfold our reforms to jobcentres, that we are going with the grain of exactly what she says. One of our concerns is that the system in jobcentres has become too box-ticking. We really need to release our work coaches to spend less time checking everybody in and more time focusing on the person in front of them and figuring out what they can get. What do they need? What help can they get? How do we support them? For some people, that is getting into a job, for others, it is moving closer to the labour market, and for some it is leaving the house. Our job is to support our work coaches. We are doing some incredibly interesting work with piloting and evaluation, trying different ways of supporting people and trying to go with what works— I am sorry: I am taking too long. I am grateful to the noble Baroness and we will absolutely take on her points.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I would like my noble friend to expand on why it is so important that we tackle the issue of ill and disabled people being disproportionately out of work, looking not only at universal credit and the broken system of access to work but at ingrained prejudice and broken mental health services, particularly for young people. I welcome the Statement from my noble friend.

I just want to make a comment about PIP. I have a very close relative who has been working with one of our disability charities for the whole of her working life. She says that she is very irritated—this is not about the Government—by the misunderstanding that PIP is something that prevents people returning to work. It is clear that it is a non-means-tested benefit. Disabled or ill people who work do not lose their PIP, and people who work can claim it to help them with additional costs. The narrative that PIP is keeping people out of work is one that she and her organisation profoundly disagree with.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend, and I am really grateful to her for clarifying that. Those of us who spend a lot of time in the weeds of social security policy have to remember to be clear what we are talking about at different times. To be absolutely clear—I know that Members of this House will know—PIP is a non-means-tested, non-taxable benefit and will stay so, and it is claimable in and out of work. Roughly 17% of people who get it are in work, and we hope that more will do so in future.

My noble friend’s broader point is extremely important. To tackle the disability employment gap, we need to do a number of different things. One is to tackle the underlying conditions. For example, she mentioned mental health. We have seen growing challenges in mental health in this country, but the Government have invested very heavily—for example, with young people, in specialist mental health professionals in every school. Our youth guarantee for young people will improve access to mental health services. We are also investing heavily in the NHS to try to get waiting lists down and to support people into mental health services.

We also have to make sure that employers are able to do their bit. I am really excited and looking forward to the report that we will get soon from the former chair of John Lewis, which will look at how we can support employers, what more employers can do and what barriers there are to employers taking on sick and disabled people. We are going to tackle it on all fronts, but I am grateful to her for raising that.

Household Support Fund: Children’s Bed Poverty

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point of tackling poverty not over one year but over several years. She will know that we will spend £276 billion through the welfare system in the coming year, 2024-25, including around £125 billion on people of working age and children. This is very much work in progress. Bearing in mind the point behind her question, I can say that my department, the DWP, is working ever more closely with the DHSC and other necessary departments to take a range of initiatives forward.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I cannot resist making the point that the last Labour Government actually lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty. It is welcome that the Government, with less than a month to go, have renewed the household support fund temporarily. The last time that noble Lords discussed this issue at Oral Questions, I asked the Minister how the Government would work on long-term strategies to fight poverty rather than short-term measures renewed only at the last minute. My question remains very much the same: given that two-thirds of children growing up in poverty live in a household where one adult works, are the Government going to work to create long-term stability and security for families, including those experiencing in-work poverty?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Again, the noble Baroness has made a good point about looking beyond a year and taking a long-term view. More than 26 million awards of support were made between October 2021 and March 2023 across the first of the household support fund schemes. I reassure her that the largest category of spend has been on food support, including support during school holidays, targeted particularly at children who receive free school meals in term time. The focus on children is incredibly important and should be continued.

