Improving Lives: Work, Health and Disability Green Paper

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

It is particularly those with mental health conditions who will be helped by the Green Paper, with the more tailored and personalised support. Very often, people with mental health conditions have conditions that come and go, so they may work full time some of the time, part time some of the time and not at all at other times. The changes to benefits—particularly, perhaps, those to statutory sick pay—will make it much easier for such people to stay in touch with work, perhaps working part time for a period. All the evidence suggests that people with mental health conditions are disadvantaged if they are completely detached from the world of work, because their depression may get worse.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I really welcome the Green Paper’s suggestion about the personal support package. It should be a significant improvement on the disastrous Work programme, which was a total failure for disabled people. Will the Secretary of State confirm that providers of such support will be adequately rewarded and incentivised to provide good enough support, because that was the difficulty with the Work programme?

[Damian Green]

Yes. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her supportive words. I hope she will see the personal support package make a difference. I have already mentioned the 200 community partners that will come in, so we will engage the third sector very actively in this process. We will also extend the journey to employment job clubs to 71 Jobcentre Plus areas—those with the highest number of people receiving ESA—so we are trying new ideas in the areas where we think they will particularly make a difference.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am happy to try to reassure my hon. Friend about that because she is right. One of the things that has improved in the diagnosis field has been the number of people who have been correctly diagnosed with mental health conditions in recent years, and clearly this is a group who in some cases have particular difficulties in getting back to work. The stress and strain of constant reassessment may well contribute to that, so we are always looking at ways of improving the assessment that we do to make sure that they achieve what they are meant to achieve and do not just act as an increaser of strain on people.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Constituents who have been refused employment and support allowance tell me that they are experiencing barriers being put in their way when they apply for mandatory reconsideration of the decision. They tell me that they are being told to put the application in writing and to give reasons in advance, and then if the request is rejected they are not given reasons for the refusal. Will the Secretary of State take a look at this situation because it does seem that there is a deliberate attempt on the part of at least some officials to thwart people in having their cases reconsidered?

[Damian Green]

I am not at all aware of officials actively acting to thwart mandatory reconsideration. As the hon. Lady will know, the Social Security Advisory Committee supported the mandatory reconsideration, but there are a number of recommendations on the table that we are looking at and that will improve the process. With all these processes, there is a need for continuous improvement, and that is what we will seek to do.

Universal Basic Income

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Ronnie Cowan]

Absolutely. The aims of this approach are laudable ones and are not something that we, as representatives of the people, should turn our back on.

As a general definition, a universal basic income would be an unconditional basic income given to each individual irrespective of their other income. At this stage, everything else needs to be defined, including what proportion of the welfare system would be replaced by a UBI. We should be sincere in our approach to this issue by saying that its successful implementation would require a revolutionary shift in attitudes towards social security.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Does he agree that one of the most successful universal payments that we had was child benefit? It was well targeted, it helped with the costs of raising children, it redistributed wealth between families without children and families with children, and—crucially—it was paid to women, which of course improved their children’s prospects. Does he not think that an earlier, simpler and more effective move might be to return to the days of universal child benefit, and to make that the political priority rather than a universal basic income?

[Ronnie Cowan]

I take on board the hon. Lady’s comments. My concern about that idea is that it would entail a change to just one aspect of what we are trying to achieve. It is a very important aspect of what we are trying to achieve, but it would not fulfil the requirements of everybody who relies on welfare.

--- Later in debate ---

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) on securing this debate, which is most welcome and timely. The contributions that we have heard demonstrate that we are in absolute agreement that our current social security system is not fit for purpose. It is not delivering for claimants, who frankly deserve better, in a whole range of different ways. The Minister and I have exchanged views on that in many debates in the past; the detail is there for everybody to review.

Like the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), I am open-minded on this issue. I want to see the evidence, and it is very early days yet. We know that the current social security system is not delivering, in particular for people in work on low incomes, who might also go from in-work to out-of-work and back into work. The system is not flexible enough. The rapidly changing labour market is not currently catered for by our social security system. The Bank of England’s chief economist, for example, suggests that 15 million jobs are at risk of automation. These are huge changes, which have been growing over the last 20 years or so. Whether or not those jobs will be replaced by new sectors, we have seen a massive change in the labour market, with zero-hour contracts and insecure, low-paid work—our social security system is just not dealing with that. It is not fit for purpose in today’s labour market and there are huge ramifications for how we adapt and develop our social security system to ensure it can properly respond to the rapidly changing circumstances that workers face, and provide them with the necessary security to build happy and fulfilling working lives.

In the light of those great challenges, the Government’s ongoing failure to implement the universal credit programme is of serious concern, and questions about that were again raised last week. Universal credit was meant to attempt to address some of the challenges around flexible working. Unfortunately, because of the way it has been pared back in recent years, as well as the difficulties with implementation—at great public expense—that has just not happened.

[Kate Green]

Would my hon. Friend accept by contrast that Labour’s working tax credit, after initial teething problems, was very effective in reaching low-paid workers, lifting families out of poverty, making work pay and responding to changing work circumstances?

[Debbie Abrahams]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend has, as ever, hit the nail on the head. I am proud of Labour’s record of lifting nearly 1 million children out of poverty as a result of that policy. It is one of which we should be justifiably proud.

We need to respond to the rapidly changing labour market. The Government’s failure to deliver on the heavily diminished universal credit project has led to considerable problems and it is right that we look at the alternatives out there.

There are, of course, different views on what universal basic income is. At its simplest, it is about all of us having a non-contributory, unconditional lump sum, which would be available to all citizens regardless of means. I would like to explore both the positives and negatives. We have already heard some of the positive arguments, such as its simplicity and the way in which it may lift people out of poverty. Currently, there is very poor take-up of income-related benefits across the country. A mere half of those entitled to income-based jobseeker’s allowance are claiming their entitlement. That might have something to do with the current Government’s sanction regime, but it is undoubtedly affecting the numbers of people experiencing poverty in the UK, which now stands at 13 million people. By offering a simple, single sum to all, UBI may go some way to tackling the poverty that so many of our citizens are facing.

In replacing our complex system of universal contributory and means-tested support with a single, simple mechanism, UBI would also allow for a greater simplification of social security administration, with subsequent savings to the Department’s budget. Again, we really need to look at that.

Secondly—this is a really important point—by offering support to everyone regardless of their circumstances, UBI could go a long way to ensuring that the British public retain trust in the social security system. Over the last six years, we have seen the complete erosion of the social security system and the denigration of claimants. Some of the language that has been used—not by the Minister but by some of his colleagues—is frankly shameful.

The recent Fabian Society report, “For Us All”, demonstrated that the Government give as much tax support to people on high incomes through the shadow welfare of tax reliefs as they do to the poorest in our society. It has been suggested that if we were to replace the Government’s tax reliefs for the wealthy with a single universal payment, the reality that social expenditure benefits us all would be much clearer. It would get us away from the Government’s divisive rhetoric of strivers and skivers. Fundamentally, Labour believes that we should value our social security system, which, like our NHS, is based on the principles of inclusion, support and security for all, should any one of us become sick or disabled, or fall on hard times.

Let me focus on some of the concerns. Alongside those arguments in support of UBI, it is clear that tension could arise between its simplicity and its adequacy in supporting people with vastly differing needs and circumstances, which the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan described. A flat rate could not possibly provide the additional costs associated with disability—approximately an additional £500 a month—which are one of the causes of disabled people being twice as likely to be living in poverty. The Government, with their swingeing cuts, have not recognised that. To allow for variations in need, UBI would need to be supplemented with additional top-ups, increasing its expense and complexity, which is where we get to some of the issues discussed earlier.

My final substantial concern is the cost. A recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggested that realising the policy would require not only an increase in income but a considerable shift in the general public’s understanding and knowledge of what and whom a social security system is there for. We know from the British social attitudes survey’s time-series analysis that although superficially there are peaks and troughs of support, when people understand what the system is for, whom it is for and the circumstances in which people make claims, they are a lot more supportive of it, so we need to inform people and extend their understanding.

I welcome this debate and I again thank the hon. Member for Inverclyde for securing it. I look forward to further exploring the strengths of UBI, but we must make informed decisions and evidence-based policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

One of the main things that I am in the Chamber to say is that a universal basic income has a number of drawbacks, one of which is the great cost attached. If I may, I will now continue through my remarks.

The Government’s approach to welfare has been about recognising the value and importance of work, making work pay and supporting people into work, while protecting the most vulnerable. A universal basic income goes against every aspect of that approach. Indeed, it would put at risk the huge progress that we have made over the past six years in transforming lives through the power of work. Employment is at a record high. As we announced this morning, there are now 31.77 million people in work.

[Kate Green]

I hope that the Minister, in his analysis of the Government’s track record in relation to paid work, will also address the rise of in-work poverty under this and the previous coalition Government?

[Damian Hinds]

If the hon. Lady will bear with me, the claimant count is close to its lowest for 40 years, unemployment is at the lowest rate for 10 years and pay is rising. Our reforms are working. Why would we put all that at risk by implementing a blunt policy of financial handouts that does not treat people as individual human beings, with their own different ambitions and aspirations? UBI would also make no allowance for those with additional needs—a pure UBI system has no additional payments for those with disabilities or variations in housing costs, as the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) highlighted. Our reforms are about supporting people to reach their full potential, treating them as individual human beings and giving them the opportunity to get on.

Universal credit lies at the heart of the Government’s commitment to reform the welfare state, as the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth, rightly identified. We want a welfare state that is fairer and more affordable, tackling poverty and welfare dependency, while supporting the most vulnerable households. The Government believe that work is the best route out of poverty, which universal credit supports by supporting people into work and by making work, and more work, pay. Together with the rise in the personal tax allowance, investment in childcare and the national living wage, our reforms are ensuring that support goes to those who need it most. There is additional help to cope with essential living costs, such as housing and childcare, and we will ensure that being in work will always pay.

Universal credit is already changing people’s lives for the better. Claimants are moving into work more quickly and staying in work longer than under the legacy system. For every 100 people who would have found employment under the old jobseeker’s allowance system, 113 universal credit claimants will have moved into a job.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Sixth sitting)

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. It is also an enormous pleasure to serve on this Committee, to have heard contributions such as that made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston, who is departing from her current position on the Front Bench, and to hear the passion with which she gave voice to the beating heart of the Labour party and the outrage at how the Bill is being introduced and its extraordinary justification. If anyone ever questions where the Labour party’s heart is, they just need to hear her speech from before lunch.

I wish to speak to amendment 71. According to the Book of Ecclesiastes:

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Those words have survived for thousands of years, but could almost have been written yesterday by an author scratching his head over some of the perverse measures in the Bill. I suspect that historians will one day look back on these debates and cite the benefit cap as a classic example of an increasingly prevalent phenomenon in modern politics: a solution without a problem. After all, we have had a household benefit cap for more than two years.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend so early. She may be about to say this, in which case I apologise for stealing her moment. As she says, nothing is new under the sun. We had a benefit cap in the 1960s when it was called the wage stop rule. Women in particular campaigned to end it, which was to the benefit of poor children.

[Emily Thornberry]

And of course, as we will see, those who will be hit most adversely by the benefit cap are, yet again, women.

Ministers seem to be no closer to pinning down a convincing rationale for the policy today than they were four years ago when the Welfare Reform Act 2012 was debated. To the extent that there has been an underlying theme throughout this period, however, it has been the ever-slippery concept of fairness. As the Secretary of State put it when introducing the Welfare Reform Bill on Second Reading in March 2011:

“The principle is that people who are unemployed and on benefits should not be receiving more than average earnings. It is a matter of fairness, so that those who are working hard and paying their taxes do not feel that someone else will benefit more by not playing a full part in society.”—[Official Report, 9 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 921-922.]

It is almost quaint, with more than four years’ worth of hindsight, to imagine Government policy being drawn up with such sensitivity to people’s feelings, but the Secretary of State’s words are revealing to the extent that they disclose that the closest thing there was to a principled reason for introducing the cap was the perception of the problem, rather than evidence of one.

As I said, that has come to be a tendency over the past few years. In fact, further evidence appeared just a few days ago when the House was asked to consider the Trade Union Bill, which seems to have been designed to allay tabloid hysteria more than to deal with a real problem. When the issue in question is out-of-work benefits, tabloid hysteria is in abundant supply. Goaded by Ministers, the entire debate has become hijacked by splashy headlines that generated heat rather than light. It is time that the plane of discussion was brought back down to earth.

I said that there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to Tory welfare reform, but that is not strictly true, because lowering the cap requires an innovation that is a novel twist to the idea of fairness. The link between the household cap and estimated average earnings has been severed. That is quite a spanner in the works in terms of the Government’s efforts to prop up one of their primary justifications for the cap. The principle that working taxpayers, when they are fortunate enough not to have to claim benefits in order to survive, must be helped to feel positive about the way that the benefit system operates was always a dubious basis on which to make policy. The fact that that was supposed to have been achieved by setting the cap at the level of earnings makes clause 7(3) even more extraordinary.

Returning to the debates of the 2012 Act, the last Welfare Reform Bill, we might find the comments of the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) particularly instructive. He was the poor, unfortunate Minister saddled with the unenviable task of defending the cap and attempting to provide a coherent rationale for it. Fortunately for him, he did have a link with average earnings to fall back on. As he explained:

“Our policy approach, and the Government’s clear intent, is to have a cap that bears reference to average earnings. That is necessary for the credibility of our benefit system. It is the right place to set the cap.”––[Official Report, Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, 17 May 2011; c. 952.]

