Poverty: Metrics

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, for her key role in achieving a remarkable consensus on the vexed question of poverty measurement and for her willingness to shift her own previous position. I have three points. First, one of the report’s key principles is a restatement of a relative understanding of poverty,

“related to the extent to which people have the resources to engage adequately in a life regarded as the ‘norm’ in society”.

This stands in contrast to Ministers’ repeated reference to so-called absolute poverty statistics, in denial of the increase in relative poverty as their policies have begun to bite, and despite David Cameron’s promise that,

“the Conservative Party recognises, will measure and will act on relative poverty”.

Secondly, Ministers also tend to use the “before housing costs” stats, even though housing costs contribute to poverty. Where the report is truly innovative is in its measurement of total resources available, including also, as the noble Baroness said, a proxy measure of disability costs. As she said, this indicates that poverty among disabled people is seriously underestimated by conventional measures that take account of disability costs benefits but not of the disability costs these are supposed to meet. Will the Minister tell us the Government’s position on this very important point and also her response to the report’s evidence of even more extensive poverty among working-age families with children than shown in the Government’s own comparable stats?

Thirdly, the report rightly includes a measure of poverty depth—in other words, distance below the poverty line, sometimes called the poverty gap, and clearance above the line. This is really important. The experience of poverty is very different for the more than 4 million people the report estimates as living 50% or more below the poverty line and for the 1.3 million living within 5% of it. Professor Jonathan Bradshaw’s analysis of poverty gaps shows that children, on average, are living further below the poverty line than they did seven years ago. Will the Government undertake to publish regular poverty depth statistics?

In conclusion, I welcome this report and, while we may well continue to need the existing poverty measures for comparative purposes, I hope that the Government will respond positively to its recommendations.

Universal Credit

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank my noble friend for this question, because of course our focus is very much on all claimants. Each claimant has a different bespoke need. The reality is that they have a work coach and a caseworker supporting them in a bespoke way that never existed under the legacy system. In relation to those who are particularly vulnerable and have particular mental health issues or disability needs, we are committed to gathering better data to support those claimants and to prioritise this as part of the wider Work Programme for universal credit. Anything we do will be introduced incrementally and could cover a broad range of complex needs rather than focusing on one particular group.

We have been focusing very much on training staff and increasing the number of staff. For example, we have introduced a function to pin key profile notes so that they are instantly visible to all staff helping a claimant. After a small trial, this feature was rolled out in September last year. We are thinking all the time about how we can help people in a bespoke way. A number of Peers who joined me at the Department for Work and Pensions at the end of last year saw for themselves the work that we do and how we focus to the best of our ability on what will be 8 million people when the whole system is fully rolled out, each and every one of them having perhaps a slightly different issue but being part of the system that works for everyone.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps I may go back to my noble friend’s question. We will be debating exactly the same regulations that were laid last year, with their sink-or-swim approach that has been widely condemned by the Social Security Advisory Committee, any number of parliamentary committees and all the voluntary organisations on the ground. The only thing that has changed is that the regulations that we were told had to be agreed by 12 December have disappeared.

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is wrong to say that the regulations have been widely condemned. Why do 70 different stakeholders want to work with us if they condemn what we are trying to achieve? I feel very strongly about this. The noble Baroness herself came to the department to see the fantastic work done by our work coaches. She may laugh at what our employees do day in and day out, 24/7, to help benefit claimants in a far better way than ever happened under the legacy system where, frankly, people were left to—

Poverty in the United Kingdom

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the statement by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, published on 16 November, following his visit to the United Kingdom.

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

The Government will consider the special rapporteur’s interim findings carefully. Although they disagree with his conclusions, the Government note that the report welcomes the simplification of the benefits system through universal credit and the recent Budget announcements to help tackle in-work poverty. Compared with 2010, income equality has fallen, the number of children in workless households is at a record low and 1 million fewer people are in absolute poverty, including 300,000 children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

The rapporteur held up a shaming mirror to poverty in our country, reinforced today by teachers’ warning of the increasingly devastating impact on their pupils. The Government’s response demonstrated their state of denial and indifference towards the impact of their policies that he criticised. Instead of constantly hiding behind cherry-picked statistics, as they have done today, why do they not listen and learn, go out and talk to people in poverty, as the rapporteur did, and end their social security and other policies that, in his words, are inflicting great and unnecessary misery?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I am disappointed that the noble Baroness thinks that the Government are not listening. Only last week, she heard directly from front-line staff at the Department for Work and Pensions—I am grateful to her for coming to the department—about the vital work they do 24/7 to ensure that claimants receive the right support. In turn, I listened to the special rapporteur on Radio 4 say that people receive no funds for between five and 12 weeks when they enrol on to universal credit. That is just plain wrong and, frankly, undermines the credibility of this report.

