GovCoin

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I give the noble Baroness that categorical assurance. The Department for Work and Pensions has absolutely no access to any such claimant information and will have no access to it in any further trials we look at. We want to keep it like that. Obviously, information will be able to Disc—which is GovCoin, referred to in the Question—but that will be protected by data protection principles. I reiterate what I said to the noble Baroness: the department and the Government will have no access to that information.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with me that this initiative, however welcome, is but one small step in tackling the much larger problem of financial exclusion? Could he give an assurance that the Government will carefully consider the recommendations of the Select Committee on Financial Exclusion, the report of which was published on Saturday? I had the privilege of chairing that committee. Particularly, there is the recommendation that fewer people are unbanked in the first place and so would not need this technology.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I wondered whether the noble Baroness would want to get in to highlight the fact that she produced the report that came out on Saturday. I think the report was embargoed until midnight on Friday and I have not yet had the opportunity to read it. I glanced at it but assure the noble Baroness that the Government will give it due consideration.

Life Chances Strategy

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, on securing this vital debate. I declare an interest as vice-president of Relate.

When the Prime Minister spoke on life chances in January, he noted that society cannot be strong as long as there are,

“millions of people who feel locked out of it”.

With that in mind, I will argue that a life chances strategy must consider the entire life cycle and I want to highlight three prerequisites for progress. First, it cannot ignore entrenched inequality and the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. Secondly, it must focus on addressing the multiple causes of deprivation throughout people’s lives. Thirdly, it must support parents and families comprehensively if we are to help the next generation.

I strongly support the call to intervene early to ensure that all children have access to high-quality early education, as well as to ensure support for their parents. I doubly emphasise the importance of policies such as the pupil premium, which give increased support to the most disadvantaged, but must register my grave concern that their effectiveness will be diluted by the growing cuts to mainstream school budgets. However, the strategy to date is missing one important element: there can be no equality of life chances so long as entrenched inequality continues to grow.

How is that the case? Think about the child who grows up on a council estate but nevertheless manages to beat the odds and make it to Oxford. She may even think that she could be Prime Minister one day. But we have only to look at the latest research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies to understand why she still feels locked out: a rich university student from a wealthy background earns up to 20% more than a poor student who has done everything right by studying at the same university and on the same course. For a child growing up on a council estate, giving them early years education—desirable as that absolutely is—will not give them equal chances, when entrenched and inherited advantage from social networks gives access to key jobs and professions. Until we address this point head on, millions of people will continue to feel locked out.

This brings me to my second point. As well as stemming the problem for future generations, the Government must use the life chances strategy to develop a better co-ordinated, cross-government approach to supporting those adults who face a range of social problems which, to quote the PM,

“combine and reinforce each other”.

The need is pressing because there is also a close relationship between experiencing multiple needs and long-term poverty and the lack of opportunity. For example, we know that just under 60,000 people experience multiple problems of homelessness, substance abuse and contact with the criminal justice system in any given year. A staggering 40% of people with severe multiple needs ran away as children, while 25% have experienced abuse and 18% were in the care system. As a result, more than 90% of these individuals have a self-reported mental health problem and 55% have a mental health condition diagnosed by a professional. These problems can develop at any time in an adult’s life.

Some progress is being made and that is to be welcomed. Increasingly, government policy calls for a more co-ordinated approach. The Mental Health Taskforce report rightly calls for better joint working between mental health and housing, a new prevention concordat and joint commissioning. Even beyond the moral case, the economic case is clear: research from the Making Every Adult Matter coalition of charities, which I have the privilege of chairing, has shown that local areas taking a more co-ordinated approach can improve individuals’ well-being and reduce the cost of wider service use by up to 25%. Despite all this, there is still no national cross-departmental strategy to support and incentivise local areas to develop better responses for people with multiple needs, so what plans do the Government have to develop one?

This brings me to my final point: a life chances strategy must include support for strong families and relationships that in turn support the next generation. The focus in the life chances strategy on parenting is welcome. However, it is important that we do not lose sight of the central role of couple relationships in determining parenting quality. A recent evidence review by the Early Intervention Foundation, commissioned by the DWP, concluded that the quality of the interparental relationship is a “primary influence” on effective parenting and children’s long-term mental health and future life chances. So we need simultaneously to aim to improve parenting skills and relationship quality, rather than focusing on parenting skills alone.