He was either right then or he was wrong, but are we not being contradicted by the changes to the law that the Government are intending now? Evidently, the new generation of Ministers take a different view. While there may be many problems that can be laid at Ministers’ feet, a fall in average earnings over the past two years is not, probably, one of them. According to the much-quoted Office for National Statistics, since the level of the cap was first established at £26,000 a year, average earnings have risen, not by much—just 0.1%, in fact—but they have risen. If wages are going up, why is the cap coming down if it is supposed to be, in any way, linked to average earnings? It is a simple question and I am sure that there will be a simple answer.

It has therefore proved necessary for the Government to take a different tack in arguing the increasingly tenuous case for lowering the cap. The alternative explanation that Ministers have increasingly relied on is that the cap is a cost-saving measure on one hand, and that it provides an incentive for people to move into work on the other. We now do not have a link to average incomes; we have the cap as an incentive to get people into work and that it will be a cost-saving measure.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling case. May I ask her to comment on recent evidence that emerged over the summer, which showed that although some people did move into work—Tony Wilson, in his oral evidence, told us a little bit about that—those who did not probably could not? They were either the parents of very young children, were suffering from ill health or there was a disability in the household.

[Emily Thornberry]

Absolutely right. Indeed, some of the evidence that we heard was that those who did move into work were not in what would be called sustainable work. For example, a single mother of many children who perhaps had been moved into 16 hours a week of work to avoid the cap, would find it impossible to sustain that work during the school holidays when her four children were back at home and she did not have childcare.

People temporarily may have been able to move into work and back out again, but we can see the continued high level of spend on discretionary housing payments to support these people. That in itself is evidence that it is not sustainable to try to push people for whom it is not possible to find work into work. Indeed, the evidence shows—I am sorry to keep harping on about evidence, but I always thought that policy was based on it—that most people who were affected by the benefit cap are not even deemed fit for work.

I will just go back. Having abandoned the idea of linking the cap with earnings, the Ministers are now relying on it being a cost-saving measure and an incentive for people to move into work. Of course, neither of those arguments stack up. I will come back to that. There continues to be a bad smell of unfairness, which will not go away. Just two days ago, the Minister was trotting out the same old argument. She said:

“The cap is a simple matter of fairness”.––[Official Report, Welfare Reform and Work Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2015; c. 144.]

However, she left us guessing, as we still are, exactly what was meant and how this could be fair as the cap seems to have been set at an arbitrary level.

Amendment 71 would remove subsection (3) and maintain the link between the level of the cap and estimated average earnings. If we are to accept the argument of the previous Minister that this connection is necessary for the credibility of the cap—a tall order, frankly—I can see no good reason for removing this requirement from the legislation. If the very concept of the benefit cap is to inspire even a shred of public confidence, it is incumbent on Ministers to explain why they propose to hand themselves extraordinarily broad powers to lower the cap at any time for any reason.

Ministers are essentially asking us to trust them to make decisions on the basis of fairness. Frankly, given their track record and given what the Minister said before the luncheon Adjournment—that she did not want to continue throwing good money after bad—it would be fair, for some people at least, to be somewhat sceptical of their understanding of fairness. To trust them to make these decisions on the basis of fairness is a slippery concept if there ever was one. The definition of the word seems in any event to be the subject of regular revisions apparently based on nothing more than political whimsy and the need of George Osborne to continue to save money.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Employment (Priti Patel)]

Good afternoon to everyone. These grouped amendments, in simple terms, are intended to counteract the changes that we are introducing to the benefit cap, as we have already heard. Amendment 25 would prevent the proposed reduction in its rate. Amendments 26 and 27 would prevent our plans to introduce a tiered structure to the cap, which will have different rates for claimants living in Greater London and for claimants living elsewhere. The two amendments would also keep the cap at its current rate with the same split between the level for lone parents and couples and the level for single people without children.

Amendment 71 would prevent us from establishing a new mechanism for reviewing the future level for the cap by maintaining the current link with average earnings. Amendment 38 is a more technical amendment that appears to attempt to direct future parliamentary procedures for introducing regulations for the cap. I will come to that amendment later. The cap was introduced in 2013 at the level of £26,000 a year with a lower rate of £18,200 a year for single people without children. Currently, the cap remains at that level.

The hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury has mentioned why the Government introduced the cap, but I will remind the Committee that it was introduced because it was felt—and is felt—that it was not fair for out-of-work households to receive considerably more in benefits than many working households earn. That view is shared by many people across the country, with around 70% of the public supporting a cap. The cap is also a key part of the overall plan to reform not only the structure of welfare benefits but attitudes towards welfare benefits, and it was introduced to increase incentives to work and to promote fairness to those on benefits and those in work. At the time, as we recall, we were trying to address the bigger economic issues of the deficit.

[Kate Green]

I understand the point about work incentives. We heard from Tony Wilson that a small number of people have moved into work, but is it fair to talk about changing the attitudes of people who are too sick to work? They are caught by the benefit cap, too.

[Priti Patel]

This is part of the wider welfare reforms. The Government are supporting people who are sick and ill. Depending on their health conditions, they are receiving support in welfare.

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady will be perfectly aware that people who are very ill, particularly those in the support group, are supported by the Government through many, many welfare measures. That covers a range of conditions.

[Kate Green]

I am sorry to interrupt, but the Minister will understand that this is terribly important to people with long-term health problems. Some 80,000 people have been placed in the work-related activity group with a long-term prognosis that they are unlikely to see a change in their condition in at least the next two years. That was the finding of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions report last year. Further, 8,000 people in that group over time and, from the figures announced by the Secretary of State the other day, some 4,500 people in that group now have degenerative conditions, which means that they will never be more well than they currently are.

[Priti Patel]

Those in receipt of the support component of employment and support allowance are, of course, exempt from the cap. The Secretary of State has recently spoken about ESA and the additional support that can be given to individuals with particular health conditions. The Government are working on that right now, completely outside of this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Priti Patel]

I understand that the evaluation has been published, and since its introduction, more than 35,000 households who had previously been capped have moved off the cap. As I have said, the evaluation shows that the cap is working, with households 41% more likely to enter work than similar households who were just below the benefit cap. This is of course about the behavioural effects, but we have to, and should, put it into the context of incentivising work and supporting people to help them get into work, which is clearly part of what the Government are doing through their welfare reform agenda.

[Kate Green]

This is genuinely a request for clarification. The Minister said a moment ago that 35,000 people—I think she said this—had moved off the cap. Is she saying that those 35,000 people moved into work? Or is she saying that they stopped claiming benefits, or that they moved house? What actually happened to them?

[Priti Patel]

It is a combination of factors. The most common reason for people moving off the cap is a movement into work. There will be a variety in terms of the nature of work roles, depending on individual circumstances, but it is also a reflection of the fact that they have been supported into work.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Fifth sitting)

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 77, in clause 4, page 4, line 33, after paragraph (b) insert—

“(ba) children living in low income working households.”

To require the Secretary of State to include data on children living in low income working households in their report on the life chances of children.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 78, in clause 4, page 4, line 35, leave out “4” and insert “1, 2, 3 and 4”.

To require the Secretary of State to include data on the educational attainment of children at Key Stages 1, 2, 3 and 4 rather than only at Key Stage 4.

Amendment 79, in clause 4, page 4, line 37, leave out “4” and insert “1, 2, 3 and 4”.

To require the Secretary of State to include data on the educational attainment of disadvantaged children at Key Stages 1, 2, 3 and 4 rather than only at Key Stage 4.

Amendment 80, in clause 4, page 4, line 37, after paragraph (d) insert—

“(e) key health indicators for children in England;

(f) key health indicators for disadvantaged children in England.”.

To require the Secretary of State to include key health indicators in their report on the life chances of children.

Amendment 81, in clause 4, page 5, line 3, after paragraph (f) insert—

“(g) low income”.

A consequential amendment to amendment 77.

Amendment 82, in clause 4, page 5, line 3, after paragraph (f) insert—

“(g) key health indicators”.

A consequential amendment to amendment 80.

[Kate Green]

Good morning, Mr Owen. It is nice to see you in the Chair and to return to the Committee for, I am afraid, my last appearance in what has been a very enjoyable Committee.

Amendment 77 would require the Secretary of State to include, in the reports that the Bill envisages, data on children living in low-income working households as part of the reporting on their life chances. We all know the damage that poverty does to children’s life chances and to their outcomes in the short and longer term. Poverty is correlated with poor health, poor educational outcomes and poor employment outcomes in adulthood. It is extremely damaging not only to the individuals who experience it, but to the whole country. The amendment is an important one in recognition of the high incidence of poverty in working households. Currently, the Bill only requires reporting on households that are out of work. Therefore, it is important to have a report on the impact that poverty could have on the life chances of children growing up in those working families.

The Government are fond of saying that work is the best route out of poverty. I absolutely agree that it should be, but while families in work do face a lower risk of poverty than those out of work, and the more work people can do and the more hours they can supply the lower the risk, two thirds of children growing up in poverty are in working households. The Government refuse to engage with that fact and the Bill, in failing to address it, continues that situation. Indeed, I would say that the Government are making the situation worse.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the measures we passed in the House on Tuesday on tax credits will take £3.4 billion annually from low-income families by 2020. Between those measures, the measures in the Bill and other measures in the summer Budget, we will see work incentives damaged. We have to be concerned, as a result, about the impact on in-work poverty. The changes that the House passed on Tuesday will come into force in April next year and will lower the level at which working tax credits start to be withdrawn from £6,420 to £3,850. They will also increase the taper rate at which tax credits are withdrawn from 41% to 48%, meaning that, for every £1 earned over the threshold, there will be a 48p reduction in the level of tax credit entitlement. As a consequence of those changes to working tax credit, the level at which child tax credit begins to be taken away is lowered from £16,105 to £12,125.

Although Labour welcomes the increase in the personal tax allowance and the introduction of the so-called national living wage, the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group has stated that any gains from those measures will not negate the impact of those tax credit cuts from April 2016. The IFS recently concluded that families will lose more than £1,000 a year on average from cuts to tax credits, while they will gain between £100 and £200 a year at most from the proposed national living wage. I recognise that some families will benefit from increased free childcare, but many still use informal care and many will still be left with a funding shortfall for childcare, even under the increased and more generous provisions in universal credit and in relation to older children.

The benefits freeze provisions in the Bill, and the provisions of the cap, will apply to both out-of-work and in-work benefits. We will expand on our concerns about those measures later, but we should be concerned about them given their impact on children growing up in working households. We are particularly worried about the freeze in housing benefit. Many working families rely on housing benefit, and the explosion in housing benefit in recent years is in no small measure due to the increased bill for those families. The way in which the Bill will create a disconnect between rents and housing benefit causes us real concern, especially in high-demand areas such as those represented by my hon. Friends the Members for Islington South and Finsbury and for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, where private rents have shown no sign of falling—rather the reverse, I expect. Our concern is shared widely outside the Committee, as we heard from our witnesses in the oral evidence sessions.

I am concerned, too, about the impact of the freeze and the benefits cap on children in working families. Child tax credit and especially child benefit are a platform that help to improve the gains from paid work. Both will be frozen for four years under the Bill. Working families with children will be hit hard, but the impact will be different for different kinds of households. In that respect, it is interesting to look at the recently published research of Donald Hirsch for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on minimum income standards. I recognise that that is not exactly the same as poverty, or child poverty, but the research gives some interesting and helpful information about how the measures in the Bill and in the summer Budget will impact on family households differently depending on size, structure and family make-up. The figures show that lone parents and large families will be the biggest losers.

A lone parent with one child, working full time on the minimum wage, was typically just short of the minimum income standard in 2010—that lone parent would have reached 97% of the objective minimum income standard through a combination of earnings, tax credits and benefits. By 2020 the shortfall will grow to between a quarter and a third—around 71%, according to the JRF research. That is for lone parents in full-time work, but many lone parents are forced to work part time because of difficulties in finding childcare, so they will benefit less from the planned rise in the national living wage as they will not be able to supply so many hours of work. The position of lone parents has also been worsened by the rising incidence of sanctions, and many families with young children have been hit as a result.

The picture for low-income working families is complex, hit by forces of opposing, but not necessarily oppositely and equally neutralising, effects. Such families require complex policy responses, but the Government’s measures in the Bill and the summer Budget are certainly not complex or subtle, and they do not even show awareness of how the problems compound one another. It is important that we focus on how the measures impact on low-income working families and the children in those families, since we share with the Government the ambition that work should be a route out of poverty for those families and that work should always pay. Today it does not.

Working families and children in those families are suffering hardship and will suffer more hardship. It is disgraceful that the Government have created such a situation. It is notable that some Government Members were deeply concerned about the matter on Tuesday, when we debated the tax credits measures. We cannot undo any of those measures today under the clause that we are debating, but we can shine a spotlight and require a proper report on the effect on working households. That is what amendment 77 seeks to achieve.

