Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I accept the importance of this issue. There are a lot of angles to it, but I fully accept its importance and the argument that discouraging kinship carers could actually have a perverse effect, certainly in terms of cost.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, raised the issue of children at risk. We as a Government take our responsibilities to vulnerable children and vulnerable parents very seriously. It is clear that such families are likely to have multiple problems that may not be solved by benefit payments alone. The noble Baroness is concerned that the benefit cap will force such households to be constantly on the move, which will make it harder for local authorities and support services to keep track of them. We recognise that a more co-ordinated cross-government response is needed, and so last December the Prime Minister announced a new national campaign to try to turn around the lives of the most troubled families in England—there are around 120,000 of them—by the end of this Parliament. Local areas are being encouraged to develop a new approach to supporting these families. It involves redesigning services so that each of the most troubled families is supported by a single key worker who helps them turn their lives around and engage successfully with education and employment. I can assure noble Lords that my officials will work closely with other departments to support the Prime Minister’s plan for these vulnerable families and ensure that those who may be subject to the cap will be given all the help and information available.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that important information about the 120,000 or so problem families—I think that is the term being used. The three categories in Amendment 99B, which was tabled in my name and that of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, were children who were subject to a child protection plan, a child in need assessment or a common assessment framework team. Does he believe that those three categories are covered by the 120,000 problem families definition? I confess that this is not my specialist area, but the reason I ask is that I understand that those families, at whom that policy is targeted, are people who are presumed to be taking significant funds from a large range of public agencies. It is quite possible for a child to have a potential vulnerability that a social service department is looking at without the family necessarily being in that position. The questions I was raising were about vulnerable children, not necessarily the children the Minister is describing, but I may have misunderstood. Perhaps he can help me.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am not quite sure, off the top of my head, how the mapping of these vulnerable families is worked. The sign just made to me by the noble Baroness, which normally is a sign for “Can I have the bill please?”, we can convert to mean, “Can I have a letter?” and I will be pleased to do that.

[Baroness Sherlock]

I would settle for a few million but a letter will do nicely.

[Lord Freud]

On the child benefit cap, Amendment 99ZB would require us to exclude child benefit when calculating a household’s total entitlement to welfare benefits for the purposes of applying the benefit cap. Amendment 99AD would go further and require that we exclude all-child related benefits. Both would result in household’s being able to receive benefits at a level above that which we have announced for the benefit cap. We believe that ultimately there has to be a limit to the overall amount of financial support that households in receipt of out-of-work benefits can expect to receive in welfare payments. Like other welfare benefits, benefits for children provided by the state are funded by taxpayers and should be taken into account along with other state benefits when applying the cap.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sherlock]

Before my noble friend responds, will the Minister explain one thing to the Committee? He has explained why he wants to make clear to a claimant household exactly what income is coming to it as a result of universal credit and the different components to help them understand that. Why does he then have a problem with separating payments as opposed to assessments?

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

To save the Minister jumping up and down, I asked him a specific question about monitoring the impact on the distribution of income within households which I would be grateful if he would answer. I do not think he answered it, although the reply has been so fragmented because of the Divisions that we may have missed it.

[Lord Freud]

On the first question, I think we should look at this rather differently. It is one payment to the household. On whether we can look at how the household can do different things with that payment, I am very happy to look at all the budgeting supporting mechanisms. I am actively looking at them, and I hope I will get some more information on that.

To be honest, I have not got on the top of my head the detail on the monitoring. We will be looking at it very closely when that comes in and will be devising a structure to do that. As noble Lords know, we are planning to have a very substantial research exercise around universal credit, mainly because it is an almost unique research laboratory opportunity in that we can capture in one place all the different behaviours. I am looking very closely at how we can get world-class research behind many aspects of the universal credit.

[Baroness Sherlock]

This is the last time I shall intervene, I promise—and that is a strong promise rather than a weak one, I can assure the Minister. I understood him to be saying that the state does not want to intervene more than it has to in the financial affairs of families, and I can see that and agree with it, but if putting different amounts of money into different subsets of a bank account is going to encourage people to budget, somebody is still going to have to go through the process of working out which elements of the total award relate to different elements—children, rent et cetera—and deal with the complicated bit of that, which is understanding how tapers apply. When the Minister thinks about this again, will he consider whether the assessment can be for a household but when you get the answer, you simply split the amount and give it in two different directions? Is that not much easier than the Minister getting embroiled with the FSA or the FCA and complicated financial services market products?

[Lord Freud]

I am thinking about this area. I do not think I am thinking in quite the same way as the noble Baroness, but I am looking at it and hope I will be able to have a vigorous conversation with her on where that comes in at a later stage.