Housing: Underoccupancy Charge

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

We are actually sympathetic to that point about rural communities, and we ramped up the amount of discretionary housing payments which were particularly targeted at the most remote rural areas, so that the policy could be dealt with by that route.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, can I come back to the Question—

[Baroness Eaton]

Could my noble friend the Minister say what Her Majesty’s Government have done to support local authorities in mitigating the effects of this policy?

[Lord Freud]

The key route is through the discretionary housing payments, on which we have now spent £470 million in total—£175 million on this particular policy. We have had a range of initiatives to support people, including those living in social housing, into sustained employment. The figure for those in social housing who are workless has now dropped to an all-time low of 39%.

Benefits: Sanctions

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Clearly, one error is one error too many. We work to try to eliminate the error rate, and we have layers of safeguards, for both JSA and ESA, to make sure that we review these cases at each level so that we get it right. Some, of course, will creep through.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

Do the Government have any evidence that sanctions are effective?

[Lord Freud]

We have done surveys on this and found that people say that the sanctions regime encourages positive behaviour. According to the figures we have, which have been published, 72% of JSA claimants and 61% of ESA claimants say that it impacts on their behaviour.

Housing: Under-occupancy Charge

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, looking at the position in the round, people move from low-cost social housing to higher-cost private housing, but that allows another family who may have come out of private housing to go into social housing. You have to look at the bill as a whole, and the saving on this particular part of the bill is running at £0.5 billion a year.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

Can the Minister explain what the Government are doing with housing associations concerning the removal of the spare room subsidy?

[Lord Freud]

Local authorities and housing associations have responded with a range of programmes to manage the various benefit changes, including this one. It is instructive to look at the reports and accounts put out by housing associations. Affinity Sutton says:

“Overall, the impact on us has been less than expected”.

Sovereign says that a team of 12 tenancy support advisers has kept its arrears low; Midland Heart says that the year has concluded with arrears continuing to fall; A2Dominion says that,

“despite welfare reform changes, rent arrears have fallen”;

and Orbit housing group says:

“Our arrears have decreased … despite the impact of the spare room subsidy”.

Universal Credit

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Well, my Lords, I will talk about universal credit and what it aims to do for the people who need support from the state system. It directs our funding far more efficiently to people who need that support. It produces economic benefits of £7 billion every year and it does so at an investment cost of £1.8 billion. That investment cost is down from the £2.4 billion that we originally envisaged.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

What is my noble friend doing to ensure that the most vulnerable are supported through universal credit?

[Lord Freud]

One of the things that we need to do with universal credit is to make sure that everyone can take part in it. We are creating a system to do that through universal support, where we go into partnership with local authorities to help people, concentrating particularly on financial and digital inclusion. We then pull in all the other third sector companies, such as landlords, Citizens Advice and credit unions, to make sure that support is holistic.

Personal Independence Payment

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The build-up of PIP was done in a controlled and phased way, and that was acknowledged by the NAO. ATOS won that contract in fair, open competition and we have no plans to reopen that process.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, can the Minister tell us what assessment he has made of the level of support by Her Majesty’s Government to disabled people?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the Government remain committed to maintaining support for disabled people. We spend roughly £50 billion a year, every year, and that is held in real terms. That is a fifth higher than the EU average. The overall spend on incapacity benefits has remained roughly flat in real terms over the life of this Government, and indeed the benefits about which we are talking—PIP, DLA—have actually been going up in real terms over the past four years.

Employment

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks and congratulations to the Minister on initiating this debate but also on his very inspired work in his field.

I am certain that there is not a single Member of this House who does not recognise the value of employment to the well-being of individuals and their families. Times of unemployment are tragic for people and for the places where they live. Therefore, it is heartening to note that, as we have heard, the number of people in employment is at a record high; over the past year the total has risen and we now have 30.19 million people in work. I know that that has already been referred to but it is such a good figure that I need to say it again.

Even so, many of our major cities, especially those in the north of England, have on occasion suffered disproportionately as major industries have almost disappeared. Therefore, today’s news—again, already referred to—about Hitachi moving its operation to the north-east is very welcome. It is also an indication of the confidence that business has in the UK and its Government.

The closure of one factory can cause several hundred jobs to be lost, even overnight. One authority in the north of England, the metropolitan district of Bradford, where I am a councillor, was once one of the richest cities in Britain and the centre of the world’s wool trade. Over a number of years, the wool trade declined and so did much of the heavy engineering industry. This had a major impact on the employment opportunities for the people of the Bradford district.

