Welfare Reform Bill Debate
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Maria Miller
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Welfare Reform Bill
Maria Miller Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1.
Mr Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to consider the following:
Lords amendment 2, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 3, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 4, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendments 5 to 14, 16, 20 to 22, 24 and 25.
Lords amendment 26, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendments 27 to 46 and 48 to 72.
Lords amendment 73, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendments 74 to 110.
Maria Miller
As Mr Speaker has indicated, Lords amendments 1, 2, 3, 4, 26 and 73 impinge on the financial privileges of the House of Commons. In disagreeing to the amendments, I will ask the Reasons Committee to ascribe financial privilege as the reason to the House of Lords. Notwithstanding that, however, the House of Commons has an opportunity to debate the substance of the amendments, and to provide the Government’s full rationale for rejecting them,
Lords amendment 1 concerns elements for disabled children. Let us be clear about the impact of the amendment. It would force the Government to reduce support for severely disabled children and, moreover, would go against our commitment to increase support for such children to £77. I believe that our original policy, as agreed in this House, is the right one, because it targets support for disabled people not on age but on need, and removes the cliff edge of financial support that is currently faced by young adults and their families.
In these difficult times, we must make tough choices about where to target our limited resources. The choice that the Government have made is to protect the money that is available to support disabled people in universal credit, and to use it more effectively to ensure that the people who face the biggest challenge are given more support. I repeat that all the money is recycled to support disabled people. What we are doing is thinking about the whole life of an individual, and removing the current artificial division between childhood and adulthood. I hope that that reassures my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), who spoke earlier about the importance of supporting disabled people. We have ensured that we can protect the money that is so important to them.
As we have reiterated throughout our debates on the Bill, we are overhauling existing support. It does not really make sense to look at any one aspect of universal credit in isolation: it provides families with a new package of support to meet a range of needs, and for that reason we need to consider the overall impact of the offer rather than concentrating on any of its individual components.
A parent with a disabled child and who is working 20 hours a week on the minimum wage is likely to be £73 better off in work under universal credit, rather than only £13 better off under tax credits. About 30,000 more families with a disabled child are in work than are out of work, so it is right for us to target support in a way that helps working families. An out-of-work family with a disabled child can receive just over £8,000 a year in benefits for their child once universal credit has been introduced. That compares with just over £4,000 for an out-of-work family with a non-disabled child, and about £1,000 for a family who only receive child benefit. Our impact assessments and modelling demonstrate that, overall, families are more likely to be better off on universal credit, and that there will be no significant change for disabled children living in poverty.
As all Members know, increasing spending is not an option. We simply cannot maintain the existing rates for disabled children if we are to increase the rates for severely disabled adults. That would cost £200 million, which we simply cannot afford. This is a critical point. If the amendment were agreed to, it would not be possible to increase the addition for the most severely disabled people to £77. Let us be clear: the decision to be made is whether we should maintain rates for moderately disabled children at the expense of raising the limits for severely disabled people. We strongly believe that the fairest approach is to align support between children and adults. We take an holistic view of an individual’s life. In summary, what is fair and right is to simplify benefits within universal credit, and to focus limited resources on the basis of need, not age.
Let me now turn to the amendments that deal with child maintenance:
“we should use every lever at our disposal to make reaching a voluntary agreement more attractive than coming into the Child-Maintenance Enforcement Commission.”
Those are not my words, but those of the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, now Lord, Hutton, to a Select Committee of this House in 2006.
Let me make four brief points to put the debate in context. Conflict when families break down is bad for children, as we all know from our constituency casework, and we all know that all too often that conflict can be embedded and entrenched as a result of problems to do with the Child Support Agency.
The role of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission has changed fundamentally. It is no longer about recovering, pound for pound, the benefits payments made to lone parents. Instead we have a benefits system that gives more than £6.5 billion in welfare payments directly to lone parents, both those in work and those not in work. In the past, change has been piecemeal. That has created the current failing system, which costs taxpayers £500 million every year; has nil-assessed more than 250,000 people, some of whom really should be receiving support; and has 100,000 clerical cases. It would not be putting it too strongly to say that we have inherited a real mess from the Labour party. The reform that we are undertaking is long overdue.
My concern is that the amendment from the other place is not about improving the situation; if anything, it would make the situation worse. It is about attempting to divide parents into those who deserve to be charged, and those who do not. Our reforms are about creating a behavioural change for the benefit of children, and about helping parents to work together. The amendment from the other place would make that approach unworkable.
Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North) (Lab)
I have been listening carefully to what the Minister has to say. This is complex territory that has bewildered previous Conservative Governments and, frankly, the Labour Government. Will she tell the House how many parents with care do not receive any child maintenance from the other party?
Maria Miller
I can tell the right hon. Gentleman how many children do not receive any maintenance from the other party. Given that we spend £500 million a year on a child maintenance system, I think that it will shock the House to learn that for half of children living in separated families, there is no support in place. It is clear for everybody to see that the present system simply does not work, and the reason why it does not work is that it does not support families in coming together.
Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)
May I say how strongly I support the reforms, particularly the link-up with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which seems incredibly sensible to the parents in my constituency who come to see me? Will the Minister tell us what will happen on the ground locally to support families who are separating? I think that is where the rubber hits the road.
Maria Miller
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I will come on to this in a bit more detail in a moment, but I have been working with organisations such as Gingerbread, Families Need Fathers, Relate, and the Centre for Separated Families to make sure that we have the sort of support in place that has not been forthcoming for too many years, so that there is a structure for referring individuals to the right level of support via telephone lines, websites and the expert support that already exists. Importantly, we will also make available funding—some £20 million—to support programmes that help families to resolve their differences. That is doubling the amount of Government support for family relationships.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I support a lot of what the Minister is trying to do, and I know how dedicated she is to trying to help the Child Support Agency. However, I support the Lords amendment on charging. I agree with charging later on, when people are refusing to adhere to an order, but if the relationship between parents has already broken down, there is a risk that people will not go for the maintenance that they want because of the charging.
Maria Miller
I thank my hon. Friend for the opportunity to clarify an important aspect of the current situation. More than half of parents within the CMEC system would like to make their own arrangements—they positively want to do that—if they had the right support in place, but they do not have that support. They see the CMEC and the Child Support Agency as the only option open to them, and that cannot be right. It cannot be right that we are not doing more to support families so that they can take responsibility and do the right thing.
Mr Frank Field
Is not the really big change that we are discussing the fact that when the CSA was first established, the maintenance moneys went to the Treasury to offset what taxpayers were putting up because, generally speaking, fathers were not prepared to do so, whereas now that money remains with the family? Is it not reasonable, in such circumstances, if people are going to get a top-up to their benefit that they should contribute to the cost of gaining that extra money? On the timing, should we not charge people once they are getting the money, not before?
Maria Miller
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. He is absolutely right. Indeed, back in 1991 when the Child Support Agency was initially put in place, some £400 million of savings were attached to it because there was a pound-for-pound withdrawal of maintenance and the welfare benefits that an individual received.
Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
What would the administrative costs be of levying the £20 fee and processing it?
Maria Miller
I just realised that I did not finish my response to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). He challenged me about the up-front cost, and why we were not just making an ongoing charge once money was flowing. It is very simple. We want not simply to use this to enhance a family’s income but to take the opportunity to help parents to consider whether they should go to the Child Support Agency as they could stay outside the system and make their own arrangements.
Maria Miller
Hon. Members will forgive me if I make some progress, as I may answer some of their questions before they ask them.
On the cost of the up-front payment, it is important that we recognise that the system costs the taxpayer almost half a billion pounds a year. We want to ensure that we are using the system to support families properly to take responsibility, but we also need to ensure that we make the prudent savings that taxpayers would expect us to make in these difficult economic times. The cost of charging up front will not disproportionately add cost to the whole system—far from it. We are incentivising people to come to their own arrangements. As I said in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), more than half the people currently inside the system would like to make their own arrangements. I know that by putting in place an up-front charge we will get some of those people to consider the actions they take.
Maria Miller
The hon. Lady will forgive me if I try to make some progress. I know that many hon. Members want to contribute to the debate and we have another significant issue to discuss after this one.
We want to support parents in taking responsibility for their child’s financial support post-separation, so that they do not see the costly and heavy-handed CSA as their only option. As I have said, half the parents using the Child Support Agency tell us they would like to make their own arrangements, with the right support, which clearly demonstrates that the CSA has come to be seen as the default option.
We have already announced that we are putting in place the support that parents need to be able to come to their own agreements, with the collaborative arrangements that are best for children.
Maria Miller
I will make a little more progress, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.
We are doubling Government spending on relationship support with an additional £20 million. I want to put on record my thanks to those groups that have worked hard with us to develop what that support should be—they are, as I have said, Gingerbread, Relate, Families Need Fathers, and the Centre for Separated Families. For families that need the more structured approach of the statutory scheme it will remain accessible and heavily subsidised, but there will be in-built incentives for parents always to see the advantages of working collaboratively and in-built incentives for parents to pay maintenance in full and on time.
