Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, Amendment 11 is in part inspired by the speech made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester at Second Reading. He suggested that this was an occasion for considering,

“the moral responsibility of this House”,

and warned that this Bill,

“looks like part of an ideologically motivated attempt to alter the very nature of the welfare state”.—[Official Report, 11/2/13; col. 469.]

He voiced his fear that we are heading towards a US-style system, where pensions are protected,

“but working-age provision is less generous and more stigmatised, barely providing enough for people to live on without relying on charitable handouts”,

and asked:

“Is this really the kind of society that we want to live in?”.—[Official Report, 11/2/13; col. 471.]

It certainly is not the kind of society in which I want to live.

The purpose of this amendment is to facilitate a debate on that fundamental question of the generosity of benefits for working-age people and their children. The first part addresses the question of whether the social security benefits affected by this nasty Bill are adequate in the first place, and the second the principles that should govern the uprating of benefits in the future once the Bill’s provisions have ceased to have effect. Of course, the two questions are related because the current level of benefit reflects uprating policies over the years.

As the House of Commons Library briefing notes:

“It is a misconception that benefit rates in the UK are based on some regular, systematic estimate of minimum needs”.

In fact, they are not even based on an irregular systemic estimate, for as the briefing points out,

“no government has … attempted any official empirical study of adequacy”,

since a covert study undertaken by the National Assistance Board back in the 1960s, despite countless fundamental reviews of social security, which some of us have lived through to tell the tale.

There are various indicators that we can use to assess benefits’ adequacy. The most basic is whether they are sufficient to keep people out of poverty and, patently, they are not, as so many people living on benefits are in poverty if one uses the relative income and material deprivation measures. The income support received by, for example, a couple with two children or a lone parent with one child is around 30% below the poverty line. Briefings from children’s charities underline the hardship that families already experience as a result. For instance, research undertaken by Barnardo’s among its service users found that two-thirds were cutting back on fuel and half were borrowing money. Three-quarters reported that food poverty was impacting on their children’s health and well-being. Similarly, a Children’s Society survey of teachers found that nearly half of those surveyed are seeing children coming into school hungry. Recent peer research undertaken by five Gingerbread community researchers in partnership with the Poverty Alliance found many lone parents skipping meals to feed their children. As one said, “Occasionally, I’ll miss meals and things like that just to make sure that they get wee bits and pieces. It makes me feel better about them having than me having”. This is an example of a common phenomenon, where mothers deprive themselves of basics to try to protect their children against the worst impact of poverty, as they act as the shock-absorbers of poverty. It is an example, too, of a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, on our first day in Committee about how women are disproportionately affected by the Bill.

The most sophisticated benchmark of adequacy is the minimum income standard developed by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It represents what members of the public through group discussion have arrived at as the minimum acceptable standard of living: what you need in order to have the opportunities and choices necessary to participate in society. I emphasise that it is about needs, as socially determined, rather than about wants.

The latest calculations indicate that a couple with two children, or a lone parent with one child living on the basic safety net benefit of income support, receive only three-fifths of the income needed to meet the minimum income standard. A single working-age person receives only two-fifths. The researchers, who are colleagues of mine at the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University, observe that, because increases in costs have not been adequately captured by the consumer prices index, out-of-work benefits fall even further short, providing a lower minimum income living standard for non-pensioners than they did in 2008 when the MIS was first calculated. They concluded, even before this Bill was proposed, that the gap between the incomes and needs of the worst-off households is widening, especially for families with children. While the JRF is not suggesting that benefits should be raised to the level of the MIS, the sheer scale of the shortfall is indicative of how far they fall below the decency benchmark established by members of the public.

Policy has been more successful in ensuring that pensioners can achieve minimum income standards, which is of course a good thing, but according to Professor Jonathan Bradshaw, the decision to uprate pensions by 2.5% and working-age benefits by 1% for three years is going to exacerbate further the absurd differentials in benefit rates that have developed over time. In 1948, a single pensioner received only 10p more than a single person on national assistance. Now, a single female receives £71 per week in jobseeker’s allowance. When they are eligible, they get £142.70 on pension credit. A lone mother with one child gets only £133.21 a week. These differentials, Professor Bradshaw says, clearly have nothing to do with need.

That brings us to the second half of the amendment, on the principles underlying uprating policies. The significance of these policies was underlined in an earlier JRF study. It pointed out that uprating policies have big effects over time. They are among the most significant decisions taken by Chancellors. Their gradual effects seem imperceptible on a year-to-year basis yet they carry immense implications for the future. This year’s decisions will certainly be perceptible, and the implications for the future are even more immense, because, whatever decision is taken by future uprating policies, they will be uprating benefits that have been significantly depressed in real terms over a three-year period.

