Immigration Bill
Lord Taylor of Holbeach Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Hylton (CB)
My Lords, we are led to believe that Third Reading is for the removal of doubt and uncertainties. I believe that there is still a lot of uncertainty over the Dublin III regulation and over discretionary entry outside the Immigration Rules. These uncertainties affect both those who could use the provisions to reunite their families and those who have to administer the provisions or to present compassionate cases to the Secretary of State. The result is that few people get admitted. Under Dublin III, even the Government do not know how many people reach this country—or if they know, they will not say. Under discretionary entry, on the other hand, an average of 35 persons were admitted in each of the last five years. Only last week, the Children’s Commissioner for England wrote to the French Government about unaccompanied children now at Calais who may be—
Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)
My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, for whom I have a great deal of regard. It is not proper to open a new substantive argument at this stage of the Bill and I think that he is out of order by seeking to do so.
Lord Hylton
My Lords, I have taken the advice of the Public Bill Office and I was told quite clearly that I could make a short intervention at this stage. That is what I am doing.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am sorry, my Lords, but the noble Lord has at least three sheets of paper from which he is reading the comments that he intends to make. I do not consider that a short intervention and I call him to order.
Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2015
Lord Taylor of Holbeach Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Meacher
I was talking to Jacob Rees-Mogg MP the other day and he said to me that the trouble is that the House of Commons deals with Statutory Instruments extremely badly. Our difficulty is that, that being the case, they depend on this House to do this very detailed work, on which your Lordships do an extremely good job. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, the point is that the cross-party debate on Thursday is not a legislative debate. It would have been right for these matters to have been incorporated in full in a piece of legislation, which would then have been open to proper debate and amendment in the normal way.
To go back to my point, if we approve the Regulations today we are actually undermining the democratic process. If, however, the elected House supports the Government, as I said before, I know that this House will abide by our conventions and vote these Regulations through whatever our personal views of them. I do not personally approve of them, but I would be in the Lobby with the Government. The duty of your Lordships’ House, as we know, is to enable Governments to think again if, in our professional judgment, they are making a grave mistake, and to allow the elected House to hold the Government to account. Noble Lords can imagine that I do not take this action lightly. I am acutely conscious of the threats made by the Government to destroy this House, one way or another, if we proceed. I do not enjoy that kind of pressure.
I will come back to the constitutional issue, but at this point I want to thank the IFS, the Children’s Society and others for their valuable help. Why are these Regulations so serious? The Leader of the House has already made the point that tax credits will be withdrawn from an income of £74 a week, £3 above the jobseeker’s allowance level, whereas in the past the withdrawal has occurred from a weekly income of £123 a week, which is very different. Also, of course, the taper rate—the percentage of every pound earned that will be withdrawn from tax credits— is going up from 41% to 48%. Very low-income working families—the lowest-income families, as I understand it—stand to lose more than £20 a week. For one of us, this can mean a meal in a restaurant. For a poor working family it can mean a pair of shoes for a child who comes home from school crying because their toes are hurting in shoes that are too small, or money to feed the meter to keep the family warm.
The Government plan a four-year freeze on the private rent level covered by housing benefit, so as rents soar—and we know that, day by day, they soar—working families will have to pay more of their rent from a shrinking income. Damian Hinds, Treasury Minister, told me in person that he hopes that families will work more hours to compensate for the cuts they are facing, but many people cannot work more hours. A lady who has cancer and who is working all the hours she can contacted me—the treatment and her exhaustion mean that she cannot do more. The parent of a disabled child, who probably actually needs to be at home all the time, is working as many hours as possible but can earn very little. Indeed, our angelic army of carers of elderly and disabled relatives across our land will be penalised. Some of them will lose more than £40 a week. People with long-term conditions or in constant pain will be devastated by the waves of cuts, of which these regulations are just one. Self-employed people who voted Conservative in May, hoping for protection, but who may earn little or nothing for weeks at a time, will be among the biggest losers. The StepChange Debt Charity says that its clients on average will lose £139 a week, a staggering sum.
All those people have been supported by what I regard as the one-nation Tories of the past. The Prime Minister said in his speech to the Conservative conference:
“The British people … want a government that supports the vulnerable”,
and, he said,
“we will deliver”.
