Households Below Average Income Statistics

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[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

Monday 7th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[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?

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Will the Minister give way?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I will give way. I will not take too many interventions because I have a lot to cover.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Funeral Poverty

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered funeral poverty.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Streeter. While few things are certain in this world, we can be sure that almost all of us will have to go through the unbearable, gut-wrenching pain of losing a loved one. Since death does not work to a strict timetable and can often come without warning, even at the end of a long illness that final passing can still take us by surprise. The support and help that people need at this time must surpass all normal standards. Sadly, it does not, which is why I secured this debate.

I am deeply frustrated that the debate is one in a long line I have contributed to on this subject. Over the past four years, I have faced a multitude of Ministers and met numerous organisations and groups in an attempt to press the Government to make much-needed reforms to how funeral services and, crucially, social fund funeral payments, administered by the Department for Work and Pensions, operate. The measures I have pressed for, and which I proposed in a Funeral Services Bill some years ago, would ease the burden of those who want to give their loved ones a fitting tribute. That I am here again to ask the Minister the same questions is evidence enough that, despite warm words from the Prime Minister as recently as last week, when she said that

“it is important to families and individuals to be able to give their loved one a proper funeral”—[Official Report, 5 September 2018; Vol. 646, c. 160.]

the reality is that, on her Government’s watch, more and more people are simply unable to do just that.

One key ask in my Bill, and from many other people at the time, was for the Government to carry out an over- arching review of funeral affordability. Back in 2014, more than 100,000 people were estimated to be suffering from funeral poverty. A Co-op survey earlier this year revealed the number now to be 4 million. That is 4 million people who have experienced financial hardship as a result of a loved one’s death.

The gulf between incomes and living costs continues to rise as the Government’s agenda, coupled with punitive welfare and benefit reforms and inaction on low-paid, insecure work, has led to a record 8 million working adults living in poverty.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her tenacity and determination in taking on this terrible scourge. Is she aware of the exploitation that people face when trying to bury a loved one, with local authorities doubling, tripling or quadrupling burial fees for someone who did not live in the borough at the time of death, even if they own the grave and lived in the borough almost their entire life?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

One measure in my Bill was to look across the board at what local authorities and the market were doing in relation to funerals, because people are being exploited at such a sensitive time.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this timely debate. Is she aware that the average cost of a burial nationally is £4,561, yet the average social fund funeral payment is £1,427—about 35% of the cost? Given the rising cost of living in other respects, that is quite a burden on a lot of families, and a lot sometimes have to sell goods to pay for funerals. Does she think that there should be an investigation into funeral charges, and also into the scope of the social fund itself?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

It should come as no surprise to my hon. Friend that I will address all the points he raises.

As I was saying, a record 8 million working adults live in poverty in the UK, with 14 million people overall living in poverty. It is little wonder that, for someone living day by day and hand to mouth, the final act of giving a deserving tribute to their loved ones is heartbreakingly out of reach. An estimated 81% of people have been unable to save for a funeral. Funeral poverty in the UK has now reached a record high of more than £160 million in 2017—a 50% increase in the last three years alone. There has also been an increase in people having to wait more than a year to bury family members.

The cost of a basic funeral is now £4,078, yet this can rise in some London areas to as high as a staggering £12,000. Around a quarter of families that cannot afford funerals borrow from friends or relatives, a quarter put costs on a credit card, and the rest take out loans or work out an instalment plan with funeral directors. Some even sell their belongings. It has been revealed recently that people are increasingly turning to crowd- funding websites to raise money for funerals, with JustGiving showing a 400% increase in people asking for money from friends, families and strangers to fund funerals for their loved ones. I cannot imagine having to seek support from strangers on a faceless website to pay for a loved one’s funeral.

My Bill and the “Support for the bereaved” report by the Work and Pensions Committee both called on the Government to negotiate a simple funeral service and to establish with the sector a reasonable cost for items required for a simple funeral. The Government claim that doing so would interfere with people’s choice but that they are working with stakeholders to agree what might be included in a standard package funeral. I hope the Minister can advise us what stage he is at after two years of discussions.

For those struggling to afford a funeral, there is state support in the form of the social fund funeral payment. It is accessible to those on certain benefits, but it is in absolutely dire need of reform. In 2017, out of the 41,800 applications for the fund, 16,900 were declined. Considering that the fund can be accessed only once funeral costs have been committed to—once a debt exists—that leaves almost 17,000 people struggling to pay. The DWP’s target to deal with claims is 16 days, yet the average between a death and a funeral is 13 days, and much less for some religions and cultures.

Those payments also categorise certain aspects of a funeral. The provisions refer to “other expenses” as being funeral directors’ fees, ministers’ fees and a coffin. These apparently optional extras have been capped for 15 years at £700. If the cap had kept up with inflation, it would be £300 higher today. However, funeral costs have far exceeded the rate of inflation, more than doubling since 2003.

I acknowledge the Government’s changes in recent years, such as allowing recipients to receive contributions from other sources without deductions, extending the claim period from three to six months after the funeral, and introducing both a shorter application form for children’s funerals and the electronic submission of forms. However, the stark reality is that, without exploring the regulation of the market and funding demand and establishing eligibility for the social fund before people commit to costs, the number of those in funeral debt will continue to swell. In 2016, the then Minister rejected calls for an eligibility checker, saying that that would cause more “confusion”. I find it absolutely impossible to see how someone knowing whether they are eligible to afford a funeral for their loved one before committing to one can cause more confusion than not knowing and being saddled with debt.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is making very important points about the social fund funeral payment system. Does she agree that it not only is confusing but adds considerable emotional stress for those going through the system if they wait so long for a decision as to whether they will get money, bearing in mind that the grant itself does not even meet some of the basic costs of a cremation, for example?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. The process is indeed distressing and complex for many people. I think the forms that need to be filled in number 24 or 26 in total. When someone is grieving and trying to find the money to pay for a funeral for a loved one, filling in 20-odd forms and trying to have a clear head while doing so is nigh on impossible.

