Whitehall: Prioritising Performance
Lord Farmer Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Farmer
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report, Making the grade: Prioritising performance in Whitehall, published by Reform on 1 May; and what steps they are taking in response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
His Majesty’s Government remain committed to attracting and retaining the most talented people to build a highly skilled and capable Civil Service. The recommendations contained within the Reform report are detailed and wide-ranging. Time is being taken to consider carefully all the recommendations. A number of activities are under way to continuously improve how talent recruitment and performance are managed.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that encouraging reply. Reform emphasises the need for greater cognitive diversity in the Civil Service and a clear route for public service-minded and exceptionally talented applicants without a specific role to apply for. Will the Government set up a mid-career fast stream to bring in high-flyers experienced in other ways of working to help break the groupthink? Similarly, using “behaviours” in success profiles favours internal candidates, so will the Government scrap this and assess instead on skills and experience?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
Success profiles provide a common framework for recruiters to assess the key attributes for roles, including skills and experience. Behaviours are not compulsory. The Government People Group is due to review the content and application of, and support for, success profiles in 2025 as part of continuing work to improve the quality and openness of recruitment. The Government are reviewing the options for a mid-career scheme as workforce demands in the next spending review are established. Many roles are open to external recruitment at all grades, with talent schemes such as the Future Leaders Scheme available to support rapid progression through to more senior levels. Regarding diversity of thinking, currently around 10% of those on the Future Leaders Scheme declare as neurodiverse.
Conversion Therapy Prohibition (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) Bill [HL]
Lord Farmer Excerpts(10 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I agree with many other noble Lords that this very short Bill does not do justice to the many sensitive and complex considerations that these issues raise. One result of the Bill’s brevity is that it includes no safeguards. The vague definition of “conversion therapy” raises more questions than it answers. No distinction is made in the Bill between undeniably cruel and coercive efforts to change someone’s sexuality or gender on the one hand and, on the other, faith leaders, parents and friends who may be approached by someone struggling in these areas and do their best to advise them. Any responsible legislation in this area must make these crucial distinctions.
No doubt, it is very difficult to do. The Government have been struggling for years to define conversion therapy in the robust way necessary for legislation. The Government Equalities Office consultation closed more than two years ago. A draft Bill was to be prepared for spring 2022, but has not been forthcoming. I am sure that that is not for lack of effort. Drawing up a conversion therapy law that does not infringe on family life, belief and other fundamental human rights is no easy task. This Bill certainly does not achieve it.
Many noble Lords will have seen the analysis of Jason Coppel KC, who considered the Bill in detail. His words are telling. He notes that the Bill
“would apply across the whole range of life; including in religious settings, social settings, and in the home”.
He says:
“No attempt has been made to craft exemptions or exceptions so as to ensure that any particular conduct, including conduct in domestic settings, or the practice of religion, is not prohibited”.
The Bill would, he says,
“restrict the ability of gender-critical persons to express their beliefs; the ability of religious organisations to express their beliefs … and the ability of parents to counsel and bring up children in the way they believe to be right”.
He continues by saying that
“the Bill criminalises expressions of personal conviction even if they are made without expressions of hatred or intolerance, or improper purpose or coercion, or abuse of power”.
He concludes that the Bill would interfere with rights protected by Articles 8, 9, 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
We must take these warnings seriously. With these rights engaged, any legislation must be carefully crafted, but also have sound justification. So what is the justification? If conversion therapy entails coercive and abusive behaviour, there are many laws governing such conduct already. When we go beyond the existing law, we very quickly infringe free speech and religious liberty. I have yet to hear a clear articulation of the gap in the law that the Bill intends to fill. Hence, I am left wondering to what extent it is needed at all. I do not believe I am alone in that.
My noble friend Lady Eaton referred to Keira Bell and her horrific experience at the Tavistock clinic. We are all, I am sure, troubled by it, as we should be. A young lady has been left with a damaged body after irreversible surgery that was not clinically necessary but rather ideologically driven. This is what happens when there is only one permitted way to respond to people experiencing distress about their gender.
