Welfare Reform and Work Bill (First sitting)

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Q 24 Thank you very much for coming. My first question is to Neera, about proposals in the Bill in relation to the Child Poverty Act 2010.

The Government have obviously criticised the Child Poverty Act, in relation to its focus on measuring relative income poverty and ignoring other aspects of child poverty. What is your critique of the proposals in the Bill in relation to measuring and tracking progress on child poverty? Can you also say something about how important it is to understand the impact on different families?

Neera Sharma: Our key concern is that measures in the Bill are likely to increase child poverty now and in future, and that families that are already struggling on low incomes could become even poorer. We are absolutely very concerned that the mere repeal of the Child Poverty Act—it was passed with cross-party support—will send the message that the UK Government no longer considers ending child poverty to be an important goal.

We feel that the Government cannot ignore the impact of growing up in a family that is struggling on a very low income. While we agree that income is not the only measurement that affects a child’s life chances, it does have an impact on health, on life expectancy, on academic outcomes and on future successes in the workplace. So we feel that it is vital that the Government continues to report on an income measure and considers the needs of children living in poverty whose parents are in work, as well as those in workless households.

[Kate Green]

Q 25 Can you say something about the way in which the Government should or should not track different kinds of family structure, different kinds of family background, and whether you see this legislation as facilitating that?

Neera Sharma: We believe that the Government should look at the situation of different families. For example, we know that children in certain black and minority ethnic families are much more likely to grow up in poverty. So some of the proposals in the Bill, such as limiting tax credits to two children, will impact harshly on larger families, many of whom are likely to be BME families.

[Emily Thornberry]

Q 26 I represent a constituency that is part of a London borough which has the sixth highest child poverty figures in the whole country, and we have already been hit very hard by the benefit cap, with many families having to move out of Islington to outer London, so children are having to commute for many hours to go to school. Can you tell us what it means for children to be uprooted from their local communities at an early age, and how their education can be affected, either by changing schools or by having to travel 20 or 30 miles to get to school each morning? How might that impact on child poverty and their life chances?

Neera Sharma: We know that children who grow up in poor families do less well in terms of their education. Uprooting those children from the communities and the support they need, as you have said, has an impact on their life chances. We are concerned that families will have less income as a result of the cap, but we are also very concerned about the mechanisms for reviewing that cap, because the Bill allows the Government to review that cap without having to report to Parliament. It is really important that there is full scrutiny and that the Government do report to Parliament, and that they ask the Social Security Advisory Committee to undertake an annual review of the cap that is reported to Parliament before any decisions are made about increasing, or decreasing—as it probably will be—the cap.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hannah Bardell]

Q 36 I have a question about resources. A significant number of women will be affected and will need potentially to get back to work. Surely extra resources are required to cater for that. Do you feel that there is adequate—

Emma Stewart: There is a genuine challenge on the ground in Jobcentre Plus, but other front-line providers can support parents. There is a capability issue as well as a capacity issue. It goes back to the point that we do not have lone parent specialist advisers any more. We have advisers, and there is a need to educate and inform advisers—we are, in our organisation, involved with this—to understand the parameters that lone parents face, and to provide a coaching intervention that effectively understands and supports them to find the kind of work that they need.

Two thirds of women currently underutilise their skills in the workplace. So for example, finding a job with a higher salary as opposed to just more hours, as a simple line of communication to advisers, is really critical. There is also an opportunity with the Work programme to look at the fact that providers will do what they get paid for in a commercial welfare-to-work environment. If providers are commissioned on the basis of job quality and job type outputs as much as volume of people into work, you will see a shift in approach.

[Kate Green]

Q 37 I want to tease out the issue about flexibilities for parents, especially lone parents, in the proposed new conditionality. There are, within guidance, opportunities for flexibility in the requirements that are imposed on lone parents now. In your experience, have you seen those well applied, badly applied or not applied? What difference can they make to the ability of a lone parent to make that journey to work?

Emma Stewart: It is very mixed. It depends, at a regional level in the Jobcentre Plus, on what the senior management team is like. In some districts that we work in, there is a real investment and there has been a focus on getting this right. In others there is a genuine lack of awareness.

The churn in Jobcentre Plus does not help at the moment. There is a need to think about consistent learning and development programmes for Jobcentre Plus advisers. If guidance, as opposed to an explicit framework, is going to be applied, that guidance for Jobcentre Plus advisers needs to be really clear about what good practice looks like to support lone parents in particular.

[Kate Green]

Q 38 Are parents and independent advisers aware of these flexibilities and able to encourage, in the negotiation of the claimant commitment, that the lone parent should raise these issues and talk to the jobcentre adviser about them?

Emma Stewart: How information is cascaded is really challenging within Jobcentre. We know that the Government have lost their ability to run campaigns effectively, but some investment is needed into how parents are made aware. For us, the issue of local enterprise partnerships, devolved activity, and how local authorities and LEPs work together at a district level to ensure that communication is made available to advisers is important. It cannot all be centralised.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

Q 39 Picking up on the point about the support that is available for lone parents at Jobcentre Plus, we have seen a steady increase in the employment rate among lone parents. Is that because the advisory role being undertaken by Jobcentre Plus is working?

Neera Sharma: I believe that in some areas it is working, but there are huge geographical variations, especially for parents who have been out of the labour market for a long time or for vulnerable parents who may have disabilities or have a child with a disability. It varies incredibly from one area to another. Also, advisers have quite a lot of discretion in how they support families and deal with conditionality and sanctions, so I would reinforce Emma’s point around better training and guidance for staff in Jobcentre Plus, especially in their dealings with families who are vulnerable. They will see more of those families seeking their advice as the conditionality of parents with younger children starts to commence.

Emma Stewart: Can I just add that we have also seen a large increase in in-work poverty? The data on more lone parents working is clearly true, but the extent to which they are working in sustainable, quality jobs is not yet fully evidenced. We know from Work programme sustainability rates that the churn is still quite high for lone parents who are moved into work and moved off benefits, but then come back on because they find it hard to sustain a job as it is not paying enough.