Housing Benefit
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, what advice would the Minister give to this chair of a housing association? We have a family consisting of a disabled couple who have two children and live in a house that has one double bedroom and two single bedrooms. They cannot move because there is no stock in rural Norfolk for them to move to. They cannot work because of their disability and caring responsibilities. They cannot afford the bills. They are applying for discretionary housing payments but that will run out by about September. At that point they will run into severe arrears. Would the Minister advise me as chair of that housing association to evict that family at that point and to send them into bed-and-breakfast accommodation at a higher cost to us all as well as to them?
Lord Freud
My Lords, the idea of providing discretionary housing payments is twofold. The first is to allow for the costs of making a change and a transition; and the other, in some cases, is to maintain the family in an appropriate home indefinitely. One of the most obvious examples of the latter is specially adapted homes where it does not make sense to move. So there should be a strategy of support for that couple regardless of whether it is in the short term or the longer term.
Queen’s Speech
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, we have had an outstanding maiden speech. We have two more to come, and I am sure that they will enrich this debate and the House, for which we are grateful.
In the Queen’s Speech we were promised both a health and social care Bill and a new single state pension. Why does this new single state pension matter so much? It matters because private occupational pensions do not really work for those with few other assets, the low paid, the self-employed, part-time workers, those with caring responsibilities and, above all, women. Think about it. To get a useful occupational pension, you start contributing young. You and your employer contribute enough throughout your working life. You stay in full-time work for 40 years, you gain from tax relief, you can manage investment and disinvestment strategies and DC schemes, and you do not need to touch your pension savings because you can access other savings. Not one of those propositions fits most women or, indeed, many low-paid men. You could not devise a worse fit for women if you tried.
A woman’s earnings are interrupted by childcare from her late 20s and elder care from her 50s. Work is part-time, low-paid and unpensioned. There is little or no gain from tax relief and little or no ability to manage DC investment. There are little or no other savings, so if she faces divorce, debt or disability, she cannot access her own pension savings; she can access only the moneylender, at higher cost. None of it works for her. That is because pensions were built by men for men to smooth the income from work into retirement. Yet for most women, their working life needs more smoothing than the move into older age. Therefore, they will always need a decent state pension, which is why I welcome the new single state pension so much.
The new single state pension will do five key things. First, as it is not dependent on waged work, it can credit in women’s hugely valuable caring work, around which our society pivots and which occupational pensions can never support. It therefore strengthens the contributory principle on which a decent social security system rests.
Secondly, it will offer a more adequate platform for retirement. A couple—he on average wage, she in part-time work—might bring home, say, £30,000 a year. With a combined new state pension of £15,000, and perhaps his small pension of £5,000, so £20,000 in total, they will have an earnings replacement of two-thirds before you count in the savings from no work-related costs. That is adequate.
Thirdly, the previous Government significantly reduced pensioner poverty. However, while means-tested pension credit lifted significant numbers of elderly poor pensioners out of poverty, it had the perverse incentive of discouraging future pensioners from saving. The new state pension, because it is above the means-tested benefit level, will make it safe to save. Every penny the woman hairdresser or the shop assistant puts away in a NEST, she will gain in full.
Fourthly, people will be able to plan for their retirement, knowing what they can rely on from the state in their older age—a simple, predictable, risk-free and adequate foundation pension. It will be genuinely transforming for many women and low-paid people in the future.
Finally, there is much talk about increased life expectancy—one year more for every five—but, on a point to which I shall return, for most people those extra years will not be years of good health. However, a good state pension, money, will do much to help stave off disability. It will buy heating, better food, cleaning and taxis—all to be welcomed.
