Women’s State Pension Age
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Mel Stride
At the heart of this matter is the imperative to ensure that we fully and carefully examine the findings contained in the report. I will not be drawn today on where we may end up in respect of those findings, but I assure my hon. Friend that we will engage fully and constructively with Parliament on these matters.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Women born in the 1950s entered into a contract with the state, but the coalition Government reneged on that, denying them their pensions. In their fight for justice, thousands have died. Since the ombudsman’s report, over 100 have passed away, and many continue to live in poverty. Shamefully, the Government are now delaying action on the ombudsman’s findings, and today have remained silent about proper compensation. Will the Secretary of State apologise for their long wait for justice?
Mel Stride
On the Pensions Act 2011, as the hon. Lady will know from the report, the window that has been particularly examined and on which these considerations turn is 2005 to 2007—a time when the Labour party was in office. But on a general and non-partisan point, my view is that we owe it to all women who were born in the 1950s to properly look at the report in detail, as I have described, and at the same time to engage with Parliament in an appropriate way.
Child Poverty in the North
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(12 months ago)
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Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered child poverty in the north of England.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and I give particular thanks to the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson), with whom I co-chair the child of the north all-party parliamentary group. I know that she cares deeply about our children in the north and works daily to try to make a difference. I also thank all the academics who worked on our report on child poverty and the cost of living crisis, alongside the Northern Health Science Alliance and N8 Research Partnership. The report led to today’s debate.
I want to say a special thank you to those parents and children who were brave enough to share their pain with us. Despite the challenges they face, they took time to use their experiences to try to make a difference, and their daily struggle should be at the forefront of our minds during today’s debate. It should be their struggles that we are determined to change. However, after 13 years of Conservative government, more than 4 million children are living in poverty, and the children of the north are suffering disproportionately.
Poverty is sadly not a new experience for many children in the north, but the scale and the severity of their deprivation are unprecedented, and poverty is the lead driver of inequalities between children in the north and children in the rest of England. The gulf between children in the north and their peers is not only growing, but growing rapidly. The north-east has the highest rate of child poverty in the UK, with 38% of our children living in poverty. In my constituency of South Shields, the figure rises to more than 42%—a 12 point increase in child poverty over the past six years. It is becoming very clear that levelling up, just like the northern powerhouse before it, is a vacuous, empty phrase that was never intended to, and never will, do anything to improve the life chances of children in my area.
The impacts of poverty are well documented. Numerous studies have shown the links between nutrition and cognitive development. Hungry and disadvantaged children suffer developmental impairment, language delays and motor skills delays, as well as psychological and emotional impacts that can range from withdrawn and depressive behaviours to irritable and aggressive behaviours.
Pre-pandemic, we even saw rising numbers of hospital admissions of children owing to malnutrition and a resurgence of Victorian diseases such as scurvy and rickets. If it were not for the nearly 2,000 food banks in the UK—they are the ones we know of—and kind neighbours, faith groups and charities, many more children would have simply gone without.
When I was a child protection social worker, the children going without on such a scale were those suffering from severe neglect, but now we have a generation of children for whom hunger and grinding poverty have become the norm. As the cost of living crisis worsens, vulnerable children and families, especially in the north, are being pushed to the edge. Our report found that during the pandemic 34% were living in poverty compared with 28% in the rest of England, and that prior to the cost of living crisis about 1 million households in the north were fuel poor—that is, up to 15% in the north compared with 12% elsewhere.
In addition, we found that families in the north were more likely to be living in poor-quality, damp homes. Before living costs started to rise, nearly 100,000 homes in the north had some form of damp, and 1.1 million homes in the north had failed the decent homes criteria.
Our report was launched in January with a warning about what would happen without the Government introducing urgent measures:
“Rising living costs will lead to immediate and lifelong harms for children: worsening physical and mental health”,
as well as poorer education outcomes and lower productivity.
I despair at how many times we have been here. It was not that long ago that the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights visited the UK and found that Conservative Governments had inflicted “great misery” with
“punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous”
austerity policies driven by a political desire to undertake “social re-engineering”, rather than by economic necessity. Just last year, his successor warned that further austerity could violate the UK’s international human rights obligations and increase hunger and malnutrition.
The free school meal support that the Government have put in place has been hard fought for by charities, faith groups, Opposition MPs and celebrities. The holiday activities and food programme was fought for from 2017, but it was not until 2021 that the Government decided to roll it out. My fully costed School Breakfast Bill would have seen nearly 2 million children start the day with full stomachs. Instead, the Government introduced a scheme that provides support to only 2,500 out of the 8,700 they identified as eligible. It took the tragic death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak from exposure to serious mould for the Government to commit to forcing landlords to fix damp and mouldy homes.
Struggling children have never been and never will be a priority for this Government. If the political will were there, they would listen to the myriad voices—including experts, charities, organisations, faith groups, MPs, including some on their own side, and Henry Dimbleby, their former food tsar—pleading with them to at least expand free school meal eligibility to all families receiving universal credit or equivalent benefits. That would mean that a further 1.3 million children living in poverty would at least get a free school meal and would be eligible for the holiday food programmes.
Poverty can be all-encompassing. Our expert witnesses told us stories of children coming to school hungry, exhausted and without shoes. They miss health appointments because travel is unaffordable. Such hardship not only impacts their health and development but stifles social mobility. Throughout the pandemic, children in the north missed more schooling than their peers across England, which will result in an estimated £24 billion in lost wages over their lifetimes. Children in the north are more likely to die before the age of one. Shockingly, one of our witnesses told us that expectant mothers have been forced to have abortions because they cannot afford another mouth to feed and another child to clothe.
