Universal Credit, Personal Independence Payment, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance (Decisions and Appeals) (Amendment) Regulations 2026
Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Stedman-Scott(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and to join the, I am sure, widespread view around the House in welcoming the continuing presence of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, in her position. Personally, I consider that a delight, even though I am often pushing her on the departmental decisions for which we hold her responsible.
For the second statutory instrument in a row, I find myself thanking the Conservative Benches for securing this debate while disagreeing by 180 degrees with the position they are taking.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
If Hansard did not catch that, the comment from the Opposition Front Bench was, “What is new?”
I begin by making a very simple point. The way in which the outcomes of the reviews of all the payments we are discussing have been conducted, particularly the personal independence payments, are causing a great deal of unnecessary distress, fear and the wrongful withdrawal of essential benefits. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, set out, this is a modest, short-term, limited measure. But we cannot discuss this situation without looking at the broader context, which, indeed, is what the Conservative Front Bench did.
I make a call here for realism. We have an ageing population, healthy life expectancy that has declined by two years in the past decade and one in 10 local areas where the healthy life expectancy is less than 55 years. We have a mental health crisis and a lot of focus on benefits for mental health issues. We need to tackle the issues behind that: schools forced to become exam factories; inequality; insecurity; and child poverty. We need to take the focus away from individuals, and trying to crack down on individuals, and acknowledge that we have a societal problem that we need to tackle as a society, and the Government need to tackle as a Government, rather than continually pounding away rhetorically at individuals.
In that context, I do not think there is enough awareness that the Timms review, to which the noble Lord, Lord Davies, referred was given guidance that it had to stick within the currently predicted future spending levels of PIP—and there is talk of reductions. Let us be realistic about this. I refer to the reactions to the Timms review from organisations that would not be considered radical. The British Psychological Society, with which I entirely agree, said:
“Those that apply for PIP should not feel demeaned and deterred from applying”
by the process. We are talking about reviews here, but people get so fearful about the reviews that they just give up. The British Psychological Society also said:
“Everyone who has been signed off with long-term sickness, including those living with a mental health condition, deserves support”.
It rightly points out that, for those with financial difficulties, the stress of reviews can cause further mental ill health. That has to be taken into account. It is awful for the individuals concerned and also very bad for the whole of society.
An organisation with which some in your Lordships’ House may have even more sympathy is the RNIB, which says that PIP assessments and reviews
“fail to properly understand the realities blind and partially sighted people face. Too many are then forced to challenge decisions that are later overturned”.
I finish by referring to a report in the Times last week, which I urge noble Lords to look at if they have not seen it. The Times sat through a full day of a hearing of the social security and child support tribunal at Swindon magistrates’ court. Problems with PIP now make up about two-thirds of that court’s caseload. In the first three months of this year, more than 27,000 PIP decisions were appealed, and 67% of those appeals were successful. For all those who were saying, “Isn’t it terrible that this is being done by remote assessments and these remote assessments may be wrong”, many of them are wrong in a way that the court later finds is clearly detrimental to the individuals who need that support.
I cite one case from that report. Appearing before the tribunal was a 63 year-old retired GP practice manager. He was
“there for his 22-year-old nephew who has a neurological impairment, learning difficulties, epilepsy, a severe tic and Tourette syndrome”,
and had
“loss of mass in his brain on the left side, responsible for language comprehension, analytical skills and controlling the right side of his body”.
A phone assessment took away his benefits. The tribunal took a very brief look at the medical evidence and restored those benefits. We have a huge problem here. This SI will possibly do a little bit of cleaning, tidying and sorting, but there is far more to do.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Stedman-Scott(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 97 and 99 in the name of my noble friend Lord Farmer, who cannot be here today. His support for Amendment 99, and mine, is grounded in—
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, I apologise for my earlier early intervention. Noble Lords know how passionate I am about early intervention and it got the better of me.
Amendments 97 and 99 are in the name of my noble friend Lord Farmer, who cannot be here today. My support for my noble friend in his amendments is grounded in a desire, which I am sure all noble Lords share, to see high national standards of support, not just pockets of excellent practice in some local authorities. Having said that, the requirement in the Children and Social Work Act 2017 for local authorities to publish their own offer for care leavers, which this would amend, is an important one. But it needs to be built on. A higher standard at a national level would not prevent innovative and exemplary councils doing even better, but it would force any that were lagging behind to improve. I suspect that those who are dedicated to their local care leavers’ cause and are working hard on the ground would welcome high national standards, as those would help them argue successfully for the enhanced leadership and financial support required to lift their offering.
