Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 40, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Drake, and to support the other amendments in this group in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, to which I have added my name. I thank him for introducing this group of amendments with what we are coming to see as characteristic clarity and compassion.

I shall say a word first about the two-child policy, which I regard as a regressive piece of social policy. In Committee, we found it hard to get Ministers to put up any kind of cogent argument for the policy as a whole, so why is it being done? Whatever one may hear behind the scenes, this is not about the small number of unemployed parents with lots of children. They would already have been caught by the benefit cap, which we now know would hit a couple with two children living in a modest house in Leeds or Plymouth. This is about a family with three children who are working but struggling anyway. It is about all those who had children confident that they could provide for them until, as the right reverend Prelate pointed out, something went wrong. Perhaps their spouse died, they got sick and could not work, a parent lost their job and so on. Those are all the things that the welfare state is meant to protect against. The nearest we got to a case was in the impact assessment, which states that it is about,

“ensuring those on benefits face the same financial choices around the number of children they can afford as those supporting themselves through work”.

So it is about choice, and my suggestion is that we should use that as a yardstick by which we test these amendments.

Let us take first disabled children. Parents may have felt that they could manage a third child, but then they find that the child is born, or becomes, severely disabled. The disabled child element of tax credits will still be paid, but it does not begin to cover the extra costs. The charity Contact a Family states that it costs three times as much to raise a disabled child as one who is not. It is also much harder for the parents of a disabled child to raise their income through working, because it is difficult to find suitable childcare and more expensive if you can. Did the parents really make a choice to be in that situation?

What about the situation, described so powerfully by the right reverend Prelate, where a family is happily married or settled and the very worst happens, in that one of the parents dies? He described clearly what would happen to that family. As well as the trauma, the finances are going to get worse, especially if the deceased parent had been the main earner. This is almost a classic example of a family that probably did not need benefits or tax credits before, but suddenly finds that it is catapulted into a position where it needs to rely on the welfare state. This is exactly the kind of thing that the welfare state is meant to protect families against. Where was the choice there?

The right reverend Prelate mentioned stepfamilies. Perhaps it is not so dramatic, but what if the relationship breaks up? If the children deserved support when they were living apart, why do they stop deserving it because they are living in the same house?

Then there are the people who literally did not make a choice at all—cases of domestic abuse. Sadly, a child may have been conceived under duress rather than as a clear choice. Abuse can include the refusal to allow a woman to use contraception. It can include pregnancy as the result of rape, which may never have been reported to the authorities because of fear of the partner. Moreover, the fear must be there that the two-child limit will make it harder for a parent to leave an abusive relationship. Too often, they end up fleeing in the clothes they are standing up in. They are homeless and they have to hide from the former spouse, which means moving to a new area, away from jobs, schools and families. It is tough enough anyway to rebuild a life without added financial pressures.

On the subject of rape more generally, I hope that the Minister is now able to explain how the proposed exemption for women who have been raped will work. I hope that he can address the questions I asked in Committee. Will the exemption apply only when a woman has made a complaint to the police, or when someone has been charged or convicted? If not, will she have to give evidence to the DWP, to whom and what kind of evidence, and can the Minister assure us that this process will remain confidential?

We come now to the subject of my Amendment 40, which would exempt children who enter a household as the result of adoption, kinship care or private fostering. I hope very much that the Minister can accept this amendment, as the arguments are completely compelling. Children raised by kinship carers are typically unable to live with their parents because of parental abuse or neglect, perhaps due to alcohol or drug problems, or because the parents are in prison or indeed have died. A grandparent, and sometimes an aunt or a sibling, will then step in and take the children in, often in a case of emergency. There is clear evidence that children in kinship care settings do better than those in unrelated care, even though they have often had similarly adverse experiences in early life.

But kinship carers pay a huge price for their kindness. They face significant additional costs when their family size increases, and sometimes it can double in size overnight. A Family Rights Group survey found that almost half of kinship carers had to give up work permanently to take on the children, thus pushing them into reliance on benefits. The state should not be putting financial barriers in the way of families willing to take on often vulnerable children. It also makes no financial sense. The average child tax credit claimed by families with three or more children is £3,670 a year; it costs £40,000 a year to keep one child in foster care.

