Benefit Cap

Alan Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[David Linden]

Absolutely. That is an issue I will perhaps touch on a little later in my speech. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to challenge the Government on that point, because I sometimes wonder how a policy like this could have got through the Government’s so-called family test. I am sure she will not hesitate in challenging her constituency MSP, the Conservative MSP Jackson Carlaw, to stand up for his constituents, many of whom have larger families.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

On that point, is it not key that we are talking about families and children? Whatever the Tories’ ideological views on people having too many children, the reality is that the benefit cap is affecting children who have no say in the matter, and it is evil.

[David Linden]

Absolutely; my hon. Friend makes that point eloquently. The issue is that the Government are making policy in their ivory towers in Whitehall without any understanding of the real-life impact that it has on many families, including in Kilmarnock.

Some nine out of 10 single parents with children are women, which adds another layer of discrimination to an already incredibly cruel policy. We have heard testimonies from women who have left relationships due to domestic abuse only to find their benefits capped and the threat of financial hardship looming. That is the reality of the policy. Every effort should be made to ensure that those women, who are often fleeing desperate situations, are supported. Instead, the heartless British Government have capped the benefits that they can receive.

On top of that clear discrimination against single parents, specifically single mothers, a 2018 report by the excellent charities One Parent Families Scotland and CPAG in Scotland revealed that most families whose benefits had been capped were unable to seek or undertake work. The report highlighted that almost four in five lone parent households affected by the cap were claiming income support because they had young children and were not expected to seek work. Some one in six were claiming employment and support allowance, which suggests that they had been assessed as not fit for work. Families across Scotland are being pushed into financial hardship when they are not expected, and indeed are not deemed fit, to find work.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that the benefit cap also disproportionately affects minority ethnic households. In England, eight in 20 households affected by the cap are minority ethnic, while minority ethnic households represent only three in 20 of the total. The Poverty Alliance has shown that the benefit cap discriminates against larger families as well, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) said. In Scotland, 96% of capped households have children and of that number, 75% have three or more children.

According to a recent Resolution Foundation report, the low level of core social security benefits, which were affected by the various real-terms cuts to benefit levels in the 2010s, has been exacerbated in the past decade by policy changes such as the benefit cap and the two-child limit and associated rape clause that have undermined the idea that those with extra needs should be supported. That has resulted in rising poverty, particularly among families with three or more children.

The SNP has put forward clear policies to tackle poverty across Scotland. For example, my colleagues, SNP Ministers in Holyrood, have doubled the game-changing Scottish child payment, rolled out 11 new benefits and extended free school meals, and are working to actively reduce poverty and inequality. All the while, this place—Westminster—undermines those efforts.

With limited tax-raising powers, no serious borrowing powers and 85% of welfare spending still controlled in London, however, those policies can only go so far. They are being continually undermined by a Tory Government that Scotland did not elect; indeed, we have not elected a Tory Government since the 1950s. The benefit cap is just another cruel policy implemented by the Tories that leads to the extreme austerity and poverty that blight the lives of far too many of our constituents.

In addition to the benefit cap, the British Government must also scrap other poverty-inducing Tory policies such as the two-child limit and the bedroom tax. We face a perverse situation where the Scottish Government have to use between £60 million and £80 million of their budget every year to mitigate the bedroom tax. Again, devolution is almost being used as a sticking plaster for bad social security policy. Quite simply, I am sick and tired of standing up in this Chamber and making endless pleas to intransigent Tory Ministers while trying to demonstrate how my constituents in Wellhouse, Easthall and Cranhill are suffering from their cruel social security squeeze.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Rutley]

As the Chancellor spelled out clearly during the pandemic, this was a response to the worst parts of the pandemic and the shock it would provide to people. The hard-working staff in the Department for Work and Pensions, including thousands of work coaches, worked tirelessly to ensure that the benefits system did its job.

Since the start of the pandemic, we have spent more than £400 billion protecting people’s lives and livelihoods, and supporting businesses and public services. As well as providing support where it is needed, the Government have a responsibility to taxpayers. We must ensure that we use our resources in the most effective and efficient way possible, and the benefit cap is a vital part of that.

The hon. Gentleman and I probably disagree on this, but let me set it out and we will see how it takes the debate further forward.

[Alan Brown]

It is a few years since the National Audit Office said that there was no system in place to measure the outcomes associated with universal credit. For years the Government have continued to say that UC helps people into work. So what changes in the assessment process for measuring outcomes have the Government made since that NAO report?