Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Wilkins Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment, which has been ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. The children we are talking about, those who will be affected by this reduction in benefit, are those who are profoundly deaf, who have Down’s syndrome and those with cerebral palsy, among many other conditions. The Government are focusing their resources on the most severely disabled, but the costs of bringing up a disabled child do not equate with the severity of the impairment. The care costs can be just as expensive, sometimes even more so, for bringing up a child who will qualify only for the future lower rate of addition under the Bill.

I grew up with my friend’s younger sister who was born with cerebral palsy. It was a family with four children. The whole family’s life was dominated by trips to London to visit her therapists, visits to hospital, visits to the swimming pool and so on, so that she could avoid contractures and had a chance to develop her full potential. Of course, we all had to go because there was no one to look after us at home. The cost must have been considerable. Then there were the costs of extra equipment, the constant wear on her clothes and so on. If Paula had qualified for the higher rate of care and needed night time attendance as well, it would have put a considerable strain on her family, but it would only marginally have increased the costs. Under this Bill, Paula’s benefits would have been halved, and her chances of developing to her full potential and living an independent life would have had no hope at all.

What about profoundly deaf children? Most do not need day and night care and so would not qualify for the higher rate. The National Deaf Children’s Society tells me that it was contacted by Laura, a single mother whose daughter was diagnosed as deaf soon after she was born. Laura had to give up her job as a nurse as she was the only person who was able to care for her child. She said to me that her life then spiralled out of control and she started getting into financial trouble. All she could think about was, “I have got to eat less and I have got to turn the heating down”, otherwise she simply would not be able to support her daughter. The NDCS helped her to apply for the current benefits, and now that the stress of not being in financial trouble has gone, she is finally able to concentrate on learning to communicate with her child, thus giving her the best possible start in life. But under this Bill Laura would lose up to £1,400 a year. That is £22,000 over her daughter’s childhood. The sum of £1,400 is the cost of heating your house for a year. Think of the danger and the misery that that will mean on a freezing cold day like today.

On Report, the Minister argued that he was working within a fixed financial envelope and that he just could not maintain the existing rates for disabled children if he was going to increase the rates for severely disabled adults. If ever there was an example of robbing poor Peter to pay poor Paul, this would be it. Surely the Chancellor is able to release his noble friend the Minister from this part of his restrictive envelope and find the money from the shoulders of people who would not notice the loss of £1,400 a year. We know that there are many of them; we read of them daily in our newspaper headlines.

Does the Prime Minister really wish to leave this as his legacy for disabled children—children with cerebral palsy? I urge your Lordships to support the amendment and send a message to the Commons to think again.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

I gather that we are being asked not to rehearse all the arguments. We have, anyway, heard very full arguments from the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Wilkins. I shall try instead to concentrate on the amendment.

No one likes cliff edges of any sort in the benefits system, and this amendment tries to make one edge less steep over time. The cliff edge that the Government are trying to eliminate in universal credit is the amount of disability additions received, by way of different gateways, by new claimant families for a moderately disabled child under 16 and a moderately disabled adult of 16 and over. The amendment’s cliff edge is different. It tries to address the difficult and sometimes rather artificial differences between the needs of a severely disabled child—whose family will get more money under the Bill—and those of a moderately disabled child and a much less disabled child, both of whose families will get much less money. I have great sympathy with the amendment because I believe that as many families as possible with even moderately disabled children should be helped, although I acknowledge that the amendment, narrowly drawn as it is, to some extent preserves the cliff edge between the disability needs of children and adults in universal credit which the Government are trying to eliminate.

The question is whether the formula in the amendment should be locked into the Bill, or whether everything should be left to regulations. My noble friend Lord German will address that shortly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we have spent a lot of time on child poverty, and the IFS projections do not take account of quite a few matters. They certainly do not take account of any change in government policy. Child poverty, to people’s surprise generally, actually went down last year, and it is projected to go down this year. What happens in future will depend on how we respond. I should point out to the noble Lord that the IFS had some very positive things to say about the impact of universal credit on child poverty, and it has pointed out the impact that universal credit will have as it goes in the direction that he and indeed I want to see.

Let me go through some of the figures on what happens under universal credit for a parent with a disabled child who works 20 hours a week on minimum wage. That parent, and that family unit, is likely to be £73 a week better off in work under universal credit, compared with £13 in the present system under tax credits. There are some 30,000 more families with a disabled child in work than out of work, so that extra money is being targeted pretty effectively.

Let me remind noble Lords again about the figures for the support that we are providing. Under universal credit, an out-of-work family with a disabled child can receive just over £8,000 a year in benefits for its child after introduction of universal credit, compared with just over £4,000 for an out-of-work family with a non-disabled child and around £1,000 for a family that receives only child benefit.

[Baroness Wilkins]

The Minister said that those children will receive £8,000. They are receiving £9,500 under the current rules.

[Lord Freud]

The figure that we have on the average amount is £8,800. There is a 5 per cent difference in the overall package for that family under universal credit. Those are the figures that we have worked out for the average. Taken overall, it is a small decline, and clearly there is a substantial incentive for the family to look at work. Work becomes much more attractive. Even a few hours of work under universal credit becomes attractive in a way that is completely impossible today.