Universal Credit Roll-out

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Neil Gray]

I absolutely agree with my hon. and learned Friend, who raises a very pertinent point that I hope the Government have heard.

We all agree that employment is a route out of poverty, but what hope do we give those who are employed and living in poverty? What hope can the Government give them, given that they are currently participating in the only route out of poverty the Tories know and yet still live below the line? The cuts to universal credit are making people worse off. In East Lothian, more than half of the local citizens advice bureaux clients on universal credit are worse off by on average £45 per week. A third of their clients are better off but by just 34p per week. We know from the Resolution Foundation that the decade from 2010 is to be the worst for wage growth in 210 years. Not since the Napoleonic Wars have we had it so bad.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

In those calculations, does the hon. Gentleman include the 1.3 million people who do not have to pay tax any more, or the £1,000 that goes straight into the pockets of those earning the least in this country?

[Neil Gray]

The cuts in the tax thresholds do not help those on the lowest incomes. [Interruption.] They do not. That is not the best direction of the funds. Helping people in receipt of work allowances and addressing the taper rates would be of far more assistance to people on low incomes.

Universal credit is not making work pay, and the Government are not making work pay. They are making people pay the price for austerity cuts. If the Government are serious about universal credit and serious about tackling inequality, they need to get serious about fixing the major problems with universal credit as it is currently being rolled out. Parliament has spoken on universal credit, and it is time the Government acted to fix it.

Child Maintenance Service

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[Marion Fellows]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She is absolutely correct. Indeed, what she refers to ties in with the whole DWP agenda of closing offices. I will come on to the under-resourcing of that Department.

Even if parents have an understanding of what the CMS can do to assist them, there is a hesitance on the part of the CMS to take enforcement action. That is a major reason why arrears have been allowed to accrue historically and currently.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that in effect that deprives resident parents of their rights, because they have no other means of enforcement? Their legal rights to enforce through the courts have been taken away by the child maintenance system, and that leaves them powerless to pursue what is their right: the maintenance due to them for their children.

[Marion Fellows]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. Again, I completely agree. When I went to the Backbench Business Committee to apply for this debate, I was aware even there of the consensus across the House on the lack of action and the failings of the Child Maintenance Service, and that is being reinforced by these interventions.

Variation claims place the burden of proof on the parents with care to show that their ex-partners’ incomes are misrepresented. I have constituents who have either hired private investigators or become private investigators themselves to prove to the CMS that their ex-partner is lying about their income. That is not their job; it should be the job of the CMS.

--- Later in debate ---

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) for securing this debate. I should perhaps put on record that I have used the Child Support Agency for the last 13 years. I would liken most of that time to banging my head against a brick wall. I also spent four years as a caseworker supporting parents with their cases, particularly with the Child Support Agency, the predecessor to the Child Maintenance Service, due to my personal knowledge of the procedures.

My experience is that staff are not properly trained. CMS staff in particular, since the move to the Department for Work and Pensions, have no idea what their enforcement powers are, are extremely reluctant to use them and regularly fail to do so. Proper compensation is also lacking when the CMS makes mistakes. I appreciate that the volume of complaints to my inbox about the CMS is relatively small, but that is because the vast majority of 3 million cases are still under the CSA system and have not yet been transferred to the CMS. Given my experience, that is probably a blessing in disguise.

I know that that is not this Minister’s fault. I feel sorry for her, because she has taken over a system that has had systemic failings for years. The fact that £4 billion in arrears is outstanding demonstrates how catastrophically single parents in this country have been let down by a system that was supposed to make collections easier. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw has ably outlined some of the key problems on which Gingerbread has made recommendations: I will concentrate specifically on avoidance by self-employed parents.

As we know from the Chancellor’s recent statement, a vast number of people are moving to self-employment. Their numbers are growing, particularly among non-resident parents. Self-employment makes avoiding child maintenance easier—there are online forums that provide advice to non-resident parents on how to avoid paying child maintenance—and frankly, the Government have not stepped up to the plate. It is absolutely scandalous that parents whose legal rights to maintenance for their children have been taken away and given to the state find the state unwilling or unable to enforce those rights. That is not good enough, and in my view, it is discriminatory, because it operates largely against women, as 75% of single parents with care are women. The Government must examine the issue again.

I call for specific action by the Minister. In particular, I echo the calls on “lifestyle inconsistent with earnings”. It is ridiculous to suggest that a parent who might have separated from their partner 10, 13 or 15 years ago should have a detailed knowledge of their financial circumstances. Often, the only evidence available to show the Child Maintenance Service is evidence of a lifestyle inconsistent with earnings. For example, a constituent of mine who left his wife and set up with another partner had a Range Rover and foreign holidays abroad, but was £33,000 in arrears. Eventually, after a long court case, the matter went to a tribunal hearing. The evidence in that case was lifestyle inconsistent with earnings; it is vital that that clause be reinstated.

The Government must consider how tax rules are used to disguise assets. In particular, if someone is self-employed or a director of their own company and makes a director’s loan into the company, that asset is owned by them, and it means that they can take a large amount of money out of the company, but it is not considered an asset for the purposes of child maintenance. That is wrong. It allows abuse of the system, and it is being used a lot. That information should be available from Companies House and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. The issue needs to be examined again.

Further, I urge the Government to consider giving women an enforceable right in the courts where there is an asset threshold. Where that asset threshold is set is a matter for the Minister and her team to decide, but if there are more than £500,000 in assets, for example, that case ought to fall outside the CMS, because they are not taken into account. For example, the family home is exempt from consideration among the assets of the non-resident parent.

