Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

Given the above, I hope that at the very least the Minister will accept the amendment and show good faith, at this late stage, so that at least the Government can monitor the impact on faith communities.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

Briefly, my Lords, I welcome the introduction by the previous Government of the family test. It was good to see in a recent Bill—it might have been the Education and Adoption Bill—that, just as the European Convention on Human Rights is written down, it was stipulated on the Bill itself that the family test had been gone through as the Bill had passed. I am sorry to hear that the results of the family test have not been published, because that test is very welcome.

The right honourable Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State, did good work with Graham Allen MP in looking at early years interventions to begin thinking in this country about how important it is to support families so that their children do well from the very start of their lives, because more and more evidence shows that supportive families, good relationships and bonding early in life have huge and beneficial impacts on society, and that is hugely important. That was really wonderful work but I am afraid that it may be getting lost somehow. I would like to be reassured that that focus has not been lost and that the Secretary of State is still worried about “broken Britain” and broken families, and is still putting that right at the top of his priorities. I wonder if the Minister can say whether it is intended in future, as I gather has been the case in the past, for the Bill to say that it has passed the family test.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

Can the Minister help me? I was just checking, and as far as I can see from handbooks, we continue to support various partners in polygamous marriages and we do not say, “After two partners you won’t get any more support for your third, fourth or fifth member of a polygamous marriage”. Why is it okay to have several spouses who are financed by benefit, but if you have more than two children they are not?

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[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 22, 23, 27, 29, 30 and 34. Given that it is quite late, I will try to be as brief as I can. I support Amendment 22. It has already been said that Clauses 4 and 6 remove any income-based measures of child poverty, the duty on the Government to work towards eradicating child poverty by 2020, and the duty on local authorities to work together towards eradicating child poverty. Instead, under the new heading, “Life chances”, Clause 4 focuses on measuring children in workless families and with poor educational attainment.

As I said, I support the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in his Amendment 22 as it provides for development measures in the early years, allows for the capture of data for all children at the age of five, and puts disadvantaged children in the same group. My Amendment 23 builds on this, particularly as the latest government figures show that 62% of children in poverty now live in working homes: that is 2.5 million children, according to the End Child Poverty Coalition.

Without question, worklessness and a lack of access to employment are key drivers of child poverty. However, as I said at Second Reading, while work can be a key route out of poverty, it is by no means a guaranteed one. There is much research which shows the significant impact that growing up in poverty has on children. As was said earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, children are much more likely to suffer from poor health, do worse at school, be jobless in the future and die earlier. The changes that the Government plan to make to the support of low-income working families are likely only to make the situation worse.

Clause 4 as it stands proposes a statutory duty to publish an annual report on children in workless households and on the educational attainment of children in England at the end of key stage 4; that is, for children of 16 years of age. That is far too late and there are no baseline comparators. Improving children’s life chances must be more than about teenage educational attainment. I agree with the organisation Action for Children that the Government’s limited measures are a missed opportunity. Educational attainment at 16 does not reflect how far development in the earlier stages of our lives affects our future, from our health to our likelihood of being employed.

Amendment 23 would mean reporting on the educational attainment of children in England, including disadvantaged children, at the end of key stage 1, at the age of five, rather than reporting on educational attainment only at the end of key stage 4, when children are 16 years old. It would also allow a baseline for the Government to measure the progress made by investing in children’s futures. I hope that it will be supported by the Minister, particularly as such data are currently available, so the financial cost would be minimal. If my amendment is not accepted, perhaps the Minister could consider including a measure towards addressing income poverty in the basket of measures in the Bill.

Amendment 27 reinforces the point that “key stage 1” means the first key stage within the meaning of Part 6 of the Education Act 2002. Amendment 29 would allow the Secretary of State to publish and lay before Parliament data which report on children who are homeless or are at risk of homelessness. This is important as the data identified can help to support strategies much more effectively in the Troubled Families programme.

Amendment 30 is concerned with children,

“in families living in problem debt”.

This provision will ensure that data are consistently collected and reported on to enable early intervention by programmes such as the Troubled Families programme. Borrowing figures released on 30 November confirm a significant and prolonged increase in household debt, and the measures in this Bill are likely only to make matters worse.

Amendment 34 is about reporting obligations for:

“Working and workless households and health”.

