Social Fund
Debate between Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Baroness Lister of Burtersett(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what arrangements will be made from April 2015 for the payment to local authorities of the moneys devolved from the Social Fund.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, the nationally run community care grants and crisis loans were not working as intended. For two years from April 2013, funding was provided by the Department for Work and Pensions to local authorities to help them provide support to local people in moments of crisis, as they are better placed to assess local need. From April 2015, local authorities can continue to do this from their general fund, in line with local priorities.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, in opposing the ring-fencing of Social Fund moneys, the Minister assured your Lordships’ House that,
“we are equally committed to ensuring that this money is targeted on and reaches the most vulnerable people”—[Official Report, 11/1/12; col. 214.]
by clearly identifying it. Now this assurance looks to be worthless, because it seems that the money is being lost in the 2015 settlement, if it is there at all. Will the Minister give a clear commitment that central government will continue to provide local authorities with a specific revenue grant in order to protect those most vulnerable people?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, local authorities are doing a good job in providing the kind of support that is available in their local areas, which previously would have been provided through the discretionary Social Fund. From the evidence that we have seen so far, local authorities are able to do this without drawing on the full amount that has been provided until now from DWP, and which was committed to only until the end of the next financial year.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Debate between Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Baroness Lister of Burtersett(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I start by thanking the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds for supporting the amendment so powerfully. He asked for a sense of direction. I fear that we have a sense of direction but it is not one that either the right reverend Prelate or I feel happy about. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, who, as ever, has brought important issues to light. I also thank my noble friend Lady Sherlock who again made a powerful speech. I also thank the Minister, whose attempt to deal with the issues raised by the amendment I acknowledge and appreciate. She was given rather a hard time but I am sure that she will understand because people feel strongly about the implications of the Bill and the effect it will have on benefits. I should like to address a number of her points.
First, my noble friend Lady Hollis picked the Minister up on this mantra that work is the best route out of poverty. Of course we all agree with that, except that work is not always the best route out of poverty because some people are going to work and are in poverty. As well as the point made by my noble friend, there seems to be an assumption that if we depress benefit levels we are somehow making it more likely that we will push people into paid work. I always remember work on lone-parent families carried out by another poverty guru, Alan Marsh of the Policy Studies Institute. He pointed to evidence that,
“a malign spiral of hardship, poor health and low morale … builds up its own barriers to work”.
He found that those in severe hardship were three to four times more likely to suffer low morale, compared with those who were not in hardship. He very wisely commented:
“It is quite hard to contemplate work if you are that demoralised and hard up”.
That is why we must not assume that keeping benefits low is necessarily going to improve work incentives.
The Minister made a point that I found quite chilling. She said: “It has never been the intention to alleviate poverty through benefit payment”. That is not my understanding: I thought that the whole point of benefits was to try to alleviate poverty. I am dismayed by that statement.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
What I said was that we believed it was misguided to try to lift people over the 60%-of-median-income line through benefit increases alone, because this would not change their lives or their children’s since it would not tackle the reason they found themselves in poverty in the first place.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I accept that, but I wrote down what the noble Baroness said. She said: “It has never been the intention to alleviate poverty through benefit payment”. I wrote it down. If she wants to retract that statement, I would be delighted.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I think it was at the point when the Minister said that unemployment benefits were only intended to be temporary while people were in between work, and that therefore they were never expected to address poverty as such. That is the problem that we are worried about.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
This is a debate about the adequacy of benefit rates, not about benefits in a package of what people receive. The difference here is that if somebody is in receipt of a combination of different benefits—housing benefit, jobseeker’s allowance and so on—I can absolutely see the point that the noble Baroness is making. What I am saying in the context of a debate about how to set the rate of a benefit is that benefits alone do not alleviate poverty.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I thank the Minister for her clarification. I think I can take it that it is not the Government’s position that benefits are not there to alleviate poverty; I hope that is right. The noble Baroness must remember that not everybody can take the route into paid work: there are some people of working age who will be on benefits for a considerable length of time and we cannot just say, “Oh well, they don’t matter”.