Maintenance direct will be a no-cost way for parents to make ongoing payments to each other within the statutory scheme and the full statutory collection scheme, with its strong enforcement powers, will be a service that both parents pay for.
Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)
Does the Minister share my experience that it is not a question of the system but a matter of enforcement? Whether the process is voluntary or goes through the Child Support Agency, the problems of children not receiving any money come about because there is either no enforcement or the enforcement is not effective. How will the system provide the enforcement action that is needed?
Maria Miller
I share the hon. Gentleman’s experiences of the current system and although I pay tribute to the staff who work in the Child Support Agency and the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission for their efforts to make the system work, we all know, as constituency MPs, that there is a big problem with parents’ attitudes towards payment. There is absolutely nothing in place at the moment to prevent parents from simply waiting until enforcement comes into play. Our measures will ensure that that changes, and will mean there is always an incentive for people to pay on time. Importantly, we will ensure that if we have to take heavy enforcement action, the individual who has caused the situation will pay for it, whether through a deduction of earnings order or through other measures we are putting in place.
It is not the Government’s intention to block parents from using the statutory scheme and we are listening hard to the concerns of parliamentarians in both Houses. To that end, the Government have proposed amendment 75 to ensure that there is a review of charging, and a report to Parliament will be completed within 30 months of the introduction of that mechanism. I can announce today that to underline that commitment the up-front charge for parents choosing to use the statutory scheme will be reduced to £20 for all applicants. In return, parents will receive a calculation of maintenance payable that will, for the first time, be based routinely on HMRC data. Additionally, domestic violence victims will be completely exempt from the application charge. I am sure the whole House will welcome this announcement, which demonstrates that no family will be deterred from accessing the statutory system purely on the basis of cost.
Maria Miller
I think it is very important to work with individuals in all the organisations that support families going through separation. We will not always agree on everything but it is important to work together because we must get a solution that is right for mothers, fathers and children.
Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
Will the Minister clarify that the gateway for access by parents will be £20 each and not, as was previously set out, a more complex one? If that is the case, I congratulate her and the Government on listening to people, reducing those charges and making this more simple.
Maria Miller
It will be £20 for the applicant only, because we want to make sure that the system is easy and straightforward to administer. For that, applicants will get a calculation of the amount of money their ex-partner would pay them. I should like to reassure my hon. Friend that, on an ongoing basis, the levels of charges will always sit disproportionately on the non-resident parent, because it is important that there is always an incentive for people to come to an arrangement.
Sheila Gilmore
Obviously, any change of heart is welcome—I do not think we would not welcome this—but there is something I do not understand. If, as the Minister has said, many people are reluctant to pay, how will charging the applicant—the parent with care—make the other parent more likely to pay?
Maria Miller
The hon. Lady and I know that it is very difficult for us to sit in judgment over parents. Family breakdown can be caused by many different things and we need to make sure that the support is there for parents to come together and work together. All our evidence suggests that 50% of people in the CSA system would rather not be there and would rather be working in the way I have described.
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
The Minister is absolutely right about the need for collaboration-based arrangements. To respond to the previous intervention, is not the inflexibility of the system one reason why non-resident parents often do not like paying? The constant barrage of letters, telephone calls and everything else means that they feel more and more reluctant but more and more pressured to pay. My constituency cases suggest that collaborative arrangements are sustainable and have worked.
Maria Miller
My hon. Friend is right that the inflexibility in the system does not reflect true family life. Every single family is different. It is difficult to reflect that in a statutory system, which is why encouraging more people to work on those arrangements together, whether the issue is finance or access, is the way for children to get the best results after family breakdown.
Ian Paisley
It would be churlish to not recognise that the Government have listened, because a £100 access fee would have been prohibitive to families, especially the most vulnerable families, who matter most in all this. I put on record my thanks to the Government for listening on that point, because that will allow more engagement with the statutory agencies, which is how we can get to the bottom of these problems.
Maria Miller
I thank the hon. Gentleman for those kind words. It is important that we have a solution that we feel everybody can work with as we move forward.
Maria Miller
May I address the amendment directly? The Government accept that Lord Mackay had the very best of intentions in tabling amendment 73 in the Lords. However, his approach means that the Government, before deciding who would pay a charge, would have to consider whether parents had tried to be collaborative. In considering that amendment, hon. Members should ask themselves whether it is the Government’s place to monitor and judge parents’ efforts to work collaboratively after their separation.
