Pensions

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. We are trying to look at what a suitable state pension is that rises in line with life expectancy and is fair across the board. I know the noble Baroness is very keen on the whole issue of fairness across all the socioeconomic areas, as it were. We are quite clear in our minds, having studied Cridland, that the reality is that our strategy is built on a solid evidence base that has been aided substantially by the two contributions from John Cridland and the Government Actuary. In fact, Cridland’s review took into account evidence provided by over 150 stakeholders. The question of life expectancy has gone up for all socioeconomic groups over the last 30 years, and for all constituent countries of the UK over the past decades. As I say, John Cridland did extensive work on this and concluded that a universal state pension age remains the best system as it provides simplicity and clarity, which enables people to plan for their retirement. As I have said, Cridland concluded that there are no practical or workable ways to factor in variations in life expectancy, and there is no evidence of regional options being any fairer or more targeted at disadvantaged groups. Allowing early access to the state pension on a reduced basis would risk leaving people with an inadequate pension. We believe that disadvantaged groups should be assisted through the working-age benefits system rather than through changes to the state pension age.

It is important to add that we should not see the issue of increasing the state pension age as one whereby we are bringing in a situation that is necessarily making it more difficult for people as they grow older, given that older workers can bring decades of valuable knowledge and experience to the workplace. This is all seeming rather doomy, but actually we should celebrate the fact that life expectancy is increasing. There are now 8.7 million people aged 50 to 64 in work, which is a record high, and more than 1.2 million people aged 65-plus who choose to remain in work. In 2017, we launched the Fuller Working Lives strategy in order to encourage more employers to take advantage of the benefits that older people bring. We are calling on employers to boost the number of older workers, not write people off once they reach a certain age.

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

My Lords, it may be that I am just getting older and more irascible and that I am just another angry old man, but I really do not see what there is to celebrate if you are old and poor and doing a manual job. It is perfectly true that life expectancy is increasing, but it is not getting any easier to get older. Surely we all understand that. What is lacking from the Statement and the Government’s response is any sense of justice around the process of being old, poor, disabled or a carer.

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I have to say I entirely disagree with the noble Lord. I listened to some of the comments made by his party in another place and I found them shocking in relation to the way that old people are referred to, as if old people are somehow rather useless and “worn out”—I think that was one of the expressions used at the other end. My young, who will be hitting retirement when this comes into fruition, would take that very poorly. We are looking for every opportunity to find ways to improve healthy working lives for everyone. If one was a little more positive about this, one would accept that it is totally unfair to ask young people today and tomorrow to be saddled with such an enormous burden as the party opposite want to impose on the young people of today and those who are very much in their youth. The idea of the party opposite is that we should add £250 billion to the debt because—even though it legislated to increase the retirement age to 68—it now says that, somehow, we are not being kind to people in poor health who are unable to work up to the state pension.

The welfare system provides a safety net for those experiencing hardship, with a range of benefits tailored to individual circumstances. Indeed, the Government are committed to supporting the vulnerable, spending around £50 billion a year on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions, which equates to more than 6% of all government spending. I recognise that this change will have a bigger impact on people with lower life expectancy, but we agree with Cridland that a universal state pension is important for simplicity and clarity for planning purposes. There have been substantial improvements in life expectancy at 65 across all socioeconomic groups over the last 30 years. This means that change is needed for fairness between the generations.

Millennium Development Goals

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

My Lords, our thanks are due to the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for her work in this field as well as for introducing the report and the debate in the way she has.

The report is welcome, not least for its references to the importance of agriculture—which has been neglected, I fear, in the current crop of millennium development goals—and inclusive growth as a necessary precondition for jobs and the reduction of poverty.

My experience of growing up in Africa as the grandson of two African farmers—we should never forget that women play a greater role in agriculture in Africa than do men—has taught me, as has my experience outside this House in Africa, that in order to bring about the “profound transformation” to end extreme poverty and improve livelihoods, to which the report refers, it is necessary to do what it suggests: to harness innovation and technology to this end. The high-level panel is to be commended for that.

