Benefit Sanctions

Corri Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Corri Wilson (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries.

The UK Government brought in the sanctions regime to tackle the perceived culture of worklessness, which they used to justify the introduction of sanctions and conditionality as measures to change people’s behaviour and to incentivise people to find work. However, as I have recently been involved in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill Committee and listened to many hours of evidence from stakeholders, I know it is widely accepted, except perhaps by this Tory Government, that sanctions have a negative impact on people and our society. They are linked to poverty, homelessness, debt, stress, anxiety and mental health deterioration.

Recent studies suggest that the Government’s introduction of sanctions on JSA claimants has led to a significant rise in the number of people leaving unemployment benefits, but, as has already been mentioned, they are not returning to work. After June 2011 an estimated 43% of people who received sanctions went on to leave JSA altogether. As my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) mentioned, less than 20% of that group are recorded as having found employment.

Sanctions do not appear to help people return to work; they appear to help people slide out of view, and that in itself has huge implications for the welfare system. Despite a number of groups highlighting that, there has still been no comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of sanctioning, looking not just in narrow terms of unemployment benefits but at the bigger picture of health, homelessness and other social costs.

Sanctions come from a black and white place where people need to be punished for not doing as they are told. However, as we all know, life is not that straightforward. How can someone battling mental health or addiction who, owing to their chaotic lifestyle, misses an appointment be expected to respond to sanctions that ultimately plunge them into greater chaos?

The welfare system was designed to be a safeguard to help and support people in a time of need, yet that safety net has been ripped from under many people’s feet, leaving them vulnerable, in extreme hardship and in some cases at very real risk. Both Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have said that sanctions are responsible for a significant increase in homelessness and rough sleeping. According to Quarriers, one in three homeless young people has been sanctioned.

Having worked in the Department for Work and Pensions for 20 years, I know that staff are in an impossible position when implementing these regimes. They often take the brunt of the claimants’ frustration and anger at the system. When I worked there, sanctions were used in extreme cases. They have their place, but a decision to impose them was not taken lightly. However, it seems that they are now the norm, leaving people destitute.

According to the Money Advice Service, a fifth of adults in the UK are over-indebted. In my constituency, 22% of people have reported being at least three months behind with their bills. Almost a third of them have a household income below £15,000 and rely on state benefits. Imposing sanctions, even for a short time, can throw hard-up families into arrears on rent and household bills that can take them months or even years to recover from. It could be argued that hardship payments are available, but people need to jump through hoops to get them and they are stripped of their dignity in the process.

People on universal credit have to pay back their hardship payments at a rate of 40% of benefits: the same amount by which hardship payments are less than benefits. In essence, universal credit sanctions last 3.5 times longer than their nominal length. These people do not need a brutal sanctions regime; they need a fairs day’s work for a fair day’s pay. People do not want to be on benefits. They want to be safe, have a roof over their head and food in their belly and to have some money in their pocket to spend. Austerity measures mean cuts, cuts and more cuts, with less spending resulting in fewer jobs.

The answer is to take measures to increase employment and grow the economy and then allow the DWP to revert to supporting people into employment, addressing the barriers to that and allowing staff to do their jobs. The key to doing that successfully is a positive relationship between the DWP adviser and the claimant, with the adviser having the autonomy and resources to address barriers to work.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Eighth sitting)

Corri Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

All right. We move on.

Clause 15

Universal credit: work-related requirements

[Corri Wilson (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)]

I beg to move amendment 57, in clause 15,  page 14,  line 31, leave out paragraph (a).

This amendment would keep the “work-focused interview requirement only” for responsible carers of children aged one and two.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 62, in clause 15, page 14, line 31, leave out paragraphs (a) to (c) and insert—

“(a) in section 19(2)(c) for the words “under the age of 1” substitute “who has not yet started primary school;”.

This amendment, taken together with amendment 63, would mean claimants in receipt of universal credit who are responsible carers are not subject to work focused interviews or work preparation requirements until their child starts school. From when a child starts school, relevant claimants would be required to follow all work requirements.

