Department for Work and Pensions

Debate between David Linden and Margaret Greenwood

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making such important remarks. Does he agree that the impact of sanctions is detrimental to people’s mental health? We are facing a mental health crisis. If we want to support people getting into work, we need to make sure that they are not struggling on the breadline.

[David Linden]

The hon. Lady is spot on. Sometimes, Ministers overlook when they take those decisions—yes, they might be driven by focus groups and such things—that the state bears the cost. If somebody hits a period of mental ill health or is made homeless, the health service or the local authority will pick up the pieces. It is not without cost for the state. I would like Ministers to have the wider picture as they pursue sanctions, because the research shows that they do not work.

[Margaret Greenwood]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous. Does he agree that the issue of poverty is so concerning for small children because it impacts on the development of the brain and how well they will be able to learn? If a child has a good five years at the start of their life, that will see them through life. So many children in desperate poverty who do not know whether they will get enough food are also in receipt of the anxiety their parents are in, as they battle those stressful situations.

[David Linden]

I am proud that the Scottish Government invest in things such as the best start grant, the baby box and free school meals, to ensure that young people get the best possible start in life. My local authority in Glasgow is spending millions of pounds on holiday hunger programmes, to ensure that children who receive free school meals during school term time are still being fed. It is a damning indictment on the state that we have to spend money from local authority budgets feeding children because their parents do not have enough money. That is the situation we are in, in the fifth richest economy in the world.

Remarkably, as I am sure we will hear when the Minister responds to the debate, Ministers are still forcing more people into the sanctions regime, which further demonstrates the fundamental issue with the British Government’s attitude to those on low incomes: preventing vulnerable families from receiving the social security they are entitled to and, most importantly, when they need it the most.

Before I draw my remarks to a close, I want to turn to the local housing allowance. The freeze of LHA rates for three consecutive years is placing additional and needless pressure on tenants and housing associations, and is likely to increase poverty and inequality. That is why Ministers should protect household incomes and support renters by restoring LHA rates to the 30th percentile as a minimum. The SNP has long called for the British Government to fix those fundamental flaws in our social security system but, as is so often the case, it falls on deaf ears each and every time, to the extent that every time I take part in one of these debates, it feels like groundhog day.

The blunt truth is that the Scottish Government cannot change those policies while 85% of welfare expenditure and income replacement benefits remain reserved to this institution here in London. That includes universal credit. By all means, I am happy to take part in debates and make suggestions about how we repair the social security system, but it is difficult to conclude anything other than Westminster—whether the Tories or the pro-Brexit Labour party—has zero appetite to genuinely step in and sew up a system that is failing some of the most vulnerable people in society. For that reason, the only way genuinely to bring about that compassionate, fair and dignified social security system in Scotland is with the full powers of independence. Frankly, that cannot come soon enough.