UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[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.

[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.

[Jim Shannon]

My constituency office is about 100 yards from the social security office—it is as close as that—and I have had numerous distressed people come from the social security office to my office looking for advice. I have written perhaps not to the Minister directly but to his Department to outline some of the changes that we feel should be made. In the light of those things, perhaps more needs to be done in the social security office to address the issues early on.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am coming on to those. UC dealt with the fact that, for some, there was in effect a 90% tax rate. The well-documented 16, 24 and 30-hour cliff edges were significant barriers for people. It was so confusing and complex that £2.4 billion-worth, we believe, of claims went untaken each year across 700,000 claimants, who were some of the most vulnerable people. My role in the DWP is to represent vulnerable people going through the benefits system and it was often those people who were missing out on money because they were simply unaware that they were entitled to the support that we rightly wanted them to have.

[Ruth George]

Will the Minister give way?

[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.

[Liz McInnes]

indicated dissent.

[Justin Tomlinson]

The hon. Lady is shaking her head. I do not understand why anybody would not want to do everything within their power to identify vulnerable people in society and give them the support we want to give to them. The very heart of the question raised by the hon. Member for South Shields is: is there a will from the Government? There absolutely is—from me and right through the Government.

We are going to keep on working with all stakeholders and partnership organisations to ensure that those in most need in society receive the support that they should. We are also looking at homelessness. Rightly, we have put in an additional £1.2 billion, building on the principles of the duty to refer. We have some exciting pilots: the Newcastle trailblazer; partnership working led by Crisis, which has had some really positive findings; and the Housing First initiatives in Manchester, Liverpool and the west midlands. Again, they are on the principles of identifying, referring and supporting. There are exciting developments from those pilots and they will go to the heart of future roll-out support.

The key for me, with my individual role in the Department, is sharpening up the tailored support, whether for care leavers, ex-offenders or the parental conflict programme, and ensuring that those who need the extra support that many of us in our lives have been able to take for granted are given it to unlock everybody’s potential. Some of the areas I felt were missing from the report related to education attainment to unlock people’s potential. I went to a school that was at the bottom of the league tables and two of my best friends went to prison. It is absolutely key that we ensure that, regardless of people’s background, they are given the maximum opportunity to succeed. I wholeheartedly support the significant improvements we are making in education.

[Thelma Walker]

As a former headteacher, I talk to a lot of my former colleagues. Many of them, of a morning, are washing children’s clothes and giving them breakfast. They are having to give children extra lunch because they are starving. Does the Minister agree that that is totally unnecessary and inappropriate? We should be caring for the most vulnerable in our society.

[Justin Tomlinson]

That is why it is absolutely right that we have targeted support at the poorest in society, so the poorest fifth are now £400 better off in real terms than they were under the Labour Government. We will continue to do that work.

By prioritising sound financial management and a strong, growing economy, we have been able to deliver record employment in every region of the country. Wages are rising the fastest in a decade. We introduced the national living wage, income tax threshold changes and universal credit childcare up to 85% of costs, which is worth up to £15,000 to parents with two or more children, and we doubled free childcare. Those are all priorities for this Government, because we recognise that everybody should be supported, regardless of their background. By treating people as individuals in a simplified system that can give tailored, personalised support, we can unlock their potential, regardless of their unique challenges and opportunities.

As I said, we have to take many of the findings and opinions seriously. We are doing a huge amount of work, and we will continue to do so. I thank the hon. Member for South Shields for raising this very important issue.

Question put and agreed to.