Carers: Financial Support

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My noble friend makes a very good point. As I said earlier, we are committed to supporting unpaid carers to balance the care they may give alongside work, if they are able to do so. Some caring responsibilities are extremely demanding. My noble friend may know that the Carer’s Leave Bill is currently going through Parliament. This will introduce a new leave entitlement as a right from day one to those being employed, available to all employees who are providing care to a dependant with a long-term care or support need.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, we have received the Government’s response to the report from the Adult Social Care Committee and we are grateful for it. Is the Minister aware that in that report we recommended that carer’s allowance be reviewed in the next year? We recommended that the threshold for the hours of caring be reduced so that people could access carer’s allowance more easily, and that the allowance be uprated in line with the national living wage. All those recommendations have been rejected. Can the noble Viscount tell me why?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

First, I wish the noble Baroness a very happy birthday. Moving on swiftly to her question, I very much note the points the report has produced; I read it over the weekend and it makes some important points. I said earlier how much we value the role of unpaid carers. Yes, the rate of carer’s allowance is £76.75 a week. The total caseload is 1.4 million and I think it very important indeed that we continue to review the role of carers and the carer’s allowance, but, as I mentioned earlier, there is a means-tested element here and top-ups are available for those in need.

Disabled People: Impact from Policies and Spending Cuts

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right to raise PIP. We are targeting support at those with the greatest needs, as she raised. PIP exempts a household from the benefits cap and is uprated by CPI, and it is payable regardless of a person’s employment status. On her particular points, I am pleased to say that we continue to see an improvement in the way that we look at and pay PIP, and particularly in the clearance times—the noble Baroness will know that there have been some delays. I will write to her on her specific question about the content. As I say, the delays are very much a priority for my department at the moment.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I take the Minister back to his answer on personal assistants. When we were taking evidence in the Adult Social Care Committee on the provision of personal assistants, it became perfectly obvious that there is a real crisis for those people who do not want to ask their families to care for them and who would really benefit from personal assistants. One lady we spoke to had employed 27 personal assistants in the course of a year, none of whom could stay with her because they could not afford to. What is the Minister going to do, if he is not going to do an impact assessment, to find out what is actually going on in the lives of these people, particularly in an area where the data is extremely short and where we also know that people are having to take on personal assistants and then act as small businesses to try to organise their national insurance? For many, that is a huge burden.

Universal Credit

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I am sorry, it should be the debt repayment rate. I am grateful to the noble Lord. I am so eager to get this right, and noble Lords may understand that there are quite a lot of numbers and it is quite technical. I am quite emotional about the fact that we are the party of social mobility and we have introduced a system that we genuinely believe will be better for everyone. It is, however, a very hard system to get right for everyone, because everyone is different—we are dealing with different situations and circumstances and we do not want people to fall through the cracks.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

I appreciate what the noble Baroness has just said, because it is an extraordinarily complex system, and this is the biggest—and riskiest—change in social security for decades. She has said that people’s lives are different. When she refers to working conditions and benefits, surely she should remember what we have been saying about the need to take great care—universal credit is great in principle but very difficult to get right. A redesign should not be beyond the Government’s confidence.

I will repeat one question that was raised by both my noble friend on our Front Bench and by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. If the Government want, as they must, to simplify whatever they can, surely they should have a better answer than the one they have given about why they do not segment certain categories of people that cannot be treated universally. It would be relatively simple to do. Apparently the department has said that it cannot be done. That is not a good enough reason when the noble Baroness is struggling to explain what will happen. There is a risk of mistakes that will bear down on the very poorest with disastrous results. This is not scaremongering, and I resent it being described so: these are very serious challenges for the very poorest in our society.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I agree with some of what the noble Baroness said but not that I am struggling—I am just saying as much as possible in the time allowed. There is a lot to say—a lot that is positive. I repeat, however, that she is correct in saying that it is hard and that we have to get it right. That is why we are going to spend so much time on the design, which is not there yet—we have not yet designed the managed migration process. That is the point: we will have rolled out universal credit itself in all the jobcentres—634 of them, I think—by the end of this year, but we will take the actual managed migration process much more slowly, because it will lift people already on benefits from legacy benefits on to universal credit.