Household Support Fund

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Absolutely. That is a very good point, because local authorities have the funding and the autonomy to decide how it is directed. The government guidance is that the most vulnerable must be targeted first. I think the categories the right reverend Prelate has raised would fit into that area.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to return to my noble friend’s original Question about the temporary sticking-plaster measures. Decisions made at the last minute are not a substitute for a proper social security system that offers families a safety net in difficult circumstances. I want to ask the Minister about the plan, beyond the decision about the household support fund, which will come very late for families and local authorities. How will the Government ensure proper stability and security for families during difficult circumstances?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I have outlined some of the measures. Perhaps the noble Baroness is alluding to the benefit cap, which we always keep an eye on. We believe that this provides a very strong work incentive and fairness for hard-working, tax-paying households and encourages people to move into work where possible. I reassure the noble Baroness that we are keeping that under review. The Secretary of State is not minded to review the levels, as there is no statutory obligation to do so. There was a significant increase, as the noble Baroness will know, following the review in November 2022.

Reducing Parental Conflict

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I believe the work achieved and continuing to be done within the RPC is invaluable. The programme has had three interim reports published that give strong evidence for that. As announced yesterday, three reports to be published in due course further demonstrate the impact of the programme with more granular detail. We are working to integrate RPC outcomes into other key government programmes, including family hubs and the Supporting Families programme, but for the moment the RPC programme remains firmly within DWP.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, for this programme, the DWP developed a national offer of parental relationship support. In 2015 it piloted a local family offer in local areas, in 2019 it invited top-tier authorities to apply for strategic leadership support funding and developed a practitioner training offer, in 2021 the DWP offered workforce development grants, and last month it announced £2.8 million funding for eight projects to reduce parental conflict. The Government have just now committed £33 million to be spent on this programme between 2022 and 2025. Will the Minister tell the House where the £33 million is going and the outcome of all these activities?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

It certainly remains work in progress. As the noble Baroness said, the reducing parental conflict programme was initiated in 2017 in response to two key pieces of evidence, one of which was the number of children who live in coupled families reporting conflict, which in 2020 was as much as 12%. We have three further evaluation reports coming out. They are enormous—I have seen them. This granular detail will be coming out shortly. It shows, for example, that 90% of those parents who have gone through it have a satisfaction rate, meaning that there is already some valuable information about its success.

Health and Disability White Paper

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for taking this Question. The PIP assessment is designed for a totally different purpose from the work capability assessment, so my first question is this: how will the Government reconcile those two completely different systems? What will happen in future to people who do not currently receive PIP—those on the limited capability for work and work-related activity element of universal credit—and particularly those with short-term and fluctuating conditions? Unless it is the Minister’s intention that some 750,000 people will lose £350 a year, an alternative needs to be in place. What would that alternative be and what would it look like? Finally, do the Government believe it is fair that the hundreds and thousands of people with disabilities that prevent them even engaging in work-related activity should receive less financial support through universal credit than people who are entitled to PIP? If so, what is the basis for that justification?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

I will attempt to answer the noble Baroness’s questions. However, I start by saying that, as she will know, these reforms are the biggest undertaken in a decade and have been years in the making, with our initial paper having gone out for a consultation in 2021.

The main answer is that we are very much focused on ensuring that more people are supported into the workforce so that they can enjoy the positive impacts of work, through a more simplified system. I turn to improving our services, which is probably at the heart of the noble Baroness’s question, in focusing on PIP. Putting aside the delays, which I realise we are making progress on, employment and health discussions, which are being tested at the moment, are led by healthcare professionals and focus on how we can help people to overcome their barriers to moving towards work. Furthermore, we have the enhanced support service and the severe disability group for those with the most severe health conditions, and we are developing the skills of our assessors to match people’s primary health conditions. These are game-changers and mark a significant change from the current system.

Social Security (Additional Payments) (No. 2) Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived
Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his introduction to the Bill. I also thank my noble friend Lady Lister for her contribution, which makes my job of inadequately filling in for my noble friend Lady Sherlock much easier. My noble friend posed many of the key questions, which I will try not to repeat.