Amendment 78 would require the report to include data on the educational attainment of children not only at key stage 4, as currently proposed in the Bill, but at key stages 1, 2 and 3. I hope the Minister will be able to explain the Government’s rationale for looking only at key stage 4. That is when a child is aged 16, which is late in their development—am I right? No doubt someone will intervene to correct me if I am wrong. Perhaps not colleagues from the Scottish National party, because I appreciate that the situation is different in Scotland. The clause would not affect the constituents of the hon. Member for Livingston. In passing, I note that when we debated the Bill on Tuesday, I pointed out that it would present an interesting little case study on English votes for English laws. Here is an example before us.

It is late in a child’s development to look at indicators only at key stage 4. I hope the Minister will be able to explain the rationale for that approach. I had hoped there might be room for some cross-party consensus on the importance of child development at a much younger age.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I suppose a cynic might say—I do not know whether this is right—that if there were to be a major change to child poverty, for instance that it got much worse, and we were to measure it by looking at educational attainment at key stage 4, it would give the Government many years’ grace while children adversely impacted by poverty were going through the system. We would not know how bad it was until they were 16, even if we were to assume that educational attainment at key stage 4 were sufficient to measure child poverty.

[Kate Green]

That is a very depressing thought, but quite possibly a fair one. It will be interesting to hear the Minister’s response. I do not think it is right in any circumstances to wait to measure the impact on children until they are 16. We know that the early years are a crucial developmental period. Action for Children, in written evidence, told us that

“the rapid brain development in the first two years of a child’s life provides the foundations for their future health and wellbeing”

and their development. Development in the early years is strongly associated with positive outcomes in later life.

Development in cognitive ability in the early years is highly predictive of subsequent achievement, with a strong relationship to educational success at school and income at age 30. By school age there are already wide variations in children’s abilities, which widen throughout childhood. The gap in attainment between the poorest children and children from better-off households, already large at age five, grows particularly quickly during the primary school years.

That points to the importance of measuring at key stages 1 and 2. Children from low-income backgrounds achieve poorer development by age five than their more affluent peers. The latest statistics from the Department for Education show that less than half— 45%—of pupils eligible for free school meals achieve a good level of development. Those children are falling behind before they start school, and the position worsens after they start school.

Closing the ability gap at age five enables children to do better later on in school. Those who arrive in the bottom range of ability tend to stay there. More than half—55%— of children in the bottom 20% of attainment at age seven, key stage 1, are still there at age 16, key stage 4. By measuring, reporting and taking action at key stage 1 would be able to tell a much better story when reporting at key stage 4, instead of waiting for the disasters to pile up.

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[Emily Thornberry]

I am listening with care to my hon. Friend’s important speech about this vital subject. She has just touched upon the impact of cold homes on children’s respiratory health. Is it her experience that people come to her surgery who live not only in cold homes, but in damp ones? Damp homes have an effect on the incidence of children’s asthma and a number of skin conditions, particularly when children’s clothes are rotten because they are put in storage against a damp wall, carpets rot, there is insufficient air going through a property and there is overcrowding.

[Kate Green]

That is absolutely right. Many constituents come to my surgery particularly distressed by damp in their homes. For many parents, it is the visible manifestation of their fears for their children’s health when they live in inadequate housing. In my experience, landlords are often very reluctant—in fact, extremely hostile—to do anything about problems reported to them by low-income families.

[Emily Thornberry]

Is it my hon. Friend’s experience that landlords—including social landlords—will go in, wash the walls that are black and tell the family that they do not have their windows open sufficiently, and when the blackness comes back the family are told that it is somehow or other their fault? Does she have the same experience as me with house-proud women coming to her surgery, saying, “I wash the walls down once a month and the blackness still comes back. I keep the windows open as they tell me to, but we are so overcrowded that this is the reason for the dampness”?

[Kate Green]

I share exactly the experience in my Manchester constituency that my hon. Friend experiences in her inner London constituency. She, like me, may have parents coming to her saying that they have been told by their landlords that they should not hang up damp washing, but they do not have gardens, so where are they meant to put it to dry? They cannot afford to run tumble driers because the electricity bills would simply be beyond their reach. The cocktail of problems that mothers in poor housing have to cope with on behalf of their families is really quite distressing. I am sure that hon. Members all around the Committee will have had similar cases in their surgeries. There is a real concern about housing quality and its impact on child heath.

Inadequate incomes also compound food poverty, meaning that low-income groups consume less protein, iron, fresh fruits and vegetables, vitamin C, fish, oily fish and folate. Women who are seeking to conceive and pregnant women worry about what will happen to their unborn babies and children as they grow up. Inadequate diets are extremely concerning when we look at children’s health and wellbeing, and are a significant consequence of low household income.

[Emily Thornberry]

I speak from my own experience when I lived in the east end on the Lansbury estate. The local shops did not have fresh fruit and vegetables because, largely, the people living in the area were poor and could not afford to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, so the shops did not stock them. In the end, the local authority subsidised the shops to produce fresh fruit and vegetables, but they sat on the shelves and rotted.

[Kate Green]

What is very interesting, as well as distressing, about what my hon. Friend said is that, when we have data, we can begin to think about solutions. We can see that the problem is a lack of access to fruit and vegetables and, perhaps, a lack of confidence among parents about how to cook or use them. Perhaps there is a lack of income or good-quality transport to go to buy better-quality food.

Earlier this week we debated how important it is to have local strategies in relation to children’s poverty and life chances. What we have just heard from my hon. Friend shows how useful those local strategies can be in looking at the data, identifying the problems and creating solutions to address them. In relation to child health and its connection to poverty, having a national report and, indeed, the lower-level local strategies and reports, would be extremely helpful to improving children’s health outcomes.

Children born into poverty suffer an increased risk of mortality in the first year of their lives and in adulthood. They are more likely to be born early and small, with low birth weight, and they face more health problems in later life. Preventing low birth weight should be an absolute priority for public health officials, but efforts to achieve that will be hampered if parents have insufficient income.

If children’s life chances are to be fully considered, it should be recognised that life chances begin in the womb, even before birth.

[Emily Thornberry]

Sixteen.

[Kate Green]

And certainly not as late as 16, as my hon. Friend suggests.

There is a real correlation between poverty—particularly household debt—and the likelihood of mental disorders, including sleep deprivation, depression and anxiety, among new mothers. The effects of poverty are particularly evident among women. Indeed, I have often said that poverty is a gender issue—that women face much of the pain and hold much of the responsibility for coping with poverty in low-income households. Debt and lack of access to income are therefore particularly damaging for a mother’s health.

That means that women are often the shock absorbers of family poverty, reducing their own consumption to ensure that other family members, and particularly their children, are provided for. Even so, it is not in a child’s interests to have a mother whose health is compromised. Naturally, a mother’s instinct will be to put her child first, but the child obviously also has an interest in having a healthy mother. Household incomes are therefore important in the round.

Maternal depression as a result of poverty is itself a significant risk factor in poorer social and emotional development in children. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to start primary school with lower personal, social and emotional development, and they are at significantly increased risk of developing conduct disorders, all of which can lead to difficulties with educational attainment, relationships and mental health throughout their lives.

There has not been much research into the impacts of adding or removing money, but, overall, the correlation between economic pressures and health is a serious concern. Children in low-income families miss out on a whole range of the conditions needed for a good-quality childhood, good psychological and physical wellbeing, and good opportunities and life chances in later life.

Amendment 80 is important in focusing action on the consequences and causes of poverty in terms of health. Monitoring and reporting will also enable the Government to make the most of the substantial investment they make in the nation’s health. It will enable us to make a more effective assessment of the impact of health spending on child development and the impact of parental awareness and education—for example, in relation to diet, breastfeeding or smoking cessation—on children’s health. It will also give us an opportunity to look at and focus local health and wellbeing strategies in the interests of improving child health. That would not cost any money, but it would lead to much clearer accountability. I commend amendment 80 to the Committee.

The other amendments are consequential on the substantive amendments in the group, so I will not speak to them. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to address the Committee on these really important amendments. We all know that the poorest children suffer the worst outcomes, and reporting on their poverty and the individual outcomes they experience is therefore the right way to get a rounded picture of child poverty and life chances, as well as of the causes and consequences involved. It will also help us to take action to introduce the strategies to address the disadvantage that poor children face.

[The Minister for Employment (Priti Patel)]

Good morning, Mr Owen. I thank the hon. Lady for her thoughtful contribution. She said this would be her last sitting, so I would like to thank her for her previous contributions. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] During my short tenure in this role, working alongside her on welfare issues, she has been a valued colleague.

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[Priti Patel]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention is timely, because I am about to come on to some of those points.

Income-based poverty measures focus only on the symptoms of child poverty while failing to tackle the root causes. Amendment 77 would take us back to when legislation pushed the Government to get families over an arbitrary income line.

[Kate Green]

Amendment 77 does not only specify the measuring of income. It mentions “working households”. That is what we are particularly concerned about.

[Priti Patel]

I recognise that, but I am going to carry on and address some of the points that have been made.

Removing income-related measures and targets and replacing them with new measures on worklessness and educational attainment will incentivise future Governments, as well as this one, to improve children’s life chances. To ensure that we drive the right progress, we should not get distracted by measures that do not tackle the root causes of poverty and should instead focus on measures that do.

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[Priti Patel]

No other country in the world has attempted to use statutory targets to legislate away income-related child poverty. The point that I think came out towards the end of the evidence session was that the Department will continue to publish low-income statistics as part of the households below average income—HBAI—figures anyway, so there is no assumption that we are dismissing the matter or undermining the UK’s international credibility, which I think was the point that the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark was trying to make.

[Kate Green]

The clauses and amendments that we are discussing are not just about publishing data; they are about reporting on the impact of what the data show on children’s life chances. I stress again that amendment 77 relates to

“children living in low income working households.”

The crucial word there is “working”.

[Priti Patel]

Work remains the best route out of poverty. We know that children in workless families are around three times as likely to be in relative low-income as children in families—

--- Later in debate ---

[Priti Patel]

Let me just put things into context. It is not a case of Government assertions. We are committed to reporting and have stated our commitment, in relation to earlier clauses, to report annually to the House of Commons. Perhaps the hon. Lady will allow me to get on to some of my other points about education and life chances. There is clearly a duty and obligation to report and my Department and the Government as a whole will do so in relation to various aspects of the matter. Despite the Labour party’s bluster it does not recognise root causes in addressing poverty and it fails to recognise that work remains the best route out of it. Only the Government have a committed strategy to look at life chances to overcome many of the root causes of poverty, which previous Labour Governments completely ignored.

[Kate Green]

Will the Minister give way?

[Priti Patel]

I will not give way. I am going to make progress. Work remains the best route out of poverty and more people are in work under the present Government. Under the present Government and during the previous Parliament we supported people who were long-term unemployed and far removed from the labour market, and helped them to get into work. Those were predominantly households, families and individuals on low incomes.

There has been progress and we are committed to supporting parents to move into work, increasing their earnings and keeping more of what they earn. Universal credit is one example and our investment in childcare and the future national living wage will all play an important combined role. The new statutory worklessness measures will track the proportion of children in workless and long-term workless households in England. The new statutory measures on educational attainment at the end of key stage 4 will hold the Government to account for their successes in raising the attainment of all pupils in England, and specifically the attainment of those who are disadvantaged.

The importance of early years action has rightly been pointed out, and the Government of course agree about that, which is why every three and four-year old in England and the most disadvantaged 40% of two-year-olds are currently entitled to 570 hours of Government-funded early education a year. We are also committed to extending three and four-year-olds’ entitlement to 30 hours a week. The early years pupil premium has also provided another £50 million in extra funding to early years providers.

[Kate Green]

We welcome those measures. What is the Government’s problem, therefore, about reporting on their efficacy? It should be a good news story for them.

[Priti Patel]

The Department for Work and Pensions will, as I said, continue to publish low income statistics as part of the households below average income report, including statistics on children living in low-income households.

Amendments 78 and 79 would expand the statutory measures to include educational attainment for disadvantaged children at key stages 1, 2, 3 and 4. The amendments seem to underline the significance already placed by the Government on education as an indicator of future life chances, but we do not think it necessary to add those additional measures. Good education, as the Committee fully recognises—points have been made to that effect—is the bedrock on which to promote individuals’ future successes and life chances. At the heart of that we are determined to promote social justice, with the commitment that every child, regardless of background, will be extended opportunities allowing them to fulfil their potential. Raising the educational attainment of all children will increase their capacity to shape their own futures, reducing the risk of future unemployment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Priti Patel]

I have made the point about the reporting mechanisms already, including during this debate. If I may, I will move on to something the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston touched on with regard to the range of life chances measures including key health indicators for children. In England, we also have key health indicators for disadvantaged children.

Amendment 82 is consequent on amendment 80 and requires the Secretary of State to set out in his report what is meant by “key health indicators”. I agree fully with the importance that the amendments would place on children’s health, but the Committee is aware that the Government have already put in place a well-developed reporting framework—the public health outcomes framework—which supports health improvement and protection at all stages of life, especially in early years. The framework includes a large number of indicators on children and young people’s health and, along with the NHS outcomes framework, sets a clear direction for children’s health that allows anyone to hold the Government to account.

The Department of Health has already commissioned University College London’s Institute of Health Equity to produce health inequalities indicators on a regular basis to complement the framework. Those indicators reflect the recommendations of the Marmot review, and profiles will be published for 150 upper-tier local authorities. Our decision to limit our headline statutory measures to worklessness and educational attainment was deliberate and supported by evidence.

