Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Lord Adebowale Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adebowale]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chief executive of Turning Point, an organisation that works with many of the people who will be affected by this Bill, should it become an Act. I felt compelled to join in this debate because many of the people who stand to be affected are people with whom I and my organisation work; they are some of the most vulnerable in society. It is important that we remind ourselves of this during the course of the debate.

In his opening remarks, the Minister made the point that the rich were going to pay more and carry a greater burden than the poor. However, it is the poor who feel the impact more than the rich. I refer to an article I once read by the sister of the Mayor of London. She pointed out that during times of austerity, the rich of course feel the burden of cuts, but generally the burden is restricted to deciding whether they should take one or two cooks on holiday with them this year. We should think about this Bill in that context.

I would like to raise a few points about the Bill’s potential impact on certain groups and make a few further points about fairness and public attitudes. Those who stand to be impacted include many working-age adults; many people accept that now as a given. Many of those with complex needs and challenges are the people supported by Turning Point. We work with people who are experiencing challenges such as substance abuse, mental ill health, learning disabilities, employment difficulties or a combination of some or all of these. I have said in earlier debates that I have yet to meet any one of our clients who does not want to work.

Around half of those who used Turning Point’s integrated, complex-needs services last year have already had benefit and housing difficulties. They have had problems accessing disability benefits despite physical and mental health problems and have been left with debts due to lengthy appeals processes. The point is that people are already struggling due to changes that have begun to affect them and there are still other changes that will start to hit from April.

I got some advice from Crisis, an organisation that is well respected across the House. It gave me an example of a young man called Russell, who had been urgently looking for a shared property in London since September, but did not have the deposit that nearly all landlords require. His rent for a small studio flat was, until September, paid by housing benefit. However, when the changes to the shared accommodation rate kicked in, his housing benefit was slashed from the £180 a week he required to £86 a week. As a result, he had to drop out of his computer course to look for somewhere to live and has accumulated nearly £3,000 in arrears and been served an eviction notice. Homelessness was a real threat for Russell. I am really pleased to report that this morning, I was told that he has just managed to find a new place to live, but has no idea how he is going to pay back the debt accumulated over that period.

The Bill has been described as a real-terms cut with the IFS estimating that, given the current forecasts for inflation, it could amount to a cumulative 4% real cut in the benefits affected. In reality, we do not know what its impact will be as it depends on future inflation rates. The IRS states that this will expose some of the most vulnerable to inflation risk.

I recognise and welcome the fact that disability benefits and carer’s allowance are exempt from the legislation, but the problem remains that the Bill will apply to the main rate and the work-related activity group component of employment and support allowance. According to Disability Rights UK, all of the 991,000 disabled people receiving ESA in the support group and work-related activity group will experience the impact of a 1% cap, and it estimates that that will amount to a loss equivalent to a loaf of bread and a pint of milk per week, or £87.65 a year. That does not sound like a lot, but I come across people whose lives are hugely affected by the ability to afford that loaf of bread and that pint of milk each week.

The Government talk about fairness, which is a big part of their motivation for reform. The debate about skivers versus strivers has been played out a lot recently, and whether it is helpful or it contributes towards polarising opinion and increasing stigma is perhaps a matter for another discussion. Still, the employed and the unemployed cannot be compared with one another so simply. For a start, many working people are in receipt of benefits. We know from recent data that households with at least one employed adult have accounted for 93% of the increase in the number of housing benefit claims in the past two years and that there are around 3.6 million working households already living on an economic “cliff edge” who could be squeezed further by this Bill. The Children’s Society has calculated that the Bill will mean that by 2015, a lone parent with two children on a weekly income of £530 would lose £424 a year, and a couple with two children on a weekly income of £635 would lose £351 a year.

Public attitudes to welfare spending are often impacted. I think that the prejudices which have been mentioned by contributors to this debate are based on the fact that the public do not often understand what the actual impact of this Bill will be on individuals. An argument used in favour of reform is that the welfare bill accounts for a quarter of total government spending. Last year’s data show that the DWP does indeed account for 23% of all public spending, or £166.98 billion. However, of the £159 billion of that sum which went on benefits, 47%, or around £74 billion, went on state pensions compared with JSA and incapacity benefit, which saw spending of approximately £4.9 billion each. Despite this, a YouGov poll recently commissioned by the TUC has found that on average, people think that 41% of the entire welfare budget goes on benefits to unemployed people. The same poll also suggests that support for this Bill actually depends on the level of understanding of it, as I have already mentioned. The Government have a duty to educate the public on the realities of welfare benefits and the impact on the poorest in society as opposed to being tempted to take advantage of ignorance of this matter.

