Pensions: Women’s State Pension Age

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Freud

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I can only repeat that we have made it clear—and the Pensions Minister went as firmly on the record as he could—that there will be no further moves in this area.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister help me? Would it help if more fathers were encouraged to work part time so that they spent more time with their children, building stronger families and stronger relationships with their children? At least one result would be that fewer women would be disadvantaged, spending less time out of the work market because they would be sharing the care of their children with their partners.

[Lord Freud]

One of the transformations in recent times is that women and, indeed, men are paid for caring responsibilities so that their pensions are not affected by that.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Freud

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

In practice, I think that what I have said produces that outcome. I have said that we will consult very widely with stakeholders to get this right, because these are very sensitive issues. The rape exemption is very difficult. Getting kinship caring and adoption right is not straightforward. In practice, there will be consultation, but I do not want to overformalise that process. I have committed to a much more open process than you might see in some other regulations that we issue.

The next complicated case is the formation of new households through re-partnering of single parents, which we have looked at very closely and which produces a number of difficulties. First, it would be perceived as unfair by those families with three or more children who stay together and receive a maximum amount of child element or child tax credit in respect of two children, whereas other families who have formed more recently could receive more. Secondly, there is a risk that families may try to manipulate the benefit system by breaking up and re-forming, or even claiming to have broken up and subsequently re-formed in order to increase the amount. Thirdly, there would be a practical issue in assigning children in newly formed families to a particular parent. We have not done that before. Your Lordships will hear me muttering the word “carbunclising”. That is not to mention the intrusive nature of that process.

Finally, I looked at the numbers involved. The reality is that, whether we like it or not, the bulk of children stay with the mother. The number of fathers with children joining mothers with children is not many. Once the measure is fully rolled out, we expect that only 7% of single men will have children, so it is not that substantial a problem. The noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, talked about half a million. That is just not the reality. I reiterate what I said in Committee about the way it is introduced in 2017 for child tax credit and universal credit. Any household which has claimed within the past six months will also be protected. For those reasons, I urge the noble Baronesses and the right reverend Prelate not to press their amendments.

[The Earl of Listowel]

Before the Minister sits down, given the fact that, as a nation, increasingly our children are growing up without a father in the family—according to the OECD, in the 2030s, we will overtake the United States in the proportion of children growing up without a father in the family—will he think again about his last statement? It may be a small proportion of fathers who bring children into these mixed families, but surely we want to encourage those larger families, especially, to have a father. The benefits that that father brings to those two children, or whatever, from the mother’s family is important. Will the Minister keep that in mind?

[Lord Freud]

We have looked at this very sympathetically, but in practice we found it too difficult. We have heard from this Chamber about the kinship and adoption issues, and those are the ones that we want to get absolutely right.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Freud

Monday 25th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The whole point is that these reports are published. It is a forcing mechanism to make sure that the relevant Secretaries of State and the relevant departments of government work together to tackle the fundamentals that produce these outcomes.

Returning to the educational issue, if we made this change to the Bill, it would increase the burden on primary schools and send a signal to schools that Parliament does not trust them to carry out their core functions. That is why I cannot support this amendment.

Amendments 5 and 6 look to expand the reporting duty placed on the Secretary of State so that his annual report containing data on children living in workless households and long-term workless households in England must include data on the health and well-being of these children.

It goes without saying that the Government want the best for our children. We want all children to have the opportunity to have fulfilling lives and to realise their potential, and clearly their health and well-being is an integral part of that. However, we can achieve this aim, which is one that we all share, only by tackling the root causes of child poverty, and I will not parrot what I have already said on this point. Our evidence review shows clearly that worklessness and educational attainment are the two factors that have the biggest impact.

We recognise that, as the evidence review pointed out, child ill-health is also a driver of poverty. We are absolutely committed to reducing health inequalities in terms of access and outcomes, and we are working across government to ensure that ill health does not hold our children back from fulfilling their potential. The Government have already put in place a well-developed reporting framework—the public health outcomes framework—that supports health improvement and protection at all stages of life, especially in the early years. The framework includes a large number of indicators on children and young people’s health and, along with the NHS outcomes framework, sets a clear direction for children’s health that allows anyone to hold us to account.

We are committed to improving access to better services and to promoting early intervention to address children and young people’s mental health issues before they worsen. We are investing £1.4 billion in that over the next five years, and we have invested more than £120 million to introduce waiting time standards for mental health services—the first time that we have done that.

