Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Hannah Bardell]

I could not agree more.

As I was saying, there was limited support for single parents, and although my mother held a good job in academia, finances were always close to the edge. I recall Lady Thatcher famously saying not long after she left office:

“It is far better to put these children in the hands of a very good religious organisation, and the mother as well, so that they will be brought up with family values.”

She told the audience in the Commonwealth convention centre in Louisville, that the spread of illegitimacy

“devalues our values and our community”.

She said that Governments had made things worse by providing social security benefits for single mothers, and it feels to me as if this Bill and the Conservative proposals are taking us back in time. We have come a long way since the dark days of the Thatcher Government: please do not let us return. All Opposition Members should be uniting against these pernicious Tory cuts—perhaps even a few progressive Government Members will join us to say no to a Second Reading.

Let me turn to the two-child policy. This part of the Bill makes changes to universal credit and tax credits, including a two-child limit for new claims and births after 2017. The Budget documents say that there will be protections in cases of rape and exceptional circumstances such as multiple births, but there are no details in the Bill. The limit will reduce the value of tax credits for future claimants with three or more children. There are currently 50,000 households in Scotland with three or more children receiving tax credits. Many of them are in Livingston and I have heard already from a number of constituents who are deeply worried about the impact that this measure will have on their finances.

To suggest for a moment that a woman who has been raped will have to justify herself to a member of the DWP is as sickening as it is unworkable. I have to hope that this grave error in policy making is a matter that the Conservatives will rethink and completely remove from the Bill. Either it is a deeply insensitive afterthought, or it is a proposal that shows utter disregard for a woman’s privacy and basic human rights.

How on earth can that policy work? What criteria will be applied to women justifying whether or not they have been raped? Will the criteria require a conviction—numbers of which, as we all know, are notoriously low—and what if a woman’s first or second child was the result of a rape? Will she be asked retrospectively to justify herself if she goes on to have a third child? What kind of training will staff have in dealing with women who have been raped? I simply do not want to believe that anyone in this House would want a woman to be subjected to this kind of regime. Asking a woman to relive such an abhorrent crime, simply to get enough money to keep a family going, is surely one of the most ill-conceived policies any Government have ever proposed. We deplore this policy and ask the Government to rethink it as a matter of urgency. As Sandra Horley, the chief executive of domestic violence charity Refuge, said:

“Women experiencing domestic violence are often completely controlled by their partner, including their access to birth control. Some women are also raped and sexually assaulted on a regular basis. Will this tax credit exemption mean vulnerable women who have been raped are forced to re-live their ordeal to prove they deserve support?”

We need detail and a rethink on this policy urgently. Similarly, for people who have had multiple births, the details and parameters of this policy are not clear. Much more clarification is required.

I will turn now to other aspects of the Bill, including the abolition of the employment and support allowance work-related activity component. Under the Bill, employment and support allowance for claimants in the work-related activity group will see their payments reduced to jobseeker’s allowance rates for new claims from April 2017. People affected are therefore set to lose up to £1,500 a year under current rules.

My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) described eloquently the pernicious nature of the changes to housing benefit for young people when she highlighted the fact she was now the only 20-year-old in the country the Chancellor would be helping with her housing bill. We now know that, from April 2017, those out of work aged 18 to 21 making new claims to universal credit will no longer be entitled to the housing element.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Listening to my hon. Friend talk about women having to prove they have been raped and about 18 to 21-year-olds having to move back in with their parents when housing benefit is removed reminds me of when I was a welfare rights officer in the late ’80s and the Tory Government decided that 16 and 17-year-olds were no longer entitled to any benefits unless they had exceptional reasons. I had to advise a frightened 17-year-old girl sitting in front of me that, yes, if she wanted to stay in her own not very nice house, which was at least safe, she would have to tell a stranger that her dad regularly raped her. What does my hon. Friend think of progress under Tory Governments?

[Hannah Bardell]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. It is very clear from her experiences that these cuts are pernicious and unfounded, and we must, must oppose them.

