Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Meacher]

3: Clause 11, page 13, line 12, at end insert—
“( ) The limit on the number of children or qualifying young persons for whom an individual element of child tax credit can be claimed, as set out in subsection (3B), shall not apply to households where one or more of the children or qualifying young persons are disabled (including, but not limited to, those persons in receipt of the disability element of child tax credit).”

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 3 seeks to exclude all families with a disabled child from the two-child limit on receipt of the child element of child tax credit and the child addition within universal credit.

I have also tabled Amendment 8, which is more limited in the protection it affords. Amendment 8 would exclude any disabled child from the number of children considered in relation to the child element of universal credit. Thus, if Amendment 8 were accepted by the Government, a family with four children, one of whom is disabled, would still lose the child element for the third non-disabled child. I argue very strongly for Amendment 3, but Amendment 8 would be a great improvement on the Bill as it stands. At this point, I pay tribute to Rob Holland from Mencap for his considerable help with the Bill.

Families with disabled children face financial and other stresses which are not faced where all the children are healthy and able-bodied. These families have extra costs for special aids, adaptations to their homes, and additional clothing and travel costs. The travel costs of medical appointments alone can be very considerable. One family, for example, reported regularly having to get to three appointments a week, and this can rise to as many as seven. The appointments are at four different hospitals, involving additional petrol costs, depreciation of the car and, most particularly, parking fees. Another family talked of their child often breaking bedroom furniture and other items due to the frustration of their disability, which then had to be replaced.

The enormity of the cuts envisaged for families with disabled children is quite extraordinary. While I know that the Government are committed to a much smaller role for the state in future, can it be right to hit the most disadvantaged the hardest? Without these amendments, the two-child limit for claims of child tax credit means that if a two-child family has a third child who is disabled, the family will be £2,780 per year, or an average of £50 or so per week, worse off than they would be under the current provision. This loss must be considered alongside the substantial fall in the level of the disability element of child credit under universal credit. The current value of that benefit is £57 per week, whereas the disability addition in a family’s universal credit entitlement will be worth only £28 a week—a loss of £29 per week. I understand that, in all, a new claimant family with three children, one of whom is disabled, will be about £79 per week worse off when these two changes come into effect than a family currently claiming equivalent benefits. Will the Minister confirm whether or not he agrees with these figures?

Research conducted by the Children’s Society and Citizens Advice in 2012 into the two-child limit for child tax credit found that the impact could be disastrous for the health and well-being of the children. Two-thirds said that they would have to cut back on food, more than half said that it would lead them into debt and more than one in 10 feared that they would have to give up their home.

Have the Government assessed the impact of these cuts on the number of children placed in residential care? There seems little doubt that all parents will be less able to cope with a disabled child at home if money is as tight as highlighted by the Children’s Society and Citizens Advice. What would be the net savings to the Exchequer, having taken into account residential care costs of a proportion of the children involved, as well as other costs of health and social care? I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify whether work has been done to clarify the net savings from the two-child limit in the context of the other planned benefit cuts, and taking account of increased government spending on other services. If this analysis has not been done, does the Minister agree that these changes should not go ahead until the Government have a clear understanding of these points? As one parent put it, “We would face the choice of increased debt or the eventual institutionalisation of our child”.

The Government may be assuming that local authorities will take over the burden of these family costs. I understand that this simply will not happen. In fact, among the families already receiving additional support from local authorities, about 60% said that that support had been cut over the past year, and there will be more cuts to local authority services in the coming years.

A big concern is lone parents with disabled children. Many years ago when I was training to be a social worker, which I did for a few years, I spent six months working in a school for severely handicapped and disabled children. I found myself running a group for the parents of those children. The group comprised about 14 parents, every single one of whom was a single mother. The fathers had apparently walked out some time after the disabled child was born. If these mothers had also abandoned their disabled children, the state would have had to take care of the children and pay the bill. The impact of the two-child limit will be greatest for these parents.

In a meeting with Ministers about tax credits, I was told that the Government expected claimants to work extra hours to make up for their losses. However, these lone parents with disabled children are not able to make up the shortfall by working extra hours. The simple fact is that the disabled children and their healthy siblings will suffer if this measure goes ahead. I understand that the Government recognise that some groups—I think it is two groups—should be exempted from the two-child limit for the child elements of child tax credit and universal credit. I hope very much that the Minister will today assure the Committee that he will give serious consideration to exempting families with disabled children from this particularly savage cut. I beg to move.

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support these amendments. It is very important to remember that being the parent of a disabled child is not the same as being a parent. It is sometimes very difficult to get that point over. I remember that when we discussed the Children and Families Bill, officials and even Ministers said, “I am a parent and I do not need any extra support”. However, this is not the same as being a parent of a normal child, if I can put it that way. We all expect to care for our children until they are 18, and many of us for much longer than that but, for a parent who is caring for a disabled child, that caring is likely to be a lifelong commitment— your life or their life. That is the point we have to remember. That lifetime commitment means that these parents face huge problems. They face practical problems, particularly when services are being cut and there is not enough support. They also face very severe emotional problems. As the noble Baroness reminded us, marriage breakdown is very common where there is a child, or more than one, with disabilities. These parents also face financial problems, which is what we are concerned with here. I suggest that most households with a disabled child already face financial hardship, even without these changes. More than half—53%—of parent carers answering the State of Caring survey in 2015 said that they were struggling to make ends meet.

Research shows that it is three times more costly to bring up a disabled child than a non-disabled child, as we have been reminded. Some 34% of sick or disabled children live in households where there is no adult in paid work compared with 18% of children who are not sick or disabled. Four in 10 disabled children live in relative income poverty once the additional cost of their disability is accounted for. Last year, the Carers UK Caring & Family Finances Inquiry found that parent carers of disabled children were one of the groups least likely to be in employment. As one carer said: “I gave up work thinking I would be able to return within a year or two once I got my daughter the support she needed. Little did I know how poor local services were and I am still caring years later”. That carer will probably be caring all her life and certainly for all the life of that disabled child. Surely we are not thinking of making hard lives even harder by these pernicious changes. I support the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

We are getting way off but our evidence is that the vast bulk of households share financial resources, so although someone in a household may receive a particular amount of money it does not necessarily mean that they do not share the burdens evenly. One can make a lot of false assumptions out of some of these data if one is not careful. I urge noble Lords not to press these amendments.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I thank the many noble Lords who have spoken in this relatively short but very powerful debate. The Minister certainly got a clear message that this is a matter of considerable concern to Members in most parts of the House. Perhaps I can say again that one-nation Tories of the past have always supported families with disabled children. I still hope that this Government too can show that they will follow the traditions of their party and not leave these families bereft and in severe straits. That is what these provisions will do in the absence of any amendments to them. I thank the Minister for his thoughtful responses as always. I think he always gives us a pretty good innings, but I hope that before Report he will feel able to clarify the relative costs of these various amendments, and then we can perhaps sit down and really think where the need is the greatest. If we are all in the dark it really is quite difficult to make sense out of things, unless the Government have implacably decided they will not change anything in this Bill at all. I hope that is not the view of the Government and of the Minister. I thank all noble Lords and the Minister and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 3 withdrawn.