Underoccupancy Charge: Carers
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to exempting unpaid carers from the underoccupancy charge.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)
An unpaid resident carer is allocated a bedroom, unless they are the partner of the housing benefit claimant, in which case they will share a bedroom. A non-resident unpaid carer who regularly undertakes overnight care in respect of the claimant or their partner is also provided with a bedroom.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
Does the Minister really think it justifiable to make carers who are providing round-the-clock care apply repeatedly for a discretionary housing payment in order to remain in their own homes—a process which, by the way, is lengthy and bureaucratic, and very uncertain in terms of getting the discretionary payment? Is this really a fair way to treat people who are providing vast amounts of care and saving the state vast amounts of money—often at great personal cost, as the Minister knows? I ask him again: will he consider an exemption for carers from this pernicious tax?
Lord Freud
We clearly value carers greatly, and we have put support into the system at different levels for them. In this case we have given local authorities some guidance to make it absolutely clear that they can make longer-term determinations of discretionary housing payments. We have also made it clear that DHPs will be paid next year as well as this year.
Queen’s Speech
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, as the Care Bill announced in the gracious Speech will have its Second Reading next week, like some others I have decided to keep my powder dry today and focus only on why the Bill is needed, not on its content.
Your Lordships will know that there is nearly universal agreement that the social care system is not fit for purpose. It was set up originally for a country where men died shortly after they retired at the age of 65 and women died before they were 70. The new statistics showing that, for example, 11 million people who are alive today will live to be 100 are cause for celebration, as is the fact that people are living not only longer but with greater degrees of disability. However, this also means that we are spending inadequate amounts on care and support, both publicly and privately. Social care funding has totally failed to keep pace with demographic change. Since 2004, spending on the NHS rose by £25 billion, but spending on social care rose by just £43 million—or 0.1% in real terms.
We all know what local authorities have done to cope with rising demand and static resources—they have increased charges for social care and rapidly raised the eligibility criteria. The percentage of councils providing support to those with moderate needs decreased from 50% in 2005 to 18% in 2011 as the eligibility criteria have been raised to cover only those with substantial or critical needs. This has been compounded by local authority spending reductions, with social services directors reporting £1 billion-worth of cuts to services in 2011-12 and warning of even greater cuts to come.
Public provision in this area is largely seen as providing poor services for poor people, and the media all too often give us distressing examples of that. However, anyone who works in this field must also acknowledge that good care is provided to individuals within the system because of the dedication and skill of thousands of workers. There are pockets of great service to be admired and we should always remember that. In general, however, the system is perceived to be starved of cash; failing to meet the volume of need; and unfair—a lottery, especially for people with middle incomes—for the simple reason that if you die neatly without needing to use care services you pay nothing while if you happen to have an illness or condition such as Alzheimer’s, you may need expensive services for many years, costing thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of pounds. The system is also regarded as extremely confusing and difficult to find your way around.
These problems will only get worse if nothing is done. Within 20 years, the number of over-85s will double and the number of people living with lifetime disabilities will grow too. Relatively fewer people will be working and paying taxes to help pay for support. However, apart from the practicalities of money and how it is to be paid for, there are other changes in society that affect what we can expect from social care. People want greater choice and control than is offered by our current system and expectations about the standards of care are rising. It still comes as a shock to the average user of care that there is so little integration and such poor communication across health and social care systems—still less, as we have heard today, across housing and transport—regardless of the fact that people’s care needs do not come in discrete packages but are stretched across the whole of an elderly person’s life including their housing, their families and their income.
What happens when people’s needs for social care are not met? We all know what happens—they turn to the NHS. This results in increased demand for unplanned and emergency services and delays in hospital discharge. Your Lordships will have seen and heard all the publicity about pressure on A&E services recently and the conflicting views about both the cause and what should be done about it. These extra pressures of course come at a time when the NHS is already under severe financial pressure.
It is easy to be extremely gloomy about the problems in social care. However, we may have some opportunities now, principally in the Bill in the Queen’s Speech, to deal with some of them. The Government are to be praised for bringing forward a Bill which is intended to address some of the problems that I have set out by looking at the Dilnot commission and the Law Commission’s proposals and, perhaps very importantly, by defining the purpose of social care and how it is delivered.
The enactment of the care and support Bill will not just consolidate and streamline into a single statute 60 years of piecemeal law-making; it will place on a statutory footing for the first time both the principle and the practice of self-directed personal care based on individual assessment. Particularly pleasing to me is that the well-being principle is also to be applied to the individual’s carers. However, it cannot be denied that, taken together with the introduction of a capped system of funding and a national eligibility threshold, the Bill represents a significant implementation challenge for everyone with a stake in the care and support system.
Like other Members of your Lordships’ House I had the privilege of serving on the Joint Committee which gave pre-legislative scrutiny to the care Bill. We called many witnesses and received huge amounts of written evidence. Two themes were paramount. The first was the need for more integration, and the announcements today about integration between health and social care are very welcome indeed. The second was the need for more resources. Everybody was concerned about the inadequacy of the resources. I am sure that we will spend many happy hours debating that as the care Bill proceeds.