Maria Miller
I will give way in a moment. The implication of the amendment is that we should say yes to that, but the Government know that the answer absolutely has to be no. Not even under the simplest model of implementation could we see a way to set a level playing field of the sort that parents really need at such a difficult time. It would cost, we estimate, more than £220 million across this spending review and the next—a cost that would not be right for us to accept, and certainly not driving the right outcomes for children.
I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), who has so much experience in this area.
Mrs Grant
I was a legal aid family lawyer for 23 years before being elected to this place, and I had the opportunity to represent many families seeking maintenance. It would be impossibly difficult, practically and fairly, to assess which families had taken reasonable steps to reach an agreement and which had not, unless we created an intrusive, Big Brother society, which I do not think anyone would want.
Maria Miller
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, because she brings with her a wealth of experience of the practical problems that families face in these very difficult times. An additional effect of the amendment would be to put almost 100% of the ongoing charges on the non-resident parent. We agree that non-resident parents should have a clear incentive to pay a greater contribution to the ongoing costs, but I fear that simply loading all those costs on the non-resident parent could drive some perverse incentives and not provide the ability for parents to work in the collaborative way that I have set out.
Roberta Blackman-Woods
We would acknowledge that reducing the amount of money that must be paid up front by the applicant is a step in the right direction, but I am still not clear about the rationale behind the non-resident carer being more likely to pay up because the applicant must pay a charge. I am concerned about conceding the principle of paying up front, because what will stop the Government coming back in a year’s time and hiking up the £20 fee to £100 or £150? Will the Minister explain how the uprating of that amount will be carried out?
Maria Miller
I thank the hon. Lady for her helpful support. It is really important that the up-front charge does not become a deterrent, which is why we will look at how charging is working 30 months after implementation. I remind her that the parent with care receives, in return for her up-front fee, a clear and detailed calculation of how much money would be payable to her through maintenance, and for the first time the calculation will use HMRC data, which will ensure that she has all the information needed to decide whether it is appropriate to go into either maintenance direct, where there will be no ongoing charges, or the statutory system.
Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
I, too, welcome the fact that the cost for the applicant has come down, but will the Minister explain what the charging will be and how much it will cost the Government to collect the £20, because it seems to me that it will cost far too much to collect a mere £20?
Maria Miller
I thank my hon. Friend for her question. Of course, we are all very quizzical about the CSA when it comes to costs, because we know that it has been very difficult to administer over the years. She will be reassured to know that we have taken a very straightforward approach and want to keep it simple. By charging an up-front fee and getting people to reconsider staying outside the system, we will be making considerable savings, as I have outlined. When she considers that each case costs around £26,000, or up to £40,000 if it involves any sort of enforcement, she will quickly see that getting people to reconsider will lead to significant savings.
Claire Perry
My hon. Friend is being most gracious in giving way. I wish to help underpin her point. As MPs we all face multiple challenging CSA cases, the most distressing of which are those where claimants know that their spouse is earning lots of money but not declaring it. Getting a statement that for the first time is based on HMRC’s reported data and sets out clearly what recipients can expect is a huge advantage, and £20 for that is a cheap price.
Maria Miller
I thank my hon. Friend for her support. The key is that we must ensure that we encourage both parents to work together, which is why we have configured the charging system in the way we have. That will always be in the best interests of the child, and hon. Members who work in this area will know that separation can be so damaging for children unless it is dealt with collaboratively.
Mr Watts
I am still not absolutely sure what the enforcement action that will drive some parents to pay will be. On the point that the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) has just made on people who have doubts about their spouse’s income, many of those people are self-employed and do not declare their incomes, so we will not be able to chase them, and that is the problem, not that PAYE will not catch them.
Maria Miller
The hon. Gentleman and I know that self-employed people, although a small number of individuals, are disproportionately represented in the problem cases that hon. Members have. He will also know that self-employed people still have to do tax returns, so rather than ex-partners having to pursue individuals who might be self-employed and have no office at which we can get hold of them, we will be able to use the HMRC link, which I think is an important improvement.
With regard to the enforcement that we will be taking to ensure that things really stick, first and foremost it is about ensuring that there is an understanding in the House about the charges that we will put in place for that enforcement action. Implementing a deduction of earnings order does not currently cost the person defaulting on their maintenance a bean. We are talking about making sure that those charges are passed on, which I think taxpayers would expect us to do. We will also consider implementing some of the other enforcement measures that Labour Members put in place through the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008.
Sarah Newton
My hon. Friend is generous in taking so many interventions. My understanding is that each CSA case costs the taxpayer about £25,000 in administration charges, and that can even go up to £40,000 if enforcement action is taken, so what estimate has she made of the savings to the taxpayer that will result from the new proposals?
