Oral Answers to Questions
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Emma Reynolds
I refer the hon. Gentleman to my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell): the deadline remains 21 December. Thanks to the Government’s steadfast commitment to the triple lock, more than 12 million pensioners will see their pension increase by more than 4% in April next years, up to £470. Over this Parliament, they will be better off by around £1,900, thanks to the triple lock. Low-income pensioners can also apply for the warm home discount scheme and, thanks to the extension of the household support fund, local authorities can target that support on low-income pensioners. In the longer term, the warm homes plan will transform homes across the country by making them cleaner and cheaper to run.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
The Minister for Employment (Alison McGovern)
As well as putting in place breakfast clubs that mean children are ready to learn, and as well as the fair payment rate—we have discussed that—which will stop families being tipped into destitution by debt, the ministerial taskforce, chaired by the Work and Pensions and Education Secretaries, will publish the child poverty strategy in spring 2025, using all available levers across government to bring about an enduring reduction in child poverty in this Parliament, as part of a 10-year strategy for lasting change.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
We know that the previous Government presided over shameful levels of child poverty, including nearly 500,000 children who are eligible for free school meals but who are missing out. Will my hon. Friend, alongside the Education Secretary, urgently look at the proposal by Feeding Britain for auto-enrolment to free school meals as part of the single application process for families claiming UC?
Alison McGovern
One person who has never looked the other way when people were facing poverty in this country is my hon. Friend. Through her innovation, she has ensured that household food insecurity is measured properly, and I pay tribute to her efforts. I have listened to what she said about Feeding Britain, and I will take that as an input into the child poverty taskforce. I hope that she and Feeding Britain will meet me to discuss how we can take that forward.
Women’s State Pension Age
Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts(8 months 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(1 year, 6 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, 8 months 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(3 years, 6 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, 10 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(4 years, 6 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, 10 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(5 years, 6 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, 7 months 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.