Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Baroness Manzoor and Baroness Lister of Burtersett

Monday 29th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for bringing forward his amendment, and I am pleased that the Government have seen sense on the need to publish these important measures. They will help policymakers and others better to understand the issues affecting child poverty and the levers that may be used to help to lift children out of poverty. The argument with the Government was never really about their life chances measures, which it is clear will provide an important point of reference for policy interventions in the incredibly complex and multifaceted problem of child poverty. It was about understanding that, while child attainment and parental worklessness are important to understanding the problem, the money in a parent’s pocket is still important to understand when seeking to help to lift children out of poverty.

I understand the Minister’s concerns that focusing entirely on income risks the “poverty plus a pound” approach to policy. However, I equally understand that, for example, an intervention in the cost of transport may help to boost attainment, because you can understand that the cost of the bus for extra classes costs more than most of the families that you are trying to help can actually afford. That means that you must have access to data on income; that is important. These four additional measures will help, and not hinder, the Government’s attempt to take a more active approach to this issue. I am particularly pleased with the inclusion of the long-term poverty measure in subsection (1)(d), and I suspect that there may even be policy officials within DWP itself who will find that measure helpful in developing interventions.

This is a good compromise and I am pleased that the Minister has been able to achieve it. Thank you.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome Amendments 1B to 1D, and I offer my thanks to various people, at the risk of sounding a bit like an Oscar winner, which I am not. First, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who spearheaded the original amendment and made such a powerful speech on Report and again today. I thank the Minister for listening, hearing and bringing forward what I agree is a pretty fair compromise at this stage. As he said, it gives legal status to the commitment to continue publishing the very important HBAI statistics. Also, there was a letter to the Times last week from nearly 180 academics, including those at the forefront of child poverty measurement, including Professor Sir Michael Marmot—I declare an interest as one of the signatories in my academic capacity. Despite what the Minister said, I think that they will see this as recognition of what was said in that letter: income and material deprivation should be at the heart of child poverty measurement, because such indicators are vital to our ability to track the impact of economic and policy change. I thank Dr Kitty Stewart of the LSE, who organised that letter, and all those who signed it, along with the voluntary organisations that have worked tirelessly to achieve something like this outcome.

Last, but by no means least, I thank Rebecca, a mother of two who, off her own bat but with the help of CPAG, launched a petition to keep the measures and collected 50,000 signatures in less than a month. Writing in the latest edition of CPAG’s journal Poverty, she said that she had been very moved as she read through many of the words written by people explaining why they were supporting the petition. She concluded that we should make sure that all children who are living in poverty are counted in the measures so that we can really see if things are getting better for them. She wrote:

“Children in poverty already feel poor and disadvantaged, why should they also be unnoticed?”.

Amen to that.

Housing: Underoccupancy Charge

Debate between Baroness Manzoor and Baroness Lister of Burtersett

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords—

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Baroness Manzoor and Baroness Lister of Burtersett

Monday 14th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 65. I recognise that my proposed new clause may be imperfectly drafted, as the word “disabled” should perhaps have been defined. As this is a probing amendment, I hope the Committee will make allowances.

My amendment is pretty self-explanatory, in that it requires the Secretary of State to,

“lay a report before Parliament annually on the progress which has been made towards halving the disability employment gap”.

It also requires that,

“the report must set out how the Secretary of State has interpreted ‘disability employment gap’ for these purposes”.

I would like the report to include,

“an assessment of the sectors in which disabled people have primarily secured jobs … an assessment of the type and level of jobs primarily secured by disabled people, and … an assessment of the progression of disabled people within the job market”.

My amendment will help to improve the transparency of employment outcomes for disabled people and allow monitoring of the Government’s target.

I am, however, rather concerned because we have asked the Minister for reviews of sanctions, conditionality criteria and so on. From my perspective, we have not had an answer that might have given us some hope. However, I hope the Minister will give this measure careful consideration because, across the Committee, I see there is some support for it.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of Amendment 64 in the name of my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley, an indefatigable champion of the rights of carers. I also express my support for other amendments, particularly those concerning the disability employment gap, on which we heard very eloquent arguments from the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton.

It is very welcome that the constraints on labour market participation created by the care of children are much better recognised now than they were in the past, but we still have a long way to go with regard to carers, who are an increasingly important part of the labour force. I hope that the carer strategy the Government are working on will address the need for policies that make it easier to combine paid work and care, such as the statutory paid care leave for just a few days a year which many other countries provide. I have argued for this very important policy in relation to a number of Bills going through your Lordships’ House. We are becoming a laggard compared with other countries. We can learn a lot from them.

As care is such an important part of the economy, the amendment underlines the case for reporting on the position of carers and former carers in the labour market as part of any duty to report on employment trends. I suggest that it might go a bit further, so that any such report includes information on those who combine paid work and care and those who have had to give up paid work to care, as well as former carers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 68. The only thing that I wanted to add—all other noble Lords have eloquently put forward the reasons why there should be reporting obligations relating to apprenticeships—is that I note that gender is missing from the amendment. It was an oversight, rather than because we did not care passionately about this particular issue. Once again, I am pleading with the Minister: we really need to be able to differentiate between the different groups to see where apprenticeships fall and who is getting what apprenticeship. The noble Baroness, Lady Nye, made a very important argument relating to young women, but the same applies to disability, race and so forth. There are variations that we need to bottom out so that employers can then have appropriate strategies in place to address the anomalies.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of my noble friend Lady Nye, who has made such a good case about gender. She made most of the points I want to make, but I have been sent information by City & Guilds, which has done research into careers advice, which shows how gender-biased careers advice is channelling young women into a very gender-biased labour market. So it is being reinforced. It is crucial that the apprenticeship system does not reinforce and aggregate that gender bias which we have heard about from my noble friend. As other noble Lords have said, it is about not just quantity but quality. From a gender perspective, quality is about the sectors within which young women and young men are being channelled.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Baroness Manzoor and Baroness Lister of Burtersett

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, we on these Benches support these amendments, too—Amendment 3 in particular. The House needs some assurances from the Government that the disability premium for each disabled child in both tax credits and universal credits will be protected, regardless of the number of children in the family. However, the child element in tax credits and universal credit will be paid only in respect of two children in a family, even when the third child is disabled. That is the point. We need to look at those exemptions, so if the Government have already said that there is some protection, surely that same protection should be afforded to the third child who is disabled.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to make a brief point in support of the powerful case that has already been made. I believe that the latest HBAI statistics showed an increase in poverty among disabled children. Can the Minister tell us his assessment of the impact of these clauses on the number of disabled children living in poverty?