Autism: Personal Independence Payments
Lord Touhig Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Touhig
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what impact the assessment criteria for personal independence payments are anticipated to have on the number of people with autism who will claim the allowance, compared with the number of those who claim disability living allowance.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, it is too early to identify what the impact of the personal independence payment will be, as we are still developing the new assessment criteria. We are determined that the personal independence payment will be fairer than the disability living allowance, taking better account of the impact of mental, cognitive and intellectual impairments. The inclusion of activities around communication, planning and following a journey will help assess the impact of autistic spectrum disorders on individuals’ lives.
Lord Touhig
I thank the Minister for his very helpful reply. Is he aware that the way in which the draft assessment criteria for the new personal independence payments are framed, coupled with the 20 per cent cut in spending and a focus on those with the greatest personal care needs, could mean that many people with autism will lose the lifeline currently provided by the existing disability living allowance? Will the Minister say how the Government will ensure that this vulnerable group of people will continue to get the much needed financial support required to give them a good quality of life?
Lord Freud
My Lords, first, I must reinforce the point which I know I have made in the Chamber before; when people talk about cuts, they mean cuts on projections. The actual payments are essentially being held flat in real terms. We have looked at the initial assessments and are currently revising them in the light of our experience and after speaking to many groups, including the National Autistic Society, in order to refine the assessment. We will publish that and our findings in the next couple of months.
Autism: Disability Living Allowance
Lord Touhig Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Freud
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for bringing up this really important matter. As I say, we are designing the personal independence payment now. One of the things that we want to get absolutely right is how we look after the most vulnerable. The default position is that we would like to see people face to face, but where that is not realistic, helpful or appropriate we will not be doing so. We will also encourage people, autistic people as well as others, to bring a carer, a family member or a professional with them so that we get the best evidence-based result that we possibly can.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, the Government’s decision to scrap the mobility award for people in residential care will certainly adversely affect those with autism. There is now to be a review, although I share the view of the National Autistic Society that the original decision was wrong and no review is necessary. However, we are where we are, so can the Minister tell the House what the terms of reference for the review will be?
Lord Freud
My Lords, there is no review. We are reviewing the position of the mobility allowance in the context of an overall look at the personal independence payment. As I have told the House in the past, we are committed to making sure that people in residential care homes maintain mobility.
Social Fund Maternity Grant Amendment Regulations 2011
Lord Touhig Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Touhig
To move to resolve that this House regrets that Her Majesty’s Government have laid before Parliament the Social Fund Maternity Grant Amendment Regulations 2011 (SI 2011/100) at unnecessary speed and without providing more information on the impact on new mothers and children in low-income families; and notes with concern that the regulations will remove funds from some of the poorest families during the crucial early months of a child’s life.
Relevant document: 20th Report from the Merits Committee.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Sherlock secured this debate and I pay tribute to her for doing so. However, it is with great regret that she has had to withdraw, and she has asked me to speak in her place. I agreed to do so willingly, but alas I fear that I will not execute the task as well as she would have done. I should also declare an interest as president of HomeStart in my former constituency of Islwyn.
The two poorest groups in our society are those at the extreme end of the age range—pensioners and young children—and the change the Government are making to the Social Fund Maternity Grant is an outright attack on young children born into some of the poorest families in Britain. Put simply, at present women receiving certain means-tested benefits can get a grant of £500 to help with the costs of a new baby. The Government intend to abolish this payment for the second and subsequent children. A woman who gives birth to a new baby will lose the grant if she already has another child aged under 16 in the household.
The Government are planning £9 billion of cuts in the tax and benefits system, and some £4 billion of those are going to come from child support. I believe that this shows that the Government are out of touch. They assume that parents need only to spend the grant to acquire a pram, a pushchair, a cot, baby clothes and all that is needed for a newborn child just once in a lifetime. I suppose they imagine that all these things can be stored away as the first child grows out of them in case another child follows, and they assume that this storage can go on for 16 years.
This is an attack on some 150,000 of the poorest families in Britain. The Government are taking this step without proper consultation and against the advice of well-known family support groups such as Gingerbread and the Social Security Advisory Committee. Yes, even the advice of the Social Security Advisory Committee, the independent body which provides impartial advice to the Government on these matters, is being ignored. The advisory committee has described the proposals to restrict the maternity grant as lacking a “coherently argued rationale” and has stated that they appear to run counter to Government policy to abolish child poverty by 2020.