Universal Credit

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

The Government support White Ribbon Day—the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women—and will be making a number of announcements over the 16 days of action, which I am sure all noble Lords will welcome. The Government are committed to doing everything we can to end domestic abuse. It is important to stress that it is the responsibility of government across Whitehall to support victims of domestic abuse. The single payment of universal credit usually allows both people in the household to make the money management choices that are best for them in considering how their decisions about work affect their household income. The reality is that I and my honourable friend in another place, the Minister for Family Support, Housing and Child Maintenance, Justin Tomlinson, are working hard with stakeholders to see what improvements could be made.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister said that split payments are available on request but, as my noble friend said, if somebody asks for a split payment, her abusive partner will know. How many of us would be willing to take the risk of further abuse? Can the Minister tell me why the Government think that they know better than survivors of domestic abuse and the organisations working with them, and continue to put the onus on the survivor and put her at greater risk?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, it is important to stress that claimants can request a split payment during a face-to-face meeting and a phone call could be made away from the perpetrator of domestic abuse or online, via the journal. Research carried out for the department suggests that only 2% of married couples and 7% of cohabiting couples keep their finances completely separate. Indeed, a number of legacy payments have always been paid as one payment.

Universal Credit

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

Absolutely. We will make sure that these regulations will be part of the proper process.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the concessions in response to SSAC, and I think we owe SSAC and all the organisations that gave evidence to it a big debt. SSAC recommended that before the department starts the migration process it should undertake what it called a “rigorous and transparent assessment” including,

“how effectively Universal Credit … is currently operating”.

Given the Public Accounts Committee’s observation of,

“a culture of denial … in the face of any adverse evidence”,

how can we be confident that the DWP’s acceptance in principle of this recommendation will mean that, before managed migration, it really will tackle the design flaws that all the organisations on the ground are saying are preventing UC operating effectively? Following on from my noble friend, why will those who do not claim within one month of the new target date not get transitional protection, when Ministers constantly say that everyone will get transitional protection?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, let me make it clear that we are now in a very different place from when that PAC report was drafted. We are injecting an additional £4.5 billion into the system to support the migration on to universal credit. We are in a place where we are already spending £100 billion on benefits for people of working age; we have to think about sustainability and affordability.

When it comes to testing the system, we will adjust and amend our processes according to how claimants respond, which we will identify through ongoing user research with claimants, where we look to establish why claimants did not interact with the service and what they found difficult. We will use that to improve the processes. At the end of the day, though, we cannot leave the process entirely open-ended, where people for whatever reason do not choose to migrate. The important thing is that that is why we are having the whole preparation and learning process—to understand why there could be anyone who fails to go through the process or there is more than one month after the closure of when they should have applied to go on to universal credit.

We will be spending time and a lot of input into advertising campaigns; communications by text, phone and letter; and home visits. Those people will not be falling through the cracks without an extraordinary amount of effort on the part of our 83,000 employees at the DWP, who are not a department in any denial whatsoever. They want this to work. They are excited about it and work hard for it; they will help us to succeed, to the best of our ability.

Benefits: Reductions

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this important issue and to pay tribute once again to my noble friend Baroness Hollis—Patricia—whose forensic analysis and passion held the Government to account so effectively, particularly in their treatment of disadvantaged women. Women are disproportionately affected by the cuts we are debating today. Still the main carers and managers of poverty, it is women who bear the brunt of the social security cuts on family life, especially as they try to protect their children.

Looming over the debate, and more importantly over low-income families, is the so-called managed migration of universal credit. Welcome as the Budget changes are, they do nothing to rectify UC’s fundamental design flaws, which become increasingly apparent as families suffer the consequences. One such flaw is payment —including money for children—into one account, which has been widely condemned for facilitating economic abuse and potentially aggravating domestic violence. Women subject to domestic violence are also being put at risk by two other cuts, which are especially harmful to larger and some minority-ethnic families: the two-child limit and the benefit cap. Both break the long-standing principle that entitlement to safety- net benefits should reflect a family’s needs. Over 70,000 families, two-thirds of whom were in work, lost up to £2,780 in the first year of the two-child limit. It is difficult to see how such a crude cut, directed at children, can support family life. The Government have refused to publish their family test assessment, despite an FOI request which was turned town on utterly flimsy grounds. I wonder why.

