Benefit Cap
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Henley
I am sorry the noble Lord does not believe the evaluation that appeared in 2014. A very good evaluation it was, and it produced some very good figures that I do not think the noble Lord himself could question. I have quoted the figures from that evaluation and I will be able to produce further figures in due course when another evaluation appears. However, it is not just about changing the culture, although that is very important; it is also a question, as I am sure the noble Lord will accept, of fairness. We do not think it is right that those in benefit should be receiving incomes higher than those on average earnings.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, the lower benefit cap is just, of course, one of the many measures that the Government are using to reduce access to welfare benefits, as the Minister indicated in an earlier answer. Another is the repeated assessment of disabled people. Does the Minister believe that it is reasonable to reassess repeatedly people with brain injuries, for example, and life-long disabilities that will prevent them ever getting back to work? Will he assure the House that he will give his personal attention to this matter, with a view to bringing to an end this cruel procedure?
Lord Henley
I regret to say that the noble Baroness is going quite beyond the Question on the Order Paper, but I would be more than happy to write to her about that particular issue.
Child Poverty Unit
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Henley
My Lords, the noble Lord asks me to write to him with those figures and I am more than happy to do as I do not have them in my brief.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that, according to the most recent survey, rent arrears are a serious problem for 85% of new universal credit claimants, which is, of course, a disaster for children in those families? What plans does he have to cut the six-week average waiting time for families to get their rent when they claim benefits, change the system of payment in arrears, particularly for rent, and enable tenants to have the rent element of universal credit paid direct to landlords to prevent these debts arising?
Lord Henley
My Lords, these matters were discussed at some length during the passage of the then Welfare Reform and Work Bill last year, and I do not want to rehearse all those arguments. However, I can assure the noble Baroness that some 90% of work benefits were paid on time. We accept that there can be problems with delays for some, and we will deal with that where appropriate. I do not believe it is right that we should start paying benefit direct to landlords. Just as people in work have to pay their rent to landlords, it is right that people on benefit should have the same opportunity.
Universal Credit: Rent Arrears
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Freud
I absolutely accept that we need to get it right. I am spending quite a lot of time with the ALMOs. I have had a couple of meetings with Eamon McGoldrick and John Bibby to discuss their findings. It is complicated. The essential fact is that landlords like their money paid in advance and all benefits systems pay in arrears, so we do not know how much of this is what the ALMOs call book arrears and how much is real arrears. We need to get to the bottom of that and we need to get to the bottom of what are the processing and payment systems issues. We need to understand what the existing arrears are. They are much higher than we expected—50%—and that is a frightening fact. We may be looking at a group going into UC which is unusual because it is moving up and down, and we need to understand and quantify those factors.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for commissioning some work on the level of debt, but in view of the impact of rent arrears and other debts on mental and physical health, will the Minister commission a review of the cumulative impact of the benefit cuts since 2010 on the mental and physical health of claimants? If the Minister is moving on to other pastures, perhaps he could leave a note for his successor to commission such a review.
Lord Freud
I congratulate the noble Baroness on her timing with that question. I will not answer it. I am not in a position, however, to commission major research on mental health today.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I do not plan to make a speech; I simply want to put on record the terrible fear that has been conveyed to me by sick and disabled people at the prospect of what we are doing here today. It is very easy for us to sit here, comfortable and secure, and just pass another clause to another Bill—but for these people it is terrifying, and that terror and fear has been conveyed to me. What they face is inevitable debt. They may be people who have not been in debt before; they hate debt and are frightened of it—and of the loss of their homes. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, rightly said, this is a truly black day for these people. That is a glib phrase, some might say, but it is terribly real for people up and down the country.
I, too, applaud the Minister for what he has done to ameliorate in some small ways what I regard as the truly terrible actions of, I would say, the Treasury in imposing these cuts on the most vulnerable people in our society. I just want to pose one question to the Minister. Will he monitor the number of suicides in the year following the introduction of this cut? I am certain that there will be people who cannot face the debts and the loss of their homes and who will take their lives. If the monitoring shows what I believe this cut will do, will he assure the House that he will seriously consider reviewing this action?
