Social Security and Pensions

Debate between Margaret Greenwood and Karen Buck

Monday 6th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ms Buck]

The Government have decided to refer to the absolute poverty figures only, which we would expect to go down as the years go by. However, under the standard measure of poverty, the relative measure, there is an increase in poverty. Indeed, if we want to get into the details, the Government’s preferred measure also shows an increase in poverty among families, including families with more children. This year’s uprating will at best serve to maintain the value of benefits, which has been severely reduced over the last decades. The resulting inadequacy of the safety net has played out exactly as one might expect; it contributes to increased numbers of children in poverty, to deepening poverty, and to increased need for food banks.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that the last Labour Government took 1 million children out of poverty, and that we could do with having a Labour Government immediately to take further action?

[Ms Buck]

I could not agree more. The Labour Government demonstrated what could be done with will, policy and investment; they brought about a dramatic reduction in pensioner poverty and child poverty. A future Labour Government will do exactly the same. Of course we will support the motion, but the Government deserve no praise—

[Ms Buck]

I have given away enough for the moment. The Government deserve no praise for refraining from a deliberate action that they should never have contemplated taking in the first place.

It is important to recognise the limitations to the uprating order. Although the nominal value of most working-age benefits will increase by 10.1%, there will be no change to the eligible cost limits of two crucial benefits: the childcare element of universal credit and tax credits, and the local housing allowance. Do the Government think that childcare and housing costs are immune to inflation? How does allowing the erosion of the value of childcare support fit with their stated aims of encouraging work progression and helping working parents to increase their hours of work?

Yesterday, the deputy political editor of The Sunday Times reported that:

“Sunak and Hunt want a new benefits crackdown, including”

increasing the

“threshold under which people must attend regular job centre interviews/meet work coaches to be raised to 18 hours”.

If the Government are serious about helping parents to progress, they should ensure that parents are better off working more hours, rather than using the crude and unproven instruments of conditionality. As the IFS has shown, parents in the lower thirds of the earning distribution already stand to lose 58% of their additional earnings when moving from 20 to 40 hours of work a week.

Incentives to progress are already weak, so allowing inflation to erode the value of childcare support makes absolutely no sense. As evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee stated recently,

“The childcare support provided with UC is only sufficient to cover part-time hours, because the cap it is subject to has been frozen for six years”,

and

“A fixed cap amid rising childcare costs means fewer hours are eligible for reimbursement under UC today compared to Working Tax Credit in 2005—potentially restricting parents’ employment options.”

While I am on the subject, we hardly need reminding that the requirement for parents who claim childcare support to pay up front heaps the burden on to low-income parents, and contributes to the nightmare of overpayments and deductions, which contribute to the debt and destitution crisis.

The local housing allowance remains frozen for the third year in a row—at least, that is how everybody apart from the Secretary of State sees it. He said in his written statement of 17 November:

“I can also confirm that the local housing allowance rates for 2023-24 will be maintained in cash terms at the elevated rates agreed for 2020-21.”—[Official Report, 17 November 2022; Vol. 722, c. 24WS.]

Perhaps the Minister can explain how those rates, which are based simply on the 30th percentile of local rents in 2019—since when rents have risen by 8% overall according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and vastly more in some parts of the country—can seriously be described as elevated.

[Margaret Greenwood]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way—she is being very generous. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, freezing local housing allowance, as opposed to uprating it to match local rents, will reduce support for nearly 1.1 million households by an average of £50 per month. Does she agree that that is an utterly impossible situation for people to face, and that we need action from the Government on it?

[Ms Buck]

It is absolutely impossible. Rents are such a major component of people’s expenditure. For that shortfall to first be fixed, and then to grow, is inexplicable. It absolutely eats into people’s residual income.

Nearly 1.5 million universal credit households receive the housing allowance. Of those, 844,000, or 58%, have rents above the maximum that local housing allowance will support. On average, they face a shortfall of £100 a month, which has to come out of their residual income.

Strengthening Families

Debate between Margaret Greenwood and Karen Buck

Thursday 8th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Margaret Greenwood]

Will the Minister give way?

[Ms Karen Buck (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the hon. Lady intervenes, I would remind Members that this is not a debate about the health service.