[Kate Green]

What evidence supports looking only at key stage 4, given the importance of early years?

[Priti Patel]

I come back to the point that information is already being published. The hon. Lady is welcome to engage with the Department for Education to look at the data and to see how they inform the development of the Bill and the decision that we are taking.

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[Priti Patel]

I would look at this on the basis of a whole Government strategy. This is not about Department versus Department, or Departments working in silos. If the hon. Lady listened to, or even looked at, the detail of what the Government are proposing with their life chances strategy, she would recognise very clearly that this is cross-Government work—the Department for Education, the Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions—to focus on the collective root causes of poverty, which cannot be looked at in isolation. It is the Government’s duty to publish data across those Departments and make it available to the public.

Our focus on worklessness and educational attainment is supported by our review, published in 2013. The review makes it clear that educational attainment is the biggest single factor in ensuring that poor children do not end up as poor adults. The evidence in that review shows that long-term worklessness, and the resulting low earnings, is a highly significant factor in trapping children in poverty now. Children in workless families are about three times as likely to be in relative low-income as children in families with at least one person in work. Our new approach regarding life chances, focusing on the root causes, will drive this and future Governments to improve children’s life chances. That is best achieved through a tight focus on work and education, as set out in the life chances measures in clause 4. Therefore, I urge hon. Members to withdraw the amendment.

[Kate Green]

That was a depressing response. The Minister attacked the measure of low income and showed a depressing lack of logic in relation to our arguments in favour of a more rounded reporting of educational attainment at the earlier stages of child development and health. She simply did not in the least—this has been a feature of this Government and their predecessor for every year that they were in power—address poverty in working families.

I accept that the risk of being in poverty is reduced the more parents are able to be in work but, when two thirds of children living below the poverty line do so in a family where somebody is in paid employment, we have to say that the issue of in-work poverty is a serious one. It shows a real paucity of ambition for those families in working poverty that the Minister is so uninterested, not just in reporting on them, but even in addressing the point in this debate. She appears to live in some sort of fantasy land where those families are doing better; in my opening remarks, I pointed to the fact that they are doing worse. I am afraid that, in the light of the Minister’s depressing response, I wish to divide the Committee on amendment 77.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee proceeded to a Division.

[The Chair]

The Ayes were three, the Noes 11. The Noes have it.

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[Neil Coyle]

We have discussed some of these issues this morning. To be accused of bluster is unfortunate and insensitive when the concern is that an intervention at 16 is far too late. It is unclear exactly what the Government intend to do if they discover—shock horror!—that there are children aged 16 who are educationally disadvantaged. I am fortunate, as the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, to have a constituency where schools are outperforming the national standards, but this is still a massive concern for us. Intervening at the age of 16 is far too late.

I think that those in the sector will conclude that the Government, in failing to accept the amendment, are acknowledging that they have something to hide on the issue, but I will not force the amendment to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 5

Social Mobility Commission

[Kate Green]

I beg to move amendment 7, in clause 5, page 5, leave out lines 16 to 27 and insert—

“5 Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission: additional functions

(1) After Section 8A of the Child Poverty Act 2010 insert—”

To leave the name of the “Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission” unchanged.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 8, in clause 5, page 6, leave out lines 15 and 16.

A consequential amendment to amendment 7 to leave the name of the “Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission” unchanged.

[Kate Green]

Amendments 7 and 8 seek to leave the current name of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission unchanged. We are shocked at the Government’s brass neck in the way that they seek to airbrush child poverty off the statute book and, indeed, to measure and report on it.

The Child Poverty Act 2010, which established the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, was passed with cross-party support. I was not in the House at the time. I was not in the House at the time; I was one of the external campaigners who warmly welcomed that the Conservative party, in particular, was taking such an interest and demonstrating such an understanding of the importance of income poverty.

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[Priti Patel]

I will not give way.

Our reforms will enable the commission to invest all its resources in galvanising effort and improving social mobility. Ultimately, reforming the commission to focus on social mobility will help to ensure that all children can reach their full potential. I urge the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.

[Kate Green]

I have no objection or disagreement with the Minister on the importance of addressing social mobility and looking at the drivers of improved social mobility. She simply must accept that around the world the compelling evidence of the importance of income poverty to all other outcomes is unquestioned. This Government will set their face against both that international evidence and their own understanding in 2010.

[Corri Wilson (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)]

Under the Bill, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission will be renamed the Social Mobility Commission, with a much narrower remit. It will report on progress made towards improving social mobility in the UK, as well as in England.

The Bill is designed to have a limited impact on the current duties of the devolved Administrations. Scotland will continue to be required to produce a child poverty strategy under a duty in a UK Act. Clearly, we will no longer be statutorily bound to report on the income targets, as they are being removed.

Removing income as a measure of poverty ignores the fact that low income impacts on children’s development and wellbeing, including their development in education and their cognitive ability, behaviour and anxiety levels. Child poverty rates that had previously fallen at the beginning of the century are now at risk of being reversed. The IFS projection is that absolute poverty will stand at 3.5 million children before housing costs and 4.7 million after by 2020.

Although worklessness and lack of access to employment are key drivers of poverty, there is no recognition of in-work poverty. Therefore, income has also to be included to ensure the other measures are meaningful and that there is a tangible benchmark. How can this or any Government tackle child poverty if they do not even recognise it exists? The child poverty measurement framework recognises the importance of measuring poverty in consultation with stakeholders such as the Child Poverty Action Group, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Save the Children. It looked at the wide range of factors that can lead to poverty as well as providing an understanding of the impacts of poverty on children and their families.

In addition, the Scottish Government have an ambitious and robust child poverty strategy and host a ministerial advisory group on child poverty, which includes stakeholders from a variety of sectors. On 23 June 2015, Nicola Sturgeon appointed a new, independent adviser on poverty and inequality to help the Scottish Government’s—

[Corri Wilson]

The Scottish Government will investigate a Scottish approach, building on wide support for the poverty measurement framework. We will support Labour to stop the proposals and ensure that the most vulnerable in society are protected.

[Kate Green]

I believe that we will have the opportunity to return to the matter on clause 6, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Priti Patel]

I beg to move amendment 86, in clause 5, page 5, line 23, leave out from “which” to end of line 24 and insert

“section 5 of the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2015 comes into force.”

This amendment brings the date from which the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission is to be called the Social Mobility Commission into line with the commencement of the other changes to the Commission made by clause 5.

The amendment brings the wording of the provision describing the date from which the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission will be called the Social Mobility Commission in line with the commencement date of clause 5—that is, two months after Royal Assent. This is a purely technical amendment, designed to ensure that the wording of the Bill is consistent.

Amendment 86 agreed to.

Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.

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Other amendments to Child Poverty Act 2010

[Kate Green]

I beg to move amendment 9, in clause 6, page 6, line 18, leave out subsection 1.

Leave child poverty targets and measures unchanged.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 97, in clause 6, page 6, line 19, at end insert—

‘(1A) In section 2 (Duty of Secretary of State to ensure that targets in sections 3 to 6 are met) for “2020” substitute “2030”.”

This amends the Child Poverty Act 2010 to set new child poverty targets for 2030 rather than 2020. To be read in conjunction with amendment 9.

Amendment 10, in clause 6, page 7, leave out from beginning of line 25 to end of clause.

Leave child poverty targets and measures unchanged.

[Kate Green]

Amendment 9 would leave the child poverty targets and measures, currently provided in the Child Poverty Act 2010, unchanged.

With your permission, Mr Owen, I will also speak to amendment 97 on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar who is engaged in a debate on the steel industry in the Chamber.

With the exception of Government Members, the importance of targets and measures of income poverty to internationally agreed definitions is unquestioned. Targets, measuring and reporting on them drive action, show progress and enable comparisons to be made: comparisons of trend data over time and other similar economies with similar demographic make-up. The importance of income poverty in that context, as we heard earlier, is linked to a range of poorer outcomes, in education, health and wider societal costs.

As I have said, there is widespread international acceptance that income is key. The Government in their own evidence review last year showed that the most important factor for children’s outcomes was lack of income. That is not just income among families where no one is in work but insufficient income from earnings, too.

Other indicators are important. It is important and right to track educational, health and child wellbeing outcomes, but those are not the same as tracking poverty, as we can see clearly from the written evidence submitted by the End Child Poverty campaign.

In 2013, the Government carried out a wide consultation on whether the income poverty measurement and target regime provided for by the 2010 Act was flawed and should be replaced. Of the many responses received by the Government to that consultation, the overwhelming majority—97%—of the responses said that the measures and the targets were fine and needed no alteration.

If ever evidence of a Government who really do not care about evidence and analysis is needed, it can be found in the proposals in clause 6. One cannot help but feel that it is not evidence but fear that motivates the Government: fear that failure to meet targets, or demonstrate progress towards them, would at the very least embarrass the Government and might even raise concern in the minds of Ministers that there could be a legal threat.

[Emily Thornberry]

To be fair—I do wish us to be fair to the Government—those who still believe that they are compassionate Conservatives might find it difficult if measures show that they are failing.

[Kate Green]

That is a very charitable interpretation from my hon. Friend, but she is a charitable lady, so we should not be surprised by her generosity of spirit in Committee today.

I have spent many years looking at this territory and I know that legal challenges have been mounted in the past. I believe firmly that a challenge would not be viable against a well-intentioned, well-meaning Government who had taken purposeful action to address child poverty even if, due to external circumstances, they were not ultimately able to meet the targets they had set, especially if they were ambitious targets in the time hoped.

What we actually have is a Government who are not bothering to try to meet the targets. In the last Parliament, child poverty fell in the first two years of the coalition Government up to 2011-12. That was the result of measures introduced by Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the previous Labour Government, that had not yet been affected by the measures that the coalition Government set about introducing. Since 2011-12, while the coalition Government and the present Government have been in charge of family income strategy, child poverty has flatlined. There has been no progress at all and no strategy to improve the position of those poor families.

[Neil Coyle]

My hon. Friend says that child poverty is flatlining, but for many families, is it not the case that absolute child poverty has risen? That is a particular concern in constituencies such as mine in inner London, and it is linked to in-work poverty.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is right, and I shall come to that point, because it leads into something that I shall say about the measures and targets that we use.

The summer Budget and the measures in the Bill will push more families and more children into poverty. We have not yet got an analysis of the impact of the Bill or the Budget on child poverty and on the numbers of children growing up poor. It is disappointing that the Government have not laid that impact assessment before the House. We cannot know for sure what assessment, if any, the Government have made of the impact. We do not know whether they bothered to make such an assessment. From our knowledge, expertise and understanding of what drives poverty, we can expect that the impact will be pretty adverse. We can also look to the very helpful Joseph Rowntree Foundation minimum income standards research, to which I referred earlier. It points to a particularly harsh effect on the family incomes of some particularly vulnerable groups, including single-parent families, couples with several children and families who face high housing costs.

[Hannah Bardell]

I am listening intently to the hon. Lady and I agree with much of what she is saying. Does she agree that the alternative targets proposed are not necessarily related to poverty? Family break-up and drug and alcohol dependency affect families from all income deciles, and problem debt is generally a consequence rather than a cause of poverty.

[Kate Green]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point about the complexity of disentangling causes from consequences and about the fact that Ministers are giving the public distorting messages about what poverty actually is. Let me make this clear: only 4% of parents experience alcohol or drug addiction, and far from all those parents are parents of poor children. Of course, it is devastating for children who grow up in households where parents are addicted, but it is not the same as poverty and it certainly does not explain the 3.7 million children growing up in poverty in the UK today. As she rightly noted, family break-up affects families across the income spectrum. There will be hon. Members in this room who have experienced it in their own families. We should not conflate the two. While it is true that single parents and their children face a higher risk of poverty, there are measures that could be taken to ameliorate and address that consequence, instead of which the Government will make the position of those families worse.

[Neil Coyle]

Is there not a challenge in what the Government are attempting to suggest, in that on the one hand the Minister says their policies on tackling poverty are working but on the other suggests that the measurements, accepted by the Prime Minister when they were introduced, are flawed? Does that not expose the Government’s real agenda, which is to mask their lack of effort in tackling the low-wage economy and in-work poverty?

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend absolutely makes the case.

As we have heard this morning, it is also ridiculous to think that measuring worklessness alone could be a substitute for measuring poverty, when two thirds of poor children are in households where somebody works. We have repeatedly heard from the Conservative party that the measures are somehow flawed or insufficient, so let us go through carefully what the Child Poverty Act actually requires in relation to measurement and targets.

We know that the Institute for Fiscal Studies expects a rise in relative poverty in this Parliament, but it also expects that it is entirely possible that absolute poverty could fall. So there is a two-way street, if you like, built into the cocktail of measures that we have. We have four measures of poverty in the Child Poverty Act: relative income poverty; absolute poverty; material deprivation; and persistent poverty. That addresses some of the concerns that Government Members might rightly have about tracking only one measure. It is right that when median income is falling, relative income poverty alone is not sufficient to give a good picture of what is happening to our poorest families, although it remains important in tracking the gap that exists.

However, it is also right to recognise that we do not look only at relative income poverty in the Child Poverty Act. We look at absolute poverty, persistent poverty and, crucially, material deprivation. Material deprivation gives a real-life test of poverty and the public can engage with it, get their heads round it and understand it. Also, as I said earlier today, it is a particularly good predictor of health outcomes for children.

