Carer’s Allowance

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and draw attention to my interests as set out in the register.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, while fully recognising and valuing the vital contributions made by carers every day in providing significant care and support, claimants have a responsibility to ensure that they are entitled to benefits and to inform DWP of any changes in their circumstances that could impact their award. Where benefits are overpaid, it is our policy to recover that money, where reasonable, and to set affordable and sustainable repayment plans that do not cause undue hardship.

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, talking of undue hardship, I hope the Minister will now confirm the figures, which were finally released last week, that more than £250 million is being clawed back from more than 134,000 carers. In 2019, the DWP promised that its new automated system would stop overpayments and warn carers in time. Does he agree that it is unacceptable that carers are being prosecuted in this way? Does he also agree that what is needed is, first, an amnesty for carers who have been overpaid through no fault of their own and, secondly, a thorough review of carer’s allowance, so that carers are neither prosecuted nor persecuted for trying their best to combine paid work with their caring responsibilities, thus propping up the whole social care system on behalf of us all?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I think I should just reiterate that the Government thoroughly recognise and value the vital contribution made by carers, but it is also the case that, if a claimant incurs an overpayment due to payment error or fraud, this overpayment will need to be repaid and, in some cases, as the noble Baroness will know, a penalty will be charged. However, we carefully balance our duty to the taxpayer to recover overpayments and safeguards are in place to manage repayments fairly. Some overpayments will attract no penalty at all, and I can certainly expand on the safe- guards that we have in place.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee has written to the comptroller of the National Audit Office asking the NAO to conduct a second inquiry into carer’s allowance overpayment, five years after the initial investigation in 2019? Would the Government welcome such an investigation and how quickly could it be set up?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I have to say that the gist of the argument that came from the noble Baroness’s question is, “What is going on?” I can tell her that around 1 million people are in receipt of carer’s allowance and that the vast majority of them—around 95%—were paid correctly. I do not entirely accept the statistics that the noble Baroness mentioned: the total overpayment rate for carer’s allowance was 5.2%, which represents about 60,000 people. About half of them ended up being given a penalty of £50—the basic civil penalty.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, on the statistics, can the noble Viscount tell us how many people owe more than £20,000? When he talks about responsibility, will he agree that the problem is that we have another instance where the information technology system has got away from human judgment? The IT system does not trigger action, so carers may wait months and months to be told that they owe significant amounts. The evidence now suggests that one of the effects of this is that some carers are not going to claim carer’s allowance because it is too risky. They are facing so much stress and this is one element of stress that they simply cannot handle.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Although I do not have the figure to pass on to the noble Baroness, I can say that the other main category for overpayments comes under the title of “conditions of entitlement”. That represents 2.8% of the total. This is when claimants have stopped caring and neglected to tell us, or when the claim has been fraudulent from the outset. I am aware of some extreme cases highlighted in the press—which, by the way, have been building up over many years—where the amount of repayment is particularly high. That amount is not particularly high, but I will certainly get the figure to the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, let me give an example. Carer’s allowance is a cliff-edge benefit. If you are caring for 35 hours a week and you earn £151 a week or less, you get the lot. If you earn £1 more, you get nothing. So the people the Minister is talking about include someone like Helen, who cared for her parents for 10 years. She breached the earnings rule because she worked in a hospital. They used to dock her wages automatically to pay for her parking. When they stopped doing that, her net pay went up. She was over the earnings limit by an average of £2 a month for two years, and she was told to pay back £1,700. DWP has known about this for years. Why is it not telling carers before they get into this kind of debt?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I think the noble Baroness will know that, each year, there is an uprating letter, so the communication is there for individuals. However, it is fair to say that we are looking at what more we can do to help our customers. I say again that it is their responsibility to tell us whether they exceed the earnings limit. Equally, we are looking to see whether, for example, under the RTI, the information that we receive instantaneously from the HMRC can be utilised so that we can send a text to customers. This is something that we are looking at very seriously— so her point is well made.

[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I have great sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has said in terms of communication. Every department can always do better in that and use every form of technology and so on to make sure that people know where they stand. However, would my noble friend not agree, and in support of what my noble friend is saying, that the Government have to be vigilant? We will get an income tax take in this country this year of only around £279 billion, and the bill just for the Department for Work and Pensions will be £300 billion. That is one department. It is vital, is it not, that the Government are vigilant and really crack down on those people who genuinely should not receive—

[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

No, I am sorry, I am talking about those who should not receive. I did not say “carers”; I am saying those who should not be in receipt of benefits.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Indeed. I think I have made it clear already that we need to be fair. We need to balance carefully our duty to the taxpayer to recover the overpayments with safeguards in place to manage the repayments fairly. I am the first to say that some carers are among the most vulnerable people in society. Where they have got themselves into difficulty and gone over the limits, it is their duty to tell us and we have an important job to do in these situations to help them with their repayments. We have made some very good progress on that, but I have made the point that in terms of communications there is more to be done.

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

My Lords, I myself was a young carer for my late father and I understand how such additional responsibilities can limit your options for a stable income. Does the Minister acknowledge that unpaid carers are disproportionately affected by poverty? Will he explore longer-term solutions to bring more unpaid carers out of poverty, such as reforming the much-needed carer’s allowance?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point. Each carer has his or her own responsibilities, some of which are very great, involving permanent lack of sleep. However, it is very important that, if they can, they should lead for themselves fulfilling and rewarding lives. That is why we have a number of initiatives to encourage carers to do some work. We think that it is good for them, and they acknowledge that. Clearly, this is a very important part of what we do in our department.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, we all acknowledge that caring is an extremely stressful occupation and that it is really good if carers can spend some time at external work. We know that it is good for their mental health. The responsibility of paying something like £1,500 back in a short period is more than stressful; it tips some people into becoming so mentally ill that they can no longer go to work. Can the Minister go back to the department and agree the number of people who should have their debt written off and that those not in that category should pay no more than £5 a week?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

We certainly do not agree with the idea that any of the debt should be written off; we think that the debt is there to be repaid. However, as I have said, we have a number of plans in place on a one-to-one basis to help each individual who has got into difficulty, to help them to repay that debt. That is a very important point.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley called for a fundamental review of carer’s allowance, as has the Work and Pensions Committee. We need a review that looks not just at the cruel rules but at the purpose of carer’s allowance, all the eligibility rules and the level of carer’s allowance, which is one of the lowest benefits of its kind.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Baroness will know that we keep these matters under constant review and that the carer’s allowance is a non-means-tested benefit, with no capital rules, in England and Wales, which means it does not depend on the payment of national insurance contributions but is funded from general taxation.

I would also say that, for the claimant to be able to earn up to £151 per week, we need to take account of the allowable expenses. So that £151 can be stretched, in effect, by taking account of national insurance, tax and other allowable expenses.

People with Disabilities: Access to Services

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their very valuable contributions to this important and wide-ranging debate. As it has highlighted, disabled people share the same hopes, aspirations and ambitions as non-disabled people to fulfil their potential and play a full part in society. However, I acknowledge that they often experience barriers that can prevent them realising this.

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, who provided a good overview of the many issues that are challenges for disabled people. Although she would not expect me to agree with many of her conclusions, she raised a number of questions which I will attempt to cover. As the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, acknowledged, it may not be possible to cover all the many themes encompassing disability that were raised today. Having said all that, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, in her usual style, won the verbal marathon to canter through most of the issues.

Over the last 25 years, this country has made important progress in tackling the barriers, through the work of campaigners and across different Governments, from the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which was alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Addington—he was here in the House for that, which is interesting—to the Equality Act 2010 and, more recently, the British Sign Language Act and Down Syndrome Act. Today, in Mental Health Awareness Week and on Global Accessibility Awareness Day—I have a badge to match—I reflect that these are reminders of how far we have come in talking about, and having awareness of, disability and accessibility issues. They also highlight what still needs to be done.

I have listened carefully to all the issues raised. Let me say clearly that there is more to be done. My noble friend Lord Holmes is right that I should be aware— I reassure him and others that I am—of the lived experience of those who are disabled. I will take back to the relevant channels his points about floating bus stops, black taxi cabs and the bank issue; I very much noted that.

Having said all that, I am proud that this Government have continued to tackle the barriers faced by disabled people. As a bit of a pushback, let me say that there are now 2 million more disabled people in work when compared to 2010. We have 20 Ministers across government committed to championing accessibility and opportunity for disabled people within their departments. Our Disability Action Plan, which we published in February, sets out the actions that we are taking this year across these and other areas, and lays the foundations for longer-term change. I will talk more about this later.

To ensure that this country is the most accessible place in the world for them to live, work and thrive, we are going further through the support delivered through the benefits system, helping disabled people to start, stay and succeed in a more flexible and accessible labour market. We are also ensuring that disabled children—also mentioned today—get the best start in life, creating more accessible homes, which I will allude to later, and improving health and care outcomes.

This Government are delivering for disabled people. The noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Sherlock, asked when disabled people can expect an update on the national disability strategy and the disability action plan. The actions set out in the disability action plan are planned to be delivered over 12 months, to lay the foundations for longer-term change. To track our progress, we will publish updates on the progress of actions from the disability action plan after six months and 12 months. The six-month update will also include an update on the delivery of the national disability strategy.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Sherlock and Lady Hughes, raised the differences between the documents. The disability action plan will be taken forward in parallel with the national disability strategy and is designed to complement the long-term vision set out in the strategy. In a Written Ministerial Statement of 18 September 2023, we announced how work on the strategy would be taken forward. Other significant work being taken forward by individual government departments in areas that disabled people have told us are a priority include reforms to employment and welfare via the DWP’s Transforming Support: The Health and Disability White Paper and strategies to address health and social care via the DHSC’s People at the Heart of Care White Paper, which the House will be aware of.

I turn to the support provided through our benefits system. I am proud that we have a strong and generous safety net for those who need it. We expect to provide £88 billion worth of support for disabled people through the benefits system this year. Last month, we increased the extra cost disability benefits by a further 6.7%. I have listened carefully to comments today on access to the benefits system. We know that, in some cases, people may not be able to engage effectively with the claim process due to various vulnerabilities. That is why the DWP has a range of different support measures at every stage of the benefit claim. This includes a “move to universal credit” helpline, a “help to claim” service delivered independently by Citizens Advice and face-to-face support in local jobcentres, where the staff will have been specifically trained and prepared for this work. Where a claimant cannot manage their claim due to a lack of capacity, they can appoint a third party to manage the claim on their behalf.

Our wider reforms look more fundamentally at different options to reshape the current welfare system. As the House will know, we have published a Green Paper, which was much spoken about today. It considers options to provide better-targeted support to those who need it most, ensuring that it is fit for the future. This subject was raised by my noble friend Lady Browning and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. I was particularly pleased to hear the remarks from the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas—it is good to hear from her again.

My noble friend Lady Browning asked how PIP provides support to claimants with mental illness. PIP was designed to help disabled people and people with long-term health conditions by making a cash contribution towards their extra costs. As part of this consultation, we want to understand whether there are other forms of support that may be more suitable for people with mental health conditions. We know that being in suitable work is good for people’s physical and mental health, well-being and financial security. As we set out in 2023 in Transforming Support: The Health and Disability White Paper, the Government aim to support more people to start, stay and succeed in work.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, asked about the reason for the rise in PIP, suggesting that it was not due to the increased prevalence of disability and health conditions but was perhaps linked to NHS waiting times. I reassure her and the House that cutting waiting lists is one of the Prime Minister’s top priorities. We are making good progress in tackling the longest waiting lists, to ensure that patients get the care that they need when they need it. This is incredibly important. Thanks to the incredible work of NHS staff, we have virtually eliminated waits of 18 months. NHSE management information from March 2024 suggests that these waits have been reduced by over 95% since September 2021, but there is clearly more to do.

Alongside the support available through the welfare system, the Government also recognise the valuable work and the needs of those who care for disabled people while holding down a job. My noble friend Lady Browning and the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, asked whether the PIP consultation was simply a money-saving exercise. It is not a money-saving exercise; this is about the Government’s long-standing approach to supporting disabled people and people with long-term health conditions. We want the system to provide the right support to those who really need it. It is right that we should look at this after 10 years or so—as I said, we introduced it in 2013.

As the House will know, the Carer’s Leave Act came into force in April, giving a new unpaid leave entitlement that is available from day one of employment for employed unpaid carers. I will briefly touch on the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. I am very aware of the issues surrounding overpayments for carers; the Government are taking this extremely seriously. It is the responsibility of individuals who receive the carer’s allowance to let us know if their earnings exceed £151 per week. We are looking very seriously at it, particularly to see how we can improve the communications exercise. Everyone will receive a letter every year to remind them, but I believe there is more that we can do. As was said the other day in the media, we are already ringing as many people as we can, from the information that we have received, to remind them of what happens if their earnings go over the threshold, so that they understand what to do.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful for what the Minister has said. Do I understand correctly that this is the response to the issue of the IT system not automatically triggering any action that would lead to information being sent immediately to the carer? Does the Minister think that this will address that issue?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I think that it will go a very long way. We are looking seriously at getting the information out quickly—the link with HMRC is incredibly important here. We already get real-time information from HMRC anyway. We are asking the same question: what more can we do to be sure that those who do not let us know, for whatever reason, will do so? We also must not forget that the vast majority do let us know. This is a very important point. I believe that there will be a Question in the House next week on this issue, which I will be willing and ready to answer.

The subject of work was raised in particular by my noble friend Lord Shinkwin. This Government will always protect the most vulnerable, but we must also do everything possible to support those who can to move into work. I echo the Prime Minister’s speech at the Centre for Social Justice on 19 April, which I attended:

“The role of the welfare state should never be merely to provide financial support … but to help people overcome whatever barriers they might face to living an independent, fulfilling life”.


That is why we are supporting thousands more disabled people to start, stay and succeed in work through our £2.5 billion back to work plan. That includes exploring reforms to the fit-note process through the call for evidence—another theme raised today—and rolling out WorkWell, to bring together local health and employment support. Questions were raised today about who is best placed to make health assessments for work. I do not intend to go further on that, but we may well receive some information through the conversation and the PIP consultation on that subject.

From 2025, we will reform the work capability assessment to reflect new flexibilities in the labour market while maintaining protections for those with the most serious conditions. My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond and others raised the disability employment gap. The Government have an ambitious programme of initiatives to support disabled people and people with health conditions. The disability employment rate was 52.9% in the first quarter of 2024, compared to 81.7% for non-disabled people. For disabled people, that is an increase of 0.1 percentage points. The disability employment gap was 28.8 percentage points in the first quarter of 2024, a decrease of 0.6 percentage points on the year before.

We are also expanding access to mental health treatment, with nearly 400,000 additional places through NHS talking therapies, which I think the House will be well aware of. All this builds on existing support, such as Access to Work grants, our Disability Confident scheme and disability employment advisers in jobcentres.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Donaghy and Lady Hughes, asked what the Government are doing to help those in poverty. There is a long answer I could give, but the short answer, which I think I have given in the House before, is that we are committed to supporting people on lower incomes and expect to spend around £303 billion through the welfare system in Great Britain in 2024-25, including around £138 billion on people of working age and their children. These statistics cover 2022-23, a year when inflation averaged 10% and benefits were uprated by 3.1%, in line with the CPI.

On the disabled, the latest statistics show that the number of people in families where someone is disabled and in absolute poverty—which is our preferred measure—fell by 100,000 between 2021-22 and 2022-23. The proportion of people in families where someone is disabled and in absolute poverty after housing costs has decreased by two percentage points since 2019-20, and the number of people in such families has increased slightly due to an increase in the number of people in families where someone is disabled.

Briefly, on education, which I think was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and others, in the special educational needs and disability sector our improvement plan will establish a single national system so that children can achieve good outcomes. We have increased high-needs revenue funding for children and young people with complex needs to cover £10.5 billion this year, up 60% over the last five years. The Law Commission is also undertaking a review of disabled children’s social care legislation to help clarify the law and to ensure that families of disabled children receive the support that they need. I hope that this may help address the remarks from the noble Lord, Lord Addington.

I will go further on the question of what the Government are doing to achieve greater national equality in the support offered to children. Our improvement plan outlines our commitment to establish a single national SEND system with a proposal to deliver national standards. National standards will improve mainstream education by setting standards for early and accurate identification of SEND need, and they will include clarifying the types of support that should be available in mainstream settings and who is responsible for securing the support. Finally, national standards will create a more consistent SEND system. That may not provide the whole answer, but I hope that helps.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

Are we suggesting that there will be a consistent approach to those who are not taking on plans in the classroom? Much of the talk here is about the plan, which is incredibly expensive and slow, is appealed and then goes through. Will we get better support for those who have not had that official diagnosis? That is the real issue here.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I certainly always listen to the noble Lord. It will be for others to judge, but I very much hope so, and I take note of that.