The Government want to improve fairness and incentivise work, but welfare reform cannot be tackled in isolation from other factors such as the labour market and current inequalities. Despite it being a commonly held view, it is difficult confidently to identify evidence of widespread welfare dependency and intergenerational worklessness. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the University of Bristol recently found that only a very small minority of households, some 15,350, have had two or more generations who have “never worked” and of those, many of the second generation have been out of work for less than one year.

Policies that change behaviour are a risk when the roots of the problem go beyond behaviour. Just one worrying trend is the 109% rise in the number of people being helped by food banks, as reported recently by the Trussell Trust. While some people think that food banks are a good idea, research in Canada seems to indicate that the level of nutrition provided by such food is very low compared with the ability to choose your own produce. I am worried that the impact of welfare changes, spending cuts to services and rising living costs could contribute to a further increase in the use of food banks. It would be interesting to know whether Ministers think that an increase in the use of food banks would be a credible and useful outcome of this Bill.

I worry that the Bill risks pushing vulnerable people, including disabled ESA recipients, the working poor and people such as Russell, further away. I would like the Minister’s response to perhaps provide some advice for the Russells of this world—he is not alone and represents maybe a few hundred thousand people—as to what they should do when faced with the impact of the proposed Bill.

Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Adebowale Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Adebowale]

62E: After Clause 138, insert the following new Clause—
“Condition relating to mental health
In section 8 of the Welfare Reform Act 2007 (limited capability for work), after subsection (4) there is inserted—
“(4A) Regulations made under subsection (1) shall provide that a person assessed as suitable for employment and support allowance by virtue of his mental condition but not currently receiving treatment from a mental health provider service shall be immediately referred to an appropriate mental health provider service and the prime provider shall then ensure that the person is already receiving or now receives suitable mental health employment support.
(4B) The Secretary of State shall issue guidance on what constitutes an appropriate mental health provider service and suitable mental health employment support for the purposes of subsection (4A).””

[Lord Adebowale]

My Lords, at this late hour I will try to be brief. The noble Lord, Lord Layard, who put his name to the amendment, apologises for his absence; he is at Davos. I am aware that the noble Lord, Lord Freud, expressed sympathy with the sentiments of what I am about to say in support of the amendment. I appreciate that and hope that we can move forward.

I start with a shocking fact; more than 1 million people are on incapacity benefit by virtue of mental illness. The condition may not be curable but it is treatable. Noble Lords may be interested to know what proportion of these people are in treatment. The figure is 52 per cent. This comes from the official psychiatric morbidity survey. It is the number of people receiving any form of treatment. Of those, half receive medication only, without any form of counselling or talk therapy. This tells us everything that is wrong with our current situation. We pay people money because they are sick but we do not have a process to ensure that they get treated. There is not a lot in this Bill that we can do to change that—that is the way it is—but if somebody is drawing benefit because they are sick, they should surely either be in treatment for that sickness or immediately be offered treatment. Anything else is a shocking waste of taxpayers’ money, apart from anything else.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

Yes, it is.

[Lord Adebowale]

I thank the Minister for his thoughtful response and the Members of the House who have taken part in this useful debate.

It is frustrating for me that there is evidence about the interventions that are likely to work with people who have the most common types of mental illnesses which restrict their ability to work—mainly anxiety and depression. The use of programmes such as Beating the Blues—the cognitive behavioural therapy approach which is most widely used in mental health, and the most widely researched intervention in the world—has a measurable and predictable impact on mental health. It is possible to apply some of these approaches and improve a depression and anxiety score such as to enable someone to work.

It is important that we pick up on the point, which noble Lords may not fully have understood, that we are dealing with people in a client group who are sometimes ill, but most of whom want to work. This is not me saying that—it is the expression of these individuals. They recognise that work is a powerful mental health improver. One in six people with serious mental health conditions currently work, and yet eight in 10 wish to do so. This means that there are 356,000 people with mental health conditions in the UK who wish to work but are not doing so. These people are inviting an intervention.

Although I recognise the seriousness of the Minister’s remarks on this issue, there is a systems failure that we could resolve. This is not about people like me and my organisations coming up with credible solutions; we have to match those credible solutions with the policy and the practice of the DWP. That is why the amendment is so important.