The department responsible, the Department for Work and Pensions, has stated that:
“This change will undoubtedly cause hardship for some cases. However this will not impact on the child poverty figures”,
due to the fact that maternity grants are one-off lump-sum payments which do nothing to increase annual income. The department is known across Whitehall as DWP, which is also a word in Welsh—“dwp” means stupid and daft in the head. Anyone who actually believes that this measure will not impact on child poverty is not taking the issue seriously at all. Indeed, Gingerbread has said:
“The DWP fails to recognise the significant and negative impact that this measure will have on the ability of poor and low-income families to buy essential baby equipment. Single parents are more likely than couple families to be poor: 52% of children in single parent families grow up poor. If a single parent has just separated from a partner, they are likely to have experienced a drop in income. If they are pregnant, or later become pregnant and cannot claim the [grant] because they already have a child under 16, many will struggle to buy items such as a pushchair, cot and car seat. If they have fled domestic violence and have no belongings for themselves or their other child, this situation is [made even worse]. The impact is likely to be particularly great where there is more than a two-year gap between children”.
Gingerbread also points out that the,
“DWP mistakenly assumes that [the grant] will have been claimed for the first child”,
But the organisation’s helpline suggests that large numbers of people do not claim the grant for their child through ignorance or the complexity of the tax and benefits system.
The Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee of your Lordships' House said that the Government’s target of 24 January for the coming into force of the instrument in order for the change to take effect in April of this year,
“has severely curtailed both the time available for consultation and for Parliamentary scrutiny”.
Furthermore, the SSAC was able to consult for only nine days on this proposal—a dismally short period. Alas, this is becoming typical of the Government, who seem to view consultation and scrutiny as optional, rather than viewing them as mechanisms which can improve government proposals and mitigate their worst, ill-thought-out effects.
As the Merits Committee noted, no impact assessment has been provided to Parliament. Little information has been given on the costs of alternative policy options and the department had not explained why the option chosen was preferred. Again, this looks like policy made on the hoof for short-term political, rather than long-term welfare, considerations.
The Social Security Advisory Committee suggested that the way in which Government have alighted on some decisions as part of this policy change lacks reasoned explanation. The committee pointed to the way in which the Government had arrived at the exceptions to the new rules, and why the option to restrict to payments who are the only children under 16 in a family was chosen above the other options presented to them. The proposal is that if there is a child in the family under the age of 16, there is no entitlement to the maternity grant. The SSAC believes that,
“this is an unreasonably high threshold and should be set at a much lower age, possibly as low as five”.
This point is reiterated by the Merits Committee, which noted:
“The rationale for limiting eligibility to households where there is no child under 16 is not explained. While it is reasonable to expect some recycling of baby equipment among siblings, the SSAC points out that it seems unrealistic to think that parents of a fifteen year old would retain baby goods that long”.
My wife and I have four children, and there was a five-year gap between the birth of our third and fourth children. I can tell your Lordships that when the fourth child arrived we had to go out and buy a whole new lot of equipment.
The advisory committee states that,
“the changes to the rules for Sure Start Maternity Grants are based on an assumption that the payments are made on the basis of meeting additional expenses incurred by the purchase of new items regarded as necessary for a baby, and that they fail to recognise ongoing or recurrent costs such as the need for the mother to eat healthily or for the home to be kept sufficiently warm”.
This would suggest that this policy, like so many that the Government have put forward, has not been properly thought through.
One respondent to the advisory committee noted that,
“each pregnancy and preparation for a baby costs an average of £1,600, and that this estimate does not simply include the ‘hardware’ required but also additional heating and travel costs for hospital visits: so there are considerable costs that cannot be met by ‘recycling’ goods from a previous pregnancy”.
The Government have not properly considered what costs incurred for children apply to every child and cannot be mitigated by hand-downs. As a result, their proposal to restrict maternity grants to the first child looks increasingly muddled and will produce significant hardships for families across the country.
There will be an intervening period of eight to 12 months between the introduction of the new rules for maternity grants and the introduction of mitigating measures to extend Social Fund budgeting loans to include maternity items. The Social Security Advisory Committee said that,
“this would mean that many people will be left without any alternative means for meeting the additional expenditure incurred by a second or subsequent baby beyond going without or having to resort to high cost lenders”.
One of the most worrying aspects of the proposals is the lack of a safety net for those who lose their grant. While a loan facility will eventually be available, the changes are not being put in place at the same time. The mitigation measures will not come into effect until at least eight months after the cuts to maternity grants have been implemented.