Quickly on housing, which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and briefly by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, thanks to the Government’s actions more disabled people have the support that they need to be able to live independently and safely. The Government have more than doubled the funding for the disabled facilities grant, from £220 million in 2015-16 to £625 million in this financial year. Our Renters (Reform) Bill, abolishing no-fault evictions and creating a new ombudsman for the private rented sector, will give disabled tenants more security and confidence to hold landlords accountable for reasonable adjustments. The Government have also proposed to mandate that all new homes will be built to a higher accessibility standard, providing greater independence and safety at home—which again was raised.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Could the Minister write to me about my other question, which was about supported housing and the ability for housing organisations to be able to access capital for it? They are finding it very difficult to do so.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Certainly, I will write to the noble Baroness on that.

Briefly, on healthcare matters—I realise that time is marching on—my noble friend Lady Browning was right to raise the issue of loneliness. We are aware that people with disabilities or long-term health conditions are more than four times more likely to report feeling lonely. New research on that matter will emerge during the summer.

The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, spoke about access to social care for disabled people. Local authorities are responsible for assessing individuals’ care and support needs and, where eligible, for meeting those needs. Where individuals do not meet the eligibility threshold, they can get support from their local authority in making their own care arrangements for care services, as set out in the Care Act—as the noble Baroness will know.

On the subject of local authorities, I noted the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, about school transport. I will certainly pass her message through the right channels.

I am also aware of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, about autism. He will know that we published our refreshed national autism strategy in July 2021, which aims to improve understanding in society, reduce diagnosis waiting times and improve access to high-quality health and social care for autistic people. I could say a lot more about that, but I shall just say that, through the rollout of the Oliver McGowan mandatory training on learning disability and autism, which he will know about, we are helping health and social care staff to have the skills and knowledge they need to provide safe and compassionate care for autistic people and those with a learning disability.

Through the NHS long-term plan, the Government are increasing the mental health workforce so that more people, including disabled people, can get the mental health support they need. That is a very important point to make.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson, Lady Andrews and Lady Brinton, asked about accessibility and transport. I shall allow myself some time in the last few minutes to address this because they are right: the voices of disabled people should be central to how transport policy is planned and implemented. That is what it means to be truly inclusive. The Department for Transport’s statutory advisers, the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, provide expert advice and constructive challenge to Ministers to help in the development and delivery of policies. The DPTAC has a statutory requirement for at least half of the committee to be disabled people, meaning that it is well placed to provide advice that will ensure that the DfT builds into its work the needs of all disabled people.

To pick up the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lord Holmes, the Government are fully committed to improving transport accessibility, supporting disabled people to have the same access to transport as everyone else. The Department for Transport has made good progress against the commitments in the Inclusive Transport Strategy. I acknowledge and say to all those who have raised points today that there is definitely more to do.

I realise that time is against me and that I have not been able to answer a lot of questions. As noble Lords would expect, with my team I will look in Hansard at the questions raised and write a letter to all those who have contributed.

To conclude, this has been a fascinating and important debate. The range of significant support and reforms that we, as a Government, are undertaking within the welfare system and the world of work, as well as in education, housing and healthcare, underlines this Government’s determination to make sure that disabled people and those with health conditions get the right support to improve their everyday experiences—the lived experience of being disabled—so that they can lead full and independent lives.

Care Leavers: Universal Credit

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the potential benefits of bringing the rate of Universal Credit for care leavers under 25 in line with the rate for over-25s.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have assessed the impact of raising the rate of universal credit for care leavers under 25 in line with the rate for the over-25s. While we are not currently planning on changing the rate, we understand the challenges that care leavers face. That is why we continue to provide additional, dedicated support to simplify and improve their interaction with the benefits system and help them into sustained employment and rewarding careers.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. Care leavers are those for whom the state has been the corporate parent. Parenting does not stop at the age of 18; indeed, the rationale for the lower level of benefits for under-25s was always that they should continue to be supported by family until they achieve that full independence to which the Minister referred. I have to say that my own local branch bank of Mum and Dad is still very much taking on new business even though my kids are in their 30s. Will the Minister commit to looking again at the evidence, including that in the recent YMCA report on young people in supported accommodation, something that care leavers disproportionately need to access? Will he consider how we can be a better parent to the many wonderful but vulnerable young people who leave our care system each year?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

This is an important subject. As I said earlier, we recognise the challenges that care leavers face as they move out of the care system. We look forward to continuing our very close partnership with the Department for Education, to ensure that care leavers can access the right skills, opportunities and wider support to move towards sustained employment and career progression. It might be helpful to the right reverend Prelate to know that we are providing over £250 million across this spending review to support care leavers on a whole range of issues, including housing, improving access to education, employment and training, and to help them develop social connections and networks, which can be very helpful to them as they set out in life.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that the acquisitive crime rates among care leavers under 25 are significantly higher than the acquisitive crime rates for care leavers over 25? We know that these care leavers are exceptionally vulnerable. If there is this discrepancy between the acquisitive crime rates, can he say clearly that we need to increase the universal credit rates for under-25 care leavers?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Baroness’s first point is correct: there is an element in the crime rate. I have the statistics somewhere here. We are well aware of it and are working very closely with the MoJ on it. Putting that aside, it is ever more important that care leavers have the best possible help to move on from the pretty challenging start that they have had in life, to show them the light—the way forward into work or education—and see them into a better life.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, we have been talking about universal credit, but international research shows that stable relationships are essential to care leavers’ resilience. They enable them to hold down jobs and live independently, hence support to form and maintain relationships is mandated in councils’ local offers for care leavers. Guidance refers to helping them to keep in touch with people who were important to them when they entered care. This is what the Lifelong Links approach achieves. It was very positively evaluated by the Department for Education, so are councils using it?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The subject of relationships is very important indeed for care leavers. Judgments on the quality and breadth of a local authority’s so-called local offer for care leavers forms part of Ofsted’s inspection framework for local authority children’s services, hence the link with the Department for Education. The reports published following an inspection include a judgment on the experiences and progress of care leavers and a supporting commentary on the local offer. The Department for Education is providing £99.8 million to local authorities through the Staying Put programme to increase the number of care leavers who stay living with their foster families in a family home up to the age of 21. Again, this links into the relationship angle.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, further to the excellent Question from the right reverend Prelate, I say that young parents are one group particularly disadvantaged by the differential rates. As many of us probably know, having a child is very expensive, and is not made cheaper for the parent by their being under the age of 25. This was reflected under legacy benefits, where the higher rate was paid to young parents. Last year, the price of nappies—that well-used product—went up by about 30%. Will the Government review the rate paid to young parents to help them to do the vital work of caring for children? I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some assurance that this disparity in allowances is under review.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a good point. The Government and local authorities should work in tandem, particularly in relation to care leavers who may have married young; I think that is the implication of his question. Local authority children’s and housing services should and do work together to ensure a range of suitable, move-on options, including for accommodation, because housing is often one of the key factors. Personal advisers should help young people to plan—particularly those who might be married—and agree which option is best to see them forward. This includes paying for items such as nappies.

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

My Lords, would the Minister not agree that the price of rent and food was similar for those aged 25 and those aged 24? Will the Government review this policy, which is not fair to young people?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

In my opening Answer, I already alluded to what we might or might not do about that. In addition to the £250 million help that we give to care leavers, there is much cross-government support. For example, the Second Chance Learning scheme supports care leavers between the ages of 18 and 21 who wish to catch up on their education, particularly secondary education. I have already mentioned housing. There is an exemption from the shared accommodation rate—the SAR. Importantly, we are improving the transition from local authority support to DWP benefits, so that those who are not able to find a job immediately can be transitioned quickly on to the universal credit system; that was alluded to in a previous question. I do not think that the noble Baroness should be shaking her head; these are genuine issues.

[Lord Sahota (Lab)]

My Lords, the savings threshold to qualify for universal credit is £16,000, and that has been the case for years. Do the Government have any plans to increase it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

We do not have any such plans, although the noble Lord will know that we keep all these matters under review. I have already outlined a number of initiatives that we have taken to help this important sector and to be sure that care leavers are given a better start in life, where they might have had a challenging and troubling start.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will well understand that, sad to say, the vast majority of care leavers leave care much younger than 25. It must be really rather frightening to find themselves in that situation at a young age, often with few educational qualifications and little to rely on in terms of future employment prospects. Does he agree that we as a state have a responsibility for those children who have been in public care, and therefore that we need to do everything we can to support them at a critical stage in their lives?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

That is absolutely right and I could not have put it better myself. That is why it is so important that at particular stages of life—that is, from the age of 14, and particularly 16, until the age of 25—initiatives are taken forward to look after this often very vulnerable group. I have outlined a number of those, and the initiatives are kept under review. I do not think I have yet mentioned the DWP Youth Offer, which is designed to help work coaches to support young people aged 16 to 24 and to encourage them to get into work as soon as possible.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that in 2017 the Children’s Society did some research into care leavers and benefits. It reported that care leavers were five times as likely as anyone else to be sanctioned by the benefits system, and that they were less likely to challenge that. Since then, the DWP now has a care leaver covenant saying that there should be a special point of contact who has to be notified before such a sanction can be applied. Can the Minister tell us how that is going and whether it has reduced the numbers?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I cannot tell the noble Baroness whether it has reduced the numbers, but it has been a considerable success. It is all part of what I was saying about our joined-up thinking in working with local authorities, as well as across government. She will be aware that we have a cross-government support group for care leavers, covering in particular the DfE, the DWP, DLUHC and, as mentioned earlier, local authorities.

Health and Disability Reform

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I will not repeat what the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has just said about the lead-up to the publication of this Green Paper, but it can hardly be described as ideal. When announcing the Green Paper and the reforms to PIP on Monday, the Prime Minister said that something had gone wrong since the pandemic, leading to more people not working because of long-term ill health; he singled out the rise in people unable to work because of mental health conditions. Of course, I agree with helping people to get back into work, where that is possible, and I agree that for some people with mental health problems, it can improve their well-being. What I worry about greatly is putting the spotlight on people with mental health problems in such an unhelpfully divisive and—I agree—stigmatising way.

We need to go back to the root causes here. Can it be any surprise that so many people are claiming sickness and disability benefits when millions are still waiting for NHS treatment, and mental health wait times are through the roof, due to an acute shortage of mental health professionals, including doctors, nurses and counsellors? Does the Minister agree that if the Government are serious about getting people back to work, they need first to reduce waiting times for NHS treatment and tackle the crisis in our mental health services which makes accessing mental health treatment so difficult and protracted?

The Prime Minister also claimed that these changes are about “compassion”, but does this not rather miss the point that most young people claiming PIP are doing so because they have ADHD or autism, rather than anxiety and depression? Last year, 190,000 young people claimed PIP due to autism, ADHD or other learning disabilities, compared to just 129,000 claiming for all other disabilities. Could the Minister explain why, in the announcement of these proposals, there has been such a strong focus on anxiety and depression and how far this is based on the evidence?

I am concerned that potentially stopping cash payments will be seen as an affront to the dignity of benefit recipients. The BBC News website yesterday quoted one 71 year-old recipient, who said that for her PIP is about

“maintaining independence, not being a burden on my family and keeping my dignity”.

It could hardly be said that the reaction from the sector has been favourable. The charity Scope has said that these plans do not fix the underlying issues faced by disabled people. The chief executive of the charity SANE has pointed out that

“mental health problems are often invisible and fluctuate from month to month or day to day, and … assessments for benefits are all too often based on ‘snapshot’ judgments that do not take account of how hidden and disabling mental illness can be”.

Can the Minister say what consultation took place with the mental health sector and those who work closely with people directly affected by these issues prior to the Green Paper being published?

Finally, I turn to a wider issue. The Statement talks about a

“new conversation about how the benefits system can best support people to live full and independent lives”.

I am sure we can all agree with that, but we need to look at these issues in the round. Being able to live independently in the community can often rely on the help and support of unpaid family carers. Does the Minister agree that it is simply unacceptable for over 150,000 unpaid carers to be facing severe financial penalties—pushing many into debt or financial hardship —for often quite unknowingly breaching the earnings limit while caring for a loved one? What urgent steps are the Government taking to stop this outrage, and will they agree to an amnesty while it is being sorted out? If the Minister cannot answer that now—I accept it is not within the immediate focus of this Statement—would he please write to me?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baronesses, Lady Sherlock and Lady Tyler, for their questions; I will do my best to answer them.

Indeed, the Prime Minister did make a speech on 19 April, and I was there in person. He covered a whole range of announcements in the world of welfare. I found it to be a very caring and compassionate speech; that is a really important point to make, because it did not come across in some quarters in the media. On how the Statement was communicated, I will not dwell on that other than to say that both noble Baronesses will know that apologies were given. That is on the record, and I do not think it is right that I should say anything more about that now.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock—and it was alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler—spoke strongly about mental health and the link with physical health. I want to make a few remarks about this, because we should see it as a sign of progress that people can talk about mental health more openly. The Government will never dismiss or downplay the conditions that people have; it is precisely because we take mental health so seriously that we need to reform the system. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but the current system does not reflect that. It is simply wrong to write people off when there is a growing body of evidence that good work can improve mental health.

In terms of the evidence raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, I visited a jobcentre only this morning and asked various questions of the job coaches. I reassure her, or alert her to the fact, that the evidence is certainly there. I am sure she will know from her own experience there is an increased level of mental ill-health, some of a severe nature. Action must be taken.

But it is more than that; it has been over 10 years since the introduction of PIP. We need to ensure that our system is fair and accurately targeted at those who need our support most. Although we have made significant progress, the disability benefits system for adults of working age is not consistently providing support in the way it was intended. In terms of a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, I reassure her and the House that we will and intend to continue to support those who need it. That includes those who genuinely are not able to work—that is what we are doing at the moment. In terms of what may come out of the Green Paper, and indeed this conversation or consultation, that is a most important point that I want to emphasise—which, by the way, the Prime Minister also emphasised.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, asked about the importance of investing in mental health services. She is right; we want to ensure we are providing the right support to those who need it most, targeting our resources most effectively, and supporting disabled people and people with long-term health conditions to live independently and reach their full potential, irrespective of whether this is a physical or mental health condition—which alludes to the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, made. Mental health remains a key government priority; that is why we are investing £2.3 billion a year into NHS mental health services, and why we brought in the long-term workforce plan, which will deliver the fastest expansion of mental health services in the NHS’s history. Just this morning, as I said, I visited a jobcentre and found out more about that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked about PIP and mental health. I will give a few more statistics to back up the views I have given so far. In 2019, there were an average of 2,200 new PIP awards a month in England and Wales, where the main disabling condition was mixed anxiety and depressive disorders. That figure more than doubled to 5,300 a month in 2023. As I said earlier, we will and must continue to support everyone with mental health conditions, recognising that the severity and individual circumstances will vary and that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Those with the most debilitating conditions should be entitled to the support they need, as I said earlier. That is exactly what PIP is intended to do, and that core aim will not change.

However, we need to have an honest conversation, which we have just started, about whether individuals with some conditions are better served by treatment and tailored support than by cash payments—which I think was a point raised by one of the noble Baronesses. To increase support, we have expanded mental health provision. Altogether, between 2018-19 and 2023-24, spending on mental health services has increased by £4.7 billion in cash terms, increasing access to mental health services. This has put 400,000 extra people through the NHS talking therapies programme, which the House will be aware of.

On the question raised by the noble Baroness about the amount going on, I say that there is a huge amount. We fully intend to go ahead with the reforms that we announced in Transforming Support: The Health and Disability White Paper, because the Government are committed to doing everything that we can to help disabled people and people with long-term health conditions. These changes are separate from this PIP consultation but, as we develop our proposals, we will consider how some interactions with the current welfare system will be reflected in a reformed system. This will be carefully worked through and reported on before we consider introducing any changes. I say again that this is the start of a conversation. We are asking as many people as possible to input into the Green Paper. Already, we have received a good number of responses in the past few days since it was announced.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler—it might have been the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, as well—spoke about too many piecemeal publications and not enough action. Since 2010, we have delivered significant welfare reforms, including introducing universal credit, a modern benefit that ensures that people are better off in work than on benefit. There are nearly 4 million more people in work than in 2010 and 1.1 million fewer people in absolute low income. However, we are now seeing a new challenge—they come up in government sometimes —that emerged in recent years and accelerated post pandemic. As the Prime Minister said, the current system is unsustainable, unfair for taxpayers and no longer targeted at those who need it most. That is why it is essential that we take action.

