Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the test and learn approach has allowed us to adapt the delivery of universal credit to support claimants more fully. Examples include: abolishing the seven-day waiting period; the introduction of 100% advances; the landlord portal; and the flexible support fund being used to cover initial childcare costs.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

19. It is no coincidence that, as universal credit has hit Ealing in the past year, food bank use has doubled. Ealing Churches winter night shelter and Ealing soup kitchen report unprecedented demand, and six deaths have been reported among users of the soup kitchen in the past year. Are the Government not ashamed that Christian charities are having to mop up thanks to the gaps in their policy, and when will they put in place the National Audit Office’s recommendation to look into hardship as well as spouting statistics at us?

[Alok Sharma]

Of course there is a range of reasons why people make use of food banks, but what is important is that the DWP makes sure that we get funds to claimants in a timely manner. The Secretary of State has already talked about the 100% advances and the two-week housing benefit run-on, and, of course, there will be additional run-ons coming on in 2020.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

12. What recent assessment her Department has made of trends in the level of in-work poverty.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

19. What recent assessment her Department has made of trends in the level of in-work poverty.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Justin Tomlinson)]

There is clear evidence that work offers people the best opportunity to get out of poverty. A working-age adult living in a household where every adult is working is about six times less likely to be in relative poverty than one living in a household where nobody works.

[Justin Tomlinson]

This Government are not only delivering record employment in all regions of the UK—it is accepted that work is the best route out of poverty—but targeting support at the most vulnerable in society, with increases in the national living wage, which will see the fastest pay rise in the last 20 years, changes to the income tax threshold and a doubling of free childcare.[Official Report, 14 February 2019, Vol. 654, c. 9MC.]

[Dr Huq]

Crash-era debt was owed to commercial lenders and stemmed from lifestyle desires, but Turn2us reports that the bulk of its 9,000 users in Ealing are in-work adults who are struggling to meet the bare basics—their debts are to council housing departments, energy providers and water companies. If the Government will not unfreeze the benefits cap now and end the scandal of zero-hours contracts, what are they doing about that worrying trend, noted by the London School of Economics, the National Audit Office and Citizens Advice?

[Justin Tomlinson]

As we know, there are 1 million fewer people and 300,000 fewer children in absolute poverty. The hon. Lady raised that theme at the last DWP oral questions, when she set out the distressing case of a claimant who she claimed was left with just £10 over Christmas because her payment was due on Christmas day. We looked into that case and I took a personal interest in it. The claimant actually received their full entitlement before Christmas, as well as interim support for childcare because they had been able to secure work. I know that the hon. Lady would want everybody in the House to be aware of that.

State Pension Age: Women

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

Or even no notice at all—my hon. Friend took the works out of my mouth. That is just not acceptable and we have to keep fighting for change.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an impassioned, compelling and informed case. We have all had letters from people complaining not necessarily about what has been done, but about the way it has been done. I had a letter from Christina Fitzgerald, who has osteoarthritis, which makes it difficult enough to work as it is. One would think the Government would learn from their mistakes, but is my hon. Friend as scandalised as I am by the fact that only last week they snuck out another change for WASPI women? For people of mixed-age couples, from here on in, it will be only when the younger one reaches pensionable age that either of them will be allowed to claim their pension credit. Is not this yet another case of women having banked on something only to have the rug ripped from under their feet by this awful Government?

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

My hon. Friend makes a good and compelling point that I shall talk about in a moment. The UN special rapporteur on poverty said that the 1950s women were just “ill-prepared” to adjust. That is the injustice.

When I think about funding a compensation scheme, I think about the money paid into national insurance. Just as an indicator for the House, the national insurance fund accounts show an increase of nearly £2.3 billion in 2017-18, taking the fund to a total of £24 billion paid into the national investment account.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

Yes.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

18. Will the Minister ensure that no one else ever suffers the same indignity as Paulette Reid of Acton, a working mum with three kids who, over Christmas, found herself with £10 to her name for the entire holiday season? When she rang the DWP asking for the payment that we are told everyone receives in advance, she was told to go to a food bank. The people at the Department obviously do not understand that that involves a referral process. How can this be happening now in the fifth richest country on earth? It seems that “I, Daniel Blake” is becoming reality in Ealing, queen of the suburbs.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I am very sorry to hear about that case. The hon. Lady’s constituent should have had access to an advance payment, and if she was down to her last £10, it should have been made on that day. If the hon. Lady will write to me with all the details, we will look at that specific case to see what went wrong.

Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit: Two-child Limit

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alison Thewliss]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I will talk about some of Refuge’s evidence later, because it is stark and the Government should take heed of it.

