Children in Need: Adulthood

Debate between Steve McCabe and Stephen Lloyd

Thursday 6th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Steve McCabe]

I am sure the Minister heard the hon. Gentleman’s point. I certainly agree that any provision of that nature should be subject to proper inspection.

Today there are more than 1 million disabled children in the UK, yet fewer than ever are getting the support they need. We also need to give some thought to healthcare improvements and just how scary it can be for a young person to wake up after surgery on an adult ward for the first time. We have an acute shortage of community paediatricians and much more work is required in the health sector in planning the transition for young people from children’s to adult services.

The Children Act 1989 requires every local authority to take reasonable steps to identify children in need in its area and to publish information on the services available. It places a particular stress on the health and development of children and the needs of the disabled, but cash-strapped local authorities are struggling to provide even the most basic services. The reality is that 15, 16 and 17-year-olds often have to be at crisis point before there is any intervention.

I acknowledge that there has been a big focus on, and in some cases a switch of resources to, child protection issues, yet while child exploitation scandals such as those in Rochdale and Rotherham serve to demonstrate that many teenage children suffer even greater risk outside the home than inside it, support is limited for the vast majority, even if their need involves neglect, abuse or exploitation. The Department for Education’s figures for 2015-16 suggest that perhaps 13,500 16 and 17-year-olds are in need because of “going missing”, and about 1,500 are in need because of trafficking.

It is estimated that each year some 12,000 16 and 17-year-olds approach local authorities because they are homeless, often as a result of a breakdown in relations with a parent or carer, violence in the home or other problems at home. Homelessness is not currently recognised as a risk factor in identifying children in need, and consequently there are no reliable statistics about the scale of the problem. However, most agencies working with teenagers identify it as a real risk factor, likely also to expose young people to a risk of drugs, alcohol problems, violence and sexual abuse.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate. I know he received much support from the Children’s Society and its “Crumbling Futures” report, which is essentially what the debate is all about. I and every other MP has had to deal with the harrowing reality of parents coming to us with teenage children who are aged 18 or 19, for whom there is no support at all. That is why I am so glad he has secured the debate. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that one of the anomalies resulting from a change to the law a few years ago is that people have to be in education or training up to the age of 18, but—even if a person is disabled and cannot get to school or training on their own—there is no statutory obligation on a local authority to provide transport for 16 to 18-year-olds?

[Steve McCabe]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Quite a lot of problems result from both extending the school leaving age and creating notional rights for children with disabilities if we do not provide the resources to make it possible to deliver on those advances.

Thanks to some work undertaken by the DFE and other organisations, we know a bit about the common characteristics of children in need: around 13% of them achieve no GCSE passes; they are much more likely to be NEETs—not in education, employment or training—and they are three times more likely than children from the care system to end up homeless. The time has come for a fundamental rethink on what is happening to these young people. We must move away from a model of rationing that allows us to deny help to those who do not reach some arbitrary risk threshold or simply to drop them on their 18th birthday. We must develop an approach that recognises the continuing needs of those vulnerable children and young people who are already in a very disadvantaged position. Of course, that will cost more, but we must not forget that funding for children’s services has fallen by £2.4 billion in real terms since 2010, with an additional £1.5 billion gap for services needed for disabled children. The Chancellor will have to be pressed to address those issues in the 2019 spending review.

I believe there are things the Minister can do. He might look again at the assessment threshold, which many Departments use to thin out the number of young people who even make it to first base, and offer some guidance on the factors that must be considered before an assessment is ruled out. Ideally, every referral by any responsible agency should merit at least a first-stage assessment. I particularly urge him to look at the issue of homelessness among teenagers, to make sure that we do begin to collect reliable data and to instruct local authorities to identify it as a risk factor when assessing children in need. He might also bring wise heads together and demand that they establish proper transition procedures for all those turning 18, so that we put an end to the lottery of assistance and support for vulnerable young people that confronts them as they reach their 18th birthday.

I urge the Minister, in the existing education review, to advocate extending the existing higher-rate pupil premium to all children in need, not just those in care. That would be a real opportunity to help children at an earlier stage. I ask him to consider making it easier for the same children to qualify for discretionary bursaries to help them attend further education or other forms of training. Disabled children and young people would particularly benefit from improved provision of short breaks for them and their carers, and we should at least contemplate the suggestion by the Disabled Children’s Partnership of an early intervention and family resilience fund. In time, such an approach might even be extended to all children in need.