This makes all the more vital the need for everyone to benefit from relationship support, particularly the most disadvantaged. The evidence shows that poverty puts great strain on relationships and that relationship breakdown can in turn lead to poverty. It is therefore vital that the life chances strategy addresses financial barriers to relationship support.

Children: Parental Separation

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, I am delighted to report that our 2012 reforms have been a huge success so far. They have incentivised separating families to make their own arrangements rather than using the statutory system as a default option, as co-operation between parents is clearly better for their children. Seventy per cent of clients using the service are choosing direct pay.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

Will the Minister set out how her department is working with the Department of Health and the Department for Education to ensure that children whose parents are separating receive the support they need both through child and adolescent mental health services and counselling in schools?

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, the department is working with other departments in a cross-government strategy to support children, with a lot more funding for mental health issues and co-operation between the various departments.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 30 in the hope that the Minister has been persuaded by the arguments made in Committee that kinship carers and adopters should be exempt from the two-child limit. I also thank him for the very constructive meeting that he held with us.

We have enunciated many times the valuable contribution that kinship carers and adopters make, supporting as they do more than 200,000 children, many of whom have emotional difficulties because they have been living with parents who are drug abusers or who have abused or neglected them. They save the taxpayer the alternative cost of placing a child in care, which is £40,000 a year, and care proceedings of £25,000. The savings that 132,000 kinship carers deliver by voluntarily caring for these children runs into billions. Yet, significant costs fall directly on the carers themselves. Many have to give up work or reduce their hours—a requirement frequently set by the social worker—to settle what is often a traumatised child for a good reason. The need for such carers is not going away. The number of looked-after children has increased steadily over the last seven years, as has the number of care order applications.

The Government’s reasoning for limiting benefits to two children is set out in the impact assessment. It is to reduce welfare costs and introduce a behaviour-related measure that will encourage parents,

“to reflect carefully on their readiness to support an additional child”,

which could have,

“a positive effect on overall family stability”.

It continued that,

“people may respond to the incentives that this policy provides and may have fewer children”.

The policy is intended to deter people having more children where they cannot afford to support them.

The Minister reported in Committee:

“The average number of dependent children in families in the UK in 2012 was 1.7, so … it is fair and proportionate to limit additional support provided by the taxpayer through child tax credit and the child element of universal credit to two children”.—[Official Report, 7/12/15; col. 1328.]

Even if one were to accept that reasoning when applied to birth parents who are considering having more children—I accept that there are many in this House who do not—it is a non sequitur when applied to kinship carers and adopters. It lacks common sense. There, the need is not to get kinship carers and adopters to reflect carefully on their readiness to care for an additional vulnerable child. To the contrary: public policy needs to support carers in their readiness to do so. That is better for the children and their family stability, and secures savings for the state by not placing them in the care system.

Kinship carers and adopters are not the birth parents of the children but they voluntarily embrace them. They are not making a decision to become pregnant; they are making a decision to care for an existing vulnerable child who cannot be raised by their parents. For adopters and kinship carers, the behavioural disincentive in the two-child limit is directed at their taking on responsibility for that existing vulnerable child. Imposing the two-child limit will deter adopters or kinship carers from coming forward to take on a sibling group, or a child if they have dependent children of their own, undermine the child’s interest and potentially increase the number in care. This is inconsistent with the Government’s commitment to ensuring that families are stable and create the best possible environment for children to flourish.

The two-child limit applied to adopters and kinship carers does not even stack up in cost terms. Exempting carers from the two-child limit would cost an estimated £30 million but the limit needs to deter only 200 kinship carers from caring for three or more children in the future before the £30 million saving would be wiped out, as the taxpayer would then have to face the cost of placing a child in care—£40,000 a year—and the cost of care proceedings, which is £25,000. I asked the Minister what behavioural response the Government were seeking to achieve from potential kinship carers and adopters with the two-child limit on benefits but I never had a reply. I returned again to the impact assessment but I could find no answer there either. Indeed, I could find no assessment of the impact on potential kinship carers, adopters or the children.