The committee said that it was particularly concerned about this, stating:
“It would be a difficult enough step for someone who would have been entitled to an SSMG of £500, to go to having to apply for a budgeting loan for the required items. But it is an entirely different matter if there is no provision to be made at all within the benefits system and they were expected to borrow commercially instead. People eligible for an SSMG would be unlikely to have access to low-cost credit – indeed many would need to borrow at APRs in excess of 100 or even 200%”.
The advisory committee urged the Government to look at halving their budget for this grant and to look at the impact of other changes; for example, to housing benefit, health in pregnancy grant and tax credits. It said that no such evaluation of the rationale had been presented to them. Respondents to the advisory committee pointed out that the cuts in the maternity grant will cause hardships for families which may translate into additional costs for other bodies such as local authority social services departments and the NHS. The SSAC therefore concluded that a more tempered level of saving may be achieved than other outcomes would yield.
The committee also observed that the low-income families eligible to apply for the grant are those most likely to have been in temporary accommodation or in homes with cramped conditions, which would make it unlikely that they would have had places for long-term, regular storage of baby equipment. Anyone with a new child knows how much stuff children can generate as they grow up and grow out of their baby clothing and equipment. People living in cramped conditions simply cannot keep such things just in case they have more children. The policy ignores conditions in low-income families and the realities of their situations, quite possibly because too many in the Government have no experience of, or any concern about, people living in such conditions. Most concerning, it risks exposing children born into low-income families to poverty from the moment they are born. That simply cannot be right for the fourth-richest country on the planet. It is not morally right either.
Rather than listening to the SSAC, the body which is supposed to advise the Government on these issues, the Government have instead pushed ahead blindly and said that they have no plans even to review the policy. It is typical of the arrogance that this Government now display that they never seem to listen to reasoned arguments or objections from any outside source, but rather they assume that they are right and that everyone else is wrong.
The Merits Committee concluded:
“This instrument seems to have been inadequately planned and explained”.
It wisely suggested that your Lordships,
“may wish to press the DWP for a better explanation of why the other options suggested were not pursued and what the anticipated impact on new mothers and children in low-income families will be”.
I hope that the Minister has some encouraging answers.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I support the Motion of Regret put so ably by my noble friend Lord Touhig. I shall speak very briefly and widen out the debate a little.
There has been a lot of discussion in your Lordships' House recently on early intervention. There have also been many reports recently, including one by Frank Field on child poverty and one by Graham Allen on early intervention. I thought and hoped that the Government would have understood the importance of spending now to save later.
During the recent debate on parenting of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, I was greatly impressed by a statement from the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. He cited the Graham Allen report on early intervention, which said that decades of expensive late intervention had failed. In his response, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, said:
“I hope that it is also fair to say that this Government, like the previous Government, recognise the importance of the early years in children's lives and development”.—[Official Report, 3/2/11; col. 1500.]
How true, but do the Government still recognise that?
This measure, cutting a grant to low-income families, may well contribute to both poverty and to poorer outcomes for children. It may not seem like much money, but it is to some people and some families generally. The loss of the money could affect the lives of not only the child or children—and some people have twins—but also affect the relationship between the parents. Stress can be created by poverty, and poverty affects relationships. It also affects maternal health, which is a key to good health and achievement in children.
Lord German
My Lords, I should like to take a rounded view of these regulations and put them in the context of the activity of the Government in terms of poverty. There are some issues which noble Lords on the Benches opposite have raised which require some answers from the Minister and I shall raise one or two myself.
First, it is important to recognise that these regulations have the effect of providing a level of savings within the DWP budget—that is undeniable—and that these types of decisions are never easy. At face value, of course, this could be simply seen as yet another cost-saving exercise, which is the thrust of the previous three speeches. However, it should also be looked at in the broader context. I shall examine both sides of the issue in my contribution to the debate.
I preface my remarks by posing a question to the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, the mover of this Motion of regret. I shall not correct him on his Welsh mutations; I shall explain to him afterwards—
Lord German
Yes, the “d” should be a “t”.
The question is about the level of savings that he and his party are looking for in the public finances and whether they are put back into good order within five years or, as I understand it from his party, within seven years. Perhaps he can tell me because I have been struggling to find the answer to the question. What is the level of interest on the loan that the country now has and the debt that we have to repay if it is to be spread over seven years rather than five, which I think was his party’s policy? At the moment we have to repay £120 million a day in interest for the next five years. If we went for the seven-year position, what savings would we need to look at from within the budgets of all the departments in the country? I still fail to understand that. As we all know, it is easy to stand up and say, “Do not cut this or that”, if in the end the summation does not add up to the figure—which I understand is the position of the Labour party at the moment.
