Benefits: Reductions

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, like every other noble Lord who has spoken, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Bassam for initiating this debate. It is a poignant debate as well as a timely one because we are remembering our dear friend Patricia. One of Patricia’s favourite words was “decency”, and we know exactly what she meant by that. I was her Whip for some time when I was a social security specialist in this House. I do not think that a Whip has ever learned more or done less. Sitting beside Patricia for the pension and social security debates, I was enormously impressed. I used to pray that she would stay in good health so that I would never have to take over from her. We will miss her hugely all around the House.

Patricia and I both grew up in a society that had the benefit of the post-war social contract defined by national insurance, the National Health Service and free secondary education—the elements of a decent life. It laid the foundation for a family life that was free from fear. The tragedy is that we could have predicted in the past 10 years that fear would return, and indeed it has. I very much regret the way that the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, finished his contribution; I was very appreciative of it until that point. The point is that we have seen the return of fear: not just being unable to envisage owning your own home, but the immediate day-to-day fear that comes from not being able to pay your rent or bills, or to buy food.

How did we ever come to this point? Patricia was an accomplished historian, and it is worth reflecting on the years between 1997 and 2010 when we are now certain, by irrefutable measures, that child poverty fell by one-third due to a combination of more affordable childcare, the minimum wage, access to jobs, better benefits and better services—years in which family incomes grew. The years between 1997 and 2010 proved that when Governments are serious about reducing child and family poverty, they can do it, and Patricia was part of that Labour Government.

The past eight years have shown how very easy those measures are to undo, even things that you think are certain and deep in the system. Year-on-year cuts in public spending have removed vital services, such as children’s services, that have an immediate impact on how people live and work. There was a real cut of £12 billion in welfare benefits in 2015, £3 billion of which were cuts to work allowances in universal credit, a scheme predicated on “making work pay”—one of the many paradoxes to be exposed; the rest was an accumulation of cuts in working benefits, tax credits, housing benefits, council tax benefits and of course child benefits. Of course I welcome the £1.7 billion that the Chancellor announced yesterday to increase working allowances, but there is a limit to how grateful we can be to a Government who are simply trying to repair the damage that they themselves have deliberately inflicted with calculated policies. And, as we have been told by many people around the House, there is indeed more to come.

We have heard a lot about jobs in this debate so far. The changing picture of family and child poverty is not about unemployment; it is more about the deregulated, insecure and unstable workplace that so many families are now in thrall to. In the middle of that massive economic change has come universal credit, the biggest and riskiest change in social security for decades and the biggest IT project, with all that that implies.

UC may well be defensible in principle, but it simply fails to acknowledge the realities of working life. It is a system based on an assumption of what is average, on monthly assessment, on erratic payments determined by arbitrary dates and calculated delays in payment, with a total reliance on IT. Families are flummoxed by how much or how little they receive. Many of them are for the first time in their lives in debt, in housing arrears, dependent on food banks.

The PAC said that universal credit is taking too long to pay people the money they need to live on. The Select Committee on Work and Pensions said that the universal support system needs to be completely overhauled if it is not to threaten not only the well-being of claimants, but the scheme itself. Every expert— and I include two ex-Prime Ministers—has said the same. The time for patching up is long gone. Another delay will solve nothing. It is imperative to embark on fundamental redesign to remove the structural disincentives, absurdities and perversities in the system. Does the Minister—who is not in her place—agree with that analysis and that there should be no mass migration until that is sorted? Does she also agree with the Resolution Foundation, which states:

“Reforming while cutting is reckless, and doing so on the back of a catastrophic decade for low-to-middle income families’ living standards is plain wrong”?


The effects are nationwide and in every community. I live in what looks like a very affluent community in Lewes, but there are pockets of poverty. We have three food banks. The wonderful volunteers who run the Fitzjohn’s Food Bank tell me that food bank usage has doubled over the past year. It has provided 43,000 meals. A mother came in the other day in total distress, having lost half her universal credit without warning. It is extremely anxious about the move to universal credit. That is just one food bank.

The rise of food banks is ascribable not just to universal credit. That is the problem: the causes go much deeper. That is why the damage relief Budget this week, which prioritised an increase in tax relief for top earners, is a disgrace. It simply puts the country on a faster track to even greater inequality.

In conclusion, we are witnessing fundamental changes in the welfare state that are dismantling the idea of the social contract and the notion of an unconditional social citizenship which included all families in the prospect of a decent life. Universal credit overrides the real choices that people face and attaches conditions to accessing and keeping work. Risk is no longer pooled; resources are no longer fairly shared. The burden is being borne by poorer families with fewer means to change their circumstances.

Patricia Hollis would never have been silent on that. She would never have stopped until she had persuaded the Government that they had to change. That is her legacy, and that is our duty.