Amendment 58, in clause 15, page 14, line 36, after “2,”, insert “3 or 4”.

This amendment would retain the current position for responsible carers of children aged three and four.

Amendment 59, in clause 15, page 14, line 37, leave out paragraph (c).

This amendment would retain the current position for responsible carers of children aged three and four.

Amendment 60, in clause 15, page 14, line 40, leave out paragraph (a).

This amendment would keep the current prescribed age of three years in universal credit regulations on the “work-focused interview requirement” for responsible carers of children in receipt of universal credit.

Amendment 63, in clause 15, page 14, line 40, leave out paragraphs (a) and (b) and insert—

“(a) in regulation 91 (claimants subject to work-focused interview requirement only), for the word “3” substitute “5 or when the child starts primary school”;

(b) in regulation 91A (claimants subject to work preparation requirement) for the words “3 or 4” substitute “who has not yet started primary school”;”.

This amendment, taken together with amendment 62, would mean claimants in receipt of universal credit who are responsible carers are not subject to work focused interviews or work preparation requirements until their child starts school. From when a child starts school, relevant claimants would be required to follow all work requirements.

Amendment 61, in clause 15, page 14, line 42, leave out paragraph (b).ww

This amendment would keep the current age of child (which is three or four) in universal credit regulations on the work-preparation requirement for responsible carers of children in receipt of universal credit.

Amendment 140, in clause 15, page 14, line 38, at end insert—

“(d) in section 22(1) after “section” insert “, except if the claimant is the responsible carer of a disabled child aged 3 or 4.

(1B) The Secretary of State must lay regulations determining what a disabled child is for the purpose of this section and may include, but will not be limited to a child—

(a) in receipt of an Education, Health and Care Plan,

(b) in receipt of a Statement of Special Educational Needs,

(c) identified by their local authority as having special educational needs,

(d) with child in need status,

(e) meeting the definition of disabled under the Equality Act 2010.”

To exempt a responsible carer of a disabled child aged 3 or 4 from all work-related requirements.

[Corri Wilson]

The Scottish National party has tabled the amendments to mitigate the changes and to take the pressure off responsible carers with very young children who receive universal credit. Currently, lone parents need attend work-focused interviews or work-related activity only when their children are between the ages of one and five, rather than having to actively seek work. The clause will mean that all parents will be expected to be available for and actively seeking work by the time their youngest child turns three in order to claim universal credit. We wish to stop those changes to the work-related requirements as well as roll back the work-related requirement for responsible carers set out in the Welfare Reform Act 2012.

Amendment 57 would ensure that the work-focused interview requirement for responsible carers of children aged two and three would remain unchanged. Amendments 58 and 59 would remove the changes to the work-preparation requirement. Amendments 60 and 61 would remove the changes to the work-focused interview requirement and the work-preparation interview requirement. Amendments 62 and 63 would amend the Welfare Reform Act so that claimants would be subject to no work-related requirements until their child begins attending school.

A child’s most critical and vulnerable years should be based on a foundation of support and love, which can make all the difference to a child’s confidence and educational attainment in later life, not to mention the benefits of family and social cohesion. Forcing a parent to spend more time looking for work means they have no choice if they want to spend more time with the child in its formative years. Where most parents are keen to return to work and to maximise their income, the provision will deprive parents of the choice of what is best for their child in the crucial early years of their development. Forcing parents to return to work before they are ready can be counterproductive and lead to financial instability as parents move in and out of work. That may lead to undue stress on parents, causing them to struggle with balancing work and the care of their young child.

Increasing conditionality for universal credit is simply another ideological crusade against those who are in genuine need of welfare support. It is, of course, not ideal for an individual to be receiving benefits, but for many it is nevertheless essential and can mean the difference between independence and absolute poverty. The stricter conditionality requirements contribute to making life intolerable for benefit claimants. In effect, it condemns the lives of those on the benefits that enable them to live independently, such as severely disabled people.