This amendment provides an opportunity for the Prime Minister to honour that pledge. He went on to say that the Conservatives are the, “party of working people”. No wonder dozens of Conservative Back-Benchers—perhaps most of them, in fact—want the Government to think again. They do not want the Prime Minister to have misled the people of Britain. It is this House’s duty to provide that time for a rethink by this Government.
I turn to the idea that the amendment is unconstitutional—and I shall keep this brief. The Cunningham joint committee, as has already been mentioned, made very clear the responsibilities of this House and that we should have unfettered freedom to vote on any subordinate legislation submitted for its consideration. The Motion was carried without a vote and is recorded in the Companion. In 1999, the former Conservative Leader of your Lordships’ House referred to a convention that the Opposition should not vote against the Government’s secondary legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, added:
“I declare this convention dead”.
Finally, I quote our highly esteemed Clerk of the Parliaments, who wrote a clarifying guidance note for the Cross-Benchers at my request. He said: “Procedurally, the Meacher-put Motion is entirely in order under the rules of the House. It is not a fatal Motion because it does not require a new statutory instrument to be laid and taken through both Houses. However, it does delay the approval of the statutory instrument, unlike an amendment which simply expresses regret while allowing the statutory instrument to be approved”.
I hope that the noble Lord, the Chief Whip, will forgive me for quoting him here. He urged me to exchange my amendment for a regret Motion. I said, “Oh, come on—that will have no effect at all”. He said, “Well, yes”. My apologies to the Chief Whip.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)
I am sorry that my conversation with the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has been quoted. That is not what I said. I made it quite clear to all who came to see me—they included all three protagonists in these debates—that the risk to this House was a constitutional one and that they ought to be aware that in my view to delay this Motion, as well as to vote it down, which is what the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, seeks to do, amounts to the same thing, and that the proper way in which to deal with something with which this House disagrees is to move a regret Motion. It was that to which I referred when I spoke to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, perhaps I may suggest, given the very large number of noble Lords who want to speak, that for the benefit of the House they keep their contributions brief and to the point, so that we can get as many people in as possible. Furthermore, if we can go around the House, as we do at Question Time, it will help create a sense of balance in our debate, which I am sure noble Lords will appreciate. I hope the right reverend Prelate will excuse me—because normally he would take precedence—but I have indicated to the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, that she might speak next. I hope that he will understand why I wish to do so.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
My Lords, as a Cross-Bencher in this House, I see it as my job to offer my best expertise and knowledge to help the Government understand the consequences of some of their legislation and statutory instruments. That is what I will now offer.
Working tax credits have provided an unprecedented and effective pathway into employment for disabled people who faced the greatest barriers to employment. Proposals to lower the threshold for working tax credits and accelerate the taper rate to 48p will dramatically reduce the incomes of disabled people in low-paid employment who, for reasons directly linked to their impairment, do not have the option to increase their working hours or to offset their losses. Disabled people—especially those with learning disabilities—are more likely to be in low-paid employment than non-disabled people.
I am not aware of an impact assessment that has evaluated this specific disability element. I fear that this cut will also disincentivise disabled people from taking the very difficult step off benefits and into work. There is little doubt that it will negatively impact on the Government’s other policy, which is to halve the disability employment gap. It does not make sense. Do not forget, either, that that gap is currently running at over 30%. Higher costs in health and social care are the inevitable result of unemployment among disabled people.
Furthermore, we cannot look at working tax credits in isolation. We are promised joined-up government but I am not aware of any cross-government analysis of the cumulative impact of this regulation on working disabled people or families with a disabled member. Where is the Department of Health? Many working disabled people affected by cuts to working tax credits are also suffering because of cuts to their social care support, the closure of the Independent Living Fund and the changes to Access to Work. In effect, the Government are making employment less likely for people with these support needs. I know that this is not their intention.
I hope that this little detail—this bit of reality and evidence—will help us to reflect. Maybe the Government will change their mind; I do not know. But I am deeply worried about the number of people who will effectively be hit by this provision, which will not deliver the Government’s own policy.
Lord Butler of Brockwell
My Lords, I am afraid I have been rather frustrated in trying to put my points as briefly as I could, so let me put one final point. There have been many times in the past when there has been an opposition majority in your Lordships’ House, particularly when there has been a Labour Government. There have been many occasions when the Opposition have wanted to overturn the Government on a fiscal matter. It has not happened and in these cases the Opposition, recognising the conventions, have exercised self-restraint, bitten their lip and stayed within the constitutional conventions. I believe that the House should do that today.