On these Benches we of course welcome this Bill for what it is, and for the much-needed help it will provide to families up and down the country who are encountering some of the toughest financial conditions in a generation. The OBR has confirmed that the hit to living standards over the past two years is the largest since records began: inflation in recent months has reached a 40-year high; food rose by 16.8% over the past year to January 2023; gas and energy prices have risen to levels we would have thought unthinkable only two years ago; and wages, which are lower in real terms than they were 13 years ago, are expected to remain below 2008 levels until 2026. The gap between income and expenditure for many people who were already struggling before has now hit breaking point and is causing very real hardship.

Those in receipt of benefits and pensions are some of the hardest hit. Although the payments in the Bill recognise this fact, taken alone they represent a highly inadequate one-off provision that simply will not touch the sides of the deep crisis forcing families to choose between food and heating, and wrecking the physical and mental well-being of families up and down the country.

The Bill is rightly being criticised in the same way that its predecessor was, with the addition of how disappointing it is that the Government have not addressed the issues that Members across both Houses raised last time, and which have been raised again by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and my noble friend Lady Lister in their speeches. Last year, the previous Minister argued that help needed to be delivered swiftly. If the Government are committed to bringing short-term support through this one-off provision, they should have taken the time to bring in changes to make the support more effective this time round. They could also tell us when the first payment might be due.

A flat payment cannot take into account a range of circumstances that effect someone’s needs, with household size being the most obvious one. Children in larger families are at far greater risk of living in poverty. Over the summer, academics at the University of York estimated that 90% of large families would be experiencing fuel poverty at the start of this year. The cliff edge involved in these payments, which has been referred to by my noble friend, is also incredibly concerning.

Linking this cost of living payment to the receipt of means-tested benefits means a sharp cut-off for anyone earning above the limit. Being £1 over the threshold should not mean missing out on £900; that is a huge disincentive for people who might otherwise look to take on more hours or look for better-paid work to lift themselves off universal credit. The number of payments was increased from last year from two to three, but has the Minister considered increasing the spread of payments further in order to reduce this cliff edge?

The Bill will not sew up the holes growing ever larger in our social security net, but the £900 will be welcomed as an increase on last year’s payment. However, the £150 payment for those in receipt of certain disability benefits has stayed the same, despite the huge increase in inflation. Can the Minister explain why this payment has not also been increased?

There are other good questions about the Bill that need to be and have been raised. Having a one-month assessment period for recipients means some may not qualify in a specific month—which I think has also been referred to—because of the way they are paid. This same issue was raised last year with the previous Bill. Does the Minister have any information from last year on how many people who are paid every four weeks missed out last year on receiving payments because of the short assessment period? Does the Minister have a similar answer for those who are self-employed but will miss out because of the operation of the minimum-income floor? Again, this was raised last year. We were told that the payments were an admittedly blunt instrument that needed to be got through quickly—that argument works less well a year later.

These payments are welcome as a one-off help, and so we are happy to support them in that capacity, but we need to make it crystal clear that they are not a long-term solution that will reform our social security net, address our broken labour market and fix the dire living standards that are dragging families down. Anything less is simply papering over the cracks.

Employment: Disabled People

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Indeed, and this is very much a matter for Jobcentre Plus. Further training is being given to job coaches in jobcentres. It is very important that those with health conditions or disabilities receive the support and advice that they need to move into or to stay in employment.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, last December, research conducted by the economic and social inclusion unit revealed the huge benefits and the challenges regarding the working conditions, employment and retention of personal assistants for working-age disabled people to allow them to be economically active. This is the third time that I have raised this issue in the House, so hopefully it will be third time lucky. Has the Minister taken account of this useful evidence on service user need and experience? Will it inform improvements and, if so, how and when?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Yes, indeed, I am aware of the question. Although I do not have an answer to that point, I will certainly write to the noble Baroness about it. I am not sure that she has asked it three times, but maybe she did so with my predecessor.

