Single-Parent Families

Debate between David Linden and Amy Callaghan

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[David Linden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely spot on; it is about how devolved powers are used. I will come on to that and the question of what devolution is for, but she is right to praise the Scottish child payment. It is something on which we have managed to get cross-party consensus. One of the few things that I have enjoyed about the SNP leadership debate, which has been absolutely terrible in my view, has been watching the candidates try to outbid each other on the Scottish child payment. That is a good thing; we should always strive to do more to protect families and children. The fact that it is so much the focus of that debate can only be a good thing. It has been a ray of light in what has been an otherwise dreary contest.

We know that inflation disproportionately impacts low-income groups such as single parents, who spend a relatively high proportion of their income on food and fuel. According to the Resolution Foundation, the poorest tenth of households experienced an inflation rate of 11.7%. It is against that worrying backdrop that I remain concerned about the British Government’s approach to social security. I do not want to be churlish; of course, any additional support is welcome, but these kinds of one-off payments are only a temporary fix. Permanent solutions are needed. Rather than offering one-off payments to shore up the incomes of struggling families, the Government should reverse the damaging long-term policies that are impacting the most vulnerable. That is why I will not tire of calling on the Government to reinstate the universal credit uplift, and, indeed, to increase it to £25 a year and extend it to all means-tested legacy benefits.

At 1 o’clock, the APPG on poverty took evidence from the Disability Benefits Consortium and we remained baffled as to why the 2.5 million disabled people on these islands were completely overlooked and forgotten during the pandemic when that £20 uplift was put in place. Ministers need to go further than that. They need to scrap the benefit cap entirely and get rid of the immoral and heartless two-child limit, which is utterly incompatible with the Government’s own family test. In this place, we rightly talk about the importance of a compassionate society—even the Conservatives. There is this thing, I believe, called compassionate conservatism. I do not know how a two-child limit is in any way compatible with compassionate conservatism.

[Amy Callaghan]

Does my hon. Friend consider that the rape clause and the benefit cap do not align with their vision of a compassionate society at all?

[David Linden]

Exactly. Quite rightly, my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire should not be sparing the blushes of the Conservatives, who are mandated to turn up to this debate—that is why there are two of them here. The reality is that there cannot be a compassionate social security system when there is this arbitrary cap in place that takes no cognisance of the cost of living. It is not compatible with a compassionate society to turn around and say, “We’ll pay for the first two children, but, by the way, do you see that third one? Out on their ear.” It certainly is not compatible with a compassionate society to turn around to women who have experienced rape and sexual violence and conceived a child as a result and say, “Okay. You have told us that this third child was born as a result of rape. Can you prove that?” That is my question to the two Conservatives who are here. Perhaps that is a problem; that got through the policy process. Was it two white men sitting there thinking, “This policy is absolutely fine”? I can tell the House that the women I speak to at Glasgow East Women’s Aid in my constituency are appalled that, years and years on, we have the abhorrent rape clause.  I know that Ministers find this issue incredibly uncomfortable, and they often tell me, “Don’t refer to it as a rape clause.” They want to refer to it by its official name, which is the non-consensual sex exemption. Let us just think about that for a minute: in 2023, the state asks women in this country to prove that they have been raped, simply so they can get state support. It really should shame the Government.

Some 86% of households trapped by the benefit cap are families, often headed by single mothers—the very people we are debating today—and it is the Government’s job to support families, not to subject them to further hardship. The Minister and the Government can and must do better. They should take heed of the wise words of John Dickie of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, who calls for the

“cruel and irrational benefit cap…to be scrapped at source by the UK Government as a matter of utmost urgency.”

Those are not my words as a nasty, nationalist MP. They are the words of John Dickie of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland—somebody who is a respected expert in this field—and the Minister would do well to reflect on that.

The continued refusal of Ministers to fix the extensive and known problems with universal credit is unacceptable, and it is clearly subjecting vulnerable people to wholly unnecessary hardship. Even more damning is the fact that this hardship has been noted outwith these islands. The Government like to fly around the world—it was San Diego yesterday—on Union Jack-clad private jets and talk about the importance of global Britain, but let us look at global Britain. A recent report from the Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) is a member, found that the level of support provided under universal credit was a key contributing factor to child poverty. The report, published in November, stated that policies such as the two-child limit and the benefit cap

“restrict the amount of benefits a household can receive, regardless of their specific needs, and thereby continue to exacerbate child poverty.”

In its recent submission to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Human Rights Watch also gives a damning review of the British Government’s restrictive social security policies, such as the two-child limit and the failure to reverse the cut to universal credit, and sets out their negative impact on the right to an adequate standard of living—things such as food and housing for families with children.