Every single one of us on the APPG, including my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), is committed to change. Our recommendations were that the Government should raise social security in line with inflation at the earliest opportunity, scrap the two-child benefit limit, pause universal credit sanctions for families with children, increase child benefits, extend free school meal eligibility, and take action to improve the energy efficiency of rented homes. That would be a good start in stemming child poverty levels, but those policies alone will not be enough. People should always have enough to live on, either through decent pay or, for those unable to work, a proper welfare safety net. But they do not, because work is no longer a route out of poverty. Sixty-seven per cent. of children and young people growing up in poverty in the north-east are from working families, and social security support continues to be inadequate.
I know the Minister is likely to tell us that the Government are spending billions on welfare, that they have uprated benefits, that they have increased the national living wage, that they are maintaining the energy price guarantee for a few more months, and that they are giving families cost of living payments, but I gently remind her that inflation reached 11% in October last year—a 41-year high—and benefits did not rise with inflation until last month. The cost of a weekly food shop is rising at its fastest annual rate since 1977, hitting 19%, and gas bills are 130% higher than they were in summer 2021.
The reality is that the Government’s support is all in the form of one-offs. Their policies are piecemeal—they are sticking plasters—and do little to address the root causes of child poverty. It should be to the Government’s utter shame that, in a country with as much wealth as ours, children are suffering in this way. History shows us that poverty is not inevitable; it is a result of choices made by Governments. Under the last Labour Government, policies such as the minimum wage, increased benefits for families with children, increased support for childcare and Sure Start lifted 1 million children out of poverty. The next Labour Government would pull families out of fuel poverty by insulating 19 million homes, stop children going to school hungry by establishing breakfast clubs in every primary school and introduce a genuine living wage to ensure that families are being paid enough to live on.
I know my party takes child poverty seriously and the Front-Bench spokesperson will be listening carefully to the points I raise here today. I am hopeful that, ahead of the next general election, we will adopt policies to expand free school meals, increase child benefits and fix problems with the Healthy Start scheme to ensure that every child, no matter where they grow up, has the best possible chance in life. Once someone has experienced poverty, it never leaves them, and enduring scars remain. The feelings of hopelessness and despair may fade over time but they never go away. They are a constant reminder of the injustice of deprivation in a country as wealthy as ours and that no one, especially children, should ever be left hungry, cold or without.
I simply ask the Minister: what is she going to do to remedy the dire situation that consecutive Tory Governments have left our children in the north in? Can she answer this powerful question from Sophie Balmer, our youth ambassador from the End Child Poverty coalition:
“Remember, these graphs are people. I’m a number on these statistics. Why does it feel like I don’t matter…my sisters don’t matter”?
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to reply to this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) on introducing it in a rigorous and well-argued speech in which she drew out the commission’s work. I welcome the important contribution of the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) to the debate, and we also heard a strong speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist). Welcome as it is to have this important debate today, it would have been marvellous if we had been able to hold it on a day when other representatives from the north could have been here to give the topic the full range of contributions it deserves.
The speeches we heard drew heavily on the work of the child of the north all-party parliamentary group and the North East Child Poverty Commission—I was heavily involved in the earlier London Child Poverty Commission, so I know how much work goes into such inquiries. What is important about them is that they draw on the lived experienced of people in poverty, the range of factors that drive poverty, including ill health and disability—sadly, correlated with poverty—and the growing significance of in-work poverty, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon drew out. That is something that we have always had, but it has, sadly, developed into a strong driver of poverty these days.
All the speeches we have heard this morning have made it clear that there are long-term consequences and harms if a child grows up in poverty. When we talk of poverty, we should always reflect on the moral dimension. It is morally critical for us to recognise and commit to dealing with child poverty. We should also reflect on the sheer inefficiency and waste that comes from trapping families and children in poverty. Growing up in poverty will have an impact on health status, leading people into poorer physical and mental health. It is also so closely correlated with educational underachievement that our schools must make extra efforts to support, educate and help children in poverty. In addition, my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields drew out the fact that, tragically, there are consequences for some of our poorest children and families in terms of interventions by children’s services. There is simply a strong economic as well as a moral case for ensuring that we deal with and invest in child poverty.
The Government have made a lot of their levelling-up agenda over the past few years, but if we do not do more to tackle the stark disparities in income poverty between regions, it will continue to be a slogan rather than something that makes a difference on the ground. We can see what remains to be done simply from the Department for Work and Pensions’ own statistics. In the three years leading up to the pandemic, 37% of children in the north-east were living in poverty after housing costs; in the north-west and Yorkshire and the Humber, about a third of children were in poverty. That is the last three-year period for which we have full income data, as the pandemic prevented the production of regional figures for 2020-21, so later figures need to be treated with a degree of caution, but there is little reason to believe that things have got better. Indeed, there are strong reasons for believing that they have, in fact, got worse.
Child poverty is a major problem in every region and every country of the UK. Even in the south-east, nearly one in four children are living in poverty after housing costs. But the north-east has seen a major worsening of its position: child poverty increased by a remarkable 11 percentage points in the five years leading up to the pandemic. The Institute for Fiscal Studies states:
“On a wide variety of measures, regional disparities in the UK are greater than in most comparable countries.”