A similar argument applies to adoption, particularly of sibling groups. It is the Government’s policy, and I welcome it, to increase the number of children being placed for adoption and to remove any unnecessary barriers to the speed of the process, but this measure will directly undermine that policy objective. Adoptive parents often already have a child or children, so there is a clear disincentive to adopt if it would mean that they would not get payments for each child, and a particular disincentive to adopt sibling groups. There is already a shortage of parents who are willing to take on sibling groups, and this will only make that situation worse. If it delays adoptions, that becomes a vicious cycle. Children grow older and it is harder to place them, and therefore it is even less likely that they will be adopted at all. The only alternative is to break up sibling groups, which damages the children because that is often the only remaining bond they have. I hope that the Minister will consider this carefully.

If we judge the Government by their own yardstick, have they passed or have they failed? Have the families we have described today, who are covered in the amendments tabled by the right reverend Prelate and myself, been reckless in having children or taking on additional children without understanding the consequences? I do not think they have. Even if we accept the premise behind the two-child policy—and I confess that I do not—the Government’s own rationale simply does not work. These amendments make absolute sense both financially and in terms of the Government’s policies, and above all they are right for the people affected.

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches have added our name to Amendments 36 to 38. We also support Amendment 40. The amendment is similar to the one that we put down in Committee when it was debated at great length. Noble Lords will be pleased to know that I do not intend to rehearse that contribution again today. Excellent reasons have already been given by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, as to why exceptions should be made to the two-child limit on receipt of tax credits and the child element of universal credit.

I want to pose a few questions. For those who did not sit through Committee stage, I will read out the exemptions we seek. Under Amendment 38, we seek an exemption if,

“the claimant responsible for children in the household is a single claimant as a result of being bereaved of their partner”—

I ask the Government, where is the choice in that?—

“the claimant has fled their previous partner as a result of domestic abuse”—

where is the choice in that?—

“the child or qualifying young person has a disability”—

where is the choice in that?—

“the child or qualifying young person is in the household as a result of a kinship care arrangement, private fostering arrangement, or adoption”—

where is the choice in that?—

“or … the claimant was previously entitled to an award for the child or qualifying young person and has re-partnered creating a household with more than two children”.

Of course, there is a little bit of choice in that. It is love, which we can believe in or not, but sometimes we do not choose who we want to partner.

Effectively, these circumstances are beyond the control of the claimants. This amendment attempts to demonstrate that the first responsibility is to the child. It must be so, otherwise what kind of society are we really creating? I was, and I remain, particularly concerned that, despite the Government’s laudable commitment to exclude women who have had a child as a result of rape from the two-child limit policy, the Minister did not explain to my satisfaction how this exemption would operate. I will not go into that debate again. It is such a sensitive area. Perhaps he will explain today. Should this amendment be voted on, we on these Benches will wholeheartedly support it.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I have not taken part in the debate on this Bill before but I was chairman of the Select Committee on adoption. I have been very concerned by the Government’s concerns, which I share, that not sufficient children have been adopted. This is a current problem. We need more adopters. It seems utterly astonishing to have a situation where those who are prepared to take children out of care or take, perhaps, members of the family whom they then adopt when they already have children, will be penalised for doing something that is entirely in line with what the Government have said in their adoption policies.

It seems to me quite extraordinary that the Government do not exclude adoption and kinship care. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has set it out very much better than I could and in greater detail, so I do not want to reflect on it. As she said, it is very expensive to keep children in care. There are practical financial reasons for the Government to look at kinship care and at adoption. They use the Bill as an opportunity to deprive these families of a comparatively small amount of money, put against the cost to the taxpayer of keeping in care children who could otherwise be living in a family of which they are truly members. That is why I support Amendment 40 in particular, and Amendment 38.