On the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about carers, there probably is not enough time to go into everything I want to say, but perhaps I can give her some reassurance on the issues circling at the moment. We must carefully balance our duty to the taxpayer to recover overpayments with safeguards to manage repayments fairly. Claimants have a responsibility to ensure that they are entitled to benefits and to inform my department, the DWP, of any changes in their circumstances that could impact their award. To be helpful, we have improved, rather urgently, customer communications to remind them of the importance of telling us about any earnings, including in the annual uprating letter that all claimants receive. We are looking to make the best possible use of earnings information collected by HMRC—so-called real-time information—to help to prevent some overpayments occurring in the first place. I reassure the noble Baroness that we are taking this extremely seriously.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I take very seriously what my noble friend has said. On the PIP process, she is right. Work needs to be and is being done to modernise the health and disability benefit services to create a more efficient service, reduce processing times and improve trust in our services and the decisions that we make. As part of this, from July 2023, a limited number of claimants have been able to begin their claim for PIP entirely online, which we aim to roll out across England and Wales.

My noble friend’s substantive question was on the important subject of autism. She will be aware of the Buckland review. It is important to say that we will link whatever comes out of this conversation, which may include matters to do with autism, with the progress we are making on the Buckland review. I am aware of the huge challenges linked to assessing those who have autism. On a brighter note, we know most autistic people want a job, and evidence shows that they may bring positive benefits to their employers. Now is the time to raise our ambition. On 2 April 2023, World Autism Acceptance Day, the DWP announced the launch of this new review. My noble friend will know that a task group has been set up that will include people with direct lived experience of autism, and be chaired by a respected independent person who is separate from government and clearly represents autistic people and their needs. The members of the task group will cover a broad range of interest groups to ensure that their views are represented. It is important to link this to what we may do out of the review on PIP. I say “may do” because this is a consultation, and we want to hear from people.

[The Lord Bishop of Lincoln]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a bishop relating to L’Arche UK and worldwide, which cares for people with intellectual and physical disabilities. The aspiration outlined in the Ministerial Statement to create a Britain in which disabled people can be supported to thrive is one that we all share. At a time of economic challenge, any responsible Government must pursue priorities and make difficult choices, but I have been in your Lordships’ House for 10 years and this kind of Statement reminds me of the circularity of this debate about welfare provision within that 10 years, where we do not seem to have made huge progress. We heard a lot from previous speakers about the varied needs of people with disabilities, some people with temporary health issues and those with severe and enduring mental health conditions. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has noted that almost two-thirds of people living in destitution or direct homelessness have a chronic health condition or disability. These people may be unable to meet their most basic needs to stay warm, fed, dry and clean. Does the Minister agree that energy for further reform of disability benefits might be best applied to meeting the needs of this cohort rather than seeking to make eligibility even tighter?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I gently correct the right reverend Prelate, or give my view, which is that the current PIP system has served a purpose; that is a fair comment to make. However, as I said earlier, after 10 years—it was our Government who brought in PIP—now is the time to review it. To put this in perspective and explain why we are doing it now, I say that since 2015 the proportion of the caseload receiving the highest rate of PIP has increased from 25% to 36%, and 7% of working-age people in England and Wales now claim PIP or DLA, which is forecast to rise to 10% by 2028-29. Going back to 2022-23, the Government spent £15.7 billion on extra costs for disability benefits for people of working age in England and Wales, and the OBR has forecast that the cost will rise to £29.8 billion in nominal terms by 2028-29. On the right reverend Prelate’s question, we believe that now is the right time to do something. In fact, not doing something would be highly negligent. It covers everybody at all levels. I know he referred particularly to those who are the most vulnerable, and he was quite right.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this Statement should fill us with joy, but anyone familiar with the history of this issue will actually be worried. The assessment has just got a hell of a lot more complicated. In the past, people have been told that they cannot get their benefits, whatever they are called, because they can walk 10 yards—except they could do it one day but not the next, and it was a nightmare. The Government have just made a quantum leap in the complexity of conditions that they are dealing with. That is good, but unless they back it up with better support to make the assessment then they are guaranteeing failure. There is no real argument about that; the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, hinted at it, and others will back me up,

I suggest that something the Minister could do to make the Government’s life easier is to start passporting the identification of problems such as education in earlier life. For instance, there are education, health and care plans, and the disabled students’ allowance. If we cannot passport those into the Department for Work and Pensions, we are going to waste a huge amount of time and effort. Most of these things will have been tested in the courts, or with an assessment. What are we doing there? When we are making new assessments, are we investing in proper identification? That has been a chronic problem in this area. I hope that by now the Government have realised that and put some sort of plan in place.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I encourage the noble Lord, with his knowledge and experience, to input into the consultation, as I suspect he probably will. He will know that the consultation is limited in scope to PIP, which is open only to claimants aged 16 and over. That is quite broad, but it is payable regardless of whether you are in work, education or, as he spoke about, training. We are keen to hear from people from all walks of life and backgrounds, and encourage everyone, including students, to respond to the consultation.

I take note of the noble Lord’s point about passporting. I know about EHC plans from my previous brief. It is important that the student diaspora and those who represent it also input to the conversation.

As I said, we believe there may be better ways of supporting people in living independent and fulfilling lives. This could mean financial support being better targeted at people, including students, who have specific extra costs, but it could involve improved support of other kinds, such as for physical as well as mental health, leading to better outcomes.

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I commend the Statement and the Green Paper. I regard the Secretary of State as someone with a warm and sincere heart, and a clear head. I think he is an impressive Secretary of State in a complex area. I also commend his Permanent Secretary, who is a quite excellent man.

Obviously, the understanding of disability and ill health changes all the time. This benefit has been around since 2013, and it is time for a strategic review. Earlier this week, we were talking about the late Frank Field. When I worked on benefit agencies with him, it was quite different. With these vast sums of money, we should focus and make sure that the money is spent wisely and well. There is only a certain amount of public money, as another party may discover in a few months’ time, although I can say nothing about that. Money cannot go both on doctors and nurses and on welfare payments, so we have to look strategically.

There are partners. Charities have a big part to play, and the Church is important in dealing with mental health. I remember the effect of Pentecostal choirs on West Indian boys with schizophrenia. They went to the Pentecostal choir, and said that they felt like new men, and I am not surprised.

I want to talk particularly about employers. Good employers have transformed the support that they offer to people with mental illness problems. Prevention is much better than cure, if you can reach out and help someone in the workplace to talk about their mental health problems. I agree about stigma. If you have schizophrenia then you say you have depression, and if you have depression then you say you have the flu. There are a number of employers that have impressed me, which I would point out to the Secretary of State, where there are ally groups supporting people’s mental health, and where facilities and services are provided. Yes, the Government have a part to play, but so does the wider community. Work, for most of us, is a lifesaver. I have never been more miserable than when I was stuck at home during Covid, and I do not think I am alone.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her kind comments about the Secretary of State and the Permanent Secretary, with whom I am working closely, as she will know.

My noble friend made an important point about the variations among individuals who have conditions. As she alluded to, some claimants will have considerable extra costs related to their disability, while others will have fewer or minimal costs. This is why we have brought forward the Green Paper, looking at whether there are ways in which we can improve how we support people, where that is better suited to their needs and to the way they want to run their lives. I should also say that it is right that it is fairer to the taxpayer than the current system.

My noble friend is right that my department has been undertaking a huge amount of work with employers and that, with the rise in mental health conditions, sometimes people in work feel that they cannot stay in that job because of their condition. A lot of work has been going on to persuade or help them to stay in work, while holding their hands and giving them detailed, experienced, skilled advice on how to cope with their lives. That is working, and I could go into more detail on it, but it just shows that we are alert to the increase in mental ill health that has come about for a variety of reasons, not just because of Covid.

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

I want to ask the Minister about applying for PIP. Similar to my noble friend Lady Browning’s case, my son-in-law has applied. He has MS and has been advised by his consultant. He has waited six years for a diagnosis and is 32 years of age. His application for PIP was turned down. He works 50 hours a week—he is not lazy at all, or anything like that—and he provides. When he reapplied, it was out of date, and he has just been told that, because he applied online once, he has to use the paper form. That form is 44 pages long. He cannot write or hold a pencil because of his illness—he has his daughter write Christmas and birthday cards. Unfortunately, the person on the other end of the phone does not seem to be sympathetic about that.

It is diabolical that someone with a medical illness like that has been sent a 44-page document to complete in two working weeks when he already feels that he is holding out a begging bowl. But he has been advised to apply by his consultant because working the many hours that he does is having an impact on his health. I ask the Minister to look at that. If we are going to digital, surely the message should not be that you get one chance only to apply online and then any other applications must be on paper.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I have every sympathy with what I have heard from my noble friend. I will not repeat what I said about the huge changes that we are making to the PIP process, but I am aware of the example that she has given of the 44-page form, which falls into that category.

Perhaps I can go a bit further—this is linked to the waiting times that we know have been apparent for applying for PIP—and say that we have seen a decrease in PIP clearances since August 2021. The latest statistics show that the average end-to-end journey for those applying for PIP had reduced from 26 weeks in August 2021 to 15 weeks at the end of January this year. So we are clearing claims faster than we were prior to the pandemic, which is going in the right direction, and we are committed to ensuring that people can access financial support through PIP in a more timely manner. Managing the customer journey times for PIP claimants is a priority for the department, and we are working constantly to make improvements to the service.

My noble friend mentioned the issue of online. Online is a way forward but it is not necessarily for everyone. We have increased the availability of case managers and assessments, and provided health professional resources, and we have been triaging and prioritising new claims in a better way.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the justification for this Statement and the Government’s plan, repeated by the Minister, is that the level of claims has risen significantly since 2009, specifically mental health claims. Since 2009, we have had a global pandemic and the acuteness of the climate emergency has become obvious to everybody. We have had a cost of living crisis; we have a huge crisis in housing. Surely it is not a surprise that we have very poor levels of mental health across our society. That is a measure of government failure rather than individual responsibility.

Does the Minister acknowledge that there are social determinants of health and that what we have to do is create a healthy society? This Statement makes no reference to that. Also, do the Government accept the social model of disability, acknowledging that the way in which society is arranged and organised is what truly disables people? Why is there nothing in this Statement—not a single reference—to what can be done to push employers to provide appropriate arrangements for disabled people, to allow them to continue to work, rather than focusing on the behaviour of disabled people?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I know that we— the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and I—have had several sessions across the Chamber, and I say gently that, for her to say that all the instances of mental health that have cropped up are purely to do with decisions that the Government have taken wholly misrepresents the situation. She will know, as I think most of the House will, that it is much more complex than that. It is linked to all kinds of issues: for example, the rise in social media and the fact that more young people are on their phones is talked about a lot. So I might chide her that she might have mentioned that, for example.

This allows me also to give one reason why now is the time to look at PIP, given the very sobering figures that I gave out slightly earlier. I now want to go a little further. If we did nothing, over the coming four years PIP spending alone is forecast to rise by 63%, from £21.6 billion to £35.3 billion. That would be for the period 2023-24 right up to 2028-29. But it is not just about the cost. As I said earlier, I hope fairly, it is important that we review PIP to be sure that it is directed in the right way, targeted at those who need it most, delivering the right sort of support for people with disabilities and health conditions and, as I said earlier, providing better value for the taxpayer.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with what my noble friend has just said and the point made by my noble friend Lady Bottomley that, whoever is in power, the present regime is financially unsustainable. However, I also agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said at the beginning: the tone and language that one uses when discussing reform is crucial. My noble friend gets that right, but can I ask him about the proposals for the so-called sick note?

At the moment, yes, GPs are under pressure, but they at least know the patient and have access to a wide range of information before they come to their decision. Under the proposals, this will be done by a DWP assessor, who will not know the claimant and will have a limited amount of background information—and relatively limited interaction with the claimant. How confident is my noble friend that that process will be fair and robust?

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Absolutely. This allows me to talk a bit about the so-called fit notes. I start by saying that we know that work positively impacts people’s physical and mental health and well-being. The current fit-note system, which is the gateway to accessing sick pay and ill-health unemployment benefit assessments, is writing off too many people as “not fit for work”. By the way, it is quite a sobering figure that it is 94% of all fit notes. We need to fundamentally overhaul the system, so that it changes the default assumption by focusing on what people can do with the right support. We know that 10 million not-fit-for-work fit notes are issued every year, so there is a real missed opportunity here.

On my noble friend’s question, we are working on a new process and there is a call for evidence out. This was published on 19 April and we are gathering evidence to assess the impact of the current fit-note process in supporting work and health conversations. It asks stakeholders how they would like to see the fit-note process change to better support people to start, stay at and succeed in work. To that extent, it very much chimes with and links into my department. That is why we are working ever more closely with the Department of Health and Social Care to take forward this important area.

Child Poverty

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to close this important debate on addressing the root causes of child poverty. It will be interesting to check with Hansard on whether this is indeed a first, as the noble Lord, Lord Bird, said, in focusing on root causes as a subject.

I thank all noble Lords for their valuable contributions and the noble Lord, Lord Bird, in particular, for securing this debate, as well as the debate on a similar topic in February. Once again, his s=-peech was a tour de force, reminding us why the noble Lord is in this House. I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Bottomley for giving us a historical perspective on this subject, with a few namechecks that went back, I think it is fair to say, several decades.

I echo the words of several Peers about Lord Field of Birkenhead. The first line of the statement given out by his family, which was issued by his parliamentary office, was interesting:

“Frank was an extraordinary individual who spent his life fighting poverty, injustice and environmental destruction”—


that is rather telling. As Sir Tony Blair said in his statement, he was an “independent thinker”, and we must applaud that. I would like to say that he was a thoroughly decent man and, crucially, one of our country’s great influencers. That is an important point to make.

As I said earlier, this is an important topic, and I believe we all recognise that child poverty is a complex issue that can be associated with a range of factors, including worklessness, poor educational attainment, inadequate housing, parental conflict and poor mental health. Many people who experience poverty face a range of barriers, which can make it difficult for them to manage and move on with their lives. I will say more about this later in my speech, and I acknowledge the different reasons for poverty that have been spoken to.

I will mention the annual statistics published last month. On the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I doubt we will ever agree, but I took note of what she said. None of us wants to see child poverty increasing, and I share the concern expressed about this. The latest statistics cover 2022-23—please note that period—when global supply chain pressures, partly linked to the war in Ukraine, led to high rates of inflation, averaging 10% over the year, and food price inflation that reached a high of 19.1% in March 2023, which is not so long ago. These factors are reflected in the latest statistics.

In response, the Government provided unprecedented cost of living support worth £96 billion over the period 2022-23 and 2023-24, including £20 billion for two rounds of cost of living payments. This additional support prevented 1.3 million people, including 300,000 children, falling into absolute poverty—our measure—after housing costs in 2022-23. Since then, we have taken further action to support those on low incomes, including uprating benefits and pensions by 10.1% last year. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, may not like the fact that I am reminding her of this, as she said. The latest statistics show that 1.1 million fewer people were in absolute poverty after housing costs in 2022-23 than in 2009-10, including 100,000 fewer children. I will stick with those statistics.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Janke, and the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, who is not in his place, asked about the two-child policy. We believe that those on benefits should face the same financial choices when deciding to grow their families as those supporting themselves solely through work. On 9 July 2021 the Supreme Court handed down the judicial review judgment on the two-child policy, finding that it was lawful and not in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I question the point about making a choice about having a child. People fall into poverty and need benefits after they have had a child. What do they do then?

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Of course, and the noble Baroness will know that I have spoken at length on this matter and that there are a number of exceptions to this particular policy. But I stick to our view that there is a balance to be struck between helping those people in the way that we do, not having the two-child policy and, equally, being fair to the taxpayer. I know that the noble Baroness will never agree to that.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

Does the Minister accept that many of these families are taxpayers and in paid work?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Absolutely. As I have said before, I do not think that we will agree at all on this—but, as I say, we are not minded to move on this policy. Both noble Baronesses will be well aware of our position on this.

There are encouraging signs that the economy has now turned a corner. Inflation has more than halved from its peak, delivering on the Prime Minister’s pledge, and is forecast to fall below 2% in 2024-25. Food price inflation is at its lowest since January 2022, at 4%, and wages are rising in real terms. We remain committed to a strong welfare system for those families who need it, and have uprated working-age benefits by a further 6.7% from this month and raised the local housing allowance to the 30th percentile of local rents, benefiting 1.6 million private renters in 2024-25.

Some questions were raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln and also alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about social housing, which is an important subject. Their questions were linked to items of damp and mould; they asked what the Government were going to do about this. The Government have now introduced Awaab’s law through the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, which gives the Secretary of State powers to set out new requirements for social landlords to address hazards such as damp and mould in social homes within fixed time periods. We are now analysing the responses to the consultation, and then we will publish a response setting out findings and bringing for secondary legislation as soon as possible.