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, I rise to speak in support of my noble friend Lord Low. Until about a year ago, I was by no means an expert in this field, and I am still not, but I have had the privilege for nearly a year of chairing the House of Lords Select Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability. This afternoon, we have listened to a litany of shameful government actions that will undermine the struggles of disabled people. Disabled people are not “them over there”; any one of us could become disabled tomorrow by an accident or an illness. This applies to all of us; it is not something to be put in a corner. I find it quite shameful that we are removing Motability cars and that we are not carrying out an impact assessment.
My conclusion is that there is nobody in the Commons to champion the rights of disabled people in a holistic manner, and that it falls to this House, which has, fortunately, a good share of disabled people and those who are experts, to do so. I want this House to put on record its dismay, disagreement and disappointment with the way that disabled people are being treated—the very people who are trying to get back to work and trying to be independent. And it could be you, tomorrow.
Baroness Meacher
The Minister says that some of this information cannot be given away. Obviously, you cannot give away any personal information. However, if, for example, the suicide rate in that group is 10% or 20% higher in the year after the introduction of this cut than in the year before, it should be perfectly possible to make that information public, and surely it would be highly significant. If the department could issue that sort of figure, I would be very grateful.
Lord Freud
We have recently produced a large analysis on this, which I will send to the noble Baroness. That analysis makes it absolutely clear that you cannot make these causal links between the likelihood of dying—however you die—and the fact that someone is claiming benefit. As I say, I will send that analysis to the noble Baroness but I wanted to make that absolutely clear now rather than set hares running.
As regards the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, the Secretary of State has been absolutely clear that the impact assessments that we have used provide the most robust analysis that is available. The White Paper will touch on many issues related to health, disability and work, and will cover a lot of new ground which we have not had the chance to debate in the context of these provisions. I commit to taking on board views directly from the group, as a number of noble Lords have requested. We will seek those views, and value them, as we aim to get better outcomes for disabled people and those with health conditions. Therefore, I hope that noble Lords agree that in the context that we are talking about there is no need to test the opinion of the House on this matter. I beg to move.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I rise to support briefly but most strongly the amendment to the Motion tabled by my noble friend Lord Low. I thank the Minister very sincerely for meeting us last week, and more particularly for his very real attempt to respond to the concerns expressed by noble Lords on Report. However, it is perfectly clear from the very restricted nature of the amendments that the Minister has been working within the tightest possible straitjacket. I accept that the Minister has done his very best, but I hope that he will understand that those sick and disabled people who genuinely cannot find an employer willing to take them on—which in my view is the very big problem they face—will face the most incredible hardship if Clauses 13 and 14 are implemented.
I shall address my next remarks directly to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr Osborne, when it was our greedy and unscrupulous bankers, not disabled people, who generated the budget deficit, is it not immoral to reduce the meagre incomes of sick and disabled people by £1,500 a year to raise some half a billion pounds to deal with the deficit? Most bankers would regard £1,500 a year as literally peanuts—they would hardly notice it—but for these people, that sum is very considerable indeed. For me, the purpose of pressing this amendment today is to provide another chance for MPs in the other place to challenge the Chancellor directly about the scandal of such a policy.
The Minister said that the amendment would delay implementation until 2020-21. I am sure that he is right, but if I am right, Clauses 13 and 14 will not incentivise sick and disabled people to get into work—quite the opposite. They will find it ever more difficult to do so. So what are three or four years to find that out and prevent the hardship that these clauses will cause?
The Minister has agreed that if people with a lifelong progressive illness suffer a step down in their condition, it should be made easier for them to be assessed quickly. I thank him profusely for that concession, but it is very difficult to have confidence in the process. Even if DWP staff are able to deliver that commitment, the assessment process itself is deeply flawed—we all know that—and often very distressing indeed.
I should be really grateful if the Minister could assure the House that, whatever happens to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Low, today, for these groups— people with terminal, progressive, lifelong illnesses—the assessment process will be very straightforward and paper-based, simply involving a letter from the doctor to confirm that the individual indeed has a lifelong progressive health issue, has suffered a downward step and is unlikely ever to work again. It should be unnecessary—and, in my view, it would be cruel—to demand anything more than that.
My only other point is that the Minister’s concessions will do little or nothing for the 50% or so of ESA WRAG claimants who have mental health problems. Yes, as others have said, until universal credit is introduced the 52-week rule will end—and again I am grateful to the Minister for that. But there are two main problems for these groups. First, the chances of being referred to high-quality therapy services and receiving those services remain small. I know that cross-departmental work is always extremely difficult, but we can go to the moon, so I expect we can do this, too. We need from the DWP some way for these people to get the therapy that they need, just as somebody with a broken leg gets something done about it.