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It is precisely because so many of those people in the WRAG have mental and behavioural difficulties and problems they have to overcome that the sooner they can be in work, the greater the support for them to be in work or, if they fall out of work, to return to work as quickly as possible—again we discussed this on Monday—through the rollout and access to the IAPT, the greater the benefit that we will give them. The biggest benefit we can give them is to enable them to be in work. Contrary to what I recall the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, saying, work is not a cul-de-sac; work is a route. It is a valid route out of poverty, a route to dignity and a route for people to be no longer dependent on benefits—and they do not want to be dependent on benefits. Frankly, we have to use the opportunity in Clauses 13 and 14 to change the current situation and make that happen. Taking those clauses out would, I am afraid, simply leave us in the unsatisfactory position that we have been in for too long.

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 41 and 44. I have listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has said and will try to give some answer to the question that I think he is putting forward, which I fundamentally disagree with.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Low, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and others for the very good report they undertook. I read it with great interest. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Low, for making a very comprehensive statement regarding these two amendments.

I do not want to spend too much time on this because we have, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, already discussed it for over two hours in Committee. However, I want to say a number of things. I was very disappointed to see the BBC news over the weekend state that government sources had said that people who were concerned about the cuts to ESA and the WRAG were “scaremongering”. This really is not the case. The facts speak for themselves. As I said, we had an extensive debate in Committee, which highlighted the research that has been done and the impact that these cuts would have. I do not want to repeat that research, but it is there. This is not scaremongering.

We on these Benches are opposed to the ESA and WRAG cuts, which will affect people when they are at their most vulnerable—when they are sick. These are people who have been independently assessed by government-appointed assessors—not by their own GPs who they have perhaps had a lifetime relationship with, but by independent assessors—as having limited capacity for work or as being able to return to some form of work in the future. As has already been outlined, over 50% of people in this group have mental health problems and it includes people with disabilities, people with progressive diseases, such as MS and Parkinson’s, and people who may be undergoing cancer treatments.

It is interesting to note that the Government have enshrined in law that there is to be parity between acute services and mental health services in the Department of Health, which is laudable. However, another department—the DWP—is penalising people with mental health problems on ESA and WRAG by cutting their benefit as though this will improve their health and will make them better sooner. That is not true, and there is no research which demonstrates it. The Department of Health and the DWP should at least try to have a dialogue to complement respective government policies. If there was more joined-up thinking between departments the taxpayer could save significant sums of money. There is no evidence that cutting £30 a week from the benefit to that of a jobseeker’s allowance will improve these claimants’ ability and fitness to work. Indeed, it may have the opposite effect.

On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, it is unthinkable that we should put it in the Bill that these benefits should be cut from ESA and WRAG without reviews and without putting into place some of the things that noble Lords have suggested. We and the Government could do those reviews first and then implement a policy. To implement a policy that will have such dire effects first, and then consider that, whatever falls out of it, something will happen, is not right or fair. The Government have to undertake research, think about the policy, consider its impact and then implement it in a fair and considered way.

The Government should strengthen the support that is given to ESA and WRAG claimants by ensuring that specialist advice and support is available to these people. Work coaches should also be given the appropriate training to understand and meet the needs of these claimants.

I look at this issue through the prism of work. The Government must also tackle the thorny issue of employer discrimination—which, although against the law, still exists, sadly, in places—and identify exactly what kind of support they will give to employers to enable them to employ more people with disabilities.

Clauses 13 and 14 should be removed from the Bill. They have no place in a caring and compassionate society.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I support the proposal to leave out Clauses 13 and 14. I was disappointed in the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. Of course, we all want people to be able to return to work, and employment is incredibly helpful if people are well enough to take it on. On the idea that, somehow, if we are not in favour of cutting these benefits we are content that people should remain out of work for an indefinite period unnecessarily, the crucial point is: can these people return to work, is it reasonable, and will these cuts facilitate that return to work or drive people further from the labour market? That is issue and we have all the evidence we need to raise serious questions about it.

