Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I had not planned to speak in this debate, but the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, put her name to this amendment, but has been detained and so cannot be in the Chamber. I think it is important to make the point that there is Cross-Bench support for this amendment.

I want to make one point. The Minister has made a great deal of the importance of fairness between those in and out of work. We know that there are problems in this Bill such as issues of fairness across geographical areas or between different sizes of household. I shall simply focus for a second on the fairness between those in and out of work. One thing that puzzles me is that not only will those who are in work get their average earnings—let us say, of £26,000 a year—they will of course also get child benefit. As I understand it, they will also, if they have three or four children, receive housing and other benefits under universal credit. The cap will not apply to those in work, so there is a discrepancy not only in that child benefit will go to those in work but not to those out of work but because it will be at the same level of net income. This applies to other benefits too.

I certainly do not want the cap to apply to those in work, but one does have to consider this. Presumably the argument for not applying the cap to those in work is that those families are really struggling—the so-called middle earners or middle-income people. It is very tough to live with three or four children on average earnings. Therefore, they need a whole range of benefits. If they need a whole range of benefits, it is very difficult to see how the Government and the Minister justify excluding any reference to all the benefits that those in work will have, and arguing that those out of work should be able to live on a level of income that no one in work would be expected to live on.

If you assumed, as I sometimes get the feeling the Government do, that anyone out of work can get back into work, and you really could find and get a job within a week, or two or three weeks, you could just about justify this. However, so many people who are on benefits are going to continue to be on benefits, and they have a range of disabilities that will not even entitle them to PIP in the future, because things are going to become very tough. The Minister knows the group of people I am most concerned about: people with a range of mental health problems. It is very difficult for those people to get any employer to take them on, yet they are going to be expected to live on a level of income that people in work will not be expected to live on. I would like to hear the Minister’s response on that point.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I totally understand why the Government require it to be said that not everyone should get child benefit. There are two groups of those who are not employed and to whom the cap will apply about whom I am particularly concerned. I should declare an interest as the president of the Grandparents’ Association.

A considerable number of grandparents, particularly grandmothers, have been in perfectly good employment over a number of years and then for one reason or another find themselves obliged to take on the care of children, who are sometimes extremely young, in addition to their own teenage children. As well as grandparents, there are also other kinship carers, as they call themselves, who take on the care of other people’s children, usually their nephews and nieces and sometimes their great nephews and great nieces. They give up their jobs. They have to, because they cannot care for these young children, who have in a sense been dumped on them without any prior warning on some occasions. They will give up their jobs for the care of their grandchildren or other kinship children, then find themselves in real difficulties with this cap.

We are not just talking about one or two children—this is my second point. There are families with a considerable number of children, not all of whom are their own. There are single mothers who have gone through a number of different partners by whom they have had a child. They end up sometimes with five different successive partners, and with more than five children. How on earth will that group of families cope if they are unable to have additional child benefit? I can understand their coping perhaps with one or two children but not three, four, five or six. Such families make up a smaller percentage; the figures were given in our previous debate. However, they do exist and they will be in real difficulty. Unless there is some sort of hardship allowance for families who cannot cope on this £26,000 cap without child benefit, I fear that I will go the way I would prefer not to go—against the Government.