[Oliver Dowden]

I will give way in just one moment. Record numbers of operations are being performed on the NHS, record numbers of people are seeing GPs, and record numbers of people are being seen in A&E. We have committed an extra £8 billion in this Parliament and another £6 billion was committed in the Budget to the NHS. I will give way, and then I must move on.

[Margaret Greenwood]

I thank the Minister for giving way and I take on board your comment, Ms Buck, but I would say that the debate is cross-departmental and the document does refer to health. Accountable care systems or integrated care systems are suggesting bundling together budgets for the hospitals, the GPs, community health, public health and local authority spending of one area—Wirral, for example—and potentially giving that to one private provider. We have seen what happened with Carillion, so there is clearly a huge risk in taking that kind of approach. I would say that if that leads to the privatisation of the national health service, it will have a devastating effect on families.

[Ms Karen Buck (in the Chair)]

I call the Minister, and I would stress my earlier point to him as well.

[Oliver Dowden]

I thank you for that warning, Ms Buck. I will deal with the comment in one sense and move on to the substance of the manifesto.

There is virtue in integrating services, The sort of thing that is being pioneered in Manchester, where we bring together different services—it is in fact being pioneered by a Labour Mayor, in conjunction with the former Chancellor’s measures—is, I think, a way of improving health outcomes.

I will now move on to the specific measures in the manifesto, which form part of broader Government policy. For example, there is the important matter of education. There are now 1.9 million children in good or outstanding schools, which is a record number. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford raised some important points about mental health. As was recognised, we are investing £1.4 billion in mental health services for children and young people, and we have set up a scheme in schools to raise awareness and help them to know how to deal with individuals in schools suffering from mental health issues. We have published a Green Paper to set out our plans to transform mental health services in schools. My hon. Friend made an important point about the need for a holistic, family approach to mental health, and hopefully the Green Paper will be a starting point.

As I said, a route into meaningful work is very important for improving children’s life chances. We now know that nearly three quarters of children from workless households moved out of poverty when their parents entered full-time work. That means 608,000 fewer children are living in workless households.

Before moving on to the contents of the manifesto, I would like to try to address some of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton. The importance of champions for the family in Government was raised by several Members. As a starting point, I know that the Prime Minister is personally committed to this—she is the principal champion of families. We have already discussed the other Ministers with family responsibilities, but I have certainly heard the point about a specific, designated family Cabinet Minister loud and clear, and I will relay that to my colleagues in Government.

My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton raised the DAD scheme. I understand from my officials that the Department for Education has funded a range of family advice and support services since 2008, including Family Matters, which runs the website called DAD. The service is well used and is valued by its users. Ministers at DFE are considering the future requirements for the next financial year, so it is under active consideration. I am sure the representations made by my hon. Friend will have been heard loud and clear. On children’s centres, an important point was raised about family hubs. Clearly, local authorities have responsibility for children’s centres and they are free to pioneer family hubs. As my hon. Friend said, a great number are already doing so. She highlighted Westminster and the Isle of Wight. I would urge other councils to consider doing so.

My hon. Friend made an excellent representation on a transformation fund. Sadly, it is entirely beyond my remit to make public spending commitments, but I am sure the Chancellor will take note, particularly regarding the £90 million in dormant bank accounts. On the statutory duty to have the father’s name on birth certificates, it is worth noting that 94% of birth certificates already have the father’s name there, so we are making progress.

On relationships education, which came up in a number of contributions, the call for evidence is out at the moment. Some passionate pleas were made. I would urge hon. Members to respond to that call for evidence—I believe it closes on Monday. That is the route for formulating policy in that area. Again, I think a valuable point was made about the need for an annual statement on strengthening families and that is again something I will relay to my right hon. Friends in Government.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford talked about Home-Start, which is very important. I have looked into it very briefly, and I believe that comes under the local transformation plans that we put in place in 2014-15. There is an opportunity, as part of those plans, to provide for such schemes, but I will write to him further on that point.

Let me turn to the substance of the debate: this excellent manifesto. The Government introduced the family test in 2014 to bring a family perspective into policy making. It helps to ensure that the impact on family relationships and functioning, both positive and negative, is recognised in the process of policy development, and it informs policy decisions made by Ministers. We introduced the test to ensure that, across Government, we think carefully about the potential for new policies to support or undermine family relationships. The Implementation Unit has a role in ensuring that the family test is implemented. The test means that families are considered at the start of any new policy development.