Tackling those economic disparities requires concerted, long-term action across the full range of Government functions, at central and local levels—from economic development to skills, housing, employment services and infrastructure. It certainly requires more than a pot of levelling-up funding that delivers the equivalent of £80 per capita to the north-east and north-west and just £60 to Yorkshire and the Humber. What the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands describes as Whitehall’s “broken begging bowl culture” cannot be the basis for addressing entrenched economic inequalities between areas.
The issue of regional child poverty also brings out the centrality of social security policy, because bad social security policy choices will exacerbate underlying economic inequalities between regions. The Government are simply not addressing that problem; indeed, for the last 13 years they have pursued policies that lead to a sharpening of regional disparities, and no amount of levelling-up rhetoric can disguise the fact that those policies remain in place and continue to have their inevitable effect.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
If the Government are committed to the levelling-up rhetoric, why is child poverty not mentioned once in the levelling-up White Paper or the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill? Is my hon. Friend concerned about that, as I am?
Ms Buck
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Frankly, it is bizarre that child poverty is not seen as a critical issue in its own right in the levelling-up agenda.
At the root of the problem is the fact that the Government have long ceased to bother with one of the most basic tasks of any social security system, which is matching resources to needs. Not bothering with that task is, of course, the explicit aim of the two-child limit, whereby the DWP is forbidden by statute from taking third and subsequent children into account in setting universal credit and tax credit entitlements, but it is also the effect of a host of other policies that override entitlements based on assessed needs. Those policies include the failure to uprate benefits by inflation and, from 2016 to 2020, the failure to uprate them at all. The four-year benefit freeze has permanently reduced the value of benefits, including in-work benefits. Ministers seem to have difficulty getting their heads around that point; they seem to think that, because benefits were uprated with inflation this year, everything is now all right. They seem not to be aware of the permanent damage that has been done.
Failing to set the local housing allowance in line with real-world rents is another issue. The local housing allowance remains frozen at 2019 levels. Across the north, two thirds of universal credit households receiving rent support in the private sector have rents above the local housing allowance maximum for their area. The shortfall between rent and the local housing allowance has to be made up out of whatever other income households have. At a national level, the average shortfall is £100 a month. Have a Government ever come up with a more elementary design flaw than building debt into universal credit by making people wait five weeks for their first payment? The examples can be multiplied.
In all cases, we see the Government breaking the link between benefit entitlements and needs as a matter of deliberate policy. Families can wind up falling foul of more than one of those policies simultaneously, which can lead to cumulative impacts—needing to make up the rent out of the rest of the UC payment, which has already been reduced to pay back an advance and which takes no account, for example, of their third child. This has been going on for years. Is it any wonder, then, that we see evidence of destitution throughout the country, or that regions that have historically done worse have faced a disproportionate impact? Consider that 49% of children in the north-east are in families receiving universal credit or an equivalent legacy benefit, compared to 24% in the south-east. Of course these policies impact some regions more than others. One of the more shocking results of the latest poverty statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions is that one in 10 children in the north-east are in families that used a food bank in the last 12 months—nearly twice the national figure.
Tackling economic disparities between areas requires a functioning social security system that takes account of all relevant needs and costs. As long as we do not have that, the rhetoric of levelling up will remain just that—rhetoric.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) for securing this debate. I absolutely agree with the early sentiments and spirit of unity in her speech and speeches from across this Chamber. It is right that we come together to do the best for our youngsters, and it is vital that they are at the heart of our actions and outcomes. The way the debate has been held is critical to getting under the skin of what is happening in communities in the north and, in fact, any community where people are struggling. I thank everyone who has contributed and who helps support the most vulnerable daily. I also thank the all-party group for its work and all those who gave evidence and insight to the APPG report, which I will refer to shortly.
I will pick up on several issues later in the debate, but I want to assure the House about the quality of homes issue, which is something that consistently comes up. Since I took on this brief, having been asked to return to DWP to cover social mobility, the issue is something I am focused on and am working on with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and across Government. This is very much something in my line of sight, and I thank hon. Members for raising those issues.
I reassure the House that we are strongly committed to a welfare system that supports those who are most in need. I understand the concerns around the phrase “levelling up”. It is not an empty phrase, and I will make some further remarks on that shortly. In 2023-24, we will spend around £276 billion through the welfare system in Great Britain, including £124 billion on people of working age and their children. As we have heard, our commitment is reflected in the 10.1% increase in benefit rates and state pensions for 2023-24, and we have increased the benefit cap by that same amount so that more people across the whole country can benefit from these new rates.
The decisive action we have seen because of the impact of the cost of living is there in how we made good on our commitment to protecting the most vulnerable. Overall, in 2022-23 and 2023-24, we are providing total support worth £94 billion to help people with rising bills. On average, that is £3,300 per household. Last year, we made cost of living payments of up to £650 to over 8 million low-income households, and I am proud to have been the Minister bringing through the recent Bill on that. This year, a similar number of eligible households will receive additional payments of up to £900. I am pleased to confirm today that 99% of households that were initially eligible for the first cost of living payment via DWP will have been paid £301 by the Government by the end of today, which basically means we will see 6.4 million households on an eligible DWP means-tested benefit getting that first cost of living payment.
That gives me the opportunity to remind anybody listening to speak to Citizens Advice and to use our Help to Claim service, the Help for Households website and the benefit calculator on gov.uk. I am mindful, however, that not everyone is able to do that, and it is absolutely right that they should turn to Citizens Advice or other help in the community, and I will go on to some of that shortly.