Today the Minister may well refer to budgeting loans as an option for helping families to pay for funerals, but I am sure he knows as well as I do that the figures for how many people apply for those loans for funerals are not recorded or kept centrally and that the average amount of a loan in the past year was only £420.

The Government should note that putting their head in the sand does not make this problem go away; it simply moves it around. A freedom of information request via ITV revealed that a 70% increase in public health funerals over the past three years has cost local councils up to £4 million. Historically referred to as paupers’ funerals, they are the last option when there is no one available to pay. It was also revealed that some local authorities were not allowing families even to attend those services. In short, taxpayers are paying for funerals one way or the other. Surely, making the fund fit for purpose is preferable to the scenarios I have outlined.

I am pleased to say that, where the Government are failing, others have stepped up. The Fair Funerals campaign—Fair Funerals is no longer in operation, but I thank it for its co-operation over the past few years—successfully managed to persuade one third of the industry’s members to display transparent, honest prices on their websites. The Co-op announced that it would invest a further £6 million in lowering funeral costs by introducing a best-price guarantee, reducing the cost of its cheapest funeral to £1,895, and the Competition and Markets Authority announced a review of the £2 billion funerals market earlier this year.

At Prime Minister’s questions last week, the Prime Minister was asked to meet a Conservative Member to discuss funeral poverty. The Prime Minister declined a meeting and went on to assert that

“the funeral expenses payments do continue to cover the necessary costs involved with funerals and cremations”.—[Official Report, 5 September 2018; Vol. 646, c. 160.]

That is completely wrong and contradicts the DWP webpage, which clearly states that the payment

“will not usually cover all of the costs of the funeral.”

It is also at odds with what funeral directors themselves are saying, with 95% reporting that Government funeral payments no longer cover even the very basic costs.

I appreciate that, in the past, Ministers have been unable to comply with all my asks on funeral poverty, so today I have only two main asks: a commitment to raising the social fund funeral payments and a commitment to introducing an eligibility check. Those two simple asks would make a world of difference.

It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who is not here with us today, and of the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess). Both are doughty campaigners on this issue.

Funerals are not a choice. Death shakes us and changes us forever. No one ever wants their loved one to pass away, and the debts associated with the funeral—or the memory of not being able to give them a decent send-off—loom over people for years. In austerity Britain, people are not just struggling to afford to live; they are also unable to afford to die. The Minister has an opportunity today to make some very small departmental differences that would ease this enormous burden on people in their darkest days. I just hope that, this time, he will.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and that is on the list of things that I will look at.

We must also focus on the quality and the standards of funerals. I accept the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings made, when he said that people do not necessarily shop around for funerals. Again, on my visits this summer, I was told that it is often the case that people go to the same funeral director that everyone else in their family has ever used, so that the relationship is built up. In this area, it is not necessarily an empowered consumer shopping around and using their buying power—I 100% get that.

Nevertheless, the CMA investigation is important as it will shape our work going forward. We expect the interim report in November and the final report next May. This investigation will be integral to our work in the future, because it is a comprehensive review of what is happening out there in the market.

Also, the market is responding, which is a good thing. Both Dignity and the Co-operative, two of the biggest players in the market, have started to offer more affordable basic funeral packages; that is a great step. Following the CMA investigation, the onus will be on us as to how we can make such basic packages more of a given and build on them; that is a really important area for us to look at. The Royal London national funeral cost index has also been doing lots of investigations, and I will meet Royal London later in the year.

We have already made some vital improvements.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the Minister for giving way and I am sorry that I did not welcome him to his new position; it is hard to keep up with things here these days, with reshuffle after reshuffle. Before he moves on to say what is coming in the future, can he update me in relation to a point I made in my speech? I asked what had happened to the discussions that I was promised two years ago about working with the sector to develop a simple funeral.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. That is ongoing work, but we felt that we needed additional evidence. I understand the importance of getting these things done, although I am relatively new to this role. However, we needed the information from the CMA to give us the ability to make informed asks, in respect of what we expect of the industry and what more we can do to empower the industry to deliver more affordable options. Perhaps then we can see areas where the Government can consider the public health aspect of funerals, as was raised in the debate, and also what local government can do. I understand the frustration, I absolutely do, and my commitment, as I am trying to demonstrate, is that we will do a lot more.

We have extended the claim period from three to six months. That is a welcome measure. We have exempted contributions from relations, friends and charities, which is also welcome. On the key bit about people not understanding, we have already made a start by introducing a helpline, about which we have had fantastic feedback. It is really important to try to give people more information and there is a lot more to be done in that area. People do not receive the ultimate decision until they have either signed a contract saying, “This is what I want to do”—but it is people’s nature to often change what they want—or until the funeral has taken place, so I understand the important point that more needs to be done on that issue. I will continue to meet and work with the industry, utilising its expertise and that of any colleagues here who wish to be engaged following both the interim and final CMA reports. I would welcome such contributions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for taking part and for their thoughtful contributions. It is unusual to have members of four different parties all asking for the same thing.

I thank the Minister, and I welcome his tone and his openness towards moving forward, but I am a little disappointed because it would not have been difficult to guess what I would be asking for today and it would have been nice if he could have given at least some assurances or had promised that we would see some change soon. Ultimately, the only thing we will leave here knowing as an absolute certainty is that more and more people will join the thousands who struggle to provide their loved ones with this final act, and that is not good enough. The matter is an urgent one, and I press the Minister to get cracking.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered funeral poverty.

Social Fund Funeral Payments

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I give thanks to the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) for bringing this debate to the Chamber and for his kind comments towards me.