I hope that in the course of our discussions we will be able to give attention to some of the ideas that were set out in the report Ready for Ageing?, which has already been mentioned and was produced by the committee led by my noble friend Lord Filkin. It states very plainly that the welfare state was predicated on full employment and a brief period of retirement. Now, however, centenarians are common and a third of life may be spent in retirement, and yet pensions and social care continue to be organised on 1950s models. The report calls for, and states that there is a desperate need for, a national strategy that includes a radical reconfiguration of health and social care. The budgetary split between them is no longer sustainable. They must be commissioned and funded jointly so that resources can be better used.
All of this is a terrific challenge. However, it may also be the clearest call that we have ever had for a new vision for social care—indeed, for a different settlement for the older people whom we will all become. We certainly need a different vision and, by the way, more recognition of the contribution made by older people themselves. Let us not forget that 60% of childcare is provided by grandparents. Let us think also of the huge numbers of older volunteers. These are important political issues that we are actually going to have to address.
The Bill that we will consider gives us an opportunity to put a welcome focus on social care—always, thus far, the poor sister of the NHS. It will also give us the opportunity, if not to implement this new vision, then at least to consider and discuss it.
International Women’s Day
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, it is always a huge pleasure to take part in this debate. I, too, am grateful to the Minister. As ever, I am in awe of the amount of experience, passion and expertise which Members of your Lordships’ House bring to the subject. This far down the batting order—we have had quite a few sporting metaphors today—it is difficult to think of anything new to say, but I just want to say a bit about public service.
All my working life has been in public service. I have never worked in the private sector. I have worked for local authorities, for the NHS or in the voluntary sector. Because I know what a hugely fulfilling experience this has been, I am concerned, even appalled, by recent reports about the fact that the number of women in British public life is plummeting; that there are fewer women now in senior positions in the judiciary, the arts, education, finance, the Civil Service and government than 10 years ago. Nearly 40 years after the Sex Discrimination Act and despite a huge influx of women into professions such as law and medicine at the lower end, as we have heard today, the glass ceiling for senior positions remains very firmly uncracked.
I count myself extremely fortunate to be able to sit in a legislature without standing for election, because of the peculiar institution that is the House of Lords. I know that it is ironic that I am saying that we should have more representation of women when I sit in a House that has only 21% women and, although we have many bishops, no women bishops, as the marvellous maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate has reminded us. It is of concern to me, and should be to all women, that we are 51% of the population, but only 22% of the House of Commons and a bit over 21% here.
A high point came in 2008 when Gordon Brown appointed Jacqui Smith as the first female Home Secretary. Before the Labour Government in 1997, only 40 female MPs had ever held ministerial office. By the time that Government ended, that had risen to 80; indeed, at that time women held a third of all ministerial posts. Currently, I am sad to say, many departments have no women Ministers at all, in spite of the ambition of the Prime Minister, which we have heard about several times.
Of course, many of the institutions that have promoted women have been abolished: the Equalities Office, the Women’s National Commission, to name two; and of course the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has been amalgamated with other institutions.
It bothers me greatly, as I know it does other noble Lords, that there is a perception that the battle for equality was won a while ago—by my generation, perhaps—but it is simply not true. Some people might say that it does not matter but I contend that having an 80/20 split rather than a 50/50 split has a damaging effect on our political life and on our social and cultural life as well.
Why do we find ourselves going backwards? One reason might be lack of leadership from the top. We still have a female Home Secretary, and other women do very well in some branches of industry, but the fact that there are so few sends a message to other women. Is the treatment by the media of women in public life harsher than it is for men? I contend that it is and that may also put women off.
The hours here and in the other place are not family-friendly, as we know. They are better than they were, especially in the House of Commons. The House of Lords is notorious for starting a debate on family-friendly hours at 10.30 pm. In fact, I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, was due to make her maiden speech in that debate.
Baroness Pitkeathley
We do a little better than that now, but perhaps not all that much better. Perhaps the image that politics is an inherently sexist arena—recent events may have reinforced that image—is also not welcoming to women.
We have also heard that it is hard to give up power. Power largely resides in the hands of men, who understandably want to retain it. Inadequate childcare is certainly a factor. A recent survey shows that two out of three local authorities are failing to fulfil their statutory obligation to provide childcare, despite the progress that the Minister mentioned. If the lack of support in the childcare area is a factor, how much more this is true of women who have caring responsibilities for older or disabled relatives.
It is in all our interests to enable those women, many of them over 50, to remain in the workforce. We need them to provide care but also to be able to continue to combine caring with paid employment. Their contribution to the economy is vital in both roles but we must also ensure that the caring role does not of itself lead them to live in poverty or build up poverty for the future because of a lack of pension contributions or savings. I am pleased to say that, yesterday, Carers UK launched an inquiry into caring and family finances, examining the costs of caring and the impact that caring has on the ability to work, with the aim of influencing policy in this area.
So far as public service goes, we must ask: what can we do about it? We can get better leadership from the top. We can stop rubbishing the idea of public service. Too often we hear that civil servants are interested only in bureaucracy. We must talk up public service.