I have added my name to those of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Hollins. As has been said, there is significant evidence that children living in poorer households are much more likely to be born prematurely, have low birth weight, and as adults to die earlier. They are also more likely to be absent from school due to illness, to be hospitalised, and to have long-standing illnesses, and are three times more likely to suffer from mental health problems.

Data collection on the impact of mental health on workless and in working households with incomes below the national minimum wage is important, particularly as the Government have put an emphasis on improving mental health services. The amendment will enable the link between inadequate incomes and their impact on the mental and physical health of the poorest people compared to others, and will allow better joined-up targeting of services between the NHS and the DWP. I want the Minister to look at this very carefully in terms of data collection.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I will speak to Amendment 22, moved by my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham and to which my name is attached, simply to say I strongly support the idea of taking measurements earlier in the child’s life. I note what my noble friend said, his reference to a strategy and that the Bill removes a strategy for child poverty. I note in the Government’s general direction of travel that they are quite sceptical of strategies. My sense is that the Government prefer to work from the bottom up, and that in education policy, as in other areas, they are reticent to have overarching plans. I would briefly like to challenge that.

The academy schools seem an example of government trying to build from the bottom up. However, what we see in the education department are real difficulties around teacher recruitment. Visiting an academy school—indeed, the best performing non-selective state school in the country—I saw wonderful results but heard complaints that because of the lack of strategy regarding teacher recruitment, there were real concerns that teachers of various kinds and at various levels would not be easily available and of the excellent quality needed in the future. My sense is the Government are rather opposed to strategies in general but I think in certain areas such as this they are really important, and we will come back to that.

I speak as a Cross-Bencher here: after 15 years in your Lordships’ House, it is rather regrettable that sometimes it seems as if one Government set certain things up and then the next Government set them down. I remember the debates about the Youth Justice Board, which seemed a very effective institution but because it was a quango the Government felt strongly that it had to go. I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, managed to persuade the Government that, in fact, it was worth keeping. Therefore, in the discussion of the old Child Poverty Act and the new Welfare Reform and Work Bill, it is worth challenging the Government a bit. I would like to challenge the Government a bit about whether, in part, their motivation might be to simply undo what others have done in the past, and whether there might be a chance to build on the best of the past as well as bring the Government’s own unique contribution to this area.

I want to be as brief as possible so I will speak now to my amendments in the grouping, the first of which is Amendment 28 on children in care and care leavers. The Bill is a real opportunity to improve the outcomes for young people in care and care leavers. It is an opportunity to gather data, for instance on their educational attainment—yes, that is gathered already—but also on their mental health. Historically, there was recognition by the ONS in 2004 of the mental health needs of looked-after children and great work was done by people such as Professor Jackson on the educational attainment of looked-after children. The educational side has been well resourced and legislated on since then, with things like virtual school heads, designated teachers in schools and priority in admissions—all really important steps forward, but the mental health needs of looked-after children have not been so successfully addressed.

The Bill is an opportunity to look at various areas of performance with regard to young people in care and care leavers. Gathering them in one place and obliging Parliament to look at them on an annual basis would really keep our focus on making the most effective difference. Of course, in the care system we have the notion of the corporate parent. In each local authority, I suppose the leader would be the corporate parent for the young people in the authority’s care. I suppose that principle extends somewhat to us as well in Parliament. What that means is sometimes difficult to explain. Obviously we do not have relationships with individual young people in care.

In Barnet in the past, when Paul Fallon was the director of children’s services, it was ensured that each senior member of the council was an advocate for a young person in care. They did not meet that young person but their job was to follow the career, as it were, of the young person in care. They would write to people, nobble them and just be a champion for the young person in care. We in Parliament cannot meet and know young people in care but we can do our very best to be champions for them in this place. They are the children of the state. If we had the data at our fingertips we would be better equipped to do that.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the presentation by Dr Mark Kerr of his doctoral thesis. Dr Kerr left care with no educational qualifications. He subsequently has successfully gone through two degrees and it was a tremendously moving experience to hear him making his presentation on young people in care. The system can work well. Young people can do extremely well and it is on us to ensure that we do even better for them.

Amendment 29 is on children and homelessness. It puts a duty on the Secretary of State to lay data before Parliament on children who are homeless and at risk of homelessness. The purpose of bringing this forward is that child homelessness increases year on year. It now stands at about 90,000, and the number of children living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation increases year on year. There is a maximum limit on the time that a local authority is allowed to place children in bed-and-breakfast accommodation with their families. That is more and more often broken. We know about the housing shortages in particular areas, especially in London and the south-east. The purpose of the amendment is to focus our minds on these young people.