I want to avoid repeating the arguments so ably put by my noble friend Lord Low but to endorse the view that these clauses will not achieve the Government’s objective of increasing the numbers of sick and disabled people moving into and remaining in jobs. It is remaining in a job which is absolutely crucial, because there is no point in getting a job for two weeks and then finding that you are so ill you have to drop out. Then, you will spend months trying to restore the benefits you have been receiving. In fact, it is a very dangerous thing for most people on benefits to take a job, which is one of the big issues the Government need to tackle. Until people feel freer to move in and out of work, we will not achieve the results we want. I know that that is the aim of universal credit and I applaud the objective. The reduction of £30 a week in the incomes of these vulnerable groups will undoubtedly cause the most incredible misery and hardship for a lot of already very vulnerable people.

I want to avoid duplicating the comments of other speakers and rather to draw the Minister’s attention to the four key points made by the Royal College of Psychiatrists about Clauses 13 and 14 and the cuts. First, as others have mentioned, more than 50% of people affected by this cut will be suffering from mental and behavioural disorders. These people find it particularly hard to get into work and, indeed, to maintain a job for reasons that have nothing to do with their benefits but more to do with fears about employers, health problems, travel problems and so on. Secondly, a survey by the Disability Rights Coalition found that almost seven in 10 disabled people say that the cuts to ESA will cause their health to suffer. To judge by my experience of some 25 years in mental health services, mentally ill people’s health will suffer most severely—if I dare say that in front of colleagues who know about other disabilities far better than I do. When faced with severe financial hardship, people with psychiatric and psychological problems will find it extremely difficult to function at all. Common sense tells us that someone with an anxiety disorder or depression will find rising debts and the prospect of eviction from their home impossible to cope with. Are these people really going to be able to search for jobs effectively? Of course not.

The third point made by the Royal College of Psychiatrists reinforces this. It points out that there is no evidence that cutting the amount of benefit someone with mental health problems receives will make it more likely for them to find work. This point has been made in respect of disabled people in general, but given the sizeable number of ESA/WRAG clients with mental health problems, the view of the psychiatrists should not be ignored. Finally, and most important from the point of view of the Government, these cuts could lead to an increase in demand for NHS mental health services. According to a Rethink Mental Illness survey, 78% of respondents said they will need more support from their GP, community services or in-patient mental health services if their benefits are cut. I do not believe that these services have the capacity to deal with an influx of demand from these groups.

Macmillan Cancer Support has made the point that success in finding a job and moving off ESA is related to the quality of back-to-work support offered, the availability of jobs, and the health of the individual rather than impoverishment. Surely these realities should drive the Government’s policy. Macmillan argues that its own research proves the correlation between financial deprivation and poorer health outcomes. In the case of cancer patients, too early a return to work can be dangerous and may drive people into the support group. That is detrimental to them and, of course, to the taxpayer.

The third group I want to mention briefly is the 8,000 ESA/WRAG claimants with progressive and incurable conditions including Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease, as already mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor. Does the Minister believe that anyone currently unfit for work due to Parkinson’s or motor neurone disease will become fit for work in the near future—or ever? These illnesses are relentlessly, tragically and depressingly progressive. Does not the Minister regard it as quite immoral—I do not often use that word but I feel I need to in this context—to treat such clients in the same way as young, fit people looking for work? I would be grateful for his views on this point.

In conclusion, I find Clauses 13 and 14 immoral in certain respects, as well as counterproductive even in achieving the Government’s own objectives of cutting the costs of sick and disabled people to the taxpayer through driving them back into work.

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[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on this amendment. Once again, we had a very good debate in Committee, and, in her usual fashion, the noble Baroness has laid out a very comprehensive argument with which I concur absolutely. I can therefore add very little to that argument except to press the Minister again to say why the well-being of children is not being factored in when it already has been. For noble Lords who were not in the Chamber earlier, I will read what the amendment says. This is all is says—which is why I have difficulty in understanding why it cannot be in the Bill. The amendment states:

“In preparing a claimant commitment for a claimant, the Secretary of State shall have regard (so far as is practicable) to its impact on the wellbeing of any child who may be affected by it”.