I ask the Minister—I warmly welcome him, as does the rest of the House, to his place—what can we do, what can DfID do, to support higher education, our research councils, our scientific bodies and our private sector in order to promote science, technology and innovation in Africa to underpin agriculture and agricultural growth.

If this report is a Christmas tree—and it is—it needs science, energy and infrastructure in order to bring it alight. Only with that can Africa fulfil its potential and the lion join the tigers as an engine of growth and prosperity, not only for Africa and Asia but for the whole world.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to say that we are doing quite well.

Disability Services

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Lord Boateng]

To move that this House takes note of the report by Scope, Over-looked Communities, Over-due Change, on disability services for people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.

[Lord Boateng]

My Lords, I rise, somewhat belatedly, to move the Motion standing in my name. To be black, a member of an ethnic minority or disabled is to know what it is to be invisible—to be there but somehow not be seen, or to be heard but simply not heeded. That concept is difficult to explain. It is difficult, frankly, for those of us who happen to be members of the black and minority ethnic community or who happen to be disabled to talk about. Yet it is, for all of us, a fact of life, and this valuable report demonstrates that most effectively, I would argue, because it reveals what a toxic mix it can be to be both black and disabled. You suffer a double whammy of neglect and disadvantage. All too often you find yourself between a rock and a hard place.

The report, Over-looked Communities, Over-due Change, makes salutary reading. Disabled people from black and minority ethnic communities and their families are often left disengaged from the decisions of policymakers and practitioners, disconnected from support systems and services, and disempowered from finding local solutions to the problems that they face. In this House this afternoon we have an opportunity to address that issue. We will have the opportunity to do so again in the weeks and months ahead as the Government take forward their own legislative programme, particularly in relation to the children and families Bill. Today, however, we can ask Her Majesty’s Government to ensure now that the policymakers act not only on this report but on the whole body of evidence that has gone before—a body of evidence that goes back many years, including the period in which I was in government, when we, too, as a Government, had no reason to be complacent about this issue but where some progress was made.

I believe that we will hear the reality reflected in your Lordships’ contributions to the debate this afternoon—contributions that represent a body of unparalleled expertise in this field, for which I am particularly grateful. It is important that we read in the report about the experiences of the black and minority ethnic communities in all parts of the United Kingdom, that we learn about good practice, that we hear and receive the recommendations from the focus groups that contributed to this report, and that we hear and learn from the voices of those people who all too often are unseen and unheard.

We are grateful to Scope and to the Equalities National Council, which is itself a black and minority ethnic voluntary sector body and a centre of excellence in this field. We find from this report that we are confronting, as a country, what amounts to a demographic disability time bomb because the black and minority ethnic population is both growing and ageing. We learn that there are at least 1 million disabled people from black and minority ethic backgrounds in our country. Some 40% of those people live in household poverty, compared with 32% of all disabled people and 17% of the population as a whole. Only four in 10 of black and minority ethnic disabled people manage to find any employment at all, and 40% of those are self-employed or part-time employees. The incomes of those individuals are 30% lower than that of the rest of the general population, with half earning less than £240 a week.

This is not primarily a debate about resources but I would argue that these issues cannot be considered in isolation from the current context of the delivery of services. The issue is not about restraints on resources; we all understand that they are part and parcel of today’s reality and we have to live with that. Nevertheless, the reality is also that these restraints on resources are falling disproportionately on the most vulnerable in our society. We know from the work of, among others, the Afiya Trust that the equality impact assessments on social care budgets are all too often disregarded and that public sector equality duties under the law are flouted. The reality for those small black and minority ethnic voluntary organisations, which play such an important part in the care of the most vulnerable, is that they are suffering disproportionately from the impact of local authority cuts. In 2010-11, £3 million was cut from the sector and £1.5 million from London alone. One in five local authorities does not actually collect any data at all on black and minority voluntary sector organisations.