The extra requirements will bring with them an increased risk of claimants incurring sanctions. The effect of benefit sanctions are bad enough on individual benefit claimants, but increasing conditionality for responsible carers, which puts them at further risk of incurring sanctions, will have the knock-on effect of condemning the children they care for.

Carers UK has expressed concern over the effects of the clause on responsible carers of disabled children, partly due to the documented lack of childcare for disabled children. Carers of children in receipt of the higher or middle rate care component of disability living allowance are exempt from the requirements, but that does not protect carers of very young children with disabilities when there are difficulties in identifying them in the early years.

It is imperative that lone parents and responsible carers are supported back into work, but not forced or sanctioned while their young child needs their support at home. The difficulties that present themselves—accessing affordable childcare, finding suitable support for a child or finding a stable job that allows a parent to have the time needed with a young child—are huge. The everyday challenges that face working families and young parents are not as black and white as the Government would have us believe. I therefore urge all Members to unite today with the SNP to remove the harsh conditionality elements placed on parents while their children are young and effectively just babies.

[Emily Thornberry]

May I comment briefly on the SNP’s amendments? Although I applaud the sentiment behind them, and if they are pressed to a vote, the hon. Lady can rely on our support, I want to put on record that it is not completely unconditional. The reality of life within jobcentres, unfortunately—it should not be like this—is that jobcentres have to be told that their job is to get particular groups of people into work. A constituent of mine came to see me and said, “My son is four. I would like to go back to work, but when I go to the jobcentre they don’t give me any help.” We should not need to choose between the extreme proposed by the Government and nothing. It should be possible to make jobcentres know that their primary job is not just to get people off jobseeker’s allowance at all costs and to sort out the statistics as best they can, but to ensure that they are sufficiently adaptable and flexible to help people who genuinely want to work to get into work, even if it means not fulfilling a target.

There will be people—particularly single women—who want help at an early stage, perhaps because their mum lives next door and they have good childcare, or perhaps because they have a skill level that will allow them to get work relatively easily with a bit of help from the jobcentre. They should not feel that the jobcentre believes it should not look after them because they are not part of the targets. I put in that caveat because the real world is not black and white; there are people in between who may be lost by the amendments. However, that is not to say that in principle we will not support the SNP’s amendments.

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[Priti Patel]

First, we have to ensure that the provision is in place, which is part of the wider childcare offering, and work is taking place through the Childcare Bill, including on delivery. Importantly, this is about working with the parents of disabled children. We have to look at individual cases to ensure that support is tailored for them. There should never be a one-size-fits-all policy—we all recognise that—so through Jobcentre Plus and our work coaches we will look at all the relevant circumstances of the individuals.

I urge the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock to withdraw the amendment.

[Corri Wilson]

I was interested in the view of the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury on the jobcentre system. I worked in the Department for Work and Pensions for 20 years, and my experience is that jobcentre staff work incredibly hard to get claimants into work. The main reason that claimants cannot get off benefits seems to be that suitable jobs are not out there. Year after year, staff’s flexibility and autonomy have been diminished. Staff are tied up with sanctions regimes, at the expense of a focus on clients and getting them back into work. That is one of the reasons why we want more powers in Scotland, so that we can take control of our economy to boost economic levers that will help grow our economy and create jobs to get people off benefits. Universal credit conditionality and changes for carers will put an unacceptable and unnecessary pressure on families. We will therefore press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Fifth sitting)

Corri Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Kate Green]

I have no objection or disagreement with the Minister on the importance of addressing social mobility and looking at the drivers of improved social mobility. She simply must accept that around the world the compelling evidence of the importance of income poverty to all other outcomes is unquestioned. This Government will set their face against both that international evidence and their own understanding in 2010.

[Corri Wilson (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)]

Under the Bill, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission will be renamed the Social Mobility Commission, with a much narrower remit. It will report on progress made towards improving social mobility in the UK, as well as in England.