The Scottish Government are protecting people from Westminster cuts. To be properly supported to live a full and meaningful life, be that in employment or otherwise, we have to look at a different way of doing things. In Scotland, the Scottish National party Government are providing £104 million in 2015-16 to protect as many people as possible from the damaging impact of the welfare reforms imposed so far by Westminster. That includes £35 million to mitigate the bedroom tax and the council tax reduction scheme, which has protected 500,000 Scots.

--- Later in debate ---

[Oliver Dowden]

I do not accept that. I hope that Members will forgive my slip of the tongue. The increase in the current minimum wage, which is less than £7 an hour, to a minimum wage of well over £9 an hour by the end of this Parliament is huge. It is not in line with the standard increase in the minimum wage. This is a step change that reflects the introduction of a national—

[Anne McLaughlin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Oliver Dowden]

I will give way once more, but I am subject to the time limit.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I assume the hon. Gentleman knows that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has noted that it is “arithmetically impossible” for the increase in the minimum wage to

“provide full compensation for the majority of losses experienced by tax credit”

—and universal credit—

“recipients.”

Is it the members of the IFS who need to go back to school, or is it the hon. Gentleman?

[Oliver Dowden]

I invite the hon. Lady to note the analysis showing that the income of a typical renting household receiving tax credits, consisting of two people working full time with two children, will increase by 12%. That is exactly what we are seeking to achieve.

The third element comes into play once we have ensured that wages are higher—and I should point out that we are able to do that only because our welfare reform programme has been so successful that it has brought about a massive cut in unemployment. Because 1 million fewer people are receiving unemployment benefit and 2 million more people are employed, the labour market can withstand a significant increase in wages. Had it not been for those developments, the whole package would have fallen apart. Our measures reflect a more coherent vision.

Once those first two elements are in place, it is only right for us to consider reducing welfare benefits. There is a clear principle behind this. People in my constituency, and in many other constituencies, face tough choices, and those choices should also be faced by those people who are receiving welfare benefits. For example, one of my constituents will have to decide whether he or she can afford to have another child; we are saying that, similarly, child tax credits should, in due course, reflect what is appropriate for a family with two children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Natalie McGarry (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

Ours is a disabling society. Some are born impaired, some acquire impairments. Some of those are visible, some invisible. All of us will, in time, feel the invisible agency of a society that is organised for the convenience of able bodies, a society which for too long has approached the mental wellbeing of its people with silence, embarrassment and denial. It is society that disables. It inscribes its exclusionary assumptions everywhere—on pavements, on buildings, in interview panels, in bleak ATOS assessment rooms.

The Government propose to abolish the employment and support allowance work-related activity component, which was originally envisaged as a way of supporting people with limited capability for work as a result of sickness or disability. It sought to recognise the barriers that people with disabilities face in seeking work, the disabling attitudes, the disabling environments, and the additional costs that disabled people bear, day to day, leading their lives. Employment and support allowance extended a small measure of recognition of the inequality that our society generates, and now even that small gesture is to be torn away. Paul Farmer, the chief executive of Mind, is reported as saying:

“People being supported by ESA receive a higher rate than those on JSA because they face additional barriers as a result of their illness or disability, and typically take longer to move into work. Almost 60 per cent of people on JSA move off the benefit within 6 months, while almost 60 per cent of people in the WRAG need this support for at least two years.”

[Anne McLaughlin]

Someone close to me who has bipolar disorder used to use her employment and support allowance to pay for things when she found it impossible to face the world. She would employ somebody to take her child to school and someone to provide talking therapies and things that improved her mental health. Does my hon. Friend agree that sometimes mental disabilities can be just as financially costly as physical ones?

[Natalie McGarry]

I thank my hon. Friend for that very well-made point.

According to the House of Commons Library, in November last year 492,000 claimants fell within the employment and support allowance work-related activity group—people assessed as being capable of undertaking some work—almost 250,000 of whom are classified by the Government as suffering from mental and behavioural disorders. Under the Bill, these people will see their payments slashed, at a saving to the Exchequer of £640 million a year by 2020. Affected claimants will receive up to £1,500 a year less than under current rules. A recent study by Scope found that disabled people spend an average of £550 more in disability-related expenses than non-disabled members of the population. These are not extravagances, they are not luxuries, and they are certainly not lifestyle choices.