The report called for a more open debate about this often hidden area of public policy, so that decisions that prevent the poorest members of society keeping up with rising living standards would not be taken in the dark. Unknown to most people, uprating policies have resulted in a significant erosion of relative living standards among benefit recipients over most of the past three decades. Recently, this has been exacerbated by the use of CPI rather than RPI as the measure of inflation, particularly during the period when prices of necessities that represent a disproportionate share of spending among benefit recipients have risen faster than prices generally—a point that we made on the first day in Committee. As Donald Hirsch of the Centre for Research in Social Policy comments, in this context, the index used to uprate benefits has become a highly imperfect mechanism for preserving their real value and a rather arbitrary means of raising benefits by an amount that politicians feel that the country can afford rather than of protecting living standards.

Of course, assessments of affordability cannot be ignored. They can also be contested, as we are doing in relation to this Bill, but looking to the future I agree with Donald Hirsch that there is a need to establish principles linking benefit uprating to some stable concept of what is fair, rather than just ad hoc decisions about what can be afforded. He suggested that, as a start, this might involve reasserting the principle of human decency whereby the real value of benefits is genuinely protected and that, in the longer term, if prosperity starts to grow again, we need to consider how those in greatest need can share in such growth.

I suggest that a report to Parliament that addresses these fundamental questions is the least that we can ask of a Secretary of State willing to preside over a deliberate reduction in the living standards of the most deprived members of our community. I beg to move.

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I have put down my name in support of the amendment and am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for her tabling of it and for her powerful advocacy of it. I have done so because I am repeatedly told by citizens advice bureaux and the like of the uncertainty which is being introduced by this Bill. It is ironic that we have talked so much of certainty in setting the rates for the years up to 2015-16, when those on benefit and providing advice feel uncertain as to its short and long-term effects.

So long as benefits have been uprated by inflation, it has been possible to budget taking them into account. But this cap on uprating is a major and apparently long-term change to the whole principle of our benefit system. Recipients and those who work with them are owed an explanation. I am not looking for commitments from either Front Bench beyond 2015, but I would be very grateful for comment from both of them on whether this is to be seen as a temporary reduction with the aim of restoring benefit values after 2016 so that we ensure a decent living standard for those on benefit—the requirement that has been so ably put by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. Or is this actually a permanent reduction to a lower level, which will then be stabilised in real terms after 2016, or a continuation of a gradual reduction expected to continue after 2016? None of those options is desirable, but they are very different in the effect that they will have, and a sense of purpose and direction from the Government and Opposition is important in all this. It is important to know just where benefits are anticipated to be going in future, both from the opposition and the government Front Bench. I hope that they can supply that in the debate on this amendment.

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[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

With the introduction of universal credit, we will make sure that that is always the case. Therefore, I do not disagree with the noble Baroness at all.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to the Government’s decision to move from RPI to CPI as the appropriate index of inflation. The Government believe that CPI is a more appropriate measure than RPI when considering the impact of inflation on benefits and pensions. It is worth saying that the judicial review of the switch from RPI to CPI found in the Government’s favour and we continue to believe that CPI is a more appropriate index. As an example of the costs involved, uprating the benefits and payments in this Bill by earnings would reduce the savings by £1.8 billion of the total of £1.9 billion in 2015-16 and, if we did so by RPI, would wipe out all the savings and cost an additional £700 million in 2015-16.

As regards paragraph (b) of the amendment, while I cannot predict the decisions that will be made by future Governments, once the provisions in the current Bill cease to have effect, the default position will be for uprating decisions to be made in line with pre-existing legislation.

In referring noble Lords to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, during last week’s debate, I was going to mention his reluctance to say what his party would do if it was in government. Indeed, he was even more than reluctant; he refused to say what it would do. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has commented on that point today.

For social security benefits and statutory payments, the default position will be for uprating decisions to be made under Section 150 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, meaning that the Secretary of State will make an annual review of benefit levels to see whether they have kept pace with the increase in the general level of prices. If prices have increased, he will then make a decision about how he should uprate the benefits covered by the Bill, based on the national economic situation and other factors he considers relevant. For tax credits, the default position is that the Treasury is required under Section 41 of the Tax Credits Act 2002 to review the amounts of certain elements of tax credits each year to determine whether they have retained their value in relation to the general level of prices.