There was quite a lot of discussion about food banks. It just so happened that I chaired a meeting the other week for a group called Just Fair, where the director of the Trussell Trust was speaking. He pointed out the exponential increase in the number of food banks over recent years. The increase is huge. That meeting was addressed by the UN rapporteur on the right to food. He made it very clear that he did not see food banks as any kind of solution to the problem of food poverty. I accept that the Minister was not saying that she was happy about the spread of food banks, but I think she was, perhaps, underplaying the extent to which they have spread recently. I do not think it is simply because Jobcentre Plus is now acting as a signpost.
I was disappointed that the noble Baroness was referring back to quotes from 1985 about the difficulties of establishing the adequacy of benefits. Research has become a lot more sophisticated since then and there is a growing consensus—although clearly not on those Benches—around the work done on minimum income standards. When my noble friend Lady Sherlock asked about impact, I do not think she was asking for the same kind of impact statement that we have been talking about—the numbers and so forth. She was asking for an impact on well-being. Local authorities are now supposed to address the well-being of everyone in their areas. What impact is this Bill—together with all the other things that are happening—going to have on the well-being of children and their parents? This goes back to what the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, was saying about monitoring. Monitoring is not simply about numbers: it is about what it is going to mean to the lives of some of the most deprived members of our community.
I am disappointed that the Minister is not prepared to accept an amendment which is not about spending money; it is about trying to let us better understand the principles that should govern our social security system when times are easier. However, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I start by making it absolutely clear that, contrary to what the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has just said, the United Kingdom has a strong and effective maternity and parental regime. The UK is significantly more generous than the requirements of the EU pregnant workers directive. The directive says that a woman should benefit from 14 weeks’ paid maternity leave; we provide 39 weeks. It also says that a woman should receive at least the amount that would be paid for sickness; our standard rate of maternity pay and maternity allowance is £135.45. This compares very favourably with the current statutory sick pay rate of £85.85 per week.
In addition, the latest available data from the OECD from the previous financial year show that the proportion of our GDP spent on maternity and parental pay is higher than in Germany or France. Moreover, in the past decade, the standard rates of statutory maternity pay and maternity allowance, which is the allowance that is paid to women who are not in work who have children, or who were not in work prior to the birth of their child, have increased by more than 35%, from £100 a week in 2003 to £135.45 currently. So while I accept that the decisions we have taken on statutory maternity pay will mean a slightly smaller increase for people over the next few years, the UK’s strong and effective maternity architecture will remain firmly in place.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, referred to what she described as a mummy tax and to media reports on it. I am slightly surprised that she referred to Mumsnet because when her honourable colleague Rachel Reeves published an article on Mumsnet on what she described as a mummy tax back in December last year, the blog attracted a lot of comment. It is worth highlighting some of the points that were made. Most of the contributors were at pains to say that they were not supporters of, or spokesmen for, the Government, or supporters of either of the two parties in government. One contributor said:
“I despise this latest Labour ‘Mummy Tax’ campaign. For one, the name ‘Mummy tax’ is hugely patronising and sexist for people in a relationship as my husband benefits from maternity pay just as much as me as all our household income is pooled. And let’s be clear although there is a real terms cut due to the rate of inflation, this change is not a tax”.