While I am on the subject of the work programme, my discussions with Ministers often ended with the sentence, “It is early days”—and it is early days—but the days are running out.

Housing Benefit (Amendment) Regulations 2010

Lord Adebowale Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adebowale]

My Lords, I support the very sensible proposals made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight. I spent a good chunk of my career working in housing, on estates and in homelessness, and I am very concerned about the impact of these changes on poverty and on the Government’s attempts to reduce poverty and reduce the Government’s deficit. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, set out very clearly the impact on individual families, and we know that transition affects poor families disproportionately more than richer families. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford made the very strong point that these proposals not only have a financial impact on poor families; they also have an impact on social services and neighbourhoods, crime, mental health and substance misuse. Throughout my career I have seen this impact walk through the doors with the homeless and with those at risk of homelessness.

While I understand that the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, stand no chance of going anywhere, they are actually worthy of careful consideration. We have not thought through the impact on families and on the societies in which they live—on social services, on health, on mental health and on employment. Given that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, will not go through, the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Best, is second best—no pun intended. Actually, it was intended. If you happen to be one of the families at risk—the majority of which, by the way, are in employment, low-wage employment though it is—it is not much comfort to be told, “Hang on a minute, you will suffer for a year and then someone might pop along and do some research into the impact”. Frankly, it is one of those amendments that I am forced to support. In conversation with the noble Lord, Lord Freud, some time ago, I expressed my concern that the Government have no plan B. It is no good making these swingeing cuts on the poor, who do not have the broadest shoulders to carry the impact of the deficit, and not have a clear plan B.

Poverty

Lord Adebowale Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adebowale]

I start by apologising to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for my tardiness in being a few minutes late and missing his opening remarks. I was delayed by my need to do my day job. This is a most timely debate, and a most welcome one. My interests in this subject go back many years. I am currently chief executive of an organisation called Turning Point that provides services to many of the poorest in our community, covering employment, mental health, learning disabilities and substance misuse. I want to address the challenges of helping those with complex needs and make a few asks of the current Conservative-Lib Dem Government.

Many of the people that Turning Point sees and many of those at the sharp end of the inverse care law—which states that those who need care most tend to get it least—suffer from complex needs. It is hard to separate those with complex needs from those in poverty. Poverty can contribute to those needs and challenges and hold someone in a life of poverty if those needs are not addressed. Not far from this building, we can see the effects on individuals; they can be seen on our streets and in our communities. The differences in life expectancy and health inequalities are stark. A woman in Liverpool can expect to live 78.3 years, whereas a contemporary in Kensington and Chelsea can expect to live for 87.2 years. Those are the stark realities of poverty in Britain. It is the 60,000 households who were newly homeless in 2009 and the 253,000 people in April still claiming jobseeker’s allowance who are at the forefront of my mind.

In explaining poverty, there is a temptation to see personal character as the main cause. I hope that we do not head in that direction. People living in poverty should just try harder—that becomes the subtext of much of the debate. We know that that approach is simplistic; it focuses on the faults of the individual, rather than considering the systemic weaknesses in society that contribute to social injustice. Social standing, as many of us in this House know only too well, is a result of complex interactions of a number of factors. It is the result of privilege of birth and educational attainment—which can also be related to the privileges of birth—social contacts and personal relationships. Strength of character is only one factor. Social justice can only hope to be achieved if this factor is acknowledged.

Of course, we cannot shield ourselves from the realities of the current economic climate. We have a budget deficit of staggering proportions and we have been told that we can expect to pay £70 billion on interest payments on that debt alone, a figure greater than the amount we spend on schools, climate change and transport combined. These facts, and the statements of the Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, have caused a great deal of fear from those whose livelihood is at risk—fear of the legacy of debt we are leaving our children and fear of what our public services are going to look like five years from now. The low-hanging fruit have already been picked, with the announcement of £6 billion of cuts. However, I am greatly concerned that attempts to rein in the deficit will create further pain for the most disadvantaged in society.

At the moment, our limited knowledge of future plans for the welfare system shows that reform will be based on promoting the value of work by ensuring that it pays to be in employment rather than living off benefit. People will have to work their way out of poverty. The benefits of engaging in meaningful work are clear: it helps to promote resilience, in terms of mental health and well-being, while increasing social networks. However, I am concerned that if we have a one-size-fits-all approach we assume that people are not in employment because of the generosity of the welfare system, and that by tapering the loss of benefits when employment is found, there is a greater incentive to return to work.