I wish that we could automatically transfer certain categories of people seamlessly, but we did that in 2011 when we were moving people from incapacity benefit to ESA, and the problem was that we missed some people’s change of circumstances and underpaid them. We do not want to take that risk again—we would be facing another judicial review. We know, however, that about 700,000 people are not receiving the legacy benefits—worth about £2.4 billion—that they are entitled to, and we want them to. That is one of the main reasons why we want face-to-face contact—work coaches and claimants working together to make sure that they get the right support.

Benefits: Reductions

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, like every other noble Lord who has spoken, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Bassam for initiating this debate. It is a poignant debate as well as a timely one because we are remembering our dear friend Patricia. One of Patricia’s favourite words was “decency”, and we know exactly what she meant by that. I was her Whip for some time when I was a social security specialist in this House. I do not think that a Whip has ever learned more or done less. Sitting beside Patricia for the pension and social security debates, I was enormously impressed. I used to pray that she would stay in good health so that I would never have to take over from her. We will miss her hugely all around the House.

Patricia and I both grew up in a society that had the benefit of the post-war social contract defined by national insurance, the National Health Service and free secondary education—the elements of a decent life. It laid the foundation for a family life that was free from fear. The tragedy is that we could have predicted in the past 10 years that fear would return, and indeed it has. I very much regret the way that the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, finished his contribution; I was very appreciative of it until that point. The point is that we have seen the return of fear: not just being unable to envisage owning your own home, but the immediate day-to-day fear that comes from not being able to pay your rent or bills, or to buy food.

How did we ever come to this point? Patricia was an accomplished historian, and it is worth reflecting on the years between 1997 and 2010 when we are now certain, by irrefutable measures, that child poverty fell by one-third due to a combination of more affordable childcare, the minimum wage, access to jobs, better benefits and better services—years in which family incomes grew. The years between 1997 and 2010 proved that when Governments are serious about reducing child and family poverty, they can do it, and Patricia was part of that Labour Government.

The past eight years have shown how very easy those measures are to undo, even things that you think are certain and deep in the system. Year-on-year cuts in public spending have removed vital services, such as children’s services, that have an immediate impact on how people live and work. There was a real cut of £12 billion in welfare benefits in 2015, £3 billion of which were cuts to work allowances in universal credit, a scheme predicated on “making work pay”—one of the many paradoxes to be exposed; the rest was an accumulation of cuts in working benefits, tax credits, housing benefits, council tax benefits and of course child benefits. Of course I welcome the £1.7 billion that the Chancellor announced yesterday to increase working allowances, but there is a limit to how grateful we can be to a Government who are simply trying to repair the damage that they themselves have deliberately inflicted with calculated policies. And, as we have been told by many people around the House, there is indeed more to come.

We have heard a lot about jobs in this debate so far. The changing picture of family and child poverty is not about unemployment; it is more about the deregulated, insecure and unstable workplace that so many families are now in thrall to. In the middle of that massive economic change has come universal credit, the biggest and riskiest change in social security for decades and the biggest IT project, with all that that implies.

UC may well be defensible in principle, but it simply fails to acknowledge the realities of working life. It is a system based on an assumption of what is average, on monthly assessment, on erratic payments determined by arbitrary dates and calculated delays in payment, with a total reliance on IT. Families are flummoxed by how much or how little they receive. Many of them are for the first time in their lives in debt, in housing arrears, dependent on food banks.

The PAC said that universal credit is taking too long to pay people the money they need to live on. The Select Committee on Work and Pensions said that the universal support system needs to be completely overhauled if it is not to threaten not only the well-being of claimants, but the scheme itself. Every expert— and I include two ex-Prime Ministers—has said the same. The time for patching up is long gone. Another delay will solve nothing. It is imperative to embark on fundamental redesign to remove the structural disincentives, absurdities and perversities in the system. Does the Minister—who is not in her place—agree with that analysis and that there should be no mass migration until that is sorted? Does she also agree with the Resolution Foundation, which states:

“Reforming while cutting is reckless, and doing so on the back of a catastrophic decade for low-to-middle income families’ living standards is plain wrong”?


The effects are nationwide and in every community. I live in what looks like a very affluent community in Lewes, but there are pockets of poverty. We have three food banks. The wonderful volunteers who run the Fitzjohn’s Food Bank tell me that food bank usage has doubled over the past year. It has provided 43,000 meals. A mother came in the other day in total distress, having lost half her universal credit without warning. It is extremely anxious about the move to universal credit. That is just one food bank.

The rise of food banks is ascribable not just to universal credit. That is the problem: the causes go much deeper. That is why the damage relief Budget this week, which prioritised an increase in tax relief for top earners, is a disgrace. It simply puts the country on a faster track to even greater inequality.

