Improving Lives: Green Paper

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Fink

Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I very much regret having to say that we are not in a position to look again at that measure. The WRAG was not doing what it was designed to do. What we are now looking at in the Green Paper is how to separate the financial aspects of the benefit from the support that people require.

[Lord Fink (Con)]

My Lords, what is my noble friend the Minister doing to help employers take on disabled people?

[Lord Freud]

It is clear that many people who happen to have a disability have immense talents and valuable skills, which employers should want to tap; they will miss out if they do not. We already offer some support—for instance, Access to Work—and we are increasing that spending. The consultation will ask employers what they need from government to help them recruit and train disabled people.

Employment: Job Creation

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Fink

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I am not sure that the noble Lord has caught up with what has been happening in the world in the last year or so, when the developing world has fallen apart.

[Lord Fink (Con)]

My Lords, what has happened to the pernicious problem of structural unemployment during the time when overall employment has fallen?

[Lord Freud]

We have seen today a series of records on employment—but the most important part of those is how we are beginning to see real inroads among the people who have been excluded from the economic life of the country. The number of children in workless households and the number of workless households are the lowest on record, and the number of workless households in the social rented sector is the lowest on record. Lone parent employment is at a record high—and an important measure, economic inactivity, is now at the lowest rate since 1991.

Child Poverty

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Fink

Wednesday 8th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

We will clearly go on reporting on the HBAI measure. As a legal target it is very dangerous, and we have just seen why. In 2011, the IFS projected a figure which was wrong by 5 million children. The IFS thought that there would be 5 million more children in 2013-14 than there actually were when the figures came out. If it is a legal target, you have to start working to reduce your poverty by 5 million children—sorry, half a million children, not 5 million. That is completely unforecastable and implies huge unnecessary costs on the state.

[Lord Fink (Con)]

My Lords, how do the Government intend to help the 390,000 children who live in workless households? What measures do they have to do this?

[Lord Freud]

The number of children in workless households has been coming down rapidly. It has come down by 390,000 and is now at a record low. We are looking to encourage more families back into the workplace through the financial incentives around universal credit, the new national living wage—clearly, a very direct incentive—and free childcare, and we are working to boost the number of apprenticeships from 2 million under the last Government to 3 million under this one.

Benefit Cap

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Fink

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

Jobcentre Plus worked with potentially capped claimants from April 2012. By November the next year, 19,000 claimants in potentially capped and capped households moved into work, although we do not know to what extent those were additional moves or normal claimant churn. Since the cap was live, more than 5,700 households—around 40% of those who were capped but are no longer capped—are now exempt from the cap due to moving into work and claiming working tax credits.

[Lord Fink (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for that comprehensive Answer, but will he confirm—

[Lord Fink]

Will he confirm that, for people who are potentially subject to the cap, work always pays? Are there any leading indicators of behavioural changes in people who are potentially subject to the cap?

[Lord Freud]

There are two ways in which the cap works to incentivise people to go to work. One is that people who qualify for working tax credit are exempt from it, but there is another way, in that anyone doing even small amounts of work will be capped by a lesser amount because it serves to reduce the level of the cap and effectively allows them to keep their earnings. Clearly, one always has to be very careful to distinguish causation from correlation, but in a survey conducted by MORI a quarter of capped claimants said that they had looked for work because of the cap and 45% said that they would look for work in the next 12 months because of it.