For kinship carers and adopters, the choice is whether or not to embrace an existing vulnerable child—a different choice to a parent choosing to become pregnant. The Minister advised in Committee that,

“there is a difference between the voluntary and involuntary taking on of children, whether they are your own or anyone else’s. That is what our exemptions are for. We are seeking to try to draw the line between where it is involuntary, as in the case of rape, and where it is not”.—[Official Report, 7/12/15; col. 1332.]

However, taking a behavioural measure into the benefits system for one purpose, then applying it to carers of children who might otherwise enter the care system without an explanation of the behavioural response being sought and with no assessment of the negative impact on the carers or the children is not good public policy.

I hope that the Government have deliberated further on where to draw that line and that they will exempt kinship carers and adopters from the two-child limit. In doing so, they would avoid building a perverse disincentive rather than positive support into public policy on people caring for vulnerable children, avoid undermining the interests of the child and avoid failing to recognise the real savings that these kinship carers and adopters provide.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to speak in support of Amendment 38 and the other amendments in this group, having spoken on the matter in Committee. In the interests of time, I will focus on two of the proposed exemptions set out in Amendment 38, but I make the point that I consider all five exemptions equally deserving.

On the issue of disabled children, which has already been set out powerfully by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Government have framed the two-child limit as being about choice, but no parent makes a conscious choice to bring a disabled child into the world—a point already made powerfully in the debate today. It is not something you plan for. If that unforeseen event happens, however, surely that child deserves our help to ensure that they can be a fully functioning member of society. Research has shown that raising a disabled child can cost three times as much as raising a non-disabled child. Surely that is part of the rationale for this exemption.

Turning to the proposed exemption when new families are being formed, in a speech last year to the Relationships Alliance the Prime Minister thanked relationship support organisations which help to keep families together and, critically, to bring new families together. I declare an interest as vice-president of the charity Relate. The Prime Minister said that,

“government should do everything possible to help support and strengthen family life in Britain today”.

In fact, he even criticised the welfare state, saying that it was,

“incentivising couples to live apart”.

How, then, can it be that the Government have brought forward a Bill which says that if two lone parents come together to raise a family—one of them having possibly suffered bereavement—their child tax credit will be cut? Surely, creating that incentive in the benefits system would accomplish exactly the opposite of what the Prime Minister wanted to achieve, as I understand it—that is, giving children the right to live in a two-parent household and providing the stability that that often achieves. In saying that, I do not mean any detriment to single-parent families, who do a very good job of raising their children. However, we know that half of all single-parent families find a new partner within five years of their previous relationship breaking up, indicating that cuts in this area could affect as many as 500,000 people. This is not an insignificant matter.

To conclude, we have heard much debate on how these proposed changes will impact vulnerable groups. I think we can all agree that it is better to be pound wise than penny foolish. As such, we need to look at changes holistically and ask whether they help individuals who can work to seek work and whether they help to ensure that the next generation is healthy and ready to contribute to society. How do we ensure that the vulnerable in our country do not start behind and get left further behind? Amendments 38 and others in this group are necessary to ensure that the vulnerable, especially children, do not start behind because of their failure to choose the right parents.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to intervene briefly. I spoke in Committee about kinship carers. Therefore, I support Amendment 40, which relates to kinship carers and adopters. One reason I take such a strong interest in kinship carers is that the north-east, where I come from, has one of the highest proportions of kinship carers in the country, along with London. I meet, and have met, numerous kinship carers in the region who will be affected by this measure.

Some very powerful arguments have been made today and in our previous debates on this topic. If I were the Minister, I would want to take account of two issues. First, the best outcomes for children are undoubtedly achieved when they are with kinship carers or adopters. Secondly, the Government would show that they are on the side of taxpayers if they exempted kinship carers and adopters from these provisions. I could say a lot about the other proposed exemptions but I have concentrated on kinship carers and adopters in the past and therefore, for consistency, I shall do so again today. When we last discussed this issue, it seemed that the Minister listened to the very strong arguments that were made. My noble friend Lady Drake has reiterated many of those powerful arguments. I felt that after our previous debate the Minister was thinking about those arguments. Therefore, I hope he will have better news for us today.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to a number of amendments in this group and shall speak briefly to them. As my noble friend Lady Howe explained, Amendment 51 would mean that people with a mental or behavioural disorder would not be mandated to take part in inappropriate activities that might be detrimental to their mental health and that the current sanctions would no longer impact on them. It is crucial that support is tailored to the individual and that it addresses a person’s main barriers to work. For people with mental health problems, I cannot stress enough how important a good relationship between a claimant and adviser is and that people must be involved in decisions being made about them.

