Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Hollins Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendment 34, tabled so comprehensively by my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham. This amendment is of particular importance in view of the enormity of the cuts to welfare spending since the passing of the Child Poverty Act 2010. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports that this will amount to £123 billion taken from our poorest citizens by 2016-17. The second feature of government policy the effects of which need to be monitored effectively—and would be under Amendment 34—is the conditionality and sanctions regime which undoubtedly increases the stress level of claimants very considerably.

As a panel member, along with Sir Keir Starmer and others, for an inquiry by the Fawcett Society into the impact of the Government’s welfare measures upon women, and by association their children, I found quite appalling the sheer level of errors and abuse in some Jobcentre Plus offices, affecting innocent women who only wanted, if at all possible, to gain their independence from the state. Our inquiry concluded that sanctions applied through no fault of the claimant were affecting claimants’ mental and physical health and the health and well-being of their children to a considerable degree. The Government have a duty to be aware of the consequences of their policies and to respond to the adverse effects.

I am aware that the Minister believes that injustices are limited in number, and that his department is doing its best to lessen them further. However, the inquiry made it clear to us that in fact the quality of service across the country varies very considerably. In some offices the staff were helpful and professional, and claimants certainly reported that. However, in others they were inadequately trained and could be callous and careless, with the most appalling consequences for the families affected. A typical example were mothers who, contrary to the guidelines, were required to travel three hours a day in total to and from work. They could not afford this and believed—rightly, in my opinion—that it was entirely wrong for their very young children to be in childcare for 10, 11 or more hours per day. Despite this entirely unreasonable requirement, such parents were sanctioned and then could not even feed their children. This was not an isolated problem but rather a regular occurrence in offices up and down the country.

Another often repeated story was that of a mother phoning the office to say that she could not attend an interview or required activity due to the sickness of a child, and was told that this information would, indeed, be passed on to the appropriate official. Of course, nothing was done. The mother would arrive at the post office to pick up her benefit only to find that there was nothing there. A sanction had been imposed with no information given to her. I cannot imagine the shock and utter distress of a mother in that situation. I believe that the Government may have adjusted the sanctions regime to ameliorate that problem and to make sure there is a gap between the imposition of a sanction and it taking place. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify the position this evening.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation produced a comprehensive review of international evidence on sanctions within systems in which benefits are conditional on claimant behaviour. It confirmed that sanctions strongly reduce benefit use and increase exit from benefits. However, Rowntree also finds that sanctions are generally less favourable in terms of longer-term outcomes, the well-being of children and crime rates, for example.

Every sanction which is unfairly imposed will cause extreme stress to parents, who suddenly find that they have no food for the children and no money even for the bus fare to reach a food bank, and have more debt and so forth. It should be a matter of great concern to the Government that 28% of sanctions are overturned on appeal and a higher percentage—39%—in the case of lone parents. Successful appeals soar for high-level sanctions. Fully 64% of single parents have high-level sanctions overturned on appeal. These must be just numbers to many of us but the Government have a responsibility in my view to report on the mental and physical health effects of the extraordinary hardship behind those numbers. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in support of my noble friend’s Amendment 34 and focus on the impact of benefit sanctions on people with mental health problems. Mental health professionals are extremely worried about the impact of this, which is why this amendment asks for a report containing data to be published.

The latest statistics around the number of people with mental health problems being supported into work though the back to work scheme are astonishingly low. Just 9% have been supported into employment since the scheme began. There are two key areas where better evidence is needed. We know that more than half of people receiving ESA in the WRAG have a mental or behavioural disorder as their primary health condition, and many more people in the WRAG will have comorbid physical and mental health problems.

We also know that people with mental health problems are being disproportionately sanctioned. Recent Freedom of Information requests to the department revealed that in 2014, on average 58% of sanctions for people in the ESA WRAG were given to people with mental health problems—20,000 in all.

The mistaken assumption is that people do not want to work, and that the best incentive is to threaten benefit withdrawal. Research shows that people with mental-health problems have a high want-to-work rate. I could say a lot more about that, but in view of the time I will not. What are the barriers? We need much more information—hence the request for a report.

I would like to share an example given to me by Mind, the mental health charity. It told me the story of a man who has been out of work for most of his adult life due to his mental health problems and who is currently in the support group. Under conditionality in the work-related activity group, this man felt so fearful and anxious of the threat of sanctions that he forced himself to attend his appointment a couple of days after being hospitalised following an overdose. This is just one shocking example of the pressure claimants are under, the health conditions that people face and, crucially, the level of anxiety and stress reportedly caused by fear of sanctions.

I urge the Minister to take these concerns and this amendment very seriously.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)]

My Lords, this group of amendments is largely focused on the non-income issues and seeks to add the matters of worklessness and educational attainment to the measures, which the Government say are focused on the causes of poverty rather than its symptoms. These matters are important because it is asserted that what is measured and reported on will drive the focus of government attention, although reliance on this approach is inherently weaker than having strategy obligation and specific targets. There will be more about that in later amendments.

In considering Clause 4 and these amendments, we should set the context by reflecting on the starting positions, and that has been done by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor. The current Child Poverty Act 2010, as amended in 2012, contains targets to be met in 2020 that relate to: relative low income; combined low income and material deprivation; absolute low income; and persistent poverty. There are four targets, not just one. It provides for the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission—formerly the Child Poverty Commission, and soon to lose child poverty altogether—to give advice when requested to Ministers on how to measure socioeconomic disadvantage, social mobility and child poverty and to report on progress on improving social mobility, meeting the targets and implementing the required strategies.

The Act also requires the publication of a strategy to comply with the targets and to combat socioeconomic disadvantage. In preparing the strategy, consideration must be given to measures—we referred to them as the building blocks at the time of the legislation—including: parental employment and skills; financial support; promotion of parenting skills; physical and mental health; education, childcare and social services; and housing and social inclusion. The Act imposes a requirement for local authorities to co-operate to reduce child poverty in their areas and prepare local child-poverty needs assessments.

As well as having income measures and associated targets, this required the Government to produce a strategy which would have regard to a range of factors, including the multiplicity of matters which affect child poverty. Apart from for Northern Ireland strategies, this Bill sweeps away all those provisions—the entirety of them. We will seek to reinstate this with subsequent amendments. Instead, the Bill requires the Secretary of State to publish an annual report containing data on children in workless and long-term workless households in England and educational attainment at key stage 4 for children in England and the educational attainment of disadvantaged children. There is no obligation on the Secretary of State to define these terms until the first report is provided for, in the year 2017 and a veiled reference to developing “other measures” to recognise what is suggested are the root causes of poverty: family breakdown, problem debt and drug and alcohol dependency. There is no statutory obligation to do so.

There is a reference in the briefing notes to a “life chances strategy” in due course, but no commitment on the scope and timing of this. The commission will have a focus on social mobility and no longer on reducing child poverty. Crucially, the Bill removes any income measure and related targets. This is on the basis that income is a symptom, not a cause, of poverty and that the relative income measure can lead to spurious outcomes when medium incomes are falling.