The Bill is designed to have a limited impact on the current duties of the devolved Administrations. Scotland will continue to be required to produce a child poverty strategy under a duty in a UK Act. Clearly, we will no longer be statutorily bound to report on the income targets, as they are being removed.

Removing income as a measure of poverty ignores the fact that low income impacts on children’s development and wellbeing, including their development in education and their cognitive ability, behaviour and anxiety levels. Child poverty rates that had previously fallen at the beginning of the century are now at risk of being reversed. The IFS projection is that absolute poverty will stand at 3.5 million children before housing costs and 4.7 million after by 2020.

Although worklessness and lack of access to employment are key drivers of poverty, there is no recognition of in-work poverty. Therefore, income has also to be included to ensure the other measures are meaningful and that there is a tangible benchmark. How can this or any Government tackle child poverty if they do not even recognise it exists? The child poverty measurement framework recognises the importance of measuring poverty in consultation with stakeholders such as the Child Poverty Action Group, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Save the Children. It looked at the wide range of factors that can lead to poverty as well as providing an understanding of the impacts of poverty on children and their families.

In addition, the Scottish Government have an ambitious and robust child poverty strategy and host a ministerial advisory group on child poverty, which includes stakeholders from a variety of sectors. On 23 June 2015, Nicola Sturgeon appointed a new, independent adviser on poverty and inequality to help the Scottish Government’s—

[The Chair]

Order. I am trying to be helpful to the hon. Lady; she is going a bit wide of the amendment. Would she come back to the amendment moved by Kate Green?

[Corri Wilson]

The Scottish Government will investigate a Scottish approach, building on wide support for the poverty measurement framework. We will support Labour to stop the proposals and ensure that the most vulnerable in society are protected.

[Kate Green]

I believe that we will have the opportunity to return to the matter on clause 6, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

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[Kate Green]

We are certainly not going to reach them under the Government’s current policies; indeed, we will move further away from them. I share the hon. Lady’s scepticism about the Government’s motives, to put it gently. It is really regrettable that, rather than seeking to tackle the problem of poverty, they simply seek to remove it altogether from any understanding of the public policy world.

I hope that the Committee understands that the critique of the Child Poverty Act and its measures and targets as being somehow deficient is completely false. It is also important to understand that the measures the Government proclaim will address poverty are also false, or at least incomplete. As I said earlier this morning, the so-called national living wage will not fully compensate for cuts to benefits and tax credits. What is more, it is highly regrettable that the Government, who are fond of the argument that tax credits are simply a substitute for lower wages, fail to recognise the different functions of pay and tax credits. It is why we have a complex cocktail of policy responses to a set of different drivers of poverty.

Working tax credits compensate for low pay. That means that in households where a family member is low paid, they may derive some benefit from tax credits. Some low-paid people will not do so because they are not in low-paid households; they are the low-paid earner in a household with a high overall household income. So tax credits are a response to low pay, and they help households that suffer low income as a result of low pay to avoid the adverse effects of that low pay.

We should also recognise that the purpose of tax credits for children is not to compensate for low pay or to subsidise employers. It is about sharing among society as a whole the investment that we all have a duty, and indeed an interest, in making in the next generation, who will deliver the future productivity in our economy that will sustain us as we grow old.

We should also remember that while rising pay and an increase in the so-called national living wage are welcome, the national living wage would have to rise very substantially for parents who have no access to any other sources of income—to more than £13 an hour—before their children were lifted out of poverty. Tax credits meet that gap. If it is to be filled entirely by rising wages, that is likely to lead to substantial numbers of job losses, which Ministers would be rightly concerned about.

It is also said that the Child Poverty Act and the measures therein are deficient, because they only look at money. While I strongly contend that money is important, that is also an incorrect analysis of the provisions of the Child Poverty Act. On Second Reading, I particularly sought to draw the House’s attention to that point when I highlighted the fact that written into the Child Poverty Act is a requirement for strategies in relation to child health, children’s education, parental employment, debt—a subject of interest to Government Members—and parenting. Those are all associated with child poverty and provided for in the Child Poverty Act, but they sit alongside the provisions of the Act in relation to measuring relative income poverty and targets for it. They are not the same thing or a substitute.