A social security safety net ought to be there for everybody—each one of us—when they need it, but by April 2018, the two-child limit had already affected 73,530 households. Well over half of those households—43,420 of them—were in work, so I will not have it if the Minister, or anybody else on the Tory Benches, which I note are remarkably empty, gives us the old Tory trope that the policy is about people on benefits making the same choices as those supporting themselves solely through work. The benefit is designed to give people in the lowest-paid work a top-up, to help support them and to make sure that their children are fed and clothed.

Of those 73,530 households, 2,900 were able to keep their entitlement for a third child by claiming an exemption to the policy. There are largely three exemptions to the two-child limit. None of them is entirely logical, and I would recommend that hon. Members check out the Child Poverty Action Group’s page on the exemptions to see how mind-bendingly arcane they are.

The first exemption is the rape clause. I put on record again my absolute disgust at a policy that forces women to fill out a form to say that they have conceived their third child as a result of rape. It is absolutely inexcusable as a policy. For someone to have to put their child’s name on a form and say that they were conceived as a result of rape is beyond contempt, and the Government should know better than to treat women in that way. We know from the figures that, up until April, 190 women across the UK claimed under that exemption. That is 190 women who have had to replay the most traumatic experience of their life to put food on the table. The Government should hang their head in shame.

The second exemption is for twins, but it is not as simple as it ought to be. It applies if twins are born after a single birth, but not before. If someone has twins after two previous children, only one twin is eligible for payment, but both those twins need to eat. There may be two almost identical families with three children—one that had twins and then a single birth, and one that had a single birth and then twins—but only one is worthy of support from the Government, which is completely illogical.

The third exemption is for adoption, but not if someone has adopted from abroad or if they were a step-parent before they adopted the third child, so that is not simple either. An additional exemption has been made for kinship care. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), who successfully campaigned for that on behalf of her constituent Alyssa Vessey, who lost an entitlement for her own child after taking on caring responsibilities for her three younger siblings. The clear result of the policy and the exemptions is discrimination. Families may have similar circumstances and needs, but some will lose out simply due to the order in which their children were born—something that those children certainly have no control over.

I understand that CPAG will be back in court on the issue before Christmas, and I wish it the very best with its case. It believes, and I agree, that the two-child limit breaches articles 8 and 12 of the Human Rights Act 1998. It is also beyond me how the limit could possibly be compliant with the UK Government’s obligations under the UN convention on the rights of the child.

There will also be an impact on blended families and families who may be encouraged to separate to avoid being hit by the limit. A friend also pointed out that women who have children from previous relationships will be caught should they wish to have a child with a new partner, which is very common, whereas the male partner may be able to go off and start a new family more easily without having the children with him.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Is it not depressing that we have debated this issue two Tuesdays in a row? I thank the hon. Lady for coming to the all-party parliamentary group on single parent families. She talked about blended families, which will be hit hardest. The Government abolished the cross-departmental work on child poverty; they are trying to abolish these things, but they have really mismatched priorities. The churches have been very vocal about it, and the Bishop of Oxford spoke last week. Does she have any comment about that?

[Alison Thewliss]

I absolutely agree, and I commend the hon. Lady and her colleagues for their work in the all-party parliamentary group on single parent families, because those families will be hugely hit by this. It provides huge disincentives for those families to go into work or to progress. It simply puts them further into poverty and makes it harder for them to get out of that poverty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rushanara Ali]

I agree. I do not think that policies that punish vulnerable people are ultimately likely to succeed, which is why the Minister needs to rethink both this aspect of the universal credit policy and the policy more generally. In their attempt to simplify, the Government have found ways to cut funding. People will be worse off under universal credit.

Since implementation, the policy has already affected 400,000 children, and some 3 million children are likely to be affected. That is why I echo the points the hon. Member for Glasgow Central made, calling on the Minister to review the policy and put a stop to it, certainly until the extension of the policy next February, which will be devastating for families.

In my constituency, a large number of children and families will be affected by the policy. We have a large Muslim population and, as has been mentioned, people of other faiths are also affected. I call on the Minister to take into account the unequal impact the policy will have and the fact that the equality impact assessment is flawed.

[Dr Huq]

rose—

[Rushanara Ali]

I will have to conclude, to give others the opportunity to speak. The equality impact assessment does not recognise the negative consequences for certain groups. More than 100 MPs wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, copying in the then Work and Pensions Secretary and the Chancellor, and we have still not had a response, which is really unfortunate. I encourage the Minister to go back to his Secretary of State and ensure that she responds to it and seriously rethinks the policy so that children in our country are protected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

I have to declare an interest as the mother of four children, albeit spread out over a period of 17 years. I can personally testify that large families have close and deep relationships, and the benefits of having a larger number of siblings are many and varied. However, this Government are seeking to punish families who have had three or more children. With only three children, those families will be losing £2,500 a year from their child element, on top of the cuts to universal credit that mean that 3 million families are set to lose over £2,000 a year. Families with four or more children will lose an average of £7,000 a year. Those families are already on a low income: they have already experienced cuts to tax credits of £1,500 on average, and a further £2,000 under universal credit.