Disabled People: Impact from Policies and Spending Cuts

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Thornton]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to assess the impact of their (1) policies, and (2) planned spending cuts, on people with disabilities, to ensure that they do not exacerbate existing inequalities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government recognise the barriers that disabled people face across many aspects of their lives. All government departments have rigorous processes in place, in line with the public sector equality duty to ensure that they consider proactively the impacts on disabled people when carrying out their day-to-day work in shaping policy and delivering services. This includes the Treasury, which carefully considers the equality impacts, including for disabled people, of the individual measures announced at fiscal events.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his Answer. This Question concerns the wider issue of impact assessments being used to guide government policy for disabled people, and is not just around vital income support. First, is an impact assessment being conducted, or has one been proposed, to look at the impact that Home Office immigration rules are having on the supply of personal assistants for working-age disabled people to allow them to be economically independent? Secondly, is an impact assessment being carried out, or has one been proposed, on the effects of the proposed modernisation of the railways on the mobility of wheelchair-users and people with sight impairment, many of whom are very worried about this?

Millennium Development Goals

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, on initiating this debate. I am aware that I am probably the least qualified on international matters to speak in it, given the excellent contributions, particularly when I put myself alongside my noble friends Lady Kinnock and Lord Browne.

The noble Lord, Lord Loomba, outlined the key issues, and I will not repeat them. However, the fact that we know that 123 million young people still lack basic reading and writing skills and that 61% of them are young women is a huge concern. We know that the millennium development goals will not be met in full so, surely, the question for the British Government to address is: what happens next? Are the UK Government involved in discussions about post-2015, particularly as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley?

I want to make two points about how important girls’ education is. The first is to do with reproductive rights and control over their own fertility. We know that there are 215 million women in the developing world who want to delay or avoid pregnancy. We also know that all the information available from across the world, some of which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, tells us that the whole of their societies and communities benefit when women have control of their sexual health and childbirth.

The second link is between illiteracy and sexual violence. Yesterday, I read an article in the Nairobi Star from Kenya. A report had been published on the Ganze sub-county that states that higher literacy levels are partly to blame for the increase in cases of sexual, gender-based violence. The reason for this is in this report. Basically, the high illiteracy level hinders the conceptualisation of information about gender-based violence. In other words, young women and parents cannot report gender-based violence because they are illiterate. They do not understand how to do these things. Indeed, the children’s officer who compiled the report pointed out that literacy classes would be enormously beneficial in this respect.

We should take some hope from initiatives that have been taken and the dedication of people who are determined to effect change across the world to get girls and women educated. I would like to mention that our former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has dedicated a great deal of his time to this issue. He was the person who moderated the United Nations session in September in which Malala made her speech about the importance of education. It is worth quoting from that speech. Among her remarks she calls on leaders to focus on education:

“This is our demand, our request to all the responsible people—that instead of sending weapons, instead of sending tanks to Afghanistan and all these countries that are suffering from terrorism, send books. Instead of sending tanks, send pens. Instead of sending soldiers, send teachers. This is the only way we can fight for education”—

well, exactly.

I would also like to pay tribute to Hillary Clinton and the work that the Clinton Foundation is doing. No Ceilings: the Full Participation Project links education to women’s control over their lives, fertility and health. It is important to end my remarks on a note of hope. There is hope and there are people who are dedicated. I would like the Minister to assure us that the British Government are taking part in the hopeful nature of what comes next.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker]

My Lords, the passage of the Bill has been a remarkable thing. Having sat through every bit of it, I have to say that the discussions in your Lordships’ House have been not just of the highest calibre but deeply thoughtful about the nature of the society that we wish to pass on to future generations; none more so than the contributions from the Bishops’ Benches. The Bill represents a real sea change for gay people and for our society—a good one that heralds the start of a new relationship between minority groups and faith groups. All those groups have an important part to play in building strong communities for the future and that is why we on these Benches have supported this Bill at every stage.

