Department for Education

Ruth George Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

I am pleased to be bringing this debate today, and I thank colleagues from across the House who have supported it and who are here to speak. The spending of the Department for Work and Pensions is the highest of any Department and represents almost a quarter of all Government spending. It is therefore important to scrutinise that spending, especially as the 10.7 million people who rely on our welfare state are those who usually have no other place to turn.

The welfare state in Britain was set up by the 1945 Government in order to defeat the giant of want and to create a country fit for heroes, but 70 years later, across Britain we are seeing an increase in situations that we think of as part of the bygone era of the 1930s. Even around our Parliament today, we are seeing people sleeping rough on our streets, dying in the freezing cold. Across the country, we are seeing families queueing up for food banks, and disabled people left isolated without the care that they need.

Poverty rates are rising, especially among children and people in work. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s annual analysis of poverty tells us that 14.3 million people—more than one in five of our population—now live in poverty. That includes 4.1 million children, a rise of 500,000 over the last five years. It also includes 4.6 million people living in persistent poverty—the poverty trap that lone parents especially are unable to escape. And shamefully, 1.5 million people, including 365,000 children, now live in destitution, unable to afford even the basic necessities. In the fifth richest country in the world, those bare facts should shame us all.

The Government rightly tell us—as I am sure the Minister will do today—that the Department’s spending is rising. It has risen by £31 billion, or 20%, since 2010. But alongside real wages falling for a decade, housing costs rising much faster than inflation, especially in areas of very high housing shortage, and cuts to so many of the local services that people rely on, our welfare safety net is in danger of not working. That is why I am particularly pleased that we are having this debate to look into the reasons for the seeming anomaly of rising spending and rising poverty, and so that we have the opportunity to suggest some answers for the Department to consider.

We know that £27 billion of that £31 billion increase in the Department’s spending relates to the state pension, with the triple lock and the single-tier pension delivering increased prosperity for most pensioners. That is good to see, but, as with many aspects of DWP spending, it does not tell the full story. While the state pension has increased, pensioner poverty has also increased. The rate of pensioners in poverty halved in the decade to 2013, but since then it has risen by 330,000 to 16% of pensioners. That change was partly due to reductions in pension credit, which now supports a million fewer pensioners, but also due to housing costs, which is a serious problem for the Department across the full range of benefit claimants.

The situation is worse for those who are not pensioners. The Institute for Fiscal Studies stated after the Budget that we will still see cuts of £4 billion a year to welfare spending on in-work age groups in the years to come. It is the particular and persistent focus on reducing spending that has played a major role in the increase in poverty, and destitution in particular. The emphasis on making welfare spending fairer to working people ignores the fact that the majority of claimants of state support are already in work. In the 2015 Budget the then Chancellor claimed that benefits should be frozen for four years because average wages had risen by only 11% while benefits had increased by 21% since 2008 due to high levels of inflation. The argument that real-term falls in wages should equate to even larger falls in the benefits on which so many in-work families rely fails to recognise the realities of life on low pay.

[Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Ind)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. We have seen changes over the past few years, including increases in some pensioner benefits and in the national living wage, but the group of people who stand out more than any other are those on benefits. It is utterly unacceptable that we can even consider maintaining the benefits freeze for one final year. It has to go.

[Ruth George]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and pay tribute to her campaigning for people on benefits. I agree with the sentiment of her intervention, because over 10 million people are affected by the reality of the four-year freeze. When it was announced in 2015, inflation was just 0.4%, but it has been 2.3% and 2.6% in the past two years. Since the freeze’s introduction, the cost of living for people on low incomes has risen by £900 a year. In real terms, the income received by a single person on jobseeker’s allowance or income support of just £77 a week will fall by over £5 a week by 2020—a drop of £267 a year. When people on such benefits have less than £10 a week to spend on food, the loss of £5 makes a huge difference. Someone can just about eke out £10 a week for food, but eating for £5 a week is impossible. It is no wonder we are seeing such growth in the use of food banks.

For families, the freeze bites even harder. If it continues, low-income families are likely to lose out on an extra £210 a year due to inflation. If we see inflation rise because of disruption to trade or food tariffs or shortages, inflation for people on low incomes will be far higher. If the benefits freeze ended a year early, that would provide an essential income boost to over 10 million people struggling on low incomes and reduce poverty for 200,000 people, so I strongly urge the Government to look at doing so as soon as possible.

Of course, welfare is in the process of being reformed, especially through universal credit. I worked for USDAW—the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—for almost two decades, so I know just how vital in-work benefits are to millions of families who struggle to get by on low pay and often low hours. I know that UC was designed to fix such problems to ensure that work always pays, and I applaud that aim, but the stark reality is that universal credit has led to a 30% increase in referrals to food banks where it has been rolled out. I see families in my surgeries facing eviction, and I give credit to the thousands of people who are organising food banks across the country to help people who cannot afford enough to eat, but that is not good enough. Food banks cannot cover the whole country—I know that from my rural area—and they should not have to, either.

I pay tribute to fellow members of the Select Committee, which has made recommendations to the Government on universal credit, and to members of the all-party parliamentary group on universal credit which, with me as chair, is producing a report on a whole range of universal credit issues—I am pleased that the Secretary of State has already committed to meeting us about it.

I thank the Government for the improvements they have already made to universal credit, and I welcome those changes, but we are still seeing problems. Some 5.1 million people in working families will see their income reduced, on average, by £2,300 a year, and 1.3 million people in out-of-work families, with even lower outcomes, will see those outcomes drop by £1,400 a year. At a time when persistent poverty and destitution are rising, the Government’s flagship policy should not be looking to take over 10% of our population even deeper into poverty.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Ruth George]

I was asked to take 10 minutes, so I will have to wrap up soon. I am sure my hon. Friend will get a chance to speak.

I ask the Government to look urgently at three issues with universal credit. First, the five-week wait for payment puts people into debt right at the start of their claim, and the levels of universal credit are simply not enough to enable them to escape that debt. Secondly, the multiple deductions: people receive an advance, and they might have debts on top of that from tax credits, housing arrears or utility bills, and they end up with an income that they simply cannot live on. Thirdly, the support for children and adults with disabilities. This Government are proud of saying that they like to support the most vulnerable people but, as one of my constituents says, “If a six-year-old boy who is bedbound is not one of the most vulnerable and does not deserve support, who does?”

We need a system that treats people like human beings. Yes, it is down to money and, yes, it is down to support, and I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to personalised support, but that support needs people to implement it, not computers that simply say no and not processes like the one I raised in a Westminster Hall debate on carer’s allowance where carers are being taken to court under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and are being forced to sell their homes because they have made an error.

We want to see investment in jobcentres and DWP staff so that they can deliver the personal support that they want to deliver, that this Government want to deliver and that we all want to see. This Department covers a huge range of people and complex issues. We all need to have trust that our welfare safety net is still there. It is the hallmark of a civilised society, and I look forward to this debate helping us to bring it in together.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth George]

I thank the Minister, the shadow Minister and all those who have made powerful speeches. Members across the House raised the issue of PIP appeals and the impact of some terrible cases. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) talked about the five-week wait. The Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), raised the benefits freeze, which came on top of a three-year freeze to tax credits and the three-year 1% cap introduced under the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Act 2013. That must be a priority.

I was pleased to hear from the Minister that the Government are looking to do more. My colleagues on the Select Committee are working on two reports on natural migration to universal credit and the welfare safety net. I hope the Government will read and respond to those, as well as the report being compiled by the all-party group on the many issues that remain with universal credit, many of which do not require additional funding but, if solved, will help people to be supported by a personalised system.

Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54).