I am concerned and disappointed by the provisions of clause 6. The clause is cynical and distressing and cheapens the United Kingdom in the eyes of the international community. Most importantly, it means that many of our poor children are at risk of becoming poorer, unobserved. I am frankly shocked at the brazenness of the clause.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar is unable to do so today, with the permission of the Committee I will speak briefly to amendment 97, which was tabled in her name. It addresses the concern that the hon. Member for Livingston pointed out a few moments ago relating to the Government not being on track to meet the 2020 target to eradicate child poverty. That is right, but as Alison Garnham pointed out to us in her oral evidence earlier this week, the Government would not have been completely unable to reach the target in due course. Let us remember that the target, as Ms Garnham pointed out to us, is not to reach zero poverty. A frictional level of poverty will always exist. Families move in and out of poverty, but it might not be sustained if, for example, they quickly return to work. We accept that a reasonable definition of the eradication of child poverty was to reach the best level in Europe—around 10%—which is a realistic target.

The amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar suggests that the target could be reasonably met by 2030, based on the trajectory that we were on before the measures in the summer Budget and the Bill. The argument for keeping the target but extending it over a realistic period is interesting. We are naturally disappointed that, for another 10 years, too many children will grow up poor, but we would rather that we retained the measure and the target in the statute book at least to ensure that there was a mechanism to drive progress forward.

My hon. Friend’s amendment is good, and seeks to give the Government leeway to deal with the difficult challenges that have existed since the 2008 financial crash and with the fact that pay either fell or was frozen in order to sustain people in employment. We recognise that time must be bought to cope with the consequences of the world financial collapse, but it is not right to give up the ambition for this generation or for future generations of children. We want the target to remain on the statute book, and amendment 97 seeks a realistic end date for that target.

Amendment 10 is similar to amendment 9 and merely addresses the same point elsewhere in the Bill.

As many hon. Members will know, I worked for the Child Poverty Action Group before I was elected to the House in 2010, and of all the measures in the Bill this is probably the one that I feel most pained, outraged and angered by. It is a disgrace. It is a disgrace and a shame that will affect our children, and I hope the Government will think again before it is too late.

[Corri Wilson]

I am conscious of the time, so I just want to pick out a few reasons why the SNP oppose the changes. The loss of income targets means that a fundamental driver of poverty—how much money a person has in their pocket—is essentially being deprioritised. Focusing on worklessness ignores the 67% of UK children in poverty who live in a household in which one or more adults are working. That is in-work poverty.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Sixth sitting)

Corri Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

If the Government are so confident that the policies are in line with our obligations under the treaty, I am sure that they will have no problem at all taking into account reports from the Children’s Commissioners of England, Scotland and Wales on the impact of the benefit caps on the wellbeing of children. If they do have a problem with that, it would be interesting to hear why.

[Corri Wilson (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)]

The amendments in this group are intended to limit the scope of the Secretary of State’s power to adjust what is, and what is not, in the review, to ensure that the Government review the impact on disabled people and carers as well as using reports from important organisations tasked with children’s rights on the impact of the cap.

Amendment 94 would require the Secretary of State to consider the impact of the cap on disabled people and carers, because the impact assessment that accompanies the Bill contains no detail about the possible impact on disabled people who are not in receipt of disability living allowance or personal independence payment. We support the amendment, because it would ensure that the Government carry out further assessment of the impact on disabled people, carers and their families.

The disability benefits consortium has called for the Government to review the impact prior to the lowering of the cap. Those on disability benefits face daily struggles with their health, mobility and wellbeing, and the last thing they need is the prospect of financial hardship, too. I do not believe that anyone chooses to be on benefits, but for those with disabilities, they can be a lifeline, and the means to a better quality of life and independence. Many carers also face daily struggles to make ends meet, as a result of the additional costs of caring combined with the loss of income from giving up work or reducing working hours. What assessment have the Government made of the number of families who will no longer be able to care as a result of the lowering of the cap?