Before I conclude, I refer to the question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, about an assessment of the changes that we are making via this Bill on the well-being of adults and children. In response—and it was a point that I made in Committee last week—this Government publish cumulative impacts of government policy at every major fiscal event. We did so at the time of the Autumn Statement last year. Those assessments include the effects of any changes in welfare and ensure that the other positive measures being introduced in relation to tax rates and so on are taken into account. That represents an increase in transparency when compared with what was in place hitherto. The assessments are publicly available on the Treasury’s website.

This has clearly been a serious debate and I am grateful for the opportunity to respond. I hope that in future debates I am able to expand a little further on some of my comments because I am concerned that in some of my points I was not as clear as I intended to be. I will ensure that when I speak in later debates I am much clearer about the importance we place on ensuring that proper consideration and monitoring are taking place in the implementation of all these changes. If any additional measures are required to support people who are affected in a way that goes beyond that which we are expecting, we will make sure that they have the support they need.

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, following the Minister’s final comments, can I check that the default position after 2015-16 will be that there would be CPI increases based on the lower level that benefits will have reached by then?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

It will be based on the benefits that exist at that time.

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Moved by

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

14: The Schedule, page 4, line 9, leave out “150(1)(i) and (j)” and insert “150(1)(j)”

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, the three amendments in this group have two specific aims, and both concern the treatment of children under the Bill, which we have discussed under Amendment 12.

Amendment 14 seeks to remove child benefit from the Bill and Amendment 19 does the same for child tax credit, while Amendment 17 concerns the child additions within universal credit. I shall return to Amendment 17 later with regard to children with disabilities.

Amendment 14 concerns child benefit. Time and again in these debates on welfare reform, we face the challenge that our reforms have a disproportionate effect on children. Overall, some 30% of households are affected by this Bill. Of those with dependent children, 87% are affected; of lone-parent households, 95% are affected. For example, a single nurse on average earnings for her profession of £530 a week would lose nothing at all as a result of the Bill. If she had two children, she would lose £424 a year in 2015-16. Families with lower incomes are those who end up being the worst affected, whether by reductions in housing benefit or the freeze on child benefit, and so on.

I do not for one moment believe that it is the Government’s intention to target children, but it is the result of much that we do in welfare reform, and that is a matter of choice. The most powerful speech at Second Reading was that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, when she spoke of the way in which she and I and the vast majority of Members of this House were not affected by the responses that we make to our fiscal challenges. We could be: my personal allowance, winter fuel allowance or bus pass benefits could be withdrawn or taxed if we took a different line. In this Parliament, £9 billion has been spent on the increases to personal allowances and £4.7 billion on fuel duty—an effective cut by not increasing fuel duty.

When we discuss matters here, I am always deeply impressed by the expertise brought on health matters by doctors and NHS trust chairs, on higher education by university professors and academics, and on defence by senior military officials. When we wrestle with issues of poverty, there is no one experiencing deprivation to tell us what it feels like. Many of us know, because of other people whom we talk to, of the pressures, especially on those in work with low incomes, but we do not experience that deprivation for ourselves.

The extension of the threshold for the personal tax allowance in 2013-14 leaves basic rate taxpayers £47 better off. If you do not pay tax, that clearly has no effect. If you are a working family eligible for both housing and council tax benefit, you will lose benefit so that your net gain is not £47 but £7 in 2013-14. There are alternatives to the pressure on the most deprived families.

I am particularly concerned about the continued chipping away at the value of child benefit. This has been frozen for three years and is now to be capped at 1% for two further years. That is a total increase of 2% compared with an estimated 16% in CPI. Again, the issue is the cumulative effect of the reductions. This is in addition to the cuts in other benefits experienced by those on low incomes. The impact assessment shows that some 60% of the savings from this Bill come from the poorest third of households, with 3% from the wealthiest third. These three amendments would mean a substantial decrease in the 200,000 children pushed into poverty by the below-inflation increases in children’s benefits and tax credits in this Bill.

I wonder whether we realise, and get hold of well enough, the considerable extent to which child benefit in particular is regarded in most families as being specifically for the children concerned. My experience in West Yorkshire is of families on low pay struggling to make ends meet but quite clear that child benefit is to be used not for the general household expenses but by the mother to help her children. The points made persistently in debates on this Bill and on the Welfare Reform Act by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, speak of the way in which it is women—often mothers—who are most disadvantaged by the measures we are taking because they are concerned particularly with the specific help of their children. Child benefit reduction fails to take account of the cultural and social support for children that this benefit provides, in addition to its financial obligations.