[Hannah Bardell]

Again, what the hon. Lady says chimes strongly with me. Is she aware that, as indicated by the House of Commons Library, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission warned in 2014 that although levels of child poverty are low by historic standards,

“there is no realistic hope of the child poverty targets being met in 2020, given the likely tax and benefit system in place”?

That was in 2014, before any of these changes were made. Is this not a thinly veiled way of covering up the fact that those targets were never going to be reached?

[Kate Green]

We are certainly not going to reach them under the Government’s current policies; indeed, we will move further away from them. I share the hon. Lady’s scepticism about the Government’s motives, to put it gently. It is really regrettable that, rather than seeking to tackle the problem of poverty, they simply seek to remove it altogether from any understanding of the public policy world.

I hope that the Committee understands that the critique of the Child Poverty Act and its measures and targets as being somehow deficient is completely false. It is also important to understand that the measures the Government proclaim will address poverty are also false, or at least incomplete. As I said earlier this morning, the so-called national living wage will not fully compensate for cuts to benefits and tax credits. What is more, it is highly regrettable that the Government, who are fond of the argument that tax credits are simply a substitute for lower wages, fail to recognise the different functions of pay and tax credits. It is why we have a complex cocktail of policy responses to a set of different drivers of poverty.

Working tax credits compensate for low pay. That means that in households where a family member is low paid, they may derive some benefit from tax credits. Some low-paid people will not do so because they are not in low-paid households; they are the low-paid earner in a household with a high overall household income. So tax credits are a response to low pay, and they help households that suffer low income as a result of low pay to avoid the adverse effects of that low pay.

We should also recognise that the purpose of tax credits for children is not to compensate for low pay or to subsidise employers. It is about sharing among society as a whole the investment that we all have a duty, and indeed an interest, in making in the next generation, who will deliver the future productivity in our economy that will sustain us as we grow old.

We should also remember that while rising pay and an increase in the so-called national living wage are welcome, the national living wage would have to rise very substantially for parents who have no access to any other sources of income—to more than £13 an hour—before their children were lifted out of poverty. Tax credits meet that gap. If it is to be filled entirely by rising wages, that is likely to lead to substantial numbers of job losses, which Ministers would be rightly concerned about.

It is also said that the Child Poverty Act and the measures therein are deficient, because they only look at money. While I strongly contend that money is important, that is also an incorrect analysis of the provisions of the Child Poverty Act. On Second Reading, I particularly sought to draw the House’s attention to that point when I highlighted the fact that written into the Child Poverty Act is a requirement for strategies in relation to child health, children’s education, parental employment, debt—a subject of interest to Government Members—and parenting. Those are all associated with child poverty and provided for in the Child Poverty Act, but they sit alongside the provisions of the Act in relation to measuring relative income poverty and targets for it. They are not the same thing or a substitute.

I am concerned and disappointed by the provisions of clause 6. The clause is cynical and distressing and cheapens the United Kingdom in the eyes of the international community. Most importantly, it means that many of our poor children are at risk of becoming poorer, unobserved. I am frankly shocked at the brazenness of the clause.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar is unable to do so today, with the permission of the Committee I will speak briefly to amendment 97, which was tabled in her name. It addresses the concern that the hon. Member for Livingston pointed out a few moments ago relating to the Government not being on track to meet the 2020 target to eradicate child poverty. That is right, but as Alison Garnham pointed out to us in her oral evidence earlier this week, the Government would not have been completely unable to reach the target in due course. Let us remember that the target, as Ms Garnham pointed out to us, is not to reach zero poverty. A frictional level of poverty will always exist. Families move in and out of poverty, but it might not be sustained if, for example, they quickly return to work. We accept that a reasonable definition of the eradication of child poverty was to reach the best level in Europe—around 10%—which is a realistic target.

The amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar suggests that the target could be reasonably met by 2030, based on the trajectory that we were on before the measures in the summer Budget and the Bill. The argument for keeping the target but extending it over a realistic period is interesting. We are naturally disappointed that, for another 10 years, too many children will grow up poor, but we would rather that we retained the measure and the target in the statute book at least to ensure that there was a mechanism to drive progress forward.

My hon. Friend’s amendment is good, and seeks to give the Government leeway to deal with the difficult challenges that have existed since the 2008 financial crash and with the fact that pay either fell or was frozen in order to sustain people in employment. We recognise that time must be bought to cope with the consequences of the world financial collapse, but it is not right to give up the ambition for this generation or for future generations of children. We want the target to remain on the statute book, and amendment 97 seeks a realistic end date for that target.

Amendment 10 is similar to amendment 9 and merely addresses the same point elsewhere in the Bill.

As many hon. Members will know, I worked for the Child Poverty Action Group before I was elected to the House in 2010, and of all the measures in the Bill this is probably the one that I feel most pained, outraged and angered by. It is a disgrace. It is a disgrace and a shame that will affect our children, and I hope the Government will think again before it is too late.

[Corri Wilson]

I am conscious of the time, so I just want to pick out a few reasons why the SNP oppose the changes. The loss of income targets means that a fundamental driver of poverty—how much money a person has in their pocket—is essentially being deprioritised. Focusing on worklessness ignores the 67% of UK children in poverty who live in a household in which one or more adults are working. That is in-work poverty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Priti Patel]

No, I will not.

We have discussed the flaws and weaknesses of the measures to some extent. Members suggest that we should extend the deadline on the same flawed measures and force future Governments to spend money on tackling symptoms, not the root causes. I recognise that Members will probably press the amendments, but I urge them not to do so.

[Kate Green]

I certainly will not withdraw amendment 9. I feel all the more strongly that it must be pressed to a Division in light of the Minister’s response. She is a very intelligent woman, and I have a great deal of respect for her as a Minister. She is extremely able, but she must know that what she is saying is a disgrace that overlooks the myriad evidence before us and—as I think my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark wished to point out—the position of her own party and the Prime Minister in his lecture in 2006. Her party supported what she now calls a “flawed measure” when it supported the Child Poverty Act in 2010.

If the Minister is going to try to tell me that she now thinks that the Government have had some awakening that was not available to them in 2010, I invite her to present the evidence that was not available in 2010 and is available today. She has not done so. The fact is that these targets are internationally recognised and respected, have been over many decades and were endorsed in the Government’s own consultation in 2013. There is no reason why we should abandon them now.

May I raise two points with the right hon. Lady? First, she says there is a temptation to move people from just below an arbitrary line to just above it. That is not what happened under the Labour Government. We raised incomes in every single income decile. We were ambitious for all of our children, and we remain so today. The idea that having targets or duties does not work is also a completely flawed argument. Conservative Members often like to point out that child poverty rose under Labour. Yes, it did, in one or two years, but I would point out that it doubled under the Conservatives between 1979 and 1997, whereas Labour took a million children out of poverty between 1999 and 2010. However, I accept that it rose in one or two years. As soon as we could see that we were veering off progress towards the target, we took action to bring ourselves back on track. That is the importance of targets. Any Government can make mistakes and any Government can be faced with external circumstances that make progress difficult, but without ambition and without targets to measure that ambition, there is no incentive, requirement or likelihood of action being taken to correct progress as soon as it is right and possible to do so.

I feel this matter very personally, as hon. Members may identify from the way I am speaking in the Committee this afternoon. I will press amendment 9 to a vote. I urge hon. and right hon. Members, in the interests of future generations of children, not to scrap the Child Poverty Act.

[The Chair]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. It is her last speech in this Committee. I thank her and I am sure we will all miss her.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Fourth sitting)

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Hannah Bardell]

Amendment 23 is about the Secretary of State appearing before a Committee in the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the National Assembly for Wales to answer questions about the report. The amendments in this group would ensure that Scotland, as well as Northern Ireland and Wales, was fully briefed on the full employment report, as they have a responsibility for policies that can contribute to full employment.

Finally, amendment 24 would leave out subsection (2) because we want to remove the provision that repeals the full employment reporting obligation at the end of the current Parliament. We feel strongly that clause 1 places a new duty on the Secretary of State to produce an annual report on progress towards full employment during the Parliament.

Amendment 22 is simply to ensure that the Secretary of State lays the report before the House of Commons, the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the National Assembly for Wales. We welcome the reporting obligations in clause 1, as they ensure that the Government are progressing full employment and that the definition made by the Department is brought before all the devolved Administrations.

As we well know, unemployment is a UK-wide problem and employment challenges facing different parts of the UK can be different. It is vital that the Secretary of State represents the devolved institutions and recognises the challenges that the Bill will have for devolved areas dealing with unemployment.

Amendment 23 adds extra scrutiny function to the Bill to ensure that the Secretary of State will appear before a Committee to answer questions on the report within each devolved institution. As the definition of full employment is not clear, the amendment would ensure that, whatever definition is decided on, the devolved institutions will be able to hold the Secretary of State to account. We are concerned that the Secretary of State could use the term to mask under-employment by defining full employment in narrow terms. Office for National Statistics figures for 2014 put the number of zero-hours contracts at approximately 700,000. People in those positions worked an average of 25 hours a week, and one third of them would prefer more hours. It is vital that the devolved institutions can scrutinise the Secretary of State’s report in order to deal with unemployment effectively.

Amendment 24 would remove the provision that repeals the full employment reporting obligation at the end of the current Parliament. If the Government are serious about reporting unemployment in order to address it, they would not dissolve the reporting duty after one Parliament. We really cannot understand that. In the current uncertain economic times, the Government cannot predict what employment opportunities lie ahead for people across the UK. It is imperative that full employment reporting continues, as it will be a useful indicator for the Government and the devolved institutions to formulate policies that respond to the demands of unemployment. Finally, the continuation of a reporting duty means that the definition will be tested and refined. Oxfam has supported the retention of the obligation to report.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I listened with considerable interest to the hon. Lady propose amendments 22 to 24, which are interesting. Although she did not talk about this, I read the amendments in the context of the wider constitutional debate being played out in the passage of the Scotland Bill, which is also before the House and covers a number of matters relating to welfare reform. While I fully understand why she wants to promote the amendments—to expose more clearly the effectiveness of the Government’s strategies and to increase scrutiny of them—I think we are stepping into quite new territory in terms of some of the reporting arrangements and the obligation of Westminster Ministers to report to the devolved Parliaments and Assemblies, and to appear before their Committees.

We know that devolved matters are wholly the responsibility of devolved Parliaments. I expect them to be scrutinised there and for Ministers in those Parliaments to be held to account for them. However, reserved matters are rightly scrutinised in this Parliament by Members of Parliament from all parties. Indeed, I venture to suggest that if we pursue this argument too far, we may start to give succour to the English votes for English laws argument, which some of us are very unenthusiastic about.

While I understand the hon. Lady’s wish to shed more light on the Government’s policies, I question some of the implications of her amendments. That is not to say that I do not understand what she seeks to achieve, but I am keen to understand the constitutional consequences of proceeding with amendment 22.

Amendment 23 is also very interesting. I read it with real interest when the hon. Lady and her colleagues tabled it, and I went off to dig a little bit into the history of what it might be about. I am sure she knows this, but other Committee members may not: the Government have some form in relation to appearing before Committees in the Scottish Parliament. Attempts were made by the Scottish Parliament’s Welfare Reform Committee—perhaps the hon. Lady can confirm this—to bring Ministers from the Department for Work and Pensions before it between 2012 and 2014, in order for Members of the Scottish Parliament to quiz them about some of the provisions of what became the Welfare Reform Act 2012.

When the Convenor of the Scottish Welfare Reform Committee sought to invite the Secretary of State to the Committee, I am afraid to say that he received a rather dusty reply. On 12 December 2012, in a letter to the Convenor of that Committee, the Secretary of State said that he would not be coming, that as a Westminster Minister he was accountable first and foremost to the UK Parliament and, slightly tongue in cheek, he strongly encouraged the Scottish Committee to scrutinise the Scottish Government’s implementation of the UK legislation. I will not get into the private grief between the Department for Work and Pensions and the Scottish National party on that, but it was clear that the Secretary of State was alert to some of the constitutional questions I alluded to a few moments ago.

In defence of the Scottish Committee, I have to say that it did not take that lying down—indeed, I would not have expected it to. The saga ran and ran—there was a series of letters, which are fun to read if anyone has a few spare minutes. In 2012, 2013 and 2014, the Committee noted that UK Ministers from other Departments had been prepared to appear before Scottish parliamentary committees, so the matter rumbled on.

In the event, no willingness was shown on the part of Ministers from the immediate past Government to appear before the Scottish Welfare Reform Committee. Since then, we have moved into another set of changes to the constitutional arrangements on reserved matters with the ongoing proceedings of the Scotland Bill.

In this Bill, we have a complex patchwork of devolved and non-devolved matters. Indeed, this is probably the Bill to exemplify the difficulties that Mr Speaker will face in certifying whether a Bill or parts of a Bill will be subject to the provisions of English votes for English laws—we might use it as a case study as we proceed through each clause, Mr Streeter, if you will indulge us.