In Bradford, for the 12-month period to September 2013, 217,500 residents aged 16 to 24 were in employment. Since September 2011, an additional 18,400 people have found employment. Employment growth in Bradford since 2011 has almost doubled the 4.7% increase seen in the Leeds city region as a whole and is more than four times the 2% increase across the UK.

Bradford’s working population is growing by 2,000 people per year. By 2021, there will be an additional 18,000 work-age people living in the district. Maintaining current levels of employment rates will require 10,000 new jobs. The Leeds city region econometric model forecasts employment growth at around 16,000 by 2020—an increase of 7.5%, which is higher than the increase of 6.5% forecast for the UK. The majority of new jobs will be higher-skilled, with around 6,000 requiring graduate level skills, while only 2,000 will be NVQ level 1 or below. The sectors likely to experience the biggest growth are health, transport, education, retail and professional and business services.

Bradford Council has implemented the rates rebate scheme as part of a package of measures funded by the Government’s successful regional growth fund. This scheme has been critical in persuading a number of prospective commercial tenants to commit to a large retail development project, which has in turn enabled the critical level of pre-letting required to trigger development obligations.

Bradford’s city centre growth zone, launched in 2012, is jointly funded by the regional growth fund and the council, the aim being to encourage private sector investment. Construction of the new retail centre, I am pleased to say, is now under way. The construction phase will create 1,500 jobs, with 2,500 permanent jobs in the completed contract, which is projected to attract 20 million shoppers per annum. The timeframe for the growth zone offer is crucial. The construction phase commenced later than anticipated when the programme was devised, and this creates a major issue. The delivery schedule and the regional growth fund funding period are no longer aligned, resulting in many priority activities falling outside the contracted delivery period.

The city centre growth zone is working in the case of Bradford. It is bringing real change to the face of the city centre—change that is lasting. The momentum for investment has been really positive. It is essential that such excellent government schemes always allow flexibility on timescales to enable local circumstances to be accommodated.

A project called Get Bradford Working has provided funding for unemployed people and has funded longer-term placements in business to provide people with skills and experience. Some 273 unemployed people have been helped into jobs created through the Employment Opportunities fund, and a further 245 unemployed people have been supported into work through the Routes into Work fund. In spite of changes in heavy industry, there are opportunities to train for manufacturing jobs in the district, which still has a larger than average percentage of manufacturing. There is a shortage of engineers—especially those with high-level skills—and there are examples of people working well past retirement age as there are not the people with the relevant skills to replace them.

Nationally, youth unemployment has been rising since the early 2000s, growing by more than a third during the 2008-09 recession, and it has remained too high ever since. It is, however, encouraging news that the latest figures show that youth unemployment has fallen by 29,000 this quarter and is 81,000 lower than a year ago. Some 8.7% of all young people who have left full-time education are unemployed. While this is unacceptably high, we should note that it compares with 12% in 1993 and 14% in 1984.

As we have heard, the Department for Work and Pensions works with young people on jobseeker’s allowance through jobcentres, and the number of young people on JSA has fallen for the 21st month running. The 18 to 24 claimant count peaked in December 2011 at over 480,000, but today it is 295,000.

Apprenticeships can be part of the solution to youth unemployment and aid the development of appropriate skills in manufacturing. There are many opportunities. The Chancellor is to be congratulated on yesterday’s Budget, recognising the value of apprenticeships and extending the apprentice grant for employers scheme, providing £85 million in both 2014-15 and 2015-16 for 100,000 grants to employers, as well as £20 million for postgraduate apprenticeships, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley.

As I have said, apprenticeships create many opportunities for young people, but in too many cases young people have not been encouraged in school or by their parents to think of them as a credible alternative to higher education. We need to move young people away from the idea that anything other than a higher education degree is an inferior route to employment.

In many schools, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, ably pointed out, careers advice is woefully inadequate, with too little focus on the variety of routes into work and education. Many careers departments in schools do not have a good understanding of the employment trends or the skills required in their locality. Academy schools with business sponsorship do much to improve this situation. Too often, those leaving education are not seen as being ready to cope with the world of work. There can be issues around attitude, timekeeping and communication. Therefore, to some potential employers, school leavers can be much less attractive than those who have experience.

There is no magic bullet that resolves the issues of unemployment overnight. Her Majesty’s Government are to be commended on their economic strategies, which give confidence to investors, on their many schemes, such as enterprise zones and the regional growth fund, and on the support that they gave to businesses in many ways in yesterday’s Budget, which will have a major and positive impact on employment opportunities.