Reduction in child benefit specifically is also a disincentive to seeking work, so it is a direct challenge to the Government’s own desire, put forward powerfully by the Minister, to encourage people to return to work. Child benefit, rightly, is disregarded both from household income and in calculating the applicable amount before housing and council tax benefit are reduced. The result is that a low-income working family living in rented accommodation loses both the £4.80 a week in child benefit and a further estimated £4.10 a week because of the disregard rules. A loss of some £9 a week is a serious blow to working families, and that child benefit reduction in particular works against the Government’s aim to get people back into work.

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[Lord Newby]

My Lords, that was not the point I made. I was talking about aligning the uprating of the adult and child rates, not the halving of the amount. I was making a different point.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked about plans to uprate benefits. Benefits not covered by this Bill are subject to existing legislation, so the Secretary of State will review social security benefits annually, after publication of the relevant price figures. He will therefore decide what uprating will take place when he has that information in the normal way. I will write to the noble Baroness with the details of other benefits that are to be uprated by 1%.

As I have said before, the welfare system provides vital support for many families with children. However, government support for children must be about more than benefits. Securing the economic recovery matters to every household in the country, and only by doing that can we create a stable and thriving future for our children. I hope that I have also been able to provide some reassurance to the Committee that this Government are continuing to take action to support families—action that will change the lives of families with children.

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and not least to the Minister for his response. I am disappointed that he was not able to respond more to Amendment 17, because it is not an expensive proposal. It will help a significant number of children—real children with real disabilities. I know that money is being provided for disabled people in the greatest need, but the disabilities that are felt and known by those who would benefit from Amendment 17 are real. To accept the amendment would provide real support for a large number of children who could thereby have been enabled to play a greater part in our society, both for their benefit and for the benefit of the rest of us.

I accept that together, the amendments in this group would cost a significant amount of money at £0.9 billion. However, it is not fair to argue that welfare benefits cannot be excluded from the work that we have been doing in order to respond to our fiscal crisis. Welfare benefits have been tackled extensively through the whole welfare reform process. This comes over to me as twisting a knife in a wound. I regret that the Government have felt that this is the area where they have to find that £0.9 billion. I will not repeat the argument that there are other areas where we could have found it.

I am very grateful to all noble Lords who contributed examples of a wide range of people: the corporal in the Army with three children, who will lose £520 a year, the primary school teacher, the nurse, and so on. They showed that a wide range of people will be affected and damaged by the Bill. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for stressing the organisations that support children. It is good to have all the statistics produced, but however many of them there are, the reality comes home to me, not when I read the Children’s Society’s statistics, but when I go to see its work in Leeds and its projects with children who are hungry, who have to cut back on food, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, and whose future prospects are being damaged, as the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, said. We need to do something to look at the ways in which we disadvantage children in practice by so much of the work we are doing.

I hope that we will come back to this issue on Report to see whether there is not something we can do to set down a marker and make a real contribution to the lives and vitality of children in our society. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 14 withdrawn.

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Unfortunately, the total cost to the NHS of dispersing and relocating pregnant women is not ascertainable because no statistics are collected on them. However, according to a freedom of information response, more than 600 women in the asylum system applied for the maternity grant in the first six months of 2011, and the vast majority of these women will have been moved during pregnancy. I have suggested to my noble friend Lord Howe that the Department of Health should hold discussions with the Home Office to ensure that dispersal policies for pregnant women and new mothers are developed that are compatible with NICE guidelines on the maternity care of women with complex social factors. I would like my noble friend, in conclusion, to provide an estimate of the rate for, say, 2012. If the information has not previously been recorded, will she arrange for that to be done from now on?

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

I simply want to express my support for the arguments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. Being part of that inquiry was indeed a harrowing experience, although nothing like as harrowing as it is for those who have been on asylum support for two, four or six years and who cannot return to the countries from which they have come. The Government accept that they cannot return to those countries, so the argument that asylum support has to be kept very low in order to discourage people from staying here did not appear to have any weight at all in terms of the evidence that was presented to us.

I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, for his promise at Second Reading to pass on the concerns about asylum child support to the Home Office. Have the Government received any response to that request to the Home Office and do they agree that we need to have some idea of what is happening to support the 10,000 children who are on asylum support?

I was grateful, too, to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, for the expression of his own surprise at the bizarre nature of the provisions being made for that support. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, likes simplicity. I do not know whether you could find anything more bizarre than the provisions under Sections 4 and 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. If we could simply move to some way of linking that support to the benefits that the Government believe are rightly paid to those in need, that would be a major act of concern for those who are in the most need of all within our society.