We might get better data. For instance, we could have data on children at risk of becoming homeless, on how effective we are at preventing children and their families from becoming homeless, and on children who are accepted as homeless with their families, in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, and so on. There is already a statutory duty to gather data on homeless children but there are various duties. There is a different duty for 16 and 17 year-olds which local authorities are obliged to have, so it might be helpful to have in one place a more thought-through approach to this.

There is an interdepartmental group looking at homelessness, which I welcome. Perhaps this is a bit far from the Minister’s remit, but I would like to know more about how that is progressing. On this issue, particularly given the fact of ever-increasing immigration, there needs to be a senior Minister looking at this, taking forward and championing this matter of family homelessness and having a strategy to really make a difference across the Department of Health, the DWP and the Department for Communities and Local Government. Such a change as this would be helpful in taking that forward.

My final point is on children in families living in problem debt. I am not sure how much time I have taken and I want to take as little time as possible, but this is a very important matter. The Government have decided to replace the child poverty measures with new life-chances indicators, focusing on measuring the number of children in workless households and the number of children with low levels of educational attainment. When the Secretary of State announced this change, he also highlighted the importance of problem debt in understanding child poverty and children’s life chances. The absence of a measure of problem debt has always been a limitation of the current Child Poverty Act. I know, from the families that I have had experience of, that where a family faces problem debt, a large proportion of family income can go on repaying debt every month, substantially reducing the money available for meeting the basic needs of children in the household. As shown in the report The Debt Trap, families in problem debt owe, on average, £3,437, or an estimated total of £4.8 billion, in arrears to service providers, creditors and government, both national and local. The social cost of problem debt is as high as £8.3 billion.

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[Lord Freud]

No. Every year I stand here because there is a forecast that says that child poverty is going up, has gone up or will go up, but when we actually see the figures we find that child poverty has actually gone down; the Government have been impressed and shocked by that. When you transform the economy, change the culture so that work is what has been driving things, and move up the employment rates and the earning rates in the way that we have, you find that the behavioural impacts are very different from the static analysis that many of the external experts tell us about.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, it is late so I will ask just two brief questions. I thank the Minister for his response. Can he give an indication of when a homelessness strategy might be produced, or is there already one that I am not aware of? He has mentioned that there are various kinds of homelessness, such as overcrowding and unfit accommodation. The one that is of most concern, though, is housing insecurity, when families just do not know where they will be from one day to the next. What is the strategy to deal with that? Is one forthcoming? How often does the interdepartmental group meet? Perhaps he might like to write to me on that last question.

I have been talking with practitioners working around the troubled families initiative, which I warmly welcome. Their work is much undermined by the fact that they build a relationship with a family, as they must and do very effectively, but then that family is moved somewhere else because the accommodation was private and temporary, and there just is not the security of tenure that there needs to be. Perhaps the Minister could help me with those questions.

[Lord Freud]

As I said, we will be putting out the life-chances strategy in time. The interministerial meets every quarter, I think.

[The Earl of Listowel]

Sorry, but I am asking about a homelessness strategy, dealing with the particular issue of housing security for families.

[Lord Freud]

Is the noble Earl talking about the interministerial meeting, which deals with those issues? Yes, I think it meets quarterly.

[The Earl of Listowel]

That is very helpful.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

The Minister talked about working with local authorities on child poverty, which obviously is welcome, and I think that he said something about not wanting to do that in a random way—excuse me, it is a bit late so I cannot remember exactly what he said. If that is the case, though, why are the Government removing the duty on local authorities to develop strategies? The letter that the Minister received from the Children’s Commissioners just the other day underlined how valuable that duty has been. I know that local authorities, within the constraints that they are having to work in, have been quite imaginative in trying to think about what they can do as partners of central government in combating child poverty, so I really do not understand why that has been taken away, given what the Minister said about wanting to work with local authorities.

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[Lord Freud]

What we are doing is working with local authorities to support them in getting at the root causes. That will be our strategy.

[The Earl of Listowel]

While I am grateful to the Minister for that information about the interdepartmental group and how often it meets, I wonder if he could give an indication of whether it is looking to develop a strategy specifically for housing security for families, or whether he might be prepared to take back to that group a request from this House—at least, from myself—that such a strategy should be developed. This seems a very important area.

[Lord Freud]

I will be pleased to do that.