Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I rise to urge the House not to give the Welfare Reform and Work Bill a Second Reading.

On the day of the Budget announcement, I, like many of my colleagues on the SNP Benches and many in society, watched in horror at Conservative Members jeering and cheering as the Chancellor announced swathes of cuts that will hit the poorest and most vulnerable in our society hardest. When I was elected by the good people of Livingston to this House, I anticipated some aspects of Dickensian tradition, largely framed around the traits and traditions of Westminster, but not for one minute did I expect that we would be taken back to Dickensian times by a Government hellbent on dividing our nation in such a regressive way.

The Conservative Government have claimed that they have

“a long-term economic plan to move the nation back to where we should be. This offers that and will reward hard-working families.”

We are certainly going backwards. The rhetoric that the Conservatives use in this Chamber about hard-working families and aspiration is fast wearing thin for many of us. Apart from anything else, when we delve into the detail, what we find is deeply worrying.

Let us look at exactly what the Government plan to do for our so-called hard-working families. The Conservatives will rename the Child Poverty Act 2010 the life chances Act. I spent a number of years in the marketing industry and recognise that this is rebranding on a grand scale. Perhaps the Chancellor is in the wrong job. I have taken the advice of the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and looked at the impact assessment that came out very recently. Paragraph 33 says of the life chances Act:

“The proposed changes enhance the life chances of children as they ensure that households make choices based on their circumstances rather than on taxpayer subsidies. This will increase financial resilience and support improved life chances for children in the longer term.”

Let me explain why SNP Members do not believe that to be the case.

The Scottish Trades Union Congress says that the “so-called” living wage is

“simply a cheap gimmick aimed at undermining…a meaningful living wage”

and that

“continuation of the public sector pay gap is…a kick in the teeth for hard-working public sector workers.”

The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations said that the Budget was an attack on the poorest and most vulnerable communities by an “economically illiterate” Chancellor who has admitted that this is not about tackling the deficit, as he said that it was part of his push for a low tax, low welfare society. In SCVO’s view, he was

“demonstrating a cruel disregard for the impact this will have on hundreds of thousands of people’s lives.”

Barnardo’s has stated that renaming the Child Poverty Act 2010 the “life chances Act” sends the message that eliminating child poverty is no longer an aim of this Government. It is clear that the Bill will push more children, families and vulnerable people across Scotland and the UK deeper into poverty. Rebranding child poverty plans as “life chances measures”, and completely removing any legal obligation to meet those targets, only proves how badly this Government are failing our society on welfare. As indicated by the House of Commons Library, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s “State of the Nation” report from October 2014 stated:

“Modelling for the Commission illustrates the scale of the challenge. It projects that—based on current OBR forecasts for employment and wage growth—relative poverty (before housing costs) will rise to 21 per cent by 2020, 11 percentage points above target, and absolute poverty will rise to 24 per cent, even further behind the target of five per cent. This is likely to be an optimistic view as it ignores the impact of the further cuts to welfare benefit entitlements that are pencilled into current plans for deficit reduction in the next Parliament.”

Those plans are no longer pencilled in; they are in black and white for all of us to see. It is crystal clear to me that the Conservatives cannot meet their targets or fulfil their promises to folk across the UK, so instead they will just rebrand and repackage swathes of cuts to make it sound as if we are getting a better deal. It simply will not wash.

Another genius rebranding exercise by the Tories has been the introduction of the so called “living wage”—which, in reality, is a small increase in the minimum wage, up to £7.20 and to £9 by 2020—and the Chancellor has blatantly stolen the terminology used by the Living Wage Foundation that has set the living wage rate at £7.85 outside London and £9.15 in London. Rhys Moore, director of the Living Wage Foundation said:

“Is this really a living wage?...The Living Wage is calculated according to the cost of living whereas the Low Pay Commission calculates a rate according to what the market can bear. Without a change of remit for the Low Pay Commission this is effectively a higher National Minimum Wage and not a Living Wage.”