This comes back to the finding of Dr Hilary Cass that “social transition” is not a neutral act; it is a major psychosocial intervention that is likely to affect whether a child’s gender distress disappears or becomes long lasting. As we saw with Keira Bell, and many like her, social transitioning is the first step on the pathway to often deeply regretted permanent changes. Therefore, those who are ideologically driven to affirm and encourage children, in particular, to see themselves as trans when they are going through temporary turbulence need to be held responsible. If anything, this Bill should outlaw that—but I cannot see it being used that way in practice. Those calling most loudly for this Bill certainly would not want that.
Despite manifest problems with the current affirmative approach, this Bill will entrench rather than correct it. My noble friend Lady Foster referred chillingly to the conversion therapy law in Victoria, Australia, which makes it criminal not to affirm someone’s identity and sexuality. Victoria’s approach is lauded by those calling for this Bill, yet its law and official guidance are extraordinarily intolerant. It has even issued guidance on what the law now considers to be acceptable prayers. Prayers must reassure people that they are “perfect the way they are”. That is a long way from the New Testament’s declaration that
“all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
I certainly have sinned, continue to sin and continue to fall very far short of the glory of God. But here, parents who do not agree to their children going on to puberty blockers can fall foul of this law. We cannot go down this path.
Universal Credit (Transitional Provisions) Amendment Regulations 2022
Lord Farmer Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, for bringing forward this regret Motion, which highlights important issues arising from the continued managed migration from legacy benefits to universal credit, and I pay tribute to her detailed knowledge in this area. As she said, the Government removed the need for the DWP to return to Parliament after 10,000 claimants had been migrated to universal credit from legacy benefits without a full evaluation of the programme so far.
In supporting her Motion, I will raise three important concerns: the lack of safeguards for vulnerable claimants, as we have heard; transitional protection, given the evidence of adverse impact of technical issues on claimants; and lack of scrutiny by Parliament, removing the opportunity for MPs and Peers to challenge and question the process so far or to introduce any legislative changes thought necessary.
First, the impact on vulnerable people can be severe. Fifty per cent of claimants of legacy benefits are on employment support allowance, which is a benefit for people who have an illness or disability that prevents them working. The process of claiming universal credit is difficult but for these people it presents a major challenge. The DWP plans to stop payment of legacy benefits to those who do not comply after three months; this is a significant sanction and could cause major distress, particularly to the most vulnerable claimants. The Government have removed the cap without publishing an evaluation. It seems essential that managed migration should be halted until an evaluation has been published.
Secondly, transitional protection is available only to those households that are migrated. There is evidence of the adverse impact of a number of technical issues on certain groups of claimants. For example, claimants will be better off if migrated after the annual uprating and worse off if migrated before. That is unfair and inequitable. People transferring from temporary to mainstream accommodation will have the housing cost element added to their universal credit. That will erode any transitional protection they may receive.
Carers, of all people, who give so much to our communities and who are entitled to the limited capability for work-related activity, will lose out on transitional protection, as the LCRWA full amount means that transitional protection is eroded by this element. Transitional protection comes to an end when joint claimants separate as a couple, even when a partner has died or left as the result of an abusive relationship. A full evaluation would enable these important issues to be reviewed and, where necessary, action to be taken to strengthen transitional protection. No claimant should be worse off at the point of transfer and vulnerable claimants need to be protected from the consequences of not coping with claims.
Thirdly, there is a lack of accountability to Parliament. As the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee points out, insufficient detail has been provided for there to be confidence in the DWP’s capacity to carry out the full migration without detriment to claimants. The managed migration to universal credit is an enormous project. The volume of claimants alone is a cause of concern, in that failure to deliver competently could cause widespread distress and hardship to those claimants.