I will say a word or so about universal pensioner benefits. Do not touch bus passes, which address the issue of pensioner isolation. Do not means test because a third of pensioners do not claim means-tested benefits, and the whole point of the new single state pension is to get rid of means-testing. You could tax, but, particularly with winter fuel benefits, which are expensive, you would get in very little—I calculate that it would be about £100 million. Instead, given the new state pension in 2016, we could postpone winter fuel payments alongside TV licences for that generation and for future new pensioners until they reach 75. Age is quite a good proxy for need—older pensioners are poorer pensioners, such as elderly widows whose husbands have died and whose occupational pensions have died with them—and I calculate that within about five years we would save about £1 billion a year and upwards. It is only a thought, but it would be simple, universal, targeted, fair and affordable.
However, if you really wanted to save on the pensions bill while increasing fairness, you would seek to tackle tax relief. It costs nearly £40 billion a year, of which two-thirds goes to the wealthiest. It is a shadow welfare state costing almost as much as the basic state pension itself. Given tax relief and national insurance, which should be levied on those of us who work beyond state pension age; given that we have an upper earnings limit at all, which is not defensible at all, which makes national insurance regressive and whose abolition would bring in £11 billion; given equity release—more than £1 trillion is locked away in housing equity and only between £0.5 billion and £1 billion is released every year; we have plenty of resource both for adequate state pensions and for social care if we seek to address and distribute the resources that we already have.
I make one final point. We need to think differently about life after 65. Increased life expectancy is not, for the most part, increased healthy life expectancy. The extra years are largely years of poor health. Most of us can expect three stages of older age: a decade or so of healthy life, and the number of healthy years is not really increasing by much, except for the better off; a decade of some limiting disability, such as a lack of mobility, the inability to reach or difficulty in hearing, but with care needs sufficiently modest that, along with telecare, they can normally be met at home; and between two and five years of frail dependency, including dementia, during which substantial personal care is needed.
It is the second stage—a limiting disability—that in my view, from all the research that I have studied, is lengthening with increased longevity. Funding and supporting that stage is not actually expensive, especially given that half the growth in the number of older people is the result of increased longevity and half is from a bulge in the number of older people coming through from the baby boom. When that is played through in the next 50 years or so, we will have just about the best worker to pensioner ratio in Europe. When we hear all those siren calls to raise the state pension age in line with increased longevity, we should pause.
In Norwich, the difference in life expectancy between the poorest and richest ward in my city is 11 years. The gap in healthy life expectancy between those two wards is 15 years and widening. Eight in 10 better-off men but only three in 10 poorer-off men will survive to 80. Therefore, in all fairness, the state pension age should rise only with any rise in the years of healthy life expectancy, not with any overall increase in longevity, which is mostly disability-accompanied, otherwise the years of healthy retirement for half the population—the poorer part—as a proportion of their adult life will actually shrink: a profoundly unfair outcome for profoundly unfair lives. We can all do better than that.
Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I support my noble friend in his amendments. Timely and efficient appeals systems are always necessary and in these circumstances they are essential. The social security appeals system is under strain and that strain will be intensified as a result of what claimants will now be experiencing. What are those difficulties? The number of social security cases going to tribunals in general were 418,000 in 2010-11, 70% higher than just two years previously, while, as far as I can tell, this year’s statistics are up a further 14% or so, and appeals against sanctions as such are only a modest proportion of these.
Social security appeals represent half of all tribunal cases. The tribunals are receiving social security cases faster than they can clear them, so that although half of all cases take 14 weeks or less, one-quarter take between three and six months to be heard and 10% take between six months and a year, so only half of those cases meet the key performance indicator, the KPI, of 16 weeks laid down by the department. During that time—that extra long waiting period already experienced—claimants’ circumstances change, they lose oral evidence based on memory and above all they are left without any benefit, some of them for months, and suffer real hardship. Timeliness and efficiency, therefore, are key.
We need the Government to tell us what problems they will meet in unleashing the stockpile of sanctions cases into a system already under strain, with the inevitable appeals that will follow, and how they propose to resolve them. How many cases are currently outstanding? Do the Government have the capacity to increase sitting days beyond the 80,000 or so required at the moment to deal with the full backlog? How long does the Minister expect claimants to have to wait? How many, and what percentage, will be over the three-month KPI target?