The comments continued and attracted quite a lot of support. Another contributor responding to the post on Rachel Reeves said:
“I’ve had no pay rise for the last 3 years and we are getting nothing this year and told to expect the same for the next 2-3 years—is that a tax? No, it’s just the real world and I have to get on with it. I’ve had a child during that time and we had to work around what we could afford with regard to length of maternity leave and to be honest £180 would have made no difference whatsoever. I despise the term ‘mummy tax’—it’s a patronising media friendly sound bite, which creates a hugely distracting perception of the middle class having to cut back on cappuccinos whilst on maternity leave which removes debate from the real issue. I would like to see the labour party setting out what it would do in power and challenging the government instead of wheeling yet more spin and inaccurate bluster”.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness. I accept that that must have been said on Mumsnet and I have to admit that I do not particularly like the term “mummy tax” either, but does she accept that while it is the case that the mother who posted on Mumsnet pooled her income, research that I and others have carried out shows that for many women having a benefit in their own right is important to them psychologically? They receive money over which they have control, whether or not they then pool it in the household. Not all households pool their incomes. Some do and some do not.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
That is a fair point. The people who were posting on the internet at that time were responding to the comments of Rachel Reeves about the proposals having a disproportionate impact on women, and only women.
Away from the debate on Mumsnet, the Government are committed to make this architecture for women stronger. The provisions in the Children and Families Bill, which had its Second Reading in another place last week, will allow working parents to choose which parent takes parental leave and pay to care for their child in the early years. This will give mothers real choice over when and whether they return to work. This is helpful in two big ways—where the woman is the higher earner and in starting to chip away at the inequality that some women face at work just because it is assumed that they and only they will take a break in their careers to have children. Our proposals will start to make a big difference.
It is also important to remember that the Government have introduced other reforms that will help to offset the impacts of these changes. For example, a woman working full time at national minimum wage for six months of the tax year, who then receives statutory maternity pay for the next six months, will still be better off overall as a result of changes to the income tax personal allowance. The introduction of universal credit will also provide a big boost for many mothers and lone parents, with 2.6 million women and 700,000 lone parents expected to gain through increased take-up and improved financial incentives to work. In addition, as part of the introduction of universal credit, £200 million extra is being spent to support families with childcare costs. For the first time, this support will be made available for families who work less than 16 hours a week. This will mean that 100,000 more working families will be helped with their childcare costs. That is important, because it means that even if someone is able to take on only a small amount of work, they will get that support for childcare costs to which they previously would not have had access. In another move that will be helpful to mothers and parents, as my noble friend Lord Newby mentioned, we have committed to introduce 15 hours a week of early education for 40% of two year-olds, starting with the most disadvantaged.
The Government will also continue to make extra support available for mothers on low incomes to buy the basic goods that they need. We have a programme called Healthy Start, and the Sure Start maternity grant—a lump sum payment of £500—is available to help parents with the costs of having a new child. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said that this is now available only to parents who have a child and no other child under the age of 16. However, this support is additional to the money that parents receive through their statutory maternity pay. Bear in mind that if there is another child in the home, some of the initial substantial expenses of having a family often are not repeated if they have a second child.
The amendment would reduce savings from the Bill by around £50 million in 2015-16. None of the decisions contained in the Bill are easy. I recognise that the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, would prefer that we did not include statutory maternity pay in the Bill. I would like that, too. I would love it if we could say, “Let’s exclude this or that”. However, as my noble friend said in our previous debates, every time we say that we will not include something in the Bill, we have to look somewhere else for the money. That £50 million is not a small sum and is equivalent to more than 20,000 part-time nursery places for three to four year-olds. This is money that will cover substantial support that rightly we provide to mothers and families in other ways.
I hope that I have been able to demonstrate that there is a strong architecture to support women when they have children. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I was going to refer to the complaints that have been made about delays in dealing with Section 4 cases. These problems have been acknowledged by the department. Efforts have been made to address the causes behind those delays and there have been some improvements.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said that disabled people receive no additional support. If asylum seekers have higher needs, they are supported by their local authority under an old Act, the National Assistance Act 1948. My noble friend Lord Avebury asked whether disabled children would receive higher value support. Again, that is a matter for individual local authorities, which will have considered the needs of the child and conducted a relevant assessment. My noble friend also asked whether these arrangements are compatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the answer to that is yes. The UK Border Agency is bound by its Section 55 duty to consider the best interests of children. As I have said, fully furnished free accommodation, education and healthcare are provided, plus an allowance to meet the need for food, clothes and other essential items.
