Supporting Disadvantaged Families

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]]

We welcome the contents of this Statement. Any measures that can help to stop children going hungry over the tough months ahead must always be welcomed.

However, before I ask questions, let us look briefly at the context. I must say that I was a wee bit disappointed that the Statement made no reference anywhere to Marcus Rashford, even though everybody knows that this initiative is a response to his campaign for free school meals in the holidays. Can I invite the Minister to go on the record and pay tribute to Mr Rashford, as I do? It is quite an achievement on his part not only to force this Prime Minister to move but also to get the whole country talking about child poverty. Indeed, it is quite chastening for those of us who spend most of our lives talking about the issue, but it is a remarkable achievement. If I am ever lucky enough to meet Marcus Rashford, after congratulating him, I think I might see if I can focus his attention next on the five-week wait or maybe the savings gateway and universal credit.

Although I am thrilled at his success, I wish that the Government had handled this better. There was a deeply depressing debate in the other place where hapless Tory MPs were forced to defend the Government’s stance on this, not just by disputing the Rashford free school meals plan but essentially by claiming that there is not an underlying problem. We need to be very careful how we talk about these matters because, as the national debate raged on, we started to hear parents once again being blamed for their poverty, with the old chestnuts appearing that if you give money or vouchers to poor parents, they will only spend them on drugs. Yet, out of this mess came one of the most heartwarming things I have seen this year, when the backlash against the Government’s position prompted a huge number of hospitality businesses, many of them badly hit by the pandemic, to offer to feed children free of charge during half-term when the Government did not.

Enough of that: I am delighted that the Government have now come round and agreed to take some action. It would be helpful if the Minister could give the House some more details on the package. First, we are told that there will be a new Covid winter grant scheme, which will give £170 million to English local authorities and, unlike previous grants,

“will carry conditions and reporting requirements to ensure that the scheme is focused on providing support with food and utility costs to vulnerable families with children who are affected by the pandemic.”

Are the Government going to define “vulnerable”? Is it about income or is it more than that? Does struggling to make ends meet count as vulnerable? Plenty of people who would not previously have classed themselves as vulnerable are losing their jobs or facing cuts in income as a result of this pandemic. Who is going to be covered by this scheme?

It is good to know that the Government will roll out holiday activities and food programmes across the country from Easter next year. Does that mean that the scheme will be in place for the next Easter holidays, in 2021, or will it kick in after Easter? We are told that the scheme is being extended to “all disadvantaged children”. Can the Minister tell the House what a disadvantaged child is for these purposes? Is it the same as a vulnerable child for the purposes of the Covid winter grant scheme? Are these separate schemes aimed at the same families or are they different schemes aimed at different families, and is there an overlap? Finally, we are told that the value of Healthy Start vouchers will be raised from £3.10 to £4.25 but not until next April. Can the Minister explain why it is not happening straightaway, given the amount of need in the country right now?

There is a much deeper issue here. During the campaign on extending free school meals, I was horrified to hear suggestions that the blame lay with parents for failing to feed their kids properly when the basic underlying problem is that too many parents just do not have enough money to make ends meet. Every week, more people are losing hours or losing jobs and they are finding that, despite years of paying in, our social security system simply does not provide them with enough to live on. However, every time we mention this, Ministers simply repeat that they have given £9 billion et cetera. That is great—I am really glad that they have invested this money—but it is clearly not adequate to the scale of the problem. Food bank use is skyrocketing and people are falling into debt. That highlights that there just is not enough money in the system.

At the start of this crisis, we asked for five urgent steps to be taken. The first was an extension of the £20 increase in universal credit to legacy benefits. I urge the Minister again, as I did this morning, to explain to the House why the Government will not do that—that is, tell us not just that they will not but why. Why is it okay to give the money to universal credit recipients but refuse it to JSA and ESA? Secondly, we asked them to scrap the savings threshold on universal credit so that we were not punishing savers. Thirdly, we asked for an end to the terrible two-child limit. Fourthly, we asked for a suspension of the benefit cap so that everyone can get the extra money that the Government have announced. Fifthly, we asked them to turn the universal credit advance into a grant rather than a loan to address the five-week wait in the short term.

If Ministers had taken those basic steps, we would have fewer parents struggling to feed their children in the first place. I therefore urge the Minister to ask her colleagues to change their minds once more, to implement these five changes and then to take a longer look at why our social security system is failing to stop so many of our fellow citizens falling into poverty. This pandemic has already done enough damage to our children. Let us all work together to do what we can to stop it getting any worse.

[Baroness Janke (LD) [V]]

My Lords, we welcome these measures and recognise the Government’s intentions to support disadvantaged families through winter and beyond—