What I should say, which think was alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is that everyone has a right to a safe and decent home. Since 2001, the decent homes standard, the so-called DHS, has played a key role in providing a minimum quality standard that social homes should meet. We are currently reviewing the DHS to ensure that it sets the right requirements for decency, and we will publish a consultation on a proposed new standard soon.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I am not against social housing—I am for social housing—but I want to break out of the situation whereby, if you get into social housing, you tend to fall behind everybody else. On what the Minister is saying about how they are going to change the requirements on social landlords, social landlords should be turning their tenants into people who can have a larger life and can get out of poverty. For most of them, even if they get into work, it is always in the low-wage economy, and they stay there. What are the Government doing about breaking the low-wage economy that many people in poverty find themselves in, who are often in social housing?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Indeed, I will allude to the cross-government work that is going on. It may be that it requires a letter to write on that point, but I shall allude to it later, if I have the time.

Altogether this year we will have spent £306 billion through the welfare system in Great Britain, including around £138 billion on people of working age and children. This includes additional support to ensure the best start in life for children. For example, we have extended free school meal eligibility several times and to more groups of children than any other Government over the past half century. They are now claimed by more than 2 million of the most disadvantaged pupils. In addition, healthy food schemes provide a nutritional safety net for more than 3 million children. For those who need extra help with essentials, as inflation continues to fall, we are providing an additional £500 million for the extension of the household support fund in England, for a further six months, including funding for the devolved Administrations.

While it is right that we maintain a strong welfare safety net, we know that having parents who work, particularly full-time, plays a key role in reducing the risk of child poverty. My noble friend Lord Effingham mentioned this. In 2022-23, children living in workless households were more than six times more likely to be in absolute poverty after housing costs than those where all adults work. This is clear evidence of why, with more than 900,000 vacancies across the UK, our focus is firmly on ensuring that parents get the right support to find work and succeed in work. Our policies include: our generous universal credit childcare offer for working parents; our in-work progression offer; further increases to the national living wage to £11.44 an hour; and national insurance cuts.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked about making the housing support fund permanent. The HSF is not the only way we are supporting people on lower incomes. April’s benefit uprating of 6.7% will see an average increase in universal credit of £470. Raising the national living wage will deliver an increase of over £1,800 to the gross annual earnings of someone working full-time on that wage. Uplifting the local housing allowance to the 30th percentile of local rents, as mentioned earlier, will benefit 1.6 million private renters by an average of £800 per year.

The noble Lord, Lord Bird, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Bennett, asked whether we accepted that a strategy was now needed. I did promise to try to answer this. We have consistently set out a sustainable long-term approach to tackling child poverty, based on evidence about the important role of work in substantially reducing the risk of child poverty. I am very aware of the interest that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, takes in this, and I reassure the House that Ministers continue to work across and beyond departmental boundaries to ensure that we take a co-ordinated approach to supporting vulnerable and low-income households. This includes a cross-government senior officials group on poverty, as well as bilaterals and meetings with external anti-poverty stakeholders. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, is right that Treasury input to this is vital.

I return to the question of childcare raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley. She asked what extra support we are providing to parents. The Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education work closely together to ensure that there is a comprehensive childcare offer that reflects different family circumstances, covering children over a range of ages.

Earlier, I mentioned some of the problems families in poverty face which mean that they can struggle to move into work and improve their financial circumstances. This Government offer a range of programmes to help people address these complex underlying challenges, so that they can take their first steps towards securing better outcomes for their families.

I applaud my noble friend Lord Effingham for making a number of interesting points. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, put it well when he said that they were interesting contributions to the debate. I agree with many of the points that he made.

The pupil premium funds schools to help improve educational outcomes and close attainment gaps for disadvantaged children in state-funded schools in England. Funding for this is increasing to over £2.9 billion in the year 2024-25. That is £80 million more than last year.

We are taking significant action to improve children’s health, which is another important point. This includes dramatically reducing sugar in children’s food, investing over £600 million to improve the quality of sport for children, and encouraging healthy diets for lower-income families through schemes such as Healthy Start. We are also investing £2.3 billion a year in mental health services.

The Money and Pensions Service’s UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing is a 10-year framework to help everyone make the most of their money. It has set out five goals to be achieved by 2030, including to see 2 million more children and young people receiving meaningful financial education.

One example of the support that we are giving is the Supporting Families programme, which is now the responsibility of DfE. This has funded local authorities to help almost 637,000 families experiencing multiple disadvantages to make sustained improvements with their problems.

A network of 300 supporting families employment advisers, specialist DWP work coaches, work with the programme, providing employment support that is helping almost 10,000 families, resulting in around 200 job starts every month.

My noble friend Lady Bottomley mentioned Reducing Parental Conflict. This is very close to my heart—I am directly responsible for it in government—and we have £33 million-worth of funding available from 2022 up until next year, 2025. This programme has enabled local authorities to support couples to address conflict in their relationship, which has helped to deliver positive impacts for children over no less than three major evaluations at the end of last year. We are also looking to see how we can ingrain that in the Child Maintenance Service, which again is my responsibility. I feel very passionate about it, and the work we do, by the way, helps to take 160,000 children out of poverty each year, and there is always more to be done.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Janke and Lady Bennett, spoke about childcare, and I want to give a quick response. The department is aware that, for some universal credit claimants, childcare costs present challenges to entering employment. To support people to become financially resilient by moving into work and progressing in work, eligible UC claimants can claim back up to 85% of their registered childcare costs each month, regardless of the number of hours that they work, compared to 70% in tax credits.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln is not in his place, and I am not sure why. I think I will write to him rather than answer him when he is not in his place. He asked about rural communities.

I shall conclude, given the hour, by reassuring the House again of the importance we place on this matter. The early years, as I am sure the noble Lord will agree, are vital to securing good outcomes for children, and that is why we continue to work across government to ensure the best start for all children, including through our early years childcare provision and funding for school breakfast clubs. We understand that many families still face challenges, we are not shying away from that, and we will continue to work to ensure that the welfare system supports families who need it. To conclude, with inflation falling towards target and the economy beginning to turn a corner—perhaps green shoots; I do hope so—it is right that we continue to support parents to meet their responsibilities towards their children by seeking employment opportunities wherever that is possible.

House adjourned at 9.21 pm.

Personal Independence Payments

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, we will shortly publish a consultation on personal independence payments. This will explore potential options to reshape PIP, to ensure that support is focused on those with the greatest needs, and will run for 12 weeks, ending in July. Outcomes for disabled people will be considered before implementing changes. There will be no immediate changes for current PIP claimants. I encourage all stakeholders to input to the consultation when it has been published.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his Answer. In his announcement, the Prime Minister singled out people with mental health problems as a particular group that could be excluded from personal independence payments in the future. As we know, these were introduced to help to meet the higher cost of daily living associated with long-term disability and ill health. The Prime Minister stated that people with mental illness would be better helped by treatment and services, but he failed to admit that there are currently 1.9 million people on waiting lists for NHS mental health services in England; they simply cannot get the treatment, because of chronic under- investment by the Government. Mental health services are, frankly, on their knees. Families living with disability are already disproportionately represented among the millions of our citizens currently struggling to meet the rising cost of living. If they are to be denied access to personal independence payments, does the Minister conclude, as I do, that these families would be pushed even further into more severe hardship and poverty?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

We need to take a step back. It has been over 10 years since the introduction of PIP, and we need to ensure that our system is fair and accurately targeted at those who need our support most. In the decade since PIP was introduced in 2013, the nature of health and disability has changed. The noble Baroness mentioned mental health, and she is right, but there may be better ways of supporting people to live independent and fulfilling lives. This could mean financial support being better targeted at people who have specific extra costs.

[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

My Lords, only yesterday in Grand Committee, my noble friend the Minister stated that the DWP is forecast to pay out nearly £300 billion in benefits by 2024-25, a sum which is completely unsustainable if we are to have sufficient funding for any other departments: defence, health, education and so on. Will he please just remind us of the future cost of the personal independence payment?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, I reiterate that there are several reasons why we want to bring forward this consultation, which will be launched in coming days. Cost is one factor but not the only factor, as I alluded to in my answer to the noble Baroness. Over the coming four years, PIP spending alone is forecast to rise by 63% from £21.6 billion to £35.3 billion. That is for the years 2023-24 to 2028-29. That is one of the reasons why we are reviewing PIP to ensure that the system is fair, accurately targeted to those who really need it the most, and delivers the right kind of support for people with disabilities and health conditions.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lord, PIP is not a general living benefit, unlike universal credit. It is designed specifically to help fund the extra costs that long-term severely disabled people have just to be able to live their lives, and often to be able to get to work. The Minister said just now that it is important to review all processes. I entirely agree, so why is it that seven out of 10 PIP appeals are won on the same evidence that the DWP had originally, which shows that this funding is desperately needed for the most disabled in our community?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I have already said that this Green Paper is a conversation that we are starting to see how the costs are best targeted and how people are best supported. The noble Baroness will know that some claimants will have considerable extra costs relating to their disability—quite right too—and others will have fewer costs or minimal costs. That is why this Green Paper will look at whether there are ways in which we can improve how we support people in the right way and in a way that is fairer to taxpayers.

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester]

My Lords, yesterday I visited National Star, an FE college that serves young people with severe lifelong disabilities. Many of them are being subjected again and again to reassessment throughout their lives. That is not only traumatising but a complete waste of time and resources. What will the Government do to take this into consideration so that people with severe lifelong disabilities are not subjected to reassessment again and again, unless, of course, that disability is generative?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate makes a very good point. It chimes with what I said earlier, which is that we need to target our resources in the right place and be sure that individuals are looked after in terms not of the end result but of the process. That is extremely important. I will make this point again: where an individual has severe conditions, it must be right that we, the state as a compassionate country, look after them, and we need to be able to provide a better focus. This is, again, one of the reasons why we are bringing forward this Green Paper.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, it is common ground among commentators that claimants who have realistic work prospects should be offered high- quality employment support. Why do the Government have so little confidence in their own policy that they feel it necessary to impose benefits cuts and the threat of sanctions, risking greater poverty and even destitution, rather than the life of dignity promised in the DWP press release?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

As the noble Baroness will know, you can claim PIP whether you are in or out of work. More than 5 million disabled people are in work. One of the aims is to continue to encourage those who are disabled to take up some form of work. I say again that it is incredibly important that this is done in a measured and targeted way in line with the needs of the individual.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister mentions that this as a conversation but that is not how the headlines read, is it? The headlines are that the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State are all about cracking down on young people, mental health problems, people who are sick, and people who do not want to work. The Government created PIP, so if there is a problem with PIP it is their problem. Everything about it is the Government’s responsibility. We have had 14 years. We have a problem with record numbers of people being locked out of work because of long-term sickness. How much of that is to down to the NHS failing? How much is down to lack of mental health services? How much is down to the fact that the systems that the Government have created do not work? We need change but, somehow, it is always jam tomorrow. I want to hear the Government come up with ideas. I do not want speeches that point out that we have spent 14 years buying no jam, then saying that there is no jam, then saying that jamlessness is a problem—but no actual jam comes along. Where is the jam?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I am certainly not going to allude to any jam. It may come with my tea later if I am allowed it. As the noble Baroness has alluded to, this conversation is designed to consider what future support for individuals should look at. That is why we are bringing forward this consultation on PIP. As the Prime Minister said on Friday morning, and I was there in person to see him deliver what I thought was a brilliant speech:

“This is not about making the welfare system less generous”.


It is for a greater focus on those “with the greatest needs”, for whom

“we want to make it easier to access”

support “with fewer requirements”. Those who need support will continue to get the support that they need. The consultation will explore changes to the eligibility criteria, the assessment process, as alluded to earlier, and the types of support that can be offered so that the system is better targeted towards individual needs.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, does anyone give any attention to the many millions of trade unionists who are paying the tax bills for all this? We keep on about the need to do things, which I am sure we need to do, but we seem to forget who is paying the taxes to make all this possible. We have to have a better balance. Tax has never been higher for middle-income earners. It needs to be put under control.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My noble friend is right. I have been very careful to say—and it is true—that we clearly need to continue to focus on those with the greatest needs. As has been mentioned earlier, we are due to spend £69 billion this year on benefits for people of working age with a disability or health condition. This is not sustainable, as the Prime Minister said himself on Friday morning.

Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 22nd April 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and my noble friend Lord Sikka for introducing their amendments. I also thank all noble Lords who have spoken. I will speak to Amendments 223, 299, 302 and 303 in my name. I should probably say at this point that I am late to this party but, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, I am not a data protection specialist, I am afraid. However, I am a social security nerd, so I am here for this bit right now.

Since this is the first part of the Bill on DWP powers to tackle fraud, I need to add my little statement on the “fraud is bad” move. Fraud is a problem and has been getting worse across this Government. There have been scandals in procurement, of which the infamous PPE contracts are just one example. There is tax due that goes unpaid at scale and, in social security, the percentage of benefit expenditure lost to fraud has been rising under this Government. However, as my honourable friends made clear in the Commons, a Labour Government would take fraud seriously and pursue all those who seek to take money fraudulently or illegally from the state. They would also focus on helping people to avoid inadvertent overpayments rather than just waiting for them to make mistakes then coming down hard on them at that point. This should not need saying but, in some of the discussions on this Bill elsewhere, there has been a tendency to frame the debates rather along the lines of a classical fallacy: “Fraud is really bad. This will tackle fraud. Therefore, this must be really good”. I know that we are fortunate that in the Minister we have someone who is able to have a much more nuanced debate. I look forward to having exchanges in a way that recognises the important role of this House in scrutinising the powers that the Executive want to take unto themselves, which is exactly what Committees in the House of Lords do so well.

Scrutiny particularly matters here because, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, and my noble friend Lord Davies pointed out, all these amendments—more than 200 amendments, 38 new clauses and two new schedules—were introduced on Report in the Commons. My honourable friend Chris Bryant tried to recommit the Bill so that the Commons could discuss it, but the Government refused. The interesting thing is that in their anti-fraud plan back in May 2022, the Government announced that they planned to boost the DWP’s powers to get information from third parties when parliamentary time allowed. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, made a fair point that departments have to wait for the right Bill to come along in order to use it, but the Government have known about this since 2022. They have had two years to draft the amendments, so although they might have had to wait for the Bill to come along, that does not seem a good enough reason for them to have waited until Report in the Commons to deposit them into the process. I hope the Minister will be able to explain the reasons for that.

My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti and others have asked some important questions about the scale on which these powers will be used; I am going to come back to that in our debate on the next group. It is hard to know the scale from the information we have so far, but DWP clearly does know, or has a sense of it, because paragraph 85 of the impact assessment states:

“Using our model to estimate volumes of hits for this measure, over the 10-year appraisal period, internal analysis has estimated that in total there will be an additional 74,000 prosecution cases, 2,500 custodial sentences and 23,000 applications for legal aid”.


It has modelled the volume of matching hits that would require investigation. Can the Minister tell the Committee what that number is? Also, what assurance can he give us that DWP has the resources to investigate that number of hits in a timely manner?

Paragraph 2 of new Schedule 3B says that the account information notices can only cover data going back a year and that they must be done in the week before they are given to DWP. Is there any time limit on how long DWP has to act on the results that have been handed over to it?

I turn now to the amendments in my name. Some of them are quite detailed because these powers are astonishingly wide and it is not at all clear how they could be used. I have deliberately tabled a series of amendments—in three groups in order to make sure that we have a chance to go into detail—to try to get information out of the Government and find out what this is about.

Amendment 223 is a minor probing amendment that would delete paragraph 3(1) of new Schedule 3B, which Schedule 11 to the Bill would insert into the 1992 Act. I will not rehearse it here but can the Minister explain what that provision is for and what its limits are? Neither I nor the people I have spoken to in financial services can understand why it is needed.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and others mentioned the fact that the Information Commissioner said he could not provide to Parliament his assurance that this measure is proportionate. My other amendments in this group are therefore designed to try to understand the impacts better. Amendment 302 would prevent these new powers coming into force automatically, while Amendment 303 would require the Secretary of State to fulfil several requirements before laying regulations to commence the powers. Amendment 299 is a minor consequential amendment. The effect of this is that the Secretary of State would have to issue a call for evidence, to inform the creation of the first code of practice, and consult relevant bodies. They would also have to lay before Parliament statements on key issues, of which I will highlight two.

The first would say whether and how AI will be used in exercising these powers, as well as how those proposals will take account of protected characteristics; this was touched on by my noble friend Lady Lister and others. That benefits often engage protected characteristics is in the nature of social security. Sickness and disability benefits engage disability, obviously; pensions engage age; benefits relating to children may engage age and also indirectly engage sex; and so on. The National Audit Office has warned that machine learning risks bias towards certain vulnerable groups and people with protected characteristics. So, what external governance or oversight is there to ensure that, once data are collected on the scale envisaged here, we do not end up with a mass breach of equality law?