I am not expecting miracles. I know that some things take time and everything costs money, but above all these children need a champion—someone who can lead a real cross-departmental effort to raise the quality of help and support to some of the most vulnerable and deprived young people in our society. I believe the Minister could be that person. We must raise interest in how much we are prepared to do before young people reach crisis point, rather than focusing on making claims about increased funding for services that only become available after youngsters have suffered a major crisis. It is both a moral and an economic issue.

Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [Lords]

Debate between Steve McCabe and Stephen Lloyd

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Lloyd]

You make a salient point, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have been sitting here for two hours, so I agreed with a lot of what you said.

I am glad that we are finally concluding our consideration of the Bill. I rise to speak to amendment (a) to new clause 9, as well to new clause 7, amendment (a) to amendment 10 and amendment 34. The Liberal Democrats welcome the amendments that the Government have tabled, but we believe that they do not go far enough.

The Bill as introduced in the other place had three major flaws. First, the single financial guidance body had no explicit function to protect consumers. Secondly, the Government missed an opportunity to ban cold calling by claims management companies, as they had promised to do in their manifesto. The ban should also have extended to other financial products. Thirdly, there were no safeguards to ensure that people received financial guidance before they accessed or transferred their pension benefits.

I pay tribute to my Liberal Democrat colleague in the other place, Lord Sharkey, whose amendments to the Bill paved the way for the concessions that we have today. I know that he and others from across the political divide have been lobbying Ministers intensely behind the scenes. It would have been nice if the concessions had come earlier in the proceedings, but there we go.

My support for the concessions is not absolute. In particular, under clause 34, claims management companies must act as though all UK phone numbers are registered with the Telephone Preference Service. As the House will be aware, however, the TPS has proven to be somewhat ineffectual. The Information Commissioner’s Office received more than 11,000 reports of cold calls from people on the TPS register last year. We believe that the Financial Conduct Authority has more teeth to enforce a ban on cold calling by claims management companies. For that reason, we support new clause 8, which would put Lord Sharkey’s amendments back into the Bill. The other amendments to new clause 9 would have a similar effect, allowing the FCA to police the ban on pensions cold calling.

Government new clause 9 allows Ministers to ban pensions cold calling and, if they do not, they must lay a statement before Parliament each year. Although I would love to name and shame Ministers every year until a ban comes into effect, I would rather that they just got on with it. Amendment (a) to the new clause would make it a legal requirement for the Government to ban cold calling, rather than just an optional extra.

New clause 4 allows the Government to ban cold calling in relation to any other financial services product after receiving advice from the SFGB. I welcome the amendment, but Lord Sharkey and I are worried that the SFGB’s duty to report on cold calling “from time to time” is too weak. I have tabled amendment (a) to amendment 10 to ask the SFGB to publish its report on cold calling at least every two years. This duty should not fall quietly by the wayside.

I also encourage the Government to accept amendment (b) to new clause 9, which was tabled by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field). As my colleague, Lord Sharkey, pointed out in the other place, a ban on cold calling must also include a ban on the commercial use of data obtained by cold calling. This gives the Information Commissioner two bites at the cherry to punish companies flouting the ban.

I now turn to the two amendments that I tabled on income shocks. They would require the SFGB to improve the capability of the public to plan for sudden reductions in income. The issue was brought to my attention by the former Pensions Minister, Professor Steve Webb, and the Chartered Insurance Institute, to which I am very grateful. Too many people are unprepared for a sudden fall in income. The 2015 financial capability survey found that 26% of working-age adults have no savings to fall back on and that a further 29% have less than £1,000 saved. There are many reasons why income shocks could occur. Money Advice Service research from 2016 found that nearly three in four households receive an unexpected bill every year. One third of households have had to make an unexpected car repair or replacement, at a cost of £1,300 on average.

The “Improving Lives” Green Paper revealed that 1.8 million employees have a long-term sickness absence of four weeks or more in a year, yet statutory sick pay is worth less than three hours’ work a day on the national living wage. This problem is made worse because, as the FCA has noted, people with serious illnesses often have poor access to financial services, particularly insurance.

