Welfare Reform Bill

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

Lords amendment 23 disagreed to.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I have received a report from the Tellers in the Division at 10.14 pm yesterday on the Question that new clause 11 be added to the Local Government Finance Bill. The hon. Members for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) and for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) have informed me that the number of No votes was erroneously reported as 309 instead of 299. I will direct the Clerk to correct the numbers in the Journal accordingly. The Ayes were 225 and the Noes were 299, so the verdict is not altered.

Clause 93

Benefit cap

[Chris Grayling]

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 47.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

With this it will be convenient to consider new clause 1 and amendments (a) to (j) in lieu of Lords amendment 47.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Byrne]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. This has been an important debate, yet the Government have ensured that no time was available to discuss Labour’s amendment and to put it to the vote before the knife fell at 5 o’clock. They declared financial privilege on the amendment in order to stop it being debated in the House of Lords. What advice would you give me, Mr Deputy Speaker, on how to ensure that this place is able to vote on Labour’s benefit cap?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Further to that point of order, I call Mr Iain Duncan Smith.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Far be it from me to suggest an answer, but the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) might like to reflect on the fact that his party did not vote on the programme motion.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

My response to the original point of order is that I am operating under the programme motion that this House voted for; I can do nothing other than that.

Clause 10

Responsibility for children and young persons

[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.