Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches also agree with kinship care as an adoption exemption. According to the Children’s Society, kinship carers support an estimated 200,000 children across the UK. These, as we have already heard, are families who have taken in children, often in difficult circumstances, out of love and kindness. They could find it all the harder to do so if they are unable to access any additional support through the tax credits system. Although the Government and David Cameron personally have said that they want to dramatically improve the adoption process, stopping child tax credits and universal credit for those who adopt or take in family members or friends runs counter to what they have said in the past. Can the Minister say what has changed?

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendments 1 and 16 in this group. First, can I make an apology to the Minister and the Committee? On Second Reading, I feel I was rather too soft on the Government. I commend the Government for their achievements in terms of employment, but there are several areas in this Bill that cause me real concern the more I contemplate them, and I should have said more about them at Second Reading.

I agree with the right reverend Prelate—if I may agree with him—that it would be unwise for the Government not to pay full attention to these amendments. I was speaking to a kinship carer earlier today. She was a godmother to a child. About six years ago, the child’s mother came into difficulties so she became a kinship carer. It was very challenging for her because local authorities do not offer much support at all for such carers. The child must have been about 11 when she came into the godmother’s care. Over the last six years, the girl has done well and done well at school. About a year ago, the carer adopted the girl. Currently, the girl is making applications to university and it is very good to see how well she has thrived, first under the kinship care arrangement and now under the adoption arrangement.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said, people in care often lack stable relationships and the only one they may have is with their siblings, yet it can be difficult to find a foster carer or an adoptive parent who will take on a sibling group. We should be very careful to avoid any disincentive to potential adopters to do that. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of Delma Hughes, a care leaver herself, who never got to know her five siblings. As an adult with care experience, she set up a charity called Siblings Together, which she has now been running for about 10 years. It provides holiday gatherings for siblings in care and opportunities for them, for example, to go to the Young Vic and perform in plays together or to go off to write poetry together, which bring together separated siblings and are immensely important for them.

I am sure the Minister will give a very sympathetic response to these concerns, which I look forward to. I also thank the Family Rights Group, which provided a very helpful briefing for this amendment on kinship care and has been working in this area for many years. I very much value its work, as I am sure all those in this area do.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, support these amendments, although as I have a debate tomorrow in the dinner break on kinship care, I will not detain the Committee at great length. As my noble friend on the Front Bench said, both the outcomes for kinship carers and the financial issues point to the Government needing to think again.

Kinship care is, by any measure, the most successful means of looking after vulnerable children who cannot live with their parent or parents. All the evidence points that way. However, the evidence also shows that more than 70% of kinship carers are technically in poverty. I know that there will be arguments about what that means, but the reality is that these families struggle. They do this because they want the children to have the very best opportunities, but when people become a kinship carer, as my noble friend and the right reverend Prelate said, they take the family on immediately. Very often, the children whom they are now taking care of will be traumatised and have real challenges. That also means that many of them are unable to work—certainly until they have got the children settled and the children are strong and resilient enough to be able to manage with their carer at work.

The costs of care are enormous, both in terms of the outcomes for children and financially. Have the Government considered, across government, the financial burden that they will be putting on to families that may then break down because kinship carers will not be able to maintain the care of more than two children? Have they considered the emotional and other burdens that they will also be inflicting on those kinship carers who end up having more than two children to care for? They have not sought this or set out to have two children: they do it because arrangements with the parents, for whatever reason, have broken down. I hope that the Government have thought about this and realised that this is an area that they really do have to exempt.

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[Lord Freud]

Clearly there is a difference between the voluntary and involuntary taking on of children, whether they are your own or anyone else’s. That is what our exemptions are for. We are seeking to try to draw the line between where it is involuntary, as in the case of rape, and where it is not.

[The Earl of Listowel]

First, I thank the Minister for his response, in which he said clearly that he is listening to the concerns raised in what has been expressed in the debate. Perhaps I should speak only for myself. I feel very anxious indeed about the welfare of the children whom we are discussing. I am anxious that children in care or on the edge of care might not have the prospect of a secure home that they currently have if this legislation is brought into being. I would be grateful if the Minister could act as soon as possible to reassure me on this. I am sure that this is a concern for all noble Lords in the Committee.