Amendment 73 would remove the provision allowing the Secretary of State to set the cap by reference to any other matters that he considers relevant. Clause 8 does not provide enough assurance that the Government will review the benefits cap with all due process and consideration. The national economic situation and “any other matters” are not exactly the building blocks of a robust and watertight reporting obligation on a matter that establishes the income of hundreds of thousands of people. These factors are too broad to be meaningful, and they run the risk of decision making that is based on political expediency rather than need for some of the most vulnerable households in our community.

We support amendment 13, because the Social Security Advisory Committee would be looking closely at the impact of the changes in the welfare system. Amendment 14 would require the Social Security Advisory Committee to report annually on the level of benefits, and to include an assessment of the impact of the cap on discretionary housing payment, which bridges the gaps that low-income families face because of welfare changes. We support the amendment, because it would ensure close monitoring of the impact of the cap on housing for families across the UK.

The DWP estimates that as many as 90,000 additional households across the UK are subject to the new cap, and vulnerable households, despite already being deemed to be in need of state support, could have their housing benefit substantially reduced even though they do not live in areas considered atypically expensive. Such a policy needlessly risks causing homelessness. Those affected by the cap will increasingly be ordinary-sized families in average-priced areas, who are simply struggling to make ends meet. The new cap will move those families closer to losing their homes.

We welcome amendment 105, which relates to the need for any reports on the impact of the benefit cap on children to be considered in the review of the benefit cap. With 210,000 children in Scotland living in relative poverty after housing costs, we must ensure that any review carried out by the Tory Government looks closely at the impact felt in Scotland by many families and their children. The Child Poverty Action Group has estimated that Scotland’s child poverty rate will increase by up to 100,000 by 2020 as a direct result of the UK Government’s tax and benefit policies. There is real concern that the further reduction of the benefit cap will compromise the wellbeing of more children as housing security is threatened, school life is disrupted and community links are broken. To date, twice as many children have been hurt by the current cap than adults. We do not support the benefit cap as it will cause increased hardship for people and we believe that the legislation does not come close to providing protection for our children from poverty.

[Priti Patel]

The clause introduces new provisions for how the Secretary of State should review the level of the cap in future and what factors he needs to take into account when undertaking such a review. The Bill prescribes that, when reviewing the level of the benefit cap, the Secretary of State must take into account the national economic situation. It also allows him to take into account any other matter he might consider relevant. The amendments would introduce a number of additional specific factors that the Secretary of State would have to take into account when undertaking that review.

On amendment 94, in the course of the debate we touched on specific aspects of support for disabled people and carers. We are mindful of the impacts of policies on those vulnerable groups, and I outlined some of the support in particular that the welfare system continues to provide to protect the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. I remind the Committee that there are exemptions from the cap for households where there is a claimant in receipt of DLA, PIP, attendance allowance or the support component of ESA. I will follow up some of the points made by the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark and drop him a line.

Amendment 73 would require the Secretary of State, when reviewing the level of the benefit cap, to take into account the national economic situation and add average earnings, regional variations and the cost of housing. It would also omit the provision that allows him to take into account any other matters that he considers relevant. I think it is fair to say that the proposed powers drawn up are broad, but we do not think it is possible to stipulate in advance the specific economic factors and developments most suitable to set the appropriate level for the cap at the time the review is undertaken.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (First sitting)

Corri Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Amanda Milling]

Q 11 I will try to do them all together. There is awareness and understanding of the benefits of apprenticeships to both the employer and apprentice. In the previous Parliament, I was pleased to see levels of satisfaction on both parts being really high. I am keen to know what we can do collectively to continue to build satisfaction among apprentices themselves and also among employers. If the employers have a great experience, they will take on more apprentices, and they will become their future workforce. Many of the people I meet when I am out and about started out as apprentices, so you can see the long-term benefits to the economy. This question is to Rebecca and Marcus.

