Supporting Disadvantaged Families

Baroness Janke Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]]

We welcome the contents of this Statement. Any measures that can help to stop children going hungry over the tough months ahead must always be welcomed.

However, before I ask questions, let us look briefly at the context. I must say that I was a wee bit disappointed that the Statement made no reference anywhere to Marcus Rashford, even though everybody knows that this initiative is a response to his campaign for free school meals in the holidays. Can I invite the Minister to go on the record and pay tribute to Mr Rashford, as I do? It is quite an achievement on his part not only to force this Prime Minister to move but also to get the whole country talking about child poverty. Indeed, it is quite chastening for those of us who spend most of our lives talking about the issue, but it is a remarkable achievement. If I am ever lucky enough to meet Marcus Rashford, after congratulating him, I think I might see if I can focus his attention next on the five-week wait or maybe the savings gateway and universal credit.

Although I am thrilled at his success, I wish that the Government had handled this better. There was a deeply depressing debate in the other place where hapless Tory MPs were forced to defend the Government’s stance on this, not just by disputing the Rashford free school meals plan but essentially by claiming that there is not an underlying problem. We need to be very careful how we talk about these matters because, as the national debate raged on, we started to hear parents once again being blamed for their poverty, with the old chestnuts appearing that if you give money or vouchers to poor parents, they will only spend them on drugs. Yet, out of this mess came one of the most heartwarming things I have seen this year, when the backlash against the Government’s position prompted a huge number of hospitality businesses, many of them badly hit by the pandemic, to offer to feed children free of charge during half-term when the Government did not.

Enough of that: I am delighted that the Government have now come round and agreed to take some action. It would be helpful if the Minister could give the House some more details on the package. First, we are told that there will be a new Covid winter grant scheme, which will give £170 million to English local authorities and, unlike previous grants,

“will carry conditions and reporting requirements to ensure that the scheme is focused on providing support with food and utility costs to vulnerable families with children who are affected by the pandemic.”

Are the Government going to define “vulnerable”? Is it about income or is it more than that? Does struggling to make ends meet count as vulnerable? Plenty of people who would not previously have classed themselves as vulnerable are losing their jobs or facing cuts in income as a result of this pandemic. Who is going to be covered by this scheme?

It is good to know that the Government will roll out holiday activities and food programmes across the country from Easter next year. Does that mean that the scheme will be in place for the next Easter holidays, in 2021, or will it kick in after Easter? We are told that the scheme is being extended to “all disadvantaged children”. Can the Minister tell the House what a disadvantaged child is for these purposes? Is it the same as a vulnerable child for the purposes of the Covid winter grant scheme? Are these separate schemes aimed at the same families or are they different schemes aimed at different families, and is there an overlap? Finally, we are told that the value of Healthy Start vouchers will be raised from £3.10 to £4.25 but not until next April. Can the Minister explain why it is not happening straightaway, given the amount of need in the country right now?

There is a much deeper issue here. During the campaign on extending free school meals, I was horrified to hear suggestions that the blame lay with parents for failing to feed their kids properly when the basic underlying problem is that too many parents just do not have enough money to make ends meet. Every week, more people are losing hours or losing jobs and they are finding that, despite years of paying in, our social security system simply does not provide them with enough to live on. However, every time we mention this, Ministers simply repeat that they have given £9 billion et cetera. That is great—I am really glad that they have invested this money—but it is clearly not adequate to the scale of the problem. Food bank use is skyrocketing and people are falling into debt. That highlights that there just is not enough money in the system.

At the start of this crisis, we asked for five urgent steps to be taken. The first was an extension of the £20 increase in universal credit to legacy benefits. I urge the Minister again, as I did this morning, to explain to the House why the Government will not do that—that is, tell us not just that they will not but why. Why is it okay to give the money to universal credit recipients but refuse it to JSA and ESA? Secondly, we asked them to scrap the savings threshold on universal credit so that we were not punishing savers. Thirdly, we asked for an end to the terrible two-child limit. Fourthly, we asked for a suspension of the benefit cap so that everyone can get the extra money that the Government have announced. Fifthly, we asked them to turn the universal credit advance into a grant rather than a loan to address the five-week wait in the short term.

