Welfare Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 2015

Lord Newby Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Lords Chamber

The compromises reached by all those involved helped to get the exceptional circumstances of Northern Ireland recognised, and the settlement agreed between Stormont and Westminster presents an opportunity not only to draw a line under the difficult events of recent months but to look to the future as we continue to support the building of a peaceful, as well as prosperous and fair, Northern Ireland. We welcome the order.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I briefly echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy. In some respects, of course, this is an imperfect way of dealing with these very important changes. But the key point is that it is a way of dealing with them. They will now be able to be implemented in a way that is impossible to see via any other route. They do, as the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, said, unlock other important developments in Northern Ireland. Therefore, we on these Benches welcome the order.

[Lord Freud]

I thank both noble Lords for the way they have approached this as something that we need to do to help the process in Northern Ireland and allow that country to function.

It is worth picking up just a handful of points before I close. The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, indicated, I think, that he did not necessarily approve of some of the Government’s welfare measures. However, let me explain how the current Welfare Reform and Work Bill will work in the Northern Ireland context. As part of the fresh start agreement, the Northern Ireland Executive recognised the importance of addressing welfare reform more broadly and not just the 2012 measures. The legislative consent Motion passed by the Assembly made this clear. So if required, we will introduce a further order to implement the relevant provisions of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill for the same reasons that we are introducing the order currently before the House: to provide Northern Ireland with a fit-for-purpose welfare system that takes parity as its starting point.

The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, mentioned the transitional provisions of the order, which allow the Secretary of State to exercise the vast majority of regulation-making powers in the first instance. In effect, this means that the Secretary of State has the power to introduce regulations until that power is handed back to Northern Ireland.

On the noble Lord’s point about some of the changes, the Northern Ireland Bill included a number of specific amendments which were agreed to help ensure that the reforms could be implemented. The Government remain convinced that the proposals introduced in Great Britain remain right for Great Britain. In Northern Ireland, we have agreed administrative flexibilities to allow payments to be made more frequently and for the rent element to be paid directly to landlords. This recognises the devolved nature of welfare and the ability for there to be different administrative arrangements in Northern Ireland. It will be up to the Northern Ireland Executive to work out their exact administrative procedures. The universal credit system in Great Britain also allows for us to make these alternative payment arrangements, which will be used where appropriate.

I emphasise again that this order fulfils a vital commitment made as part of the fresh start agreement and it has the support of the Northern Ireland Assembly. It does not diminish the devolution settlement but supports the future of devolution in Northern Ireland and paves the way for the introduction there of a modern, reformed welfare system. I commend the order to the House.

Pensions Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Pensions Bill, has consented to place her interests, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

Clause 23: Amendments

Amendment 1

Moved by

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

That is a more reflective point; it is just not exactly what the amendment before us today actually refers to. It refers to the financial measures of “absolute low income”. Is that the one that is based on 1998-99 and uprated for inflation in a direct line?

My point is that there is an absolute crying need, of which we are all absolutely aware. There is child poverty out there and we need to strain every sinew to ensure that we tackle it. Also, we have no doubt that on the current measure there is no question that it is going to increase. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s figures forecast that as the recovery gets under way, private sector earnings will increase by 4.6% per annum. It does not take a great mathematical mind—which is fortunate for me—to figure out that with what we are dealing with today, as well as the likely increase in private sector incomes, we are going to see the gap rising and almost an inversion of what has happened over the past few years happening in the future. But there are more indicators that need to be examined to give us a holistic picture and to ensure that we target scarce resources where they are needed most.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, this proposed new clause would require the Secretary of State to lay a report in each of the years in question, assessing the impact of that year’s uprating order on child poverty based on the different measures contained in the Child Poverty Act. I absolutely understand noble Lords’ concern to ensure that we are tracking progress and impacts on child poverty. However, I do not believe that this new clause is necessary to do that.

The Government already publish child poverty figures every year using the households below average income series, which is usually published in May or June and includes details on the areas listed in the amendment: namely, the number of children,

“living in relative low income … combined low income and material deprivation … absolute low income … persistent poverty”.

