Social Security

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

There is, of course, nothing to celebrate here. The Conservative Government are trying to clean up the mess they created, and they are not even getting the job done properly. We have repeatedly called on the Government to scrap the benefit freeze. This uprating is of course welcome, but it appears to be too little, too late. The brutal cuts imposed by the Government have entrenched, and continue to entrench, poverty across these islands. A 1.7% increase in working-age benefits does not make up for the damage caused by the four-year freeze. If austerity was really over, the Government would be making up the shortfall.

Let us look at some of the effects. Overall, benefits and tax credits affected by the four-year freeze will be around 6% lower in 2020-21 than they would have been if CPI indexation had been applied during the four years of the freeze. Taking account of all uprating restrictions across the decade, affected benefits are around 9% lower in 2020-21 than they would have been if CPI indexation had applied since 2010. Child benefit and working tax credit elements are between 13% and 17% lower in 2020-21 than would have been the case if CPI indexation had applied throughout the decade.

The Resolution Foundation estimated that the four-year freeze saved the Government £4.7 billion a year by 2019-20, of which £1.8 billion was attributable to the final year of the freeze, and yet the Treasury forecast at the 2016 Budget that the four-year freeze would achieve an annual saving of £3.5 billion by 2019-20. Just last week, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported:

“The benefit freeze has seen the value of many benefits fall. The same benefit received in 2019 and 2013 is worth around 6% less”.

We have to wonder about that. If austerity was really over, as we are continually told it is, the Government would make up that shortfall.

I am sad to say that there are 1 million people living in poverty in Scotland, and almost one in four of them are children. In 2019, 250,000 children living in one of the world’s richest nations are growing up in poverty. That is nothing short of scandalous. Poverty is not inevitable. People not having enough money to feed and clothe their children is not something that happens by accident. The existence of poverty in a country as rich as ours is a direct consequence of political choices. The decade of austerity was a political choice. Massive long-term cuts to the social security budget were a political choice. The widening of the holes in the social security safety net so that more families and children would fall through was a political choice. The ill-conceived and hopelessly financed introduction of universal credit was a political choice. Making the poorest, weakest and most vulnerable in our society carry the can and bear the brunt of a financial crisis that had nothing to do with them was, of course, a political choice.

There can be no doubt that one of the main drivers of child poverty in these islands has been the Government’s package of welfare reforms, which by any measure has been an abject failure. How else could one describe a package of reforms the result of which is that 65% of all the children who live in poverty come from households in which at least one adult is working? There is no need to take my word for it; the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty said:

“Changes to benefits, and sanctions against parents…are driving the increase in child poverty.”

Some would still have us believe that it will take decades to turn things around and lift children out of poverty, but I do not believe that that is true. There are measures that the UK Government could take right now that would immediately stop children and their families falling into poverty. One of those would be for the Government immediately to stop the roll-out of universal credit, take their time and find the money to fix the major problems in the system, which they are only too well aware of but choose to ignore. There is no doubt that poverty in childhood leads to poverty of hope, aspiration and opportunity. Most movingly, we hear too often of the deep scars that people have in adulthood as a result of child poverty.

[Debbie Abrahams]

On that point, I wonder what the hon. Member thinks of the Citizens Advice proposal that all frozen benefits be uprated not just by CPI, but by CPI plus 2% for the next four years. That would go some way to addressing the appalling imbalance, and the poverty that so many of our children and our disabled people have found themselves in.

[Chris Stephens]

The hon. Lady—my good friend—is right that Citizens Advice has produced an excellent report on this. My local citizens advice bureau bears the brunt of trying to help people fill out forms and navigate their way through the social security system, and I am sure she knows all about that. I hope that the Government will take cognisance of the Citizens Advice report to which she refers.

There is an inescapable and undeniable link between the paucity of affordable rented property in the private rented sector, as we have heard from the shadow Minister, and the increased risk of people becoming homeless simply because they cannot afford to meet the cost of living in private rented accommodation. There is a chasm of difference between what people are expected to pay and what they can afford to pay.

Let us be absolutely clear: this housing crisis—particularly in England—and the rising levels of homelessness and rough sleeping did not happen by accident. There has not been some unforeseen set of circumstances that has led to the number of households living in temporary accommodation in England rising by 60% between 2012 and 2018. No unexpected or unforeseen quirk has led to the number of rough sleepers in England nearly doubling over the past five years. This housing crisis was all too predictable, because just about every stakeholder warned the Government right from the start about the inevitable consequences of pursuing their austerity agenda. When they froze local housing allowance and failed to meet their targets for building social housing, what did they expect to happen other than a rise in homelessness and the number of people sleeping rough on our streets? That is exactly what has happened, so let us call this what it is: a crisis entirely of the Government’s own making.

It is incontestable that the Government’s austerity agenda has had a hugely negative impact on people’s ability to rent private sector accommodation. Research from the Chartered Institute of Housing shows that many LHA rates now fail to cover even the cheapest third of rents, as they were designed to. A survey carried out by the National Housing Federation and the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations found that tenants on universal credit were more than twice as likely as other tenants to be in debt.

There is much more to be done to ensure that we help our fellow citizens escape poverty. I hope that Ministers have seen the two Bills that I presented today, the first of which aims to ensure that people who give up a zero-hours contract job are not subjected to sanctions under universal credit, and the second of which would ensure that the Government would step in to ensure that no one in rent arrears is evicted from their home.