Another reason why the local offer is an important part of primary legislation is that it includes services relating to relationships—a primary need for children coming into care, while they are in care and when they exit. My noble friend Lord Farmer, the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and Lord Mackay, now sadly retired, tabled an amendment to the Children and Social Work Act 2017 that was eventually accepted by the Government, which included the important word “relationships”.
On Amendment 97, the Bill presents an important and timely opportunity to embed relationships more deeply into councils’ arrangements to support and assist care leavers in their transition to adulthood and independent living. We should do all we can to enable care leavers to maintain, strengthen and build family and social relationships. Family group decision-making provisions in the Bill need to be built on. Having gone to all the effort to bring together families and friends who are committed to a child potentially leaving their parents’ care, we cannot allow those relationships to fall through the cracks in their care pathway.
The Family Rights Group, which forged Māori-born family group conferencing into a British model over many years by working with families and children with relevant experience, has similarly refined the lifelong links model, which started as the family finding model in Orange County, California. Lifelong links ensure that children in care have a lasting support network of relatives and others who care about them. A trained co-ordinator works with the child or young person to identify and safely reconnect with important people in their lives, such as relatives they may have lost contact with, former foster carers, teachers or sports coaches. With family group decision-making becoming standard practice, many such people will, or should, have been involved in that process. Keeping these contacts going is a sensible and straightforward next step. The lifelong links approach has demonstrated significant benefits, including more positive and healthy connections in the child’s life and better mental health, instead of isolation and depression, or worse.
Knowing that they matter as an individual to people who are not the professionals paid to look after them gives a child a much better sense of identity. The practical wisdom and guidance that family and friends give often makes the care leaver far more emotionally stable, with a knock-on effect on their ability to hold down accommodation and training or education courses. This reduces the risk of homelessness and of a child trying to make their way without a goal or purpose. Without the motivation that positive relationships provide, it can be very hard to persevere. If you do not matter to anyone, it is easy to wonder what the point of bothering is.
The lifelong links model is currently available in over 40 local authorities across the UK, with 22 receiving Department for Education funding. Lifelong links is not named in this amendment, but, given all of the investment the Government have already made in evidence-building, it should be included in regulations and guidance as an offer to all children in care and care leavers.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I am going to be slightly unconventional and start with the last amendment in this group, Amendment 183A, in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. I think it is so important that it does not get buried in this rather large and diverse group. This amendment seeks to deliver what was, in essence, in the right reverend Prelate’s Private Member’s Bill, which we debated a few months ago, and which I spoke in favour of. It sought to ensure that the universal credit regulations are amended so that care leavers turning 18 receive the same level of universal credit as anyone receives at the age of 25.
I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, who said that these are young people who have no access to the bank of mum and dad and no cushion. We are expecting them to live on a level of universal credit that is not reflective of what other people who have more support—not necessarily, but probably—live on. This is a modest measure. As I said at Second Reading, it is a humane, constructive and practical step. Although this should not be the reason for it, it is very clear that it would end up saving the state money by ensuring people have a little more support and do not fall a very long way through the cracks, as the statistics show they very often do.
At the Second Reading of that Bill, I spoke about the wonderful scheme in Wales that has been trialling universal basic income for care leaves, set at a quite decent level. One of the interesting things was that the only condition put on those care leavers was that they had to take one session of financial education. This is where I come back to Amendment 95, from the noble Baroness Tyler, to which I have attached my name. I have heard anecdotal reports—we have not had the written reports from the UBI trials yet—that one of the offers was that care leavers could take more financial education sessions, in acknowledgement that they had a significant amount of money available to them. Virtually every person in the scheme took the extra financial education. It might seem a bit specialised to have this in an amendment, but it is such an important factor.
I point to the fact that this is a broader issue. Care leavers are obviously people who particularly need financial education, but I note that, last year, the Financial Times Christmas appeal was to raise money to give British young people financial education. That is an indictment of the failure across the whole system to educate young people. It is very clear that care leavers are people who particularly need it, deserve to get it and can hugely benefit from it.