Moreover, later this year, we will see the first of what will become an annual report from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, chaired by Alan Milburn. It will report on the Government’s progress towards reducing child poverty, in particular meeting the targets in the Act and implementing the most recent UK strategy.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, asked a number of questions about that commission. He asked where it had got to and what it was going to say. The answer is that the Government do not know what it is going to say because it is an independent commission. We await its report eagerly, but we are not attempting to pull it up by the roots to find out what it is going say as it is in the process of undertaking its work. I can reassure my noble friend that there is no drift in the work of the commission. It is a very substantive piece of work and it is therefore not surprising that it cannot do it very quickly. We expect that its report will be available in the late summer. It will report to Parliament and I am sure that we will give considerable scrutiny to it in your Lordships’ House when the time comes—we are already looking forward to it on these Benches, I can tell you.

I strongly believe that it is only through such comprehensive reporting, looking at poverty issues in the round, that we can have a meaningful debate about child poverty. As noble Lords have mentioned, we published in response to a Parliamentary Question in another place the expected impacts on child poverty of the uprating measures that we have announced. An additional 200,000 children will be in that category by the end of the period covered by the Bill as a result of the measures in it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked whether we would publish other impacts of the measure. We do not think that it is possible to derive estimates of all the measures in the Bill. For example, impacts cannot be modelled for the persistent low income poverty measure because impact assessments are based on cross-sectional data rather than longitudinal data. In addition, measures based on an estimate of material deprivation are technically complex to model because material deprivation relies on more factors than just income, so impacts have not been modelled for these measures. The noble Baroness asked also about the absolute poverty figure. If she will forgive me, I shall write to her on that separately.

As we have said previously, we believe that we need to be cautious about setting too much store by such individual assessments of impact. These are not predictions of how the child poverty figures will change in the future, as they do not take into account all the other variables which exist. For example, our estimates will change as forecasts of economic growth and average earnings change, and they do not take account of policies which cause child poverty figures to move in the other direction such as universal credit. Universal credit, which has not played much of a part in our debate today, is of course expected to lift up to 250,000 children out of poverty depending on the effect of the minimum income floor. I believe that we can have a meaningful debate about poverty, as we have started to do in the latter part of this debate, only when we accept that poverty goes wider than the measures contained within the Child Poverty Act.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked a number of questions about the work that we are doing on defining poverty and on the consultation. The consultation is finished. She is quite right that a number of people have been very critical of what the Government are proposing and we are now considering how we respond to those criticisms. It is not the case that the Government have made up their mind about the outcome and are going to ignore everything that has been said—that would be ridiculous. I can give the noble Baroness an assurance that we are analysing all the submissions, of which there have been a number, and we will produce our response to the consultation in the summer.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

I am sure that the Minister is about to say this, but the assurance that I was seeking was that all the responses would be published on the web. I do not question the fact that the Government are analysing them all—I am sure that they would not ignore any of them—but the public need to know what people were saying about it.

[Lord Newby]

I am happy, I think, to give that assurance. I say “I think” only because I have not talked to officials. That is the standard practice and, unless somebody for a reason that I cannot immediately think of has said that they do not want their comments to be published, I would expect the department to publish all the comments and representations that we have received.

I want to clarify a few matters that have been put to us on several occasions by noble Lords. First, the Government are committed to the Child Poverty Act; secondly, we are committed to eradicating child poverty; and, thirdly, we strongly believe that income matters and will remain a central part of any new measures of child poverty. Our discussion is about what else one needs to do both to measure and deal with child poverty so that all children have a better opportunity when they are living on very modest means.

A number of noble Lords have cited figures from the IFS and the Child Poverty Action Group which suggested that child poverty levels would rise by between 800,000 and 1 million by 2020. I really would caution against setting too much store by those figures. First, child poverty forecasts are an inexact science. For example, the numbers that the IFS produces do not account for future changes to government policy. It is measuring change at a time of immense fiscal challenge for the Government but cannot know what government policy will look like in four or five years. The IFS core numbers also do not take fully into account the dynamic and behavioural changes that will result from the Government’s reforms. Moreover, even in the short term, child poverty forecasting has proven difficult to get right. The IFS, which I accept is a leader in this area, made predictions in October 2011 of a fall of 100,000 in the figure for relative child poverty for the year 2010-11. In reality, the figure fell by 300,000. It is therefore an inexact science and it is very easy for numbers produced by it to be spectacularly wrong. This does not of course detract from the importance of taking action to reduce the level of child poverty, but it serves as a reminder that we should proceed with caution in making forecasts of child poverty, whether based on measures in isolation or changes over the longer term.