However, I recognise that this is part of a package designed to save money and that, if the circumstances for the country were appropriate, we would not have wanted to do this. If the finances were strong, I doubt whether this would have appeared on the horizon. Fundamentally, the judgment here comes down to the question of whether this particular set of regulations fits within the whole scheme of reforms and changes to our work and benefits regime, in the context of the economy as we find it. You cannot see one particular benefit set in isolation without considering the rest. Right from the beginning when the universal benefit regime was talked about in your Lordships’ House, and through the discussion and questions about it here, I have always been attracted by one of its fundamental aims—a fundamental aim of the whole revision of the benefits structure from its current complex base to something much more straightforward and simple—which is to lift people out of poverty. The impact assessment produced by the Government showed figures which, frankly, would have made everybody around this Chamber smile.
The principal aim of the universal benefit Bill and the new work programme is to lift people out of poverty. That programme itself requires investment: it has a £4.5 billion price tag. Part of that has to be funded from within the savings that can be made from the department, and part is coming from new money that the Treasury has made available. In making this change in these regulations, are we ensuring overall that the poorest and most vulnerable are being supported while helping to lift large numbers of our people out of poverty? That is the fundamental question against which you set these regulations. If the answer to that is yes, then, clearly in the context of that whole regime, you have to move forward upon that basis.
There are some problems and concerns, and some of them have been raised already. I echo some of them and pose a new one in questions that I hope the Minister will answer at the end. First, we have this interim period between the universal benefit Bill passing through your Lordships’ House and its becoming an Act in our country. In that interim period, the current interest-free loans will no longer be available. There is a danger that the people who find themselves put in most difficulty by these regulations will turn to high-cost lenders. What comfort at all can the Minister offer for where these people might turn in that interim period so there will be no difficulties for them? It is a short, one-off period before the new loan arrangements for purchasing, say, a cart, buggy and all those matters are in place.
Secondly, as has already been alluded to, what happens when a second child is born in a family and there has been no claim for the first child? You can imagine the circumstances where that might happen. Someone who is in work, has appropriate leave and reasonable funding behind them, might decide that it is not worth the effort, hassle or for other reasons—it might be that parents provide some of this equipment—and do not apply for the grant. Then perhaps there is a period of no work and when it comes to the second child it is difficult to find that sort of money. What happens when this is the first application within the family but the application is for the second child? Again, I would value an answer from the Minister.
Lord Touhig
I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in what has been a very good short debate. I especially thank my noble friends Lady Massey, Lady Gale, Lord Liddle and Lady Hughes for their important contributions. I am very sorry that we were unable to convince the noble Lord, Lord Blackwell. I do not think that £4 billion of cuts in child support, hitting the poorest in our community, is defensible. The noble Lord, Lord German, might have taken issue with my use of the Welsh word “dwp”, but then of course he is not a man from the Gwent valleys. He seemed a little uncomfortable defending Tory cuts. I have only one word to say to him and his colleagues on the Liberal Benches, and that word is “Barnsley”.
The Minister was right to offer an apology at the start, because there has been a failure in proper communication and consultation on this measure. However, I think that the most disadvantaged in our society need to know that some people are on their side. The great socialist, James Maxton, said that poverty is man-made and is therefore open to change. I think that one way to demonstrate that it is open to change is by testing the opinion of the House tonight.
Poverty
Lord Touhig Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Touhig
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord McFall. I welcome him to your Lordships’ House and congratulate him on his maiden speech. I extend my congratulations to my noble friends Lord Boateng and Lady Donaghy, and to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, on their excellent contributions today. My noble friend Lord McFall and I have known each other for 20 years, and in that time I have come to hold him in very high regard indeed. We have seen from his contribution to this debate why he was such a successful chairman of the Treasury Select Committee in the other place. With great skill he held the Government to account while at the same time preserving the unity of his committee. He was relentless in conducting his inquiries into the banking crisis, and many a banker did not look forward to appearing before him when he sought to hold them to account, exposing their greed and ineptitude which brought the world economy to the brink of collapse. My noble friend served in the Whips’ Office for some time, and in the Northern Ireland Office. Many in the Province will remember him for his compassion and his cool head on the day of the Omagh bombing, when he was the only Minister in Northern Ireland.