The second issue is not about numbers but about verdicts and outcomes. Of those cases going to appeal, some 40% overall are won by the claimant. Former presidents’ reports on this are, frankly, an excoriating indictment of the DWP decision-making process and their findings over the years are confirmed by the recent November 2012 report analysing appeals. The main reason why appellants win is that they produce additional oral evidence not previously taken into account by DWP. However, the reports and the research have noted that tribunal judges were continually frustrated by the behaviour of decision-makers within DWP. In the latest statistics, about one-third of local decisions on sanctions were reconsidered by the decision-maker and, of those, half were in favour of the claimant. Of those not accepted by the decision-maker, just over one-third are going on to tribunal.
Why are those tribunal judges so continuously frustrated by decision-makers’ efforts within DWP? First, we are told by tribunal judges that decision-makers choose not to accept additional, usually oral, evidence without having any good reason for refusing it. That is because they have often failed properly to engage with the claimant. Something like 65% of all appeals come into this category. Secondly, there is little evidence that decision-makers reconsider cases at all. They were, the report said, reluctant to do so and did not bother to explore any discrepancies in evidence or to follow up requests for further information.
Thirdly, decision-makers did not weigh medical evidence at all appropriately, especially for mental health claimants, nor did they seek further information when dealing with a progressive condition. That applied to something like 15% of the appeals that went to tribunal. Most damning of all, they often made different decisions from the tribunal decision-makers on the basis of the same evidence presented to the tribunal, which meant that decision-makers got it wrong, according to law, in 30% of the cases lost by DWP. In other words, had the decision-makers within DWP done their job properly, these reports suggest that DWP would either not have had the appeal because the decision-maker would have rightly reversed the original decision, or at appeal the DWP would have won most of the appeals that it lost because the tribunals would have accepted that all the appropriate evidence had been properly assessed. That is a pretty searing judgment of the current system.
What are the implications for those caught by this Bill? The problem is clearly threefold. First, local offices are making flawed decisions, including on sanctions, and that is before we get on to the disgraceful area of targets. Secondly, decision-makers are not doing a proper job reviewing those local office decisions and are endorsing flawed decisions that they should have corrected. Thirdly, the tribunal service cannot keep up with the increased number of appeals coming its way. Of course, this will get far worse now that legal advice and support are withdrawn and, as a result and as we shall argue later, tribunal cases will take twice as long to process.
Will the Minister reduce the pressure on tribunals and better support claimants by requiring decision-makers to do a more conscientious review of the original decisions? It is clear that at the moment too many of them are not doing a professional job—bluntly, they need to brought face to face with the evidence. Are decision-makers informed of the tribunal’s findings and is their performance reviewed when their decisions are overturned by the tribunal? Could that perhaps be a KPI? What guidance and additional training will be made available to decision-makers to improve their performance? If the Minister is going to review any targets, could we please have a new performance indicator, a really useful target that reduces the number of successful appeals by claimants from the current 40% or so down to, say, 20% or even 15%? That would really transform decision-makers’ behaviour.
Given the trivial basis for sanctioning claimants uncovered by the Guardian, many of whom we can expect to appeal, thus increasing the backlog before eventually being overturned at appeal, as many of them will be, will the Minister ensure that cases going to appeal are pre-reviewed and re-reviewed by decision-makers to improve their own poor-quality decision-making? Will he also ensure that the number of tribunal sitting days is appropriately increased to meet the target of within 16 weeks, so that they are timely, and that—I am trespassing into a following amendment—sufficient advice is given to claimants, as my noble friend Lord Bach will argue, to reduce the number of unsuccessful appeals, given the delays? I hope that the Minister will be able to answer these questions and those of my noble friend tonight and in the process perhaps allay our very real concern for these claimants who are going to be caught up in an appeal system that is increasingly flawed and failing.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, the purpose of these amendments is to ensure that the reconsiderations and appeals arising from decisions relating to sanctions that are dealt with by the Bill are considered in a timely and efficient manner, and that appeals take into consideration the delay between the failure to participate and the issuing of the sanction.
