Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Margaret Greenwood

Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

It is deeply disappointing when Members of this House trade their principles for perceived political advantage, as the hon. Gentleman seems to have done on universal credit, having of course previously been a strong supporter of the coalition Government’s reforms. He knows full well that direct payments to landlords are available. I have myself met the two most prominent residential landlord organisations very recently and, if he looked at the data, he would see that the proportion of working-age recipients of housing benefit and universal credit in the private rented sector seeking support has not really changed over the past 10 years.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

It is reported that the Law Centres Network says cases are now common in which eviction proceedings come to court after the Department for Work and Pensions has failed to pay rent directly to the landlords of universal credit claimants, even though it says on a claimant’s journal account that a direct rent payment has been made. What action is DWP taking to address this issue as a matter of urgency?

[Kit Malthouse]

As the hon. Lady will know, we have taken significant action to try to improve the situation upfront, not least by providing an additional two weeks of housing benefit for people transitioning to universal credit. People can receive a 100% advance and help with budgeting support, and of course a direct payment is available if landlord or tenant require it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Margaret Greenwood

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend made a remarkably good speech about this just a week or so ago, and I congratulate him on his foresight. He is absolutely right: relative poverty as currently measured suggests that there are quite a lot of poor people in Monte Carlo, which, of course, is not an intuitive picture that people would have. As a Department, we are looking at other measures. We believe that absolute poverty, which currently stands at an all-time low, is a better indicator. Of course material deprivation, which asks specific questions about how people live, holds some promise as an indicator that the public might appreciate.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I am disappointed to hear the Minister be so facetious about a subject as important as child poverty. At the last count, 72% of households whose benefits were capped were those of lone parents and 77% of those lone parents had a child under five. They can escape the cap by working at least 16 hours a week, but are then hit by the cuts to work allowances in universal credit, which trap many in poverty. According to Government figures released last week, more than half a million children are currently in poverty in lone-parent families where their parent—usually the mother—is either in full or part-time work. If the Government really believe in making work pay, will they reverse the cuts to work allowances?

[Kit Malthouse]

I know that the hon. Lady likes to present herself as some kind of latter-day mahatma and as the only person in this House who cares about poverty, but, of course, that is not true. Many of us—as councillors, voluntary workers, social workers and so on—have spent many years fighting poverty, so it would be helpful to the general tone of debate in this House if she were not quite so accusatory. Our view, and the Office for National Statistics points this out, is that 100,000 fewer work-age lone parents are now in poverty and that their biggest problem—the biggest thing that assails them—is childcare. The 85% payment for childcare under universal credit and the increase in availability to 30 hours will give the greatest assistance to lone parents.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Kit Malthouse)]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, not least because we are approaching the deadline for the switchover of SMI from a benefit to a loan. He is absolutely right—this change is specifically designed to keep people in their homes. I urge people to ignore the scare stories being put around, look at the paperwork, take the phone call that has been made and ensure they make a good decision in time.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Had the Secretary of State read the full article that she refers to on Channel 4’s FactCheck, she would have seen that it said that our numbers were in fact correct.

[Margaret Greenwood]

Well, it did. I recommend that the Secretary of State rereads it.

In less than two weeks’ time, support for mortgage interest will change from a benefit to a loan. Government figures released on Friday show that, even at this late stage, the DWP has still not managed to contact 40% of claimants by phone to explain the change, and 30% of all claimants have already declined a loan. A large proportion of claimants are pensioners, and Age UK is warning that many may instead try to manage by cutting back on essentials such as heating. Why have the Government failed to give claimants adequate notice, and will they call a halt to this policy, which risks inflicting hardship on thousands?

[Kit Malthouse]

We have been communicating the changeover with approaching 500,000 pieces of paper since last July, and well over 350,000 telephone calls have been made to the something like 90,000 people in receipt of this benefit. There are specific provisions, post the changeover, to deal with people who perhaps attempt to manage on their own and feel that they cannot do so in that, post the deadline, they can reapply for support and backdate it to 6 April if they so wish.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Margaret Greenwood

Monday 5th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As my hon. Friend knows, the child maintenance system was put in place to enable greater co-operation between parents, on the basis that that often results in a much better outcome for children, but there are parents who fail to do that, and for those circumstances, we have invested significantly in the financial investigations unit of the Child Maintenance Service. We will be consulting further on what more we can do to strengthen our enforcement powers.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister to his place. When the benefit freeze was introduced in April 2016, inflation stood at 0.3%; it is now over 3%, and food prices in December were over 4% higher than a year earlier. A recent study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that one in four of Britain’s poorest households are struggling with problem debt, and new figures from the End Child Poverty coalition show that in some parts of Britain, such as Bethnal Green and Bow in London and Ladywood in Birmingham, over half of children are living in poverty. Their families are no longer just about managing. Will the Government end the social security freeze that is pushing families into poverty?

[Kit Malthouse]

I would advise the hon. Lady to be slightly careful about the statistics she is using. As we heard earlier, there are some particular problems, but in that report in particular there were enormous caveats saying that the measures were not accurate and the numbers not necessarily reliable, particularly on a constituency basis. The Government are committed to a strategy to tackle poverty that involves work, and since 2010 we have 954,000 fewer households in unemployment and moved into work. That is the best thing we can do for their futures.