Welfare Reforms and Poverty

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes that a commission of inquiry should be established to investigate the impact of the Government’s welfare reforms on the incidence of poverty.

I am very grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving the House the opportunity to debate this issue, which has been seriously neglected over the past three years. I am pleased to move the motion, which appears in my name and the names of Members from other parties.

It is clear that something terrible is happening across the face of Britain. We are seeing the return of absolute poverty, which has not existed in this country since the Victorian age, more than a century ago. Absolute poverty is when people do not have the money to pay for even their most basic needs. The evidence of that is all around us. There are at least 345 food banks and, according to the Trussell Trust, emergency food aid was given to 350,000 households for at least three days in the last year. The Red Cross is setting up centres to help the destitute, just as it does in developing countries. A study that was published two months ago shows that even in prosperous areas of the country, such as London, more than a quarter of the population is living in poverty. This point is really scary: according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, for the first time, the number of people in working families who are living in poverty, at 6.7 million, is greater than the number of people in workless and retired families who are living in poverty, at 6.3 million.

The Department for Work and Pensions published new data two months ago—it was pretty reluctant to do this, and one can see why—showing that the use of sanctions, which means depriving people of all their benefits for several weeks at a time, had increased by 126% since 2010 and, most strikingly of all, that 120 disabled people who had been receiving jobseeker’s allowance had been given a three-year fixed duration sanction in the previous year. Figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government—these are the last that I will quote, although there are many more that I could quote—show that there are now more than 2,000 families who have been placed in emergency bed-and-breakfast accommodation after losing their homes. The 5% rise in the overall homelessness figures last year included nearly 9,000 families with children, which is the equivalent of one family losing their home every 15 minutes.

What impact have the so-called welfare reforms, which would more accurately be described as social security knock-backs, had on the families who have been affected? The best evidence comes from the Northern Housing Consortium, which carried out a survey three months ago of a representative sample of people living in social housing. It found that a third of families spent less than £20 a week on food and that the average spend on food per person per day was precisely £2.10. That is a third less than those families were able to afford three months before that. The proportion of households that had to make debt repayments of more than £40 a week had doubled and the average level of debt was £2,250. That might not sound a lot to us, but to people with that standard of living it is an enormous and daunting sum. A third of families had council tax debt, and households were having to spend 16% more on gas and electricity. Those are deplorable figures of profound impoverishment in an economy that is still the sixth largest in the world.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this incredibly important debate. Does he also recognise the impact of 2.7 million people losing out through the Government’s changes to council tax benefit, many of them disabled people, veterans and some of the most vulnerable in our communities?

[Mr Meacher]

I have already made slight reference to that, but my hon. Friend is entirely right. The change is quite small, but its impact can push very poor families into deep poverty.

What are the causes of the emergence of absolute poverty? The biggest cause is the huge rise in sanctioning: depriving someone of all their benefit entitlement for a month in the first instance, for three months in the second instance and, on a third infringement, for three years!

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Ministers—and certainly some Tory Back Benchers, as we have just heard—are in a state of denial about the increasing poverty in this country resulting from Government policies. They want us to believe—the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) is as good an example as any—that we are dealing with the work-shy and scroungers, with people who have no justification for receiving benefits in the first place. It is to a large extent a repeat of what I witnessed during the Thatcher years. My right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), whom I congratulate on initiating this motion, will recall how we repeatedly used to point out what was happening in the country at large under Thatcher—increasing poverty and deprivation. Ministers and Tory Back Benchers back in the 1980s simply denied it: poverty did not exist; it was a figment of our imaginations. It was not then and it is not now.

The Child Poverty Action Group has estimated that 60% of the current benefit cuts fall on those who are in work. I totally reject, as do my right hon. and hon. Friends, that those who are not in employment are scroungers or not justified in receiving social security benefits. The severely disabled are among those being hit by the cuts.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that child poverty will rise during this Parliament from 2.5 million to 3.2 million—an interesting figure, and I would argue that this debate is justified by that alone, and it explains why my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton and I urge taking action. The figures I have quoted mean, according to the IFS, that almost 24% of children in the UK are likely to live in poverty by 2015 next year. What sort of country are we—supposedly one of the most advanced industrialised countries in the world, yet 24% of our children will be living in poverty by next year? This compares with just over 19% in 2011—and that figure was far too high. The IFS goes further, projecting that, unless there are changes, current policies will impoverish a further 700,000 children between 2015 and 2020. That means some 4 million children growing up in poverty in the UK.