It is important to remember that many figures on poverty are based entirely on tax and benefit changes feeding entirely into the relative income measure of poverty. This measure does not capture the full range of issues that poverty involves. It captures a lot, but it does not capture them all. It will not tell us how many children’s lives will have been changed by 2020 but only how many children have circulated around the poverty line. One way of tackling child poverty is to focus on this line, pushing up benefit incomes to lift people from just below it to just above it. We already know that focusing on the relative income line alone yields perverse results, and people have referred in this debate and earlier debates to the fact that, in 2010, 300,000 fewer children were set to be in poverty because the recession had caused median incomes to drop. Children were set to be pulled out of poverty not because anything had changed in their lives but because the rest of society got poorer.

The alternative path that we are trying to follow in government focuses on the interventions that transform lives. That is why we have protected spending on the education budget; that is why we have invested £2.5 billion in the pupil premium for disadvantaged pupils; that is why we are spending £1.2 billion on capital investment in schools; and that is why we are investing in making work pay through the universal credit, sending out a clear signal that we believe that work is the best route out of poverty for parents and their children. As part of the universal credit, we are spending an extra £200 million to support families with childcare costs and, for the first time, this support will be made available to families who work fewer than 16 hours a week. This will mean that 100,000 working families will be helped with their childcare costs.

As I have said, the Government are currently analysing responses to their consultation on new measures of child poverty, measures which will attempt to capture the wider reality of poverty in the UK today. The Government already produce a number of detailed reports on poverty. I hope that this will reassure the Committee that we will continue to publish vital information around child poverty and to take our obligations around child poverty seriously. This proposed new clause would therefore be an unnecessary addition to the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, we have heard yet again some very powerful and persuasive speeches and it is a very interesting argument. I commend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds for provoking such a good debate on so important an issue. As we have heard, this amendment would remove child benefit, child tax credit, and the child addition to universal credit from the scope of the Bill. Since we on these Benches would like to remove all benefits and tax credits from the scope of this Bill, we are pleased to support it

As we have heard from the right reverend Prelate, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and others, the Bill has a disproportionate impact on children and families. The Government’s own impact assessment shows that two-thirds of affected households are families with children. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, noted in a very powerful speech, the Children’s Society says that while 30% of all households are affected, 87% of families with children are hit.

On one level this is because families with children receive more in state support—of course they do. As the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, pointed out, a household without children is rather cheaper to run than one with children; not to mention a great deal quieter. However, while most parents rightly bear the lion’s share of the cost of raising their children, the state has always contributed—not just in extreme cases to try to protect children from the misfortunes that befall their parents but also because, in general, it is always recognised that children are a public as well as a private good. We all have a stake in seeing the next generation thrive.

Many noble Lords have rehearsed—and I will not repeat them—the concerns expressed to all of us about the impact of these measures on families with children. We have all had briefings from Save the Children, the Child Poverty Action Group, the Children’s Society and others making those points. These are very difficult times to be raising children, as my noble friend Lord Touhig noted in a very powerful speech. As the costs of food and energy have soared, more and more parents are struggling to make ends meet as they spend more of their money on these basic costs.

The right reverend Prelate made a telling point, I thought, when he reminded us that, unlike other areas, we do not have people in here with direct expertise of the matters under consideration. To that end, I liked the quote from Rosemary Keenan, the chief executive of Catholic Children’s Society (Westminster), when she said:

“It is hard for many of us to imagine what it is like for a mother to only have £1 left and know she still has to feed her children before the next payday. Families facing in-work poverty rely upon Working Tax Credits and other benefits to help make ends meet, and will face serious hardship as a result of these restrictions”.