Amendments considered in the other place also touched on this issue. In response, the Government said that public preparedness for income shocks would be an aspect of the money guidance function. Although I welcome that commitment, I would like the Minister to go further. The Bill contains no specific direction for the body to improve preparedness for income shocks or any mechanism to measure the progress of the body in this regard.

The SFGB’s focus will be pulled in every direction. How will the Government convey to the SFGB the strategic priorities for the coming year, and how will Parliament and the public be able to scrutinise and evaluate that work? The Government have finally listened to the arguments made on these Benches and in the other place. I thank them for doing so, but they must now go the distance. They must take robust action to end the scourge of cold calling and protect millions of vulnerable people from sudden income shocks.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I apologise for missing the earlier part of the proceedings; I was chairing a debate in Westminster Hall.

I want briefly to voice my support for amendments 8 and 9, to which I have added my name, and also for new clause 8, in my name, which effectively repeats amendment 42 as proposed by Lord Sharkey in the other place. As Members will know, that amendment was withdrawn on the solid understanding of a promise by the Minister in the Lords who said that her officials were working through the detail of a ban on cold calling. She went on to say that the Government would bring forward amendments to this House to implement that ban. Plainly, they have not done so.

I am not quite sure why the Government have backtracked on what seemed to be such an obvious and solid promise. It might have seemed that focusing on the role of the Information Commissioner and Ofcom was the easy option, but, with all due respect to the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey), the kind of cold calling that innocent people are being subjected to every day is actually a cold, calculated business strategy; it is not only an issue about the misuse of personal data, important though that may be.

This Bill is supposed to be designed to ensure that people are protected and that the financial decisions that they make are taken after careful consideration and access to independent guidance. Why on earth are the Government reneging on their promise to eliminate cold calling for commercial purposes, the aim of which is to bounce people into decision making and deny them the time for proper, careful consideration and access to good guidance? New clauses 3 and 4 simply will not do the trick. People may well see them as a deception—an attempt by the Government to fool people into thinking that they are taking action when they are not really doing so at all. Everyone knows that it is a complete nuisance and underhand practice designed to entrap consumers.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Steve McCabe and Stephen Lloyd

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

The most striking features of the Budget are the parts the Chancellor tried to ignore: growth and wages. After all we have been through, and after all the promises about long-term economic plans, austerity and building for the future, the reality is that average earnings will be no higher in 2022 than they were in 2007. We are heading for the worst decade for pay growth for 210 years. Given all the lectures from Conservative Members, it is worth pointing out that the Chancellor is now on target to borrow £30 billion more by 2020 than was predicted just a year ago. Apparently, it is okay to be in that position but still to lecture others about the dangers of borrowing to invest.

The greatest disappointment is that the Chancellor does not seem to recognise the impact of rising food prices, although 78% of my constituents who replied to my cost of living survey were worried about the failure of wages to keep pace with inflation, with 80% stressing the impact on family budgets of rising food prices. The Government also look very out of touch when it comes to funding the fight against crime, tackling social care—that was one area in which we might have expected progress after the fiasco of their manifesto—and recognising the plight of schools.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Steve McCabe]

I will not, because we have only a short time left and other Members want to speak.

It is disappointing that the partial response to the problems with universal credit is being delayed. That issue was raised by 94% of people who responded to my survey. They will not understand why the Government are only cutting the waiting time to five weeks, or why we need to wait another three months for action, especially with all the pressures over Christmas. They certainly will not understand the continuing freeze on benefits. One way in which savings could be made would be to address the cost of work capability interviews for people who have long-established and well-documented illnesses that clearly leave them unable to work. Even those responsible for the assessments concede that this is a punitive and pointless exercise, with decisions often reversed at appeal after months of worry and suffering.

It is not all bad. I am hopeful about the industrial strategy and, on the back of today’s news about life sciences, I hope that Ministers will shortly come to Birmingham to announce support for Birmingham Health Partners and the Institute of Translational Medicine so that the extraordinary medical advances that are being pioneered there also become a focus for new jobs and industries. I also want more effort to boost our region’s skills base, which is crucial for the growth that our economy needs. I ask the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills to look at how we can ensure that those making large contributions to the apprenticeship levy, such as Cadbury in my constituency, get a fair return, and at how we use the levy more imaginatively to involve the self-employed and those in microbusinesses who, if freed from bureaucracy and costs, would be in a position to offer young people high-quality apprenticeships that will lead to real jobs in emerging areas.