Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateWill Quince
Main Page: Will Quince (Conservative - Colchester)Department Debates - View all Will Quince's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(3 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberThroughout the pandemic, our priority has been to protect the most vulnerable, which is why we spent an additional £7.4 billion last year to strengthen the welfare safety support for working-age people. Our ambition is to help parents return to work as quickly as possible, as there is clear evidence of the importance of having parents in work for reducing the risk of child poverty. That is why we are spending over £30 billion on a comprehensive plan for jobs.
I thank the Minister for his answer, but 60% of kids in my constituency are living in poverty, and over 4.2 million live in poverty across the country. The numbers have gone up by 700,000 since 2010, and the Government’s limited extension to the local support grants does not make up for the cuts to universal credit, which will mean that families are £1,000 a year worse off from September. Is it not time that the Minister reconsidered that decision and made sure that families do not lose £1,000 from September, so that more children are not forced into poverty?
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. We are wholly committed to supporting families with children. We spent an estimated £111 billion, including £7.4 billion on covid-related measures, on working-age welfare in 2020-21. In addition, as the hon. Lady referenced, we introduced the covid local support grant. We have now extended that grant with an additional £160 million in funding between 21 June and 30 September. That brings the total funding package to £429 million. For the hon. Lady’s constituency—I reference Tower Hamlets London Borough Council—it means an overall funding package of over £3 million.
What we have been hearing from the Government is, frankly, rubbish. In Leeds East alone, 11,000 children—that is approaching half of all children—live in poverty. It is not getting better for the children of Harehills, and it is not getting better for the children of Cross Gates, Gipton, Seacroft or anywhere else; it is getting worse. Poverty levels went up by 25% in the five years before the pandemic, and it is going to get worse when £20 of universal credit is taken away from families in October. I dare the Minister today to come to the food banks of Leeds East and tell people in my community why the Tory party thinks that their children should be forced into further poverty this winter.
Recent statistics show that before the covid-19 pandemic, we were in a strong position, with rising incomes and 1.3 million fewer people, including 300,000 fewer children, in absolute poverty, after housing costs, compared with 2010. There were also over 600,000 fewer children in workless households. Our long-term ambition is to support economic recovery across our United Kingdom, and our new plan for jobs is already supporting people to move into and to progress in work.
In-work poverty has hit a record high and the vast majority of the millions of children in poverty have working parents, but the Government’s response is to cut universal credit this September. There is no sign of an employment Bill to improve conditions at work, and they have also frozen help with housing costs. What is the Government’s plan to tackle in-work poverty? A good way to start would be to cancel that cut to universal credit this September.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. As our economy improves, we will increasingly focus our support on in-work progression to improve opportunities for those in low-paid work and support them towards financial independence. As part of our comprehensive £30 billion plan for jobs, there is an extra 13,500 work coaches, the kickstart scheme, the restart scheme, SWAP—the sector-based work academy programme—and our in-work progression commission, which will report shortly on the barriers to progression for those on persistent low pay and recommend a strategy for overcoming them.
I would remind the Minister that universal credit is an in-work benefit and it is means-tested. If people do progress, they will not be eligible for that support, so it is not an argument for proceeding with that cut in September.
Can I ask the Minister about a significant barrier to work, which is childcare? He will know that soaring childcare costs have to be paid up front, but universal credit is paid in arrears, leaving parents in debt. I recently met the campaign Mums on a Mission, which has been forced to bring legal action to try to make the system work for parents. More people would be able to work the hours they wanted if we got this right, but do Ministers understand just how significant a problem this is?
The hon. Gentleman knows that I will not be able to comment on live litigation, but what I would say is that we do have a comprehensive childcare offer, both as a Government and specifically as a Department. I would also say that, unlike the previous benefit system, in which childcare costs could be up to 70% recoverable, in universal credit the figure is 85%, so it is a far more generous system.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has told the Work and Pensions Committee that cutting £20 a week from universal credit in October will reduce unemployment support to the lowest level for over 30 years at exactly the point when unemployment is being increased by the ending of the furlough scheme, and that it will also pull 400,000 people, including many children, below the poverty line. What assessment will the Minister make of the impact of that cut on child poverty before the cut goes ahead?
The first thing I would say is that the Government have always been clear that the £20 increase to universal credit was a temporary measure to support households most affected by the economic shock of covid-19, and that decisions on whether to extend support would be made as the economic and health picture became clearer. There have been significant positive developments in the public health situation since the increase was first announced, with the vaccine roll-out now significantly gathering pace. I say to the right hon. Gentleman that any look at measures of that kind in terms of forecasting is purely speculative, but it is our expectation that this additional financial support and other direct covid support will end once our economy has opened.
No assessment has been made. Projecting the impact of an individual policy on poverty levels is complex and inherently speculative. It is difficult to isolate the specific impact of one policy and determine its effect on how many people fall below the poverty threshold, which itself changes over time.
That is simply not good enough. Ploughing ahead with the scheduled cut to universal credit means ignoring the advice of three Select Committees—the Scottish Affairs Committee, the Work and Pensions Committee and the Lords Economic Affairs Committee—over 100 Tory MPs, former Tory Minister Lord Freud and over 50 anti-poverty charities. In the face of that, how can the UK Government justify cutting £20 a week for millions of families already living on subsistence incomes?
