Child Poverty: Benefit Cap
Debate between Lord Davies of Gower and Baroness Sherlock(2 months ago)
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Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
Absolutely, my Lords. It is not only an area of my responsibility in the department but one of long-standing concern. A significant amount of money changes hands already but we are looking at each stage—how do we make the Child Maintenance Service operate ever better than it does at the moment? An awful lot of money changes hands, mostly relatively smoothly. There are challenges with some non-resident parents and some who simply do not wish to pay, so the Child Maintenance Service is constantly updating the range of powers it has to go after them.
We all take the same view: you may separate from your partner, but you do not separate from your children. We need to find ways to make sure that both parents contribute. We have a consultation out, which we are looking at. We are also reviewing the child maintenance calculation. We are committed to making sure that the service works well and that the principles are up to date, but no one gets away from the fact that you may leave your partner, but you do not leave your kids.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, to continue the Welsh theme, 30% of children in Wales are living in poverty, according to the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, so I stress to the Minister the urgency of reducing child poverty across the UK.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
The noble Lord and I are as one mind on this. Child poverty is too high across the UK. It went up significantly under the last Administration. We are determined to bring it down, and we will do so.
Social Security Payments: Uprating
Debate between Lord Davies of Gower and Baroness Sherlock
Baroness Sherlock
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have for uprating social security payments.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, the Secretary of State is required to review the rates of the state pension and benefits every year. The Secretary of State will announce the outcome of her review to this House by 25 November in the normal way. The Government have committed to the triple lock for the remainder of this Parliament. It would not be right for me to prejudge the outcome of that review when the ONS is yet to publish the relevant indices.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister and welcome him to the Dispatch Box and his new brief—a great place to start. Last April, when inflation was 9%, benefits were raised by just 3.1%, because that had been the CPI rate the previous September and them’s the rules. At the time, despite big pressure, Thérèse Coffey—then at DWP—said no; we must stick with the system year on year. Ministers promised that benefits would rise again by inflation next year, so it would all come out in the wash.
Now we hear that the Prime Minister is threatening to abandon that promise and is even suggesting that linking to earnings might be fairer to workers, as though we are saying to millions of workers, “Your wages are going up by less than inflation; we will fix that by cutting your universal credit and child benefit.” As well as low-paid workers, these benefits support children, sick and disabled people, the unemployed and poor pensioners. I simply do not believe that most people in this House or this country think that those people ought to be paying for the fallout from the Government’s disastrous Budget. Will the Minister please tell the House that the Government are not seriously proposing to do that?
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
I am very grateful for the noble Baroness’s welcome to the Front Bench. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has a legal duty to review the rates of benefit increases once a year. She will be doing this on the same timeframe as previous years, with the latest available data. It is right that, when this review takes place, she looks at up-to-date information for the whole economy and acts accordingly, within the terms of the Social Security Administration Act 1992.