The second major issue is that it is extremely difficult for these people even to get an interview, let alone to find an employer willing to take them on and keep them. So the loss of income for these people is simply a punishment for something that is no fault of their own. That is my problem with all this. The Minister’s concessions, I am afraid, do very little to set right this injustice. It is despite my respect for and thanks to the Minister that I will vote for the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Low, today. My vote will signify my disbelief that disabled and sick people are being asked to pay the price for the bankers’ greed and appalling behaviour—which, according to a former Governor of the Bank of England, continues pretty much unchecked today.
Lord Freud
I start by thanking noble Lords for their contributions. Clearly, many of them feel very strongly on this issue and they have expressed that.
I was struck by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, saying that this was merely an amendment to ask for extra time. However, the point that I tried to make was that the time being asked for was very substantial—as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, accepted, we are talking about the way this is constructed—pushing this measure out to 2021. The noble Lord, Lord Low, rather gave it away when he said that the concessions—the practical concessions I am trying to deliver to the House, and to the people who need them to help with their particular circumstances—were not enough, and that he would therefore bring forward this amendment to drive at the whole structure of the Government’s proposal. The noble Lord said that this amendment is a compromise, but in practice it is not, because it would mean that these measures could not go forward. Research has to happen, which we could not therefore do to any reasonable timescale.
There may be compromises—I have found three—but this is not a compromise. Although I am sure that this is not the noble Lord’s intention, his amendments effectively wreck this policy, for those reasons. I argue that that is not something this House is here to do, given the very clear message that was sent. This House sent this measure back to the other place, and it has come back with financial privilege. If the noble Lord’s amendment is carried, we will be sending this measure back with just as many costs—I gave an illustration of those—as were involved the first time. I know that a lot of noble Lords will feel pretty uncomfortable with that process. I accept that many noble Lords do not like this measure, but we are beyond that position now: we are into the question of the appropriate position of this House, in the context of a very substantial vote for the measure’s coming back.
Let me deal with some of the points that noble Lords have made. I point out to the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, that there is evidence that financial incentives do work in this area, and I have quoted those in the past.
Baroness Meacher
My understanding is that the evidence is all about able-bodied people, not disabled people, and that is a crucial difference. Disabled people are a different issue.
Lord Freud
Disability benefits was dealt with in a paper by Barr et al, published by the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health in 2010, and there are some others.
People in the WRAG are not incapable of working: they have limited capability to work. That is the distinction—the tier down—from those in the support group. The noble Baronesses, Lady Campbell, and Lady Grey-Thompson, made the point about the barriers that exist. I accept that people face barriers to work in this category. One of the things we are focusing on in the White Paper, and which we will spend a lot of time on in future, is dealing with these barriers, because this Government are committed to halving the gap.
Meanwhile, the flexible support fund is designed to go to the work coaches. However, to pick up on the questions of the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, this depends on whether it is in relation to ESA or UC. Within UC the work coach maintains the relationship right the way through regardless of the health status or employment status of the person. That is where we will focus our attention and, clearly, because there is a relationship with a work coach, the money will be available directly to support such people.
As to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, on progressive conditions and reassessment, I thought that this was a legislative issue and I was considering how to sort it out. However, it is not a legislative issue but a communications and operational issue. That is why the approach I have taken is to work with some Members of this House and stakeholders to get the system working. It is important. Sometimes people who have Parkinson’s are fine at the beginning and go about their lives, but then it gets worse. So being labelled with a particular illness does not mean that you should be at the top rate but, if you take a downward move, it is vital that you are straight in. We need to look at the processes for that and I have committed to doing so.
As to mental health conditions, which many people have talked about, the most frightening single statistic about our system of welfare support is that 42%, I think the figure is—I am speaking without a note—of people go into ESA with mental health reasons as the primary indicator. Once they have been on ESA for a year, that figure has moved up to 68%. We have turned the system round. Work is part of the solution. Leaving people sitting at home is the worst possible thing we can do for them. The whole of our welfare system has been wrongly directed at that kind of projection and we are moving the system round to stop that—
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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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.
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?