Members will know that back in 2014, I introduced the Funeral Services Bill. This Bill called for the Government to carry out an overarching review of funeral affordability. At that time, more than 100,000 people were estimated to be suffering from funeral poverty. That means, simply, that they were unable to afford to bury their loved ones or had incurred significant debts in doing so. Since 2004, funeral costs have risen by a staggering 80%, with the average funeral generally costing just under £4,000. In this climate of rising costs, the only payments that have not increased are the Government-administered social fund funeral payments, for which, between 2014 and 2015, the Government turned down 24,000 applicants.

I am really proud that my Bill started a national conversation and gave this issue the prominence it needed. I have continued to campaign on behalf not just of those we know about who are struggling with funeral poverty, but of all those who have stayed silent, or who have stopped me in the street, written to me or sent me deeply personal messages stating that they would never want anyone to ever have to go through what they have—the stress, shame and indignity of not being able to offer their loved ones the one final goodbye they wanted. The pressure of that while trying to grieve is immensely distressing for so many people. In a country where we do not readily talk about death and dying, I have been heartened to see in the past few years a diminishing of the last great taboos of discussing dying and death.

I am not going to spend the time I have today going over how the social fund operates; I think hon. Members have done that justice already. I would like to use the short time I have to share my efforts, and those of other interested organisations since December 2014, in trying to seek some long-needed reform to the social fund payments through the introduction of an eligibility checker, as proposed in my Bill.

In late 2015, I, along with the National Association of Funeral Directors, Citizens Advice and others, attended a roundtable with the then Pensions Minister, Baroness Altmann. There was broad agreement that the introduction of an eligibility check would stem the tide of people committing to costs before they knew of any award, thus avoiding debt. At that roundtable, the Minister gave a cast-iron assurance that she would explore the eligibility-check option.

Correspondence between myself and the Minister continued. She advised me that research into the issues raised was ongoing, as were discussions with stakeholders. In April this year, I wrote to her dismayed that she had not mentioned the eligibility check in her recent correspondence. I pressed her for an update on the research and discussions with stakeholders that the Department had undertaken. I also asked for clarification that, as a wealth of research had already been conducted in this area, her Department were not simply duplicating existing work.

Two months later, I needed to remind the Minister that she had failed to respond to my letter. In that reminder, I also asked that the Government’s response to the Work and Pensions Committee report on bereavement benefits, which also asked for an eligibility check, was corrected, as the Government falsely said in their response that an eligibility checker already exists. It does not and the record has still not been corrected.

I then received a letter simply dated July 2016 from the Minister. It said that:

“we are looking to see if a checker is the best solution”,

and that I would receive an update this summer. The Minister then resigned, saying:

“Unfortunately over the past year, short-term political considerations, exacerbated by the EU referendum, have inhibited good policy-making.”

Well, no shock there.

Although I am always keen to debate these issues, I am totally fed up with the Government’s poor response and incompetence on this issue, and the way in which this Minister’s predecessors have messed me and all these other organisations around. I welcome the new Minister to her place and have read her letter to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), who chairs the Work and Pensions Committee. In it, she also writes of conversations with stakeholders. I imagine that stakeholders can only say the same thing so many times without getting completely fed up.

My questions to the Minister today are really simple: what research has been done by her Department? Where on earth can any of us find it? Who are these mystery stakeholders? I want to make it very clear to all those suffering from funeral poverty that even if this Government continue to let them down, I and my colleagues never will.

Supported Housing: Benefit

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Just seven days ago, the new Prime Minister spoke in her inaugural speech about social justice, yet here Opposition Members are, yet again, having to speak out against yet another socially unjust policy proposal from this Government. Cutting housing benefit for the most vulnerable in our society will result in the closure of thousands of supported accommodation units. This is about people’s homes and people’s safety.

When I was a local councillor, two sheltered accommodation complexes for the elderly were earmarked for closure. For a year, I worked with elderly residents to save their homes, and I will never, ever forget the worry and fear etched on their faces, and the many concerns they had. All they could think about was where they would live, how they would afford to move and who they would have for company. When we know that Age UK is reporting that 300,000 elderly people suffer from chronic loneliness, which leads to early death, we see that the social angle this accommodation provides is beyond vital, and I remember the sheer joy and relief when we managed to stop those shelters closing.

Today I am mindful of the fact that we are talking about not just one or two shelters for the elderly closing, but hundreds and potentially thousands. I would like the Minister to tell us where on earth these people will move to if their shelter shuts. Many in constituencies such as mine will not be able to afford private accommodation. Many will have no family to go to. Thanks to this Government, there is a massive shortage of council housing, forcing these people into residential or care homes or into the health service, which is not fit for their needs or appropriate for them, particularly in the long term. That leaves only one option: homelessness. Yet this policy will see the closure of homeless hostels too, which can mean only one other choice: to go on to the streets. Surely the Government can see that if they push ahead with this change, there will be no charities and services they can push this problem on to, because cutting this money is cutting those very services.

Earlier this year, I had the huge privilege of spending time with Terry Waite CBE. Many may not know this, but this towering, kind, humble man, known for the horrific captivity he endured in Lebanon, is president of Emmaus UK, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). Emmaus provides homes and work for people who have experienced homelessness, and it is due to open a site in my constituency. It provides a tried and tested, lasting route out of homelessness. It also generates £6 million per year in savings to the state, through reductions in offending and the improved use of health services. However, it has told me that if housing benefit for supported accommodation is capped nationally at LHA rates, it would lose over £3 million per year, threatening most of its communities with closure.

[Peter Aldous]

I, too, have visited an Emmaus community. Does the hon. Lady agree that Emmaus does great work? For every £1 the state puts in, Emmaus produces a social return of £11. Does she agree that it is vital that the new system we come up with acts as a catalyst for that type of inward investment?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

What is vital is that this proposal is scrapped, so that the Emmaus community in my constituency can be built, and all the people living in the other communities are not faced with being pushed back on the streets because their community has closed down.