Of the 2.6 million people still on legacy benefits, up to half are vulnerable long-term claimants such as the sick or disabled. The DWP needs to provide stronger evidence of its competence to communicate with the most vulnerable claimants and of its capacity to transfer their claims without disruption to those payments. Parliament should not be excluded from this major project, the impact of which on the poorest and most disadvantaged people may be very serious. It is essential for MPs and Peers to exercise full scrutiny and accountability and that they are kept in full touch as the project is rolled out. We support the Motion.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, the Minister told the House on 17 October that, as of February 2022, 5.18 million working-age adults, or 12.7% of the GB working-age population, were receiving out-of-work benefits. She explained that the largest categories were universal credit “out-of-work” or those with “no work-related requirements”, but can she inform the House how many are claiming the legacy employment and support allowance? Presumably, they would all be migrated as part of “move to UC”.
She also said that the DWP is trying to reduce the flow into unemployment and inactivity through prevention and retention work by supporting disabled people and people with long-term health conditions. Will the migration of people currently claiming legacy employment and support allowance into universal credit mean these claimants receive more attention from work coaches, with the aim of their being better enabled to work? This is not about being punitive, but ensuring that no one is simply parked on benefits when their well-being and sense of purpose would be greatly boosted by working or increasing their hours. This is obviously even more important when there are so many vacancies.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for tabling this important regret Motion, which she introduced with her usual power and precision. All I can do is reinforce some of the points she and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, made emphasising how much this matters for both the well-being of claimants, particularly those in vulnerable circumstances, and transparency and accountability to Parliament.
I have yet to see a convincing justification for the removal of the stage gate, which was introduced to assuage concern raised in both Houses. Two reasons were given by the then Secretary of State in a letter to the chair of the Work and Pensions Committee in May: first, that early lessons and observations were captured during the truncated pilot in Harrogate. We have not been told what those lessons were and, curiously, in oral evidence to the committee in June, the next month, the same Secretary of State said:
“We learned a bit in Harrogate, but not a lot. The main thing we learned in Harrogate is not to do it the way it was done in Harrogate.”
That is all the more reason, one would have thought, for maintaining the piloting approach that Parliament was promised. But, no, apparently UC’s resilience during the pandemic means that a pilot is no longer needed. As my noble friend pointed out, that was a very different exercise involving a very different group of people, almost certainly far fewer in vulnerable circumstances. Instead of the pilot, as we have heard, we have what is called the discovery phase—which sounds so appealing, like a mystery cruise, but has actually reassured no one, particularly the SLSC and SSAC, never mind external stakeholders.
Although ultimately SSAC drew back from recommending that the stage gate be retained, it made clear its concerns at its abolition. Among the points it made was the need to monitor the impact of the declining ratio of staff to claimants during the discovery phase and to publish before the Summer Recess the criteria for scaling up and moving on to the next phase of implementation, yet, to my knowledge, they have still not been published. Why not? Will the Minister give an undertaking today to do so, and to ensure that the declining staff/claimant ratio is monitored?
These and other issues, as we have heard, stem from a concern about the risk to claimants of the whole exercise. When the original regulations were considered, the view was put strongly by SLSC and SSAC that the balance of risk lay too heavily on the claimant. This was why CPAG, of which I am honorary president—I am grateful for its full briefing—Z2K and disability organisations called for the automatic transfer of migrated claimants, rather than requiring them to make a new claim. I never saw a plausible reason for rejecting that idea, but clearly it will not happen. As my noble friend asked, could the department at least consider the suspension of an existing claim rather than its termination in cases where a new claim is not made in the required period—not least because of the implications for transitional protection?
Her Majesty The Queen: “The Faithful”
Lord Farmer Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Farmer
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to advising Her Majesty The Queen to add “The Faithful” to her title; and what legislation, if any, would be required before such a title was adopted.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his thoughtful suggestion and for his kind words in the Motion on the humble Address about Her Majesty the Queen’s long and successful—and, I submit, happy and glorious—reign. There are no plans for the Government to advise Her Majesty to change her title, which was set out by proclamation made under the provisions of the Royal Titles Act 1953.