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I will contribute briefly to this debate in support of the amendment. The issue here is that we are in a very different benefits culture from the one we had maybe until 2010—I am not sure when exactly. The point is that the claimant commitment is the basis for sanctioning. If a parent fails to comply with a claimant commitment, that is when they will be sanctioned. If the claimant commitment is completely unrealistic and the parent cannot comply with it—for example, if it requires the parent to travel 90 minutes each way and they manage to have childcare for only five or six hours a day, or whatever it is—it will be physically impossible for them to satisfy that claimant commitment.
We know, certainly from the Fawcett Society inquiry I was involved with, that there is quite a need for training for these staff. That of course goes back for as long as I have ever been involved with welfare matters, which is probably some 40 years. Staff are very poorly paid, they tend to be rather inadequately trained and there is always a rapid turnover of staff, so you always have new staff who are trying to learn the rules, and so on. So this claimant commitment takes on a far greater significance in this day and age than it would have done 30 or 40 years ago.
That is why I ask the Government to take this very seriously. They need to accept that they have low-paid staff, a rapid turnover, poor training, and therefore that sanctions happen utterly inappropriately. The claimant commitments are wildly unrealistic in the experience of the inquiry I was involved with, which is very dangerous for the children. The parent goes along on a Friday to pick up their benefit and is told, “Oh, sorry”—or probably not even “sorry”—“your benefit has been stopped”. Is there any supper for the children? No, sorry, no food in the house—and so on. It is very serious for children affected by sanctions following the claimant commitment. That is why, although this sounds like a fairly innocuous amendment, believe me, it is very important.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I agree wholeheartedly with this amendment. It would be difficult to do otherwise because, as my noble friend reminded us, I moved a parallel amendment to what became the Welfare Reform Act 2009 when we were in government. When one looks back at legislation one has been responsible for there is always a moment of trepidation, but we are on safe ground in this case. Those were the days when the noble Lords, Lord Skelmersdale and Lord Northbourne, were heavily involved in our debates. Having said that—and I underline the importance that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has placed on this amendment—it is slightly disconcerting to understand that one’s labours at the Dispatch Box all those years ago have lain dormant and fallow, so I press the Minister to say why it has not been introduced.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Meacher
“Housing costs: payments to landlordsHousing costs: payments to landlords
(1) Regulations made by the Secretary of State under section 5 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 (claims and payments regulations) must provide for the payment of the housing costs element of an award of universal credit to the landlord where the claimant requests such payment to be made to the landlord.
(2) In this section—
“landlord” means the person who is entitled to payment of rent for the occupation of the accommodation occupied by the claimant as his or her home;“rent” includes the license or similar payment for the use and occupation of the accommodation.”
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 82A I hope not to take up much of the House’s time. The amendment requires the Secretary of State to make regulations that would enable tenants receiving universal credit to choose to have the housing element of universal credit paid directly to their landlord.
We debated this matter in relation to an earlier welfare reform Bill and I am aware of the Government’s resistance to the measure. As benefit levels fall drastically under successive rounds of cuts, the need for this provision has grown over time. Until the introduction of local housing allowances, private tenants were able to choose to have rent payments paid direct to their landlord. Currently, social tenants can still request that housing benefit be paid direct to their landlord. However, under universal credit, tenants, whether social or private, will lose this flexibility and thus the opportunity to ensure that their rent is paid regularly so that they can at least be guaranteed a roof over their heads even if they cannot feed their children.
The Government argue that to include housing benefit payments within the universal credit payment promotes financial responsibility and helps prepare claimants for the world of work, when they will need to manage their entire budget without help from the state. Of course, in a perfect world this is a reasonable argument. However, it fails to take account of government policy to ensure that work pays. But this is being done by reducing out-of-work benefits substantially. The result is that it is highly doubtful that any of us in this House could manage to live on out-of-work benefits—pay the bills, feed the family and pay the rent. If we could not do it, why should we expect others far less privileged to be able to do so?
The Government’s attitude to this matter suggests to me, I fear, little understanding of the incredible challenges faced by out-of-work claimants under the regime which has been unfolding since 2010.
I wish to put on record in your Lordships’ House that tenant choice, as set out in the amendment, was supported by the Work and Pensions Select Committee in its report Support for Housing Costs in the Reformed Welfare System published in April 2014. The Select Committee suggests that such arrangements could be available at least for the first few years of a UC claim as a transitional measure. I hope the Minister will be able to respond to that proposal.