He went on to say that, to add insult to injury, the current calculation is based on workers receiving tax credits, which are also being cut.

Let us move on to tax credits and universal credit. The four-year freeze starts in 2016 and will affect around 577,000 families in receipt of child benefit in Scotland, and an overlapping 468,000 in receipt of housing benefit. More than a third of a million households in receipt of tax credits will also lose out. The Conservatives claim to be the workers’ party, but that claim could not be further from the truth as they lower the total amount that a household can receive in benefits to £20,000 outside London, and £23,000 in Greater London. In the words of charity Barnardo’s:

“This will significantly reduce the income of some very poor families.”

Worse still, in the Trade Union Bill—yet to be debated by this House—the Government plan to introduce standards for unions when voting for a strike that not even we as politicians are required to meet.

Let us consider the proposals for lone parents and other “responsible carers” in receipt of universal credit. We know that they are not currently subject to “work preparation” requirements until their youngest child reaches the age of three, and they do not have to be available for and look for work until that youngest child reaches five. The Bill reduces the age thresholds for work preparation to two, and for full work-related requirements to three. Let me be clear: the SNP is abjectly opposed to the capping of benefits such as carer’s allowance, child benefit, child tax credits, severe disablement allowance, and widow’s pension. The people who receive those benefits are some of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, and it is abundantly clear that there is no level to which this Conservative Government will not stoop as they attack those vulnerable groups.

Instead of considering how we can properly protect and support folk who have already faced significant challenges in their life, we have a Government who cannot see past reducing a deficit, and will do so at all costs. This is an “at all costs” attack on the sick, the poor, the disabled, the elderly, and the many families who are working and trying their best to get to the end of the month without getting into debt. This Government’s cuts will affect the working poor, so that instead of being supported to better themselves, those in work will be further marginalised and have their benefits cut. Barnardo’s has noted that:

“A lone parent working full time on the minimum wage for 37 hours a week with two young children would lose £1,200 a year as a result of changes introduced from April 2016, even after accounting for the increase in the minimum wage.”

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making an important point. Does she think that all lone parents are able to work 35 hours a week?

[Hannah Bardell]

I believe we must have benefits that are suited to the situation, and the Conservative proposals will not do that.

[Simon Hoare]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Hannah Bardell]

I will not; I will make some progress.

I am one of those children from a single parent family. My own mother worked all the hours in the day to provide for my brother and I, at a time when single parents were demonised by the Thatcher Government.

[Angela Crawley]

At the moment, 1 million more children are expected to grow up in poverty by 2020 across the UK. That would mean 5 million children in poverty in one of the world’s richest nations. Does my hon. Friend agree that those children need support, not savage cuts to the security of their families?

[Hannah Bardell]

I could not agree more.

As I was saying, there was limited support for single parents, and although my mother held a good job in academia, finances were always close to the edge. I recall Lady Thatcher famously saying not long after she left office:

“It is far better to put these children in the hands of a very good religious organisation, and the mother as well, so that they will be brought up with family values.”

She told the audience in the Commonwealth convention centre in Louisville, that the spread of illegitimacy

“devalues our values and our community”.

She said that Governments had made things worse by providing social security benefits for single mothers, and it feels to me as if this Bill and the Conservative proposals are taking us back in time. We have come a long way since the dark days of the Thatcher Government: please do not let us return. All Opposition Members should be uniting against these pernicious Tory cuts—perhaps even a few progressive Government Members will join us to say no to a Second Reading.

Let me turn to the two-child policy. This part of the Bill makes changes to universal credit and tax credits, including a two-child limit for new claims and births after 2017. The Budget documents say that there will be protections in cases of rape and exceptional circumstances such as multiple births, but there are no details in the Bill. The limit will reduce the value of tax credits for future claimants with three or more children. There are currently 50,000 households in Scotland with three or more children receiving tax credits. Many of them are in Livingston and I have heard already from a number of constituents who are deeply worried about the impact that this measure will have on their finances.