I had thought that Parliament in previous times, such as from 1945—I cannot claim to have been here at the time—was determined that poverty should largely be abolished, that full employment should occur and that no one should ever be in need again to the extent that people were before the second world war, yet we seem to be returning to that situation, which we hoped would be abolished for ever.

The policies being pursued—only 1% uprating of so many benefits, including child benefit; the change from the retail prices index to the consumer prices index as a basis for calculating benefits; the reductions in working tax credits and the rest—all add up to explain why we need this debate on poverty. All this, of course, is without what the Chancellor has threatened—a further £12 billion-worth of benefit cuts that he would like to see introduced after 2015.

Is it surprising that so many people in need are turning to food banks, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton mentioned? During Education questions in September last year, the Education Secretary said that when people used such facilities as food banks, it was

“often the result of decisions that they have taken which mean they are not best able to manage their finances.” —[Official Report, 9 September 2013; Vol. 567, c. 681.]

That was his explanation—a leading member of the Cabinet—for food banks. The Trussell Trust described those comments as “not just insensitive”, as they obviously were to say the least, but “completely inappropriate”.

As anyone would know, people do not just go to a food bank for fun to ask for this, that or the other. It has to be authorised; people need vouchers and authorisation before food can be given. Does anyone in this House believe that people go along to food banks for the fun of it and to get a bit of free food? They go because they have no alternative. They have such limited incomes for bringing up their children, and I thought many of them feel humiliated by having to attend food banks. I would feel humiliated, and I am not alone. I would imagine that virtually every Member would feel humiliated if, as a result of limited income, poverty and so forth, they had to go to a food bank. How easy is it to justify that to the children? “Why are you going to a food bank, dad? Why do we not go to Tesco’s like everyone else?” Many children would ask such questions. We know why people go to food banks.

What about the figures? In 2009-10, about 41,000 people used food banks. By 2011-12, it had gone up to 128,000. As I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton mentioned, the latest figures from the Trussell Trust suggest that some 350,000 people are using them. Given that—fortunately—other organisations provide such facilities, the total number is about half a million. Half a million people in this country are using food banks! Are we proud of that? Do we feel that the House of Commons is doing its duty, and carrying out its obligation to deal with poverty and deprivation? Let me say it again: at the beginning of this year, 2014, half a million people are resorting to food banks because they have no alternative.

Other problems are being caused by cuts. For example, as a result of the impact of the cuts on local authorities, many home care visits are limited to 15 minutes. Those visits would not have been authorised in the first place unless they were necessary. Most of them involve disabled people and, in many cases, elderly people—in my age group or older—who cannot look after themselves. The number of 15-minute visits has increased by 15% over the last few years, and 60% of local authorities commission such visits. Why is that? In the main, it is not because any of them—including Conservative councils—are insensitive, but because, given the impact of the cuts, they see no alternative.

[Andy Sawford]

My hon. Friend has made an important point about the impact of the social care cuts. Is he aware that the 10% of local authorities that are the most deprived in the country face cuts six times higher than those faced by the 10% that are the most affluent?

[Mr Winnick]

That too is an important point, which I hope the Minister will bear in mind when he winds up the debate.

For those who have limited means, for those who cannot find work and for the disabled, the last few years—especially the last three—have become a desperate struggle for survival. I repeat what I said earlier. We should be ashamed, deeply ashamed, that so many of our fellow citizens—and let us not forget for one moment that they are our fellow citizens—are having to live in such circumstances. I only hope that there will be a change of Government, and that the new Government will do what I have every confidence that they will do. I hope that they will develop policies that will make life easier for those in need, as a Labour Government did previously. I was a bit of a critic of the last Labour Government on occasion, but there is no doubt that, overwhelmingly, my constituents were greatly assisted by their policies. I said so at the time, and I have said so many times since then.

This debate is essential, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton on introducing it. I hope that, as a result, Ministers and Conservative Back Benchers will recognise how vital it is that change should come.