Lord Farmer (Con)
I thank my noble friend the Minister for that Answer, which I was expecting. Does he agree that the unprecedented occasion of a Platinum Jubilee demands marking for future generations and centuries the uniqueness of this reign? Adding “the Faithful” to the Queen’s title, as in “Alfred the Great”, would make her stand out in the sweep of history. This permanent and indisputable marker would acknowledge her constancy and outworked sense of duty. It has a double meaning, as it is directed both to God and to her fellow man. Can my noble friend the Minister suggest a constructive way forward?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I agree with every sentiment that my noble friend has expressed about Her Majesty. The position is that the titles are proclaimed by the Accession Council and embraced in the Royal Titles Act. The Platinum Jubilee demonstrated the affection this country has for Her Majesty; it may be left to history to accord titles to past monarchs, but the Government have no plans to make a change.
House of Lords: Appointments Process
Lord Farmer Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I first thank my noble friend Lord Balfe for his kind words and for initiating this debate. Recent Sunday Times stories about former party treasurers imply that large donors given peerages are inherently unsuited to serve in the House and that this is confirmed when they do not subsequently speak or attend. Wealthy people putting their mouths where their money is bring insight and expertise to this House’s debates and committees.
On the criticism of the quality of service and work done in this House by the Sunday Times, the judgment of a senior EU lawyer whom I met during the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo was that the work received in Brussels from the House of Lords was second in quality to no other secondary Chamber in the world. Our gracious monarch strictly enjoins us to attend her Parliament in Westminster to treat and give our counsel upon the arduous, urgent dangers impending upon her realm. This Writ of Summons lays sobering responsibilities upon those who receive it.
Without making excuses, here are some thoughts on why former treasurers may not contribute: the difficulties of investing much time mastering the House’s procedures, of understanding the timetabling and of risking disapprobation when speaking out in relative inexperience. These can be powerful disincentives. My advice to former treasurers is this: you have the money and a great honour has been bestowed on you—you can speak in Parliament—so pay for high-quality help. Do not stint; an experienced advisory team can help you master procedure and time.
Frankly, disapprobation can come to wealthy Members not for what they say but for who they are. Fear of humiliation discourages and silences. Such prejudgment is discourteous, and courtesy is the currency of this House. If we in this House treated all appointees cordially, we would see and hear the best of people and counsel given would be richer and more wide-ranging.
Government: Leadership Training
Lord Farmer Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Norton for this timely debate, which I fully support. I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, by admitting that I come to it somewhat humbly, acknowledging my lack of experience as a Minister, an MP or a civil servant.
Over the past 18 months, we have become more aware than ever of the importance of effective government, which requires excellence in leadership. When the control of the state extends over our social lives, our access to workplaces, healthcare and leisure facilities and our ability to travel freely, it is terrifying to think that incompetence might hold sway for want of core leadership skills. Among those, I give pre-eminence to the ability to exercise courage and servant leadership, which are mutually interdependent, in pursuit of the common good. Political elites should always be focused on pursuing this, but their hypercompetitiveness and electoral short-termism make courage and servant leadership particularly elusive traits.
Moreover, “Gotcha!” politics has become supercharged by cancel culture: pitiless condemnation of what people say—let alone do—which makes it more difficult than ever to act with courage. Anonymous social media bullies seek to destroy through fear the man or woman who, in Theodore Roosevelt’s words,
“is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; … who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds”.
Good governance always requires taking risks, for the present incumbents to realise long-term rewards which may accrue to other political parties and leaders.
The implementation of my two reviews commissioned by the Ministry of Justice required political and civil service leaders to invest faith and money in the ability of healthy relationships with families and others to reap significant rehabilitation rewards. In the short term, this meant, for example: allowing access to iPads for video visits; home leaves on temporary licence; and enabling more women to stay with babies born during or shortly before their sentence. Retrospective research findings, such as reoffending being 39% less likely when prisoners had received family visits, suggest good outcomes will ensue from such measures, but prospective, longitudinal studies showing reductions in intergenerational crime and long-term desistance, are likely to take more than a decade to yield the irrefutable data that many leaders prefer to act on when making seemingly risky decisions.