The Scotland Bill will create further complexity. We are in a period of some uncertainty about which welfare reform provisions will be devolved and which will obviously depend on Parliament’s will, and that legislation is far from completing its parliamentary passage. Labour has tabled several amendments to the Scotland Bill that I confidently expect us to consider on Report that propose further devolution of several welfare and employment matters to the Scottish Parliament. For example, it has long been our intention—my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham talked a great deal about this in the previous Parliament—to devolve employment programmes such as the Work programme to the Scottish Parliament. We have developed our thinking in that field so that we now have amendments to the Scotland Bill that would also devolve the Access to Work programme, jobs guarantees programmes and employment programmes of less than one year’s duration.

There are question marks around amendments 22 and 23. They are interesting and I am delighted that the hon. Member for Livingston moved them for debate, but I would prefer to await developments on the Scotland Bill before arriving at a firm conclusion about what my party’s position might be on them. However, the hon. Lady is really on to something with amendment 24, which deals with what is effectively a sunset clause on the Secretary of State’s obligation to report on the full employment targets. Since I saw the SNP amendment and my mind became focused on that provision, I wondered why the Government drafted it. Will the Minister tell us in a few minutes that the Government are confident that, on full employment, by the end of this Parliament, “Job will be done”? As the hon. Lady said, we are keen to understand what the Minister means by full employment. That debate will be developed by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham and I know we are all very much looking forward to his erudite speech.

[The Chair]

Very much.

[Kate Green]

It is good to have your endorsement, Mr Streeter.

We also know that progress on tackling unemployment is not necessarily linear. Even if the Government’s programmes are entirely commendable, effective and produce very positive results—hon. Members will not be surprised to learn that we may have some questions about the efficacy of some of them—as we famously heard from our political forebears, events happen that can blow the finest ministerial plans off course. Looking at the recent history of employment figures, if we are prepared to accept that the definition of full unemployment is, let us say, an employment rate of 80%, we were nearly at full employment in 2008. Then, of course, there was a significant rise in unemployment as a result of the world financial crash.

Although we have begun to see the very preliminary shoots of recovery—it is notable that people tended to stay in work after the 2008 recession, compared with previous recessions—the progress has not been constant since the economy began to recover after the recession. The last two sets of unemployment figures we have seen—we expect some more tomorrow—show unemployment rising again, and there are particularly worrying trends in relation to youth unemployment, which has proven to be a particularly stubborn nut for the Government to crack.

Amendment 24, tabled by the hon. Member for Livingston, is really interesting. I hope the Minister will tell us why she thinks it is right to have a sunset clause. Is she trying to protect future Governments? It is very kind of her to think about protecting future Labour Governments, but we are ambitious about full employment. We were the first to speak about it 10 years ago.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Twenty.

[Kate Green]

Twenty, my right hon. Friend says; I am too young to remember.

We would be happy for an incoming Labour Government to be held to account for full employment. It is an ambition that goes to the heart of my party; indeed, it is embedded in our name. This is an interesting amendment. I want the Minister to explain to the Committee why the Government want to put a sunset clause in the Bill. I very much look forward to the debate we are going to have.

[The Minister for Employment (Priti Patel)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter, as we begin line-by-line scrutiny.

The Bill introduces a statutory duty to report on the progress towards full employment. It is the right moment, as we start our scrutiny, to debate full employment. I am pleased that the statutory duty to report on progress has been welcomed by both Opposition parties in the Committee. The clause extends to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. All right hon. and hon. Members in the Committee will have heard in the run-up to the general election and in subsequent debates that the Government want everyone, regardless of where they live, to fulfil their ambitions relating to work if they can do so.

As the Government set out in our manifesto, we aspire for the country to be the best place in the world to start a business and we want to achieve the highest level of employment. Therefore, producing an annual report illustrating progress towards full employment across the UK demonstrates the Government’s clear and transparent intention to continue to commit to those aspirations. We want the UK to be the best place in the world to create a job, get a job, keep a job, have long-term, sustained employment and be helped to look for another job if one’s circumstances change. Over the next five years, we want to move from a low-wage, high-tax, high-welfare economy to a higher-wage, lower-tax, lower-welfare economy.

It is worth pausing to put this in context. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston mentioned a raft of measures, including employment programmes, that have enabled more people to be in work than previously. The labour market has improved since 2010. Employment is up at 31 million, and there have been steady increases. The employment rate is now 73.4%. We recognise that there is more to do; hence the commitment to full employment.

--- Later in debate ---

The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston mentioned at some length the Scotland Bill and the extensive debates that we had during its Committee stage. That Bill is still progressing. For the record, on the hon. Lady’s illustrative point about DWP Ministers not attending the Select Committee in Scotland, I will be going in the next two to three weeks. I look at that as very much a part of the ongoing dialogue that we should have with the devolved Administrations in this important space.

[Kate Green]

That is interesting information. I know that informal meetings have taken place and have been referred to in some of the correspondence that I mentioned between DWP Ministers and the Scottish Parliament. Would the Minister welcome a legislative requirement upon her to attend?

--- Later in debate ---

[Hannah Bardell]

Thank you, Mr Streeter. This has been an interesting debate. I heard some encouraging remarks from Labour Members, and I hear what the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston says about waiting for the Scotland Bill. However, I would say that, disappointingly, we have not seen any movement or support from the Government on the Scotland Bill. It is important that we have reporting mechanisms and commitments put down in legislation.

[Kate Green]

The hon. Lady is right that we have not yet seen a great deal of progress on the Scotland Bill, and it is difficult to predict whether that Bill will be overtaken by this one. It seems to have become stuck somewhere in the long grass. Does the hon. Lady agree, having rightly exposed this question this afternoon, that we might hope that Ministers will take note and accelerate the progress of the Scotland Bill? Does she also agree that if they fail to address the points that she has raised today, it would be a good idea to bring the issue back when we discuss this Bill on Report?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

I beg to move amendment 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 6, at end insert—

“(1A) In this report the Secretary of State must also set out the progress that has been made toward halving the disability employment gap.”

To require the report on progress towards full employment to also report on progress towards the Government’s stated aim to halve the disability employment gap.

The amendment is in my name and in that of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham. In it, we make the case for a requirement to report on disability employment. I believe all hon. and right hon. Members share our concern about the substantial gap in employment rate between disabled and non-disabled people. Despite efforts over many years and some progress, the gap still stands at an unacceptable 30%. That has to be a worry for everybody.

It is, however, quite unclear from the Bill how Ministers intend to narrow the disability employment gap, how doing so will contribute to the overall full employment target that we have discussed, and what timescale they have in mind for reducing that gap. We warmly welcome the ambition of, as I understand it, halving the disability employment gap, but our amendment is designed to explore the fact that that is an ambitious target, unsupported by either targets or plans.

Not only does the employment gap between disabled people and the rest of the working age population stand at an alarmingly high 30%—only around 48% of disabled people are in work—but different groups within that very low level of employment experience different employment outcomes. The employment rate for people with learning disabilities, for example, is a shockingly low 8%. For people with autism, I believe it is around 15%, and for people with mental health difficulties it is relatively high. Around one in four people in the workplace will experience a mental health problem at some point in their working life, but despite the prevalence of mental health problems, employers remain suspicious, and they are often reluctant to employ people with mental health problems. As I often say, however, in reality they probably already do, but they just do not know it. We think the Government’s aim of halving the disability employment gap is ambitious, but we think it is right. We support that aim, and we want to discuss with the Minister this afternoon the steps she can take to ensure that it is achieved.

[Emily Thornberry]

I have been listening with great interest to what my hon. Friend has been saying, but I might have missed something. When did the Government make that promise to halve unemployment among people with disabilities?

[Kate Green]

I cannot recall exactly, but perhaps the Minister will be able to enlighten us. She may even wish to intervene on me to do so. I believe that that aim was announced very recently. My impression is that that has happened since the general election, and possibly over the summer. Perhaps her officials will be able to advise her if she, like me, cannot recall the exact date.

We agree that it is important to have that ambition for the level of employment among disabled people. It is important for our economy. We are massively wasting the talents and contribution of many disabled people. In written evidence from Leonard Cheshire, the Committee was informed that the achievement of the Government’s ambition could make an immense contribution to the economy of between £13 billion and £68 billion a year. That, by any measure, is a substantial difference. Of course, it would also make a tremendous difference to disabled individuals, many of whom would love to be working but cannot obtain the work they would like. For a whole range of reasons, they experience significant barriers to labour market participation. It is, of course, absolutely right that we should work systematically through dismantling those barriers. In my opinion, disabled people should have the right to work. They should have the right to good work, and to the dignity of good work, which I think all of us in the House value. I commend Ministers on their ambition, but we will want to test them on the substance that sits behind it.

As I said, many disabled people who would like to work are not working, although they certainly have no lack of ambition to work. Indeed, their ambition to work is substantially higher than among non-disabled people who are not working. For example, among those with qualifications at level 3, 14% of disabled people who are not working would like to be working, compared with 6% of non-disabled people. That shows in just one set of statistics—many more could be pulled out—that disabled people are keen to work where that can be made possible.

However, we have many significant concerns about how the Government are approaching the delivery and achievement of their ambition. We have concerns that Government policies are playing out in a way that is not helping at all. For example, the Work programme has failed to deliver specialist employment support that meets the particular circumstances and needs of disabled people. Today it delivers employment outcomes—jobs, in other words—for only about one in 10 of those on the Work programme and on employment and support allowance. That is not good enough. At that rate of progress, it will take us a very long time to achieve Ministers’ ambition of halving the disability employment gap.

Many disabled people are not even receiving the support that they need while on ESA to take the steps that they need to enter or to facilitate their entry into the workplace. Later in our debates, the Committee can look forward to extensive discussions of the Government’s proposals on those in the work-related activity group. We know that the Government are making a case to cut the benefits of people in that group, which my colleagues and I will firmly oppose. We do not believe that taking money away from disabled people is the way to facilitate their return to work. We also know that the Government have made a broad-brush case that it will be part of a process of offering additional employment-related support to disabled people in the WRAG, but we have heard no details at all yet about what that additional support will look like.

If we cannot debate that at this point in the Committee’s deliberations, I give notice to the Minister that we will be very keen to have a full discussion of what is intended and what is in Ministers’ minds in relation to that additional support when we debate the relevant provisions in the Bill, which are very worrying with regard to the work-related activity group. They worry me, but they are causing huge anxiety to many of the 500,000 or so people in the work-related activity group.

[Neil Coyle]

Does my hon. Friend not think that disabled people’s confidence in the Government’s ability to support them with this commendable target has been somewhat undermined by the reduction in the number of disabled people supported by Access to Work, the number of disability employment advisers and the amount of employment for disabled people in Remploy factories? However in context or out of context they were, the comments made by a Department for Work and Pensions Minister were unfortunate. Does my hon. Friend think that that has affected disabled people’s confidence in the Government’s ability and commitment to ensure that decent employment opportunities are available?

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; there is real scepticism about what the Government really intend. I think the Minister is incredibly well intentioned in her ambitions for good-quality, sustainable job outcomes for disabled people. However, wishing for the ends is not the same as achieving them. We need the right steps and the right measures to provide support for disabled people and crucially, as my hon. Friend says, to give them the sense of confidence they need to take advantage of the support on offer. If they feel that the Government’s motivations are, in fact, to make it harder for them to survive while preparing for work, or to push them into unsuitable work—work that may actually make those with serious health conditions even less well—that is naturally not a frame of mind in which we would wish anybody to enter an employment support programme.

The barriers faced by disabled people to an equal chance and an equal right to participate in the labour market are myriad, and many were referred to in the written and oral evidence received by the Committee. For example, we heard from Mind, which I thought gave some interesting and illuminating evidence to us last week, that there is a particular concern for people with mental health problems who are looking for work. It needs to be the right sort of work and the right sort of support to get people back to work.

According to Mind, just 8% of people with mental health problems who have gone through the Work programme have achieved a sustained job outcome. Furthermore, 83% said that their experience of being on the Work programme had made their health worse, and 76% said it made them feel less able to work. Those are really depressing statistics. I know the Minister will share my huge concern about those figures and the experiences of people with mental health problems. It is not a good sign for halving the disability employment gap given that, as I said earlier, so many of us will experience a mental health problem at some point in our lives.

We all share a real concern about young people’s employment prospects. We all know the scarring effects on a young person at the beginning of their working life of not being able to get into the labour market in order to build up their experience of work and ultimately progress and develop their career. I am absolutely passionate about that. I am of the generation that experienced a collapse in employment for young people at the beginning of the 1980s, and I remember the fear and anxiety we lived with at the time. We have seen it happen to subsequent generations, and I know that there is real concern about ensuring our young people have the very best chances to start their careers and get into the world of work.

The anxiety we rightly have about our young people’s employment prospects is massively amplified for disabled young people. Their employment chances, and the educational experiences many of them have that lead to their employment chances, are so much worse. We must all be concerned about that. We know that disabled young people are four times more likely to be unemployed at the age of 26 than non-disabled young people. They are twice as likely to be not in education, employment or training. To the extent that the Minister’s ambition to halve the disability employment gap can bear down on those shocking statistics and improve on the very poor performance we are achieving for our young people, she will have the wholehearted support of the Labour party.