The question that one puts to the Government today is: will they confirm their commitment to public sector equality duties? Will they reassure the House that the Red Tape Challenge will not be used to water down a commitment to equality? We must also ask ourselves, and ask the Government, what steps are in fact being taken to ensure that their disability strategy reflects the special needs and concerns of black and minority ethnic disabled people. Will the Government meet representatives of the Equalities National Council and Scope to receive their input? A commitment was given on a previous occasion in this Chamber by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, that there would be such a meeting. Despite requests from both Scope and the equalities council, no such meeting has yet taken place.

Do the Government intend to respond positively to the UN recommendation, endorsed in this report, that there should be a national equality strategy? All the signs and indications from the Government to date have been that they do not intend to embrace the need for such an equality strategy. However, if an equality strategy is not to be introduced, how are the various strands across different sectors and different government departments to be pulled together? Will the promised disability strategy be backed up by an implementation plan, with a focus on measurable outcomes and a means of monitoring progress?

Will the Government clarify their approach to translation services? There again, we have had conflicting signals from the coalition. On the one hand, the spokesperson in this House very rightly affirmed her belief, based on her considerable experience of local government in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, that translation and interpreting services have a very important role to play in the delivery of care to black and minority ethnic communities, yet the Secretary of State for Communities, no doubt concerned about resources, described such services as “divisive”. How can this be, given all the evidence, which is contained again in the report?

One example given was of a tape to describe the symptoms of and treatment needed for multiple sclerosis. It was given to an elderly, non-English-speaking Asian woman in relation to the diagnosis of her daughter and it created tremendous fear, concern and apprehension because it had not been translated very well. These services are absolutely crucial to ensuring that there is proper diagnosis, care and treatment. Will the Government clarify the situation and give service providers and users the reassurance that they seek?

All these questions speak to an issue that goes to the heart of how we care for one another in society. Yes, of course it is important that special needs are met and that we address those issues, so well articulated in the report we are considering, as they affect black and minority ethnic communities. However, the reality is that when the needs of one section of service users are consistently overlooked, it is the quality of service to all that is undermined. We are genuinely all in this together—whatever our race, colour or language and whatever the level of our abilities or disabilities. Responsive, respectful and relevant services, made accessible and inclusive, are to the benefit of us all, regardless of our race, background or relative abilities.

What the Government will hear today will not be special pleading; it will be a call to action for a decent society, one in which we can justly take pride. Last year, in the Olympics and Paralympics, we celebrated our diversity. We took pride in it; it said something important about us as a nation. Yet the reality is that when the celebrations have subsided, for all too many of our fellow citizens disadvantage and inequality remain a fact of life. There is disadvantage, inequality and an inability to access the services that they so desperately need.

I hope we will see in our House’s response to this important report, and in the Government’s response, a determination in this new year to resolve to translate the evidence, which is there for all to see, into policy and action so that we can celebrate good practice and a society that is truly diverse—and one that recognises the huge potential that is lost when we fail to meet the needs of those who currently are not receiving their due. When we take action to enable and empower all of us in our God-given and precious diversity, then we really do have something to celebrate. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Boateng]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is right: there are many role models in the disabled and black and minority ethnic communities. Our concern is that they should be role models for what they are, not for their success in overcoming the barriers that they have had to face because they are black or minority ethnic or because they are disabled. This has been an important debate. Members who have spoken on all sides of the House have demonstrated a depth of experience, knowledge of the subject and passion that is truly inspiring to us all. I am grateful to the Minister for her willingness to write to us to address the detailed questions that many Members of the House have raised with her, and I urge her to adopt the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, of lodging all of those in the Library, so that we have a comprehensive response of the Government to the debate and the report.

Motion agreed.