Academic business studies expose the limits of such “vigilant” leadership. This is when decision-makers work
“to the best of their limited abilities, within the confines of available organizational resources, to exercise all the caution they can to avoid mistakes in the essential tasks of information search, deliberation, and planning.”
To me, this emphasis on caution, avoiding risks and bureaucratic decision-making can and does stifle initiative and innovation and quenches the spirit of adventure. It can eliminate the need for courage, whereas judging risk/reward ratios and courageously acting on them demands it.
Research on how senior leaders in the US federal Government made their most difficult decisions considered whether they employed this “vigilant” approach to decisions involving informational, technical or political complexity. Notably, leaders said that their most difficult decisions required courage. Those courageous decisions were made after personal reflection and/or consulting a small number of trusted advisers, rather than in ways that could be described as “vigilant”. The researchers concluded that complex decisions required leaders and their advisers to be “ambidextrous”—systematic and highly rigorous but also able, when courage was needed, to stick their heads above the parapet and take risks to reap potentially great rewards.
However, how does one train to develop a courageous risk-reward mindset? It has to be modelled from the top and is closely linked to servant leadership that focuses on the growth and well-being of those being led. I am a Christian and follow the most successful servant leader of all time, who was fundamentally characterised by humility, Jesus Christ, who described his heart as humble and lowly. He is not a bad model to look at even for those who are not Christians.
For the purposes of this debate, servant leadership includes demonstrating loyalty to those above and below oneself in the ministerial hierarchy or Civil Service grade structure and, of course, ultimately to the people of this country—again seeking their common good. Organisational culture experts describe how servant-led employees do not fear being punished for taking risks and trying to do the right thing, as long as their actions align with their organisation’s goals, mission and core values. This makes them perform at more of a risk-taking level. Imagine if the whole of government—politicians and the Civil Service—were infused throughout with courage and servant leadership, where responsibility lies where it should and subordinates are not sent over the top to take the flak.
I know that there is a view that those most senior should be protected where possible from the full force of opposition, but preparing for this debate put me in mind of the Battle of Waterloo, where my great-great-great-grandfather lost an arm. As many in this House will know, Waterloo was a slaughterhouse, the worst carnage in the Napoleonic wars, with huge pressure on British officers, a vast amount of whom were killed or badly wounded. In those days, officers led from the front, exposing themselves to great risk of loss, balanced with the reward of glory in service to their country. We need to see a revival of that courage and servant-mindedness in Whitehall and Westminster today.
Covid-19: Wedding Venues
Lord Farmer Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Farmer
To ask Her Majesty’s Government when weddings will be able to take place in venues which enable social distancing and comply with other COVID-19 precautions.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, I am sure my noble friend would welcome that, following the Prime Minister’s Statement yesterday, from 4 July, wedding ceremonies and civil partnership ceremonies will be able to take place in England. Venues should ensure that they are Covid-19 secure, with clear social distancing in place. People should still avoid having a large ceremony and should invite no more than 30 close family members and friends.
Lord Farmer (Con) [V]
My Lords, I do indeed welcome the announcement that my noble friend refers to. The Government are supporting commitment by lifting the ban on weddings, but marriages also need supporting. The Government were unable to express their commitment to do that in the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill, but will not bring that Bill, when enacted, into force until autumn 2021. What commitment will my noble friend make that this Government will have enhanced support in place for marriages under strain by the time no-fault divorce is available?
Public Services: Update
Lord Farmer Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True
My Lords, I might be new in the game, but I am afraid that I cannot urge the Government because I am no longer on the Back Benches. I can say that the Government understand the critical importance of local authorities in confronting this problem. I will certainly make sure that the noble Baroness’s points are heard and understood by the Chancellor. As I said, I cannot anticipate what financial provision he will make for the future.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, given the latest Public Health England advice that quarantining of new and at-risk prisoners should be in place for the rest of this year, can my noble friend advise us of the Government’s planning for the resumption of prisoners’ family visits and the progress on making virtual visits widely available?