With respect to Amendment 52 I will restrict my comments to the provision of mental health care. This amendment would mean that anyone on ESA with a mental health problem as their primary condition—as the noble Lord, Lord Layard, explained—could be fast-tracked to IAPT for therapy. That needs to be debated, but Mind is concerned about the broader implications this could have for the many people who are already on waiting lists for talking therapy.

A survey of 2,000 people from the We Need to Talk coalition last year found that one in 10 people had to wait over a year between being referred for talking therapy and having an assessment. Waiting this long can be incredibly damaging. The findings also showed that while waiting for talking treatments, four in 10 people harmed themselves, one in six attempted to take their own life and at least 6% of people ended up being admitted to hospital.

People are already trying to get treatment, but services are just not meeting demand. We would need to know what types of treatments people with mental health problems on ESA are already receiving, are likely to be waiting for or have already received. So it is difficult to know what effect this amendment would have.

The final point to tease out of this debate is to raise caution around any suggestion of mandated treatment, although I am sure that this is not the intended effect of this amendment. I am pleased to speak to the amendment to highlight the wider issues around access to mental health services. Anything we can do to improve access to mental health services for all is absolutely a good thing. The Minister defended the proposed changes to the ESA WRAG during discussion of Amendment 34 earlier this week by saying that the Government are doing more than any previous Government to improve access to mental health services —presumably those provided by the NHS. However, mental health is still the Cinderella service in healthcare and is not just the responsibility of the NHS. If I were a Minister in the Department of Health, I would be extremely worried that these proposed DWP policies would lead to an increase in or a worsening of mental disorders for people in this group and that they would lead to additional demand and escalating costs.

I will also speak briefly on the stand part debate for Clauses 13 and 14. My noble friend Lord Rix sends his apologies. It is quite a task for him to come into the House at the moment due to his current health problems, so he chose to focus his input on his excellent Second Reading speech.

I welcome the review published by my noble friends Lord Low, Lady Meacher and Lady Grey-Thompson and I urge the Minister to look closely at it. I particularly welcome the review’s inclusion of people with a learning disability. The story of Sam Jeffries, who himself has a learning disability and whom I met yesterday at the launch of the review’s publication, where he spoke, gives a human face to the concerns that noble Lords are expressing.

Sam is a 25 year-old man who lives on the Isle of Wight with his nan. He is currently in the ESA WRAG group. He has a moderate learning disability and some joint problems, so he finds it difficult and painful to walk other than for short distances. He uses some of his personal budget to go to a Mencap day service, which he enjoys, although he would like to work. He has a support worker, who is paid partly from his personal budget and partly from his benefits. Sam says that if he were to lose another £30 a week it would make a massive difference. He would struggle to pay for everything. It would mean not going to his day service and being unable to afford the taxis he sometimes needs to get around. He would like to work part-time if he could but there are not many jobs around, and sometimes 50 people are competing for each job.

I have worked with people with a learning disability for much of my life, and they need the support to look for work and ongoing job support. This should be the Government’s focus, not cutting benefits. To do so will ruin the employment prospects of many people with a learning disability while at the same time affecting their social life, their health and their self-esteem.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak to Amendment 52, to which I have put my name. In so doing I express my strong support for Amendment 51, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, which aims to improve back to work support for people with mental health problems. I also signal my strong support for the arguments that have been put forward that Clauses 13 and 14 should not stand part of the Bill.

I will briefly speak on Amendment 52. The noble Lord, Lord Layard, has already argued very powerfully that any person with a mental health problem as a primary medical condition awarded ESA in the WRAG group is immediately offered assessment and treatment in a local IAPT service. That is very important, and I will explain why I added my name to that amendment. It is about offering that treatment, not about it being compulsory—that is an important point to grab hold of, given the discussion we have had.

There is now plenty of evidence which shows that when people experience mental health problems, getting the right type of talking therapy as early as possible can make a huge difference to their recovery and their ability either to return to or enter work, and to prevent them becoming ill again. It is a very good and helpful idea that people with mental health problems in the WRAG group should get that immediate treatment. I accept that there are issues to work through here, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, drew attention, about making sure that in doing this we do not build some sort of tiered approach to mental health services, which could create difficulties.