We must have parity on interview panels, because we tend to appoint or choose people in our own image. Having appointed dozens, probably hundreds, of people in my time, I know that men tend to oversell themselves while women go the other way and undersell themselves. In that regard, increasing the self-confidence of women is all-important. Those of us who have been reasonably successful in public life owe a duty to our daughters and granddaughters to build that confidence so that the whole of society can benefit.
Housing Benefit
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Lord Freud
My Lords, I said that people will make a range of responses. Some will decide that the best thing they can do is to downsize and they will be supported in that. Clearly, in areas where there is no appropriate social housing, there is the option of moving into private rented housing. However, the essential point is that there is a limit to what the state can afford. We have had quite a lot of changes in the private rented sector, and this brings the social rented sector into line.
Baroness Pitkeathley
The Minister is concerned about the problems of caring families. Has he considered the issue of a carer who looks, say, after her severely disabled husband? The spare bedroom—the surplus bedroom as he puts it—is necessary to keep all the equipment, such as hoists and so on; and sometimes the carer needs to sleep there to have an adequate night’s sleep. What arrangements can be made in that situation?
Lord Freud
My Lords, that is exactly the kind of case that the discretionary housing payments are intended for. Where there are genuine problems of that nature, we would expect those payments to be made to support that particular family in its accommodation.
Taxation: Families
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, I feel privileged to speak in this debate introduced by my noble friend Lady Hollis, who, in a very fine speech, spoke with her customary forensic skill and passion. I am very glad to have the opportunity to focus on those families who have caring responsibilities. I believe that the cumulative impact of the changes to social security, taken together with the cuts in social care services, has not been adequately assessed.
Let us look, first, at the number of caring families. The census statistics published last week show that the number of carers has risen by 11% since the last census in 2001, bringing the total in England and Wales to 5.8 million—a rise of nearly 600,000 carers. That means that across the United Kingdom there are now an estimated 6.5 million carers, and the value of the carers’ support has been estimated by Carers UK as being £119 billion every year. I make no apology for quoting that statistic for the second time this week in this Chamber.
Carer’s allowance, the main carer’s benefit, is already the lowest of its kind. At £58.45 a week, it leaves many carers in financial hardship as a result of the reduced earning power and higher living costs associated with disability and ill-health. A survey of more than 4,000 carers in 2011 showed that 45% of carers are cutting back on essentials such as heating or food; four in 10 are in debt as a result of caring; and the stress of money worries and other stresses associated with caring mean that the health of one in two carers is severely affected. I quote one carer:
“We have suffered financial hardship so bad it is unreal. Before I became a carer I worked for many years. I believe that I paid all my dues. Today a carer is made to look like a scrounger. I feel every time you speak to one of the agencies that are supposed to help us and be understanding they somehow try to make you feel ashamed of yourself”.
According to new government impact assessments, while 510,000 people will receive a higher award following the introduction of the personal independence payment, by 2018 an estimated 607,000 fewer disabled people will be entitled to support. Given the link between carer’s allowance and DLA and the PIP, this risks a knock-on impact of 23,000 fewer carers being entitled to receive the carer’s allowance. DLA acts as a gateway to carer’s allowance but this will not be replicated in the PIP. The government impact assessment shows that by 2018 there will be a 10% reduction in the number of disabled people in the groups which act as a gateway to carer’s allowance.
The impact assessment in May 2012 said that the reforms would,
“not affect the overall size of the Carer’s Allowance population or the level of expenditure on the benefit”.
However, this appears to be inconsistent with such a substantial reduction—as I have quoted—in the number of disabled people in the carer’s allowance gateway groups concerned with the PIP and the DLA. A third of people entitled to carer’s allowance are entitled to the benefit because they care for someone on middle or higher-rate DLA.
Should the carer’s allowance caseload follow the pattern of reduction in PIP spending, we would perhaps expect to see a fall of 34,600 in the total caseload of those entitled to carer’s allowance and a fall of 23,800 in the number of those in receipt. It is very frustrating that the lack of a full impact assessment means that we cannot reconcile the apparent inconsistency between the projected fall in the DLA and PIP caseload and the suggestion by the Minister and others that the carer’s allowance will be unaffected. The latest impact assessment, I am sorry to say, simply states that the Government are,
“continuing to analyse the impact on certain passported benefits and schemes, including Carer’s Allowance”.
This is quite unacceptable given that implementation will be with us in April this year. Therefore, I must ask the Minister: when will the Government publish a full assessment of the impact on carers of the introduction of the PIP, including an assessment of the impact on the projected carer’s allowance claimant count compared with projections if DLA were to continue? This seems to be inconsistent with government policy on the benefit cap. The Government have said that the cap is intended to improve work incentives, yet carers in receipt of carer’s allowance are already caring for a minimum of 35 hours a week—many of them for 50 hours or more—so it would be impossible for many to juggle work with heavy caring responsibilities.