There is considerable support for direct rent payments to landlords if claimants request it. In February 2015, for example, the Northern Ireland Executive confirmed that landlords will be paid benefit directly to cover tenants’ rent. The Scottish Government have also indicated their wish to introduce such a provision. Both Shelter and Crisis support it, for obvious reasons.
An important point raised by the Residential Landlords Association is that direct payments will prevent an abusive partner using the rent money for their own purposes, an issue I had not thought of. Partners with a gambling or drink problem too often reduce their families to destitution. In fact, I was very familiar with such problems years ago, although they had rather gone out of my mind. This amendment would provide some protection for such families.
Finally, the Minister will be well aware that this is a big issue for landlords and hence for the adequacy of housing supply for benefit claimants. It seems that this is as powerful an argument for the amendment as the concerns about tenants. Quite simply, if landlords cannot be sure that the claimant will be able to pay the rent on time every time, they would be sensible not to rent their properties out to universal credit claimants. We already have an excess of demand for housing over supply. Does the Minister have an estimate of the expected fall in the supply of properties for rent for claimants in the coming years? Is the Minister concerned that research by the RLA earlier this year showed that 63% of private landlords with tenants on universal credit said that their tenants were in arrears with the rent? How many of those landlords will be willing to risk renting to benefit claimants again? In my opinion, only very few.
I very much hope that the Minister will be able to persuade the Secretary of State to take this amendment seriously in order to avoid a likely catastrophe in housing provision for universal credit claimants, and serious consequences for the children of the many parents who will be unable to cope. I beg to move.
Earl Cathcart (Con)
My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has just said, under the old housing benefit scheme the tenant had the choice of the payment going to him or directly to the landlord. The Minister said that, under the new scheme, the,
“position is for universal credit to be paid as a single monthly sum direct to the claimant; that is designed to mirror what would happen if the claimant was in full-time employment, when they would be responsible for managing their own funds and paying their own rent”.—[Official Report, 21/12/15; col. 2438.]
In an ideal world that is an excellent idea, but in the real world it invariably does not happen. As a landlord, I can foresee that when the tenant receives the universal credit, the temptation will be to buy the weekly shopping, petrol, clothes and so on, and by the time the rent becomes due there will not be enough money left, so the spiral of debt takes hold. But the Government are adamant that paying universal credit only to the claimant not only will work but does work. Is this experiment working as the Government say it is?
According to a survey conducted by the Residential Landlords Association, it is not. It found that of those private sector landlords who had tenants on universal credit, some 63% had tenants in arrears on their rent—a point just made by the noble Baroness. Of that group of landlords, 85% had contacted the Department for Work and Pensions to have the housing element of the universal credit paid direct to them after eight weeks of arrears, as is their entitlement. More than 57% of that group said that it had taken the department more than five weeks to respond to the request, which means that the landlord is already more than three months out of pocket. I understand that the problem is even worse for social housing, with nearly 90% of tenants in arrears. It is heartening that the Minister said in Committee that,
“we are doing a lot of work now with social landlords to get the problem under control”.—[Official Report, 21/12/15; col. 2437.]
At least my noble friend admits that there is a problem and that the new system is not working quite as planned. Much of this could have been avoided if the rent had been paid direct to the landlord.
In October 2012, a survey of more than 1,000 landlords carried out by the Residential Landlords Association and the Scottish Association of Landlords found that more than 91% of landlords were less likely to rent to tenants on benefits as a direct result of the decision not to allow payment of the benefits direct to the landlord. Not making the payment direct to the landlord is not helping the landlords and it is certainly not helping the tenants. All the evidence, backed by Shelter, Crisis and the Money Advice Trust, has been that paying it direct to the landlord was popular with tenants, as they were assured that their rent was covered before they decided how else to spend their money.
If the Government really want to make tenants,
“responsible for managing their own funds and paying their own rent”.—[Official Report, 21/12/15; col. 2438.],
what better way than the tenant asking for the rent to be paid direct to the landlord? To my mind, that is the height of responsibility for the tenant: to ensure that the roof over their heads is paid for before deciding how to spend any remaining money.
Lord Freud
Perhaps I should not have personalised it.