The second issue I want to highlight concerns the provision that will be made to ensure that individuals subject to investigation do not experience hardship during it or lasting detriment afterwards. Given the comments of my noble friend Lady Lister about the cases from CPAG, can the Minister say whether a claimant’s benefits will be kept in payment while they are investigated following the data that are surfaced as a result of these trawls?

I am concerned that, given the potential scale of hits, a claimant who had, say, inadvertently breached the capital limit but then found themselves at the back of a long queue to be investigated could find themselves ending up paying back really large sums. The Minister will be aware of the recent media coverage, which others have mentioned, of how the DWP is treating people who were overpaid the carer’s allowance, a benefit that gives £81.90 a week to people providing at least 35 hours a week of unpaid care. It is a cliff-edge benefit—if your net earnings are under £150 a week, you get the lot; if they are over it, you get nothing—so a small rise in the minimum wage or a change in tax thresholds or rates can be enough to make someone entirely ineligible overnight, even if nothing changes in their circumstances.

As my noble friend Lady Lister said, apparently, DWP’s IT systems can flag when a carer’s income breaches the threshold but it does not necessarily do that, allowing them then to rack up potentially thousands of pounds’ worth of overpayments. The Guardian has investigated this issue; I shall mention two cases that it offered. First, an unpaid carer with a part-time charity job unknowingly breached the threshold by an average of £4.40 a week—£58 in total—caused by the automatic uprating of the national minimum wage. Because that left her not eligible for anything, she ended up being told to repay £1,715, including a civil penalty.

In the second example, a woman caring for her husband with dementia and Parkinson’s was told to repay nearly £4,000 for inadvertently exceeding the earnings threshold by calculating earnings from her zero-hours job on a monthly basis, as she thought the rules required, rather than a four-weekly basis, which they actually do; the rules around allowable costs and earnings are quite complicated. Crucially, according to the Guardian, she was told that, if she appealed, it could cost her even more. The Guardian quotes from a DWP letter telling her that, if she challenged the repayment order,

“the entire claim from the date it started will be looked at, which could potentially result in the overpayment increasing”.

Is that standard practice? Is DWP currently acting on all the alerts it receives of overpayments? If these powers are switched on, what safeguards will there be when that happens to protect millions of people from ending up paying back years of overpayments that DWP could have prevented?

Before embarking on investigations on this scale, we need to understand more about how this measure will work. We have had some excellent questions in Committee from the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, and others; I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken today. I have been made well aware of the strong views expressed about this measure in Committee. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, for her kind remarks. She is right: I take all these matters extremely seriously. I have listened carefully to all the speeches, although I might not agree with them. Many questions have been asked. I will attempt to cover them all, of course; I doubt that I will be able to but I assure noble Lords that it is likely that a long letter will be required after this. Obviously, I will reflect on all the speeches made in Committee today.

I start by talking about the timing of the introduction of this measure. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said that the measure was introduced, in her words, “on the late side”. As she alluded to, the DWP published the Fraud Plan in May 2022, where it outlined a number of new powers that it would seek to secure when parliamentary time allowed. In answer to her question and others, in the parliamentary time available, the DWP has prioritised our key third-party data-gathering measure, which will help it tackle one of the largest causes of fraud and error in the welfare system. We will not sit back and ignore an opportunity to bring down these unacceptable losses and better protect taxpayers’ money. I will expand on all of that later in my remarks.

Before attending to the themes raised and addressing the amendments, it is important to set out the context for the power for which we are legislating. Fraud is a serious and damaging UK-wide issue, accounting for more than 40% of all crime. To be fair, many speeches alluded to that. The welfare system is also a target for fraudsters, and we are seeing increasingly sophisticated attacks occur on a scale that we have not seen in the past. We all have our own experiences at home of fraudsters who try completely different methods, not linked to the benefits system at all, to try to gain money through ill-gotten uses and methods.

In 2022-23, the DWP paid out more than £230 billion in benefits and payments to people across Great Britain. I very much took note of the figure that my noble friend Lady Buscombe raised. I say to the Committee that this figure is forecast to rise to nearly £300 billion by 2024-25, in quite short order, so this is a really serious issue to address. However, more than £8 billion has been overpaid in each of the past three years because of deliberate fraud against the state or because genuine errors have been made.

To assist the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, to whose speech I listened carefully, fraud, not error, is the biggest cause of welfare overpayments, totalling £6.4 billion of the £8.3 billion overpaid last year. The noble Lord, Lord Vaux, also asked about the figures. These losses are largely because people are intentionally and knowingly taking money that they are not entitled to. This is not organised fraud either; the vast majority comes from individuals who are not entitled to the money. We cannot underestimate the lengths to which some will go in order to take money they are not entitled to or promote ways to defraud us to a wider audience. This new legislation is not just about protecting the taxpayer; it will help those who make genuine mistakes in their claim, and our swift action will avoid them building up large overpayments.

Some people have said that the department has the powers that it needs to fight fraud and error—I think that was alluded to even today. However, some of the current powers that we have to ensure benefit correctness are over 20 years old—a point that I think my noble friend Lady Buscombe made. In this time, fraud has evolved and become increasingly sophisticated and we must keep pace with the fraudsters. It is for this reason that the Government are bringing these new third-party data powers, as set out, as said earlier, in the fraud plan.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

I apologise for interrupting, but can the Minister show us in the Bill where those restrictions on the information that can be requested reside? As I read it, as I mentioned to the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, paragraph 2(1) of new Schedule 3B, as inserted by Schedule 11 of the Bill, is pretty wide when it refers to

“names of holders … other specified information relating to the holders … and … such further information in connection with those accounts as may be specified”.

So it appears that the DWP can ask for whatever it wants, rather than what the Minister just described.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

That is a fair challenge and I will certainly be coming on to that. I have in my speech some remarks and a much more limited reassurance for the noble Lord.

It is only when there is a signal of potential fraud or error that the DWP may undertake a further review, using our business-as-usual processes and existing powers—an important point. DWP will not share any personal information with third parties under this power, and only very limited data on accounts that indicate a potential risk of fraud or error will be shared with DWP in order to identify a claimant on our system. As I said earlier, I will say more about the limited aspects of this later in my remarks.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister, but will he be coming on to explain what these signals are? He is almost coming to a mid-point between innocence and suspicion called “signals”—is this a new concept in law? What are we talking about and where in all of Schedule 11 is the word “signal”?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

If the noble Lord will allow me, I would like to make some progress and I hope that this will come out in terms of what we may be seeking on a limited basis.

The first third parties that we will designate will be banks and other financial institutions, as the Committee is aware. We know that they hold existing data that will help to independently verify key eligibility factors for benefits.

This clause does not give DWP access to any bank accounts—a very important point—nor will it allow DWP to monitor how people spend their money or to receive sensitive information, such as medical records or data on opinions or beliefs.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, mentioned—I want to try to answer one of her questions—this power cannot be used to suspend someone’s benefit. Cases that are flagged must be reviewed under existing processes and powers—business as usual, which I mentioned earlier—to determine whether incorrect payments are being made.

Our approach is not new. HMRC has long been using powers to request data at scale from banks on all taxpayers under Schedule 23 to the Finance Act 2011. Our approach carries similar safeguards. Tax fraud is no different from welfare fraud and should be treated similarly. This was a key point that the Prime Minister made only on Friday when he committed to bring DWP’s fraud and error powers more in line with those of HMRC. This is one clear area where we are seeking to do this.

This allows me to go on to very important points about safeguards. Not all the cases found through this power will be fraud. Some will be errors which the power will help to correct, preventing overpayment debt building up. Some cases may also have legitimate reasons for seemingly not meeting eligibility requirements, for example where claimants have certain compensation payments that are disregarded for benefit eligibility rules. In those cases, no further action will be taken. Our robust business-as-usual processes will ensure that all cases are dealt with appropriately.

Another question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, on safeguards was to do with the legislation. A key safeguard is that we cannot approach any third party either; there must be a three-way relationship with the department, the claimant and the third party. This safeguard will narrow the use of this power substantially and ensure that it is used proportionately, as these three-way relationships are limited, meaning that data cannot be gathered at scale from just any source for any purpose. Any third party we will want to get data from will need to be designated in affirmative regulations that noble Lords will have an opportunity to scrutinise. These regulations will be accompanied by a code of practice. We will be bringing that forward, and we will consult on the code before presenting it to Parliament—which answers a question raised by, I think, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron.

The power also ensures that we can request only very limited data on benefit recipients. I think this addresses a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux. We must work with key third parties to define what is shared, but our expectation is that this would be a name and date of birth or a unique payment number, along with the eligibility criteria someone has matched against: for example, a benefit claimant who has more savings than the benefit rules would normally allow.

Outside controls will apply here, too. DWP already handles vast amounts of data, including personal data, and must adhere to the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

On the point, which again was raised during this debate, about the remarks made by the Information Commissioner’s Office and its updated report on this measure, published as Committee started and which the Committee may be aware of, I was pleased to see that the commissioner now acknowledges that the third-party data measure is in pursuit of a legitimate aim, stating:

“I understand and recognise the scale of the problem with benefit fraud and error that government is seeking to address and accept that the measure is in pursuit of a legitimate aim. I am not aware of any alternative, less intrusive, means of achieving the government’s stated policy intent based on their analysis”.


I think that is a significant point to make, and it is a point with which I very strongly agree.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

It is also worth pointing out that the paragraph I quoted follows immediately on that. That is the qualification that I quoted.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Yes, I am aware of that. I think the noble Lord was alluding to the point about proportionality. I listened carefully and took note of that, but do not entirely agree with it. I hope that I can provide further reassurances, if not now then in the coming days and weeks. The point is that there is no other reasonable way to independently verify claimants’ eligibility for the payment that they are receiving.

I turn to the amendments raised, starting with the stand part notice from the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Chakrabarti, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, who is not in his place, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. They and my noble friend Lord Kamall, who is not in his place, interestingly, all made their case for removing the clause, of which I am well aware. However, for the reasons that I just set out, this clause should stand part of the Bill.

In raising her questions, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, made some comparisons with HMRC. There are appropriate safeguards in place for this data-gathering power, which will be included in the code of practice. The safeguards for this measure will be equivalent to those in place for the similar HMRC power which Parliament approved in the Finance Act 2011.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

When might we see the code of practice? It would be extremely helpful to see it before Report, as that might short-cut some of these discussions.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I will need to get back to the noble Lord on that, but perhaps can reassure him that it is already being worked on. You can imagine that, because of the sensitivity of these powers, we are working very carefully on this and making sure that it will be fit for purpose.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

Can we see the draft code of practice before Report?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

That is part of the answer that I gave to the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, which I think is a fair point.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, asked about the code of practice and what steps my department will take to ensure transparency and accountability in the exercise of these powers if they are implemented. In the primary legislation, we will make provision to publish the code of practice, which will set out general guidance on how the third-party data power will work, as I have mentioned. We will develop the code of practice with relevant third parties and it will be consulted on publicly before being laid in Parliament. We will explain what the expectation is for data holders and ensure full compliance for the DWP. This will provide assurance that we will operate transparently and mirror the approach that we have taken with other DWP powers. Any changes to the code of practice, other than minor changes, will also be done in consultation with stakeholders.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, stated that the power was too broad and the gist of one of her questions was that there is no need for all these benefits to be in scope. As the noble Baroness has demonstrated, there is a wide range of benefits and therefore potential avenues for fraudsters to seek to exploit or for error to creep in. That is why it is important that the power enables the department to respond proactively, as new fraud risks emerge.

That said, as the noble Baroness knows, the power will not be exercisable in all the benefits that she listed, such as child benefit, because the legislation is drafted in such a way that it could reasonably be exercised only in relation to benefits for which the Secretary of State is responsible. I reassure the Committee that using Section 121DA of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 is a consistent approach that we take to defining benefits in this way to safeguard all existing legislation and account for a benefit being, for example, renamed or amended. It should be stressed that the listing of a benefit does not mean that this power can or will be exercised upon it. The conditions in the third-party data legislation must still apply, and therefore not all benefits will be subject to this measure. That is a very important point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

I would be convinced about the Government’s intentions, and would not press this amendment at the next stage, if the Minister can name just one big accounting firm which since 2010, as a result of a court judgment that said it was selling unlawful tax avoidance schemes, has been investigated, fined or prosecuted. If he can give me such an example then I will be convinced that the Government are seriously tackling tax fraud and its enablers.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Lord has set me quite a challenge at the Dispatch Box. It is out of scope of today’s session but, having said that, I will reflect on his question afterwards.

I am aware that time is marching on. My noble friend Lord Kamall asked about burdens on banks. We believe that the burdens on banks will be relatively low.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, made a number of points; I may have to write to her to expand on what I am about to say. Removing the requirement for third parties to provide legible copies of information means that DWP could receive the information but there is a risk that the information is not usable; that is my answer to her points. This could limit the data that DWP receives and prevent us utilising the power in full, which could in turn impact the savings due to be realised from this important measure.

I turn to the final amendments in this group, which were raised by the noble Baroness. They would place requirements on the Secretary of State to issue statements in the House and consult on the code of practice. We will talk more about the code of practice later on in this debate, and I have already made clear my firm opinions on it: we will take it forward and are already working on it. There will be a consultation that will, of course, allow anybody with an interest in this to give their views.

I turn to the number of statements that must be made in the House regarding the practical use of the measures before powers can commence, such as the role that artificial intelligence will play or assurances on any outsourcing of subsequent investigations. This is an important point to make and was raised by other Peers. I want to make it clear that this measure will be rolled out carefully and slowly through a “test and learn” approach from 2025, in conjunction with key third parties. To make these statements in the House would pre-empt the crucial “test and learn” period. I say again that discussions with the third parties are deep and detailed and we are already making progress; this point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, on the link with banks and third parties.

Importantly, I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, that we will not make any automated decisions off the back of this power; this was also raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. The final decision must and will always involve a human being—a human agent in these cases—and any signals of potential fraud or error will be looked at comprehensively. I am grateful for the remarks of my noble friend Lady Buscombe on this matter.

I know that I have not answered a number of questions. Perhaps I can do so in our debate on another group; otherwise, I certainly wish to answer them fully in a letter. I hope that I have explained clearly, from our perspective, why this power is so important; why it is the right power to take; and how we have carefully designed it, and continue to design it, with the key safeguards in mind. I strongly value the input from all those who have contributed today but I remain unconvinced that the proposed amendments are necessary and strengthen the power beyond the clear safeguards I have set out. With that, I hope that the noble Baroness will not press her opposition to Clause 128.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

I may have missed something, but can I just check that the Minister will deal with the matter of signals, which he mentioned at the beginning of his response? Will he deal with where that phrase comes from, what they are, whether they will be in the code, et cetera? There are a lot of questions around that. Does it amount to actual suspicion?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Absolutely; I am keen to make sure that I answer on that. It may be possible to do so in the next group but, if not, I will certainly do so in the form of a precise letter—added to the larger letter that I suspect is coming the noble Lord’s way.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

A number of pensioner groups are watching these proceedings. I have received some messages. They are asking, “When is the Minister going to answer the questions asked about the operation of the surveillance of recipients of the state pension, especially those who have foreign accounts?” I assume that the Minister will clarify that in any subsequent letter to me.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Absolutely; the noble Lord will know that I have not managed to answer all the questions. I have tried to bring in everybody on this important and serious debate. The answers will be forthcoming.

[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

I thank my noble friend very much for all the explanation that he has given thus far. I just want to add a word that has not been mentioned: deterrent. One of the reasons why the Government have sought to introduce this in the Bill, I believe, is that it is hugely important that we are much more thoughtful about what will stop people doing the wrong thing. It has become an old-fashioned word but, from a legal, practical and moral standpoint, does my noble friend agree that this is a practical deterrent to make sure that people do the right thing?

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

Is it not one of the dangers that this is a deterrent to people claiming these benefits?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I have a response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, about signals. The signal is where the criteria or rules for benefit eligibility appear not to be met, and Parliament will have agreed those rules.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, the Committee will be grateful to hear, I hope, that I will not try to capture such a rich conversation. I thank the Minister for his careful listening and consideration. I will read carefully what was said at the Dispatch Box and what is about to be said during our discussion on the next two groupings because, without seeing all that in the round, I cannot truthfully say whether the questions asked by noble Lords have been answered.

I share a little of the concern that I can see agitating the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, about the words “signals”, “criteria” and “codes”, which are not promised in the Bill but are suddenly appearing. Indeed, the Minister will remember that, in a private meeting, we talked about how those criteria might be gamed and, therefore, how detailed they could possibly be. There may still be some differences of opinion, and possibly differences of practice, that need to be worked out.