If Ministers had taken those basic steps, we would have fewer parents struggling to feed their children in the first place. I therefore urge the Minister to ask her colleagues to change their minds once more, to implement these five changes and then to take a longer look at why our social security system is failing to stop so many of our fellow citizens falling into poverty. This pandemic has already done enough damage to our children. Let us all work together to do what we can to stop it getting any worse.

[Baroness Janke (LD) [V]]

My Lords, we welcome these measures and recognise the Government’s intentions to support disadvantaged families through winter and beyond—

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I am sorry, but we cannot hear the noble Baroness. Could she try again?

[Baroness Janke (LD) [V]]

Can you hear me? We very much welcome these measures, and I too pay tribute to Marcus Rashford and his campaign.

I would like to understand a little more of the noble Baroness’s clarification of what is meant by “beyond”. I very much hope that there is to be a longer-term strategy on this issue, as criticisms I have heard from local people are that the Government appear to be following a policy of knee-jerk responses and quick fixes, while the public in general would welcome a much longer-term approach, which would give them more confidence. For example, is it the Government’s intention that the temporary measures taken during the pandemic are to be made permanent, such as the extension of the free school meals entitlement to families with no recourse to public funds? Perhaps the noble Baroness could clarify that.

The Statement also said that local authorities have local ties and knowledge, and this is most certainly the case. Local authorities are to receive £160 million, to be added to the £63 million—[Inaudible.]

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I am sorry, but we cannot hear the noble Baroness. Can she get closer to the microphone?

[Baroness Janke (LD) [V]]

I am right up against the microphone now. Can you hear me?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

We can hear you now.

[Baroness Janke (LD) [V]]

Local authorities are to receive £160 million, to be added to the previous sum of £63 million which was distributed earlier in the year. This is to be paid as a one-off government grant. I would like to understand more about the basis of these measures. What consultations have taken place with local government and what were their outcomes?

The issue of conditionality was raised. How is that to be achieved and demonstrated? Are there to be target numbers of families or children? Are levels of participation to be measured, or perhaps there are measures of improved well-being that are to be reported upon?

What exactly is the basis of these sums of money? We are told that funding will be dispersed according to an authority’s population, weighted by a function of the English indices of multiple deprivation, so presumably we are looking at a sum per head. Can the noble Baroness say how much per head and for how many people?

Does the noble Baroness feel confident about the number of families that are to be helped, given that local authorities have had financial cuts of £16 million over the last 10 years and that their capacity is significantly reduced? Many important services for disadvantaged families no longer exist in many areas, such as family support schemes and community facilities such as libraries, sports and recreation, and local health promotion, and many of those may be required to implement the scheme. Does the noble Baroness feel that the sums of money here will be enough to achieve the objectives she describes in the Statement?

The noble Baroness talked about the importance of nutritious food. Has any financial assessment been made of the cost of providing this to the numbers involved? If so, it would be good to see it. The Food Foundation has established that, to pay for the Government-recommended “eatwell plates”, people on universal credit would need to spend around two-thirds of their non-housing income on food. It would help to understand the analysis that underpins these measures.

We all welcome the expansion of holiday activities for disadvantaged children. Can the Minister clarify how these children are to be identified? Who is eligible for these provisions? Existing criteria exclude many children, particularly in low-paid working families. We have welcomed the temporary measures that have been introduced during the current crisis. Can the Minister assure the House that these will remain in place?

We welcome the £16 million for charities to help those struggling to afford food, but surely this is no more than a sticking plaster. We must ensure that families’ income is sufficient so that they can afford to provide nutritious food for themselves and their children. Removing the benefit cap and the three-child limit would help. If the Government do not intend to do that, what longer-term policies are being considered to ensure that families and children will no longer have to depend on short-term fixes and will have enough income to provide their own food and care for their families without depending on charities?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)]

My Lords, I will respond first to the points raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Sherlock, and then cover the points from the noble Baroness, Lady Janke. I am sorry that the audio of the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, was not at all good. If I do not answer all her questions, I will go through Hansard tomorrow and make sure that she receives a written answer.

