Poverty

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

One of the most valuable things I got from this House was during the passage of the Welfare Reform Act 2012, when we debated what to do for the most vulnerable in the context of UC. That led to the creation of universal support, whereby we join up with local authorities to try to provide services that join together. We have done that now for two of the barriers people face, in budgeting and in digital competence, and we are now exploring how to expand that approach, which shares information, data and support in relation to other barriers. We have some trials going on at the moment, one in Croydon and one in the London Bridge area, on how to do that most effectively.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)]

My Lords, one of the Government’s more successful innovations in dealing with the long-term implications of poverty has been the introduction of the pupil premium. I have to tell the Minister, from conversations I have had with headmasters in some of the most benefited schools in this area, that they are concerned that changes in the rules about how entitlement to benefit is calculated in future will affect very directly the input into schools through this rather good innovation. Any reassurances that can be given, now or in writing, would be appreciated.

[Lord Freud]

That is one of the topics that I and the Schools Minister are talking about. We now have, as a potential option for future use, far more specific measures of real levels of poverty in universal credit which we can use to record poverty, rather than the much cruder measures that we used in the legacy system.