This is not just an issue of child poverty. This is an issue of families facing destitution, with rising numbers of families with three or more children going to food banks. Families do not go to food banks unless their children are hungry. Can the Minister look not just those families in the eye, but look those children in the eye, or the parents who are trying to get their children to sleep at night when they do not have enough food in their stomach? It is absolutely inhumane. The policy will have a similar impact on large families as the benefit cap has on families in households with no work, but large families cannot escape that impact through work. In the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, we have heard of children in families to whom the benefit cap applies being taken into care because, given their levels of income, their parents cannot give those children the basic, decent standard of living that they need to survive. Is that a danger for all large families? It seems to be a return to Victorian times, with families punished for having more children and for not being able to earn enough.

Child tax credit and the child element of universal credit, which stands at £2,780 a year, is paid because successive Governments have recognised that doing so goes some way towards meeting the costs of a child, and have signed up to the ambition of reducing child poverty and increasing children’s life chances. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation produced a study that showed the impact of reducing incomes on children’s outcomes. Having reviewed over 34 studies, it concluded that increases in income appear to have an impact on cognitive outcomes comparable to the impacts of spending on early childhood programmes or education. However, income influences many different outcomes at the same time, including maternal mental health and children’s anxiety levels and behaviour. Few other policies are likely to affect such a range of outcomes at once. It is sad that the Government did not see fit to do an impact assessment on this policy, or to publish that assessment, before they went ahead.

[Dr Huq]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work of the all-party parliamentary group on universal credit, which she chairs. Is she aware of the figures that show that 60% of Muslim children and 52% of Jewish children live in families with three or more children? My hon. Friend is doing a great demolition job on this Government, who balance their books on the backs of the poor.

[Ruth George]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. The policy will certainly have a disproportionate impact on some faith groups, but also on anyone who, for whatever reason, has chosen to have three or more children—people like my constituent who posted on my Facebook page comments regarding this policy. She wrote that her husband died when she had three children and he was just 40. Why are the Government seeking to punish those children even more? They have already suffered the death of their father, and can now expect to see their income reduced as well. This policy simply does not make sense for the long-term economy of this country, which needs to invest in our children’s future in order to grow its way out of the economic mess that the past eight years have left us in. This country also needs to look at the interests of those children, and the impact of poverty and destitution on the 3 million children who will be affected by this policy. Please do not roll this out next February.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend is a doughty champion of school breakfast clubs and has established one in his constituency. He is on the right lines and we support him in his efforts.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

16. Last week, figures from the Equality and Human Rights Commission showed that child poverty among single-parent families is predicted to rise from the current figure of 37% to 62%. In the same week, the new all-party parliamentary group on single parent families followed Ronald Reagan’s lead in 1984 and held a UK Single Parents’ Day for the first time. Will the Minister please unfreeze the benefits cap so that the figures I cited are not realised? Will he or his boss—either would be welcome—address our APPG at the first opportunity?

[Kit Malthouse]

There is no question of unfreezing the benefit cap because it is encapsulated in primary legislation. It might be interesting for the hon. Lady to know that, in the year after the benefit cap was imposed, 100,000 children moved out of poverty altogether. I am surprised that she has not welcomed the news that was announced last week that, as the Secretary of State said, more than 1 million people have moved out of absolute poverty. That shows the greater usefulness of the absolute poverty indicator compared with those for relative poverty, which the EHRC used in its report.

Child Poverty: London

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful and compelling speech. Her constituency is not dissimilar to mine. When we think of child poverty, we think of Dickensian cobbled streets and of it as some sort of inner-city malady, but we both represent suburban seats. In Ealing Central and Acton 7,179 children live in poverty, which is not a dissimilar figure to the one she quoted. We also hear about Victorian diseases such as tuberculosis making a comeback. Those places were built to fulfil the suburban dream to get away from the inner city, but the horrible scourge of child poverty is coming to our suburbs. Does she agree with me?

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. There are great similarities. Suburban London is not the suburban London that many of us think exists.

By the end of their lives, boys from poorer backgrounds have a life expectancy that is an astonishing 9.2 years shorter than that of their wealthier counterparts. Take my borough, Merton, where Wimbledon constituents have a life expectancy almost three years longer than those in Mitcham and Morden, despite a mere letter change in their postcode. The Government, I know, are extremely fiscally responsible so, if that is not enough to inspire the Minister to action, perhaps it is worth them considering that child poverty costs the UK economy a staggering £29 billion per year in services and wasted potential.