I am grateful that both noble Baronesses welcomed the Statement. Let me say right at the start that the Government much admire Marcus Rashford’s passion and commitment and are proud to have provided this invaluable support. I note the hopes of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, for Marcus Rashford’s next campaign.

She also mentioned the comments about parents who use their benefits for purposes other than we would wish. We do not associate ourselves with those remarks. We are only too aware and appreciative of the difficult circumstances in which some parents find themselves at the moment. We are delighted that the hospitality industry came into its own and are glad that it was in a position to give extra help.

I am well aware that earlier at Questions, the noble Baroness was underwhelmed by my response about legacy benefits. I will try to be a little more helpful. Back in March, when there were no arrangements such as the furlough in place, UC had to take the strain until those schemes came online. The Government were trying to cushion those who had had a fall in income because they were made unemployed, or their earnings dropped, due to Covid-19. They were not trying to provide a general uplift in benefits. Those who were newly signed on to universal credit did so because they had seen a significant drop in their income, whereas those on legacy benefits had not seen the same fall.

Moving on to what we have done, we have announced a £170 million Covid winter grant scheme, to make sure that families get the help they need. We are giving this to councils because they are best placed to understand their communities. They know the most vulnerable children and families who need this money. As the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, said, this is being done on a per-head-of-population basis, according to the deprivation indices.

We are also investing £220 million more than existing funding allocated to the programme. This will mean that children eligible for free school meals will have the option to join a holiday time programme that provides healthy food and funds activities during the summer, Christmas and Easter holidays. I am afraid I am not able to comment on more than that timeframe. I will write to the noble Baroness about why the Healthy Start payments will not start until April 2021.

On the holiday activities and food programme, much has been said about the speed at which it has been introduced and whether it was a reaction, but I will say that we have been piloting this initiative and trying to work out how best to deliver it. This was not a knee-jerk response or something we thought we had better get on and do; it was something we piloted and tested. We made sure that, when we announced it, we knew that it would work. Since the summer, 50,000 children have benefited from the holiday activities and food fund, and a further 2,500 additional breakfast clubs have been started.

Will all children in England be eligible for a place on a HAFF programme? The programme will make free places available to children eligible for free school meals in their local authority for a minimum of four hours a day, four days a week, six weeks a year. This will cover four weeks in the summer and a week’s worth of provision in each of the Easter and Christmas holidays. As I have said before, local authorities have the flexibility to decide how to do this and how to use the money.

As I expected and I understand, there has been a call for the £20 uplift to be extended to legacy benefits, and I have been very clear about the Government’ position on this. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, raised the issues of the savings threshold, the two-child limit, the benefit cap and advances into grants. I have made clear that the Government do not have any plans at the moment to change those things, and, as my Secretary of State said in the other place,

“advances are actual grants to people—they are just the phasing of universal credit payments over the year”—

and they are repayable within a year—

“and soon to be over two years if that is what claimants want.”—[Official Report, Commons, 9/11/20; col. 642.]

We are listening and extending the time.

Where we have been doing the local pilots, there has been extensive discussion on interfacing with local authorities. I understand that the Government have written to all the chief executives of the local authorities, and, at this stage in the proceedings, the announcement and commitment have gone down very well. I am afraid I cannot tell the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, how much it is per head because it will be up to local authorities to say where the money goes and spend it most effectively.

Understandably, the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, raised the point about local authorities and underfunding. We are giving councils unprecedented support during the pandemic: a package of £6.4 billion so far. We recognise that there will be individual councils with unique circumstances, and we encourage them to approach MHCLG to discuss their future financial position.

Before I close this part of the questioning, I will make the point that Covid has certainly made life very difficult for people—nobody is trying to ignore that—but, underlying this, we believe that parents are responsible for their children. It is not the state’s job to take that responsibility, other than in these very difficult times, where we are trying to do everything we can. One of the areas I have responsibility for is the Child Maintenance Service. You would not believe the extent to which people try to get out of their responsibilities to pay for their children. We are working very hard to get this money back. As it stands, there are 130,000 children who are owed £381.3 million, and I am doing everything I can to get that money to children because it would make a huge difference to their lives.