The benefit cap is also meant to promote behaviour change and discourage long-term benefit claims. However, in his response to an amendment at Report stage of the Bill in the Lords, the Minister said that,
“one thing we are not looking to encourage is a change in the carer's behaviour so that they stop caring. That is absolutely not where we want to go”.—[Official Report, 23/1/12; col. 892.]
I think that most of us would say amen to that.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions stated, when he introduced the Bill in the Commons, that the benefit cap was,
“a matter of fairness, so that those who are working hard and paying their taxes do not feel that someone else will benefit more by not playing a full part in society”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/3/11; col. 922.]
I suggest that if this cap is designed to be fair to individuals who are working hard and playing a full part in society, it cannot be right that it applies to carers—the very epitome of the big society.
The cap is also designed to apply to workless households, a description which carers would find insulting, given the level of their workload, and inaccurate, given that carers in receipt of carer’s allowance are, as I have said, already providing a minimum of 35 hours’ care a week. Each one is saving the state an average of more than £18,000 a year with the unpaid care they provide for loved ones. Surely it is deeply unfair to apply the cap to carers, given their contribution to society. It seems to me that doing so sends out a very negative message about the value that the Government place on caring. Indeed, the cap may ultimately act to disincentivise those who willingly and lovingly take up caring for their families, and it may in the future lead to family finances collapsing and caring becoming financially untenable. It is a great pity that, in spite of the valiant efforts of many of my colleagues, the Government did not accept the amendments on this issue tabled on Report and at other stages of the Welfare Reform Bill.
I turn to the bedroom tax, which will also have a severe impact on certain groups of carers. They may be unable to cover the shortfall and be forced to move—for example, where one member of a couple has a disability and the couple cannot sleep in the same bedroom or where an extra room is needed for equipment. Families who have spent considerable amounts of their own money making suitable adaptations to their homes may also be forced to move. This would not only be distressing for families and disruptive to care arrangements but could risk a greater long-term cost as adaptations will then be needed in their new homes.
As regards changes to council tax benefit, carers will be affected differently depending on the scheme adopted by their local authority. I am happy to say that some councils are proposing to recognise carers as a vulnerable group but others are not. Carers may face substantial reductions in the support that is available to help meet council tax bills. This, again, is inconsistent with the aims of the policy to improve work incentives. The Government have made it clear that they do not wish to force carers to give up caring and return to work. I have already quoted the Minister on that. However, if carers are unable to increase their income through work, reductions in support with council tax bills will only put them under further financial pressure.
In summary, I very much fear that all the changes will seriously undermine carers’ ability to care for older and disabled loved ones and will push families to breaking point, with serious long-term consequences for family life, health and social care services and, indeed, for our wider society. That makes neither moral nor economic sense.
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, my name is also on this amendment and I fully support what my noble friend Lady Hollins has said. As we have heard, there are approximately 6.5 million carers. Of course, we all need to remind ourselves just how important they are and how much money they save the state in the work that they do on behalf of their families and, indeed, friends, because quite a number of carers are not necessarily directly related. Perhaps the Minister would agree that that is a very good reason for putting this proposal in the Bill. It would certainly reassure all those who, as has been said, do so much for the nation in terms of finance and for individuals with whom they have personal caring relationships.
I hope that it will be possible for the Minister to accept this amendment. Otherwise, perhaps he will give us an assurance on the questions that have been asked. That would be helpful and useful. I look forward to hearing his reply.
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, I, too, speak in support of these amendments. We are talking about essential rights for carers. When carers give up work in order to care, it is crucial that they are able to access financial support, which provides them with an independent income. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me for a brief trip down memory lane about an independent income for carers. In the 1960s, an independent income for carers was at the very heart of what started the carers’ movement. That independent income was achieved in the 1970s and went on to be extended in the 1980s. I should like to acknowledge the very active part that the noble Lord, Lord Newton, who is not in his place, played in extending those rights under—perhaps I may remind your Lordships—a Conservative Government.
Given the importance of carers, which has been acknowledged time and again, it is disappointing that the Government have not brought forward an amendment to place these rights in the Bill. If the gateway for PIP payments is left to regulations, different groups of carers will have their rights to carer’s allowance set out in different ways. Those caring for disabled children will continue to receive DLA and will not be moved on to PIP, and carers looking after an older person in receipt of attendance allowance, which is also unaffected by these reforms, will continue to have their right to carer’s allowance clearly set out under the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act. Yet those who are caring for disabled people of working age who are being moved on to PIP would have their rights set out only in secondary legislation, which would make for a confused picture.
I know that Carers UK, other Peers in your Lordships’ House and the Disability Benefits Consortium very much welcomed the Minister’s decision to bring forward their decision about both levels of PIP in December. But to give carers full confidence in their rights and clarity in the legislation, it is crucial for the decision to be written in the Bill.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, my name is also on this amendment and it is clear that we support it. The amendments are, I hope, welcomed by the Minister as an opportunity to firm up what, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, has said, he said before Christmas: that carers of claimants of both rates of the daily living component will retain eligibility for the carer’s allowance, and to make that undertaking concrete by placing it in primary legislation.