Indeed they will. As we have heard from a number of noble Lords, the Bill comes on top of a series of cuts in the value of other tax credits and benefits. As well as the headline cuts, there have been a series of hidden cuts affecting, for example, tax credits for families with children by changes to taper rates, the treatment of income and the freezing of allowances, all of which sound technical but have in fact saved billions. However, it is not of course money that has been saved, but money that has been taken way from low-income families with children.

I seem to recall that the Government suggested at earlier stages that one of the reasons that so many families are affected is that tax credits go too high up the income scale. The implication, I suppose, is that people would not miss the money. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, described some figures from Citizens Advice. It has given us case studies showing that a couple with two children, where one parent is working full-time on just over minimum wage—getting £13,000 a year—will gain just 76 pence from the personal allowance. As a result, however, they will lose £3.46 a week net. By April 2015, that family on £13,000 a year with two kids will be £12.79 a week worse off. Even if we go nearer to average earnings, Citizens Advice suggests that a family earning £26,000 in similar circumstances will be over £12 a week worse off by April 2015. The sums may not sound like a lot, but they are significant to families on those kinds of incomes.

The Bill, as we have heard, will affect primarily working families with children. I was pleased to hear my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen reiterate the impact of the Bill on child poverty, although I hope to hear something specific about this. I feel that I have probably done it to death, so I shall stop saying it now.

To come back to our core concerns, the Bill is a completely inappropriate way to address the up-rating of state support for families. We have perfectly good mechanisms in place to do that on an annual basis in the light of prevailing economic conditions. To come to the specifics, in trying to circumvent those annual mechanisms, the Government have left me slightly confused. I therefore have two questions for the Minister. First, can he tell the Committee what plans are in place for the up-rating of those benefits, tax credits and allowances which are not included within the scope of the Bill? This was raised at an earlier stage, but I do not think that we got a full answer; if we did, I apologise and will look it up. If the Minister does not know, would he mind writing to me before Report stage?

Secondly, other than those mentioned in the schedule and the universal credit work allowance mentioned in the Autumn Statement, are there any other benefits or allowances which the Government intend to up-rate by 1%? Those two questions together sound quite boring but, in fact, their answers will enable us to understand the parameters of the Bill’s impact. Unless we can get that detail, the Committee cannot properly understand its consequences.

Coming back to our core objections, these are poor choices for the Government to be making. The families who will be hit are not responsible for the economic situation, for the banking crisis or for the failure of the Government to get the economy growing again. They are just doing their best to manage in difficult times. Yet the Government are planning to cut the value of the help they get from the state in order to fund a tax cut for nearly 13,000 people earning £1 million a year. We should not be doing this and are pleased to support the amendment.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I absolutely understand and appreciate the desire of the right reverend Prelate and other noble Lords who have spoken on these amendments to protect and support children; of course, we all want to do that. However, our view is that supporting children is not just about increasing benefit levels. One of the most important things that we as a country can do to support children is to tackle the deficit and restore economic growth. In doing so, we create a future of prosperity, opportunity and jobs for the parents of those children in the short-term and for those children as they grow up. Taking benefits out of the Bill, as proposed by the right reverend Prelate, would take away some of what we consider to be the vital savings required to do this.

The amendments which we are debating now would remove from the Bill the child element of tax credit, child benefit and the lower rate of disabled child addition in universal credit. I assume that the right reverend Prelate’s intention in removing those elements is that they would be up-rated with prices, as was the case previously. If that were the case, I need to remind the House that the savings delivered by the Bill would be reduced by nearly £1 billion. In our view, those savings simply have to be found. If we did not do it through the Bill, they would have to be found from somewhere.

I was extremely grateful to the right reverend Prelate for the fact that, unlike the Opposition, he at least set out how he would raise the money. It was a long and credible list. However, it is not a list with which the Government agree. The Government’s view is that tax credits and child benefit account for over 40% of working-age welfare expenditure. It is not realistic to think that they can be excluded from the need to make savings.

We are attempting to prioritise resources into reforms which can help children in a variety of ways. To repeat some of the points which I made in my earlier speech, I hope not too tediously, we have since September 2010 entitled all three and four year-olds to 15 hours per week of free early education. This is being delivered flexibly to meet parents’ needs. It will be extended to 260,000 disadvantaged two year-olds from September 2013. We are also helping 100,000 more working families with their childcare costs by spending an extra £200 million in universal credit.