Rebecca Plant: I think there is a fundamental piece missing in the chain, which is an apprenticeship charter. How do you make sure that a young person and a parent know what they are actually signing up to? Has it got a full-time job at the end? Measuring quality in that way and raising awareness of apprenticeships—there needs to be a formal agreement between the parent or guardian and the employer, to understand what they are taking on.

There is a big nut to be cracked with the SME market. I think they can take more apprentices, but how do we create an on-boarding ramp to make it easy for people to consume apprenticeships? When they are in, everybody loves them, but it is that scary thought: “How am I going to do this?” Sorry, I didn’t really answer your question.

Marcus Mason: In terms of satisfaction, we still hear from businesses that, ultimately, they feel some apprenticeships just do not fit their needs and are not flexible enough—there needs to be more control over design, and through the Trailblazers we have seen some of that. I would encourage the Government to look at how you can involve more SMEs in that as well, because I think the Trailblazers have been dominated, by and large, by bigger employers. It is great that they are designing apprenticeship programmes that fit the work for them. Sometimes, businesses and their supply chain raise concerns about some of the standards being set, because they do not fit their small and medium-sized business environment.

[Corri Wilson (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)]

Q 12 My question is for Marcus. On the Conservative manifesto commitment to halve the disability gap, there is a huge difference between wanting to go back to work and being physically and mentally able to. Is there a disparity between the commitment and the actual opportunities that are out there?

Marcus Mason: To be honest, that is not something we have consulted our members on much, so I am probably not best placed to answer.

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[The Chair]

We are going into the last five minutes of the session.

[Corri Wilson]

Q 21 My question is to David. With increased conditionality, there are likely to be more sanctions. Would you foresee any additional cost to the Government as a result of this?

David Holmes: I do have a general concern. One of the great things about the troubled families programme is that it enables a holistic approach to be taken to working with families. In the broader context of the Bill, we also have to be holistic about Government policy, and we need to be careful to ensure that if we are working with troubled families to try to improve their lives, we don’t have changes to welfare legislation that impact negatively on those same families, without being very conscious that that is the course that we want to take.

[Jo Churchill]

Q 22 My question is to Geoff. Did you extrapolate any of the findings out? I like the programme—it has huge benefit for these families—but one of the evidence-based things that I drew from it was about those people who you could get into either volunteering or work, because it is that construct that is valuable. One of the unforeseen consequences, which to me was brilliant looking forward, was that school attendance improved hugely, and then you start to break a cycle. So are we looking at any further reporting like that, which obviously has long-term effects on positive results in the job market going forward?

Geoff Little: We have been measuring families through this programme for over five years now. We started by measuring people’s progress 12 months before they came on to our programme, and then 12 months afterwards. We have been doing that year on year for five years now, so we have a body of very robust evidence, and that tells us that, yes, there are sustained changes in people’s lives here. This is not a quick fix; the problems that people have take decades, sometimes generations, to develop. You are not going to turn that round in a 12-month, quick-fix, dip-in dip-out programme. You have got to do this in a sustained way and understand how the place impacts on the family as well. Seeing how it can impact on a family who may have all kinds of complex problems but who live in a relatively affluent area is a different task than dealing with the same type of family, with the same type of problems, but who are surrounded by families who also have complex problems.

The context absolutely matters, and I think we can measure the impact in different types of places. Then, the key thing for me is that you have to respond in an appropriate way for the appropriate place, and I think the programme allows us to do that, because what we are reporting on is outcomes in the place as a whole, and not simply family by family.

The important thing for me is that the reporting programme that we are being asked to comply with asks for no more information than we are already providing, so it is not an extra burden. It asks us to provide information on a cross-cutting basis. It is not about whether you are getting work outcomes, or school attendance outcomes, or domestic violence outcomes. You report on the outcomes in the round, and I think that is so different from the normal reporting on individual requirements to individual Departments of State, backed by an individual inspectorate, which simply leads you to front-line staff behaving accordingly. I think that this cross-cutting reporting changes the way people behave.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q 28 We know that we have high levels of poverty in working families, and the most recent statistics from DWP show that 64% of children growing up in poverty have at least one working parent. Given that, are you concerned that reporting solely on children who are in workless families will not give a true picture of child poverty in the UK?

