Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, my colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester argued that in this Bill we are again putting pressure on those who are already the poorest in our society. We want to urge the Government to look again at the effect of the Bill on child poverty, not just over the next three years, but on into the future. I will not repeat my colleague’s arguments, but in that context, I want to ask three questions of the Minister.

First, will the Government make some commitment about benefits for asylum seekers, especially child asylum seekers? I ask this as a member, alongside the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, of the parliamentary inquiry into asylum support for children and young people, which has recently reported. I am told that benefits for asylum seekers are not welfare benefits, and that although they are benefits designed for the welfare of those in destitution, they are beyond the scope of this Bill. In that Alice-in-Wonderland world, I would nevertheless plead with the Government to give some comfort to asylum-seeking children and those who work with them.

Until 2008, these benefits were pegged at 70% of income support, but now they are not related to anything at all and have fallen to between 50% and 60% of income support. No increases were made in 2012 and we are told that there are no plans for any increases in the near future. I am thinking of a teenage girl in Leeds who has to look after her disabled mother as they seek asylum after fleeing from terror. She goes without meals herself in order to ensure that her mother is kept out of destitution. Will the Minister press her colleagues to ensure that the 10,000 asylum-seeking children who are at the most deprived end of our society are given a fair chance in life?

It is always a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, in these debates. Will the Government look again at the effect of the provisions of this Bill on disabled children? While some disability benefits are to be protected, the lower child disability addition of universal credit is included in the Bill among the benefits to be capped at 1% per annum. I follow the noble Lord, Lord Low, in asking that this should be looked at again. This benefit will be halved under universal credit; families with disabled children will have that element of their benefit reduced from £57 a week to £28, and now that savage reduction will be compounded by an increase of only 1% rather than by inflation. Will the Government consider the cumulative effect of the various measures on disabled children?

Alongside that, again with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, I am concerned about the effect on families of the continuing erosion of child benefit. This benefit has long been the mark of our support for children in our society, but already we have seen a significant number of families being deprived of this universal benefit altogether. The social value of paying this benefit to the mother has, I believe, not been properly or adequately counted. It is a benefit that is widely used to support the next generation, but it is now being refused to many. The 1% increase in 2014-15 follows three years of freezing the uprate so that, over the five years from 2010 to 2015, the level of child benefit for a family with three children will have reduced by £380 a year—in addition to the other reductions for children in deprived circumstances. Child benefit is key to the welfare of our society and it needs to be protected.

Finally, other noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord German, have asked the Minister whether she will encourage her colleagues, and indeed everybody else, not to use derogatory or dismissive language when they refer to those who receive welfare benefits. I will go a bit further than that and ask whether she will make it clear that the vast majority of those on benefits are not shirkers, fraudsters or spendthrifts. The majority of those who receive benefits are in work and the majority of those out of work would love to work if they could find jobs. The stigmatisation of those who receive benefits is both serious and dangerous. In 2011, there was an increase of 30% in attacks on disabled people, fuelled by stories of how people were falsely claiming disability allowances. Politicians and journalists are accused of spreading a mythology that causes stigma. Will the Minister today begin the process of slaying that myth by declaring that responsibility for poverty does not lie with the poor, so that we can, together, seek to support one another in helping those in most poverty, especially those in child poverty, within our society?