To deal with a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, we are taking action to deal with exorbitant practices by payday loan companies and loan sharks. One thing that we are grappling with, with which any Government would grapple, is that many families on low incomes have got very high levels of personal debt. This is not new. When I was Treasury spokesman for the Liberal Democrats about seven or eight years ago I appeared, somewhat implausibly, on the steps of the Treasury with my right honourable friend Vince Cable, bearing an outsized cheque at the point when personal debt in the country reached £1 trillion. Most of this, I accept, was mortgage debt; it is not the debt that we are talking about today. However, some of the biggest increases in personal debt over the past decade have been among people on low incomes. This growth in personal debt was not effectively recognised or tackled in the past. Indeed, our appearance bearing this cheque just guaranteed a huge amount of ridicule for Vince Cable and myself, rather than anybody, including the previous Government, taking the slightest notice of it, which was deeply distressing—or, more importantly, taking the slightest action to deal with the culture with which we are now grappling.

However, both in terms of loan sharks and payday lenders, I hope that we are taking more effective measures, not least through the amendments during the passage of the Financial Services Act, to ensure that people requiring access to short-term loans can, at the very least, do so with companies which will treat them half-decently. The other area which we protected, which is vital to families and benefits those at the poorer end at least as much as those at the upper end, is the support they get through the schools system and the NHS, where the budgets are protected.

The right reverend Prelate spoke about child benefit, which he is anxious to protect. I remind the House that, even after the changes that have been made to child benefit, nine out of 10 households are still covered by it. We are taking the entitlement away only right at the top end. Child benefit continues to be paid to many households which are by no means on low income.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, we should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and my noble friend Lady Lister for this amendment and the manner in which they have spoken to it. I start by reiterating that obviously our overall objective is to get rid of the 1% uprating cap throughout the Bill. Obviously, if we were successful, the protection that both speakers are seeking here would be unnecessary, but if we are not able to do that, we have to consider a range of mitigations to these cuts. The aspect identified by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood—the bearing of inflation risks much in excess of OBR forecasts—is certainly one that should concern us all. As it is, on the basis of the OBR forecast, by 2015-16 the 1% uprating will imply a real cut of some 4%. Depending on what happens to inflation, that real cut could be much higher. We have heard a range of figures from both speakers that could flow from that.

We need to recognise that these real cuts lower the base for whatever the uprating may be for the future. Studies point to the rate of inflation for what might be termed as essential items being higher than the overall rate, with essentials for this purpose including such items as food, heating, transport, fares and water charges. These are costs which are largely inescapable for low income households. The briefing we have had from USDAW records electricity prices rising by 3.9% and gas by 5.2% up to December 2012, with the poorest 10% of households spending 17% of their income on food, which rose by 3.8% in the period to December. As it stands, this Bill places the whole of the inflation risk on benefit and tax credit recipients, irrespective of the size of the risk. However, if inflation is less than 1% the Government can take the benefit of that and, if they so choose, uprate by less than 1%.

It was the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and his noble friend Lord German who demanded of the Government at Second Reading that there should be no further cuts beyond those set out in the Bill. Of course they got a dusty answer from the Minister, but the problem is that we do not know the level of the real cuts which flow from this Bill because we do not know the rate of inflation. The point made by my noble friend Lady Lister is that inserting an upper rate of 3% should not be taken to imply that real cuts up to this level are acceptable, but that automatic cuts above that level are certainly not.

I hope that the noble Lord will not press his amendment at this stage—I think he said it was probing in nature—because we believe that the right course of action is to eliminate the 1% cap in its entirety. But if we are unable to do that on Report, the type of backstop being sought by this amendment is something which deserves our support—subject to only one exception, which is that the Minister can give assurances about how poor people are to be protected from inflation, a phenomenon over which they themselves have absolutely no control.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the effect of Amendment 6 would be that if inflation as measured by the September CPI was to rise to 3% or above in 2014-15 or 2015-16, Clause 1 would not apply. Amendment 10 would do the same for Clause 2.