I want to refer briefly to the wonderful folks at One Parent Families Scotland, because they have been campaigning for an awfully long time to end the benefits-related discrimination against single parents under the age of 25. People under 25 are entitled to a lower allowance of benefits than those aged 25 or over, but before the introduction of universal credit there was an exemption for single parents in recognition of the costs of caring for a child alone. Now that the exemption has been removed, children are certainly paying the price. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire set out, young single-parent families are now up to £66.13 worse off per month under universal credit compared with the legacy system, which equates to a drop of 20%. Denying young single parents—largely women—the same level of social security penalises children on the basis of their parent’s age and pushes young families into poverty, with an incredibly detrimental impact on their rights and wellbeing. It frustrates me that Scottish Government officials rightly talk about getting things right for every child, yet baked into the social security system is an inherent unfairness.

It is one thing for me to stand here and quote respected committees, international bodies and think-tanks, but I want to highlight some local examples from the east end of Glasgow, which I am incredibly proud to live in and represent. Last week, I was joined in Tollcross by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn). While we were at Tollcross advice centre, Matthew Leach, the financial inclusion officer, told me of several examples—he even provided me with case studies—that highlight the folly of the UK’s current social security system. Time constraints mean that I cannot read them all out, but I will certainly send them to the Minister’s office this afternoon to highlight just how challenging the Government’s policy makes life for single parents in these islands.

As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has said, life is hard enough for everyone right now—the cost of living crisis means that everyone is having to do more with less—but we know from today’s testimony alone that life is particularly hard right now for single parents, and the fact that the British Government are making life harder only adds insult to injury.

In conclusion, Westminster must do better. If it will not, an independent Scottish Government stand ready to step in and fulfil their obligations to families, whatever shape, size or format they come in.

Social Security and Pensions

Debate between David Linden and Amy Callaghan

Monday 6th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[David Linden]

Given the ability of the Government to crash the economy in the mini-Budget by the now elusive right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss)—[Interruption.] Hon. Members have managed to wake up just in time to debate economics. They had nothing to say on food banks or child poverty, but when it comes to money, they are excited. The hon. Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans), who is a parliamentary private secretary, must do better with his interventions if he wants to get into the Government.

Last April, Ministers in Edinburgh called on the British Government to reverse those policy changes. That would have put £780 million into the pockets of Scottish households and it would lift 70,000 people, including 30,000 children, out of poverty in 2023-24.

In its recent submission to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Human Rights Watch also gave a damning review of the British Government’s restrictive social security policies, such as the two-child limit and the failure to reduce the cut to universal credit. It set out the negative impacts on the right to an adequate standard of living, to food, and to housing for families with children. It is a depressing state of affairs that thousands of families with children will be pushed into poverty simply because the British Government refuse to scrap the two-child limit on child tax credits and universal credit. In April 2022, 1.3 million children here in these islands were affected by the two-child limit—that is 8.7%, or one in 12 children—and that number will, sadly, continue to rise as nearly all low-income families with three or more children eventually become subject to the limit.

[Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Conservative Members may jeer from a sedentary position, but they have the poverty of people right across Scotland on their hands?

[David Linden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I understand that political ideology will separate us, but in the five years that I have been a Member of this House I have struggled to get my head around the fact that, while the hon. Gentlemen who do their surgeries on a Friday morning see the same people as we do in our surgeries, who come and say that the social security system is inadequate and has left them in dire straits, there is no conviction to come into this Chamber and say to the Government, perhaps as the hon. Member for Amber Valley has done, that this is wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson). Let me begin by saying that 1.7 million people in Scotland are turning down or turning off their heating as their bills rise. More than 70% of the poorest 20% of families are going without essentials, more than 300,000 Scots are cutting back on toiletries and sanitary products, and 42% of adults in Scotland are showering or bathing less. That is only a snapshot of a very bleak situation. Why is it happening? Because of 13 years of Tory rule. Tories are more interested in inciting a culture war than food on tables in Scotland. Scottish National party Members welcome an inflation-related increase in benefits, but why the delay? Why do our constituents need to wait until April? This should have happened immediately, because energy bills, food prices and mortgages have already risen.

Then there is the benefit cap, a grossly unkind policy that is illustrative of this Government—a Government who have removed the cap on bankers’ bonuses but will not scrap the cap on benefits, which has been frozen since 2016 and which dictates the amount of social security that our constituents can claim: meagre, tiny amounts in comparison with the billions that the Government are playing with. They continue to inflict even more hardship on the most vulnerable of families, 70% of whom are single-parent families. Even a glance at the welfare system over which this Government preside shows that people must bargain to access welfare, and they are bargaining with their dignity.

Let us contrast that with the social security system established by the Scottish Government. They introduced the Scottish child payment, which, despite being a brand-new benefit, has already been increased by 25%. That has brought the payments to £25 a week, a rise of 150% in less than eight months.

[David Linden]

May I point out that the Scottish child payment is not dependent on a family’s having two children, but is per child? Unlike the UK Government and the People’s Republic of China, we care about all children, not just the first two.