The Minister and the House know well that the changes to disability benefits are causing considerable concern to disabled people and to their carers. This amendment is about providing some clarity. It cannot provide full reassurance because carers do not yet know how they will be affected by the 20 per cent proposed cuts or the exact way that the new thresholds will work. We know that half a million people will lose benefit, but we do not know how many of that half a million qualify for carer’s allowance at present. I am afraid we must assume that there will be a large number of current recipients who will no longer qualify for support.
There has not yet been any impact assessment—it is not simply that the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, cannot find it. We hope—indeed, we expect—that there will be as part of the response to the consultation announced yesterday. However, for today, we would simply ask the noble Lord to solidify his commitment to those who qualify under the new assessment process that their carers will be able to receive carer’s allowance. At the moment, the Bill does not repeat what is there for DLA. It does not even appear to do it in regulations.
A move from warm words to an undertaking in the Bill to maintain the status of carers’ rights would be very welcome. It would be a sign that the Minister is listening to disabled people and understands their need for clarity. In Committee the Minister spoke very warmly of our 6 million carers. Along with those warm words, can we have something in legislation?
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Bakewell
My Lords, this amendment seeks to make the lot of carers in our society, whose lives are often already difficult and sometimes miserable, less miserable than it would be if the Bill went ahead as proposed.
There are 6.4 million carers in the UK contributing an estimated £119 billion to the UK for the unpaid care that they provide. I reiterate those figures: 6.4 million carers saving the country £119 billion. What kind of lives do these people have? What kind of situation are they in that they are able to be so generous with their time and their care? They have a rough time. They face a precarious financial situation, with 72 per cent finding themselves worse off when becoming carers due to the combined pressures of reduced earnings, a low level of benefits and the costs associated with living with someone with a disability. A Carers UK survey of over 1,700 carers found that 74 per cent were struggling to pay essential utility bills, 52 per cent were cutting back on their own food to cope, 66 per cent were using their own income earned from very modest jobs to pay for care for the person they were caring for, and 54 per cent were in debt as a result. It is worth saying that people do not choose to be carers; somewhere along the line life has been unkind to them and they are making the very best of it in the interests of us all.
The amendment seeks to help those carers who wish to make their income more secure by taking part in some paid work. It would ensure that when universal credit was calculated, carers would be allowed to keep more of their earnings than those without such responsibilities in recognition of the additional barriers that they face in combining work and care. It is welcome that the Government have decided to keep the carers’ allowance out of the universal credit. That is to the good. It is also welcome that the additional support given to those in short-hours jobs under the universal credit scheme will help to make work pay for some carers. However, it is not clear why the Government do not recognise, with a specific disregard within universal credit, the particular difficulties for carers in holding down a job.
Currently, individuals in receipt of income support are eligible for a £20 a week earnings disregard. That is not a fortune. They are allowed to earn £20 a week before their benefit starts to be withdrawn. The Government have announced that there will be specific disregards for couples, single people, lone parents and disabled people, and they have stated that, taken together with the universal credit taper, these will leave those four groups in low-paying jobs significantly better off than under the current system. However, for some reason this does not apply to single carers, who currently have access to a £20 disregard in income support through the receipt of the carer premium but would be able to access only the basic single person disregard of around £13.50 a week under universal credit. This could leave carers who are juggling work and care over £200 a year worse off because their benefits would be withdrawn earlier.
It does not sound much, does it—£200 a year? What difference could that make? Let me tell your Lordships what difference that would make, and let me repeat that this difference could affect a large number of the 6.4 million carers who are saving the country £119 billion a year in unpaid care. They are the ones who will suffer worse than they already do—carers living on their own, those who do not have children and those who are caring for a disabled parent who is not considered part of their household for the purposes of universal credit. All those groups would be made deliberately worse off than they already are. This group includes those who look after a disabled or elderly friend or poor relative who does not live with them and those who look after, for example, an adult disabled child who lives with them but, because of the rules of universal credit, is not seen as part of their household.
Carers UK estimates that this is likely to affect up to 50,000 carers, leaving them worse off in work and breaking the promise of universal credit to make work pay. These carers did not choose the life that has rolled out before them. They did not make choices about jobs and opportunities. They did not make choices; they were faced with someone they love in a disabled and needful situation. Out of the love they bear them they have made the sacrifice of careers and opportunities to earn as other people earn, in order to give free of their love and to provide care to those in their family. As Carers UK put it, nearly three-quarters of carers on benefits are women. On top of the additional likelihood of childcare responsibilities and difficulties in accessing replacement social care, thereby reducing the financial return of work for women who are able to work for only a few hours alongside caring, this will act to further distance female carers from the workplace.