I am happy to give a commitment to the House that DWP will process the stockpiled cases, and any reconsiderations and appeals that follow, in a timely manner. It is not in the department’s interest to procrastinate on these cases any longer than necessary. I also note that the department is already required by Article 6 of the ECHR to deal with social security disputes in a reasonable time, while the First-tier and Upper Tribunals are also bound to deal with appeals in a fair and efficient manner. When the Bill receives Royal Assent, I assure noble Lords that processing the stockpiled cases, including any appeals and reconsiderations, will be given a high priority. Purely from a business perspective, DWP will want to unwind these cases and any follow-up activity as quickly as possible so that it can utilise its resource in dealing with more current claims.
The associated amendment seeks to ensure that when the First-tier Tribunals and the Upper Tribunals are determining an appeal against a sanction decision issued in reliance on the provisions in the Bill, they have regard to the circumstances around the Reilly/Wilson case, particularly any delay resulting from the case. I understand, given the noble Lord’s statement at Second Reading, that he is concerned that, because there may have been longer than usual between the failure to participate and the issuing of a sanction, the claimant will be unable either to remember or to provide evidence of any good cause they had for the failure.
I will spend a moment describing the process that happens between a claimant failing to participate and the issuing of a sanction. When a claimant gets referred to a DWP decision-maker for a sanction decision, a letter is sent asking them to provide evidence of good cause. The letter says:
“Will you please contact me before”—
and then a date is inserted—
“to explain why you did not undertake this activity. You should note that unless you provide a good reason for not undertaking this activity, your benefit may be affected”.
So the stockpiled cases would, at the time of the failure, already have been asked once to provide good cause. The fact that we did not deal with these cases immediately will not have prevented these claimants from providing evidence of good cause at the time of the failure. The decision-makers will have all this evidence on the stockpiled cases already, so the risk that they have been unfairly treated is significantly minimised.
I know that not all claimants will have provided their evidence of good cause the first time they were asked for it, although this is of course entirely their fault. However, I reassure noble Lords that in these cases, where a claimant is attempting to argue that they had a good reason for a failure that occurred many months ago, decision-makers and First-tier Tribunals will make an objective decision based on the evidence before them. They would of course take into consideration any claimant’s argument that they had good cause, but that they cannot provide evidence because of the length of time since the failure. It would be up to those hearing the appeals to judge on a case-by-case basis whether they thought this argument was strong enough.
I also note that this amendment only seeks to ensure that the appeal, and neither the decision to issue the sanction nor the reconsideration, takes into account any time delay caused by the Reilly/Wilson case. I assume that this was not the intention of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. There is this oversight, and claimants in the stockpile would at the time have been asked for evidence of good cause. The tribunal is also already bound to have regard to all relevant matters.
Picking up the issues raised by the noble Lord and the noble Baroness on national insurance credits, prior to the changes to the jobseeker’s allowance sanctions regime from 22 October last year, national insurance credits were paid during the period of the sanction. National insurance credits are not paid when the benefit is sanctioned on or after 22 October. The Bill does not change these arrangements. The payment or not of national insurance credits with respect to stockpiled sanction decisions will therefore depend—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I support the amendment of my noble friend. I have to declare a sort of interest as a former Minister responsible in the DWP for the tribunal services before Leggatt centralised them. As a result, I would visit tribunals and, five minutes into the hearing, I could tell whether the claimant had or had not received legal advice and support or welfare advice and support before entering the appeal. Those who had presented a coherent account with the appropriate accompanying papers and evidence, were prepared for the questions asked of them. It kept the process simple and straightforward, and the cases that I saw took on average about 40 minutes to complete. In each case, the decision, usually up to half the time in favour of the claimant, was the right one.