To suggest for a moment that a woman who has been raped will have to justify herself to a member of the DWP is as sickening as it is unworkable. I have to hope that this grave error in policy making is a matter that the Conservatives will rethink and completely remove from the Bill. Either it is a deeply insensitive afterthought, or it is a proposal that shows utter disregard for a woman’s privacy and basic human rights.

How on earth can that policy work? What criteria will be applied to women justifying whether or not they have been raped? Will the criteria require a conviction—numbers of which, as we all know, are notoriously low—and what if a woman’s first or second child was the result of a rape? Will she be asked retrospectively to justify herself if she goes on to have a third child? What kind of training will staff have in dealing with women who have been raped? I simply do not want to believe that anyone in this House would want a woman to be subjected to this kind of regime. Asking a woman to relive such an abhorrent crime, simply to get enough money to keep a family going, is surely one of the most ill-conceived policies any Government have ever proposed. We deplore this policy and ask the Government to rethink it as a matter of urgency. As Sandra Horley, the chief executive of domestic violence charity Refuge, said:

“Women experiencing domestic violence are often completely controlled by their partner, including their access to birth control. Some women are also raped and sexually assaulted on a regular basis. Will this tax credit exemption mean vulnerable women who have been raped are forced to re-live their ordeal to prove they deserve support?”

We need detail and a rethink on this policy urgently. Similarly, for people who have had multiple births, the details and parameters of this policy are not clear. Much more clarification is required.

I will turn now to other aspects of the Bill, including the abolition of the employment and support allowance work-related activity component. Under the Bill, employment and support allowance for claimants in the work-related activity group will see their payments reduced to jobseeker’s allowance rates for new claims from April 2017. People affected are therefore set to lose up to £1,500 a year under current rules.

My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) described eloquently the pernicious nature of the changes to housing benefit for young people when she highlighted the fact she was now the only 20-year-old in the country the Chancellor would be helping with her housing bill. We now know that, from April 2017, those out of work aged 18 to 21 making new claims to universal credit will no longer be entitled to the housing element.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Listening to my hon. Friend talk about women having to prove they have been raped and about 18 to 21-year-olds having to move back in with their parents when housing benefit is removed reminds me of when I was a welfare rights officer in the late ’80s and the Tory Government decided that 16 and 17-year-olds were no longer entitled to any benefits unless they had exceptional reasons. I had to advise a frightened 17-year-old girl sitting in front of me that, yes, if she wanted to stay in her own not very nice house, which was at least safe, she would have to tell a stranger that her dad regularly raped her. What does my hon. Friend think of progress under Tory Governments?

[Hannah Bardell]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. It is very clear from her experiences that these cuts are pernicious and unfounded, and we must, must oppose them.

The Scottish Government are protecting people from Westminster cuts. To be properly supported to live a full and meaningful life, be that in employment or otherwise, we have to look at a different way of doing things. In Scotland, the Scottish National party Government are providing £104 million in 2015-16 to protect as many people as possible from the damaging impact of the welfare reforms imposed so far by Westminster. That includes £35 million to mitigate the bedroom tax and the council tax reduction scheme, which has protected 500,000 Scots.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the changes on conditionality to three and four-year-olds are an interference with Scottish and Welsh Government policy? They impose an obligation to provide some form of childcare for those policies to be in any way humane. That is above and beyond the way in which a UK policy should affect Welsh or Scottish Government policy.

[Hannah Bardell]

I agree with the hon. Lady wholeheartedly. We will certainly have to look at that. The Joint Ministerial Committee met today. Hopefully, it will have discussed this matter and we will hear further information on it.

The SNP believes that having socially progressive policies is the key to unlocking our society’s potential. That is why our First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, wrote in yesterday’s Sunday Herald:

“The UN General Assembly in New York will provide the backdrop for national governments to agree the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Sustainable Development Goals themselves offer a vision of the world that I believe people in Scotland share. From ending poverty to combating inequality, the aims set out by the UN form an agenda for tackling some of the world’s greatest problems.