The reason this idea of choice does not work is that it is too attractive for a landlord to have an AAA income stream. That is why the solution of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, cannot work. It is a retrograde step away from claimants being job-ready. We know that we need to give an enormous amount of help to people with budgeting, and we are doing so. We are looking to social landlords to help us with that, and many are doing a great job. But I am afraid that I must ask, with some passion, that the noble Baroness withdraws this amendment.
Baroness Meacher
It is extremely late but I would like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and the noble Lords, Lord Layard and Lord McKenzie, for their very helpful and powerful contributions. The Minister and I will have to disagree passionately about this issue: I do not think we are going to agree. The Minister is right that landlords have a lot of power. They will walk away. Why should they let out their properties and not have their rent paid? They will not do it. That is my big worry—I say that seriously to the Minister: they will not do it. One can talk about budgeting help and all sorts of things but this is very difficult. As benefits reduce, people are going to find it incredibly difficult to manage at all. They simply will not be able to leave any money in the pot until the end of the month to pay their rent because of the pressures they will be under. I profoundly and passionately disagree with the Minister, as much as I respect and like him. But what am I supposed to do but withdraw my amendment?
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
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Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, perhaps I may intervene briefly to say a word about Amendment 42 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and Amendment 43 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Layard. In Committee, we discussed this briefly. While I have previously made it clear that I would seek to minimise those occasions on which we seek in statute to specify the circumstances in which people should access NHS treatment, that principally should be determined on a clinical basis. Past experience has demonstrated the value of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme in providing assistance to people with mental health and behavioural disorders, especially anxiety and depression. Your Lordships will know that the numbers who are in receipt of benefit and who are out of work by reason of those conditions has significantly increased over the last two decades. We need to respond to that.
The IAPT programme, which begun under the Labour Government before 2010, was continued and rolled out during the coalition Government after 2010. I stress that the importance of this will, I hope, give the Minister the opportunity to say that, while not accepting the letter of Amendment 43, the Government are sympathetic to the spirit of it. After 2012-14, there has been a 25% increase in the number of therapists providing psychological therapies through the National Health Service. That rollout is continuing. Health Education England anticipates that the increasing supply resulting from its commissions for training places for psychological therapists should arrive at the point whereby at 2017-18 the demand for such therapy is able to be matched by the supply of trained therapists. We have an opportunity, in the timeframe anticipated for the measures in the Bill, to make it more certain that somebody with anxiety and depression requiring access to therapies while signing on for benefits should be able to access that therapy. I hope that the Minister can give that positive response to these amendments.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I really was not expecting to speak today on this. We had asked that Amendment 43, on IAPT, be shifted and taken separately on Wednesday. The IAPT programme has now been going for 10 years: we had the first pilot in the mental health trust in east London 10 years ago. The point of that pilot, and of the whole programme, was to help the large numbers of people with mental health problems back into work. I remember talking to jobcentre staff and having great difficulty persuading them to refer people to the programme. Ten years on, we have so much evidence that if people with depression or anxiety receive good therapy quickly, they achieve remarkable results—far better results than any other that I am aware of in the psychological therapies. I stand here completely unprepared, save only to say to the Minister: please make use of what is an excellent programme on the whole—nothing is perfect everywhere, of course not—to help the 50% or so of unemployed people who desperately need precisely such help so that they can quickly get back to work. I make that big appeal to the Minister.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)
My Lords, I add my support to the opening remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell. She said that she was somewhat disappointed by the Minister’s response to these amendments in Committee. She is right. He founded his response on a defence that these statistics are already available if you know where to find them and that they will continue to be published. That is only half the story. There is a case to be made for looking at more qualitatively based, specific disability-related data that are not available. It would not cost a great deal of money. The DWP has a capable resource department. Over a period of years, a lot of small but very important disability employment issues could be explored and the trends chased down and studied.
I give the example of the change as we move to universal credit, using work coaches rather than disability advisers. I understand that and I am very supportive of that new environment, but the work coaches are not dedicated specialists. They will have access to people, but I would love to watch how that works—if it does—as universal credit is rolled out. If it does not, we will need to change the setup, as I am sure the Minister will agree. I would like to see that kind of thing in gremio of the other suggestions for the reporting requirement from the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell. I support her in observing the need for what does not currently exist. With a bit of good will, working with the disability communities, we could have better sight of some of these problems.