Those who have experienced the horror and degradation of being homeless and on the streets could find themselves right back there if this policy goes through. This is just poor economics, and it is beyond contemptible. I am completely aghast as to why any Government would want to introduce a policy that would see our elderly, our care leavers, those with mental health and learning difficulties, our veterans and victims of domestic violence on the streets, and that would keep those who are already homeless there too. If this policy is introduced, people will be destitute.

Earlier the Secretary of State said that, despite people being in enduring limbo, it will be autumn before we have an announcement. I hope that that means the Government are slowly beginning to understand at last that regressive policies such as this, punitive benefits sanctions and the bedroom tax only create more problems for our society and will cost the Government a hell of a lot more in the long run.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

First, any claimant who has difficulty attending an assessment centre can request a face-to-face assessment in their own home. Secondly, with regard to how far somebody can travel in an assessment, this is not just a black-and-white issue of 20 metres; it is about whether they can do that safely, repeatedly, to an assessable standard and in a reasonable time. If a claimant is unhappy with a decision, they can ask for a mandatory reconsideration or an independent appeal.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

One of my constituents who works 16 hours a week and is a carer for a disabled relative has discovered that because of the living wage she no longer qualifies for carer’s allowance, leaving her with a substantial shortfall. Why on earth have this Government forced her and thousands of others into this desperate situation?

[Justin Tomlinson]

We as a Government spend £2.3 billion a year in supporting the invaluable work that carers do in this country. The impact of the national living wage will always be reviewed.

Funeral Poverty

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard]

My hon. Friend is right. None of us really wants to think about what we will do when the reality presents itself to us and we have a funeral to organise. Not only do we have to process the emotions that we inevitably feel, but there is an entire series of practical steps that have to be gone through that we are probably not best placed to go through at that time. We are not acting as the informed consumer that we might be if we were going down the supermarket to make a normal purchase. This cannot be the normal purchase that we might like it to be.

The experience can be overwhelming at times and many people require a degree of practical help in trying to navigate the process. For some, yes, the need to organise might be a welcome distraction from the process of grieving, but I do not think it can ever be accepted that these things will just happen of their own accord. As Marie Curie points out, there can be quite an adverse consequence for the grieving process if the result is not the right one in the end. Above all else, the cost of a funeral can be a massive shock to the budgets of families who perhaps do not start off with a significant amount of resilience in the first place.

The fact that I organised today’s debate seems to have provoked a number of insurance companies into rushing out annual reports a few weeks early. Both Royal London and SunLife had to get a move on down the printers, and Royal London’s report, which came out on 5 October, showed once again that funeral costs continue to rise. It now estimates that about one in 10 people are struggling to meet the cost of a funeral. The other provider, SunLife, in its “Cost of Dying” report, which came out even more recently—this weekend—found that the cost of a basic funeral had risen to £3,693, with a further £2,000 spent on discretionary items such as extra limousines, venue hire and catering. That is a sizeable sum, which, if not met out of the deceased’s estate, will place a substantial burden on the family if they have few savings yet need to find the money for a deposit even to start the process. No wonder research shows that credit cards and funerals are two of the items that we most commonly find together.

For those whose financial resilience is low to begin with, the phenomenon of funeral poverty almost has a sad inevitability about it. It leaves people facing a scale of debt and a suddenness that they simply cannot be expected to prepare for, so I think that it is right and proper that we look today in particular at what the Government’s tools are for trying to deal with the problem.

The main one is the social fund funeral payment, which has been in existence since 1988. It combines an uncapped commitment to “necessary” costs such as burial and cremation fees, along with a capped amount of £700 to cover such items as the coffin, the memorial and funeral directors’ fee. With an average award of £1,347, it undoubtedly makes an important contribution to the costs of a funeral for those who receive a qualifying benefit and where no other family member can meet the bill.

It should be made clear that the benefit is designed not to pay the full amount of the funeral costs, but to make a contribution. That is the policy objective. It is worth assessing whether the benefit functions as it should against that policy objective. I am sure that we could all express views on whether it should achieve other objectives, and there might well be a debate to be had on that matter, but I want to assess the benefit against that particular objective to start with.

It is worth noting that within the average figures, there is a broad discrepancy. The discrepancy between the cost of a burial versus a cremation leads to some perverse outcomes. The amount that an individual gets will depend on which they opt for and where they are in the country. There is no inherent, internal logic in the amount that an individual will get when they are faced with meeting these bills.

The capping of additional costs at £700 has been controversial for quite a while. I first got involved with this topic when the NAFD came to see me about it. I understand why it is a complex issue. Some suggest that over time the value of the £700 has been eroded. Mathematically, that cannot be argued against. Inflation means that if we were paying that £700 now, based on the amount that it started out at when capping first took place in 2003, it would be slightly over £1,000. Perhaps the best way to think about this is not to argue whether it is too high or too low, but to look at the costs that it is designed to meet.

We have a very poor understanding of where the money from the social fund funeral payment is actually going. We understand where the capped amount—the £700—goes. It does not meet all the additional costs, many of which are discretionary and at the choice of the consumer, but the Government—rightly, in my view—seek to meet all the necessary costs, which relate to the legal requirement regarding the disposal of someone’s remains. It is right and proper that the Government should meet all those costs, and they recognise that. There can be no model in which all the necessary costs are not met.

However, despite five years of trying to achieve that—without any luck—it is very hard to track through the Department for Work and Pensions where those necessary costs are going. Different local authorities charge different fees for cremation and burial. There is no consistency across the country. There are some perverse factors, such as the growth of private crematoriums driving up local authority crematorium costs as well. I have asked on a number of occasions, as other hon. Members have, for more information on what the money is going on. It makes it very difficult, I think, for both the Department and interested observers to make an accurate assessment of whether the benefit is performing adequately and reaching its policy objective. We need to understand what the cost drivers are, and it is important that the Government try to work out what more they can do to improve the data collection. I would be interested to know what steps the Minister thinks that he can take to improve the data collection to allow that analysis to take place.