Although I acknowledge the strength of feeling that has been expressed by noble Lords about the difficulties that inevitably are faced by people who come to this country seeking asylum, when comparing asylum support rates across Europe, our research shows that the UK is comparatively generous in family cases, providing more to an asylum-seeking family of four than countries like Sweden or Denmark. Further, as I have mentioned, there is an ongoing review of our approach to asylum seeker support and we expect to finish conducting our inquiries shortly. We are taking account of the views of partners, including the recommendations of the Children’s Society. We will want to ensure coherence with the mainstream benefit system and the financial constraints being faced. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked for further details about the evidence that is being considered in the course of the review. I shall see whether I can write to her with further details on that.
It is worth saying that there is no statutory obligation to carry out an annual review of asylum support rates. Instead, Parliament has set a clear benchmark that the support provided must meet the “essential living needs” of recipients of Section 95 support and that it must provide “accommodation” to recipients of Section 4 support. It would be wrong to raise expectations in this area given the current constraints on the funding available, but we are committed to an approach to asylum support that is fair, reasonable and balanced. No one who has sought our protection need be destitute while waiting for an application to be decided, but if the application is refused and the decision is upheld by the courts, we expect people to return home. Perhaps I may add that if someone is granted asylum, if they are in need of benefits they will transfer on to the domestic regime, which ensures that they receive the same benefits as anyone else in this country under the normal rules that apply.
If I have failed to address all of the detailed questions put by my noble friend Lord Avebury and, indeed, if there are any others, I will follow them up in writing. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for the opportunity to set out the support that is provided and I hope that I have been able to reassure her and other noble Lords that the Government continue to take this matter very seriously. I hope that she will withdraw her objection to the schedule.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and the right reverend Prelate for their powerful support in this debate, and I thank my noble friend Lord McKenzie for accepting that perhaps our side will have to reflect on the findings of the inquiry. That was very welcome. I also thank the Minister for her full reply and for the good news that the review is expected to conclude by the end of this financial year. That is one good piece of news. When she writes to noble Lords, perhaps she will also say whether the review will be published so that we can read the full results.
I want to make only one point because I am conscious that noble Lords are waiting for the next debate. I turn to the question of “temporary”, which was picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. I would point out that a Written Answer in the other place last week stated that the average time spent on Section 95—not Section 4—was 525 days. That is a long time to be living on such a low income.
It has been useful to have this debate. Although I cannot welcome everything the Minister has said, I do welcome her acknowledgment of the importance of these issues and the fact that the review is about to conclude. I do not intend to oppose the schedule.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Debate between Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Baroness Lister of Burtersett(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I support both these amendments. I have a question concerning Amendment 2. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, I am slightly confused; I had understood that the rationale for not including, say, pensioners in the Bill was that that group could not be expected to make up the difference through paid work. Therefore, and in a sense this follows on from the noble Lord’s question, why are disabled people in the support group affected, albeit not as much as some other groups? According to the Disability Benefits Consortium, a person in the support group will be £138 per year worse off by 2015. That is a considerable sum for someone living on benefits, and of course the personal allowance element is larger than the element that is protected. Why does that principle of excluding groups that the Government expect to go into the labour market to somehow protect themselves not extend to people in the support group who, by virtue of being in that group, are not expected to look for paid work?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. It is probably worth my summarising that the two amendments we are talking about seek to make changes to the ESA. Amendment 2 would remove from the Bill the 1% increases in the personal allowance for those in the support group, while Amendment 3 relates to those in the work-related activity group.
I understand why noble Lords have tabled these amendments and raised the points that they have in this debate. We all want to protect those who are furthest from the labour market, or who have additional costs because of disability, and that is what the Government are doing.