Then there was the other sort of case that came to tribunal, people who came with their sheaf of papers in a carrier bag, which they shuffled through without any advice, unaware of what it was that the tribunal needed to know and what would count as relevant evidence. I recall one man, Indian or Pakistani, who was there with his wife; his eyes never left the floor, and he sat hunched over as he tried to explain in poor English and a low, faltering voice, why he was appealing against a refusal of DLA—and he could not. The superb chair, who we now call a judge, spent nearly two hours trying compassionately to coax his story and evidence out of him in some sort of order. It took more than twice as long as the previous case, and his appeal was upheld.
What lessons may we draw from the situation in which there is no prior legal help or support for advice? Social security decision-makers, as we argued on the previous amendment, frequently fail to review decisions properly. Unless the claimant is savvy enough to put his case in ways that fit guidance on reconsideration, we end up with an unnecessary tribunal case, and the tribunals handling such cases clear, as a result, two or three cases a day instead of five or six. I plead with the Minister to learn from this. I do not know whether he has sat in on any social security tribunals, but he would quickly see which claimants had had prior advice and which had not. Remove the advice and the need does not go away; it is merely displaced to the very much more expensive and time-consuming stage of the tribunal itself. Instead of advice being given in advance, the whole untangling of that mess has to be done by the tribunal judge in person. That seems to me key. The need does not go away; all you are doing is transferring it to the most expensive and laborious way of addressing it.
Legal advice, which we are told we cannot afford, is not a luxury; in my view, it is essential because social security is complex and most claimants, by definition, are probably poorly educated, not especially articulate, confused about what they are due and need help at the early stages. They are aggrieved. However, as my noble friend Lord Bach said, early advice may discourage people from pursuing unfunded and unfounded cases. Legal advice also helps ensure greater consistency and a common approach across regions. We are getting a lot of research evidence suggesting the unevenness of responses from decision-makers and tribunals trying their best to produce the consistency that local offices are not.
The Minister knows that we are seriously worried about what will happen when existing claimants are brought on to UC, which I very much want to work. I fear that the tribunal system will be completely overwhelmed unless there is legal aid and welfare advice available at the preliminary stage to screen out weak cases and to put into good order appropriate cases for the tribunal; otherwise, I believe that the system will buckle.
We are therefore deeply worried about the situation of claimants under the Bill who will not know what their rights are and whether the proposed sanction is valid. In some cases, they may have been stalled for many months. They do not have fresh evidence to bring to bear and can no longer rely on their memory to give a coherent account of what happened when. Did they have good cause? At the preliminary stage, legal or welfare rights advisers can perhaps help them find out, track hospital or school records, organise paperwork and explain to the claimant what will happen, why he has lost his benefit and whether the case against him is soundly based. If that welfare rights officer or the legal advice is not there to do that, the tribunal judge will have to, as I have seen with my own eyes. Can that individual stop the sanction? Is it possible for him to comply? Jobcentre staff cannot or will not now give that advice, especially given the evidence about targets. Claimants need the supportive, friendly, neutral, professional, cheap advice from outside the system. However, of course all this hinges on whether the department wants people to get the right benefits and the right outcome. Does it?
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, is it not the case that every Government of the United Kingdom since 1948 have been committed to the principles and values articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Is it not also the case that Article 7 declares that all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law? If the Government deny legal aid in these cases, will they not repudiate that historic and fundamental commitment?
Lord Freud
Perhaps I may make absolutely clear the point about the numbers. There was a lot of comment from noble Lords opposite that the system would be overwhelmed by the numbers because people did not have legal advice and the system could not therefore cope. The point I am making is that that argument does not stand in the light of the rather small number of cases—between 1,500 and 2,000—that might come towards the First-tier Tribunal as a result of the Bill.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
If I may intervene, approximately 500,000 sanctions were issued last year. Something like 3,500 or 4,000 of those cases went to appeal. That was last year, before this additional provision hits them. The Minister may wish to reconsider his statistics.