There are various anecdotal reports that not every council runs its crematoria on a cost-recovery basis. If some are seeking to cross-subsidise, that ought to be at least transparent to the Government; that might help them to understand how the overall amount spent remains roughly the same at some £46 million each succeeding year, while the proportion spent on necessary costs continues to fluctuate. The Government need a better understanding of what is going on.

Many have argued that a relatively straightforward step in the right direction would be to index-link the capped payment—the £700—to inflation. When I put that to the Minister’s predecessor, Mr Webb, he replied:

“One risk of index-linking these payments is that prices would rise and recipients would be no better off”.

I have interrogated that statement from as many logical positions as I possibly can, and I still cannot make head or tail of it. I do not think it relates to the reality faced by funeral directors or consumers. Although I recognise that there is a need for much greater transparency on the part of funeral directors when it comes to offering itemised estimates without having been asked to do so, to my mind a £700 cap leads to some perverse outcomes. Increasing numbers of funeral directors carry a substantial amount of debt because they have to act as debt managers, and that leads some of the larger chains to turn people away when it becomes clear that they may require some social fund payments to pay for the funeral.

I ask the Government once again to look at index-linking—not merely as a spending commitment, but to help them better understand the cost drivers from local Government and to use whatever savings they achieve to pay for the index-linking that would allow funeral directors to cover more of their costs. That would also give the Government an opportunity to look at saying to funeral directors, “Right. We have index-linked, so now let us look at how the industry can improve its delivery of services and act in consumers’ interests to get a fair outcome.”

I ask the Government to consider balancing the need to fund necessary costs with the need to ensure that those costs are constrained on the part of local councils—there can be no blank cheques—and that additional costs are not squeezed merely to ensure the funding of necessary costs, of which we do not have a full and proper understanding. There is a danger that, as debate on and public interest in the subject grow, we may get some perverse demands for change that will not lead to any improvement in the experience of the bereaved. We need robust, coherent data to judge the right way forward, and at the moment we do not have that information. Many observers in the sector strongly believe that to be true.

We also need to look at how the benefit works. From my time on the Work and Pensions Committee, I know that it is important to be quite forensic on each individual benefit. What is its policy objective? Is it delivering that objective? How is it being managed? With some 51,000 applications for the social fund funeral payment, some 41% of which were rejected, I wonder what scope there is to improve the pre-eligibility scrutiny of those applications, because 41% is quite a large number. I suspect that many will be quite transparently not eligible at an early stage.

There have been numerous meetings about how to improve the process, but we still seem to get roughly the same number of rejections. I would welcome the Minister’s view on what more could be done to improve that. The bereaved should not be left disappointed by going through the process of arranging the funeral, only to be rejected later. That can be quite devastating, and it causes many of the financial problems that I have mentioned. In turn, it leaves the funeral directors out of pocket, and they have to chase the debt.

Will the Minister address the situation of people who are awaiting a decision on a qualifying benefit? They are trapped in two DWP holding circles: a decision on their own benefit, which will have consequences for their entitlement to the social fund funeral payment. The form is very complex. Virtually every Work and Pensions Committee report that I have been involved with asks the Department to improve the layout of the form and to subject it to the test of the behavioural insights team. No DWP form can ever not be improved, and I think that this particular form would defeat even me if I tried to fill it in.

The timeliness of decision making matters. The Department’s performance on that is quite good; its target is 16 days, and it seems to fluctuate between 17 and 18 days, so it is not that far off—I can think of many other examples of where it is nowhere near its targets. Although that represents quite good performance, the target of 16 days is actually three days longer than the average time between a death and a funeral. Timeliness of decision making is still an issue, and it might be improved by a pre-application eligibility procedure, if such a thing could be introduced.

I would welcome the opportunity for relatives to know before they commission a funeral the scale of resources that they are likely to have at their disposal. Some relatives may feel that the measure of their grief and loss can somehow be proportionate to the complexity of the funeral that they commission, and although I understand why that is the case, it would be helpful for people to have a clear understanding from funeral directors at a very early stage about what the items on the bill will cost. It would help for them to know how much will be spent on each element and which elements were required, which were discretionary and which were optional. At the moment, people are not acting as informed consumers. Affordability works both ways, because if a funeral director offers a more affordable plan to the customer, they are more likely to get their money in the end. Both parties can benefit from that, and it would alleviate the levels of debt.

One interesting element of the debate is budgeting loans. Steve Webb participated in a debate on this subject a few years ago, in which he talked about budgeting loans being a solution to much of the problem. Despite repeated efforts by the NAFD to get more information out of the Department through freedom of information requests, no one seems to have evidence of any budgeting loan being taken out for the purpose of paying for a funeral. I would be interested to know whether there is any evidence that that is actually happening, because we do not have any data on it.

I will try to wrap up rapidly, because I am running out of time. I have been struck by the calls for regulation of the industry. I recognise that it is tempting to say that there should be a much greater state role, but I do not think that we have exhausted the good will of the industry. Quaker Social Action runs its fair funerals pledge, and many funeral directors are signing up to it, particularly from the younger end of the industry—the insurgents. That disruptive influence on the industry, focusing on what the consumers actually need, can only be a good thing. I am not entirely clear that the industry needs to be castigated. I know many of my local funeral directors, and they are compassionate, caring people who want to do the best on behalf of their community. I am sure that that is true in all our constituencies.