There is widespread support for significant and radical reform of the employment support being delivered to disabled people. We heard it from our witnesses, we saw it in the written evidence and it is widely debated around the House. It is therefore a huge disappointment to us that nothing in the Bill gives any sense of what the Government are actually going to do about the disability employment gap. There is not even any specific reference to it in the Bill, with its full employment reporting obligation. That must call into question the seriousness with which the Government are prepared to put their money where their mouth is. A reporting obligation would really put a spotlight on what the Government are doing and what their programmes and initiatives are achieving to halve the disability employment gap.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hannah Bardell]

I commend the hon. Lady on a great speech. I agree with much of what she says. Remploy was one of the organisations that gave evidence. Although it is now successful, it previously had funding pulled by the Government, who took away vital opportunities. In Scotland, hundreds of disabled people lost the opportunity to work. The Scottish Government intervened and have now developed an organisation called Haven PTS, which I have visited personally. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need investment in such organisations so that employment opportunities are out there for people with disabilities?

[Kate Green]

I have never been a purist on Remploy. It seems there is a place for such employment support for some people; it helps with their sense of dignity and pride. That has in many cases been taken away from those who lost their jobs on the closure of the factories. Their chances of returning to work have been pretty poor.

Even more concerning is what happened when the Government closed the Remploy factories on the back of the independent report that they had commissioned from Liz Sayce. It was said that the money could be better applied to giving disabled people a chance in the mainstream labour market, and we expected that that money would go into, for example, the Access to Work programme, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark mentioned. In the previous Parliament, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions found that it appeared no such thing had occurred. Indeed, it seemed impossible to find out what had happened to money released from the closure of the Remploy factories. That is hugely regrettable. It does not seem to have done much to benefit those who had lost their jobs as a result of the closure. I very much share the hon. Lady’s concerns.

We heard from many of our witnesses about the need for personalised specialist support designed and delivered more locally. Kirsty McHugh told us about that last week, and she highlighted the importance of the adviser relationship and building confidence. We heard a lot about the need for a better payment mechanism for providers. For example, Matt Oakley said in his evidence that he thought the Government might need to look again at the attachment fee for providers who were supporting disabled people with programmes to get them back to work.

Will the Minister say something about what has happened with Work Choice, a specialist programme for disabled people that witnesses in our evidence session last week were positive about? We know that the proportion of people who go into work having been on Work Choice is 10 times the proportion of disabled people who go into work having been on the Work programme, but it is underused. I have been told that in my constituency the payment structures are being changed to make it less likely that providers will work with those with the highest barriers to labour market participation, who are the group that we understood Work Choice was intended to help.

We also heard, and have had written evidence, about the importance of joining up the health and social care agendas with the employment agenda to facilitate a return to work. For example, people need flexible health provision so that they can get an appointment with a doctor or a specialist at a time that does not clash with when they wants to go to work, and they need social care that helps them go to work. Perhaps somebody can arrive to help them get up that bit earlier in the morning, so that they have time to prepare themselves and go out to work. Although the integration of health and social care is welcome, I suggest to the Government that the missing bit of the jigsaw, if I may suggest this to the Government, is employment. Joining them up would facilitate and maximise the chances of people moving into work. We can also question whether the criteria by which local authorities are required to provide social care should include access to employment.

Routes to work are important. Later we will debate participation in apprenticeships, internships and traineeships, and we also heard that it would be very important for the Government to act as an exemplar and a good commissioner. Self-employment has been raised.

[The Chair]

Order. This is a very powerful speech, but if the hon. Lady could relate it more to the reporting of the employment gap, that would be helpful.

[Kate Green]

I understand, Mr Streeter; you are quite correct.

It is important that the Government come forward with a report on how things are progressing and on what measures we can have to understand the nature of the progress, but I think Parliament would also welcome a report that described the steps the Government were taking, the different labour market approaches that were being used and how each of those was more or less effective for people with different health conditions or disabled people with different impairments. I am particularly interested in any report that might be prepared that properly analyses the use of self-employment for disabled people. We heard some interesting and, I think, ambivalent views from our witnesses last week, who said that it could be good and give disabled people more freedom, autonomy and choice, but that it could also be quite isolating, which would be a concern.

We heard a great deal about employer engagement. Public reporting might be one way to enthuse employers and drive up employer engagement, because it would be very much in the public domain and visible, and that would facilitate public debate.

I hope that the Minister welcomes amendment 2. I understand that, if she feels unable to accept it in full today, she may wish to reflect on it and come back with some of her own suggestions. I am open to hearing from her, but we must all agree that a focus on this issue is really important to every single one of us, and that a proper statutory report of progress would be extremely helpful in achieving the ambition that Ministers have.

[Emily Thornberry]

It has come to my attention that the first time we were aware that the Conservatives said that they wanted to halve the disability employment gap was in a brochure snappily entitled “Strong Leadership. A Clear Economic Plan. A Brighter, More Secure Future.” On page 17 of this book of fiction, there is the title “Jobs for all”, and following that, it is stated:

“We will fight for equal opportunity”,

and that

“the jobless rate for this group”—

people with disabilities—

“remains too high and, as part of our objective to achieve full employment, we will aim to halve the disability employment gap: we will transform policy, practice and public attitudes, so that hundreds of thousands more disabled people who can and want to be in work find employment.”

What is interesting is the context within which the Government made that promise—that solemn vow—to the country about what they would provide. They said that they would provide full employment and, if I can repeat it for emphasis,

“as part of our objective to achieve full employment, we will aim to halve the disability employment gap”.

If the Government have decided to put into legislation the solemn vow to have full employment—clause 1 states that they are going to report to Parliament to tell us how well they are doing on that—it makes complete sense, as part of that, for them to have an obligation to tell us how they are doing with halving the disability employment gap.

That is the only point I wanted to make.

[Priti Patel]

I welcome the debate and the points made by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston, because this is an important area for discussion.

The amendment’s purpose is to require the annual report to Parliament to include progress on the measures that have been made towards halving the disability employment gap. To put that into context, as she touched on, the Government are absolutely committed to the ambition to halve the disability employment gap. It is a challenging one—there is no doubt about it, which is why I welcome her contribution—because it requires us all, in my view, to transform policy, practice and public attitudes, and the Government are committed to doing all that they can to ensure that disabled people who can and want to work are supported and able to move into work as well.

The hon. Lady will know—we have discussed this in previous debates—that there has been an increase of more than 200,000 in the number of disabled people in work in the last year. That is why it is important to bring together—again, I touched on this issue in the previous discussion—other aspects of Government to work together to achieve the objective in the right way, so that the right kind of support and provision can be made.

As progress against the disability employment gap commitment is, of course, a key factor in achieving the wider commitment of full employment, that is why we take the view that it is not necessary for progress on that commitment to be reported on in the annual report. We believe that that is consistent with the Government’s manifesto commitment, which we said was part of our objective to achieve full employment, in addition to the aim of halving the disability employment gap. We will be able to achieve full employment only by achieving progress towards halving the disability employment gap.

I will touch on some of the points that the hon. Lady mentioned, particularly with regard to support for groups and with regard to how we will do more to halve the disability employment gap. She will know there are a range of Government programmes and initiatives. She mentioned Access to Work. Indeed, we have extended Access to Work to provide more support to disabled people in pre-employment, through work experience and obviously through employment-based training, internships and traineeships.

The hon. Lady touched on the Work programme as well. With regard to both the Work programme and the Work Choice programme, we take the view that they are not directly comparable, but of course the contracts for both programmes will end in 2017 and we are already working with the providers to get a better understanding of how we can develop them, including the support that is required, and so we can invest in the right way. She mentioned payment models. We are having those discussions right now, and it is right and proper that we work with those providers. We have also launched a specialist employment support programme, which is an innovative new programme that again provides extensive specialist support to those disabled people who need help and support.

Those are just illustrative examples of the work that is taking place in this area. However, in relation to the amendment, I will just restate that we will be able to achieve full employment only by achieving progress towards halving the disability employment gap. The annual report will include an update on the Government’s progress in achieving that ambition. That is why in our view the amendment is unnecessary, and I therefore urge the hon. Members who tabled it to withdraw it.

[Kate Green]

I welcome what the Minister has said about recognising the importance of halving the disability employment gap, and what she has said about its being a prerequisite for achieving the ambition of full employment, which I think is right. However, it always drives purposeful and effective policy when the spotlight of reporting and monitoring is put into the public domain, and therefore I wish to divide the Committee on the amendment.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Child Poverty

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure, Mr Howarth, to respond to this debate and to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) on introducing it this afternoon.

As the debate has proceeded, we have understood the complexity and multi-layering that is intrinsic in child poverty, but we should also recognise that we know what works to tackle it. Looking at the track record and progress that was made under Labour Governments between 1997 and 2010, I am proud that we saw huge progress with more than 1 million children in the UK lifted out of poverty.

We know what led to that massive reduction in child poverty. As the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire acknowledged, it was in no small measure due to the effectiveness of tax credits, and to the rise in employment, particularly the employment of lone parents, which increased from 44% in the mid-1990s to approaching 60% when we entered this decade.

None the less and despite that progress, today, as we have heard, 3.7 million children in this country live in relative poverty. Perhaps even more depressing, since 2011-12, progress to reduce that number further has stalled. There was no progress whatever under the coalition Government after 2011-12, and the prediction is that under this Parliament, we will start to see a substantial rise in child poverty. None of us can be satisfied or complacent about that.

We have, rightly, heard a lot about the importance of measuring child poverty and having meaningful targets for tracking and tackling progress. At one time, there was cross-party consensus on the importance of measuring relative income poverty and targets for its reduction, but that consensus has broken down between the parties. It seems to have broken down in the Prime Minister’s mind—we have heard him say that he is in favour of targets and measuring and addressing relative poverty, and that he is not and believes that that is irrelevant. We have heard that the Government intend in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, which is now being debated in Committee, to remove the targets altogether and no longer to set that hard ambition for us to improve our performance. I cannot help feeling—the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) hinted at this—that that is motivated by fear that the targets will not be met, fear that the position will worsen and fear that the Government will be held to account, as they should be.

We know the importance of having targets and an agreed definition of poverty. Targets drive action. They drive progress and they allow for comparisons that show the direction of travel and the trends, and enable us to compare ourselves with our international peers. No one would pretend that child poverty in this country is like child poverty in some of the poorest economies of the world, but the measures in the Child Poverty Act 2010 have presented a very useful picture that has enabled us to compare performance here with the best performing countries in Europe. Indeed, that was the ambition. It was not to eliminate child poverty to zero, because we all recognise the existence of frictional poverty, but to be at the level of the best in Europe. Until the arrival of the coalition Government, we were on track to achieve that.

It may be that recognition of the importance of targets is why in 2013, when the Government consulted on changing or abolishing the targets, 97% of those who responded said there was no need for any change, so it is highly regrettable that there are proposals from Ministers today to do something that has been roundly rubbished by all the respondents to that consultation. I am shocked by the lack of notice that the Government have taken.

We also heard today, rightly, about the importance and centrality of income in defining, measuring and tackling child poverty. Indeed, Kitty Stewart of the London School of Economics has shown that income is the single most significant factor and indicator of poor outcomes for children across a whole range of measures, including educational attainment and poor health. We also know that poverty has a cost to society as a whole. Estimates by the Child Poverty Action Group suggest that the cost to society of failing to tackle child poverty is £29 billion a year.

In recognition of the intrinsic link between low income and poor outcomes for children, the Child Poverty Act 2010, which received cross-party consensus, covered not just income poverty and did not require measures only on income poverty, but also required strategies on, for example, education, health, parental employment, debt and parenting. All those are associated with high levels of child poverty, but they are not the same as child poverty and it is important not to confuse the two.

None the less, one of my regrets about the abolition of much of the 2010 Act is that we will lose the requirement to produce those strategies. This morning, we heard in the Standing Committee considering the Welfare Reform and Work Bill—the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire may have repeated this this afternoon—that the intention in Scotland is to continue to produce that strategy and I understand from this morning’s evidence session with witnesses that that is also the case in Wales. However, there is no expectation that that will happen in England. Ministers will not expect local authorities to produce comprehensive strategies to address child poverty. If I am wrong about that, I shall be very pleased to hear it and I hope that the Minister will be able to contradict my assertion this afternoon.

We know that the Government know that income is important. Their own evidence review in 2014 showed that it was the most important factor, and not just, as we have heard today, that low income arises because families are out of work, but when there is insufficient income from earnings. It was right for hon. Members to point out this afternoon the absolute inadequacy and insufficiency of measuring only worklessness when two thirds of children in poverty are growing up in working households. We know the reasons for that. They are not laziness on the part of those parents, but poorly paid jobs, lack of access to flexible jobs that can be combined with family responsibilities, high child care costs, high housing costs and ill health. The need to care for a family member suffering ill health or their own ill health curtails employment chances.

[Jim Shannon]

I mentioned during my contribution the effect on those on low incomes of buying cheaply because it is better financially for their pocket, but that affects their diet and health. Does the hon. Lady believe that we should also address that issue?

[Kate Green]

The hon. Gentleman made a useful contribution on the poverty premium: that the poor pay more for the basics. He now adds another important dimension: that lack of income means that the poorest in our society are unable to afford to have the quality of life that protects health, wellbeing and social participation.