Our expectation is that, as the vaccine is widely rolled out, restrictions will be lifted and our economy will reopen over the next few months. Therefore, the Government’s focus will rightly shift towards supporting people’s incomes by helping them back into work and to increase their earnings through progression as part of our comprehensive plan for jobs. We have consistently shown throughout the crisis that we will continue to assess how best to support individuals and businesses as the situation develops.
A Joseph Rowntree Foundation report stated that before the pandemic over half of working-age people receiving income-related benefits were already below the poverty line. We are at a critical juncture. This Tory Government can carry out one of the biggest cuts to benefits in decades, bringing the basic level of benefits back to early-1990s levels, or they can provide substantial long-term support to people, so which will it be?
As I said, our expectation is that as the vaccine roll-out gathers pace, as restrictions are eased, as our economy opens up and as our labour market starts to grow again over the next few months, it is absolutely right that our focus shifts towards supporting and empowering people back into work, because we know—all the evidence shows us—that work is the best route of poverty. We will do that through our £30 billion comprehensive plan for jobs.
The number of working-age adults in working families in absolute poverty before housing costs fell by 300,000 in 2019-20. We have strengthened the welfare system, spending £7.4 billion in 2020-21 on measures such as the universal credit uplift. This is on top of additional support such as the coronavirus job retention scheme and the self-employment income support scheme.
Wandsworth food bank does an excellent job of helping people in need, but it would like not to exist. Some 56% of the current food bank referrals from my constituents are due to wages being too low; 43% are due to unpredictable work from the gig economy. Many of my constituents in Putney, Southfields and Roehampton are working two or three jobs, and across the country one in six working households are unable to make ends meet. What steps has the Department taken to ensure that work always pays?
The Government are wholly committed to supporting the most vulnerable in our society, spending over £111 billion on working-age benefits in 2020-21, including an additional £7.4 billion in covid-related welfare policy measures. Additionally, my Department’s covid winter grant scheme—now the covid local support grant—has helped those families most in need with the cost of food and other essentials. We take the issue of food insecurity incredibly seriously; that is why we have published data on household food insecurity from the family resources survey for the first time, to get a better understanding of the lived experience of families.
The Minister has made it clear on a number of occasions that the Government believe that the way out of family poverty is to get people into work. What would he honestly say to a child growing up in a family in my constituency whose parents work and who is still living in poverty? What words would he use?
Of course I do not want to see anybody in this country, let alone any child, growing up in poverty. Working-age adults in working families were approximately four times less likely to be in absolute poverty than working-age adults in workless families. A child living in a household where nobody works is five times more likely to be in absolute poverty than a child in a household where every adult is working. As I said, we have to focus on in-work progression and tackling in-work poverty, and we are doing that: we have the In-Work Progression Commission, which will report shortly on the barriers to progression for those in persistent low pay and set out a strategy for overcoming them.
The Department has taken huge steps to reduce and minimise fraud and error during the last 12 months. We have introduced a range of measures, including optimising digital capability, expanding our integrated risk and intelligence service and policy functions, developing prepayment risking techniques and introducing a prepayment enhanced checking service for high-risk claims.
I am grateful for the Minister’s answer. Of course, errors are inevitable in such a large system, be they errors with overpayment or underpayment. Apart from trying to stop that, the key thing is to make sure that they are communicated clearly and resolved swiftly, so what is his Department doing to ensure that this is the case?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we want to see issues resolved as quickly as possible. I would stress that the vast majority—around 95%—of payments are paid correctly, and the Department has processed over 4.3 million new universal credit claims since March 2020. The priority has been to get money to those people who need it desperately as quickly as possible. To do that, we streamlined some of our normal checks, but we are currently revisiting any high-risk claims that we paid during the covid-19 trust and protect period. I would of course be very happy to meet my hon. Friend to talk about this issue in more detail.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I believe that I have written to him—if I have not written to him, I know that I have written to a number of his colleagues on this matter. We do owe a huge debt of gratitude to health and social care workers for the work that they have done over the course of the pandemic. This is not as simple as he suggests. We follow exactly the same treatment of moneys coming into universal credit as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs does and, as a result, that is very difficult to do, which is why we will not be doing it.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The vast majority of veterans make a successful transition to life outside the armed forces, with around 85% securing employment easily. The DWP provides support to veterans in a number of different ways, including through our voluntary entry to the work and health programme and through our network of hard-working armed forces champions up and down the country. That work complements the resettlement support provided by the Ministry of Defence, sponsored by Career Transition Partnership.
I am afraid I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Lady. I appreciate the question, but the two-child limit is a question of fairness and of putting those who are in receipt of benefits in the same position—facing the same life choices—as those who are not in receipt of benefits.
I think I have covered this one. As our economy improves, we will increasingly focus our support and work on in-work progression to improve the opportunities for those who are in low-paid work and to support them towards financial independence. The in-work progression commission will report shortly on the barriers to progression for those in persistent low pay. Our plan for jobs—those extra 13,500 work coaches, kickstart, restart, job entry targeted support and the sector-based work academy programme—will make a difference, and of course we have the strategy coming out of the in-work progression commission.