Maria Miller
My hon. Friend cites those figures accurately, and the savings throughout this spending review period and into the next will be considerable indeed—running, I believe, into about £200 million. That is money we can use to support families directly through organisations such as those I have mentioned, and that is why we have made up-front a very clear commitment to taking £20 million of the money that we will save and directly investing in it in beneficial support for families. That is the right thing to do with the money that we are saving, as is making our contribution to reducing the budget deficit, which we inherited from the Labour party.
Maria Miller
Will the hon. Lady forgive me if I close on child support now?
We know that we have to get parents to work together, and the issue is not simply about maintenance, but about continuing to encourage co-parenting, post-separation. Again, where possible, that is the right thing for children, and that is why the coalition Government, with our commitment to shared parenting, are putting family relationships and responsibility first. I therefore urge right hon. and hon. Members to reject this amendment from the other place, which could seriously undermine the very principled reform that we are undertaking here today.
Maria Miller
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I want to turn to the housing measures in order to ensure that other hon. Members have an opportunity to contribute.
The amendments to clauses 68 and 11 would dilute our proposals to deal with the widespread problem of social tenants under-occupying their accommodation. The proposed changes would effectively allow that group to keep one spare bedroom and, critically, wipe out up to £300 million a year from the estimated £500 million in savings, which we would have to find elsewhere. That approach is quite simply unrealistic, and in the current economic climate it would be totally irresponsible of us not to press ahead with our changes.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
Does the Minister not accept that in many areas there is no alternative social rented accommodation to move to, and that people will be expected to move from social rented housing to smaller, private rented accommodation, which will end up being more expensive and, therefore, increase the housing benefit bill, not decrease it?
Maria Miller
I know that my hon. Friend takes a great deal of interest in that issue, as indeed do many other hon. Members, but I simply put it to him that many people in that situation will choose not to move. They will choose to make other arrangements and, perhaps, to get other people in their household to contribute to the bills. Indeed, I am sure he is right that some people will choose to move, and we are ensuring that there is sufficient time for them to consider their options and, importantly, making sure that support and a significant amount of discretionary housing payments are in place, so that local authorities are able to support people who have difficulty with the change.
Simon Hughes
I am grateful for the Minister’s understanding, and, as somebody who represents more people in social housing than probably any other English MP, I know that the Government have absolutely the right policy to ensure that people do not occupy properties that are bigger than they need when the state is paying the rent. But it is not practical to insist that they move when there is nowhere smaller to move to, so Lords amendment 4 is entirely reasonable, because it refers to the situation when
“any such landlord is not able to offer suitable alternative accommodation which would not cause a person to under occupy.”
If a landlord is able to do so, of course the tenants must move, but if the landlord is not, the tenants will not be able to move anywhere appropriate.
Maria Miller
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention; I understand the feeling with which he delivered it. I say clearly to him that we are saying that there is a great deal of time and considerable support for individuals who find themselves in difficult situations. We need to make sure that as many people as possible are able to remain where they are and that they are given the support to do that.
We have made considerable moves to make sure that the right support is in place, particularly for those with disabilities or foster care responsibilities. But I ask my right hon. Friend to consider how we would deal with what would be an enormous loss to the savings. Our basic problem is that there are 1 million spare bedrooms while about 250,000 families live in overcrowded accommodation. It is important for us to try to balance all those factors.
Kate Hoey
Would the Minister like to visit one or two people who I know in my constituency? It is only across the river. They are elderly people with one extra bedroom who have lived where they live all their lives. Their children have moved outside London because they cannot get housing here, but they occasionally visit with the grandchildren. This is just unbelievable—it is genuinely unbelievable that any Government would think of making someone move away from their family home. Will the Minister visit and explain the situation to those elderly people, who are so worried and upset by what has been suggested?
Maria Miller
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. Again, I understand the thoughtful comments that have been made. We are not making anybody move. The average reduction will be about £14 a week, but for many it will be about £12. Given the amount of notice that we are giving individuals and families, we want people to be able to consider the available options.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
In many islands or remote villages, there is simply no alternative accommodation; the turnover of social housing is so slow that it could take many years for a smaller house to become available. What support will be available for people on islands and in remote villages so that they can stay in their own communities?
Maria Miller
My hon. Friend and I have spoken about these matters and I understand the very individual problems that his constituency faces. It is because of those very individual situations that we have put in place significant support so that local authorities can consider different ways to support families living in rural areas some distance from other communities and make sure that they are not dislocated from their support networks.