Yet my noble friend has one shortcoming, and I hope he will forgive me for revealing it. It is that he and good timekeeping are not close companions; indeed, some would say they are total strangers. His extraordinary work rate, running from one engagement to another, is the reason for it. I well remember a few years ago arranging to meet him and other friends for dinner. We all arrived at the appointed restaurant at the appointed time and waited and waited and waited for my noble friend. Eventually, after half an hour of putting off an eager waiter who wanted to take our order, we surrendered our table to other diners who were very hungry indeed. My noble friend did not arrive for a further half an hour and we had to queue to get our table back. I regret to say that I am not sure that his timekeeping has greatly improved, but I have no doubt that we will welcome his further contributions in this House. As our debates are carefully timetabled, I am sure that that will do much to improve his timekeeping.
The two poorest and most disadvantaged groups in our society are at the extreme end of the age spectrum: children and pensioners. During the past 12 years, a Labour Government did much to redress this with the record increase in child benefit, family tax credits and the child trust fund, all aimed at helping families with young children. We also saw the introduction of pension credits, free bus travel free television licences, all improving the quality of life of pensioners. But these significant advances may now be reversed by what Paul Krugman has called “ideologically fixed deficit hawks”. Only on Monday, we saw this Conservative/Liberal Democrat Government begin their assault on child trust funds. We know that they will freeze child benefit and, with massive cuts in public services predicted, every family with children and every pensioner needs to be concerned about the future.
The Conservative/Liberal Democrat Budget of a few weeks ago heralds a major attack on public services which support the most disadvantaged in Britain—public services that we have built up over years and make us a civilised society. What this Government have forgotten is that public service is labour intensive. We cannot sack police officers and put CCTV cameras on every street corner and call it policing; we cannot sack teachers and sit every child in front of a computer screen and call it teaching; and we cannot sack social workers, give every pensioner a microwave and call it home care. I have no doubt that we on these Labour Benches will need to be vigilant in these coming months if we are to defend public services on which so many of our vulnerable citizens depend and which the two parties opposite seem determined to put to the sword.
I shall confine the rest of my remarks to the plight of disabled people in general and those with autism in particular. Research conducted by Leonard Cheshire Disability found that 30 per cent of disabled people live below the poverty line. That is one in three and a terrible indictment of Britain in the 21st century. The National Autistic Society says that the lack of support that people with autism receive means that they and their families experience extreme financial difficulties. Some people with autism are able to live independent and fulfilling lives with very little support, but we all know that others will need support throughout their lives. The vast majority of people with autism want to work, and we need to do more to help them to do that. But as a dear friend of mine, a now retired GP, Dr Dipak Ray, said to me only last week: “Suddenly, creating jobs is out; inflicting pain is in”. That seems to be the message that we have had from this Budget.
Only 15 per cent of adults with autism are in full employment. Some 66 per cent of adults with autism are not in any kind of employment. Almost 80 per cent of those are on incapacity benefit. Six out of 10 adults with autism survive only with family and parental financial support. Caring for a child with autism is a full-time job. According to the National Autistic Society, 68 per cent of carers it surveyed said that their caring responsibilities exceeded 70 hours a week. The same survey revealed that only 41 per cent of carers had jobs, while almost 70 per cent gave up work to carry out their caring responsibilities.
More than half of families with disabled children borrowed money from family and friends to pay for essentials. According to a recent Contact a Family survey, one in four families is going without heating in their homes, one in seven is going without food and nine out of 10 said that financial worries are having a severe impact on family life.
I believe that noble Lords on all sides of the House will find these circumstances unacceptable and will want to challenge any Government who plan to introduce cuts in public services for the disabled. Disabled people, especially those with autism and their families, will be forced into greater poverty and financial dependence on family and friends if we do not take steps to protect them.
The Prime Minister said recently that the third sector was really the first sector. He was right in that we esteem that sector, but I hope that his remarks were not code for plans to offload the responsibilities of the state on the voluntary sector. The voluntary sector in Britain makes a huge contribution to the quality of life of millions of our citizens. Many voluntary groups are hard pressed. With massive public spending cuts in the offing, this will cascade into the voluntary sector.
The government programme states that the main burden of the deficit reduction will be borne by reduced spending rather than increased taxes. It also states that people needing care deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. I hope that the Government recognise that, without funding for services for the disabled, there can be no respect and certainly no dignity.