Carers UK gives the following case study of someone who would be affected by these measures. This is an example. Janet is 55, single and cares for her son Michael, who is 30. Michael is severely autistic, has multiple health conditions and needs constant support. He receives disability living allowance and Janet receives the carer premium to income support for caring for him. Several years ago Michael started going to a specialist day centre for one day a week. Janet has been able to start working for a few hours, earning £20 a week as a cleaner, while Michael is at the day centre. With the income support earnings disregard Janet’s benefits are unaffected by her earnings. However, under universal credit, because she would be eligible only for the basic single person’s earnings disregard, as Michael is not considered to be in the same benefit household as Janet even though they live together, this would mean that after the first £13.50 of earnings, Janet’s earnings would be tapered away at the 65 per cent taper. For £20 of earnings she would be £15.78 better off. Compared to her situation on income support, Janet would be £4.22 a week—£219.44 a year—worse off in work. Is this a situation that people can be proud of—that we should be penalising someone who is giving so much free labour to the country? Janet is unable to increase her working hours because additional day centres are not available and buying replacement specialist domiciliary care costs over £15 an hour, so that would actually leave Janet worse off.
Janet is trapped. She does not have any options—oh, but she does have an option: she could give up doing her caring and put the person for whom she cares into care. She could say, “This is enough. My contribution is not recognised. I am worn out and finding the stress of looking after someone disabled too much. I am going to give up, and someone else can cope. I am going to get a job and make my way of life more comfortable”. What percentage of 6.4 million carers might make such a decision? What would it cost the state if they all abandoned their role as carers? They already do not believe that they get much sympathy from society at large, but moves like this would alienate them still further. The Government should estimate what the cost would be if even a small percentage of 6.4 million carers gave up their role. I beg to move.
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, I support this amendment, to which my name is also attached. Because of the scheduling of business in your Lordships’ House this is the first opportunity I have had to speak on the Welfare Reform Bill, but I know that many, indeed most, in the carers’ movement owe a huge debt of gratitude to the noble Baronesses and noble Lords who have been speaking throughout Committee stage.
The amendment proposed so ably and passionately by my noble friend seeks to ensure that the universal credit does not put up a further barrier for those people who want to combine caring with work. Given that the aim of the universal credit is to support people into work, it seems wrong to reduce the work incentives for one of the groups for which that support is most needed.
I agree with the Minister’s aim to encourage carers to combine paid work with their caring. Let us think of the reasons why we want to do that. First, it would increase their income; we have already heard that caring takes place in poverty. Secondly, if carers are not in work, they build up poverty for themselves in future through the reduction in their pension contributions. Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, being in a paid job helps carers with the stress, which is often very great, of their caring role. It enables them to maintain social contact and skills and to have a bit of respite from the caring situation. So we want to help carers stay in work as long as possible.
We know, however, that carers already face significant barriers to work. According to research commissioned by Carers UK and the DWP for carers’ rights day in 2009, some 1 million carers—that is around one in six of the figure that we have heard of 6 million carers—have given up work or reduced their working hours in order to remain as carers. A major barrier is the availability of suitable replacement care. In a separate survey, over 40 per cent of carers who gave up work did so due to a lack of sufficiently reliable or flexible services. A similar number, 41 per cent, said that they would rather be in paid work but services available do not make a job possible. In addition to that, for those who are able to juggle work and care, stress and poor health are common. Nearly half of the respondents to a survey of working carers for Employers for Carers and Carers UK indicated that their work had been negatively affected by caring and that they felt tired, stressed and anxious. Employees with heavy caring responsibilities are two to three times more likely than those without caring responsibilities to be in poor health. For these reasons, carers are just the sort of claimants to be working a few hours a week in low-paid work. We estimate that 50,000 of them might be affected by this change.
I know that the Minister wants to encourage carers to start working more than a few hours, but because of the other issues I have mentioned, for many carers a small or even a tiny increase in working hours is impossible. Because the Government argue elsewhere in the Bill that increasing earnings disregards will incentivise work, it seems inconsistent here to suggest that reducing the carers disregard will encourage additional work. I hope the Minister will agree that there is no logic to discouraging carers from juggling paid work with caring as long as they can and leaving them worse off than they are. I very much support the amendment.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I am not going to add to the very powerful case that has already been made by my noble friends Lady Bakewell and Lady Pitkeathley. I simply wanted to seek some clarification of what was said in Committee, when a number of us put the case for a carers disregard, and the Minister said in his reply:
“Rather than going through the complexity of the separate disregard route, we have provided an additional element that is included in the gross amount of the universal credit for carers. That is a change from carer’s allowance”.—[Official Report, 1/11/11; col. GC 443.]
I am rather confused by this, because it seemed to me that it was muddling up carer’s allowance—a very important benefit, which some of us would like to see higher than it is at present—and the support provided to carers through means tested benefits such as income support.
Because I worry about my memory for the intricacies of social security I did not challenge the Minister at that point, but afterwards I sought guidance from Carers UK. It, too, was very confused by what the Minister said, and wondered whether or not the Minister—I hate to say this—was perhaps confusing carer’s allowance and means tested support for carers. Because the position is not changing, I do not see how the removal of a disregard can be justified on the basis of what happens with carer’s allowance. Universal credit is not replacing carer’s allowance. There is an element in means tested benefits for carers that will continue, but it is nothing to do with whether there is a disregard or not. It wondered whether the Minister is promising a higher premium for carers under universal credit. That would be excellent news if it were the case, but I rather doubt it. Could the Minister perhaps clarify what he meant in Committee, because it did not seem to me that it was answering the kind of case that has been made by my noble friends; namely, why is it that carers are the only group to lose the disregard that they currently have?