Guto Bebb
This issue has been of real concern to me. In a recent letter that I received, Community Housing Wales argued that more than 40,000 individual tenants in Wales would be affected by the issue of under-occupancy. What it failed to say is that, according to Welsh Assembly statistics, more than 50,000 tenants in Wales are over-occupying. There is a need for social housing providers to look creatively at how they move tenants within housing stock.
Maria Miller
It is important that that part of the debate is recognised by the House. For every family in a situation of under-occupying, many have considerable problems with over-occupation.
The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) talked about her real concern for some of her constituents. I remind her, although she will know this already, that the measures that we are talking about are for working-age people only—not for pensioners. I encourage all hon. Members to ensure that the tone of our debate is based on fact and not fictional evidence.
Claire Perry
About a third of my constituency casework is made up of Child Support Agency cases, but another third is made up of housing. In Wiltshire, more than 12,000 people are waiting on the housing list. Week after week, young families come in who simply cannot get the housing that they need. Will my hon. Friend confirm that we must support the principle and do what is being discussed to relieve the pressure on social housing lists?
Maria Miller
Absolutely; my hon. Friend makes a clear point and an important contribution to the debate.
Maria Miller
If hon. Members will forgive me, I will make a little progress, because I know that many people want to contribute to this debate.
Aside from the financial issues, there is the bigger issue of fairness, which hon. Members have talked about in their interventions. Is it fair for taxpayers to take the tough choices about where they live, only to fund tenants in the social sector to live in homes larger than they need? Is it fair that people who are renting from private landlords get housing benefit to live in accommodation that is a suitable size for their household and that those in the social sector are not so restricted?
Maria Miller
If I am allowed to make some progress, I will perhaps answer some of the questions that hon. Members want to ask.
If social sector tenants choose to continue to live in accommodation that is larger than they need, it is only right that they make a contribution towards the cost. They can meet any shortfall through employment or other means. Those are the sorts of everyday choices that people living in the private rented sector and those who are not getting housing benefit have to make every day.
Mr Speaker
Order. It is clear that at the moment, the Minister is not giving way. It is for her to decide whether to give way. I gently make the point that it is now four minutes to 6 and the debate must conclude at 7. If Members were to have the opportunity neither to make their points through interventions nor through speeches, I would anticipate an extensive disappointment. I am sure that the Minister will factor that into her calculations in tailoring her contribution to the debate.
Maria Miller
I reassure you, Mr Speaker, that I will make the rest of my contribution very brief indeed.
The average weekly reduction is likely to be about £14. However, that is the average. Nearly 80% of claimants are under-occupying their accommodation by just one bedroom and will see an average reduction of about £12 a week. Working for just a few hours a week could help to meet that cost. The substantial investment that we are making in the Work programme and universal credit will ensure that people are supported in finding work, and that that work will pay.
We have listened to the concerns about the impact that these changes will have on specific groups, so we have committed to increase the budget for discretionary housing payments by £30 million from 2013-14. That additional money, which could help about 40,000 claimants, is aimed specifically at disabled people and accommodation for foster carers. We are working closely with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure that we have an effective implementation plan that will support tenants, their advisers and housing providers.
Ultimately, the country cannot afford to fund what is approaching 1 million spare rooms from the taxes of hardworking families, when those spare rooms could be used by other families who are living in overcrowded accommodation.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
The chief executive of Halton Housing Trust has written to me. He states:
“Based on existing turnover of smaller accommodation it will take over seven years to re-house all of those households who are under occupying their current homes.”
He goes on to state that, in particular, it will affect
“homeless households and those leaving care.”
Does the Minister really think that that is fair?
Maria Miller
That is why we are already working with local authorities to ensure that they are well prepared for the changes. We have discretionary payments in place so that local authorities can take account of such problems. We reject the Lords amendment.
I will now move on to the remaining amendments so that I do not incur the wrath of Mr Speaker. The other Lords amendments in this group are minor and technical or simply clarify policy. They have already been announced and I do not intend to go into any further detail so that there is more time for Members to contribute to this important debate.
Mrs McGuire
I would not disagree with the hon. Gentleman. Housing was built in the 1940s and ’50s to deal with the nuclear family that everybody knew at the time. The way in which families have developed, including the growth in the number of single-parent households, was not factored in. That goes for the social rented and private sectors.
Mrs McGuire
The hon. Lady definitely is not getting in—certainly not at the moment.
The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) said that there are communities in all nations of this country—smaller communities, but sometimes larger ones—where there is an insufficient supply of houses, which is very true. People might have lived in them all their lives and would be unable physically to move.