The critique of measures on which the Government are relying to underpin their rejection of the Child Poverty Act 2010 is simply wrong. Let us remember that it is not that the income measure in the Act does not capture the full picture of poverty. There is not one income poverty measure, but four to give us a rounded view. It is important to continue to measure relative income poverty, which we expect to rise. None the less, Ministers should be grateful for the four measures in the 2010 Act because it is possible that at the same time as seeing a rise in relative income poverty, we may see a fall in absolute poverty in the next few years. If median wages rise, but benefits are frozen or rise only with prices, we will see a rise in relative poverty. Conversely, absolute poverty could fall if benefits rise in line with the consumer prices index. It is important for Ministers to recognise that we have a good mix of measures in the 2010 Act, which would enable them to point to the complexity of the picture, rather than rejecting the Act on the misleading grounds that it measures relative poverty alone.

We have no analysis yet of the impact on child poverty of the measures in either the Welfare Reform and Work Bill or the others announced in the summer Budget, some of which we are debating this afternoon. However, we know that the impact of those measures will not be felt in the same way across all family types and structures. Lone parents, couples with several children and those with high housing costs will be hit particularly hard.

As we have heard this afternoon, it is important also to understand that the effect of the so-called national living wage will not wholly compensate for the cuts that are being made. Indeed, the cuts are particularly perverse when we consider that many of them are to in-work benefits, increasing, not reducing work disincentives. I am quite at a loss to understand why Ministers think that is a sensible way to proceed.

There is also a massive amount of ignorance about the purpose of different policy instruments to tackle poverty. Everybody welcomes higher minimum pay. Of course it is right that people should be paid properly for the work that they do, and of course it is right that the taxpayer should not subsidise low-pay economies, although we should recognise that achieving a minimum income standard for some families from earnings alone would simply drive businesses out of business. We have heard the projections that even a national living wage may lead to the loss of some tens of thousands of jobs. That is why, in addition to measures to tackle low pay, it is important to invest in tax credits, because many low-paid people who will benefit from the increase in the national living wage may not live in poor households. Conversely, many of those who are going to receive the national living wage will not be lifted out of poverty by that alone, because of their family and household structure and size. Therefore, it is important that we proceed on both fronts, and we cannot expect, at the lower end of the labour market, for wages alone to lift all families out of poverty.

Income poverty is crucial, and the Government’s analysis of the limitations of the Child Poverty Act and the limited approach that they will take to address rising family poverty, frankly, are simply wrong. It is regrettable that, with so much evidence before us and such a long history of having seen what works and what does not, Ministers are so uninterested in looking at the facts and the evidence, and instead insist on pursuing an ideology that will cause hardship for many, and, for the most vulnerable, destitution, the likes of which we have not seen for two decades.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Tomlinson]

I will address that later, so please be patient for a little bit longer.

Children grow up without the aspiration to achieve. They become almost certain to repeat the difficult lives of their parents, following a path from dependency to despondency, rather than to independence. At the beginning of my remarks, I talked about my background. That is what drove me into politics. We all have our calling, our passions and our priorities. That very much was what drove me into politics. As I said, I think we all share the same end goal; there is just disagreement on how we would look to achieve it.

On our record on worklessness and poverty, I highlight that many hon. Members have referred to the IFS statistics throughout the debate. I sound a strong note of caution on that. The statistics have been wrong every single year since 2011, and in the summer, they were half a million out, so I attach a big note of caution to the predictions and doom-mongering.

[Kate Green]

The Minister will know that one of the reasons why there may have been a discrepancy between the IFS prediction and the out-turn is to do with the use of survey data and different datasets. Does he agree that there is no doubt at all that the accumulation of measures announced in the summer Budget will increase child poverty, perhaps by many hundreds of thousands of pounds? They cannot fail to, because they will make working families worse off.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the shadow Minister, but I am afraid we disagree on that, and I am setting out why I think that is not going to be the case.

Despite a huge increase in spending, by 2010, the number of households where no member ever worked nearly doubled, in-work poverty rose and the Labour Government missed their own 2010 child poverty target by 600,000 children. Compare that with our record. During the previous Parliament, we turned around Labour’s legacy of worklessness. There are now 2 million more people in work. To put that in context, it is more than the figure for the whole of Europe put together. We have the fastest growing major economy.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (First sitting)

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Q 24 Thank you very much for coming. My first question is to Neera, about proposals in the Bill in relation to the Child Poverty Act 2010.

The Government have obviously criticised the Child Poverty Act, in relation to its focus on measuring relative income poverty and ignoring other aspects of child poverty. What is your critique of the proposals in the Bill in relation to measuring and tracking progress on child poverty? Can you also say something about how important it is to understand the impact on different families?

Neera Sharma: Our key concern is that measures in the Bill are likely to increase child poverty now and in future, and that families that are already struggling on low incomes could become even poorer. We are absolutely very concerned that the mere repeal of the Child Poverty Act—it was passed with cross-party support—will send the message that the UK Government no longer considers ending child poverty to be an important goal.

We feel that the Government cannot ignore the impact of growing up in a family that is struggling on a very low income. While we agree that income is not the only measurement that affects a child’s life chances, it does have an impact on health, on life expectancy, on academic outcomes and on future successes in the workplace. So we feel that it is vital that the Government continues to report on an income measure and considers the needs of children living in poverty whose parents are in work, as well as those in workless households.

[Kate Green]

Q 25 Can you say something about the way in which the Government should or should not track different kinds of family structure, different kinds of family background, and whether you see this legislation as facilitating that?

Neera Sharma: We believe that the Government should look at the situation of different families. For example, we know that children in certain black and minority ethnic families are much more likely to grow up in poverty. So some of the proposals in the Bill, such as limiting tax credits to two children, will impact harshly on larger families, many of whom are likely to be BME families.

[Emily Thornberry]

Q 26 I represent a constituency that is part of a London borough which has the sixth highest child poverty figures in the whole country, and we have already been hit very hard by the benefit cap, with many families having to move out of Islington to outer London, so children are having to commute for many hours to go to school. Can you tell us what it means for children to be uprooted from their local communities at an early age, and how their education can be affected, either by changing schools or by having to travel 20 or 30 miles to get to school each morning? How might that impact on child poverty and their life chances?

Neera Sharma: We know that children who grow up in poor families do less well in terms of their education. Uprooting those children from the communities and the support they need, as you have said, has an impact on their life chances. We are concerned that families will have less income as a result of the cap, but we are also very concerned about the mechanisms for reviewing that cap, because the Bill allows the Government to review that cap without having to report to Parliament. It is really important that there is full scrutiny and that the Government do report to Parliament, and that they ask the Social Security Advisory Committee to undertake an annual review of the cap that is reported to Parliament before any decisions are made about increasing, or decreasing—as it probably will be—the cap.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hannah Bardell]

Q 36 I have a question about resources. A significant number of women will be affected and will need potentially to get back to work. Surely extra resources are required to cater for that. Do you feel that there is adequate—

Emma Stewart: There is a genuine challenge on the ground in Jobcentre Plus, but other front-line providers can support parents. There is a capability issue as well as a capacity issue. It goes back to the point that we do not have lone parent specialist advisers any more. We have advisers, and there is a need to educate and inform advisers—we are, in our organisation, involved with this—to understand the parameters that lone parents face, and to provide a coaching intervention that effectively understands and supports them to find the kind of work that they need.

Two thirds of women currently underutilise their skills in the workplace. So for example, finding a job with a higher salary as opposed to just more hours, as a simple line of communication to advisers, is really critical. There is also an opportunity with the Work programme to look at the fact that providers will do what they get paid for in a commercial welfare-to-work environment. If providers are commissioned on the basis of job quality and job type outputs as much as volume of people into work, you will see a shift in approach.

[Kate Green]

Q 37 I want to tease out the issue about flexibilities for parents, especially lone parents, in the proposed new conditionality. There are, within guidance, opportunities for flexibility in the requirements that are imposed on lone parents now. In your experience, have you seen those well applied, badly applied or not applied? What difference can they make to the ability of a lone parent to make that journey to work?

Emma Stewart: It is very mixed. It depends, at a regional level in the Jobcentre Plus, on what the senior management team is like. In some districts that we work in, there is a real investment and there has been a focus on getting this right. In others there is a genuine lack of awareness.

The churn in Jobcentre Plus does not help at the moment. There is a need to think about consistent learning and development programmes for Jobcentre Plus advisers. If guidance, as opposed to an explicit framework, is going to be applied, that guidance for Jobcentre Plus advisers needs to be really clear about what good practice looks like to support lone parents in particular.

[Kate Green]

Q 38 Are parents and independent advisers aware of these flexibilities and able to encourage, in the negotiation of the claimant commitment, that the lone parent should raise these issues and talk to the jobcentre adviser about them?

Emma Stewart: How information is cascaded is really challenging within Jobcentre. We know that the Government have lost their ability to run campaigns effectively, but some investment is needed into how parents are made aware. For us, the issue of local enterprise partnerships, devolved activity, and how local authorities and LEPs work together at a district level to ensure that communication is made available to advisers is important. It cannot all be centralised.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

Q 39 Picking up on the point about the support that is available for lone parents at Jobcentre Plus, we have seen a steady increase in the employment rate among lone parents. Is that because the advisory role being undertaken by Jobcentre Plus is working?

Neera Sharma: I believe that in some areas it is working, but there are huge geographical variations, especially for parents who have been out of the labour market for a long time or for vulnerable parents who may have disabilities or have a child with a disability. It varies incredibly from one area to another. Also, advisers have quite a lot of discretion in how they support families and deal with conditionality and sanctions, so I would reinforce Emma’s point around better training and guidance for staff in Jobcentre Plus, especially in their dealings with families who are vulnerable. They will see more of those families seeking their advice as the conditionality of parents with younger children starts to commence.

Emma Stewart: Can I just add that we have also seen a large increase in in-work poverty? The data on more lone parents working is clearly true, but the extent to which they are working in sustainable, quality jobs is not yet fully evidenced. We know from Work programme sustainability rates that the churn is still quite high for lone parents who are moved into work and moved off benefits, but then come back on because they find it hard to sustain a job as it is not paying enough.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

We have already had a review. Specifically with regard to the statistics, the trend is that the number of people dying, as a proportion of the population, is going down. I bring the House back to my point that any attempt to extrapolate anything beyond the figures is completely wrong.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

On Second Reading of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, the Secretary of State said that if someone is in the work-related activity group, they should be

“capable of doing some work very soon.”—[Official Report, 20 July 2015; Vol. 598, c. 1260.]

But in July 2014, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions said that 80,000 people had been placed in the WRAG with a prognosis that a change in their condition was unlikely in the long term. Does the Minister agree that those people should not be in the WRAG?

[Priti Patel]

Of course, all claimants in the WRAG are assessed, and that assessment determines that they should be in that group. Importantly, people in that group who need more support to prepare for work receive employment and support allowance. I emphasise that that support helps them to prepare to go back to work, whether in the short or medium term. Importantly, claimants are asked to participate in activities that are both appropriate and reasonable for each individual claimant.

[Kate Green]

But 80,000 people who are not expected to get better have been placed in the WRAG, including 8,000 with degenerative conditions, which by definition mean they will become less well. Cutting £30 a week from such people’s benefit will not make them better or help them work; surely it will just make them poorer.

[Priti Patel]

I reiterate what has been said previously: no one will lose out in financial support. [Interruption.] This is for those who are already on the benefit. Importantly, those in the WRAG will be given support to prepare for a return to work in the short or medium term. It is wrong to assume that their condition will automatically deteriorate. Everyone who participates in that group will have the appropriate support, and the expectation on them is both appropriate and reasonable for the individual claimant, with their circumstances taken into account.

DWP Data

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

Absolutely; we will be doing exactly that.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

There is huge disquiet among disabled people, as story after story surfaces in the media about disabled people being found fit for work and dying shortly afterwards—last week another story appeared in the Daily Mirror about a disabled man who died two weeks after his assessment. The shenanigans in the DWP around the release of the statistics are concerning—and puzzling, if the Department has nothing to hide. First, the Secretary of State told Parliament that the DWP did not collect the data, in the teeth of the Information Commissioner’s ruling to release them. Within days, he was flatly contradicted by the Prime Minister, and now we hear that the DWP is appealing publication of the data that the Secretary of State first said were not collected.

Will the Minister come clean before the House? She said the data would be published “shortly”, “very soon” and “no later than the autumn”. Why is it taking so long? On what grounds is the DWP appealing publication, and will the data, when eventually published, be timely? It is feared that by the time this procrastination has finally resulted in publication, the data will be so out of date as to be pretty well useless. Will the raw data be published, and what analysis will accompany them to meet the high standards for the publication of Government statistics to which she claims the Department aspires? Finally, will she explain why the Secretary of State first claimed the data were not being collected, when blatantly they were and are, as he now apparently acknowledges?

[Priti Patel]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. I think it is fair to say that, as I stated earlier, the Government are going to publish these statistics. Despite the scaremongering and the gross misrepresentation from the Opposition—scaremongering about suicides, I should hasten to add, which is a complete misrepresentation —I should say that Labour introduced the work capability assessment back in 2008, and at that time Labour Members did not say that it was leading to people committing suicide.

When it comes to publication, this is complex statistical information. As the hon. Lady and, I am sure, all Opposition Members will know, we are bound as a Department by the Statistics Authority on the quality of information that is published, so it is very important that we get this right. Let me emphasise that officials are working as we speak to prepare the data, and we will be publishing them very soon. I have said it already and I will say it again: we will publish before the autumn this year, and once the data are published I will be very happy to take questions on the content and any other aspect of the data that the hon. Lady and hon. Members see fit.