In conclusion, we are witnessing fundamental changes in the welfare state that are dismantling the idea of the social contract and the notion of an unconditional social citizenship which included all families in the prospect of a decent life. Universal credit overrides the real choices that people face and attaches conditions to accessing and keeping work. Risk is no longer pooled; resources are no longer fairly shared. The burden is being borne by poorer families with fewer means to change their circumstances.

Patricia Hollis would never have been silent on that. She would never have stopped until she had persuaded the Government that they had to change. That is her legacy, and that is our duty.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, even if he has made most of my speech for me—although I can hardly complain about that. I shall try to add a few points that he did not mention.

This is a very regressive Bill that plays fast and loose with language and is based on a series of false premises. The basic tenets of the Bill have already been demolished by my noble friend Lady Hollis and the cumulative impact exposed by my noble friends Lady Sherlock and Lady Lister, the latter of whom also offered the House an alternative and rather more accurate title for the Bill.

I will confine myself to two broad points. The whole tone of the Bill is based on the assumption that if we call poverty by other names or measure it in other ways it will go away. In fact, as has been systematically demonstrated this evening, the Bill cuts the incomes of the poorest, and the working poor in particular. It puts children inevitably at the greatest risk. It prejudices family life and threatens the most vulnerable. It is a prospectus for greater poverty and greater inequality. It is a deliberate policy choice by this Government.

Clauses 1 to 7, which eradicate the poverty targets, are a very simple solution to the problem—they aim not to abolish poverty itself but simply the targets in the framework that has enabled successive Governments to examine, understand, chart and attack poverty. As we have heard many times already, the targets would be replaced by a set of life chances. It is a solution worthy of Kafka. The Government, as we have heard, are virtually alone in defending this. My own figures—perhaps the Minister can confirm this—say that 97% of respondents to the consultation on the new measures believe that the targets under the Child Poverty Act should be retained; a mere 3% disagreed. Can the Minister in winding up tell us who constituted the 3%? It would be quite interesting to know who agreed with him.

The reasons for the abolition are pretty unsubtle. Those income measures tell a graphic story of failure: half a million more children will be in absolute poverty after 2016 and a likely 4.7 million will be in absolute poverty by 2020. Clearly, income is no longer an indication, let alone a determinant, of poverty, because the Government decree it so. I find it astonishing that this can be defended with any integrity or logic, yet we know that the Minister is a man of great intelligence and integrity. Instead of robust, independent targets that will impose on the Government reporting requirements and accountability for troubled families, worklessness and educational achievement—these are the substitutes for the hard measures of income poverty. They are not, as they have been described by the Minister in another place, measures of poverty. They are not the root causes of poverty. Research shows that they are more likely to be the outcomes of poverty. There is a mass of evidence showing the proven link between poverty and educational failure, and much of the other indicators. If the Government were serious about the root causes of poverty, they can do something very simple: keep the income measures in place, add them to the new measures of life chances, explore the relationship between them and devise policies to attack them.

When I think about what the Government are trying to do by redefining poverty, I think of a young man I heard about last week. He is a student who was unable to go to school because he had only one shirt. When it was washed he had to wait for it to dry, but there was no money for the meter, so he missed school. That is what poverty means: it means having no money for the meter, not having a spare shirt or a spare pair of shoes. That young man possibly came from a troubled family, and it would be good to measure his educational achievement and his social mobility, although it would take years and involve sophisticated methodologies. The point is, by dismantling the full picture of the impact of policies on incomes of families in and out of work, we cannot equip ourselves to understand or frame the policies that have the greatest effect, let alone eradicate material poverty.

One of the most disingenuous aspects of this part of the Bill is that the new measures proposed are at most half measures. The most egregious gap is that there is no measure for the poverty of families in work—those families attacked by the attempted tax credit changes. Another is that there is no reference or target for measuring the cost of housing on families, at a time when working families are being priced out of the private rented sector. Will the Minister explain why these measures do not take into account those two most fundamental aspects of family costs?

That brings me to the second area: housing. As we have heard, Clause 21 introduces a 1% reduction to social housing rents for each of four years, beginning in April 2016. It looks like a sensible step and has been cautiously welcomed. What are not welcome are the perverse consequences. The predicted loss of income to housing associations is £3.85 billion. The Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated a loss of 14,000 homes; the National Housing Federation, 27,000. Which of these figures does the Minister agree with, or does he have an alternative figure? There is only one way to compensate for this: maintain funding for the affordable homes programme. Will he give us that assurance?

