Child Poverty

Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Bird

Monday 29th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Absolutely. As I have said before, I do not think that we will agree at all on this—but, as I say, we are not minded to move on this policy. Both noble Baronesses will be well aware of our position on this.

There are encouraging signs that the economy has now turned a corner. Inflation has more than halved from its peak, delivering on the Prime Minister’s pledge, and is forecast to fall below 2% in 2024-25. Food price inflation is at its lowest since January 2022, at 4%, and wages are rising in real terms. We remain committed to a strong welfare system for those families who need it, and have uprated working-age benefits by a further 6.7% from this month and raised the local housing allowance to the 30th percentile of local rents, benefiting 1.6 million private renters in 2024-25.

Some questions were raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln and also alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about social housing, which is an important subject. Their questions were linked to items of damp and mould; they asked what the Government were going to do about this. The Government have now introduced Awaab’s law through the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, which gives the Secretary of State powers to set out new requirements for social landlords to address hazards such as damp and mould in social homes within fixed time periods. We are now analysing the responses to the consultation, and then we will publish a response setting out findings and bringing for secondary legislation as soon as possible.

What I should say, which think was alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is that everyone has a right to a safe and decent home. Since 2001, the decent homes standard, the so-called DHS, has played a key role in providing a minimum quality standard that social homes should meet. We are currently reviewing the DHS to ensure that it sets the right requirements for decency, and we will publish a consultation on a proposed new standard soon.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I am not against social housing—I am for social housing—but I want to break out of the situation whereby, if you get into social housing, you tend to fall behind everybody else. On what the Minister is saying about how they are going to change the requirements on social landlords, social landlords should be turning their tenants into people who can have a larger life and can get out of poverty. For most of them, even if they get into work, it is always in the low-wage economy, and they stay there. What are the Government doing about breaking the low-wage economy that many people in poverty find themselves in, who are often in social housing?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Indeed, I will allude to the cross-government work that is going on. It may be that it requires a letter to write on that point, but I shall allude to it later, if I have the time.

Altogether this year we will have spent £306 billion through the welfare system in Great Britain, including around £138 billion on people of working age and children. This includes additional support to ensure the best start in life for children. For example, we have extended free school meal eligibility several times and to more groups of children than any other Government over the past half century. They are now claimed by more than 2 million of the most disadvantaged pupils. In addition, healthy food schemes provide a nutritional safety net for more than 3 million children. For those who need extra help with essentials, as inflation continues to fall, we are providing an additional £500 million for the extension of the household support fund in England, for a further six months, including funding for the devolved Administrations.

While it is right that we maintain a strong welfare safety net, we know that having parents who work, particularly full-time, plays a key role in reducing the risk of child poverty. My noble friend Lord Effingham mentioned this. In 2022-23, children living in workless households were more than six times more likely to be in absolute poverty after housing costs than those where all adults work. This is clear evidence of why, with more than 900,000 vacancies across the UK, our focus is firmly on ensuring that parents get the right support to find work and succeed in work. Our policies include: our generous universal credit childcare offer for working parents; our in-work progression offer; further increases to the national living wage to £11.44 an hour; and national insurance cuts.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked about making the housing support fund permanent. The HSF is not the only way we are supporting people on lower incomes. April’s benefit uprating of 6.7% will see an average increase in universal credit of £470. Raising the national living wage will deliver an increase of over £1,800 to the gross annual earnings of someone working full-time on that wage. Uplifting the local housing allowance to the 30th percentile of local rents, as mentioned earlier, will benefit 1.6 million private renters by an average of £800 per year.

The noble Lord, Lord Bird, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Bennett, asked whether we accepted that a strategy was now needed. I did promise to try to answer this. We have consistently set out a sustainable long-term approach to tackling child poverty, based on evidence about the important role of work in substantially reducing the risk of child poverty. I am very aware of the interest that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, takes in this, and I reassure the House that Ministers continue to work across and beyond departmental boundaries to ensure that we take a co-ordinated approach to supporting vulnerable and low-income households. This includes a cross-government senior officials group on poverty, as well as bilaterals and meetings with external anti-poverty stakeholders. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, is right that Treasury input to this is vital.

I return to the question of childcare raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley. She asked what extra support we are providing to parents. The Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education work closely together to ensure that there is a comprehensive childcare offer that reflects different family circumstances, covering children over a range of ages.

Earlier, I mentioned some of the problems families in poverty face which mean that they can struggle to move into work and improve their financial circumstances. This Government offer a range of programmes to help people address these complex underlying challenges, so that they can take their first steps towards securing better outcomes for their families.

I applaud my noble friend Lord Effingham for making a number of interesting points. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, put it well when he said that they were interesting contributions to the debate. I agree with many of the points that he made.

The pupil premium funds schools to help improve educational outcomes and close attainment gaps for disadvantaged children in state-funded schools in England. Funding for this is increasing to over £2.9 billion in the year 2024-25. That is £80 million more than last year.

We are taking significant action to improve children’s health, which is another important point. This includes dramatically reducing sugar in children’s food, investing over £600 million to improve the quality of sport for children, and encouraging healthy diets for lower-income families through schemes such as Healthy Start. We are also investing £2.3 billion a year in mental health services.