As I set out earlier today, a key purpose of the Bill is to deliver clear and credible plans for our public finances. It is only through having these plans that we can maintain confidence and keep interest rates at near-record low levels. We have clearly stated our intentions on uprating policy for the next three years, but the plans for 2014-15 and 2015-16 are made possible only by this Bill. Adding conditions to the Bill would remove that certainty and weaken the credibility of our plan to reduce public spending and tackle the deficit.

The Autumn Statement operating decisions were taken on the basis of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s CPI forecast. As the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, explained, the OBR does not forecast inflation to reach 3%. The CPI forecasts for the purpose of uprating in 2014-15 and 2015-16 are 2.6% and 2.2%. The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee is committed to maintaining price stability, which is defined by the Government as an inflation target of 2% as measured by the 12-month increase in the consumer prices index. Inflation is forecast by the MPC and the OBR to be above the 2% target in the near term but is forecast to fall back towards the target in the medium term. The inflation target is not set by the Governor of the Bank of England. The inflation target is set under the terms of the Bank of England Act 1997 on an annual basis by the Chancellor, and that will continue to be the case whoever the Governor of the Bank of England is.

As I said at Second Reading, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, helpfully reminded me, these are forecasts and targets. External factors and unforeseen events can produce a different outcome—on the upside or the downside. Nobody can say with absolute certainty what inflation is going to be two years from now.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

Both the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and I referred to economists and people who are suggesting that the inflation rate might be higher. Can the Minister quote the people who are saying it might be lower?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, economists say all kinds of things. For every economist who says one thing, I guarantee that I can find you an economist who says the other thing. There will be a new inflation forecast from the OBR at the time of the Budget. It would be completely inappropriate for me to speculate on what that might say and I am certainly not going to do so today.

As I said at Second Reading—and I repeat—we will continue to monitor closely the rate of inflation and its impact on the cost of living for families and the wider economy, as we always do. Again, as I said at Second Reading, the Government have taken action in response to the changes in the cost of living, including cancelling the January fuel price rise, providing further funding for local authorities to freeze council tax and, of course, for virtually everybody in work, implementing the largest ever increase in the personal allowance in April 2013.

The Government believe that what really matters to families is the impact of our policies as a whole and this will continue to be a key consideration for our policies in the future. However, that does not mean that we believe that we should add conditions to the Bill, and I am certainly not going to agree to that this evening. People have seen very significant restraint in their pay across the private and public sectors without the comfort of a safeguard against increases in inflation. Noble Lords have said a lot about certainty today. The truth is that no one has certainty, whether they are in or out of work, about their future real income. As noble Lords know, many people in the public and private sectors have not been getting pay increases linked to inflation and have been falling behind in real terms. This is exemplified by the difficult decision we took to freeze public sector pay at a time when inflation was rising to 5.2%. It is also borne out by the fact that, according to the latest figures, over the past year average earnings have risen by only 1.3%—not very different from the increase that is being proposed in the Bill. This means that on the best available forecasts—those produced by the OBR in November last year—even with the effects of this Bill, by the end of the financial year 2015-16, out-of-work benefits will still have risen faster since the start of the financial crisis than if they had been linked to average earnings, which many noble Lords are concerned about.

It is vital that we set out clear and credible plans to reduce welfare spending, tackle the deficit and secure the economic recovery. Adding conditions to the vital savings delivered by this Bill would remove that certainty.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend. These are very difficult issues. I do not think that his response takes us any further forward from the Government’s position at Second Reading. I hope that he will do me the favour of reflecting carefully on what he has heard today. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Lister for her wise counsel and support, as always.

I am seriously interested in this issue. I think it is a modest proposal. I will go away and think carefully about what my noble friend has said today but we may have to return to this at later stages of the Bill. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Credit Unions

Lord Newby Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, there are various restrictions on credit unions at the moment. I am not aware of an absolute limit on loans. Clearly, the unions need a financially viable business structure. They do not have one at the moment. A typical loan from a credit union is about £500. It costs the union more than £75 to make the loan and it earns less than £63, so getting a new mix of business is vital.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the next big step required to increase the volume of credit union activity is to make credit union accounts accessible via post office counters? Will he assure the House that this option is under active consideration as part of the wider review that he described?

[Lord Freud]

Yes, my Lords, that aspect of the review is under active consideration.