Lord True
My Lords, my noble friend raises a very important point. Prisoners are a vulnerable part of the community and mental health is important for everyone, not least prisoners. I assure him that although this is at an initial stage, action has already been taken to ensure that locked mobile telephones can be given to prisoners in settings where there is no access to call boxes. Provision is being made to bring in the kinds of virtual conferences and meetings that he describes. I cannot give him an exact figure on the number of settings, or the timing, but I assure him that the Government are aware of the issue and addressing it.
Universal Credit
Lord Farmer Excerpts(7 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this issue, which affects so many lives, both directly and indirectly, in terms of the confidence the general public has in our welfare system. It is vital to stand back and assess what universal credit—UC—is trying to achieve.
If we had not, with our coalition partners, invented and implemented UC, the ineffectiveness of the legacy welfare system would have been a running sore in political debate that would have become a dangerous fault line as we approach Brexit. It would have been far too late to make any meaningful reform, but there would have been urgent calls for it, given the acute labour shortages we would be facing as the number of migrant workers willing to do jobs left vacant by British workers reduced.
Related to this, and before Brexit became an issue, the high unemployment rates that welfare reform has helped us to avoid would have undermined the whole of society. Human dignity is deeply affected by lack of work. For example, while it is a complex picture, Understanding Society data suggests that longer-term unemployment is associated with obesity. This badly affects confidence and employability and thereby further traps someone in a pernicious cycle of poor health and unpromising life chances.
Writing about the legacy benefit system, one of our foremost experts, Nick Timmins, said,
“Like many others, I had come by the mid-to-late 2000s to recognise that it had become horrendously complicated—both in the way it handled the absence of work and in the support it offered once people were in low-paid jobs”.
He notes its incomprehensibility to claimants and administration staff alike, the billions of pounds-worth of unintended error every year, and how it “almost actively encouraged fraud”. Substantial reform was particularly important because moving into low-paid work for those out of it for any length of time felt very risky. It could take weeks to sort out a fresh claim for benefit if the job failed, hence unemployment existing alongside high vacancy rates. He and Professor Roy Sainsbury, an early proponent of a “single working-age benefit”, saw UC as,
“essentially a technocratic change … an apolitical idea that was not rooted in any ideology at all”.
Thus, my concern is that UC has become unhelpfully politicised—a stick with which to beat the Government regardless of the broad sweep of positive outcomes, and the subject of inaccurate and shameful scaremongering.
For example, during Prime Minister’s Question Time in the other place on 11 October, the Leader of the Opposition claimed that Gloucester City Homes had evicted “one in eight” of their tenants—650 in total—due to UC. However, in actuality eight people, all of whom had significant debt arrears before UC was introduced, were evicted. Richard Graham, Conservative MP for Gloucester, flagged up as a point of order that,
“the picture painted by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday was a long way from the true situation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/10/17; col. 497.]
The impression has also been given that there will be a big bang in UC rollout just before Christmas, when most families already feel nervous about their finances. However, the pace of the test, learn and rectify process is staying steady and the proportion of the forecast claimant population receiving UC will reach 10% by the end of January, as preannounced. On the subject of test and learn, can the Minister inform the House what progress has been made in developing universal support, which will help people with debt and other disadvantages as they become used to the new system?
Finally, there will be a projected £70 billion in savings to the public purse as a result of the shift away from the legacy benefit system, not because of parsimony, but because of people moving into work. Have the Government modelled if and how savings might be improved by lowering taper rates still further than the recent drop from 65% to 63%, albeit at an up-front cost of £1 billion over five years? There would be a similar cost in reducing the taper rates from 63% to 60%. But what would be the likely return to the Exchequer, given that lower taper rates—and of course improved work allowances—increase work incentives?