On the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, referring to the principles outlined by my noble friend Lord Freud during the passage of the Welfare Reform Act, I am clear that those principles—that we will target welfare spending to those most in need and ensure that we do not do anything to disincentivise people from pursuing work—remain intact via this Bill. We are prioritising those in greatest need.
It is right to say that there will still be some effects among disabled people through the Bill because we are including the personal allowance for both types of ESA as well as the additional element for those in the work-related activity group. However, we are ensuring that all those benefits that are paid specifically to cover the additional costs associated with disability are not included in the Bill. For example, the disability living allowance and the attendance allowance are protected, as are the disability premia in benefits such as income support, ESA, JSA and housing benefit, and we have excluded the disability elements of tax credits from the Bill.
In many cases, the basic rate of ESA is just one element of the total package of benefits received. Many people on ESA are also in receipt of other benefits, such as DLA, to which I have just referred, and housing benefit. It is worth noting that around 65% of people in the support group also claim DLA. The point I am trying to make here is that ESA is not the only benefit that most people are relying on. People in the support group receive a component worth £34.80 a week, as has already been said, and they are also automatically entitled to the enhanced disability premium of £14.80 a week if eligible for income-related ESA. We should not forget that some people will be eligible for the severe disability premium or the carer premium. All these are protected, like the support component. Income-related ESA households where a member of the couple is over pension age also receive a pensioner premium to ensure that the rate of benefit is the equivalent of the pension credit rate. This rate is also uprated as normal.
My noble friend Lord German asked in particular about the personal allowance aspect of ESA and why it is included in the Bill. It is important for me to be clear that the personal allowance is there to provide basic support. It is designed to meet the basic needs of all those on out-of-work income-related benefits. The personal allowance is consistent across all benefits which relate to those of working age. There is a standard amount. For single people, it is currently £71 a week. It is important that I am clear that this rate is common across all claimants who receive ESA, JSA, income support and housing benefit and reflects the fact that they perform a similar function of providing basic support for everyday needs. They do not reflect disability or the additional costs of disability, so therefore it is right that they are set at a standard rate. That is the rationale for including the personal allowance in this Bill and for the personal allowance to be subject to the 1% cap on annual increases. Treating one personal allowance rate differently from that in other benefits would mean that there would be no clear level of income at which state support is set and at which access to other help would be available across a wide range of services. It would also introduce an element of complexity in terms of the coherence of the benefit system which would introduce new challenges and be likely to add further costs to the running of the overall system.
As has been acknowledged, the support group component is protected, so it is not included in the Bill. It is the component element of ESA which differentiates the need based on the effects of a disability or a condition. That particular component relates to the effects of a specific disability. The support group component is paid in recognition of the fact that more severely disabled people are less likely to be able to increase their income by moving into work and may have additional needs. Therefore we pay those in the support group a higher increase than those in the work-related activity group.
It is worth making the point that for those in the work-related activity group, ESA is not like the old incapacity benefits that usually led to people being in receipt of that benefit for a long period. This is intended to be a short-term benefit for those in this group. Those who are placed in the work-related activity group are there because they have been found able to prepare for work. As such, they will be referred for appropriate support, training and provision to ensure that they get the help they need. ESA for people in that group is intended to be a short-term benefit and we expect these claimants to be closer to the labour market and be in a better position to prepare for work. Therefore, while they may not be looking for work immediately in receipt of that benefit, they have some ability to affect their own incomes. That is why it is right that the annual increase for those in the work-related activity group should—unlike that for those in the support group—be fully within the scope of the Bill.
In his opening remarks, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, again referred to the alternative option of the Government bringing forward annual orders rather than introducing the Bill. It is important for me to stress heavily that a central purpose of the Bill, in addition to achieving savings, is to provide certainty. I will say that regularly throughout the passage of the Bill; it is an important aspect of what we are doing. I know that the noble Lord seeks to undermine that, but it is central to what we are trying to do. It is important that we recognise the long-term benefits of providing that certainty; that is how we retain the credibility of the Government’s fiscal policy.