At the heart of the matter is the fact that no one goes into the process with a clear understanding of what costs they should reasonably expect. No one knows what a cheap funeral looks like versus an expensive funeral; one is merely presented with a bill at the end. It is difficult to understand how the component parts of that bill have been assembled, and, emotionally, one is probably not in a position to interrogate it. That can make it difficult to be an informed consumer, and it suggests to me that the market is not fully formed. It is hard to regulate a market that is not acting like one, and in which consumers are not making informed decisions at the point of purchase.

I support Quaker Social Action’s call for some sort of non-governmental third-party ombudsman role. When Steve Webb discussed the matter a few years ago, he talked about “Tell us once” being a possible mechanism for achieving that, but I do not think that it has lived up to its expectations in that regard. It has done a good job of reducing some of the bureaucracy, but it is not acting as a signpost to the best advice on how to navigate this complicated process. I would welcome the Government’s looking at signposting people to groups such as Quaker Social Action, and considering whether such a group could perform an ombudsman role. Yes, that would need to be funded—advice always needs to be funded—but I suspect that sufficient savings could be made in the administration of the benefit to fund Quaker Social Action to play that role.

Many would argue for some linkage between the social fund funeral payment and a defined “simple” funeral, and that suggestion perhaps causes the greatest concern. It is very hard culturally to define what a simple funeral would look like. Quaker Social Action has been cautious not to require those funeral directors signing its fair funeral pledge to guarantee to provide a simple funeral. Instead, it says that the funeral director should clearly advertise their cheapest available funeral.

We need to be careful not to go down the route of the state defining what type of funeral it is prepared to pay for. A lot of cultural elements circle around how we decide what is appropriate for our loved one. It is difficult to try to define what that simple funeral ought to look like.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Maynard]

I am happy to, although I was just about to finish.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the hon. Gentleman; I appreciate that I will be speaking in a second. I have spoken to a lot of funeral directors who have said that they already offer a simple funeral. That was something that I proposed in my Bill, and the industry was split down the middle—some were for it and some were against it. I just wanted to clarify the hon. Gentleman’s point.

[Paul Maynard]

I suspect that we are closer to agreement than the hon. Lady might realise. I know what a simple funeral would look like and I know what its pricing structure would be; I just get a little nervous about tying the social fund funeral payment to that precise model. There may be cultural or religious reasons why people need optional extras.

In summary—if I have left any time for the Minister and anybody else—I would welcome a bit more information on how we can get the basic data to make the right decision about whether this benefit is delivering on its policy intent. I think it can, I hope it will and I look forward to hearing what everybody else has to say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David; I thank you for allowing me to sit through the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) on securing the debate. Funeral debt affects a growing number of people, but the private nature of grief and the social pressure to provide a decent send-off means that those people do not always have a voice. One of the things that we should always do in this place is speak up for the voiceless so the hon. Gentleman has done those people a great service by calling this debate today.

Perhaps like other hon. Members, the issue first came to my attention through a constituent who had got into serious debt paying for their brother’s funeral. At the time, I assumed that such cases were relatively rare but, sadly, that is not the case. More than 100,000 people are living with funeral debt, while others struggle to meet the costs, end up selling their possessions, or turn to friends or family to cover the cost. These debts are significant. Royal London’s national funeral cost index shows that the average debt is £1,318.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend know that since 2004 there has been an 80% increase in the price of funerals, but wages and benefits have increased only fractionally in line with inflation—if not, they are struggling to keep up with inflation? The average social fund funeral payment was £1,225, which means that there is a huge gap in what is affordable. Would she congratulate Quaker Social Action on its excellent work in this regard?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I would definitely like to thank Quaker Social Action, which I have done a lot of work with over the past 12 months. I am aware of some of the quite startling stats about this growing problem mentioned by my hon. Friend. I really do not think it is going to go away; it is going to get worse. Worryingly, as she said, the cost of a funeral service continues to rise well above the rate of inflation and the average debt is rising.

Losing a loved one, as most of us will sadly know, is one of the most difficult experiences we face in our lives. It shakes us and changes our world forever. In the middle of that personal turmoil, the last thing that people need is money worries. People will always feel a strong duty to do right by others when they depart, which makes it especially painful for those who are not able to provide what they see as a fitting service for their loved ones. That is why we need to have a really serious conversation about funeral affordability.

Hon. Members may be aware that in the previous Parliament I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill. The aim of my Funeral Services Bill was to approach some of the issues around funeral affordability. At the centre of the Bill was a call for the Government to carry out an overarching review of funeral affordability. When researching the issue, it quickly became clear how many factors affect the price of a funeral and how many Departments have a stake in it. Making funerals more affordable is not simple and requires co-operation between the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Ministry of Justice; only a cross-departmental approach can work. I hope that the Minister can give us a commitment that the Government will begin to look strategically at funeral poverty.

I am aware that there is not enough time to cover everything, so I will focus on one thing that should be reformed urgently: the way in which social fund payments operate. Funeral payments give people much-needed support, but the system has some major flaws. A funeral payment covers all of an applicant’s necessary costs plus up to £700 of other costs. That might sound reasonable enough, but, in fact, those other costs include things such as funeral directors’ fees and ministers’ fees—things that we can agree most applicants would consider necessary. The £700 cap was set in 2003 and has not kept pace with the rising cost of funerals, so funeral payment awards are increasingly inadequate. The average award is just over £1,300 at a time when the average funeral costs £3,700. If the cap on other costs had risen with inflation, it would stand at just under £1,000 today. As we have heard, funeral costs rise even faster than inflation. Although I appreciate the comment by the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys that the social fund is a contribution, the reality is that if we want funeral payments to be fit for purpose, that cap needs to rise.