We have worked with Ofcom and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to ensure that we have a growing number of social tariffs for access to homework, applying for jobs and getting more training and support for those people on universal credit or means-tested benefits. We are working hard to promote that in our jobcentres and through partnerships, and we are working strongly with Ofcom.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
It is good to hear that the cost of living payments are going to be in people’s bank accounts, but does the Minister not agree that they are another sticking-plaster measure? If benefits and the welfare system were providing what they should, then we would not need to provide these payments because people would have enough to live on.
Mims Davies
I understand the hon. Lady’s point. I thank her for her passion and interest in this area, and for what she is doing for her constituents. There is no direct, objective way of clarifying what is an adequate level of benefit. Every person has a different level of requirements depending on their circumstances. Income-related benefits are not made up of separate amounts specific to beneficiaries’ expenditure, or food costs or whatever. The Government firmly believe that beneficiaries should be free to spend their benefits how they see fit in the light of their individual circumstances and needs.
The Government’s approach to welfare is to fully recognise the value and importance of work, which has been mentioned in this debate. Making it work for everybody is vital. We are determined not only to help people progress and be supported in work, but to protect and support the most vulnerable in society. Universal credit is adjusted monthly depending on a beneficiary’s circumstances. It is absolutely right that the people who need additional support, whether that is through the household support fund, hardship payments or an adjustment due to a change in circumstances, are able to come forward. I spent much of my childhood on benefits due to the impact of ill health and disablement, and we had to navigate through the same system. I personally understand it.
Whether people are on benefits for a short or a long time, it is important that they are supported, and know how to navigate the system to get the right support for their family. That is why I am always keen to reiterate the Help to Claim service, the Help for Households website and the work we have done on the household support fund. I thank our partners in particular for their work on delivering the household support fund for people, whether they receive benefits or not. We have heard today that because of the war in Ukraine and the changing impact of the pandemic, more people than ever have found things particularly tough. With the household support fund, I have made it clear that people on benefits, and those who are just above the threshold or just managing, or perhaps in a change of circumstances, will be looked for, found and reached out to so that that discretionary support can be given to those who need it most. Devolved Administrations will receive consequential funding to use at their discretion.
It is right that in our approach to tackling poverty, we are able to bring in different interventions and different changes. People can call it a sticking plaster, but for me it is a different intervention and a step change to support some of the people I have mentioned, who perhaps would not normally need to be supported by the benefits system. It is a firm belief that the best way to help families to improve their financial situation is through not only work but skills. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) mentioned sectors and areas where people perhaps do not see a way into better-paid jobs and opportunities. It is vital that we engage and talk with them, and use Jobcentre Plus sits and local networks to help people see that there are opportunities just down the road from them. Their skill base, level of education or confidence—the word we hear continually at DWP—should not lock them out from the opportunities that are there. That is why those 1.1 million vacancies across the UK are our firm focus to help people to take further steps not just into work but to progress in work, and to be better off.
I will turn to some of the points that have been made today to hopefully underline that focus. On jobs interventions, there have been jobs fairs at the JCP in Birkenhead, and there are 16 employers with 400 roles available. In Sheffield, the NHS has very pleasingly streamlined the application process for universal credit claimants, ensuring that we actually attract the people who are down the road into the roles we need filling. In Doncaster, our local team has worked on jobs fairs particularly for those with health conditions and disabilities. In fact, there was recently a north-east jobs fair at the Stadium of Light with 50 employers and 1,800 people invited. It is absolutely vital that we use all different interventions to help people to be better off, including those additional interventions from Government as well as helping people to progress and be better off in work.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank all hon. Members for taking part in this debate and the members of the child of the north APPG. As the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) alluded to, some were unable to take part. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for her support from the Front Bench. I also thank the Minister for her comments and for her consistency. She has done what many Ministers have done before her in debates on these issues: she has defended indefensible aspects of this Government’s record and has blamed covid and Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine for the problems we face when we all know the Government crashed the economy last year. We all know we were uniquely exposed to the hike in energy prices because of a lack of investment in renewables and a failure to rein in the energy companies properly. We are the only country in the G7 that has not recovered from the pandemic because we came from such a low economic base.
To be fair, I did not expect the Minister to commit to getting rid of the five-week minimum wait for universal credit, suspending the two-child limit, and increasing free school meals and the Healthy Start scheme, but I assure everyone here—I am sure they know this already—that I will continue to push and argue for them. My disappointment is not really for me; it is for the children and families in the north who, yet again, in the absence of any promises of consistent and sustained support, will have to rely on their remarkable resilience and the charitable sector in our strong, close-knit communities right across the north. For them, the general election cannot come soon enough.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered child poverty in the north of England.
Oral Answers to Questions
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Mims Davies
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue. I will address this to you equally and fully, Mr Speaker. It is vital that we ensure that our staff our consulted and listened to. We have more than 920 buildings, which can house 168,000 people—we currently have 92,000 people. Some of them are poor-quality buildings, without progression opportunities, and we have not been able to embrace hybrid working. Let me remind the House that this is about back-office function and retaining staff, giving them a better quality of workplace and embracing hybrid working, and about people staying local when they can.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
As a result of my Food Insecurity Bill, the family resources survey now reports on food insecurity. The survey found that one of the key reasons, even pre-pandemic, that people could not afford to eat was that benefits were grossly inadequate. Does the Secretary of State think that the pitiful 3.1% increase in benefits, when inflation will peak at 8%, is going to make people more or less able to afford to eat?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (David Rutley)
The uprating was in line with inflation in the way that it has been calculated since 1987, but additional support is available, through the three-part plan that the Chancellor set out to tackle energy costs and through the household support fund.