Queen’s Speech
Lord Farmer Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I start by welcoming the prominence of the issue of life chances in Her Majesty’s most gracious Speech, thus fulfilling commitments made by my noble friend Lord Freud in this House. At Second Reading of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill he described how:
“In the past, Governments spent money in an attempt to solve problems rather than drive real change in people’s lives, and our approach is different: we believe that … we must relentlessly focus on tackling the root causes of child poverty to improve the life chances of our children”.—[Official Report, 17/11/15; col. 122.]
Hence the new statutory measures on worklessness and educational attainment.
My noble friend also promised to develop indicators to measure progress against other root causes of child poverty, including family breakdown, so their inclusion in the Queen’s Speech was essential if the Prime Minister is truly to launch,
“an all-out assault on poverty”.
I need hardly say that indicators in themselves change nothing—what matters is that, to quote my noble friend Lord Freud again, they,
“drive action which will make the biggest difference to the most disadvantaged children, both now and in the future”.—[Official Report, 17/11/15; col. 32.]
Will the Ministers assure the House that bold policies commensurate with the scale of family breakdown in this country, also implicated in our high rates of mental ill-health among the young, will be brought forward?
Efforts to improve family stability could be game-changing in preventing children growing up in poverty. Joseph Rowntree Foundation research by Smith and Middleton highlights the fact that 85% of children who avoided poverty over a five-year period had lived continuously in couple households. Children in intact families are also less likely to experience behavioural problems; leave school and home earlier; become pregnant or a parent at an early age; report depressive symptoms; and smoke, abuse alcohol and use other drugs during adolescence. They are more likely to perform well in school and need less medical treatment. Family breakdown is not inevitable, and noble Lords have heard me outline solutions before such as family hubs. Noble Lords may wonder whether I will ever move on from this issue but I am compelled by the facts and the need for concerted action if we are to get ahead of this epidemic.
As well as implementing the family test, the Government need to have a Minister in every department who has the departmental responsibility for proactively addressing the causes and effects of family instability: Defra, for example, will know that relationship breakdown can undermine rural productivity when it leads to the division of family farms, loneliness and isolation, and, as we heard in Oral Questions today, even suicidality. More positively, the Ministry of Justice also knows that efforts to strengthen families are essential for the rehabilitation of offenders. The Secretary of State for Justice, Michael Gove, told governors this month :
“Critically, education should also help prisoners to acquire the social skills and virtues which will make them better fathers, better husbands and better brothers. Ensuring that prisoners can re-integrate into family life and maintain positive relationships is crucial to effective rehabilitation. Families are one of our most effective crime-fighting institutions. And we should strengthen them at every turn”.
A cornerstone of the justice reforms in the Queen’s Speech is the greater freedom that governors will have and the accountability for outcomes, particularly from education, that will be a key trade-off for greater control. Dame Sally Coates’s recently published review lays out a holistic vision of education for prisoners that includes family and relationship learning and practical skills for parenting, finance, and domestic management. HMP Parc in Bridgend, Wales, is a clear example, copied across the world, of a prison that has managed to change the culture around family visits without compromising on security. Similarly, HMP Winchester has transformed how prisoners engage with their families while inside. When the first week induction process includes a session that brings home to you how hard it will be for your children to have a father inside, it can lay a totally different foundation for how someone serves their sentence.
There are potentially other important knock-on effects: these prisons have found that good-quality contact with family members can make the difference between ingesting new psychoactive substances—what Prisons Minister Andrew Selous refers to as “lethal highs”—and deciding against doing so. If you know you are going to attend a homework club with your child that week or it is the day for you to write home, then even if you want to escape to drug-induced oblivion because life is so tough, these family ties can act as a strong disincentive to do so. Dads’ clubs on the wings also bolster inmates’ resolve to make good choices.
As I suggested at the outset, this new Session gives us a fresh opportunity and impetus to undertake far-reaching and much-needed social reform to strengthen our economy and enhance our security. I urge our Government to deliver a life chances strategy that rises to the scale of the challenges our society faces and Members of this House to do all we can to do likewise.