Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Flather Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Flather]

My Lords, I found this Bill very difficult to understand. I have no experience in this field, and I am not connected to any organisation or to any of the issues that have been mentioned by many noble Lords, but, like everybody else, I have received a great deal of correspondence and I have tried my best to read as much of it as possible.

I have always felt that our welfare system should first and foremost be looking after the most vulnerable. That goes without saying. What is the welfare system for? It is to look after those who need it most. What many of us resent is feeling that it is sometimes used by people who should not be using it. It is sometimes used fraudulently, and we sometimes see people who are fit and healthy not working when jobs are available. If there are no jobs available, that is a different matter, but they have preferences and say that they will not take this job or that job, but taxpayers should have some preferences as well about who they would like to pay for.

As far as the vulnerable, the elderly and the disabled are concerned, I wholeheartedly support all of what has been said, and I look forward to the amendments that will come up to improve the Bill. My husband is very disabled, although fortunately we have not had to depend on benefits, but every little bit that he gets is helpful. It is very sad when one partner in a couple is disabled and gets worse and the other partner who tries to be a carer gets older. That is our case, because I can no longer look after my husband.

If somebody has drug dependency, they are on benefits and they also get paid for their drugs. What reason is there for them to get off drugs? Not only are they treated as disabled but they have their drugs paid for. There is no incentive to get off drugs. These sorts of things worry me, and I hope that they will be looked at.

I was extremely pleased to hear the Minister say in his opening remarks that the benefits of a person who takes a job will be protected and their universal credit can be reinstated if the job does not work out, because I have often felt that people are afraid to take a job because they are afraid that it will be very difficult to get their benefits reinstated. In fact, if I had seen the opening remarks of the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, I would probably have understood the Bill a lot better, but I did not hear them until I came here.

I want to introduce an utterly controversial idea. I expect that it will not find much favour, but it has been on my mind, and I am often controversial in what I say. I feel that people should not be getting the full raft of benefits for any number of children. I feel that the first two children should get a full raft of benefits, the third child should get three-quarters and the fourth child should get a half. I say this, especially after the recent riots, because we need to give responsibility for bringing up children back to the parents. It is very easy to produce a child, but it is not very easy to bring it up. I hear parents saying, “The school should teach them that,” or “The school should do that”, as if the state should take care of everything. The school has so much less time with a child than the parents do. I think it is time to make parents responsible for at least some part of bringing up their children.

The minority communities in this country, particularly the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis, have very large numbers of children and the money that follows the child is an attraction. Nobody likes to accept that or to talk about it because it is supposed to be very politically incorrect. Well, I am politically incorrect, and there is no doubt that six or seven children give you a far larger income than three or four. I think it is about time that we stop people using children as a means of increasing the amount of money that they receive or of getting a bigger house.

In the countries of origin, these people—Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and even Indians—have large families because there is no safety net. When you get old, it is only your children who are going to look after you. That does not apply here. Every old person will have their pension and will be looked after. It is time to introduce the pattern of this country and to tell people that they must start following it. At the bottom of the education league tables are the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and top of the league are the Chinese and Indians. Indians have fallen into the pattern here. They do not have large families because they are like the Jews: they want their children to be educated. This is the other problem: there is no emphasis on education in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi families. If there was, there would be no problem. But we have a large number of young people, particularly young men, who have very few skills and very basic education and they are not really skilled to do any work even if the work were available.

It concerns me that we do not say anything, we do not do anything and we do not send any message that this is not acceptable. Having a child is easy; bringing up a child is difficult. The recent riots have told us that parents need to take responsibility for their children.