Of course, for now, I will not press my opposition to Clause 128 standing part. I welcome further conversation between now and Report but, I have to say, I lost count of the number of times noble Lords have said “proportionate” in this debate and how many times the issues of scope, sweeping powers and so on were stated by some very expert people—both in and outside of this Room, not simply noble Lords.

The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, mentioned a pilot but I seem to remember that some of the outcomes on equality in that pilot got lost in translation. Perhaps it would be good to find out exactly what the pilot did and did not reveal—that is, not just the things that the department would like to reveal but some of the things that were not tested.

I do not doubt the personal integrity of the Minister in the slightest but I am unsure about the idea that the “test and learn” approach has no boundaries around it in the Bill. It is like saying, “Trust us. We test and learn, and all those powers exist”. With that, I will withdraw my stand part notice on Clause 128, but we have quite a lot of questions still to answer in our discussions on the next group of amendments and beyond.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I would of course much prefer Clause 128 not to stand part, but we were just privileged by a master class from the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. She talked about these being probing amendments, but I do not think that I have seen a schedule so expertly sliced and diced before. If those are probing, they are pretty lethal. I agree with so many of those elements. If we are to have provisions, those are the kinds of additions that we would want and the questions that we would want to ask about them. I very much hope that the Minister has lots of answers, especially for the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, but also for the other noble lords who have spoken.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, the debate on this group has focused largely on the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, regarding using powers only where there is a suspicion of fraud, making provisions so that information collected can be used only for the narrow purpose of determining overpayment, removing pension-age benefits from the scope of the powers and requiring approval from Parliament before the power can be used on specific working-age benefits.

I was going to go over the reason behind these measures once again, but I will not delay the Committee on why we are bringing them forward. I believe I did that at some length in the previous group, so I am going to turn to the amendments raised.

Narrowing these powers as suggested by the noble Baroness, with Amendments 220, 221, 222 and 222A, will leave us exposed to those who are deliberately aiming to defraud the welfare system and undermine the policy intent of this measure. In fact, taken together, these amendments would render the power unworkable and ineffective.

To restrict the power to cases where DWP already has a suspicion of fraud, as suggested by the noble Baroness, would defeat the purpose of this measure. The intent is to enable us to use data from third parties to independently check that benefit eligibility rules are being complied with. We use data from other sources to do this already. For example, we use data from HMRC to verify earnings in UC and check that the benefit eligibility rules are being complied with. Parliament has determined that, to be eligible for a benefit, certain rules and requirements must be met, and the Government have a responsibility to ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent responsibly. Therefore, the DWP should be able to utilise information from third parties to discharge that duty. This is an appropriate and proportionate response to a significant fraud and error challenge.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, also proposed that the power should be restricted such that it would not apply to persons who hold an account into which a benefit is paid on behalf of someone who cannot manage their own financial affairs—such persons are referred to as “appointees”. An appointee is a person who may be appointed by the Secretary of State to act on behalf of the benefit customer. Usually, the appointee becomes legally responsible for acting on the customer’s behalf in all matters related to the claim. It is also made clear to the appointee, in the documents that they sign, that we may get information about them or the person they are acting for from other parties, or for any other purposes that the law allows, to check the information they provide.

Under our proposed legislation, it is right to say that there may be some people who are not themselves benefit claimants but who have given a person permission to pay benefits into their bank account, who may be picked up in the data returned by third parties. Under the noble Baroness’s amendment, we would not be able to gather data on appointees, which would make the power unworkable, because third parties would not be able to distinguish between an individual managing their own benefit and an appointee. It also assumes that no fraud or error can occur in these cases, which is definitely wrong. I assure the noble Baroness that we handle such cases regularly and have robust existing processes for identifying appointees on our own database and for carefully handling cases of this nature.

The noble Baroness would also like to see the power—

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

Rather than asking all my questions at the end—I only have four—I will try to get answers as we go. On the appointees, I think that the Minister has just said that the reason the Government need these powers is that some appointees will have their benefit money paid into their own account, not into a separate second account, so that therefore needs to be the case. I am very happy to reword this amendment to make that clear. I was talking specifically about the linking arrangements; the amendment does not talk about excluding appointee accounts. It specifically says that accounts that are linked to an account into which the benefit is paid are not there. I am happy to reframe that in a way that defines it—I am sure we can find a way around this—but does the Minister accept the principle behind this: that, if there is a separate account that, say, I hold for a child who is there, this should not give a reason to look into my own accounts? Or is he saying that the Government want to look into my own accounts, or business accounts, or family accounts as well? Which is it?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The Government do wish to have that power. I should make it clear that an appointee could be a claimant as well, so there is a dual issue. It is important that we retain that power, to be sure that we cover the whole ground. But I will reflect on the noble Baroness’s point.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

There were a number of questions on the other group that related specifically to people’s willingness to take these roles on and what the unintended consequence of putting appointees and carers in this position might be for the DWP, with people saying, “Actually, not me, then”.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point. I may be able to give her further reassurances in a letter because, on the one hand, we do want the power to be able to cover the ground. On the other hand, there are necessary protections that we must put in place. So further reassurances probably need to be given. There is that balance to be struck, but I hope I can continue to do that.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

If I may pursue this, I am not sure I heard the Minister’s answer to the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron—or maybe I did. If it was a charitable bank account, a business account or anything else, I think the Minister said that it would be subject to that scrutiny as well. Once someone acts for a carer, all of their bank accounts could be scrutinised—surely that is ridiculously unfair.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I am not sure I agree with that. I hope I can reassure the noble Baroness, as I tried to on the previous group. Using our test and learn process, which is already under way working closely with the banks, bringing them along with us and them bringing us along with them—there is a good relationship there—we are working through these important matters.

The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, is important, as is that of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. Again, it is important to give those reassurances. They will be forthcoming, and that is all part of our test and learn process, which I hope provides some reassurance.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

I want to be absolutely clear on this point, because I am still not totally sure I am—I raised this the first time around on the last group. If I, as a landlord, have been paid rent as housing benefit directly, my accounts are caught. If I am a trustee of a charity and a cosignatory on a bank account, is the Minister saying that that charity’s account will be caught or not? I want to be absolutely crystal clear on that.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

This is part of the filtering discussions that are already taking place at the moment.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

Under the terms of the Bill, would this allow that to be caught?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Yes it would. Landlords are in scope. We will filter this through in terms of the business as usual. If we receive any information—

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

Given that, has the department done an assessment of the likely impact on landlords being willing to take people on housing benefit? It is already an issue that landlords are reluctant to take housing benefit recipients, but, with this, I could see the market completely freezing for people on benefit.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I clearly cannot go far enough today, but, because this is important and we are in Committee, I need to give some further reassurances on where we are in the process in terms of filtering. If I may conclude my remarks, I will finish this particular point. This is all part of the test and learn, and I give some reassurance that we are working through these important issues in relation to appointees and landlords.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

It is precisely as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said on the last group—this is a massive net. It feels as though this is so experimental that there is no certainty about how it will operate, and the powers are so broad that anything could be subject to it. It sounds extremely dangerous, and it is no wonder that everybody is so concerned.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I do not agree with that. We have done quite a lot of business together across the Chamber. That is a slightly sweeping issue, because I have given some reassurance that we are already working with the third parties to make sure that we have robust processes in place. For instance, when we are talking about landlords, while it is possible that a landlord’s account may be matched under the measure, only minimum information will be provided by the third parties to enable my department to identify an individual within our own database. With all the data received, we will make further inquiries only where appropriate and where the information is relevant to the benefit claim. This is already part of our business-as-usual processes.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the Minister but, throughout these two groups, he has, in a sense, introduced wholly new concepts. We have “test and learn”, “filtering”—which sounds extraordinary—and “signals” but none seem to be in the black letter of the schedule, nor in the rest of the Bill. We have a set of intentions and we are meant to trust what the DWP is doing with these powers. Does the Minister not recognise that the Committee is clearly concerned about this? It needs tying down, whether we need to start from scratch and get rid of the clause or take on board the amendments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. The uncertainty around this is massive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Right. A number of questions have been asked. I am not sure that I can give too much more clarity—only that I will go back to what I said on the first group in terms of the limited nature of what we are trying to do. I was very clear about its limited nature, I think.

This leads on to the numbers that noble Lords are asking me about. Of course, I cannot give that figure, as we do not honestly know it. Until we move forward on bringing the measure in, we will not know it. What is certain is that we need this power to be able to gain the limited data that we need. When we receive the data, it may be the case that we need to follow up. I am sure that we will not need to follow up in the vast majority of cases but we must have this power.

To the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, I say this: this measure is for UK accounts only. I hope that that is also helpful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

This is the problem. We have been talking about limited information, a limited nature and the limited things that we will look at, but that is not what the Bill says. We need to think seriously about how we should limit the rights in the Bill to match the requirements of the DWP. At the moment, there seems to be a huge gap.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

That point is very much noted. I will certainly take it back. Clearly, we need to provide greater reassurance on the limits and scope, as well as on what we are trying to do. I regret that I am not able to give those answers in full to the Committee now but I hope that, today, I have already taken us further forward than we were before we started. That is quite an important point to make.

I shall touch on the benefits that are in scope of this measure, a point that was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. I think the noble Baroness wishes to restrict the power to working-age benefits, but pension-age benefits are not immune to fraud and error—I wanted to address that—and it is our duty to ensure that these benefits are paid correctly and in line with the benefit eligibility rules that Parliament has previously agreed. Every payment that the DWP makes has eligibility criteria to it. Parliament has considered these criteria in the passage of the relevant social security legislation, and the Government have a responsibility to check that payments are being made in line with those rules so that taxpayers’ money is spent responsibly.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

Pension benefits other than pension credit have eligibility criteria attached, but I do not know any eligibility criteria applying to pensions that you could discover from someone’s bank account.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The example that the noble Lord will be aware of links to what the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, was saying about some pensioners who have moved abroad but, for whatever reason, have not told us that they have done so and continue to receive the uprating. The figure for the fraud aspect—or it could be error—linked to state pensions is £100 million.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

Presumably the DWP already knows the address of the bank account to which an overseas pension is being paid. Why does it need to know any more?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My understanding is that it needs to have these powers to be able to cover the ground properly. I say again that these powers are limited, and whatever comes from the data that is requested from the third parties will end up being, we hope, limited. Even then, it may not be used by us because there is no need to do so.

The power covers all relevant benefits, grants and other payments set out in paragraph 16 of new Schedule 3B to the Social Security Administration Act 1992, as inserted by Schedule 11 to the Bill. To remove pension-age payments from the scope of the power would significantly undermine our power to tackle fraud and error where it occurs. Pension-age payments are not immune to fraud and error, as I have mentioned. I will give an example of that. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked whether people would be notified of their bank accounts being accessed.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

Before the Minister moves on, I asked specifically about child benefit. Could he please answer that?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I know that I said earlier that child benefit was not included. I will clarify that child benefit is not a benefit for which the DWP is responsible or has any functionality for. This measure will be exercised by the DWP Secretary of State, and we cannot use this power for that benefit.

I was in the middle of answering a question from the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I will finish this answer, if I may. The DWP personal information charter lists banks and financial institutions, and other parties, among the parties with which DWP may share data and from which we may receive data. It also lists checking accuracy and preventing and detecting fraud among the purposes for which we may share or receive information.

A claimant will not be notified if their account details have been returned to DWP by a third party as that could alert fraudsters to the criteria, enabling them to evade detection—I think that is a valid point—but they will be notified if a DWP agent determines that a review is required as a result of the information provided by the third party. That notification will be done through the business-as-usual processes.

Moving on to defining working-age payments in legislation, which relates to the final amendment in this group, Amendment 235, which was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, it would require the Government to specify in regulations the working-age benefits with which this power could be used. As she demonstrated, there is a wide range of benefits and therefore potential avenues for fraudsters to seek or exploit or for error to creep in. That is why it is important that the power enables the department to respond proactively as new fraud risks emerge.

That said, as the noble Baroness knows, the power will not be exercisable in all the benefits she listed—I took note of her long list—such as child benefit, which we have just mentioned, because the legislation is drafted in such a way that it could reasonably be exercised in relation to benefits for which the Secretary of State is responsible. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and the Committee that in the first instance, we plan to use this with universal credit, employment and support allowance—ESA, pension credit and housing benefit. That is the way forward.

There may be a number of questions that I have not addressed, but I hope that I have continued to make the case for why this measure is so important and our aim to tackle fraud and error. I continue to make the case that it is proportionate and that proportionate safeguards are in place. With that, I hope the noble Baroness will agree to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

Will people with power of attorney over the account of someone who receives a benefit also be caught up in all this? That is another vulnerable group, so this could be extensive and quite worrying. Secondly, I am concerned by the Minister’s answers on this group. They have made me feel somewhat more strongly than I did when giving my response on the previous group, so I feel I should put that on the record.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

That is understood. I know that I need to provide further reassurances. Attorneys are included for the reasons that I set out for appointees.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for taking the time to try to answer the questions. I know that we have given him a hard time, but I thank him for responding so graciously.

He did not take the opportunity to explain the process simply to the Committee. It may be that it is too difficult to explain simply or that, in fact, he can explain what they intend to do, but the powers allow them to do something much wider than that. It would be helpful if he could reflect before he writes as to how best to frame this. I think I heard him trying to say to the Committee that people think that more information is being handed over than will in fact be handed over. If that is the case, it would be helpful if he could spell that out because that would at least begin to help people understand better what is going on.

Secondly, in responding to me, the Minister focused, understandably, on the content of the amendments. I was trying to explain that the reason they are probing is that it is quite hard to get a handle on this. It is a big, sprawly thing, and I am trying to find a way of nailing some jelly to the table; I am trying to find ways of containing it. I still do not know which benefits the Government can use the powers over and which ones they intend to. It is a great step forward to know where they are going to start; that is really helpful. I am also grateful for the clarity, whether people are happy or not, that the Government intend to use the powers on the state pension and make that clear because that was not the impression given in the House of Commons when the matter was debated there. That is a helpful piece of clarity for the Committee and the wider community.

I know this is hard; fraud is difficult. A case was mentioned where an organised fraud gang stole more than £50 million in social security benefits. I know it is hard, and I know it is hard for the DWP to understand precisely where these things will lead when you begin to go there. I understand that if it is too boxed in, it makes it difficult to be able to follow where the fraudsters go, who are often one step ahead of the Government. I get all of that, but there is a risk that when it has spread so widely, the level of concern gets to the point that it will not be as publicly acceptable as the Minister thinks it is. I ask him to take the opportunity, when he goes back to the department, to talk to colleagues and think about what kind of assurances the Government could try to find a way of giving to people, either staging processes or government oversight. I ask him to think about that because the kinds of concerns he has heard here will only increase as the powers start to unfold.

In the next group of amendments, which I think will now be discussed on Wednesday, I want to dig further into the question of who the data and account notice can be given to and what criteria will be used. That will be another chance to flush out some things, so I give notice now that I would like the Minister to look into those areas next. I am grateful for his efforts and to all Members of the Committee who have explored this matter. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Child Poverty

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, these statistics cover 2022-23—a year when war in Ukraine and global supply chain challenges led to unexpected and high inflation rates, averaging 10% over the year. These factors are reflected in the statistics. The Government have since taken firm action to support those on the lowest incomes, including through uprating benefits by 10.1% from April 2023, increasing the national living wage from April 2023 and providing cost of living support worth £96 billion over 2022-23 and 2023-24.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, we have a record number of children in poverty, of whom two-thirds are considered to be in deep poverty, and an annual increase even on the Government’s preferred measure. Plus more food insecurity means more hungry children and reliance on food banks. So what was the Secretary of State’s response? “The plan is working”—working for whom? When seven in 10 children in poverty have at least one employed parent, parental employment can be only a partial answer. Welcome as it is, benefits uprating is really the minimum we should be expecting. Will the Government therefore now accept that it is high time for a new plan, which scraps the social security policies that drive worsening child poverty and sets out a comprehensive, cross-government child poverty strategy?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Setting such a strategy and targets can drive action that focuses primarily on moving the incomes for those just in poverty—just above a somewhat arbitrary poverty line—while doing nothing to help those on the very lowest incomes or to improve children’s future prospects. Therefore, we have no plans to reintroduce an approach to tackling child poverty focused primarily on income-based targets. Having said that, perhaps I can reassure the noble Baroness that my Department for Work and Pensions consistently works across government to support the most vulnerable households.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that this figure from the department graphically indicates the importance of the school meal service? Would it be better to go back to a position in which the head teacher, rather than some large external body that is unknown to the school, is responsible for the quality and delivery of the service?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I note that the noble Lord has raised this point in the House in the past, and the Government certainly support the provision of nutritious food in schools. It ensures that pupils develop healthy eating habits and can contribute to concentrating and learning in the classroom. As he will know, we have extended free school meal eligibility several times and to more groups of children than any other Government over the past half a century. We provide free meals for 2 million disadvantaged pupils through the benefits-related criteria.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister was quite selective in the figures he gave in his Answer because, in fact, by every official measure, child poverty has been rising faster in the UK than in most OECD and EU countries, many of which have actually reduced child poverty during this period. It is the fastest rise we have seen for almost 30 years, and this is not an accident; it is the direct consequence of the Government’s political decisions, taking money away from the poorest families to benefit the better off. Does the Minister not agree that it is now imperative that the Government bring forward the sort of comprehensive plan to which my noble friend referred, to start to restore the incomes of these families and children and take them out of poverty?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I beg to differ with the noble Baroness, because analysis shows that the Government’s cost of living support prevented 1.3 million people falling into absolute poverty after housing costs in 2022-23. That includes 300,000 children, 600,000 working-age adults and 400,000 pensioners. The £96 billion I alluded to earlier included £20 billion for two rounds of cost of living payments for more than 8 million households on eligible means-tested benefits. I gently say to the noble Baroness that she should bear these very important initiatives in mind.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to the 200,000 children who represent 14% of the children who are eligible for free school meals, even on the very small amount of money their parents are allowed to use, who are not registered. They are not registered because there is no automatic registration, which can happen extremely easily once people are handed out universal credit. I have asked the Government this many times: why does automatic registration not happen? This is 200,000 kids today, right now, who did not get a meal that we pay for.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I have certainly taken note of the point raised by the noble Baroness, but I say again that we have extended eligibility several times and to more groups of children than any other Government over the past half a century. Free meal support is also available to around 90,000 disadvantaged students in further education, so an awful lot has been happening in that space.