If we concentrate our actions and resources on the root causes of child poverty, such as worklessness and education, that will be the springboard from which everything else will follow. While the Government recognise the importance of tackling child ill-health, these amendments would ultimately distract the Government’s focus and finite resources from what is most important for our children’s future life chances. For these reasons, I cannot support the amendments of the noble Lord and the noble Baroness.

Amendment 7, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, would require separate reports for measures of worklessness and educational attainment. We are already committed to reporting on these measures and believe that it is sensible to deal with them together as they are jointly fundamental to improving life chances.

Amendments 9, 10, 12, 13 and 14 are consequential on Amendment 7 and therefore, in the Government’s view, unnecessary.

Once again, I thank noble Lords for their contributions but, on the basis of what I have said, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[The Earl of Listowel]

Before the noble Lord sits down, will he reassure the House about the future of health visitors? Clearly, they have a very important role in the welcome things that he has just said. The Government have done a great job in recruiting and developing the workforce, but now that responsibility for health visitors has been moved to local authorities, which must fund them, there has to be a concern that in the current atmosphere for local authorities we may go backwards and health visitors will not be commissioned to do the work that is so necessary in relation to what we have just been discussing. Perhaps the noble Lord would consider writing to noble Lords who are interested in this area about the mechanisms that exist to ensure that that does not happen.

[Lord Freud]

I shall be happy to write.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Freud

Monday 21st December 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the care with which he is responding to these concerns, particularly about children. He will be aware of a recent small study dated November 2015 from the University of Manchester on the impact of the bedroom tax. It found that children were hungry and were having difficulty in concentrating at school. The response from the Minister’s department was that this was a small study which did not fit the larger picture. I would be grateful if, before Report, he could send a letter setting out what research will be undertaken in the 12 months following the implementation of this provision. What research will be commissioned to look carefully into the impact on children? I take his point that many children will benefit from their parents going into work but I am worried about those who do not.

[Lord Freud]

It was a small report on, I think, 14 children, and we aim to look at things on a much safer basis. I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

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[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I would be grateful if the Minister provided a little detail on the research that will be coming forward after the Bill is enacted so that I and we can see its impact on children. For instance, for some time now the University of East London has been researching the issue of family homelessness. Is the Minister thinking of talking to such institutions? Going back to the previous debate, it is important to get some high quality research that goes into the detail and granularity of the impacts of these measures.

[Lord Freud]

The noble Earl will be aware that an enormous amount of research is conducted in this area. I will write to him with anything specific that I can on our research proposals.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Freud

Monday 14th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

We have not yet put out the detail of the transitional regulations and that is where one would expect to see them. We will be producing some precision in how the regulations will work.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s response and for the work which the Government do to support care leavers. I omitted to say why Amendment 62D was timely: today, research from the University of Lancaster highlighted a huge leap in the number of newborns being taken into care. In 2008 it was about 800, in 2013 it was over 2,000; a very considerable number. Some of that is down to better early intervention; taking children very quickly out of damaged families. However, Nicky Morgan, the Secretary of State, is concerned about this and it suggests, again, that we need to be even better at supporting these vulnerable families. I hear what the noble Lord has said and I will look carefully at it.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Freud

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

Before the Minister replies, it might be helpful to remind him that the amendment on targets is in the next group. I quite understand why he might choose to address it here but the amendment he is addressing that I and my noble friend tabled is simply about the measurement. I think the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, began the argument on targets but my amendment was intended to be strictly on the measurements.

[Lord Freud]

In practice, that is not the case. There are two sets of amendments in this group and Amendment 46 from the Opposition deals with the targets so I must deal with both issues. That is what I have been trying to do. I hear around the Chamber that more noble Lords are concerned about measures than targets.

In reality, there is only one word between us: statutory. I made a commitment that we will go on publishing HBAI and that is a protected position. Let me just explain how that works. The HBAI is a national statistic. That means that it complies with the code of practice for official statistics, which states that it must be produced independently of political influence. Any changes to HBAI in future would therefore be made only following the judgment of the head of profession for statistics in the Department for Work and Pensions. Any such changes would be subject to formal consultation with users, as required under the code of practice for official statistics. I think I am on reasonably safe ground in assuring noble Lords that we currently gather HBAI with a full documentary analysis. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I have that on paper in front of me or on my shelf. That has on it not only the Excel tables but also a clear commentary. By implication, I am saying that that will go on being published in a similar format.