I am delighted to confirm that Scotland has become one of the very first nations on Earth to publicly sign up to these goals and provide leadership on reducing inequality across the globe.”

Michael Green, from the Social Progress Index, said:

“The term Gross Domestic Product is often talked about as if it were ‘handed down from god on tablets of stone.’ But this concept was invented by an economist in the 1930s.”

He says that we need a more effective measurement tool to match 21st century needs: the social progress index. We absolutely agree that GDP is the internationally recognised benchmark, but we have to take into consideration much wider aspects. Michael Green asserts that economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and improved the lives of many more over the last half century, yet it is increasingly evident that a model of development based on economic progress alone is incomplete. Economic growth is not enough. A society that fails to address basic human needs, to equip citizens to improve quality of life, to protect the environment and provide opportunity for many of its citizens, is not succeeding. We must widen our understanding of the success of societies beyond economic outcomes. Inclusive growth requires achieving both economic and social progress. If we focus solely on GDP and reducing the deficit at all costs, we will store up significant problems for the future.

The SNP was very clear in its manifesto proposals about the aspects of policy that could be introduced to help bring people out of poverty. We want a vote for child tax credits and child benefit to be uprated in line with the consumer prices index and to support an increase in free childcare up to 30 hours a week by 2020. We propose an increase in carer’s allowance to bring it in line with JSA, which would see more than 100,000 unpaid carers in Scotland better off by almost £600 a year. We support increases in the personal tax allowance, but will back an increase in the work allowance—the amount people are allowed to earn before their benefit is cut at 20%.

The Bill is an attack on civil society. It is an attack on our poorest families. It is a regressive Bill that takes us back in time with cuts that will hit women and children the hardest. It will stigmatise and marginalise women who have been raped, and put conditions on the most needy in our society. At a time when we should be looking outward and forward, when we should be progressive and look to give our people a bright future and something to hope for, this Government are instead looking inward to attack their own people and turn them against each other in a way that even Thatcher’s Government would not have dared. The people of Scotland will not stand for this and neither will its democratically elected politicians. If the Bill and the Budget succeed, going our own way in Scotland and building a society that is progressive and for everyone, not just the rich, will be increasingly attractive. I urge the House to reject the Second Reading of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Lady raises a perfectly valid point. There is a philosophical difference here: do we take the difference between what they currently get on ESA and JSA and use that money to help give them the greater support that should get them into jobs, or do we just carry on as we are, knowing that the current programme is not that successful? We have to do something different. We have to do more in the Work programme to make it more likely that people with disabilities will get jobs. The jobs are there; all the statistics tell us that more jobs are available than there are people looking for them, but those with disabilities are not getting them at the moment. They need more help with resilience and confidence—the things that make a difference when people go to an interview. They need employers who understand, so the Disability Confident programme is important. They need—we need—providers to understand that they must do more to help, and in return we probably need to give more cash up front, rather than depending solely on payment by returns for those in the ESA category. We MPs need to do our bit. When we hold job fairs, how many of us focus on those on ESA? It is time to tilt our jobs fairs away from those on JSA and towards those with disabilities and on ESA. We can do that, with the help of the Department for Work and Pensions.

There is much to be done, and I believe Ministers are aware that when they review the Work programme they will have to innovate to make sure that those with disabilities and on ESA stand a better chance of winning jobs in a competitive marketplace. We need to do more to help employers realise the importance of this. All of us need to do more as Members to inspire our residents and our businesses to apply for those jobs and to help them win them. That will be vital in reducing the working age welfare cost from 13% of all public spending at the moment to a more reasonable figure.

[Hannah Bardell]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Graham]

I regret that there is no more time.

Above all, we need to inspire those with disabilities into a job. The Leonard Cheshire Disability charity said:

“We believe that disabled people should have the freedom…to contribute economically and to participate fully in society.”

I believe that all of us agree with that. Now we must do our bit to make sure it happens.