Maria Miller
I thank the right hon. Lady. It is very gracious of her to give way so that I can clarify matters. She will obviously be aware of the new national home swap scheme, which, importantly, will help people to identify housing in other areas, which is what she is talking about. We are also providing funding to councils of some £13 million over the next four years so that they can support under-occupying tenants who wish to move.
The right hon. Lady will also know that there is a great deal of commitment from the Government in terms of helping to build affordable housing: some £4.5 billion will help to deliver up to 170,000 new affordable homes. Those are all ways in which we can make the sort of changes that she wants. Just to clarify, as a lady who was born in a council house—
Mr Speaker
Order. This really is an abuse. It is a novelty, in my experience, for a Minister to intervene from the Front Bench reading from a folder. That really will not do. Interventions should be brief, and it would be good if the House—both sides—could get back into the courteous mood in which it found itself yesterday and for part of today.
Malcolm Wicks
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), and I shall echo some of his remarks on the child maintenance charge.
I have been privileged to be a Member for 20 years, and I have noted that the issue of child maintenance and child support has been a running controversy and a running sore through Parliament and Government during that whole period. I shall briefly remind the House of the background. While there have, of course, always been children in this and similar countries brought up by only one parent—war widows after the first world war would be an obvious example—it is nevertheless true that in the post-war period there has been a kind of social revolution whereby very significant numbers of children spend either a proportion or all of their childhoods living—usually with their mum but sometimes, in a minority of cases, with their father—in so-called one-parent families. That is about divorce, which remains at a high level; it is about separation—and cohabitation is more likely to lead to separation than marriage; it is about the fact that many children are born “out of wedlock”, to use a quaint term, and live with a single mother.
This has been a major contributory cause to what we call child poverty, which interfaces with economic insecurity. I think that Parliaments and Governments have found it more difficult to grapple with and honestly discuss family insecurity than economic insecurity caused by low wages or unemployment. As I say, Governments have found it difficult. The old maintenance system, which was run by the courts, did not work: it delivered low levels of maintenance or no maintenance to many mothers and children.
The previous Conservative Government established the Child Support Agency—I think they were right to do so—but many former Conservative Ministers bear the scars of trying to make it work. They did not make it work effectively for all children. That was not because of incompetence—there were computer problems and the rest—but because this is one of the most difficult areas of government. It is the state—perfectly properly, in my judgment—trying to mediate during the pain, anger and passions of family breakdown, when issues of access and custody are also present. Although the old Child Support Agency had some successes, it never succeeded in getting maintenance from those fathers—yes, I know, sometimes mothers, but I am going to talk about fathers—who absolutely refused to fulfil their parental obligation and support their own children.
The last Labour Government tried to improve the situation and they might have done to some extent, but if we are honest about this—I am not normally one who tries to take the politics out of politics; otherwise I would have to join the Liberal Democrat party—some humility is justified in this case. For getting on for 20 years, Governments of left and right have failed to tackle this issue adequately. We really need to point again at the sheer scandal of there being too many parents out there who refuse to support their own children financially. That is the reality.
When I intervened on the Minister—it was good of her to give me the statistics—she said that among these families half, fully half, are not receiving child maintenance. What does that mean? It means either that the children are living in relative poverty and/or that other mums and dads in the community, whom we call taxpayers, are being asked in difficult economic circumstances to support not only their own children but other people’s children as well. What I am leading up to is to ask whether the idea of a charge to be able to use the system helps or hinders that process.
I do not think I am against a charge per se. Given that taxpayers have a stake in this, as well as, usually, the mother or “the parent with care” to use the awful jargon, and the child—they are the parties that have an interest in this—I am not against the taxpayer in a sense benefiting through proper payment of maintenance. We could discuss how that might come about; but if there is to be a charge, as was argued by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), why should it not be levied when the flows of maintenance are coming to the mother and benefiting the child? Why should a fee be charged immediately rather than later in the process? I think that many Members would agree with that, but perhaps the Minister would like to comment.
Maria Miller
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for allowing me to answer his question. Fees and charges have been inherent in the child maintenance system from the start, since 1991. As he knows, his own party advocated the use of fees when it was in government, as indeed did Sir David Henshaw. Why? Because charging fees is a way of trying to get people to take responsibility. If that is done up front before an individual gets into the system, we are more likely to effect the behavioural change that I think is so important.