Neera Sharma: Yes, Barnardo’s is very concerned. We should also report on children who are growing up in working families. That is why it is imperative that an income measure is retained.

[Corri Wilson]

Q 29 To follow on from what Hannah was saying, given that the child poverty targets were unlikely to have been met, would it have been better to delay the targets instead of removing them?

Neera Sharma: Yes, the Government could have taken the opportunity to look at the timing and set interim measures and looked at the direction into the future instead of looking at abolishing them completely.

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

Q 30 I want to move on to the changes in the Bill on conditionality for universal credit. I will be interested to hear your views on the impact that that will have. In particular, will you address whether you think any negative impacts that those changes might have will be to some extent mitigated by the changes to free childcare, with the Government’s proposal to double childcare to 30 hours a week? Is there a balance between the two?

Neera Sharma: We welcome the doubling of free childcare for families, which will help many parents to enter the labour market and progress with their careers. But we have a number of concerns, and one of those is around timing. The childcare Bill will come into force in September 2016, but the greater conditionality—full conditionality for parents of children aged three and four—starts in April 2016, so there is a six-month gap. In Scotland, the childcare provision will not take place until 2019, so there is a bigger issue for devolved nations.

We are concerned that there are timing issues. We are also concerned that the Government should look at what that 30 hours of childcare translates into: that it is available locally and appropriate, and that it meets the needs of vulnerable families—for example, parents who have got disabled children. Our services are telling us that it is difficult for parents in rural areas, parents who are vulnerable and parents with disabled children to access that childcare at the moment.

During the summer, and more recently, providers have also raised the issue of sufficiency and how they are going to meet the demand. For example, the National Association of Head Teachers conducted a survey over the summer, and two thirds of respondents said that they could not meet the extra demand, that they would have to reduce places by 25% to 50% and that that is going to be quite challenging. We are concerned about those points. There are childcare issues that need to be addressed in terms of timing and capacity on the ground.

Emma Stewart: From our perspective, we are concerned about the kind of jobs that are going to be available for low-income parents. We are also concerned about the kind of support that is going be available to address their specific needs in the labour market. There is conditionality for people who are out of work and there is conditionality for people who are in work, and in-work conditionality is relatively untested. Our anxiety is that it is going to be rolled out incredibly quickly, and DWP trials are not necessarily rolling out to test how it will work in time, with the introduction of universal credit nationally.

In terms of support and jobs, we work with very low-income women across London, and our experience is that the flexibilities that were available under lone parent obligations are being withdrawn. On the ground, the experience in relation to UC is going to be that, if you are in work, to move out of conditionality, effectively, you need to be earning the minimum wage in a full-time job. We know that a significant proportion of lone parents can’t have, choose not to have, and, ideally, do not want a full-time job; they want a job that is flexible to fit around their caring responsibilities. That equates, effectively, to a 22-hour-a-week job at £10 or £12 an hour.

The challenge in the jobs market, as it stands at the moment, is that there are very few quality flexible jobs available for parents to move into, so they are going to face impossible choices. Without some form of front-line support from Jobcentre Plus providers and Work programme providers, they are going to be faced with a very difficult choice: either go and work full time, which, when you consider housing, childcare and the taper rates that are being proposed, will not be considerably better for them, and they will be with their children less; or move into a part-time job, but the issue is that only 6% of vacancies available in the jobs market at the moment that offer a level of quality in terms of living standards have some element of flexibility from day one. So parents are fishing in a tiny pool.

So the issue is around having tailored support and brokerage on behalf of candidates who need flexibility through the mainstream system in relation to employers, as well as a recognition that there are bigger structural issues in the labour market that DWP needs to be talking to BIS about. That is really important.