The key point I want to underline, which was made so powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Layard, was that an approach like this could save a very large amount of money on welfare. From listening to the debate so far, I have understood from the Government that that is what the Bill is primarily about. There is an opportunity to do that here, so we should not pass it up. I also offer my services to work with the Minister to find a way to make this amendment work, because it has great potential.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health recently published a report which suggested that the work capability assessment process might have led to the large number of 600 extra suicides. It says that its study,

“provides evidence that the policy in England of reassessing the eligibility of benefit recipients using the WCA may have unintended but serious consequences for population mental health, and there is a danger that these adverse effects outweigh any benefits that may or may not arise from moving people off disability benefits”.

It goes on to say:

“Although the explicit aim of welfare reform in the UK is to reduce ‘dependency’, it is likely that targeting the people living in the most vulnerable conditions with policies that are harmful to health, will further marginalise already excluded groups, reducing, rather than increasing, their independence”.

After reading about that report I tabled a Written Question, which produced a very prompt Answer from the Minister. I am grateful about the time it took, although the Answer was not exactly informative. The Question was:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will release data relevant to the assessment of whether Work Capability Assessment tests are connected to the incidence of suicide or mental health problems of disability benefit claimants; and if so, when”.

The reply was brief and to the point:

“The information requested is not available”.

I can understand that but surely, the issue having been raised, it is incumbent upon the Government to make inquiries into the report that the journal produced and to satisfy themselves and others that the process of the work capability assessment is not resulting in ill effects upon those undergoing the process of such assessment to any significant extent, let alone, of course, the dreadful extent of suicides resulting from it. I hope that having regard to the thrust of the amendments in this group, the Minister will indicate that the Government will again look into, or rather look into—clearly they have not looked into the possibilities here—the impact of that assessment, taking into account the report to which I refer. It is surely imperative that in recasting the system we take every opportunity to ensure that minimal harm is occasioned by the processes that are instituted to distribute the benefits in question.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to make a brief point in support of the powerful case that has already been made. I believe that the latest HBAI statistics showed an increase in poverty among disabled children. Can the Minister tell us his assessment of the impact of these clauses on the number of disabled children living in poverty?

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, very briefly, I lend my support to these very important amendments. We have heard some extremely powerful arguments. I want to draw attention to one point in Amendment 3, which refers to child tax credits and says that the limit should not apply,

“where one or more of the children or qualifying young persons are disabled”.

I remember vividly a meeting that I attended during the course of what became the Children and Families Act, organised by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley. The very point which she was talking about was the impact on parent carers trying to bring up disabled children. One of the mothers was bringing up three disabled children. I remember that vividly because I think it brought tears to most of our eyes, including those of the Minister. Can the Minister say what the Government’s thinking is about households which have more than one child who has a disability?

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for this debate and, particularly, I heard the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, about how the lone parent—the mother—is so often left on her own with a disabled child. That is a very moving point and clearly rings true.

Perhaps I may look at the technical position. Amendment 3 would exempt those families who have at least one disabled child from the policy which limits support to two children. The intention of this amendment is to allow families with a disabled child to claim the child element of child tax credit for an unlimited number of children. Under Amendment 19, that intention would apply to both tax credit and universal credit. I should point out, as a matter of information, that the difference in having the child element allowed for a third child is not actually that great, if you look at the statistics. That is because the number of parents who go on to have more children is actually very few, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, will probably know, so there is not a lot of difference in the cost. I know that she will appreciate the thinking behind that point. Amendment 8, meanwhile, which goes on to the point about paying the child element, is technically a bit misdrafted, but I know that the intention of the amendment is to allow that child element to be paid.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, drew on the issue of whether a choice has been made. Clearly, we have considered the issue of disabled children carefully and looked at the challenges which these families face. We are committed to supporting those families with disabled children by paying the disability element of child tax credit and the equivalent in universal credit. That is true for all disabled children, although there are in practice rather few—I mean that there will be some, but relatively few—so, however many there are, it will be for not just the first disabled child but all of them. From what I am hearing, I think that the debate is now around the child element as well as the disability element and that that is where the differences lie in practical terms.