The Money and Pensions Service’s UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing is a 10-year framework to help everyone make the most of their money. It has set out five goals to be achieved by 2030, including to see 2 million more children and young people receiving meaningful financial education.

One example of the support that we are giving is the Supporting Families programme, which is now the responsibility of DfE. This has funded local authorities to help almost 637,000 families experiencing multiple disadvantages to make sustained improvements with their problems.

A network of 300 supporting families employment advisers, specialist DWP work coaches, work with the programme, providing employment support that is helping almost 10,000 families, resulting in around 200 job starts every month.

My noble friend Lady Bottomley mentioned Reducing Parental Conflict. This is very close to my heart—I am directly responsible for it in government—and we have £33 million-worth of funding available from 2022 up until next year, 2025. This programme has enabled local authorities to support couples to address conflict in their relationship, which has helped to deliver positive impacts for children over no less than three major evaluations at the end of last year. We are also looking to see how we can ingrain that in the Child Maintenance Service, which again is my responsibility. I feel very passionate about it, and the work we do, by the way, helps to take 160,000 children out of poverty each year, and there is always more to be done.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Janke and Lady Bennett, spoke about childcare, and I want to give a quick response. The department is aware that, for some universal credit claimants, childcare costs present challenges to entering employment. To support people to become financially resilient by moving into work and progressing in work, eligible UC claimants can claim back up to 85% of their registered childcare costs each month, regardless of the number of hours that they work, compared to 70% in tax credits.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln is not in his place, and I am not sure why. I think I will write to him rather than answer him when he is not in his place. He asked about rural communities.

I shall conclude, given the hour, by reassuring the House again of the importance we place on this matter. The early years, as I am sure the noble Lord will agree, are vital to securing good outcomes for children, and that is why we continue to work across government to ensure the best start for all children, including through our early years childcare provision and funding for school breakfast clubs. We understand that many families still face challenges, we are not shying away from that, and we will continue to work to ensure that the welfare system supports families who need it. To conclude, with inflation falling towards target and the economy beginning to turn a corner—perhaps green shoots; I do hope so—it is right that we continue to support parents to meet their responsibilities towards their children by seeking employment opportunities wherever that is possible.

Household Support Fund: Children’s Bed Poverty

Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Bird

Thursday 21st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. The House will know—and I shall say this again—that this is one of the ways forward. The most important thing is for people to be in work. She will know, for example, that we have brought the figure down for workless households very substantially since 2009-10.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

With eight different government departments dealing with poverty, is not it time that we actually co-ordinated our dismantling of poverty by bringing in a government department that deals exclusively with poverty prevention?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I am very aware of the noble Lord’s interest in this area. I recall the debate that he led on about three weeks ago, which I was involved in. I have very much taken note of his view. We do not agree that there needs to be such a high level of focus on poverty. Having said all that, I think that he is aware of the huge number of initiatives that we are taking, particularly cross-government, in tackling poverty, particularly child poverty.

UNICEF: Child Poverty Rankings

Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Bird

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

We certainly know that it is prevalent, but I have already laid out the measures we have taken. There has obviously been quite a debate this afternoon about the statistics. The Government published The Best Start for Life: A Vision for the 1,001 Critical Days in March 2021. I reassure the noble Baroness that we recognise that the early start for children is incredibly important. There is a range of initiatives to help with that issue, which of course is linked to poverty.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Are the Government aware that most of the people we are talking about—the children—inherit poverty? It crosses the generations. When will we move a lot of the effort into breaking poverty passing from one generation to another? That is where the money really needs to be spent, to bring about social transformation in every sense.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Lord is of course right, and I was very pleased to wind up his debate last week. Perhaps I can be helpful by saying that, compared with 2010, there are over 1 million fewer workless households in the UK, the number of children growing up in homes where no one works has fallen by 680,000, and 1.8 million more children are living in a home where at least one person works. However, the point he makes is incredibly important: we have to stop this intergenerational worklessness issue.

Department for Work and Pensions: AI

Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Bird

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I will not be drawn into answering questions on that, but I can say that it is important that the scrutiny of the Bill is done in an effective way and, of course, this House is very good at doing that. As I have mentioned before, it is very important that there is trust in AI solutions; this must be a prevalent issue among all users of AI.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Will this AI enable people who are on social security to get a better deal and get off social security, so that we can tap into the skills and abilities of millions of people who are caught in the Bastille of poverty and social security?

Council Tax

Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Bird

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I can certainly pass on that request to the Treasury—that is no problem at all—but I reiterate that there are no plans to review or revalue council tax. It is important to say that the council tax system is understood by people. A recent poll demonstrated that there is no move from the public to change it.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

With 60%, or 60p in the pound, of local authority council tax spent on social support, that is an enormous amount of pressure on local authorities. When we talk about reforming local authorities, can we take into account that enormous pressure, which is growing all the time, and the wonderful work that our local authorities have done over the Covid-19 period?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I certainly recognise the wonderful work done. Each council provides council tax reduction schemes for working-age taxpayers. Councils have choices, as they should, about how to design their scheme, reflecting local circumstances. There is a variation in how councils deliver these schemes. For example, some councils offer 100% reductions on their criteria, while others request a contribution from everyone irrespective of income and savings.