Welfare Assistance Schemes

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for initiating this important and timely debate. I also thank the Government for the welcome concessions they have made following two rounds of consultations. I should perhaps declare an interest as the honorary president of the Child Poverty Action Group, which was instrumental in the test case that led to the consultation—an example of the threat of judicial review bringing real benefit to some of the most deprived members of our society.

However, the new money available is also intended to ease pressures on health and social care and the total allocation represents a cut of around £100 million on the previous year, which itself represented a cut in funding, as the right reverend Prelate has already noted. The statement underlined that there would be no ring-fencing or monitoring of its use. I hope the right reverend Prelate will forgive a Biblical allusion when I say that this smacks of the Pontius Pilate approach to policy-making—central government washing its hands of all responsibility for what happens to the money it has earmarked to meet the needs of some of the most vulnerable members of society.

It is important to put these schemes in context and remember that they are not some new addition to the welfare firmament but replace long-standing social safety net provisions within the social assistance scheme. Some of us recall when discretionary exceptional needs payments were replaced by regulated single payments. These were described at the time by the Social Security Advisory Committee as an “essential part” of the social assistance scheme,

“providing a cushion against particular one-off events which cannot be provided for from within a very basic weekly income”.

This is still the case, as minimum income standards research highlights. Regulated payments were of course then quickly replaced by the discretionary Social Fund.

Given this history, it really is essential that central government does not wash its hands of all responsibility for the allocated funds. At a minimum it needs to establish basic monitoring requirements so it is possible to evaluate how well the schemes are meeting needs and also so that local authorities operating less effective schemes can learn from those operating more effective ones. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, highlighted some of them.

The Department for Work and Pensions review of the first 18 months of operation included very little information on those seeking help. This means, among other things, that, as the equality statement on the 2015-16 funding allocation acknowledges, it is difficult to predict the full impact on protected groups because the Government do not nationally collect data on who has benefited from existing local schemes. Yet it also acknowledges that it is reasonable to consider that a number of protected groups could be impacted by any decisions. This is simply not good enough, especially as the Scottish Government have shown that it is possible to monitor local schemes effectively, revealing, for example, that people with disabilities are particularly reliant on the scheme, as the right reverend Prelate has already observed. In its report on localisation issues in welfare reform, the Work and Pensions Select Committee recommended that central government should monitor the use of the funds until the new arrangements had bedded in, suggesting a period of five years, which seems very reasonable. Interestingly, I noted that it has moved from its initial position of not supporting ring-fencing and is now recommending that the money should be ring-fenced.

I am making a very modest request, which is that the Government review their position on monitoring and accept that they still have a responsibility to ensure that the money earmarked to meet the needs of vulnerable groups, such as homeless people and care leavers, is used effectively for the purposes intended. Simply intoning that local authorities will act responsibly, as the Minister did earlier today, is no answer. I am not accusing local authorities of acting irresponsibly. I am simply asking for accountability.