I acknowledge broadly the figures to which the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, drew attention in regard to the reduction without the child element. When that is in UC as a unified benefit, it will be only one part of the total payment. On the amount that the family gets, the reduction will be much less than the “down to a quarter” figure to which she was referring. On top of the disability element that we are exempting, we are exempting from the benefit freeze all those benefits which relate to the additional costs of disability, including PIP and DLA.

On Amendment 19, which would create a duty for an appeals process, I repeat the point that I made earlier: we already have comprehensive appeal arrangements and therefore do not need this amendment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, made a point about what happens to HBAI figures. As we have found out year after year, it is impossible to predict with accuracy future HBAI figures. As is customary, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has a solution to it all, but I am not convinced that the discretionary approach would be the optimum one in this area. Whatever happens, I do not think that any kind of solution would come from that.

Family and Relationship Support

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government which Minister has responsibility for family and relationship support policy; and what steps they are taking to deliver the commitment in the Conservative Party Manifesto 2015 to invest at least £7.5 million a year in relationship support.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

In asking the Question, I declare an interest as vice-president of the charity Relate.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Altmann) (Con)]

My Lords, I am the Minister responsible for family and relationship support policy. We are working with several organisations to develop and deliver provision. This includes preventive support, help for those experiencing difficulties, piloting relationship education in perinatal classes, and supporting local authorities to improve family relationships. I confirm that the total funding for this in 2015-16 is at least £7.5 million. We are currently planning how to make the most effective use of this funding.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

I thank the Minister for her Answer and welcome her to her new role. The last time I counted, there were five government departments with a direct interest in family relationships: indeed, six if you count the Home Office’s interest in domestic violence. Given this fragmentation and the fact that relationship breakdown is estimated to cost the country some £46 billion per year, what mechanisms will be used at Cabinet level to ensure that family policy is co-ordinated across government, and how will each department be held to account for the family test announced by the Prime Minister last year?

Disability Services

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I, too would like to congratulate both the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, for securing this timely debate, and Scope, for producing such a valuable and important report. As president of the National Children’s Bureau—a declared interest of mine—I am particularly keen to draw attention to the compounded disadvantage that children and young people with disabilities in black and minority ethnic communities, or whose parents have disabilities, face to their well-being. Not only do children in general face particular vulnerabilities to poverty, but it is also well documented that disability increases the risk of poverty. When children are additionally members of the black and minority ethnic communities, their well-being risks can soar.

I had a lot of statistics that I was going to go through, but the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, has covered them very well. However, if noble Lords will bear with me, I have one or two points I would like to underline before going on to talk about some more general issues covered in the report. It is vital—the report makes this very clear—that we understand that the disadvantages of disability can be amplified for children from within the black and minority ethnic community. The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, talked about a double whammy. However, if you look at children and young people, and the link with child poverty, as well as the links with disability and the disadvantages faced by black and minority ethnic communities—I am thinking particularly of some black or black British households and the nearly 60% of Pakistani and Bangladeshi households which, according to Barnardo’s analysis of DWP statistics, were living in poverty in 2011—we are talking about something which is more like a triple whammy for children.

Scope’s very important report, Keep Us Close, also made it very clear that the children of disabled parents within the black and minority ethnic community fare no better. We have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, about the very low employment rates for some disabled members of the BME community. Disabled women in this community, who are often the main carers, face incredibly low rates of pay. As we have heard, the median was almost half that of non-disabled adults. None of that will be made any easier with the forthcoming changes to financial support through the new disability addition to a family’s universal credit entitlement. For families receiving the current mid-rate component of disability living allowance, financial support for this group will be halved to £28 a week.

It is against that backdrop that the disabled children we are talking about today will face a range of other problems, which was highlighted well in the report. For instance, in many cases, they or their parents will face language barriers in trying to access the care that they need. Simply put, you cannot know what you do not know. For many in this community, the report has highlighted that language barriers mean that they miss out on services available to them simply because they do not know how to ask for them or what they are entitled to. Scope has also found that members of the BME community are less likely to be represented on some of the forums and committees that make decisions about public services. At these crucial moments for shaping policies and services, the needs of the black and minority ethnic community too often go unvoiced.

