Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, I support this amendment, to which my name is also attached. Because of the scheduling of business in your Lordships’ House this is the first opportunity I have had to speak on the Welfare Reform Bill, but I know that many, indeed most, in the carers’ movement owe a huge debt of gratitude to the noble Baronesses and noble Lords who have been speaking throughout Committee stage.

The amendment proposed so ably and passionately by my noble friend seeks to ensure that the universal credit does not put up a further barrier for those people who want to combine caring with work. Given that the aim of the universal credit is to support people into work, it seems wrong to reduce the work incentives for one of the groups for which that support is most needed.

I agree with the Minister’s aim to encourage carers to combine paid work with their caring. Let us think of the reasons why we want to do that. First, it would increase their income; we have already heard that caring takes place in poverty. Secondly, if carers are not in work, they build up poverty for themselves in future through the reduction in their pension contributions. Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, being in a paid job helps carers with the stress, which is often very great, of their caring role. It enables them to maintain social contact and skills and to have a bit of respite from the caring situation. So we want to help carers stay in work as long as possible.

We know, however, that carers already face significant barriers to work. According to research commissioned by Carers UK and the DWP for carers’ rights day in 2009, some 1 million carers—that is around one in six of the figure that we have heard of 6 million carers—have given up work or reduced their working hours in order to remain as carers. A major barrier is the availability of suitable replacement care. In a separate survey, over 40 per cent of carers who gave up work did so due to a lack of sufficiently reliable or flexible services. A similar number, 41 per cent, said that they would rather be in paid work but services available do not make a job possible. In addition to that, for those who are able to juggle work and care, stress and poor health are common. Nearly half of the respondents to a survey of working carers for Employers for Carers and Carers UK indicated that their work had been negatively affected by caring and that they felt tired, stressed and anxious. Employees with heavy caring responsibilities are two to three times more likely than those without caring responsibilities to be in poor health. For these reasons, carers are just the sort of claimants to be working a few hours a week in low-paid work. We estimate that 50,000 of them might be affected by this change.

I know that the Minister wants to encourage carers to start working more than a few hours, but because of the other issues I have mentioned, for many carers a small or even a tiny increase in working hours is impossible. Because the Government argue elsewhere in the Bill that increasing earnings disregards will incentivise work, it seems inconsistent here to suggest that reducing the carers disregard will encourage additional work. I hope the Minister will agree that there is no logic to discouraging carers from juggling paid work with caring as long as they can and leaving them worse off than they are. I very much support the amendment.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I am not going to add to the very powerful case that has already been made by my noble friends Lady Bakewell and Lady Pitkeathley. I simply wanted to seek some clarification of what was said in Committee, when a number of us put the case for a carers disregard, and the Minister said in his reply:

“Rather than going through the complexity of the separate disregard route, we have provided an additional element that is included in the gross amount of the universal credit for carers. That is a change from carer’s allowance”.—[Official Report, 1/11/11; col. GC 443.]

I am rather confused by this, because it seemed to me that it was muddling up carer’s allowance—a very important benefit, which some of us would like to see higher than it is at present—and the support provided to carers through means tested benefits such as income support.

Because I worry about my memory for the intricacies of social security I did not challenge the Minister at that point, but afterwards I sought guidance from Carers UK. It, too, was very confused by what the Minister said, and wondered whether or not the Minister—I hate to say this—was perhaps confusing carer’s allowance and means tested support for carers. Because the position is not changing, I do not see how the removal of a disregard can be justified on the basis of what happens with carer’s allowance. Universal credit is not replacing carer’s allowance. There is an element in means tested benefits for carers that will continue, but it is nothing to do with whether there is a disregard or not. It wondered whether the Minister is promising a higher premium for carers under universal credit. That would be excellent news if it were the case, but I rather doubt it. Could the Minister perhaps clarify what he meant in Committee, because it did not seem to me that it was answering the kind of case that has been made by my noble friends; namely, why is it that carers are the only group to lose the disregard that they currently have?

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

I hope noble Lords will forgive me; I was a few minutes late in coming in, so I missed a little bit of what the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said. As I was listening I wondered to what extent more carers would or could be encouraged to be carers if in fact such a situation as she was proposing existed. Perhaps I am looking at this in a slightly disorganised way, but if there is an answer to my question, I would like to know it.