Poverty

Debate between Lord Sutherland of Houndwood and Lord Freud

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

One of the most valuable things I got from this House was during the passage of the Welfare Reform Act 2012, when we debated what to do for the most vulnerable in the context of UC. That led to the creation of universal support, whereby we join up with local authorities to try to provide services that join together. We have done that now for two of the barriers people face, in budgeting and in digital competence, and we are now exploring how to expand that approach, which shares information, data and support in relation to other barriers. We have some trials going on at the moment, one in Croydon and one in the London Bridge area, on how to do that most effectively.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)]

My Lords, one of the Government’s more successful innovations in dealing with the long-term implications of poverty has been the introduction of the pupil premium. I have to tell the Minister, from conversations I have had with headmasters in some of the most benefited schools in this area, that they are concerned that changes in the rules about how entitlement to benefit is calculated in future will affect very directly the input into schools through this rather good innovation. Any reassurances that can be given, now or in writing, would be appreciated.

[Lord Freud]

That is one of the topics that I and the Schools Minister are talking about. We now have, as a potential option for future use, far more specific measures of real levels of poverty in universal credit which we can use to record poverty, rather than the much cruder measures that we used in the legacy system.

Personal Independence Payment

Debate between Lord Sutherland of Houndwood and Lord Freud

Thursday 13th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, on my noble friend’s question about the medical reports, my understanding is that all information which is relevant is brought to the assessments, and that indeed people—supporters or family—can be brought forward to make the case and provide evidence. Again, I am not sure about the extent to which the fine detail of this issue is yet locked down. We are going through the details, and indeed on Monday we can start to discuss some of the fine points. The regulations have been laid in draft to be looked at by the various committees—the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and so on—and I think that that is the stage of the process that we are at. The noble Baroness is looking puzzled. If I am wrong on that, I shall make sure that that is corrected.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement. There are a number of good things in it. However, I should like to ask for reassurance on a specific point. Can the Minister reassure us, either now or certainly at the stage at which regulations are introduced, about the extent to which these changes and their impact will be monitored—for example, in relation to the employability of disabled people, in relation to whether there is a rise in demand for additional residential or homecare support, and in relation to whether there is consistency of assessment between the two different assessing bodies? There are a number of points here on which many of us would be much reassured if monitoring arrangements were in place. No Government can get all of this right. We will be bombarded with statistics from around the whole country, and it would be useful to know that central and independent monitoring was taking place.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are planning to have a real look at this in the autumn of 2014, once the system is up and running. I am sure that we have not yet fine-tuned the exact nature of what we will be testing for, but consistency of application will clearly be one thing. We generally watch that quite closely but that is likely to be one of the issues, and the impacts will be another area which it is likely that that 2014 process will cover.