A concrete example of a missed opportunity in terms of support faced by disabled children with language barriers can be seen in education. Many young disabled people have a statement of special educational needs guiding their education. However, the report has shown that many black and minority ethnic parents did not know what that was or that they should have the chance to influence their child’s statement at an annual review meeting. Include Me TOO is a charity which specifically supports disabled children, young people and their families from the black and minority ethnic community. It has published a report that found that some parents did not even know their disabled child’s annual review meeting was coming up until it had already happened.

Unavailable, incomplete, or outright incorrect translation services, particularly within medical services, present another challenge to BME parents of disabled children, a point which clearly came across in the Scope report. It highlighted a particular case and asked people to imagine that they were the mother of Anita, a woman who was consulted during the writing of today’s Scope report. Her daughter was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Rather than a thorough explanation of the range of MS symptoms, Anita’s mother was given a CD of translated information that merely laid out the worst-case scenario. Quite understandably, that really alarmed and upset her.

In addition to poverty and language barriers, the disabled children of black and minority ethnic communities also face a number of more subtle disadvantages of social isolation and stigma. Again, I thought that the report was very good in highlighting these issues. Perhaps I may pick up on a couple of other examples. One misconception that some members of the community face is that they will have significant family safety networks on which they can fall, although sometimes that is not the case and, indeed, the opposite can be true. The Scope report found strong evidence that social isolation can be very problematic for disabled people from black and minority ethnic communities. Most notably, it drew attention to the experience of women, who are generally the primary carers. A number of BME women who took part in the research highlighted social isolation as an acute problem that they had experienced. One female respondent to Scope’s survey said that when they ask social services for extra support, they are sometimes told, “No. You can do it yourself because you are from an Asian background”. She said that social services think that they have a close and extended family who can look after them, as well as religious leaders. Her view was that that was an excuse for social services not doing what they are supposed to do.

Parents in the BME community also voiced concerns over social stigma associated with their children’s disability. The Scope report highlights the case of a Muslim woman which demonstrates this very well. She felt constantly that she had to defend her son against her extended family’s constant judgment of him as “just a naughty boy”. She said that she was very grateful when her son was finally diagnosed with autism, which she felt gave her a sort of defence mechanism against her family’s accusations that bad parenting on her part was the root cause of her son’s problems.

As I hope I have demonstrated and as the report demonstrates very well, which is why it is so important that we are giving time to this subject today, more needs to be done to bring about a cultural shift in the perception and provision of services for all disabled children and all children of disabled parents—yes, for everyone, but particularly those from within the black and minority ethnic community. These children start well behind the starting line in the race of life from the triple vulnerabilities of youth, disability and minority community status, which then can be coupled with the higher levels of poverty, the language barriers, social isolation and stigma that I have talked about.

The question is: what can we do? We will have an opportunity to do something concrete in a Bill which will shortly be coming before your Lordships’ House. Scope has developed a “provide local principle”, which is designed to ensure that services in local areas are inclusive and accessible and, where services for disabled children do not currently exist, local authorities must guarantee their delivery and ensure that parents and families are involved in their commissioning.

Today, I ask the Government to consider including Scope’s “provide local principle” in the forthcoming children and families Bill as part of the local offer to which they have already committed. The introduction of this principle would do much to improve the services available to all disabled children, including those from BME communities. Given the will, I am sure that this can be done and I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on this point.

Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I support the amendment and I am very grateful to the noble Lord for bringing it forward. It is important that we do not allow this dimension not to have the necessary attention before this Bill completes its passage. Everyone accepts that mental illness is a widespread challenge and we all commit to the need for something to be done. Yet, decade after decade, we hear the same noises being made and we wonder whether progress has been achieved.

As has been said by a number of noble Lords tonight, it is not just for the benefit of the individual—clearly it is to the individual’s benefit if he or she can remain in work or get into work with the necessary intervention, help and support—as it is also clearly of benefit to society as a whole and to the economy.