It does not take much looking to find past cases in the tribunal system where there have been assets of several million pounds in the form of the family home, expensive sports cars and other high-value items that the CMS cannot take into account because they do not generate an income. That is a convenient shelter allowing high-net-worth individuals to avoid paying for their children. The issue is important. The women involved in these cases have no other way of enforcing their rights. The Government have removed their rights in court, and they need to be reinstated, because so many assets have been excluded from consideration that non-resident parents’ ability to pay for their children is not being reflected.

I mentioned earlier that CMS staff do not know their rights. The CMS is completely unwilling to request data from the Land Registry, for example. I support co-location of HMRC and CMS staff. HMRC should automatically notify the CMS if a non-resident parent’s claim for tax relief increases. If they put in a tax return and are claiming up to the tax-free allowance in income, the CMS should automatically be notified. We should have much more effective data sharing across Government to enable enforcement.

I fought the system as a single mum for eight years. As a lawyer, I thought that I would be able to understand and work the system, but even now that I am a Member of Parliament, we still cannot get it to work. It is really a scandal and a disgrace that lone parents are being let down so badly by a system that allows non-resident parents to manipulate it.

I am grateful for this debate. If, as a Government, we are to be there for everybody, we must support those who are least able to enforce their rights. The fact that their legal rights have been taken away means that the burden and responsibility on the Government are that much greater. Having practised as a barrister for 13 years or more, I know that a judge in the courts would look at these things very differently from the Government. Quite frankly, it is time to give women more rights to take these matters through the courts, or to make sure that staff are properly trained to take the necessary action and enforce the rules appropriately. I note that there are £3.9 million of arrears in the Minister’s constituency; regrettably, there are £5.4 million of arrears in mine. I say to any single parent who reads this debate: please contact your MP—allow us to try to help to make the system work for you.

When the CMS makes mistakes, it should compensate appropriately. The compensation regime for the CMS has changed since responsibility moved to the DWP. That is wrong, and I suspect that we will see some reports from the parliamentary ombudsman about maladministration claims against the DWP. It is unacceptable that when the Department has made mistakes, it has been the children who have had to pay for them. There are some simple steps that could be taken that would not necessarily cost the Government huge amounts of money, but which would help parents to enforce their rights.

Oral Answers to Questions

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)]

8. What steps he is taking to support people with disabilities and health conditions who are looking for work.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

15. What steps he is taking to support people with disabilities and health conditions who are looking for work.

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

16. What steps he is taking to support people with disabilities and health conditions who are looking for work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Britain has an astonishing 30% gap between disabled and non-disabled people in work. What steps are being taken to ensure that disabled people are afforded the same professional opportunities as those without disabilities?

[Justin Tomlinson]

The Government are committed to halving the disability employment gap. We are ensuring that disabled people have the skills and confidence to enter work through a named coach in universal credit and we are upskilling our Jobcentre Plus staff and our employment support programmes. We also recognise that we need to create opportunities, so we are working with businesses through the Access to Work programme, the Disability Confident campaign, the small employer offer, and our reverse jobs fairs.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Graham Evans]

rose—

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The Opposition do not like being reminded of the fact that the last Labour Government left the economy in a terrible mess, and it is this Chancellor who, over the last five years, has set out to put it right, and we are proud of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

When the Chancellor delivered his Budget speech yesterday, he made the oft-repeated claim that the

“best route out of poverty is work.”—[Official Report, 8 July 2015; Vol. 598, c. 333.]

That was probably true once, but it is no longer true—it has not been true for a number of years. The truth today is that, for millions of low-paid workers, poverty persists no matter how many hours or how hard they work. For people who are bringing up children on low or, indeed, average incomes, the costs of housing and of childcare mean that they are running to stand still. I have said before in this House that in-work poverty is the great scandal of our age. Sadly, very little was announced yesterday to tackle the underlying drivers that are stifling the opportunities and aspirations of the working poor.

Instead, we learned that the axe of the £12 billion-worth of cuts will fall most heavily on low and middle-income families. Last week the Government announced changes to the way in which child poverty is measured. Having heard yesterday’s announcements, it is not hard to understand why they did that, because the lowering of the threshold for tax credits and other changes announced yesterday will take income largely from the pockets of working parents and compound the projected increases in child poverty arising from the last round of cuts.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Housing and childcare matters are devolved to the Scottish Parliament, so does the hon. Lady agree that, if there are structural imbalances, they need to be dealt with by the Scottish Parliament?

[Dr Whiteford]

I am sure that the hon. Lady is well aware that Scotland’s childcare offer is significantly better than that enjoyed by people in other parts of the UK, and that our housing situation is not exacerbated by real rent imbalances similar to those experienced in London and the south-east of England in particular. I will pick up on that later.

The hon. Lady will also be aware that the Scottish block grant is calculated on the basis of the contents of the Red Book. The money currently allocated to Scotland is determined by this Chamber, so this Budget is relevant to everybody throughout the UK. It would be very wrong to ignore the fact that the purse strings are still controlled here, and that is one of the reasons why I argue for those powers to be sent up the road to Scotland, where we can use them more wisely.

I want to return to the issue of child poverty and the paper exercises conducted to measure it. Whatever we do to massage the figures, I do not think any of us can avoid the evidence of our own eyes in our constituencies. We are seeing growth in child poverty on the ground. We see it in the rise of food banks, which have already been alluded to, and in the larger number of people coming through MPs’ doors with income-related problems. That is also being experienced by advice bureaux. We also see it in the evidence of organisations that work directly with vulnerable families and those on low incomes.

In my constituency, one in five children is growing up in poverty. That might come as a surprise, because we enjoy some of the lowest unemployment in the whole country. A very small percentage of people are not in work, but many thousands of people are in low-paid work, and it is those working poor who are going to be most affected by what was announced yesterday.

More families than ever are running to stand still, and under this Government more people are being left behind. The UK has a deeply polarised labour market, and the ability of people in low-paid work to get ahead is severely curtailed.