The question I want to raise with the Minister relates to his introductory comments on the rationale for the two-child limit in terms of child tax credit. I am sure that he will correct me if I am wrong, but he said that the Government are assuming that people make a rational choice when they choose to have a third child, and therefore, given that they are making a rational choice, that it is fair to say, “Of course the state will allow you to have another child, but it will not subsidise that additional child, or at least not to the extent that it has in the past, so you should bear this in mind if you are thinking of having a third child”. That is my rough understanding of what the noble Lord is saying.

When I think about young people in care, I know that most of them come from poverty in the first place, and many of them will go on to have families in poverty. Many will not get good qualifications; only 6% currently go on to university compared with 40% of the wider young people’s population. Their educational attainment remains stubbornly low. On apprenticeships, one hears all the time that these young people do not have the basic mathematical and literacy qualifications to get on to an apprenticeship scheme. So many young people leaving care will end up in poverty.

But we also know that many of them will have children very early. Many young women have children while they are still in care, and many will have them immediately after they leave. This, I suggest, is not a rational choice on their part. One reason that is often given, which seems to me plausible, is that, because they have never been loved themselves, they want to have a child who they believe will love them—and they will have other reasons for starting a family so early. However, they are not starting from a rational point. So my concern—which we will debate this more fully—is that this aspect of the Bill will be particularly disadvantageous to care-experienced adults and care leavers. They will be penalised because their lives are sometimes so chaotic and unhappy that they will start large families and they will be poor, and this area of the Bill will make them poorer still. I wonder if the Minister might say whether he has thought through the implications for care leavers and care-experienced adults of this aspect of the legislation in terms of penalising people who seem to choose to have larger families and who are poor.

[Lord Freud]

I know that the noble Earl is very concerned in this area of the care leaver and I understand exactly where he is coming from. Clearly the Government have a great deal of concern about some of these outcomes for young people in care—the noble Earl touched on some of the figures—but the choices, rational or not, should not be different from those of people who have to support themselves. I know that we will come back to this issue slightly later so I will stop on that particular point because we are dealing with another one today.

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[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 2, I shall speak to Amendments 4, 7 and 12 in my name. As we have heard, the Bill introduces a two-child limit on receipt of child tax credits for children born before 5 April 2017 and the child element of universal credit for families making a new claim, whether or not the child is born before April 2017.

My Amendments 2, 4, 7 and 12 are about introducing exemptions. On this, I concur with my noble friend Lord Kirkwood because I understand the budget restrictions that the Minister is facing in relation to the welfare budget. My exemptions also highlight the importance of sensitivity in implementing these provisions. Many exemptions are needed. There are groups of people who cannot make rational decisions—or rational choices, should I say? The problem is about determining whether these exemptions are met, which can be very difficult.

Amendment 2 is an enabling amendment to Amendment 4, which addresses the need for exemptions for,

“the person or persons claiming an individual element of child tax credit”,

if the person,

“has been a victim of rape … is a kinship carer”,

which we have already discussed. Again, I concur with what the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, said so well. Exemptions would also apply to an individual who,

“has previously claimed tax credit as a single parent but is now part of a stepfamily, or a cohabiting multiple family … has fled domestic violence, or … has suffered a bereavement of their husband, wife, civil partner or cohabiting partner who is the parent of the child or children for which an individual element of child tax credit is being claimed”.

Families are complex units. If two single-parent families, each with two children live together, they are entitled to retain or claim the child tax credit but not if they marry. This is because their change in circumstances mean they will fall under universal credit and the two-child limit. Transitional arrangements are supposed to ensure that existing claimants are unaffected by these changes. However, households in receipt of child tax credits and which are migrated into universal credit will be protected only in so far as they maintain their current claim—in this case, if they stayed single.

Iain Duncan Smith has talked about encouraging dual-parent families but this Bill, as I said previously, runs counter to that. However, let us be clear. We on these Benches do not necessarily agree that two-parent families are in some way better, as Iain Duncan Smith effectively believes. All family types are valid and important. In my view, not exempting families where single parents come together is difficult to understand, given the commitment made in other statements.

In domestic violence cases, a woman—it usually is a woman—with more than two children who flees a violent relationship must know that she will be able to afford to care for all her children so that she is not trapped into staying in a violent or abusive relationship due to financial hardship. It is also clear that if a working husband or wife dies, the income in the family will fall. It is logical that these families should be exempt from the two-child tax credit limitation.