Following on from the comments we have just heard about the regional dimension, I should like to add the rural dimension. It is difficult enough for those with mental illness problems in cities but it is sometimes even more difficult in rural areas where there are not the support networks within anything like reasonable distances. In any thinking that the Government may be doing on this, perhaps that also could be taken on board. Even though this proposal may not find its way into the Bill, I hope that the Minister is in a position to indicate to the House the thinking on the way that this dimension can be taken forward.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I, too, add my support for this amendment, which was moved very powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale. As other noble Lords have said, all we need is a little bit of joining up between some of the important work that has been taken forward by the DWP and Jobcentre Plus, the very laudable intentions of the work programme and the work being promoted by the Department of Health. I have looked at the DoH website and its work in relation to increasing access to psychological therapies. It talks about how it is now much more possible to join up the help being provided to those with mental health problems as regards their anxiety and depression, as well as helping them back into work.

One example of which I am aware involves Relate, the charity in which I have a declared interest, working closely with Mind in the Hull and East Yorkshire region and the Humber NHS foundation trust. Working together, the programme that they are providing for people with mental health problems is helping to tackle their anxiety and depression while, because they have an employment adviser on hand, helping to get them back into work and to stay in work. This is the sort of approach that we should be advocating. It just needs a little more joining up, which is exactly the spirit of this amendment. I also hope that it will be possible to have further discussions on these important bits of joining up between the welfare state and providers in the voluntary sector.

Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendments 62BL and 62BM, and in doing so I draw the attention of the House to my interests, which are in the register. I am a former non-executive director of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission and a former chief executive of the National Council for One Parent Families.

I want to ask a specific point about these government amendments, which seem to be producing a new formulation that would require an applicant wanting to apply for child maintenance through the CSA to consider with the commission whether it is possible for them to make a private arrangement before being allowed to make such an application. Can the Minister please make it clear to the House just what the applicant would have to do? If I am making an application and I simply say, “I wish to make an application”, and the agency says, “Have you considered making a private application?”, and I say, “Yes, but there is no way that he is ever going to agree to it”, is that enough? Am I then allowed to proceed, or is it intended to be a bigger hurdle than that?

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I welcome the announcement of the additional £20 million for family support services for separating families, which is part of this package of reforms, and in doing so I must of course immediately declare a very direct interest as departing chief executive—this week—of the charity Relate. We provide help and support to separating families, to mothers, fathers and children and to wider family members. I recognise also that this is less contentious than the issues surrounding the reform of the statutory system, which we will be debating a little later, but it is worth a quick comment—not least because of the fact that each year around 350,000 children are directly affected by parental separation.

I am sure that all noble Lords across the House will agree that it is better, wherever possible, to encourage separating parents to make voluntary maintenance arrangements and to provide them with all the necessary practical help and support to do so. I am equally sure that all noble Lords recognise that this avenue will never be possible or appropriate, or even desirable, for all parents, particularly when issues of domestic violence are involved. That is what the statutory service is there to do, quite rightly, but it must be in everyone's interest that as many separating families as possible are encouraged and actively supported to make their own arrangement, not least so as not to clog up the statutory system for those who really need it most. The fact that some 50 per cent of children living in separated families have no effective child maintenance arrangements in place is surely evidence that the current system needs an overhaul. It is self-evident that any new system should be based as far as possible on reducing conflict and encouraging collaboration.

The fact that the funding announced today will allow parents to access more consistent support services as soon as possible across the country, and that it responds very directly to concerns raised by the DWP Select Committee a number of months ago, will be in everyone's interests, particularly those of children. This form of earlier intervention must be a wiser use of resources than waiting for problems to become so intractable, and for conflict to become so entrenched, that voluntary-based arrangements, frankly, become quite impossible.

As a former chair of the Kids in the Middle coalition of charities, I know that high levels of conflict in family relationships are bad for the well-being of everyone involved, particularly the children. Research makes it clear that the two most damaging issues for children when parents separate, which often make effective and enduring co-parenting far more difficult, are high levels of conflict and a lack of contact between both parents after separation. It will hardly be a surprise that the two often go hand in hand and, crucially to the debate today, that where there is contact between the child and the non-resident parent then often financial support arrangements flow as well. There is good evidence for the impact that co-ordinated services can have in this area, addressing financial, legal, housing and practical advice but also emotional support, mediation and a range of other things. I will not detain the House any longer by going through the research evidence that exists in this area, but I find it persuasive.

I stress, as I did in Committee, how detrimental it is to any child to grow up not simply without enough income and financial support but without any role model of a father—as generally the non-resident parent is—as a key figure in that child’s life, providing practical, emotional and financial support.