As we have heard, some of the most vulnerable people in society will be badly hurt by these reductions in rent. These are people in supported housing, people who need shelter from domestic abuse, people who would otherwise be on the streets. It is the most expensive form of housing support. It carries high rents. As the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, said, housing associations are already cutting back on their plans. It is such a false economy. Supported housing is estimated to save the country about £640 million a year. In 10 years’ time the shortfall, if these plans go ahead, will be 46,000 homes. The only certain prognosis is a massive increase in homelessness and greater cost to the NHS. This is yet another example of the dysfunctional disconnect between housing and health policy. The Bill has already been amended in the House of Commons to allow for some limited exemptions. I urge the Minister to do what many of the agencies that really know what they are talking about are asking him to do and introduce an amendment for the whole of the supported housing sector. That is the only thing that we can do to guarantee viability.

Finally, I come back to a very significant point about young people. The Government announced in the Budget that 18 to 21 year-olds making a new claim for universal credit will not be automatically entitled to support with their housing costs. As yet, the details are unclear, as is the process of implementation, but there is widespread concern that many young people may not fall into a protected category. Already, 8% of 16 to 24 year-olds report homelessness. The last thing we want is more young people recruited on to the streets. Will the Minister give us an assurance this evening that he will provide the list of exemptions that takes into account all the reasons that young people may need support with their housing costs, and that this will be the subject of wide consultation before any regulations are brought forward?

In conclusion, in his foreword to the Cabinet Office briefing on the Bill, the Prime Minister said that the Bill was designed to champion social justice. We on this side of the House have a better idea of what social justice means. It does not mean cutting benefits. It does not mean removing a guaranteed framework so that you know how many people are in poverty and whether those figures are going up or down. It means being fair and introducing policies that really support families and the most vulnerable in our society.

Architecture and the Built Environment

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Monday 28th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a very important report, and I am very grateful to my noble friend for securing the debate and for introducing it so comprehensively.

The unifying and really big idea in the report, which has not been provided with such clarity or meaning before, is about what constitutes the elements of good places and good place-making. What makes the argument in the report compelling is not least that it presents a view of planning which is potentially creative, humane, connective and dynamic—somewhat the opposite to the constrained and rather mean-spirited version that we have had in recent years, which is focused on development control, is seen to be burdensome and has been unfairly blamed for failure, notably to deal with housing supply. I suggest that those failures have their roots in the economic and social challenges which show up the clear failure of policy on place-making and regeneration as a whole.

I am inclined not just to welcome the report but to say, “Amen: at last a different vision. A prospect for the sort of change that so many people who care about this country and what it feels and looks like have wanted for a long time”. In particular, the report makes clear a positive and integrated version of place-making, in which you indeed need planning, landscape, architecture, conservation and engineering working together across disciplines. We have never needed such a powerful vision more urgently than we do now. As a country, we need to plan on a scale which has simply eluded us so far. We need to build new power stations, green energy sites, gas storage facilities, reservoirs, airports, railways and towns. That all requires of us an approach to spatial planning, integrated labour markets, environmental sensitivity and climate change. We need to plan for food, energy and climate security. At the same time, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, made so clear, we need to conserve and work with the character of what makes this country so beautiful and different: the spectacular heritage of the everyday and everywhere.

To do all that means accepting the second definition in the Farrell report: that place is character. It involves politics, life, advocacy, community and the environment—elements which bring together not just the professionals but the whole community. Fundamental to that is expanding and sharing knowledge and the need to learn the constituent elements of place-making from the primary school to, yes, the planning committee. I do not agree with the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, made. I think that there is a lot we can do to assist planning committees of elected officials to understand some of the basic criteria that go into making good decisions.

We also need to inspire a new and energetic generation of place-makers drawn widely from different disciplines who can be taught in different ways by different people—not least, to develop a national habit of design. I have reservations about detail and implementation. For example, although I applaud the observation that conservation and development are not either/or, I do not think that the answer lies in bringing English Heritage and the CABE-Design Council into a single organisation. They deal with different criteria, which are often contestable, of development.

I am concerned about a few missing realities, particularly the serious impact of the loss of specialist planners and architects and the continuing uncertainties in the planning system. I hope that we will have the opportunity to debate the report at greater length. I hope that the Minister will say tonight that it is irresistible and implementable.