The other issue is the way applications are administered. At the moment, the DWP requires an invoice from the funeral organiser before it can process a claim, which means that people have to commit to a service before they know the value of the funeral payment they will receive. Inevitably, that means that some people commit to a funeral service they cannot afford and end up in severe debt. The process is completely backwards. The DWP urgently needs to look at how it can give applicants a clearer idea of the support they will receive, which will help people to make a more informed decision about the kind of service that is right for them.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I add my support for Quaker Social Action and the work it has done on the matter. My hon. Friend is making a point about the people’s ability to plan funerals. Does she agree that we have to be very sensitive to communities when the speed at which someone is buried comes into play in being able to plan and cost accordingly, and to some of the risks that creates for those communities?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

My hon. Friend is correct; this does not only affect people who have the time to plan a funeral, which is short in itself. Some communities cannot plan—full stop—so that debt will be incurred by everybody across the board.

The decisions by the DWP are far too slow. Most funeral services, as we have said, are decided very quickly after a person’s death, but the average claim can take up to three weeks to process, which means that most people only find out whether they are entitled to support long after committing to costs. My Bill, among other things, called on the DWP to introduce an eligibility check to help applicants understand whether they are likely to receive support before they make any commitments to funeral costs. I hope that the Minister can update hon. Members on social fund funeral payments, and accept what his predecessors would not—that there are serious flaws in the current system. I would like him to tell us what he will do to improve the process.

When I introduced my Bill last year, I hoped to start a national conversation about funeral affordability. The Government and the wider public have become increasingly aware of the issue. This debate is a welcome continuation of that conversation, but it is about time that some of that talk is turned into action. I hope the Minister will tell us about some of that action today.

Amendment of the Law

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham). Last week, the Chancellor proved to us all just how out of touch and deluded he and his Government are. Apparently, people in my South Shields constituency have better living standards than they did in 2010, despite weekly pay across the north-east being the lowest in the country and dropping again just last week, prices continuing to rise, public sector jobs being shed at the rate of over 1,000 a month since 2010 and having 28,000 people in the north-east stuck on exploitative zero-hours contracts.

At the same time as the Chancellor was making his statement, one of my local food banks moved to larger premises to cope with the increase in the working poor they feed. That is hardly a record that any Chancellor should be proud of. When he boasts about full-time employment, what he fails to mention is that this includes those who are self-employed. The reality for many of the self-employed I have spoken to is that they are low paid: some do not even take a wage themselves and many do not work full time. It is worth noting the correlation between high levels of self-employment, low pay and poverty. We need look only at other EU countries where self-employment is high—Greece, Spain and Portugal, which are countries where working people are struggling.

On hearing the Chancellor’s speech, people in Shields will have concluded either that he does not know their pain or that he does not want to know. I bet he does know that many of the people taken out of the unemployment figures in Shields have not found employment at all, but have been unfairly sanctioned or ushered into meaningless training courses just so they do not show up in the stats. If so, the Chancellor is painting a picture he knows does not match up with what is really happening in our country—a picture that my constituents are far too smart to fall for: they will see right through it.

It was not only on living standards that the Chancellor’s hype did not match the reality. What about his so-called northern powerhouse? We were told to expect big announcements, but in our part of the north, there were next to no announcements at all. He mentioned the north-east once in his speech and for every five projects announced in London and the south-east, he announced one for the north-east.

Looking more closely at the Chancellor’s plans for our region, it appears that they are totally vacuous and simply an afterthought. The northern transport strategy document re-announced a number of projects, some of which are still not under way. There was no announcement on business rates. Talks about reopening a ferry route to Norway were “welcomed”, but without a commitment that the Government would do anything to make any of these things happen.

I have been a Member of this House for just under two years. Prior to that, I lived and worked under this Government, and I am telling the House now that things were tough—at times, really tough. Life beyond this place has got tougher for the people of this country. I wanted to be here to give a voice to the people in my constituency who have suffered under this Government, and to fight for a Labour Government because Labour has a different way—a fairer and more balanced way.

We know from the Office for Budget Responsibility that another five years of this Government will bring a level of pain that will be nothing like the pain people have already seen. People have a choice. They can opt for cuts to the vulnerable on a faster and crueller pace, deep and damaging cuts to our police, defence and social care budgets and total decimation of our NHS coupled with VAT rises, or they can choose Labour’s plans to make work pay and bring the deficit down in a more responsible way, while protecting vital services like our NHS.

I conclude with the observation that the sun is certainly not shining yet, but come May, it will be—when we have a Labour Government.

Personal Independence Payments

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger, and to follow the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), after the excellent introduction to the debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce).

This Government have presided over a miserable few years for those who need to turn to the state for help. Those who do not find the door slammed in their faces still have to deal with the incompetence at the DWP that has led to benefit delays of as much as a year in some cases. Those people are genuinely terrified of what the future holds for them.

The Gray review echoes a lot of the concerns that Opposition Members have been raising for some time now, along with the hardship that the problems have caused for our constituents. But the review does not go far enough. My constituent Mr Mark Douglas has Parkinson’s, and applied for PIP in November 2013. After two months he had heard nothing from either the DWP or his assessor. When I chased Atos, it said it could not confirm an assessment date. It took persistent chasing from Parkinson’s UK and me on Mr Douglas’s behalf to get an appointment scheduled at the end of January, nearly three months after he had begun his claim.

It took a further three months and numerous letters for Mr Douglas to get a decision. All the while he had no updates from his assessor or from the DWP. The replies I was able to get from the Department were so vague as to be completely useless. When I asked when Mr Douglas would be notified of the DWP’s decision, the response was:

“We aim to make and notify decisions on most cases within 3 weeks. However, it may take less time than this, or longer.”

In other words, the Department was completely clueless. When I raised another constituent’s delay with the Prime Minister, he admitted it was unacceptable, but that was, sadly, nine months ago, and PIP claimants are still experiencing the same unacceptable problems. When on earth are the Government going to get a grip on this issue?