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

My Lords, the fact that nearly one in three children in the UK are living in relative poverty is the logical outcome of years of starving social services and funding for the most vulnerable in our country. At worst, that translates into empty tummies, cold homes and even no bed to yourself. I am sure the House would be interested to hear the Minister’s excuse—surely not Ukraine again. In an election year, I have to tell him that the British people will neither forget nor forgive what this Government have done to our children.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I think that is a little unfair from the noble Baroness. She will recognise, as I think the House does, that Ukraine has played a part. In the previous Question we heard about our role as a country, which is continuing, and we have had support from the Opposition on that. We have set a clear and sustainable approach, based on evidence of the important role that parental employment plays in reducing the risk of child poverty. We have a huge number of initiatives in my department to encourage more people to get into work. That is why, with more than 900,000 vacancies across the UK, our focus is firmly on supporting parents into and to progress in work, which helps directly with poverty.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister challenged my noble friend and cited statistics on absolute poverty, which, as we know, is the Government’s favourite measure. The last time we discussed this, on 28 February, the Minister told me that the Government prefer absolute poverty rather than relative poverty as a measure. He said:

“The absolute poverty line is fixed in real terms, so it will only ever worsen if people are getting poorer and will only ever improve if people are getting richer”.—[Official Report, 28/2/24; col. 1028.]


Since the latest official statistics show that 600,000 more people, half of them kids, are living in absolute poverty, does the Minister accept that the Government’s policies are now pushing children into poverty? If so, what are they going to do about it?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I have already spelled out what we are doing about it. Do not forget that these figures are one year out; they are retrospective figures. In my opening Answer, I spelled out what we had taken action on. The noble Baroness is right; we do prefer absolute poverty, because relative poverty can also provide counterintuitive results, as it is likely to fall during recessions due to falling median incomes. Under this measure, poverty can decrease even if people are getting poorer.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I wonder whether the percentage of children in absolute poverty in this country is higher or lower than in France or Germany. I wonder whether this Government have some lessons to learn from our neighbours.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Indeed. I do not have any figures to answer the noble Baroness’s question, but she makes an important point, which other Peers have raised, about the importance of bringing as many children out of poverty as possible. I happen to cover the Child Maintenance Service in government, and I feel very proud that every year we take 160,000 children out of poverty by ensuring that the money flows from the paying parent to the receiving parent—it is very important.

[Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of TUC-commissioned research from November 2022 that showed that more than a quarter of children whose parents had paid jobs in social care are growing up in poverty? That is a scandal—220,000 children of parents who do work that I am sure noble Lords will agree is vital, skilled and valuable work for this country. Can the Minister tell me whether the picture in respect of the children of workers in social care has got better or worse since 2022? If it is worse, what are the Government going to do about it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I have already mentioned many of the things that we are doing. I have also been quite open by saying that the war in Ukraine and the pandemic have had an effect. Those are not the only factors, but it is important to recognise that. To support people in work, the voluntary in-work progression offer is now available in all jobcentres across Great Britain, providing an estimated 1.6 million low-paid workers on universal credit access to personalised work coach support to help them increase their earnings. The department is working at pace with a number of important initiatives to encourage more people into work, which takes more children out of poverty.

Occupational Pension Schemes (Funding and Investment Strategy and Amendment) Regulations 2024

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Occupational Pension Schemes (Funding and Investment Strategy and Amendment) Regulations 2024.

Relevant document: 17th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, these regulations were relaid before the House on 26 February. They bring in new measures that will support trustees and sponsoring employers of defined benefit occupational pension schemes to plan and manage their scheme’s funding over the longer term. The aim of the regulations is to achieve a fair and long-lasting balance between providing security for members of defined benefit schemes and affordability for the sponsoring employer.

I start by giving a bit of background. The UK has the third-largest pension system in the world, with assets of around £2 trillion held in both defined contribution and defined benefit schemes. The pensions sector is an integral part of the UK economy. I will focus on defined benefit pensions and these regulations. Over the last decade, across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the UK has seen the greatest improvement in defined benefit funding.

There are around 5,000 defined benefit schemes in the UK, and around 9 million people who depend on these pensions when they retire. Defined benefit pension schemes, often referred to as DB schemes, are a promise that scheme members will receive a guaranteed income in retirement, usually paid monthly, for the rest of the member’s life. Between them, UK DB schemes have around £1.4 trillion of assets under management.

Most DB schemes are closed either to new members or to new accruals. This means that they have an increasing number of members who are retired or close to retirement, and either a decreasing number of members or no members at all who will make contributions to the scheme. This is referred to as “maturing” and will change the funding requirements of the scheme. It is therefore extremely important that employers and trustees work together to manage maturing schemes to ensure they can continue to pay members’ pensions.

DB funding levels have improved in recent years through a combination of employers supporting schemes and, more recently, changes to interest rates. The Work and Pensions Committee report on its DB schemes inquiry, published today, recognises the new opportunities and challenges this brings. But financial markets and economic conditions are changeable and funding positions can quickly deteriorate. The Government will respond to the Work and Pensions Committee report in due course, but I reassure noble Lords that these regulations are designed to provide a solid foundation across current and future economic and market environments. This is good news for schemes, members and sponsoring employers, and for the UK economy.

The majority of DB schemes are well managed and supported by their sponsoring employers, but some schemes are not as well run, or are taking an inappropriate level of risk in their approach to investment and funding. This can lead to funding problems developing. Over a quarter of all DB schemes are in deficit on a technical provisions basis. This means that they have a deficit which will need to be repaired to ensure that members get their promised pensions when they are due to be paid—hence the regulations we are debating today.

The regulations build on the current funding regime for DB schemes, embed good practice and provide clearer funding standards. This will help ensure that all DB members have the best possible prospect of getting the benefits they have worked so hard to build paid in full when they fall due.

The consultation attached to these regulations built on extensive discussion, engagement and consultation with the pensions industry going back as far as 2017. This joined-up working is ongoing, with the development of the Pensions Regulator’s draft code of practice through to its most recent consultation on the statement of strategy. We had good engagement with the consultation: 92 responses from a wide variety of organisations across the pensions industry. The industry broadly welcomed the draft regulations but expressed some concerns that they were too prescriptive and could be improved for schemes open to new accrual. We listened, and the regulations before us today take account of that.

A key aspect of this work was the importance of balancing, on the one hand, clear standards for both open and maturing schemes that reflect the best practices that most schemes already follow and, on the other, ensuring that individual schemes have the flexibility to make funding decisions that best suit their own unique circumstances. Also, schemes must continue to be affordable for their sponsoring employers and to pay out all pensions as they fall due. Importantly, we aim to promote better collaboration between sponsors and trustees in the formulation of an overall journey plan. This includes an investment approach that reflects the scheme’s circumstances.

The Pension Schemes Act 2021 introduced new scheme funding requirements for DB schemes and requires DB scheme trustees to prepare a statement setting out the scheme’s funding and investment strategy, which must be submitted to the Pensions Regulator. These regulations are principle-based and set out detailed requirements for the funding and investment strategy. Better information and clearer funding standards will help address the problems the Pensions Regulator has faced in the past and will enable it to be more effective, efficient and proactive in carrying out its statutory functions.

As part of this strategy, all DB schemes will be required to set out their plans for how pension benefits will be paid over the long term. For example, this could be through buyout with an insurer, by entering a superfund or by running on with continued employer support. The strength of this employer support is fundamental. For the first time, these regulations introduce key principles for assessing the strength of the employer covenant. This is an assessment of the financial ability of the employer in relation to its legal requirements to support the scheme.

Schemes are required to have a clear plan along their glide path to maturity and low dependency, so as not to need further employer support by the time they are significantly mature. Schemes are required to reach low employer dependency in reasonably foreseeable circumstances. This embeds existing good practice that funding risks taken by a scheme before they reach maturity must be supportable by the employer, while providing explicitly for open schemes to support more risk, because there is more time for them to address any funding shortfalls.

The best possible protection for a DB member is to be supported by a strong and profitable employer. That is why we have made it clear that recovery plans are to be put in place as soon as the employer can reasonably afford, but this does not mean that the employer must put every free penny into the scheme to the detriment of its growth and other commitments. We believe that this sets an appropriate and sustainable balance while ensuring that schemes get a fair share of available resources.

The funding and investment strategy must be reviewed and, if necessary, revised, alongside each scheme valuation, which is usually every three years. When submitted to the Pensions Regulator, these valuations will be accompanied by a statement of strategy. This will articulate the trustees’ approach to long-term planning and management, as well as their assessment of the implementation of the funding strategy, key risks and mitigations and any lessons learned. Depending on circumstances, the Pensions Regulator now has the flexibility to ask for less detailed information from the schemes to improve long-term planning and avoid unnecessary burdens.

These regulations help drive the Government’s vision to encourage schemes to invest in ways that are productive for the UK economy. They make it clear that schemes have significant flexibility to choose investments while meeting the low-dependency principle. This will help support trustees in reacting to changing circumstances while investing in the best interests of their members.

The pensions industry has welcomed these revised regulations, which are explicitly more accommodating of risk taking, where supported by the employer covenant. They increase the scope for scheme-specific flexibility, including allowing open schemes to take account of new entrants and future accrual when determining when the scheme will reach significant maturity. The Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association recently commented that this is

“a significant set of ‘win’”

for its members.

I move on to the timing of these regulations. They will come into force on 6 April 2024 and a scheme must have a funding and investment strategy within 15 months of the effective date of the first actuarial valuation obtained on or after 22 September 2024. We intend that the Pensions Regulator’s funding code will be laid before Parliament this summer. The regulations, the code and guidance will work in partnership. These regulations will encourage the widespread adoption of existing good practice and help the regulator to intervene more effectively to protect members’ benefits.

I am confident that the Occupational Pension Schemes (Funding and Investment Strategy and Amendment) Regulations 2024 will support schemes and employers to make long-term plans and enable the Pensions Regulator to take effective action when needed. This will help ensure that scheme members get the retirement they have contributed towards and rightly expect. In my view, the provisions in these regulations are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. I commend the regulations to the Committee and beg to move.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount very much for his normal exposition. I am sure that we will hear a lot more detail from other participants. I will confine myself to some questions rather than go through this large document, which the noble Viscount did not go through in great detail.

First, is there a disproportionate governance burden for small firms? I was worried about how small firms will be able to cope with these new regulations. Secondly, the resolutions will add to the duties of defined benefit schemes. Can the noble Viscount elaborate on how these duties will be dealt with? Thirdly, will the regulations help set out long-term objectives? I was a bit worried about comments that these schemes are all coming to an end and that we are just relying on people sitting in place on the schemes and very few new people, if any, coming in.

Is there a conflict—I could not answer this myself—between the beneficiaries and the employers? The noble Viscount used the phrase “fair balance”. I am not sure that this conflict shows a fair balance. On the duty of trustees to protect the interests of the beneficiaries, can we rely on all these trustees to do so, especially when the schemes are, in effect, stationary and being wound up? Also, there is the impact of the fund being hived off to insurance companies. These funds are hived off so often; will the beneficiaries’ interests really be protected? I think that will be their worry.

Finally, the noble Viscount talked about actuarial valuations. So often they mean that funds keep moneys in reserve, probably more than a commercial firm would have to. Can he comment on that? It is very nice and careful that they do so, but sometimes that might have a negative impact on the beneficiaries. I hope he can give me some answers to those numerous questions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to these regulations and all noble Lords who have spoken for their contributions. I should perhaps say that nothing in my speeches should ever be taken as actuarial advice or indeed advice of any kind, unless you have money to burn. As we have heard, these regulations implement significant changes to the DB scheme-specific funding requirements in association with the revised DB funding code. I will go through what I understand them to be doing—I invite the Minister to correct me if I have it wrong—and I have some questions.

The changes are driven by the recognition that most DB schemes are closed to future accruals and are maturing, which makes the longer-term strategic management of them important if members are to make sure they get their benefits in full when they fall due. The key principles underpinning the changes are a requirement for schemes to be in a state of low dependency on their sponsoring employer by the time they significantly mature, and better trustee engagement and better understanding and accountability between trustees and the regulator.

The regulations require trustees to agree a funding and investment strategy—an FIS—with the sponsoring employer, which will set out that longer-term funding objective and how it will be achieved over the lifespan of the scheme. Schedule 1 then sets out the matters and principles that trustees must have regard to in setting their FIS, and that they have to think about liquidity and unexpected requirements on the journey and after significant maturity, including the strength of the employer covenant, which I will come back to in a moment.

The trustees have to consult the employer on a statement of strategy on progress in achieving their FIS. In the absence of a Keeling schedule—I confess I am slightly obsessed with them—I went back to the Pensions Act 2004. Section 221B states that

“trustees or managers must, as soon as reasonably practicable after determining or revising the scheme’s funding and investment strategy, prepare a written statement of … the scheme’s funding and investment strategy, and … the supplementary matters set out in subsection (2)”.

Paragraphs (a) to (c) of Section 221B(2) say that the supplementary matters are: the extent to which trustees or managers think the funding and investment strategy is being successfully implemented, and if not, what they will do about it; the main risks faced by the scheme in implementing the funding investment strategy and what they are doing about the risks; and their reflections on past decisions and lessons learned. Paragraph (d) adds:

“such other matters as may be prescribed”.

These matters are now prescribed because they are defined by Schedule 2 to these regulations, which specifies the information to be covered in the strategy statement.

I assume this means that TPR will now have discretion on the level of detail it can request from a scheme in relation to the supplementary matters. Otherwise, without that discretion, it would have to rely on its existing powers and the setting of the clearer funding standards in these regulations. Is that a correct assumption? How will the DWP monitor whether the regulator is delivering that higher level of probability for which it is shooting? Are the Government leaving the door open to the prospect of increasing the regulator’s powers? That is an interesting one.

To return to the covenant, Regulation 7 puts the employer covenant assessment on a formal legal footing for the first time. The covenant now appears to be central to the new regulatory framework, rather than being left for the regulator to cover in the code. I presume the intention is for this to be an area of increased focus for trustees. This is welcome, given the increasing importance of covenant strength to the decisions made by trustees, although I suspect the law is catching up with trustee thinking as much as driving it.

However, getting access to enough information to assess the employer covenant is not always easy, and trustees and employers may not always align in their view of the strength of the covenant. The Minister mentioned that change can come quickly. We live in a world where changing markets and the impact of technology, mergers and acquisitions, leveraging and new creditors can all make a material difference to the strength of the covenant in pretty short order. The same forces can also reduce trustee confidence in the strength of the covenant in the longer term.

Regulation 7 requires trustees to assess the strength of the employer covenant, looking at current and future developments and the resilience of the business when they are setting or revising the FIS. As the Minister mentioned, funding deficits must be addressed

“as soon as the employer can reasonably afford”.

But we are also told that the impact on the sustainable growth of the business must be taken into account. Does that not put the trustee in the position of being faced with a push-me pull-you set of regulatory requirements, where the two are pulling in different directions?