What is so wrong with that?

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I will briefly support this amendment. Before doing so, however, I have not had an opportunity to thank the noble Lord, the Minister’s colleague, for the assurance and commitment that adoptive parents, kinship carers and others will be kept out of the two-parent limit. I was very grateful to hear that from him.

The amendment, which I support, brings to mind two questions. If a child has had, for instance, pneumonia, and subsequently gets ill on a regular basis, what mechanism is in place to allow for the fact that the child has been and continues to be unwell on a periodic basis, which will allow the parent to give the child the care they need to recover fully from this issue?

The other question—perhaps I am stretching a little—is with regard to dealing with mental health. There has been a great deal of concern about perinatal mental health, and clearly this is an opportunity to spot perinatal mental ill health, including post-natal depression, and to do something about it. I may have missed other debates during the course of the Bill—perhaps the Minister can refer me to them or just drop me a line—but I know that information about the health of welfare claimants cannot be shared with the health service directly. Are the Government thinking of doing what they do in police stations, which is to station a mental health professional in the jobcentre itself so that they can help spot any issues of this kind and ensure that the parent and child get the support they need to deal with that?

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Moved by

[Baroness Manzoor]

45: After Clause 15, insert the following new Clause—
“Universal Credit (Work Allowance)
The Universal Credit (Work Allowance) Amendment Regulations 2015 are repealed.”

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[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, I have tabled this new clause because I think it is fundamentally important. Noble Lords will recollect that Members of all parties and none were pleased when the Chancellor dropped his plans to cut tax credits. That happened only because of the pressure put upon him by this House.

I have put down this amendment because the universal credit changes are identical to the tax credit changes, so the arguments are almost identical. Although the universal credit changes come in later and will affect the flow, not the stock, of claimants, they will have exactly the same effect as the tax credit cuts. This impact has been confirmed both in the Red Book and by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which says that the tax credit cuts will, in the long run, make no difference, as the cuts to universal credit will affect the very same people. On average, low-income working people will lose £1,000—again echoing the tax credit cuts.

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I ask noble Lords to accept that this is the right way to do these assessments. One will see from that all the information that it is possible to find. One does not need something that, frankly, I cannot ask people to do, because it is just not practical. It is not realistic to do what has been asked for in Amendment 46A. It is for that reason, and not because I am against information, that I ask the noble Baronesses not to press that amendment.

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response, which was very considered. I also thank my noble friends Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope and Lord Oates for supporting me on this amendment. I understand clearly the argument that the Front Bench has put forward and I get the argument because, like the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, I am very interested in evidence-based decision-making. As a relative newcomer to this House, I sometimes think that we put the cart before the horse, as we saw earlier on when the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, spoke in relation to another amendment—let us do something and then see what the effects are afterwards. But we are talking about real people with real lives, not just figures to be moved around in the budget. These cuts will have an impact on those people’s lives.

I said earlier at Second Reading, a long time ago it seems, that we on these Benches are looking at the Welfare Reform and Work Bill through the prism of work; that is what is really important to us. It is about getting more and more people off benefits and into long-term, sustainable, well-paid work—that is the purpose of this. I do not feel that, as it currently stands, this will be achieved. I have articulated not my figures, but figures from respected bodies, which have indicated what the impact of this cut to universal credit work allowance will be.

I say, again, to all noble Lords on all sides of the House, this amendment is different. It is not like the amendment on tax credits, where there was an issue about constitutional matters—though I took wide advice before I put down my fatal amendment and noble Lords will know that I did not speak in the debate that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde had; I have immense respect for him—this is something that will affect people’s lives. As I said, 2.6 million individuals are going to be affected. We cannot have this inconsistency in our approach. I passionately believe in consistency and I passionately believe in equality and fairness and this will not allow that to happen. We will see two sets of people who are in very similar or indeed identical circumstances being paid different rates of benefit. That cannot be right. I really do not want to be seen as a rebel in this House, as somebody has called me; that is certainly not my intention. But, for me, this is the principle of the matter and it is on that basis that I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.