Poverty

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boateng]

My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, for initiating this debate, I confess a degree of trepidation in speaking to your Lordships’ House for the first time. That trepidation is in no way engendered by the kindness and warmth shown to me and my fellow newcomers to this House by all Members, officers and staff, but by the requirement to be both brief and uncontroversial. That does not come naturally to me. Given the rather rueful faces of some of my noble friends, I think that they probably share that view. Nevertheless, one will do one’s best. I am encouraged in that by the traditions of this House. I first encountered those traditions on the very first occasion that I came to the Palace of Westminster many years ago. I came here wearing flares and with an Afro—when one had hair and wore flares—which tells noble Lords just how long ago that was; it was 14 December 1978.

I came here as a young lawyer accompanying a group of black women from the London Borough of Lewisham. They were concerned about what was happening to their children and other young people in Lewisham—black and white, but largely black—in relation to a piece of legislation known as the sus laws. These women had attempted to initiate a debate about the sus laws in the other place. They had a great deal of support for that from their then local MP, Chris Price, but they did not succeed. The then Labour Government did not want to debate the sus laws or to hear from this group of black women in Lewisham. It was your Lordships' House that found the time and the space to discuss this matter in a debate on a Private Member’s Bill on the sus laws initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. I will never forget it, nor will I forget the respect that was shown to these women and their concerns by the noble Lord and by the late Lord Pitt, who was one of the first Afro-Caribbeans—my race—to find a place and a welcome in your Lordships' House. He was an inspiration to many of us.

I also remember the contribution of the late Lord Gardiner and the response of the Minister in this House at that time. This House listened. The Motion was not carried, but subsequently a Conservative Government—due very largely to the heroic efforts not only of those women but of the right honourable Sir John Wheeler—abolished this unfair and discriminatory piece of legislation. However, it was this House, with its tradition of being responsive to the needs of those who might otherwise not get a hearing—the poor and the dispossessed—which showed the way. That taught me something which I have not forgotten in the course of my subsequent career in the law and in politics, and which strengthens my resolve to put before your Lordships a concern that those women in Lewisham would have wanted this House to hear, were they here today. It is a concern about the impact of the Budget, and a number of its proposals, on a group of young people who all too often are not heard in our society—young people at risk and young people in care. These are some of the most vulnerable young people in our society. They do not have much of a chance because they tend to go into care, having been subjected to abuse and disadvantage in myriad ways. When they are in care, I fear that the state does not prove to be a very good parent.

This Budget was introduced in the context of the notion of the big society. It seems to me that if the big society is to live up to its name, it has to find a place within it for young people at risk and young people in care. I learned, in the course of putting together the Green Paper Every Child Matters, way back in 2003, that young people at risk and young people in care are to be found not just in the inner cities of our in country, but in rural areas too, because poverty and deprivation can be found all over our land. Young people—young people at risk and young people in care—tend to be the least advantaged of all.

The big society is often juxtaposed with the big state. That is a false dichotomy. It is not a question of whether or not you have a big society or a big state; it must surely be a question as to whether or not the state empowers and enables citizens to make a contribution, to come together to care, and to form sustainable and cohesive communities. I fear that aspects of this Budget work against that. The removal of ring-fencing in terms of local authority grants will, I fear—I am not alone in this; it is a fear shared by many in local government, many social workers and many who run voluntary organisations—lead to a collapse in funding for voluntary organisations, cutbacks in the special support services provided to children in care and children at risk. That would be damaging.

I ask the noble Lord who will reply for the Government in this debate: please, please, in the course of the spending review that must take place, and is taking place, make sure that there is a stream of work that looks at the impact of the budgetary provisions that we are debating on those children in care and children at risk, and the voluntary organisations that serve them, who will inevitably be affected by the increase in VAT and who do not have a rebate system upon which they can rely.

I ask the noble Lord to think also about how the office of the Children’s Commissioner, which is being reviewed, can be strengthened in such a way that it is answerable to Parliament. The Children’s Commissioner should be appointed by Parliament and have a specific remit to examine the implications of all Budgets, presented in any circumstances, on children and young people at risk, so that they do not as a result of a side wind or neglect lead to their being further disadvantaged.

I hope that I have been brief and uncontroversial—because this cause can unite the whole House—but none the less passionate.