Welfare Reform Bill
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(14 years, 5 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley)
We have now had 14 minutes. The Committee should reconvene.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, we have added our name to the noble Earl’s amendment and have Amendments 51CAC, 51CCA and 51EB in this group. These amendments relate to Clauses 13, 14 and 22, which refer to the introduction of the work-related requirements and the claimant commitment. The drivers of some of the work-related requirements or no-work-related requirements depend on whether the claimant has limited capability for work or work-related activities. These concepts are familiar to us from ESA deliberations and it is understood they are to be imported into the universal credit.
Autism: Disability Living Allowance
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(15 years ago)
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Lord Freud
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for what is actually a very complicated question to answer briefly. This is a different assessment. The personal independence payment is looking at what people need to function in their daily lives, whereas the work capability assessment is designed to look at whether people are capable of working. They are different. We need to make sure that we do not have too many tribunal cases. At the moment, under DLA, tribunal cases are at 11 per cent, which is too high. One of the attractions of going to a consistent, coherent new personal independence payment is that we can have criteria which make it much less obvious that people need to go to tribunal.
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, I declare an interest as the person who took the Autism Bill through your Lordships' House. The Minister will know that that Bill placed an obligation on local authorities to survey the number of adults with autism in their area to ensure that there are enough services for them and their carers. Given the restrictions on local authority budgets, has he any concerns that they will not be able to do this, thus further disadvantaging people with autism and their carers?
Lord Freud
My Lords, we are all indebted to the noble Baroness for taking that Bill through the House. One of the effects of that Act is that even in times of restraint local authorities have an obligation to look after this group of people. The Act provides that protection for them.
Pensions Bill [HL]
Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts(15 years ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting in Committee, we will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
Clause 1 : Equalisation of and increase in pensionable age for men and women
Amendment 1
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I take this opportunity to thank the Minister and his team, who have been very helpful and accommodating as we have gone through our amendments. There have been some government amendments, and I am grateful for their explanations.
The purpose of this group of amendments should be very clear. Collectively they seek to review the Bill’s acceleration of the equalisation of the state pension age for men and women. They preserve the existing timetable set out in the Pensions Act 1995, which means that women will reach pensionable age at 65 if born after 5 April 1955. For women born between 6 April 1950 and 5 April 1955, state pension age will gradually increase over a decade, rising one year in every two.
The state pension age needs to rise in order to pay for a more generous basic state pension linked to earnings. This was a principle established by the Labour Government in 2007 and one that we continue to support. By retaining the table contained in the Pensions Act 1995, the increase in state pension age to 66 for both men and women is negated. However, our Amendment 4 brings forward the increase for men and women to 66, accelerating this by four years to between 2020 and 2022.
The amendments make no specific proposals for changing the current timetable for increasing SPA to 67 between 2034 and 2036 and then to 68 between 2044 and 2046, legislated for in the Pensions Act 2007, although we accept—as do the Government, I believe—that increasing longevity will eventually cause that to be revisited. We do not challenge the life expectancy projections that the Government have used to underpin their policy changes. We do, of course, accept that life has literally moved on since 2004, and the data which underpin the Turner settlement have moved on. Average life expectancy for those who reach 65 in 2026 has increased by 1.5 years for men and 1.6 years for women. Our challenge to the Government and their response to these changes is to the speed and equity of the adjustments that the Bill seeks to make, particularly for women.
When the Conservative Government legislated to equalise the state pension age for men and women at 65 in 1995, they gave 15 years’ notice from the beginning of the change and indeed 25 years’ notice of the end of that change. When the last Labour Government legislated to increase the state pension age to 66 in 2007, they gave 17 years’ notice to the start of the process. In this Bill, the coalition Government give just six years.
In setting out their policy objectives, the Government instance the need to take account of the increase in life expectancy, the need for spending on the state pension to be sustainable, the need for intergenerational fairness, and the need for fairness in the balance of support given by the working age population. We do not disagree with these aspirations, but consider that there is another policy objective that has been overlooked: fairness for those going through the transition, with sufficient notice for them to have the chance to adjust to changed expectations of receiving the state pension age at a later date. We know from the impact assessment that the timetable proposed in the Bill will affect some 5 million people; 500,000 will have to wait more than a year extra to receive their state pension, all of them women. Of these, 300,000 women will have to wait for more than 18 months and 33,000 will have to wait for two years. Contrast this with our proposal in this amendment, which affects 1.2 million fewer people. It will affect about the same number of men and women, and no one will have to have an increase in state pension age of more than a year. In terms of intergenerational equity, measured as a proportion of adult life spent in receipt of a state pension, the timetable we propose has a smoother transition to the long-term trend of 32.5 per cent for men and 34.8 per cent for women.
