Impact of Government Policies on Family Budgets

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Knight for initiating this important debate. I wonder how many of your Lordships know what it is like to live on the margins. I am not referring to those who live outside the norms of society, to those who break the law, have a drug or alcohol problem or are homeless. I mean those who are just about coping, either financially or emotionally, and often both. I well remember a time, as a single parent, when I was just about coping financially, when I would go to sleep every night and wake every morning wondering how I could balance my income with the demands on it and constantly juggling the importance of paying this bill while putting off paying another. I am glad to say that that was a long time ago and now I feel confident enough to know that I have some leeway, some cushion to protect me if disaster strikes, if I become severely ill or if the roof blows off. I suspect that most of your Lordships are the same, but for millions of people, that is not how it is. They live just coping, because of a network of factors, financial, social and emotional, which, if they are kept in balance, allow them—just—to cope.

I want to talk about the experience of two such families. First, take the experience of Annette, a single mother of two children, newly divorced from a violent husband. She has an almost full-time job in a supermarket and receives tax credits, help with childcare and child benefit, all of which are now being reconsidered and are likely to disappear or be reduced. At present her children go to a breakfast club two mornings a week, to an after-school club once a week and to a play day at the local library on a Saturday morning. This helps her with her shifts at the supermarket and with the food bills. Every other Saturday the children have a supervised contact session with their father at a local children’s centre. Midweek, she and the younger child attend a Sure Start centre where she meets others and receives help and support. She greatly values the social contact this gives her and the friendships she has made.

All these services, the things which mean that she just about copes, are now under threat because of cuts to either their voluntary—let us never forget how many of these services are provided in the voluntary sector—or statutory funding. If this young mother were like most of us in this House and had a cushion, even a cushion of £20 a week, this would not be so important, but she does not have that cushion and, as a consequence, she very soon may not cope at all, because this fragile network of support on which she relies is being taken away What will be the result of that? It does not take a genius to see that extra stress on this already highly-stressed situation will have dire consequences down the line. Annette’s mental health is likely to suffer. The children’s relationship with their father may be broken. The nutrition of the children may suffer. Let us not forget that a quarter of Britain’s schoolchildren go to school without breakfast. Annette may lose her job and become entirely dependent on benefits. Need I go on? What is the potential bill for the state then, compared with the small amounts that it is investing in this family now?

The next family to which I want to draw your Lordships’ attention is that of a carer, Shirley. She is aged 55. She is looking after her mother, who is 85 and is disabled by a stroke, which has affected both her mobility and her speech. Shirley’s husband is about to retire but of course his pension is not going to be as much as they had expected. She works very part-time and receives the carers allowance—which, fortunately, is not to be taken into the universal benefits proposals, as was originally intended—but she is increasingly worried about the impact of local authority spending restrictions on the services they use for her mother. One of the day-care centres has already closed. The respite service, which enables the carer and her husband to have a night out once a fortnight, provided by a voluntary organisation, is under threat. The speech therapy group at the local hospital will come to an end next March when the specialist nurse who runs it retires and is not replaced. Shirley, not surprisingly, is very worried about fuel bills as her mother is immobile and some form of heating has to be provided in the house night and day. Her experience is typical.

Age UK says that spending cuts are projected to reduce spending on older people’s care by £300 million over the next four years. Real spending on older people’s care will be £250 million lower in 2014 than it was in 2004, but over the same period the number of people over 85 has risen by two-thirds. In 2005, 50 per cent of councils provided support to people assessed as having moderate needs, but in 2011 the figure has fallen to 18 per cent. As a result, the number of people receiving local authority-funded care at home has reduced from just under 500,000 in 2004 to just under 300,000 in 2009.

A survey in April 2011 of 61 councils by Emily Thornberry MP showed that 88 per cent of them were increasing charges for social care services, 16 per cent were raising eligibility criteria and no fewer than 54 per cent were cutting funding to the voluntary sector, which provides so many essential services. In addition, two-thirds were closing care homes or day centres.

I emphasise that cuts in support to caring families like this are a false economy. If financial and practical support to carers is cut and caring breaks down as a result, there will be a considerable knock-on cost to health and social care services, as well as serious damage to family life. I remind your Lordships, as I often do, that there are 6 million carers in the United Kingdom providing care to a value of £119 billion every year.

Both those typical families are doing their best to cope. They are fulfilling their family and societal obligations lovingly and dutifully, but government policies are having detrimental effects so significant that the end result may be family breakdown, with all its attendant costs to the state and to society itself.

We are all aware of the dire financial situation in which global events have placed the UK, but it must surely make sound economic as well as moral good sense to continue supporting families such as those that I have set before your Lordships. Local authorities and the voluntary sector are having to cut services that provide the difference between people just coping and not coping at all, and we shall all reap the whirlwind from that before many years have elapsed.

May we be assured that the Government, however inexperienced Ministers are in the normal lives of citizens, understand that many of them are just coping and just managing? Can the Minister assure the House that he understands that withdrawing these networks of support will result down the line in fractured and fragmented families which, in the end, will cost us all a great deal more?