The overall PIP journey is an unpleasant one. The quality of assessments is uneven, assessors do not properly understand people’s conditions, communication with claimants is poor and decision letters are often unintelligible. All that will sound familiar to some of us: we have seen it all before from this Government with work capability assessments. WCAs do not take account of people’s fluctuating conditions. They may appear to be physically fine at their assessment but on a different day might be housebound; as a result, those people are wrongly declared fit for work. We are likely to see a lot of inaccurate PIP decisions appealed, just as we have seen one in three decisions on employment and support allowance appealed because of the poor quality of assessments.

The real problem, however, is one of delays. It is disappointing that the review does not go into further detail in that regard. Mr Gray explains in his foreword that he has “taken it as given” that the Government will be taking action to speed up the process, but sadly this Government’s record means that Opposition Members are unable to do the same.

I hope the Minister will explain what is being done to address the backlog. Will he share the data on the current lengths of time that people are waiting for their PIP claims to be processed? The delays must be the urgent priority, because later this year PIP will be opened up to all existing long-term DLA recipients. Until now, the PIP system has been dealing only with a minority of eligible people, so if it is in chaos now, how bad will things be in October?

Does the Minister not think that it would give a clear message to PIP recipients that the Government actually cared if they decided to halt the roll-out until they got the system right? Should the Government not be setting out clearly the monitoring arrangements they have in place for the estimated 500,000 disabled people who are going to lose out in the transition from DLA to PIP?

The review shows that the experience of claiming PIP is a nightmare. People do not have confidence in the assessments, or in the DWP’s ability to process their claims on time. These individuals are in many cases totally reliant on Government support, but right now the Government are showing that they cannot be relied upon. The DWP has failed to learn the lessons of the Work programme and universal credit, and is presiding over another disaster in PIP, yet it is our constituents who continue to pay the price under this heartless and shambolic Government.

Benefit Claimants (North-east)

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) on securing the debate and on her passionate speech. We all know how the changes under this Government have victimised benefits claimants, and we have all met people who have suffered because of the harsh sanctions regime, but it is not only the law that has changed; the culture has changed, too. The jobcentre is a very different place from what it was just a few years ago. The focus has changed. It is no longer about getting people into work; it is about getting them off benefits by any means necessary.

My hon. Friend gave several examples, and things are no different in South Shields. Constituents of mine have been refused a private room to discuss intimate personal or medical issues, and have felt humiliated at having to hold such discussions in a public area. One man who was suffering from serious back pain and could barely climb the stairs was told that he could not use the lift because it was for staff only. The general attitude of staff is confrontational and sometimes downright rude. One man was told that he had to shut his mouth and get out when he disagreed with staff.

[Ian Lavery]

To highlight one of the difficulties with the staff, who generally do a fantastic job, the press reported on the assessment of a lady who is blind and has a guide dog. The person doing the assessment held three fingers up and asked the blind lady, “How many fingers am I holding up?” The lady said, “I am blind.” The person said, “That has nothing at all to do with it. I have to ask you the questions.” That is the way disabled people—in this case, a blind person—are being treated by some of the staff in jobcentres.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I have noticed that compassion and understanding are being completely removed from the jobcentre. There are no grey areas anymore; it is black or white. When I went to my local jobcentre to discuss some of my constituents’ complaints, I was shocked by how dismissive the local management team were. They explained that they refused to offer a private room because they did not want to set a precedent. In other cases, they simply said that they did not believe what I and my constituents were telling them. The whole attitude was completely negative and showed the confrontational way in which jobcentres now deal with claimants. In fact, the attitude shown to me was so appalling that I complained to the regional manager. It was not that I was particularly fussed by how they spoke to me; my concern was that if they speak to a Member of Parliament in that way, how on earth are they treating our constituents?

Jobcentre staff are ultimately there to provide a service, and to help people find work. If someone has special requirements, staff should be allowed to accommodate them. The Government’s hard-line approach and the pressure on staff to meet targets mean that the focus has changed and the majority of hard-working staff, who I genuinely believe want to do their jobs properly, feel hindered and frustrated about being unable to do so. When I was looking for work, advisers were there to guide jobseekers into work or training that was right for them. It was a process that treated people like human beings. That is important when people are already feeling low or marginalised because of their unemployment. That is not how the system works today. Now the role of the jobcentre is to police the unemployed and punish them for making even the smallest of mistakes. If they are five minutes late for an appointment, there is no mercy or discussion—their benefits are simply cut off. Where once staff were there to advise, they are now told to check up on claimants, to police them and to catch them out.

As far as I am concerned, our jobcentres are no longer providing a good enough service. Staff are under pressure to get people off benefits by any means necessary, and there are perverse incentives to push people on to make-work courses. Constituents have complained that they have been ordered to take the same CV writing courses over and over again as a substitute for genuine support. That is a complete waste of time and does not get them into work. What it does, however, is remove them from the unemployment figures. Like those on the Work programme, they are not employed in any meaningful sense, but they do not show up in the figures. I make it crystal clear to the Minister that being on the Work programme or stuck on make-work training courses does not constitute employment, no matter how much her Government would like us to think so. The only purpose of the schemes is to help a jobcentre meet its targets, because it can use the courses as evidence that it has provided training or work-related activity, or use non-attendance as a reason to sanction benefit claimants.

In any organisation, the attitude of those at the top filters down. That is why the culture change at the DWP fits right in with the ugly attitude that the Government have taken towards people on benefits. They have encouraged and continue to encourage the public to think of claimants as spongers or skivers, so that working people struggling to get by will blame the unemployed man or woman next door, claiming their £70 a week, instead of the tax-dodging companies that cost our economy billions every year. The way claimants are treated is nothing to do with getting people into work; it is about scapegoating the poor and making them a target for the anger and frustration the public feel during a time of serious hardship. It is downright nasty politics, and the Government should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.