It is accepted that the Government’s proposal will save more in resources, although the savings do not begin to accrue until 2016-17. As the impact assessment makes clear, there is a judgment to be made. Indeed, we thought that it was a judgment that the coalition Government had made when declaring that the date when the state pension age started to rise to 66 would not be sooner than 2020 for women. Perhaps the Minister will take the opportunity to say why the Government have changed their mind on that issue. Just look at some of the unfairness. A woman born in April 1953 will be able to get her pension at 62 years and 11 months. A woman born in April 1954 will have to wait until she is 66. Many women and men affected by these changes would already have plans under way for hitting what they thought was their state pension age. We have heard from many who have reduced hours or given up work and taken on caring responsibilities for parents or grandchildren. The position for women is compounded because of the disadvantage that this generation of women has experienced in terms of lower earnings, interrupted careers and restricted access to private pension schemes. They have less flexibility to respond to the changes that see their state pension age rise by six years between 2010 and 2020, compared to just one for men.
I take this opportunity to particularise some of this unfairness. I am sure that other noble Lords have received, as we have, a host of representations from people and I would like to quote from two. One is as follows:
“Yes, I’m now 55, with only a small additional work pension on top of the State pension to come, because I wasn’t able to contribute anything extra to my employers scheme when I was younger—my husband & I separated and I was a single parent of 2 children and there just wasn’t the spare cash. I used to be a part-time worker—part-time women used to be discriminated against in not being able to participate in pension schemes (look up ‘Beswick Cases’ and the ‘Barber judgements’). So like many women the same age I’ve grown up in one era ‘Your husband will take care of you financially’, then things changed. I would have been able to retire with a full pension (such as it is) at 60; then, the Equalities legislation was moving it slowly towards 65 but at least I had due warning”.
Another person makes a point that I highlight:
“The law when I was younger prevented me from paying into a private scheme when I was not working or was working part time which happened because due to rearing children and the ill health of one of them, which he will have on and off throughout his lifetime. I feel it was a waste of money buying the extra NI contributions because since I bought them the government is now proposing to give me no pension at all for 2 of the years for which I thought I was buying a full pension”.
I pick up on that point in particular. The noble Lord will be aware of the buy-back opportunities—six years’ buy-back with class 3 contributions. He may also be aware of the further buy-back opportunities that were argued for and recommended to the House by my noble friend Lady Hollis. I imagine that more than a few people found themselves buying back extra class 3 contributions to secure a full state pension, on the assumption that they would give up working at a known date, given that the state pension age was set down in the 1995 Act. Now, like this person, they may find themselves waiting an extra two years for their state pension, continuing to work to be able to survive. By working, they would pay their national insurance contributions, and the buy-back that they had already made would be a complete waste of money. It seems to me a point to pick up and pursue further. I was alerted to it particularly by this representation. We need to reflect on what notice and information were given to people that caused them to go through these buy-back arrangements and to waste a not insignificant amount of money.
I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, that his amendments look on the face of it to be somewhere between the Government’s position and ours, but doubtless he will expand on that when he introduces them. It would be helpful if he could give us an analysis, in terms of the increase in the state pension age, of those affected who will have to wait less than a year for their state pension in comparison to the current arrangement, those waiting more than a year, those waiting a year and a half, and whether there are any up to the two-year mark.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, I should point out that, if this amendment is agreed, I cannot call Amendment 1A, for reasons of pre-emption.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, perhaps I may respond to the very helpful introduction by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, and apologise to the Committee pre-emptively, as this is my first occasion in Committee, at least at this end of the Palace. I thank him for raising matters of substantial public concern in a moderate way, and shall try to talk around them and to explain matters connected with my own amendment. It will be obvious to the more perceptive Members of the Committee that, despite the heroic efforts of the Clerks with occasional interventions from myself, in this case it probably was the printer who was responsible for certain infelicities, one of which appears in Amendment 3A, which refers to 2010. This should of course be 2020. In Amendment 4A, there are two references to 2010 which should be 2020. Though I may take the Conservative Whip, not even I would claim to wish to legislate for the past. Those will be self-evident as slips of the pen.
If we unpack the principle of this, we always begin with a troubling element to do with disturbing the contributory principle, or disturbing people’s settled expectations. In a pure world, which ours is not, we would probably wish not to disturb anything from the moment when somebody entered the scheme as a young person and was paying on a certain assumption, in the hope that 40 years later they would receive their due pension. That was perhaps the philosophy of 1948. I do not think it is the practice of 2011. It is clear that, for a whole variety of reasons, successive Governments have changed that, particularly in relation to the inexorable march of longevity and the pressures on the public finances.
I was very grateful to hear the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, making that point specifically, and of course we all make it. As he rightly intuited, my effort is in a field which is certainly somewhat exploratory, and I am exploring it in parallel with a number of Parliamentary Questions. We do not quite know the distribution, but we do know, on the Government’s proposals, that half a million women—of course it is only women—are affected by phase 1 of this change, and then men and women are affected by the move in the overall pension entitlement thereafter. There is an inhibition because it is felt, perhaps for reasons of concern about European sensitivities, that we are dealing with all the women in one go, and then moving forward together. The Minister may wish to comment further on that in a moment.