My second point is that a contract of employment takes two people: you need an employer as well. We must not forget the employers. They try to do the best they can. As was said, physical disability is in some ways easier to address because the solutions are more obvious. Potential employees who suffer from any kind of intermittent condition—it is mainly, but not just, mental illness—are in a different category altogether. I remember feeling sympathy for the Minister when he got into trouble for saying that people with disabilities were not worth the money, or something—I am sure he never said it and that he did not mean it even if he did. However, he is right, in that the one risk that a potential employer fears—if I can put it that way—with regard to a very good candidate with intermittent conditions is that they cannot control their ability to turn up at key moments. Therefore, we need flexible working and to compensate for or take account of that, to reassure employers. You could do it by mitigating NI contributions, for example. We are not yet engaging in sufficient outreach with employers who might otherwise be willing to address this gap.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, before the Minister sits down, perhaps he would help us by explaining what the technical problems are in a simple referral to NHS by IAPT of people who have a diagnosis of a mental health problem.
Lord Freud
Yes. The Secretary of State for the DWP has no power to make referrals into the health system. That is just the way that these things are kept separate, and there is enormous sensitivity in the medical area about data and information flowing around the systems. In practical terms, that makes it impossible to join them up; it must be done in a much more subtle and clever way.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
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Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 3 I shall speak also to Amendments 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 14, which are all to Clause 4 of the Bill. Indeed, they are all amendments in effect to the Child Poverty Act 2010. They represent a repetition of amendments that I tabled in Committee about the annual reporting on health and well-being and on children aged five, as opposed to at key stage 4. For very logical reasons, the Public Bill Office has put Amendment 3 before my old amendment, which is now Amendment 5, because maternal nutrition obviously comes before children who have already been born. Therefore, I shall speak first to Amendments 5 and 6 to amplify what I said in Committee, on which I had a discussion with the Minister before Christmas following the rather inconclusive conclusion to our debate that evening, following timing problems in the House. I particularly want to talk about the link between extreme poverty and mental health, particularly of children, which was highlighted in the previous amendment.
In any situation, it is grossly inefficient to tax people who cannot pay. Local government has been quite right to draw the Government’s attention to the inability of councils in England and Wales to collect the £1 billion in three years that they were instructed to start taxing in April 2013. Of course, as has been said many times during the passage of the Bill, there is a cumulative impact on the health and well-being of residents when the benefits provided by central government for survival are being reduced in value as the rents that they have to pay rise. Therefore, in fact, we are talking about the cumulative effects of a great number of issues that are not in themselves all the responsibility of the Department of Health, or, indeed, the Department for Communities and Local Government, which have to deal with the outcomes.
The economic and social costs of mental health provision, which is the subject of this amendment, have been calculated by the Centre for Mental Health, in which I declare an interest as a vice president, as being £105 billion in 2009-10, which is reckoned to be an underestimate. That is a huge amount of money and a great deal of that is caused by the conditions that we have been discussing in this Bill. It is of interest that Dr Angela Donkin, who is a deputy director at the Institute of Health Equity, has said that the national audit in 2010 found that 82% of homeless people had at least one physical health problem, and 72% had at least one mental health problem. So there is a huge cost to all this poverty.
Some 10.4% of those in fuel poverty, living therefore in extremely cold houses, showed higher levels of respiratory conditions, cardiovascular disease and poor mental health as the result of the conditions in which they lived. You then add food poverty, which has been mentioned—and, again, the lack of proteins, iron and the correct vitamins, minerals and fatty acids leave a higher susceptibility to illness and infection and heart and lung complications. It is said that preventing low birth weight should be an absolute must for all public health officials, but all their efforts will be hampered by inefficient incomes, which mean that people cannot buy what is required to produce that high birth weight. Finally, there are many mental disorders, particularly evident in women who, in addition to handling the family budget, suffer from maternal depression, which is bound to impact on the children and their social development.
As I mentioned before, we have a situation here where the Chancellor is apparently directing, without ever taking evidence from such as the Barrow Cadbury Trust, whose evidence was used by the Mayor of London to calculate the London living wage—and also, I fear, there is a lack of tie-up between the Treasury, the Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions as well as the Department for Communities and Local Government. There is too much silo working. My amendments aim collectively to ensure that the collection of evidence by one ministry or another should be made available to all the others so that they have an aggregated picture on which to make their judgments.