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[Lord Freud]

I think the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, will support me here but my memory is that the material deprivation figures are in the HBAI statistics. She nods that that is the case, so I can confirm that.

I shall summarise briefly. I am not in a position to give noble Lords the one word they want, but hope I have indicated that the measures will be available to see what is happening to relative child poverty. I am convinced that it is our new life chances measures—the measures rejected six years ago by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, which focus on the key drivers of worklessness and educational attainment—that will make the biggest difference to children, and that these amendments, were they on a statutory basis, would dilute that focus. We want to focus on the measures that make a real difference to children’s lives. I therefore invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, and, in particular, to the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, for raising the questions that she did. As I said earlier, I am particularly concerned about the life chances of care-experienced adults and young people leaving care. In earlier debates the Minister assured me that there were strategies, and I know that there are many welcome investments, in terms of statute and finance, to improve outcomes for care leavers and care-experienced adults. However, the latest figures on 19 year-olds coming out of care who are not in employment, education or training are the worst for many years. Only 6% of young people leaving care are going on to university, compared with 40% in the general population. Despite massive investment by this and previous Governments in improving educational and work outcomes for young people leaving care, it is still not being as effective as one might wish. I think that what is being done is very good, but there needs to be a lot more work.

Then there are the young people on the edge of care, who do not reach the threshold. There are many more young people and children in need, who will have even worse educational and work outcomes. That is relevant to this debate, because what happens to these young people as they become adults, when they have such low educational qualifications that they cannot get on to apprenticeship schemes, have very little prospect of getting work and are likely to remain uneducated? One should always remember that many of them do do better in later life; because of early trauma, it takes them time to catch up. This large group may not be as susceptible to the incentives to work, or go on to further education, that the Minister is talking about. They might be particularly helped by measures of this kind, which focus on those in long-term poverty, and which would keep Parliament’s mind on them and how they are doing. I hope that that makes sense to the Minister. He might like to write to me if he cannot respond now.

[Lord Freud]

I will write, because the issues that the noble Earl raises are genuinely important and difficult. We are all struggling with them. As we develop the life chances suite, we need to bear in mind the particular problems for those people, because as a group they have much poorer outcomes than they should.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Freud

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[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.

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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.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Freud

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I would never launch something at noble Lords on Report in that way. Let me go and think about how I might present some useful figures in a reasonably timely way. That is not a promise to produce anything more than I have but I will look and see whether I can be more helpful, given that I clearly have not been now.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, will the Minister consider writing me a letter about improving access to childcare for disabled families?

[Lord Freud]

Can I look at that? I am not sure quite how much of this is in my own purview. If I can, I will.

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[Lord Freud]

That is the best I can do at this stage. However, I accept that that is a bit tentative as an answer, so I will look to get the noble Baroness a better answer, or as full an answer as I can provide after talking this through with colleagues.

The Government believe that these changes strike the right balance between protecting the vulnerable—we have discussed the extra support for families with disabled children—while encouraging families which receive both child tax credit and universal credit to make the same financial decisions about the number of children they can afford as are made by those families who support themselves solely through work. They help to make the welfare system sustainable and the move towards a high-wage, lower-tax and lower-welfare country. Clauses 11 and 12 should therefore stand part of the Bill.

[The Earl of Listowel]

Before the noble Baroness responds—and I do not wish to keep the Committee from its dinner—while I thank the Minister for reminding us about the very welcome new higher minimum wage that the Government are introducing, looking at figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies on projections for the difference that that will make, it has been clear to me that the complex way in which the tapers work will often mean that, for instance, lone working parents will not benefit that much more from this new, very welcome offer. Therefore I encourage your Lordships to keep that in mind. It is a very welcome offer but it may not make that much difference to the families that we are concerned about today.

[Lord Freud]

I will just deal with that. In universal credit we are producing something very clearly tapered, without the trap at the 16-hour point, which is in the current legacy welfare system. Therefore we have a pathway. One of the things we are doing, particularly for lone parents, is that once you are freed from that tyranny of the 16-hour rule, it is interesting how firms in the north-west, where that is already happening, are able to work with those people and start moving them up the earnings progression—not just as regards the number of hours but earnings progression—and we are beginning to see signs of a transformation. That is behind some of these changes—we want to make people independent of the state as much as we can.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Freud

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[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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[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.

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[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.