Oral Answers to Questions
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Dr Coffey
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue. I will absolutely share her concerns on the specific college to which she refers, Northern College. As I say, the Government are committed to helping ex-offenders to re-establish themselves back into the community and into work. As part of the Government taskforce, though, I am very keen to help prisoners get the right job skills while they are still in prison so they can walk straight out of prison into the world of work. However, the elements to which she refers will continue to be important in ensuring that people stay in jobs and succeed in jobs.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Will Quince)
Analysis shows that prior to the pandemic, the poorest 20% of households saw their incomes increase by over 6% in 2019-20, even after taking account of inflation. Since the pandemic hit, we have strengthened the welfare system, spending £7.4 billion on measures such as the universal credit uplift, on top of additional support such as the coronavirus job retention scheme and the self-employment income support scheme. Her Majesty’s Treasury analysis has shown that the Government’s unprecedented support package means that working working-age households in the bottom 10% of the income distribution have seen no income reduction.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I am not at all surprised that the Minister’s answer bears little resemblance to the reality. Even pre-pandemic, 75% of children living in poverty lived in a household where at least one person worked. A recent NHS England-funded report found that around 700 child deaths could be avoided each year by reducing deprivation rates. Under this Government, work is no longer a route out of poverty. Why is that?
Oral Answers to Questions
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)
We are providing £15 million for local authorities to make discretionary payments to people not eligible for the self-employment income support scheme. The DWP has temporarily relaxed the minimum income floor for self-employed UC claimants affected by covid-19. The self-employed have also benefited from other parts of our support package, such as increased local housing allowance. However, I urge anyone who thinks they may need further support to check the benefits calculator on gov.uk.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab) [V]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Will Quince)
We keep all policies under review, including the uplift to universal credit, which is under active discussion between our Department and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I would gently push back on what the hon. Lady said and alert her to the fact that in 2020-21, we will spend more than £120 billion on benefits for working-age people. That is £120,000 million—around £1 in every £8 that the Government spend; three times the defence budget, and nearly as large as the NHS budget. We continue to support people throughout this country during the pandemic.
Covid-19: DWP Update
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Dr Coffey
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We know that it is not a well-targeted system, and that is why we will continue to say that it is not the approach that this Government will take. May I also wish a belated happy birthday to my hon. Friend, who turned a significant age at the weekend?
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab) [V]
Recently the Secretary of State said that she was confident that the system was working. Prior to this pandemic, more than 8 million people struggled to access food, and now a further 8 million households with children have lost their income. With food banks reporting increased footfall of more than 100%, can she please explain what possible grounds she had for that misplaced confidence and her continued justification for the five-week wait for universal credit, the two-child policy and the benefit cap?
Dr Coffey
The fundamentals of universal credit do not change. The reason for the assessment period is to understand people’s general income and use that as a basis, but that is where the advances come in: to help people who cannot make ends meet in between. As I said, fewer than half of people who have applied for universal credit have also wanted an advance. We are getting the vast majority of that money to people within three days and I think that that shows that the system is flexible enough to help those who need it most.
Oral Answers to Questions
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Justin Tomlinson
We rightly welcome the fact that we are now providing an additional £6 billion to some of the most vulnerable people in society through the PIP system, but we recognise that more needs to be done to gather evidence early. Through the forthcoming Green Paper, we will be looking at how we can work better with claimants to ensure that as much evidence is presented as early as possible in order to get the right decision first time.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Dr Coffey
To be open, I am not aware of the study to which the hon. Lady refers. I will find out about it after questions, so I can send her an answer in writing. As I have mentioned to the House before, food bank use is not what we want to see in the long term. The best way to get out of poverty is through work, which is why we will continue to help people up the escalator of career progression.
Oral Answers to Questions
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Guy Opperman
It is not specifically the case that pensioners are in poverty compared with previous records, which show that pensioner poverty is coming down. I will write to the hon. Lady in respect of her specific point about the winter fuel allowance.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
I listened carefully to the Minister’s earlier answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). It was simply not good enough because in just two days’ time changes by this Government to mixed-age couples’ benefits will make them ineligible for pension credit and force them both to apply for universal credit, which will result in many losing thousands of pounds. With one in six older people already living in poverty, is it not time that the Minister rethought the changes, or is he determined to increase those shameful levels of poverty?
Guy Opperman
Pension credit is intended to provide long-term support to economically inactive pensioner households. It is not intended to support working-age claimants. This change ensures that people cannot access pensioner benefits before they have reached state pension age, so taxpayer support is directed to where it is needed most.
Households Below Average Income Statistics
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Amber Rudd
That is such a good point from my hon. Friend. He is right that we need to constantly address poor-quality accommodation, as well as making sure that that accommodation is affordable. I am engaged in conversations with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that we address this together.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Recognising the direct link between this Government’s punitive welfare reform agenda and rising levels of absolute, grinding poverty, over seven months ago leaked documents showed that the Department began a study of factors driving the use of food banks. It is due to be concluded in October—what are the interim findings?