We have been helped enormously by the Front Bench team in dealing with some quite difficult, tricky and intricate issues. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that, no, there is no room for triumphalism. However, he will perhaps allow some of us today to celebrate what for us is a really important step towards equality and equal treatment. There is no room for intolerance but this House should be very proud.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, the custom at this stage of the Bill is for all of us to look at each other and congratulate ourselves on the piece of legislation that we are just about to sign off. Of course, I realise that not all noble Lords feel the same sense of satisfaction at a job well done that the Minister, other noble Lords who have supported the Bill and I feel at this moment. I regret that they are not sharing the sense of joy and happiness that some of us are experiencing. Certainly, if the London Gay Men’s Chorus’s tuneful offerings outside the House are anything to go by, very many others feel the same. Some of us, indeed, could not resist wearing pink carnations. However, I note that even the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is somewhat resplendent in pink himself.

To noble Lords who opposed the Bill I say that you have tested the Bill to within an inch of its life, and for that I congratulate you. No one expected that getting the Bill through your Lordships’ House would be a walk in the park, and I think that noble Lords have done their job as they see it with dedication and commitment.

There were moments at midnight when we were again discussing adultery when I thought we were never going to reach this point. Those moments were made all the more memorable by the description by the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston, of what is adultery and what is not. I refer noble Lords to col. 146, 8 July 2013, if they are in any doubt. I wish her well with George Clooney, and I myself do not think that he is anything like worthy of the noble Baroness.

I very sincerely hope that time will change the views of noble Lords who are still concerned about the Bill. I hope that the happiness the Bill will bring to thousands of same-sex couples will persuade everyone that, after all, Parliament was right in its huge majorities on free votes, which led us to where we are today. I hope that your own marriages will indeed come through this change unscathed and as whole as ever, and that marriage itself will actually be strengthened and deepened by the Bill.

We must recognise that when the Prime Minister, to whom I pay tribute for his steadfast support, my right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, and the leader of the Liberal Democrats all speak in unity, then the issue has powerful friends. However, even with those powerful friends, free votes ran through the Bill on all the major votes, and were won all the way through with huge majorities.

I pay tribute to the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston, for the way in which she steered the Bill through the House. Patient, energetic and always ready to listen, she never lost her sense of humour or proportion. Ditto her helpmates, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover. Indeed, we worked together on this Bill, and I am glad of it. The Bill team were always helpful and friendly, and are to be congratulated on their very hard work. I know that the demands that were made on humanism, pensions and a host of other issues meant that they and the Ministers had to go back and persuade their colleagues in government that they needed to revisit or revise matters they thought already settled. I know how hard that is.

Across the House there has been remarkable work by groups of Back-Bench Peers, co-operating to win the free votes on the Bill. My noble friend Lord Alli has been remarkable; not only did all of us on the Labour side receive bulletins and information about what was going to happen and when votes were taking place, but he also organised some light entertainment for Labour colleagues. On Monday the actor Richard Wilson and last Wednesday evening Paul O’Grady, aka Lily Savage, joined us in Committee Room G. I thank them for their support and generosity. My noble friend Lord Alli has talked to everyone all the time, which I think helped the good humour and tolerance which characterised the debates even when we fiercely disagreed.

There are other Members one should thank. The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, fought the corner for humanist weddings. The noble Lady, Baroness Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Lester, helped to find a way through on humanist weddings. My noble friend Lady Gould explained with great clarity the issues faced by transsexual people, matters not yet resolved and to which we may return some time in the future, but not on this Bill. Many of my colleagues have been here all the way through. I thank you all.

I personally have been blessed with support and equal sharing, as it should be, by my noble friend Lady Royall, who fitted the Bill in with her many other duties. I thank her. My noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe sat next to me all through the Bill, and kept us to time and calm while under duress. I also thank the back room: Bethany Gardiner-Smith from the Opposition Whips’ Office, whose research, political management and inspired amendment-drafting made many things possible.