Malcolm Wicks
In general, it is the mothers of Britain—sometimes it is the fathers with care, but it is generally the mothers—who have taken on huge responsibilities. It is the parent who does not pay who is the irresponsible party, and who reneges on his duty to care for his own children. I want a system that can be tough-minded about the fathers who refuse to pay. They are often self-employed, and have become deliberately self-employed. The mothers often know where they live. A mother will have heard about the new person in the father’s life, about the fancy car outside the house, about the foreign holidays—yet the system has failed to make those fathers pay. Let me put the question to the Minister again. Will a charge help in those circumstances?
Many mums will know that the Child Support Agency, or whatever we choose to call it, does not work. We want to make it work, but people say, “My friends didn’t get anywhere.” Only recently I discussed with the Secretary of State the case of one of my constituents who, throughout the lifetime of four children, never received any maintenance. That person thinks that the system does not work. I want it to work, but if some mothers are deterred from using the system, it will be a failure.
This should not be a big party issue, and I hope that the Department will reflect again on when the charge might be levied.
Maria Miller
How does the hon. Lady suggest that the agency should decide which parent stood in the way of an agreement? Would she take the same view as was taken in the debate in the other place, which is that it would always be the non-resident parent’s fault that an agreement was not in place?
Kate Green
The point is that a system is being established whereby the parent with care must access the system. There will be a discussion at that point about the process by which that approach to the agency is made. There is no difficulty at all at that point in taking a decision about the responsibility and behaviour of the parent making that application. I cannot understand why the Government think that it is perfectly okay for other officials in the DWP to make decisions on whether people are making appropriate efforts to make themselves available for employment, but not for a decision to be taken on whether a parent has properly engaged in a process of seeking to reach agreement with a non-resident parent.
I also want to speak briefly about the Government’s proposal to amend the obligation on the child poverty target under the Child Poverty Act. The current obligation is for the Government to report on the progress that must be made to achieve child poverty targets—targets to which every party in this House has signed up. There will now be a far weaker requirement simply to report on proposed measures. In other words, there will be an obligation on the Government to report on what they might or might not do, but absolutely no obligation to report on whether it works or on what difference it makes. That undermines what lies at the heart of the Act, which was a genuine wish across the House in the previous Parliament to see real progress in bringing down child poverty and for every politician in this House to be accountable for that outcome.
I very much regret such a weakening of the Child Poverty Act. In future, the Government could legally produce a child poverty strategy that makes no reference to the number of children in poverty—an extremely important measure in driving progress—and has no clear goals for how the proposed actions will reduce that number. When the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests that the cumulative impact of the Government’s welfare reforms on other measures will be to drive up child poverty between now and 2015 and onwards to 2020, one has to wonder whether the proposal is not a rather cynical and calculating step on the part of the Government to wriggle out of an obligation that they know they are not on track to meet.
Jenny Willott
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Will the Minister look at what an appropriate time frame would be and how long it is likely to take housing associations to move people around properties? Will she ensure that discretionary housing payments are available throughout that period so that people do not receive a large cut in their benefit while they are waiting for alternative accommodation to become available? This is a difficult issue and I know that the Government have made provision for those living in adapted accommodation and for foster carers.
Maria Miller
I just want to reassure my hon. Friend on a couple of points. First, we intend to commission an independent evaluation of the impact of the size criteria measure, which will give her some of the information and reassurance she seeks about the impact of the changes. We will also be providing funding of £13 million to councils over four years until 2015-16 for support to tenants who wish to move.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
Briefly, I want to make three points about under-occupancy and disabled people. First, I welcome the Minister’s announcement of funds to ensure that disabled people and other special cases are given the help that they need in transition. The other points that I want to make both arise from a constituent’s coming to see me. This particular family has four members, with two disabled people within it, and it needs four rooms. From the outside, someone might say that parents and two children need two or three rooms, which would give them one spare room. Absolutely not: in this case, every single room was needed, and the family was concerned that under the legislation they would be told that they had a spare room and be forced to move. I would like some reassurance on that point—that where people need all the rooms because of disability, certain rooms will not be considered spare, even if the family being of such a size might otherwise justify that decision.
Maria Miller
I can reassure my hon. Friend that if a disabled person has the need for an overnight carer, additional rooms can be allocated. Indeed, if there are disabled people in the house who require rooms, there will be clear support there for them to be able to have those rooms.
Jeremy Lefroy
I thank the Minister for that reassurance. On my second point, as hon. and right hon. Members know, many homes have had thousands of pounds spent on adaptations, and rightly so, for disabled people. It would not make a great deal of sense to ask people to move from a home that had had such adaptations into another home, where making such adaptations would cost plenty of money. Also, in the first home, the adaptations might have to be removed. Again, I ask for reassurance that common sense will prevail.