Amber Rudd
The hon. Lady is right—we are looking at the factors to do with food banks. I want to take a very open approach to finding out what is going on and what the drivers are, because sometimes there are quite a lot of conclusions. I want to make sure that there is an opportunity to do some myth-busting and find out what we can do to allay this.
UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
I thank the House for allowing me to hold this debate this evening on the statement by the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Professor Philip Alston, following his visit late last year to the United Kingdom, which, along with a plethora of other reports, has ensured that the grinding and increasing poverty of daily life for so many in the UK has been brought into the spotlight.
Unlike the Government, who have treated Professor Alston’s well-evidenced and thorough statement with complete and utter disdain, I want to personally thank him for his conviction in passionately highlighting the absolute shame, degradation and harm that this Government are inflicting on those they govern, which has led to 14 million people living in poverty.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
In addition to the disdain that this Government showed for the UN rapporteur’s report, the United States Government showed the same disdain when he produced a report on poverty in the United States. I know that we have a special relationship with the United States, but I think it shames us all that we share that disdain. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
My hon. Friend points to a worrying analogy, and I do of course agree.
Professor Alston’s statement confirms what many Labour Members have known for a very long time—that when it comes to welfare reform and this Government’s policy agenda overall,
“the evidence points to the conclusion that the driving force has not been economic but rather a commitment to achieving radical social re-engineering.”
It has long been embedded in Tory DNA that “there is no such thing as society”, and social experiments in rolling back the state always begin with those who need the state the most. That is why the legacy of every Tory Government is one of deep inequality.
Professor Alston rightly notes that nowhere can this social re-engineering be seen more clearly than in the roll-out of “universal discredit”, as he calls it.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this matter to the House for consideration. The report highlighted the alarming rise in food bank use. In my constituency, the Trussell Trust food bank had a 20% increase in take-up over the Christmas period because of debts due to delays in first universal credit payments, leading to people being forced to choose between paying rent and feeding their children. Does the hon. Lady not agree that the Minister—I am being respectful to him—must take steps to address the issues highlighted in the report? It cannot be ignored.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will come to those points later in my speech, but he is right; this cannot be ignored any longer.
In principle, universal credit seemed to make some sense. Consolidation of six benefits into one should have achieved the key tenets of simplifying payments and incentivising people into work. Crucially, however, it was never designed to get support to those who needed it in a timely and efficient manner. In reality, like all welfare reform measures from this Government, it was about creating a hostile environment and demonising and dehumanising benefit claimants. As Professor Alston notes, the Department
“is more concerned with making economic savings and sending messages about lifestyles”
than with responding to genuine needs.
The result has been an unrelenting onslaught of abject harm inflicted on more than 3 million people. The late-in-the-day news that the next phase of roll-out is being scaled back gives no comfort to the millions already suffering. Trussell Trust food bank figures show that in areas where universal credit has been implemented, food bank usage has increased by 52%. The fact that the Work and Pensions Secretary states that she “regrets” the growth in food banks will offer no comfort to the estimated 8.4 million people in the UK suffering from food insecurity, or to the volunteers and faith groups filling the gap left by the state and manning the nearly 2,000 food banks that we shamefully now have operating as a permanent part of the welfare state.
Nor will the Secretary of State’s regret give comfort to my constituents, such as one 18-year-old girl starting out in life who unexpectedly lost her job and who, despite statements made by the Government to the contrary, has not been eligible for housing cost assistance through universal credit. She narrowly escaped homelessness thanks to the intervention of our irreplaceable South Tyneside citizens advice bureau. The Secretary of State’s regret will also not help my constituent who suffers from mental health difficulties and was left with only £1.25 per day to live on after the Department made an error with her payments.
The five-week delay embedded in the system, which often turns out to be longer, was never going to achieve anything other than hardship, because one day going hungry and not being able to pay the bills is one day too many.
Thelma Walker (Colne Valley) (Lab)
In my constituency, there are nearly 6,000 children living in poverty, and in one ward 40% of children are living in poverty. Does my hon. Friend agree that in one of the richest countries in the world, unnecessary suffering brought about by Government policies is unacceptable?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I agree.
The 35-day delay leads to destitution and despair. There is no acceptable rationale for making people wait that long other than, to use Professor Alston’s words,
“to make clear that being on benefits should involve hardship.”
That hardship is exemplified clearly in the draconian application of sanctions. It is estimated that across the benefits system, more than 350,000 people were denied access to benefit payments between 2017 and 2018 for the most trivial and minor of reasons—for example, missing appointments because a relative has died unexpectedly or because claimants themselves have been admitted to hospital, or attending interviews instead of jobcentre appointments. The list is endless.
Professor Alston’s statement pays attention to the 2017 Government transformation strategy, under which all Government services will be “digital by default”. Universal credit claimants have been used as guinea pigs, as this is the first major service to be digital by default. It was either a deliberate act or total incompetence that led the Government to the conclusion that the most vulnerable and those with limited digital literacy and limited access to computers should be the first to test that. Even worse, it has been done against a backdrop of closures of libraries and jobcentres—the very places that those struggling would have gone to for assistance.
This Government have created a disability culture void of medical evidence and based on ignorance, fabrications and downright cruelty. The work capability and personal independence payment assessments—the most damning policies of our time—have seen companies such as Maximus, Atos and Capita being handed multimillion-pound contracts to hit targets based on how many people with disabilities they can push into destitution, and people with Down’s syndrome being asked by assessors how they “caught” it.
Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a very good speech. Does she agree that it is shameful that in 2017 the UN, which we associate with development work in third-world countries, found that 14 million people in Great Britain were living in poverty as a result of the Government’s failed welfare reforms? Does she agree that the Government should be ashamed of the findings of the UN report, which demonstrates that the only increases we have seen in this country are in child poverty, food bank usage and homelessness, as a direct result of Government policies? Does she agree that it is unacceptable for the Government to ignore the UN’s findings on poverty and the treatment of disabled people in this country?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
The Government should be ashamed. They should also be ashamed that a wheelchair user with multiple sclerosis was asked how long it would be before she could walk again, and that a young woman with a cancer-related bone marrow disease was denied personal independence payments because she had a degree, because working to gain a qualification is apparently a sign that someone is “not really disabled”. On top of that, people with disabilities are losing their severe disability premiums and enhanced disability premiums under universal credit, leaving them £80 a week worse off.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate on this important issue, which I feel has been shamefully neglected by the Government up to this point. Does she agree that the use of informal observations in benefit assessments, which have no criteria and are open to subjective opinion and interpretation on the part of assessors, often results in inaccurate and ill-informed assessments? That has certainly caused some of my most vulnerable constituents considerable distress. Does she therefore agree that the Government should undertake a review of the use of such observations?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I agree that that would be a welcome way forward.
Those stories I have mentioned are not the exception but the norm, so it is little wonder that in 2017 the UN concluded that the UK Government were guilty of
“grave or systematic violations of the rights of persons with disabilities”.
The UK benefits system now locks people into a Kafkaesque nightmare, and for some the only escape, tragically, has been to take their own lives. This state-inflicted damage cannot and must not continue.
Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)
I too congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on her powerful speech. Does she agree that the welfare state system we now have, in which people are left utterly powerless and often without the support they need to appeal decisions, is contributing not only to rising debt but to rising levels of mental health problems, as people suffer from depression and despair because they are unable to get on and be treated fairly?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
My hon. Friend is right. I used to be proud to live in a country where people, when in need through no fault of their own, were able to receive help from the welfare state in their darkest hours, but since 2010 that safety net has been eroded and ripped away so that work is no longer a route out of poverty. Punitive welfare reform, benefit cuts, inaction on low-paid and insecure work and the widening gulf between the cost of living and income have led to 4 million people being in work and in poverty, and over 4 million children living in poverty. Stories of children coming to school with a grey pallor and undernourished, rummaging through bins for food and wearing threadbare clothes are commonplace.
What comes through very clearly in Professor Alston’s report is that this Government do not have a vision for this county that works for everyone. His statement and the full report, which will follow in the spring, should be treated as a factual commentary and a warning for future general elections of how Tory Governments rip the very fabric of our county apart and cause irrevocable harm. Eight years of regressive policies have led to the hollowing out and decimation of local government and many other key public services, meaning that costly crisis management, rather than prevention, is now the norm.
We now see the human cost borne out on our streets, where homeless people are dying; where people suffering from terminal illnesses, disabilities and mental health difficulties are being wrongly declared fit for work, which means some attempt to take their own lives, and some are successful; where children and adults are being admitted to hospital for malnutrition; where food banks are having to turn desperate people away because they cannot cope with demand; where families are living in squalid temporary accommodation, with only the clothes on their backs and no end in sight; where vulnerable adults and children are being left with no social care provision at all; and where a whole generation of women have been plunged into poverty after their pensions were stolen from them by this Government.
This short debate in no way does justice to Professor Alston’s report, and I hope we will be able to revisit it in future, because as we debate it here tonight there will be mams and dads returning home after a hard day’s work with rumbling stomachs, looking through empty cupboards wondering how they will feed their children. There will be elderly people sat alone, the silence of their loneliness piercing as they wonder if they should eat or put their heating on. There will be thousands who have torn open that brown envelope this morning only for the words and decisions within it to tear their world apart. Their pain lies at this Government’s door. Their suffering should be the shame of this Government, but it is not.
Professor Alston noted the
“striking…disconnect between what I heard from the government and what I consistently heard from…people…across the country.”
He added:
“The Government has remained determinedly in a state of denial…poverty is a political choice. Austerity could easily have spared the poor, if the political will had existed to do so.”
In his response I hope the Minister will answer one pertinent question, the answer to which millions of people currently suffering need to know: does that political will exist yet?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Justin Tomlinson)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), who has done a huge amount of work in this area over a number of years. She brings a huge amount of experience to many of the points she has raised.
This report covers not only the Department for Work and Pensions but the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Treasury and the Department for Exiting the European Union, but I will be speaking predominantly from the perspective of the DWP. At this stage it is only an interim report, and we are committed to considering Professor Alston’s views and opinions very carefully.
I recognise that hon. Members would now expect me to disagree with the majority of the report as it stands, and there are certainly things with which we do not agree, but I support the important role of the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. The former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Ms McVey), other departmental Ministers, our respective teams and I were fully engaged with the process. We met Professor Alston, we supported the visits and the engagement throughout the process and, as I said, we will give very serious consideration to his views and opinions.
As a Minister, I am not precious. Government should be challenged and held to account, whether by the UN special rapporteur, by stakeholders or by the fantastic work of the various Select Committees. All Governments of all political persuasions, since the dawn of time, have had challenging reports, and it is rare we get a report that says, “Fantastic. You are single-handedly doing everything perfectly right.” Such reports are an important part of our democratic process, and even the most challenging and most critical reports ultimately shape future decisions.