Amendment 3 would introduce reporting on maternal nutrition—an addition to what I tabled in Committee. Also, it has been taken forward considerably since we debated it in December, particularly in a speech by the Prime Minister on 11 January, when he announced his life chances strategy. In addition to maternal nutrition, he also endorsed what was in my previous Amendment 4: the suggestion that reporting on children should not be left until key stage 4, at the end of schooling, but should be done at the age of five, because we would then have some chance of taking remedial action based on something that we had found early, thus increasing life chances. It is interesting that in his speech on 11 January, the Prime Minister said that,
“we must think much more radically about improving family life and the early years”.
He called that a “life cycle approach”—one that takes people from their earliest years through schooling and through adolescent and adult life.
This strategy clearly points to the importance of early child development and getting children ready for school, thus endorsing the assessment currently done of every child by the age of two, which I mentioned in Committee. Without measuring a child’s progress at the age of five, the Government cannot know how successful or otherwise any remedial treatment initiated following the health visitor assessment at two has actually been in preparing children for school.
I also mentioned in Committee that the All-Party Group on Speech and Language Difficulties, which I co-chair, in a report on the links between disadvantage and speech, language and communication needs, found that children with a low IQ from advantaged families overtook children with a higher IQ from disadvantaged families by the age of five. That is a terrible factor to consider: that overtaking will happen unless remedial action is taken. Therefore, I strongly believe that tackling child poverty and improving children’s life chances—the right reverend Prelate has just spoken about this, and we have just voted on it—is a national endeavour and responsibility. My amendment is designed to present the Government with the opportunity, through the evidence produced every year, to learn about what is actually happening to our children, and then to enable all the departments involved, not just the Department for Work and Pensions, to use the information to improve life chances, and thus to invest the nation’s money in its future—our children—more wisely.
My other amendments—Amendments 7, 9, 10 and 12 to 14—are textual adjustments to reflect the content of Amendments 3 to 6. I beg to move.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I strongly support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham. The main amendments in this group are of fundamental importance if the Government are to make a success of their own DWP policy. The Government want to focus upon the life chances of children rather than upon poverty alone—but I do not believe we should lose sight of the significance of poverty, particularly when the levels of poverty will worsen so severely in the coming years. I was relieved to hear the Minister assure the House that the Government will continue monitoring poverty as before, whatever becomes of the amendment on which the House has just voted when it gets to the other place.
Of course, there is a lot more to successful parenting and the life chances of children than income alone. As we all know, sufficient income is a necessary but certainly not a sufficient condition for a successful childhood. Parents’ mental and physical health and well-being are essential to successful parenting. If a mother is malnourished, she is most unlikely to provide for her child’s mental and physical needs. If she is depressed, she may not be able to look after her child at all until her mental health improves.
As my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham reminded us, the Prime Minister himself has highlighted the early years as one of four areas in which to anchor the Government's approach to life chances. The Government’s life chances strategy can, in my view, set a course for improving school readiness for the poorest and most disadvantaged children—but only, of course, if it is introduced across the country and is adequately funded. But only by monitoring progress in improving the health and well-being of children in workless households, particularly during the early years, is there any hope that policies will be developed and adjusted over time to ensure that they help rather than hinder the life chances of those children. Any Government will need to learn from their mistakes over time—and as we all know, Governments certainly make mistakes.
Housing: Underoccupancy Charge
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Lord Freud
We have run a well-being survey since 2012, published by the ONS. I am pleased to report that, on all four key measures of well-being, there has been an improvement every year since the survey started almost four years ago; that is, in life satisfaction, finding activity worthwhile, happiness, and reduction of anxiety.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I understand what the Government are attempting to achieve through the underoccupancy charge, but does the Minister have an estimate of the number of people who are subject to that charge for whom there is no appropriately sized accommodation available? Does he have any plans to relieve those particular households from the charge, when it is no fault of their own that they cannot move out?
Lord Freud
We saw in the report that came out just before Christmas—which we were able to discuss in this Chamber—that nearly 100,000 people have moved and are no longer affected by the removal of the spare room subsidy. More than half of them have been able to downsize—mainly within the social sector, but some in the private sector. More want to do so and the process is continuing.