The Bill also impacts on many families who already have three or more children if they make a new claim for universal credit as a result of common, but unpredictable, life events. Anyone can lose their job at any time; we can all get sick; we can all have a disability in the future. So this is totally unfair and unreasonable. The DWP’s own analysis demonstrates the risk of child poverty, which is already significantly higher among families with three or more children: 35% compared to 25-26% for families with one or two children.

Other noble Lords will, no doubt, speak on these important issues. As has already been identified, other exemptions may need to be applied in areas such as private foster care arrangements and disability. This is why I have put down Amendment 4, proposing that:

“The Secretary of State may, by regulations, make further provisions relating to the operation of subsection (3C).

The main point of my amendments is that there are lots of complex family situations and many areas could be considered for exemption. However, the ability to exempt these people requires knowing what exemptions they meet. Some exemptions will be easier to assess than others, but how will DWP caseworkers assess if a child is born as result of rape? How intrusive will the questions be and what evidence will caseworkers look for? As we know, many people sadly do not report rape and, when they do, convictions are low, so that will not help. The Minister has already stated that cases of rape will be exempted. How will the DWP know whether a claimant’s child is indeed a result of rape? The only way would be to ask, and I shudder to think how deeply upsetting and totally inappropriate it would be for a caseworker to venture into such traumatic, deeply sensitive and personal issues.

Therefore, although the Government should include exemptions in the Bill, they will also need to consider how exemptions will be assessed and applied. To safeguard against deeply intrusive questioning, Amendment 7 would insert in the Bill the provision that the DWP must,

“have regard to the importance of the person’s right to respect for private and family life”, under Article 8(1) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms as set out in Schedule 1 to the Human Rights Act 1998”,

and should not,

“in seeking to determine whether the exemption applies, request any information about the claimant’s private medical or sexual history”.

I turn to Amendment 12. As the Bill stands, Clause 12 will mean that families with children born before April 2017, making a new claim under universal credit, do not receive the same protections as those available to claimants of tax credits and may have their child additions within universal credit limited to two children. This seems totally unfair and I do not understand the reasoning behind it.

My Amendment 12 would afford the exempted people I have previously identified, such as people who have been raped and single parents, the same protections once universal credit comes into force through the child element in universal credit. Proposed new subsection (1C) in Amendment 12 states:

“The Secretary of State may, by regulations, make further provisions relating to the operation of subsection (1B)”.

This is a very difficult and sensitive debate. I listened carefully to the discussion on kinship carers and concur with everything that was said. For many of the categories that we have outlined this is not about rational choice. People sometimes find themselves in certain circumstances for the right reasons—for example, the joy of bringing an additional child into a family. However, circumstances such as rape are not so pleasant or nice. I think that noble Lords around the Committee want the Minister to commit to look at exemptions very carefully. As has been outlined by other noble Lords, I want to avoid unintended consequences. I cannot believe for one minute that the Government want such unintended consequences to arise. I believe that they want to do the right thing. Putting exemptions on the face of the Bill will give many people in our country great hope. We are talking about a lot of people—millions, in some cases. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendments 4 and 12. It is a privilege to follow the eloquent noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, and I shall concentrate on one or two aspects of her comments. As regards the need for these exemptions, someone commented to me that the poor have always had the largest families. The austerity that we are experiencing is due in large part to the fact that some vastly wealthy people made some very poor choices. Yet today we are looking to penalise the poorest in our society, and most especially their children, by taking money away from them. Therefore, I support very strongly the noble Baroness’s call to make the exemptions as wide as possible.

Last Friday a report on the education of children in care was launched at the Nuffield Foundation. The Children’s Minister, Edward Timpson MP, addressed the launch. The report highlighted the fact that the educational performance of children in care was still a long way behind that of the rest of the general population of young people. That is a matter of concern. However, children in need who have stayed with their families and not been taken into care, fostered or taken into a children’s home do far better once they are taken into the care of the state than those children who have not been subject to intervention by the state. We all know that due to pressures on local authorities, the threshold for being taken into care is quite high. Many more children in need live in fairly dysfunctional families but those families are not dysfunctional or abusive enough for the children to be taken into care, and those children are struggling. We need to think about families in which the parents grew up in deprivation, not just financial but emotional deprivation. Often the parents will have had issues around drink and drugs, and have not been able to show the children very much love.