Justin Tomlinson
I will give way. I will not take too many interventions because I have a lot to cover.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank the Minister for giving way. I am a little confused, because the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions have both dismissed the findings and do not agree with the report. Has there been a change of thinking since they made those comments?
Justin Tomlinson
What I am saying is that we will consider the report seriously. We obviously do not agree with all the points, but Professor Alston has highlighted some important views and opinions to which we should rightly be looking to respond.
One challenge I make to Professor Alston ahead of his final report is that, at two of the visits, the visits to Newcastle and Clacton, he had the opportunity to meet frontline staff and volunteers. At the recent Women and Equalities questions, my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) expressed a huge amount of disappointment from those frontline staff and volunteers, who felt that their fantastic work was not recognised—it had just one line. It is right that the report holds the Government’s feet and Ministers’ feet to the coals, but we would all recognise that there are people doing a fantastic job, both the paid formal staff and the volunteers, and I hope Professor Alston will reflect on that.
As we consider Professor Alston’s views and findings, we must remember that this is a snapshot. On many of the issues raised, we are rightly already taking action, acknowledging that there were issues and that they needed to be dealt with. That is either through the additional money secured in recent Budgets, or through our ongoing and crucial work with stakeholders, with their particular expertise. As I have said, while this covers many Departments, I will focus on where the DWP has the lion’s share of the involvement.
Understandably, UC formed a significant part of both the report and the speech we have just heard. To be absolutely clear, this was never a financial thing. We are looking to spend an additional £2 billion compared with the legacy benefits, and rightly so. UC offers the opportunity for personalised, tailored support dealing with housing, training and childcare, and giving claimants who are in a position to seek work an additional 50% more time to find work.
Although there are still challenges and there is much more work to do, if Members visit jobcentres, they will find that the frontline staff do recognise that UC is significantly better than the complex legacy benefits. They were six benefits across three agencies—HMRC, the DWP and local authorities—and, frankly, people had to be nuclear physicists to navigate them. We all know from our own constituency casework how complex it was to unravel the situation.
Justin Tomlinson
Let me make a bit of progress and I will give way if I have time. The hon. Member for South Shields has raised some important questions and I want to try to cover as many as I can in the limited time. If I can, I will come back to the hon. Lady.
There have already been much needed improvements, partly through the additional £4.5 billion cash boost that has been secured in recent Budgets. There are the changes to advance payments, particularly to make that a part of the discussion in the initial conversation. We have changed repayments from six months to 12 months to 16 months and the rate at which they are done. That is something that we will continue to review. There is the additional, non-repayable two weeks’ housing benefit, worth up to £237, and the recent announcement of an additional two weeks of ESA, JSA or income support, worth up to £200. We have scrapped the seven days’ waiting. There are the alternative payments—direct to landlords—on housing, and more frequent payments where we feel that will help. There is the additional £1,000 work allowance, worth £630, which alone came to £1.7 billion. There is the 12-month exemption from the minimum income floor for the self-employed, and there is the increase in the severe disability premium from £158 to £326.
However, there are areas where we still need to do further work. The hon. Member for South Shields talked about digital by default. I think we do need to look at that. We have alternatives in place, but we also need to be more proactive in recognising those who would need that support. We have to identify vulnerable claimants and a major step was to put in place a formal arrangement—I championed this—with Citizens Advice. It will remain independent of us, it is widely respected and it is best placed to give support, particularly to vulnerable claimants, not just on the digital side, if that is needed, but general support as people navigate the benefits to which they should be entitled.
Building on that, we have to make sure that stakeholders are absolutely key and at the heart of everything we do in training our frontline staff and providing support for claimants. For example, a month before Christmas, I was working very closely with Women’s Aid, Refuge and ManKind, meeting three or four times, so that they could do a root and branch review of the training we do to help to identify potential victims of domestic abuse, update our training manuals and guidance, feed in the feedback they receive from their supporters, and look at the best ways to identify potential victims, refer them to the maximum number of local and national support organisations, and work on the level of support we can offer. That is a principle I would like to see formalised, so that it does not just happen because it is a topical issue; it is a given going forward and we look to do that in many areas.
A lot was said about measures of poverty and what the reality is out there. What we do know is that there are 1 million fewer people in absolute poverty—a record low—including 300,000 children. On the different measures of relative and absolute poverty before and after housing, all are no higher than in 2010 and three are now lower. The average income of the poorest fifth in society under our Government has increased by £400 in real terms.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Does the Minister agree with Professor Alston’s assessment that, because the Government use four different measures of poverty, they can essentially say what they want about the figures? The reality is that there are 14 million people living in poverty in the UK.
Justin Tomlinson
The hon. Lady has just used one of the statistics. There is cross-party work on looking at alternatives. We are very interested to see if there is a way we can find statistics that we can all agree on. I think that is one area on which we do all agree.
The richest fifth are £800 less well-off under this Government. We are rightly targeting support at those who are most in need. Household incomes have never been higher and income inequality has fallen, having risen under the last Labour Government.
Many Members referred to food banks. Food affordability, the ability to afford a meal, has almost halved in the last five years. It is down to 5.4%. That is 2.5% lower than the EU average. There is still more to do in that area, which is why I am committed to working a lot more closely with the food bank network in this country. For a variety of reasons, some people may be going to food banks who should be receiving formal support. I want to make it as easy as possible to identify, to refer them and to get them back in to the system, so they can receive the full support.