Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

Debate between Baroness Wheatcroft and Baroness Lister of Burtersett

Report stage
Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 1 and 7 in this group, as well as to Amendments 3 and 4 which will be debated later. I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. He spoke sanely about what these amendments would do and why they should do it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, made the case very clearly. There are 2 million pensioners living in poverty and 1 million in extreme poverty. Noble Lords need to know that this Bill would put more people in this position. We should not be passing it unamended.

I find the arguments against our amendments pitifully thin—I am sorry, but I do. I remind the House that, in Committee, the Minister, who wants to do the right thing, said:

“The Government’s triple lock manifesto commitment remains in place”.—[Official Report, 26/10/21; col. 738.]


I know that that is a reference to the fact that we are told that the suspension will be for only one year, but that is not good enough. If you suspend the earnings lock for one year, the cumulative effect goes on, so the commitment is lost.

The commitment was to keep the earnings lock in place because earnings might well be greater than inflation—particularly CPI inflation—and there is no doubt that that will be the case. After all, the Government keep telling us that they want a high-wage economy. But they do not seem to want higher increases for pensioners. We know that, in most cases, these people’s spending is very curtailed. It goes predominantly on fuel and on food. Those are constituents of the CPI, but they are not in the same proportion as they are in pensioners’ spending. Therefore, increases in fuel and food prices hit pensioners harder.

I am still bemused as to how, in Committee, the Minister was able to tell us that,

“we are not currently expecting widespread, significant and sustained increases in consumer food prices in the coming months”.—[Official Report, 26/10/21; col. 740.]

I do not know what she knows, but the supermarkets certainly are. These price rises are already coming through. They are not yet fully reflected in the CPI, but we know that prices in the shops are going up. And the more that wages go up in this new, high-wage economy where we are encouraging drivers of HGVs to demand more money—which the Government say they deserve—the more this will feed through into increased food prices.

We need to make sure that our pensioners can eat. I do not want to be responsible for pensioners going hungry —or even hungrier than they have been in the past—and I do not believe that the Minister does either. It is imperative that we do what should not be beyond the wit of any Government and come up with a number that approximates effectively to where underlying earnings have gone in the last year. I have every confidence that the ONS can do this. Indeed, CPI is not quite as robust as the Minister would have us believe; it is often adjusted after a few months, or even a year, because a lot of numbers have to be adjusted as new information comes through. We could come up with an adjusted earnings figure which would enable the Government to maintain their manifesto commitment, which I am sure it would really like to do. It would enable the rest of us to ensure that pensioners –those on pension credit, as well those on the basic pension—lead a slightly better life. This is all part of the levelling-up agenda.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, in speaking briefly in support of Amendment 5, although I also support the other amendments in this group, I will spare noble Lords the full lecture on the use of relative and so-called absolute poverty measures that I gave in Committee. As the Minister completely ignored the point in her response to that group of amendments in Committee, I return to it now. In discussing an assessment of the Bill’s impact on pensioner poverty—which is certainly necessary—we should be clear how we measure poverty.

When mentioning poverty, the Minister constantly uses the so-called “absolute measure”, and no doubt she has been briefed to do so today. I say so-called because it is better described as an anchored measure, anchored to the poverty line in 2010-11 adjusted for inflation, but taking no account of changes in living standards in the intervening period. In doing so, she ignores what has happened using the more commonly used relative measure, which is part of the suite of official measures.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Wheatcroft and Baroness Lister of Burtersett

Monday 23rd January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, asked questions about the morality of the current situation. I should like to ask this House, following the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood: is it moral that we are deliberately pushing families with children below the level of income that Parliament has decided is necessary to meet their most basic needs? Research shows that that money is not sufficient to meet those basic needs, as determined by the wider population.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, on the government Benches, have asked questions about costs—I had a wonderful vision of the noble Lord wearing his “Action for benefits” badge in front of the mirror. In the other place, the Minister said that this is not primarily a cost-saving measure. What is it? He said it is primarily about changing behaviour, but my noble friend Lady Sherlock pretty well demolished those arguments.

The Minister also said that this is about restoring the credibility of the welfare benefits system. However, that credibility is being undermined by the misinformation being put out by Ministers about that system—in particular, the way that they slide between talking about average incomes and average earnings as if they are the same thing, when they are not. The median family in work receives £33.70 in child benefit as well as various other in-work benefits. The point was made that child benefit replaced child tax allowances. If that had not happened and we still had family allowances and child tax allowances, the median earnings of the average family would be that much higher because of the effect of child tax allowances. It is therefore really unfair that we are not comparing like with like and, as my noble friend pointed, when the Minister was pushed on this issue in Committee regarding how he could justify the fact that we are not comparing like with like, he simply did not have an answer.

[Baroness Wheatcroft]

My Lords, I did not join your Lordships' House in order to kick the underprivileged, particularly children, but I did believe that the Government were committed to healing the broken society. I do not think that any of us can doubt that society is broken, and we would all agree that there is a need to heal it and that dealing with the dependency culture is an important part of that. That is something that I believe in absolutely. That is at the heart of this legislation. To my mind, the worst sort of child poverty is poverty of aspiration.