One reason the majority of those affected are in work is that larger families out of work will be caught by the benefit cap. A Policy in Practice study revealed “significant human costs” and questioned its application to lone parents of very young children, who are not required to undertake work-related activities. What assessment have the Government made of the impact of the cap on the family life of this group, for whom paid work is often simply not feasible? According to the Chartered Institute of Housing, the lowered benefit cap is hurting children and causing stress and,

“significant hardship to households who have no realistic prospect of escaping it”.

As we have heard, aggravating the effect of these and other specific cuts is the steady erosion of the real value of most working-age benefits, paid in and out of work. The Resolution Foundation calculates that the freeze has meant a real cut in benefits of over 6%; child benefit, a bedrock of family finances, will by next April be worth 14% less for second and subsequent children than when introduced in the late 1970s. The Prime Minister recently identified as a key challenge,

“helping people with the cost of living”.—[Official Report, Commons, 31/10/18; col. 904.]

Could the Minister explain how freezing benefits helps people on the lowest incomes with the cost of living, which since last year has risen faster than anticipated when the freeze was first announced? Why, if there is money to cut taxes, which will provide low-income families with little or no help, is there no money to lift the freeze?

The Government have also devolved responsibility for the crisis support provided by the national Social Fund to local authorities, without ring-fencing the inadequate devolved resources. According to Church Action on Poverty, at least 28 authorities have closed their provisions completely and many more have cut them back significantly. The ultimate safety net is being shredded, yet the Government simply wash their hands of all responsibility—an example of the institutional indifference they show towards the impact of their policies on vulnerable and marginalised groups.

While the evidence shows that parents living in poverty typically demonstrate great resourcefulness and resilience in struggling to get by and protect their children, it also shows just how damaging the impact of poverty and homelessness can be on family life. The Social Mobility Commission has pointed to the impact of stress from material deprivation on parenting and family relationships. According to the Tavistock Institute, the evidence,

“demonstrates the salience of stress within families experiencing poverty, and in particular maternal mental ill-health, couple relationship quality and levels of conflict”.

Government policy is deliberately increasing the pressure on these families.

I wish that the Minister could have heard at a Women’s Institute meeting here last week the primary head teacher from an area where UC has been in operation for two years, with, she reported, a huge impact. She said that poverty was worse in her community than she could remember, and she talked about children complaining of hunger stomach pains, sometimes taking food out of rubbish bins, and some with shoes with holes or kept together with elastic bands.

I call on the Government to think again and to stop penalising families who already have so little. There is growing criticism of the DWP’s culture of denial and indifference towards the effects of its policies. In the words of George Bernard Shaw, indifference towards our fellow human beings is “the essence of inhumanity”.

Universal Credit

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank the noble Lord and say straightaway that there will be no delay to the publication. Indeed, because we have to see these regulations on the statute book by the end of this year, it is very important to ensure that they are laid shortly and that we can debate them in your Lordships’ House. We very much hope that, unlike the package of £1.5 billion in extra support for universal credit that was introduced in another place following the Budget last autumn, the managed migration regulations will not be rejected, as the package was last autumn.

It is important to remember that we introduced a package that made advance payments quicker and easier for people to access. They could have a 100% advance up front for their first month’s claim, with no interest to repay for 12 months. We scrapped the seven-day waiting period and introduced a two-week run-on for people receiving housing benefit, with a cash payment that was not repayable. We are helping more than 500,000 people by protecting severe disability premiums.

That package was rejected in another place. Let us hope that this managed migration package will be supported in another place and in your Lordships’ House, because we want to protect the severely disabled, those with health conditions and those who genuinely need our support. We, too, are surprised by the recent controversy, because we are trying to do the right thing to support the right people. Benefits will not be turned off. We will be very careful to ensure that there is a transfer. That is why we will introduce the system slowly and carefully. We are using six months of next year to try to get this right.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I echo what has been said about my noble friend Lady Hollis. She was an inspiration.

This morning, at a meeting of the APPG on universal credit, organisations working with claimants around the country were unanimous that so-called managed migration—as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made clear, it will not be managed on behalf of claimants—should not go ahead until UC’s design flaws are rectified, especially inflexible monthly assessment, which is creating huge problems. Will the Minister undertake to look at these problems as a matter of urgency? UC needs to be recalibrated.