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[Baroness Stroud]

I can clarify that again but it is here, quite clearly. Perhaps we can discuss this later.

[The Earl of Listowel]

Can the noble Baroness say which page she is referring to?

[Baroness Stroud]

Page 18.

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[Lord Freud]

I am trying to think of another example because, as the noble Baroness knows, we are trying to incorporate all means-tested benefits. The main one is housing benefit and the other one that the noble Baroness may be thinking of is support for council tax where we have not made any provision because each council has its own policies. I cannot think of any other means-tested benefit to which, once universal credit is in and working, that would apply. I think that I have dealt as best I can with all the points raised and, for the reasons set out, I urge noble Lords not to press their amendments.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his responses. I am reminded by what he said of the importance of universal credit, which I think we all support in terms of enabling more people into work. I pay tribute to the Government one more time for their achievement in getting so many of our people into work after a time of such austerity. It is hugely important for families and for all of us.

I also thank the Minister for his acknowledgement of the work that I do and the interest I take in looked-after children. I have a specific question. The Minister talked about important strategies that the Government have developed for care leavers, which are very welcome indeed. But we know that outcomes, despite this good work, are often still very poor for care leavers. Will the Minister consider making an exemption among those that he is considering specifically for care leavers in this regard? Separately, will he consider making a similar exemption for care-experienced adults? These young people and adults have had a disastrous start in life and often their experience in the care system is unsatisfactory, with much instability. As a society, we should consider exempting them because of the histories that they have experienced.

I listened with interest to the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, in his riposte to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. If I understood him correctly, he said that we should bear in mind that for the taxpayer, payments of this kind are not popular. Hard-working taxpayers may well not wish to pay other people to have more children when they have had to make hard choices themselves about clothing and schooling their own children. I take his point, but just because a measure is not popular, it is not necessarily not the right thing to do.

As an example, the decision by the Prime Minister to make a commitment of 0.7% of gross national income to the Department for International Development seems to have been pretty unpopular, but I certainly think that it was the right one. It becomes clearer and clearer that it was the right decision when we look at what is going on in Syria. I may well be mistaken, but my personal view is that it seems more and more right when we consider the instability in Syria and other places.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

Is the noble Earl, whom I greatly respect, aware that Professor Deaton received earlier this year the Nobel prize for economics? His subject is global poverty and one of his important findings is that official aid does more harm than good.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I thank the noble Lord for drawing that to my attention and I shall make it my business to read that finding.

Perhaps I chose a poor example, but often decisions that are unpopular can be the right decisions to make. Governments have a little more time to reflect and can decide that the cost of bringing children up in poverty has such long-term problems in terms of poor educational outcomes, imprisonment and later dependency on the state that despite such a policy being unpopular it is worth while investing in large, impoverished families to prevent their offspring becoming dependent on the state later on.

The Minister said that the average size of families was 1.7 children. What is the average size of families on benefit and the average size of a family in poverty? My sense is that they tend to be larger families and that this particular legislation will penalise larger families.

[Lord Freud]

Taking the noble Earl’s points in order, we need to have good strategies for care leavers. Clearly, the statistics are disturbing, and they have been for decades. I am not utterly convinced that exemptions in this particular area are the best way of supporting care leavers. There are other things that we can do that are way ahead of this. However, we do now flag care leavers in the benefit system so we know who they are and we can look at what they are doing, certainly with JSA, and I hope that we will be putting that into UC, although I am not absolutely up to date on where we are with that system.

On the noble Earl’s point about popularity, it is important that the benefits system does not become unpopular because that will undermine its legitimacy. It could be argued that one thing that we are doing now is creating a benefits system that has legitimacy and acceptance because it is perceived to be fair and to drive the right outcomes, which is not something that people feel about the legacy benefits system. That is a subtle point and closely related to what we are doing here.

The figures that I have seen, which I am afraid I cannot recall off the top of my head, show that very rich families and very poor families tend to be larger than those in the middle—thereby hangs a tale that goes to my noble friend’s point about who can afford to have large families. But I will have to write to the noble Earl with the exact figures.