Trustees will be required to seek more detailed information from the employer regarding its business. The regulator will provide updated guidance on the covenant, which will set out its expectations of both employers and trustees, and the regulations will clearly require trustees and employers to work more collaboratively in future. I have two questions about this, following the issue flagged up by my noble friend Lady Drake. Because placing the assessment of an employer covenant on a legal basis is novel, we need the Minister to make it clear how the regulator will resolve disagreements between trustees and employers on the current and future strength of the covenant, where that is inhibiting agreement on the FIS. If they cannot agree on the FIS because of different views on the strength of that, what will the regulator do about it? Secondly, will the regulator be able to impose its own view of the covenant on trustees?

Regulation 16 strengthens the requirements on the chair in respect of the strategy statement. It seems that the code has been drafted in a manner which assumes that chairs of trustees are appointed by the trustee board. I believe that there are still occupational schemes where the appointment of the chair is wholly the decision of the employer. Does this carry any implications for the requirements placed on chairs appointed in that way?

The costs incurred by trustees, which are funded by employers, will inevitably increase as a result of this. I am quite sure that the Minister will have read the 13th report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. I will not read it out in detail, but it points out the DWP’s assessment that about 16% of DB schemes had deficits in March 2023. It says:

“The Impact Assessment … claims that, as a result of these Regulations, DB schemes’ aggregate ‘deficit reduction contributions’ could be around £0.26 billion lower over the 10-year period compared to the current situation”.


It goes on to point out a range of issues around this, but what interests me is this:

“We note … that the IA states that it is based on data from March 2021, ‘therefore more recent market developments (particularly the rise in interest rates and gilt yields which impacted the estimated liabilities) are not captured in the modelling.’ In the light of market volatility, the House may wish to explore how robust DWP’s assumptions are about the potential benefits of these Regulations”.


I do not have a dog in this fight, but could the Minister put a response to that on the record? What assurances can he give the Committee in response to the concerns of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee?

Another point was made by that committee in its 17th report. I think the Minister indicated—or maybe he did not; I cannot remember—that this is a revised version of an instrument originally laid on 29 January. The DWP had to amend the content to amend the commencement date of one of the provisions to ensure that it aligned with the policy intention. Yet again, for the record I note a disappointment that once again we are having another instrument laid because of errors made in the original that needed to be corrected. It is becoming a bit of a pattern, I am afraid. But in this case, it provides us with an opportunity. In its 17th report, the SLSC said at paragraph 7:

“Our 13th Report of this session provided the House with extensive supplementary information on how the obligation is intended to work, and we are disappointed that DWP did not take this opportunity to improve its Explanatory Memorandum”.


Can the Minister explain to the Committee why the Government did not take that opportunity afforded to them by the need to reissue the instrument?

I have two quick points to make that were raised by other Members. First, on the Work and Pensions Select Committee report, the Minister said that the Government would respond to that in due course. I recognise that it has only just come out and they will not be able to. However, there is one point that would be helpful in particular—they will already have thought about this—which is that the committee raised the position of open schemes and relayed concerns that, despite some of the changes that had been made, some open schemes still thought that the new regime could require them to de-risk prematurely. Are the Government confident that they have landed in the right space on this?

Secondly, my noble friend Lady Drake asked a very important question about the regime governing investment by schemes that have reached significant maturity, essentially about whether they will no longer be required to balance cash from investments and liabilities going out. It would be very helpful if we could know about both of those.

I apologise to the Minister that I have, yet again, asked a number of questions, but I am grateful and look forward to his reply.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken in this short debate. As usual, there were a number of specific and quite technical questions, notably from the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. I shall do my best to answer them. I think that some of them may be included in some of my rounding-up answers to other questions—but, as she will expect me to, I shall write a letter copying in all Peers if I fail to answer all of them.

Just on the question that the noble Baroness raised about the draft regulations, we outlined in the consultation response, as she alluded to, on 26 January 2024, that we would legislate for the regulations to come into force from April 2024, applying to scheme valuations from September 2024. That recognised feedback through the consultation about the need to give the pensions industry sufficient time to prepare before the requirements took effect. The regulations as drafted meant that one component of the reforms, the recovery plans, would come into effect on 6 April 2024 and not 22 September 2024. Since laying the regulations, we have recognised that this has the potential to cause confusion and additional administrative requirements for schemes. That is why we withdrew the regulations and relaid a revised version.

For clarity, we made two changes to the regulations. The first amendment was to ensure that the changes to recovery plans took effect only when the effective date of the actuarial valuation to which the recovery plan relates is on or after 22 September 2024. The second, in light of the first, is to clarify that changes which relate to actuarial valuations and reports also apply only on or after 22 September 2024. I reassure the noble Baroness that no other changes were made. These changes restate our intention to give sponsoring employers, scheme trustees and managers the same amount of time to prepare for the new requirements in the recovery plan.

I do not believe that I have an answer to the Explanatory Memorandum question, but I shall see whether I can address that before my remarks have concluded.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Yes, I will do my best to do so. Regarding the Explanatory Memorandum, as outlined, because the changes here were focused on clarifying the date on which the regulations came into effect, the changes to the Explanatory Memorandum were limited to reflect the change. We shall note the feedback for future SIs. That is my answer but let me reflect on it; I might well be able to enhance it in the letter that I am clearly going to have to write.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I will not interrupt further but, just to clarify the question, the point the committee was making was not that the Explanatory Memorandum needed to be changed to reflect the changes in the instrument itself. It was that, since the department was having to relay the whole thing, why not take the opportunity to do a better job of the EM? That is all.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Absolutely. I think I have already indicated that lessons have been learned. From my point of view, I regret that we fell down on the Explanatory Memorandum and that we had to relay the regulations. Just for the record, I wanted to say that.

With that, I hope that we can take these regulations forward.

Motion agreed.

Women’s State Pension Age

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing the Oral Statement to the House. However, to paraphrase “Hamlet”, methinks the noble Viscount doth protest too much. It is all protest as to why he is not doing things.

From these Benches, we support the WASPI women in their campaigns, and we welcome that, after their years of work, the ombudsman has finally recommended compensation. They must be recognised as courageous women, and their persistence should be rewarded. Sadly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said, some have died along the way.

The noble Lord, Lord Hague, wrote a big op-ed in the Times today about why the WASPI women were not going to be paid. Basically, what he said can be summed up as “They should have known better”. At this late hour, I can think only to quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

“All the planning … and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint”.


I am afraid that what has happened is that so much time has elapsed that so many of the WASPI women have died or retired, and life has gone on.

The DWP has said, so I have read, that it will comply with the ombudsman’s decision. I would like the Minister to say how many WASPI women have died—a simple calculation, rather than the additional details that the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked for. Please will he come back to the House and say that the DWP has agreed, after consideration, that it will comply with that ruling, as the ombudsman suggested?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, for their comments. Some of what I will say chimes with the comments made by the noble Baroness. The Government are fully committed to supporting pensioners in a sustainable way that gives them a dignified retirement, while also being fair to them and taxpayers. We will carefully study the ombudsman’s recommendations in that respect.

I too am grateful to the ombudsman for conducting the investigation. The Government will provide an update to the House once we have considered the report’s findings; I will say a little more about the timings in a moment. Following the ombudsman’s five-year investigation —we should note that it has been five years—and his subsequent substantial report, it is right that we carefully consider his findings in full. That is work that this Government and the department are steadfastly committed to. I also make the point that the department has assisted the ombudsman throughout his investigation—which he recognises—by providing thousands of pages of evidence and detailed comments on his provisional views. As I said previously, the ombudsman’s chief executive herself has recognised that.

Something else that chimes with some of the remarks from the noble Baroness is that I well understand the strong feelings across the Chamber on these matters and the desire for urgency in addressing them. To echo points that have been made in the other place: these are complex matters, and they require careful consideration. It is therefore right that we take time to consider the ombudsman’s full findings.

There are many issues to consider, including that the courts concluded that the DWP gave adequate and reasonable notification of the state pension age changes. The ombudsman has noted in his report the challenges and complexity in laying the report before Parliament, through which he has brought matters to the attention of this House. We will provide a further update to the House, as I said earlier; but I also echo points made in the other place that it will be done with “no undue delay”.

The ombudsman is not saying that WASPI women suffered a direct financial loss, nor that all women in born in the 1950s will have been adversely affected. That adds to the complexity of the situation, which, again, is why the report requires proper and due consideration.

I turn to the points that were made. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked about remitting to Parliament. In saying that we continue to take the work of the ombudsman very seriously, it is only right that we consider the findings of what is a substantial document. In laying the report before Parliament, the ombudsman has brought matters to the attention of the House, so it is important that it is considered very carefully.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, raised some points about the 2011 Act. The Pensions Act 2011 accelerated the equalisation of women’s state pension age by 18 months and brought forward the increase in men’s and women’s state pension age to 66 by five and a half years relative to previous timetables. The changes in the 2011 Act occurred following a public call for evidence and extensive debates in Parliament. During the passage of the Act, Parliament legislated for a concession worth £1.1 billion, which reduced the proposed increase in state pension age for over 450,000 men and women. That means that no woman will see her pension age change by more than 18 months relative to the timetable set by the 1995 Act. These reforms have focused on maintaining the right balance between the affordability and sustainability of the state pension and fairness between generations.

On the figures that were raised, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, I will cite a few statistics that may be helpful to the House. Around 3.5 million women born in the 1950s are impacted by the state pension age, and around 2.2 million men born between 6 December 1953 and April 1960 inclusive are also impacted. At the start of 2024, there will be around 790,000 women born in the 1950s who are still to reach their state pension age of 66. On the number of women who have died, which was also mentioned, the department offers its very sincere condolences to the families of the 1950s-born women who have died before reaching state pension age.

A question was raised about the referral to Parliament and not to the DWP, as well as the question of trust. In reply, I quote what the ombudsman’s chief executive herself said on Sky News last Thursday, the day the report was published:

“The Government, the DWP, completely co-operated with our report, with our investigation, and over the period of time we have been working they have provided us with the evidence that we asked for”.


I respect the independence of the ombudsman’s office and note that he has referred this matter to Parliament. His report notes the complexity and challenges involved. In laying the report before Parliament, the ombudsman has brought matters to the attention of this House. As I have said before, we will provide a further update to the House.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked about considering giving 15 years’ notice. She is right that it is important to give people enough notice about state pension age changes. In the last review of state pension age, the Government committed to provide 10 years. That is intended to provide sufficient time to allow people to plan.

I will finish by stating that this Government have a very strong record in supporting all pensioners; for example, in 2023-24 we will spend £151 billion on support for pensioners, which represents 5.5% of GDP. That includes around £124 billion for the state pension. We are committed to ensuring that the state pension remains the foundation of income in retirement—now and for future generations. Just to make the point, we are honouring the triple lock, which was mentioned on Sunday by the Chancellor, and is being put into the Conservative Party manifesto. Also, we are increasing the basic and new state pensions by 8.5% from next month. I mentioned earlier in the Chamber that we now have 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty after housing costs than in 2010. I thank both Peers for their comments.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

The House should thank the Minister for bringing us the Oral Statement and answering the questions. We should, however, be under no illusion that this is only a minor element of the issues raised by the 1950s women arising from the increase in their retirement age. This stage is not about any form of restitution of the pension they have lost, it is simply about a failure on the part of the DWP to provide the people affected with adequate information. What is clear from the ombudsman’s report is that the DWP failed to adequately inform those concerned. That is what the report finds. It also finds that it constituted maladministration. Those points, those issues, were identified in the stage 1 report. So that part is not a surprise. The Government have known that for some time.

This stage identifies that that maladministration amounted to an injustice, and it suggests that those who were affected by that injustice are entitled to a remedy. The Secretary of State said in the Commons yesterday—he said it 26 times, by my count—that there would be “no undue delay”. Well, “undue delay” implies to me that there will be a delay. The Secretary of State argued—it has been repeated by the noble Viscount today—that the reason for this delay is the complexity of the issues.

I am afraid I do not have much sympathy at all for this issue of complexity. The issues are clear and straightforward: a group of women were told later than they should have been about the change in their retirement age and, because of that, they suffered detriment—a loss of autonomy and a loss of life chances. That is the injustice. That is all clear. It does not need any further assessment or thought. It absolutely leaps off the page in the ombudsman’s report.

My question for the Minister is: whatever the need for delay to work up the fine details of any deal, will he not accept that it is now time to acknowledge there was maladministration, as identified some time ago by the ombudsman? Will he recognise the injustice that is set out in this report? Will the Government commit to implementing some remedy in the light of the maladministration and the injustice?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

As I made clear earlier, the report came out only on Thursday. We have said very clearly that we want to have enough time to be able to look carefully at all the details in the report. This touches on some of the points that the noble Lord has made.

Could I just say that the story the noble Lord has presented is not entirely the actual story? For example, it is important to remember the state pension age changes were considered by the courts during the ombudsman’s investigation. In 2019 and 2020, the High Court and the Court of Appeal respectively found no fault with the actions of the DWP. The courts made it clear that under successive Governments, dating back to 1995—and I make the point about successive Governments—the action taken was entirely lawful and did not discriminate on any grounds. During these proceedings, the Court of Appeal held that the High Court was entitled to conclude, as a fact, that there had been

“adequate and reasonable notification given by the publicity campaigns implemented by the Department over a number of years”.

Just to add to that, to be helpful to the noble Lord, since 1995 the Government have used various methods to communicate the state pension age changes, including leaflets explaining the legislative changes, advertising campaigns to raise awareness and directly writing to those affected. So I would just make the point that that is one of the complexities and that it is not all as the noble Lord says. As I have made clear before, this is one of many complex issues that we need to look at as a result of the production of this report.

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

I thank the Minister for the Statement. On the general issue of the state pension, I warmly welcome the commitment by the Government, through the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the weekend, to the maintenance of the triple lock. It is extremely important that that assurance is given. I remember when we negotiated the confidence and supply agreement with the then Conservative Government, this was one of our central demands and the Government committed to that. I am glad that it remains in place.

On this issue of the WASPI campaign, I congratulate the women and those behind it, who—over many, many years—have brought it to this point. I understand the complexities, I understand it was produced only on Thursday and I understand the need for a considered look at it. Both the Opposition and the Government take that position. But I do worry, along with others, about this continued repetition of “undue delay”. It has been five years, as the Minister indicated, since this was first referred to the ombudsman and many more years that this has been under consideration. Can the Minister give your Lordships’ House some kind of indication of when this is going to come back to Parliament? We know the timescale for the remainder of this Parliament. It might not be that long. We need action as quickly as possible. The women concerned deserve that. The action has to be one that entails a clear commitment to proper compensation.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, for his support and endorsement of our stance on the triple lock and our decision to include it in our manifesto. On the points on WASPI that he has mentioned, absolutely—I think I have said this before—I recognise the strength of feeling and I am aware of the urgency in dealing with many of these matters. I probably will not repeat it again, but just to say it briefly, I have highlighted very clearly the complexity of the issues. The noble Lord would not expect me to be in a position to set out a timetable, even if I could. So I am afraid that I will disappoint him by sticking to the line, which is that we will be coming back to Parliament without undue delay.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the WASPI and Back to 60 campaigners on their quest for justice. The ombudsman’s reports have said that:

“Our investigation found maladministration … thousands of women may have been affected by DWP’s failure to adequately inform them that the state pension age had changed”.


This has led to anguish, hardship and many other problems. I have met many of these women and listened to their arguments and to their case. This problem of not telling them about the hike in pension age is part of a bigger problem about how women have been treated by successive Governments. Despite the Equal Pay Act 1970 and the illusions of equality, women continue to be treated as second-class citizens. The gender pay gap persists, which then leads to the gender pension gap. Despite hiking the state pension age for women, women continue to receive a lower state pension. No attempt whatever has been made to equalise the two, although the equality horse was ridden to raise their state pension age. Unfortunately, many of the wronged women have died. I am sure that the House would agree that justice delayed was justice denied.

I do not understand what, in the light of this report, the Government need to consider. It is very clear that women have been wronged. I press the Minister to give a commitment that women will be compensated for the anguish and hardship that they have suffered and that this compensation will be paid, I hope after the Easter break.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I will disappoint the noble Lord by saying that I am not able to give any such commitment, apart from those that I have given. I am beginning to sound like a long-playing record but, despite what he said, these are complex matters, and he will have to respect that. I want to pick up on one thing that he mentioned—the role of DWP. Yes, the report’s words, not mine, were that the PHSO found maladministration in the steps that the department took between 2005 and 2007 in relation to notifying the women affected. I gently point out that this was when the Labour Party was in power. The point has been made before, but it is worth making. However, this is one of the many complexities. I am unable to answer the precise questions. I hope that the noble Lord respects this.