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I do not recognise the word “inflexibility” when it comes to universal credit. The whole point of the system is to take six different benefits and put them into one simple one that tracks people’s circumstances on a monthly basis, rather than leaving people with no contact, sometimes for literally years, under the legacy system. We are spending £3.1 billion on transitional protections for 1.3 million claimants to ensure that no one loses out at the point of transition. This will ensure that no families receive less money than they do today. We are spending an additional £1.4 billion on protection for 500,000 disabled people receiving disability premium.

Domestic Abuse: Universal Credit Payments

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the implications for their proposed domestic abuse strategy of the default joint payment of universal credit to couples.

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

My Lords, there are no implications on the provision of the default joint payment of universal credit to couples as a result of the domestic abuse strategy and consultation. We already provide split payments and additional support to victims of domestic abuse who request them. More broadly, the Government are currently considering stakeholder responses to the consultation on domestic abuse that closed on 31 May and will publish a response and a draft Bill later this Session.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, domestic violence, welfare rights and women’s organisations are all warning that default joint payments will undermine the new domestic abuse strategy—which rightly includes economic abuse. With all the money bundled together in UC, such payments increase the risk of economic abuse. Requiring a victim to request a split payment, as the Minister said, makes her vulnerable to retribution from a violent partner. Why are the Government not actively trying to find a way of meeting the widespread calls for default split payments?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, it is important to stress that most couples can and want to manage their finances jointly, without state intervention, so split payments should not be the default. When an individual suffering from domestic abuse and violence requests a split payment, we will support them in putting the arrangement in place—but split payments in universal credit cannot be the solution, the panacea, to what is a criminal act. They are provided to any individual who requests them as a result of domestic violence.

Benefit Cap: Child and Family Well-being

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the benefit cap on child and family wellbeing since that cap was lowered in 2016-17.

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

My Lords, since 2013, the benefit cap has provided a strong financial incentive for those who can work to come off welfare and so improve their child and family well-being. While 134,000 households had their benefits capped, figures for February 2018 show that around half are no longer capped because they are working at least part time, and so qualify for their full benefit entitlement and therefore a considerable boost in income and well-being.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, a new study by Policy and Practice, which was founded by one of universal credit’s architects, highlighted the human costs of the cap, arguing that it should be applied only to those who are actively required to seek work. Can the Minister explain what purpose is achieved by imposing this measure, which is designed to get people into paid work, on lone parents of infants, who are not required to seek paid work because of their caring responsibilities, thereby causing, in the words of a High Court judge,

“real misery … to no good purpose”?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I beg to differ from the noble Baroness. I would call it not “imposing” but “empowering”. Our research shows that the best way to lift children out of poverty is by supporting parents into work. Record numbers of lone parents are now working: 1.2 million, with 1 million fewer people living in absolute poverty compared to 2010, including 300,000 children. We know that 75% of children in poverty leave poverty altogether when their parents move into full employment. We have doubled free childcare to 30 hours a week for nearly 400,000 working parents of three and four year-olds, and a parent need work only one hour a month to be eligible for childcare costs.

Universal Credit: Free School Meals

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

The simple answer to the noble Lord is no: I do not accept that. I think it is important to dispel straightaway any potential misunderstanding of what we are doing to safeguard the free school meals system for the future. The Government’s purpose here is to ensure that the programme continues to reach the most disadvantaged households in a way that is consistent, simple and fair. As the rollout of universal credit continues, it is no longer fair to retain the temporary measure, which we always said was temporary, that allows all households in receipt of universal credit to access free school meals. That said, the new rules will ensure that the provision of meals continues to be targeted where it is needed most, with 50,000 more children expected to benefit by 2022 as compared with the previous benefits system.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has not actually answered the noble Lord’s question, so could she do so now? Can she also give an assurance that no one will be sanctioned if they are required to increase their earnings to the point which takes them over the eligibility limit and they lose their entitlement to free school meals as a result?

[Baroness Buscombe]

I have to take issue with the noble Baroness, because I feel that I have answered the question. I want to stress that the reality of this is that every child receiving free school meals now, and any child subsequently given free school meals while the universal credit rollout is under way, will have their entitlement protected until the end of the rollout or until the end of the child’s current phase of education, whichever is later. We want to ensure that, through the universal credit system, we are doing absolutely our best to give our young people the best possibilities in life; this is not the same as the old legacy benefits.