Underlying that, though, is the notion of the deserving and undeserving poor, as mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn. Once work has been incentivised, those who do not or cannot work are deemed to be irresponsible. If you want to know how to create an underclass, the recipe is very clear: create unemployment and remove the support necessary for those who want to work to move towards work. We know that much.

Unemployment is currently high. We cannot expect people to walk into jobs. This approach is alarming, and cuts to public spending are set to increase redundancies. The TUC has recently reported that 45.9 per cent of women in the north-east work in the public sector. There is no point blaming the public sector for that; it is a fact. Unemployment is set to increase in the area, affecting the whole community. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development suggests that cuts to jobs in the public sector will increase unemployment to 2.95 million, accounting for one out of every eight jobs in the public sector. Personal responsibility does not come into this equation. Unemployment is out of the control of the individual, and we know that every month that someone stays unemployed, their mental health deteriorates—the two are interconnected.

Those in poverty are trapped in a cycle of deprivation, often incurring greater levels of debt. The exclusion from financial services and the difficulty of getting credit, with the high interest rates that can be obtained, mean that those in poverty pay over £1,000 more a year on life’s essentials than they need to.

There is no guarantee that those who work are protected from poverty. Statistics from Barnardo’s suggest that a couple with two children and one parent working for the minimum wage would have to work 60 hours a week to earn the 60 per cent of median income that takes them out of poverty.

I have to be honest—rather than “we’re all in this together”, I am concerned that those communities most disadvantaged are being left on the sidelines. We have seen this before; in the 1980s and early 1990s, long-term unemployment scarred communities and it still does. The effects of unemployment go far deeper than just the individual. It also affects families and community cohesion, often resulting in higher levels of crime, further deprivation and further increased expenditure. We have had a failure to invest in preventive actions to act against the social problems connected to long-term unemployment, adverse effects on mental health and drug misuse. Permitting this degradation of society to occur again is both morally questionable and economically illogical.

We must make sure that the long-term unemployed are given access to support that addresses the obstructions preventing them from entering employment. Communities with high levels of unskilled workers have been disproportionally affected by the high levels of unemployment. We cannot perceive long-term unemployment as being a product of laziness; rather, it is an indication of unmet need in the community.

Those most in need of support are the least likely to receive it. This is for a number of reasons. Staff not recognising the full extent of the problem or believing it is the responsibility of other services—a lack of joining up on the ground, a lack of connectedness in service provision, which is both bespoke and personalised—a lack of confidence and knowledge about the availability of support and a distrust of services can all combine to ensure that those with complex needs do not get the help that they deserve.

Efficiencies can be made by increasing the effectiveness of services. Effective services are designed according to the needs of the communities they serve. We cannot assume that all communities are the same. Rather, people should be given a voice to say what they need from the services, and they should be given the opportunity to design and indeed deliver those services where possible. We must ensure that performance measures are based on the outcomes they achieve for individuals and the wider community.

My own organisation has been working on models that engage communities in designing and delivering services, and auditing the effectiveness of those services in their communities. We have shown that such an approach can give far better access to hard-to-reach groups, and we have found that integrated services offer the best opportunity to improve access to services.

Integration can be through joint commissioning across health and social care as well as whole-system redesign. My view is that the whole system needs redesigning. Slash-and-burn not only will not deliver the savings that we are looking for, but will simply drive more cost into the system for future dates. We can avoid duplication of delivery, which means savings; and many of these services can be made sustainable through a strong partnership with the community.

We have seen the effects of not taking action in the aftermath of a recession—inaction born from the belief that people should be able to resolve their own problems. Instead, we need to recognise that the way that services are currently designed prevents people helping themselves, leading to costly inefficiencies along the way. We need to resolve these obstacles if we are to reduce poverty and achieve social justice.

I end by asking my first two questions of this Government. First, are the Government prepared to report regularly on the impact of the impending spending cuts in public services on our poorest people and communities? Too little is said of the impacts of the economy on our poorest. While I appreciate that Frank Field will be working on measures of poverty, I think that we are in danger of letting the excellent get in the way of the good enough. If you cannot afford to feed your kids, a debate about how to measure poverty will be meaningless to you. I want a “good enough” measure; I am not interested in the perfection of the science. Will the Government report regularly to both Houses, and to the country, on the impact of the budget cuts on the poorest areas and people? Secondly, we have set up an Office for Budget Responsibility. Can we also have an office of social responsibility?