Lord Bach
My Lords, perhaps I may go back for a moment to the hiatus caused by the Court of Appeal decision. It means that those who stood to have the protection of the law as it stood at the time that they were sanctioned or due to be sanctioned will, if the Minister is right, no longer have that protection, merely because of the passage of time and because something has intervened that is absolutely no fault of theirs, but is, I am afraid, the fault of the Government. That seems to be against any British sense of fair play. I beg to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I will address Amendments 4, 5, 5A and 6 together. The purpose of these amendments is to place in the Bill detailed requirements for the independent report set out in Clause 2.
I should be clear that Clause 2 provides for an independent review of the operation of provisions relating to the imposition of sanctions which would, without this legislation, be unlawful. The amendments could be seen to imply a much wider review; it is not a full review of the operation of sanctions, although clearly there could be wider relevance. At least one of the things covered in the amendment is not within the scope of the Bill: paragraph (d) asks about the number of penalties imposed upon claimants in receipt of employment and support allowance. I can answer that today, as the Bill is only concerned with JSA claimants.
The Government are happy to consider a wide range of areas for the review, but it would be unhelpful to lock down the terms of that review at this stage. Despite my earlier comments, the amendments list a number of areas the review could usefully consider. I am happy to confirm what I said on Thursday, and give a commitment that we will discuss further with the Opposition the scope of the review. Within that process, we can look at the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on provision for outsiders.
Amendment 5A would ensure that the independent reviewer makes an assessment of the extent to which senior managers in Jobcentre Plus have used targets in the operation of sanctions. This amendment is completely unnecessary. There are no targets for sanction referrals. The Government have made a point of removing the vast majority of targets within Jobcentre Plus. It is regrettable that loose drafting of an internal e-mail suggested otherwise. If noble Lords look at sanctions, there is no clear trend in the proportion of the caseload who receives them. Prior to 2007, the rate was running at around 4%; since then it has fluctuated between 3% and 5%. There is not the clear trend in the growth of sanctions which some people have been claiming.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I do not doubt the Minister’s honesty and integrity in his statements about targets at all. However, the staff clearly do not believe him. It is clear from the evidence that we have seen—the leaked e-mails and all sorts of other examples coming to Members of Parliament and so on—that the staff in local offices believe, because they are told by their managers, that they have to increase the number of sanctions. In the e-mail, the manager of the particular jobcentre was criticised and told that she would be subject to first-stage disciplinary hearings because that office was something like 93rd out of 101 in sanction production; they should have been producing something like 25 a week and were only producing four or six a week. Therefore: “Guys, we should raise our game”.
The e-mail was not loosely drafted. It was very precisely drafted; we have all seen copies of it. That e-mail, from someone senior in the office to their staff, made it very clear that if they did not increase a number of sanctions, they, too, would be involved in a disciplinary process. That is believed by those staff and by staff across the country. I do not doubt the Minister’s word, or that he does not intend that to be the case. What is he going to do, therefore, to ensure that local offices no longer behave in this way?
Lord Freud
My Lords, let me make very clear the difference between having targets, having business or management information, and doing something with that information. Clearly, you collect these data not just to answer parliamentary questions but to run the business. It is used to look at where there are outliers and peculiarities, and what the norms are. When a particular jobcentre may be well outside the norm on either side, you might want to ask it why that was the case. Was it justifiable, and what were the dynamics of that? In some cases you are clearly looking at particular parts of the operation that are not operating in line with the norms. That is not having a target culture. A target culture—as the noble Lords opposite will know, because they were running one in many parts of the public services—is where you incentivise and drive performance based on particular targets. We do not do that. We do not have targets. We do, however, have management information and, as I say, we need to understand why outliers exist.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, will the Minister explain why this senior staff member—the manager of the office—told the staff underneath her that unless they increased the number of sanctions she would be subject to the first stage of a disciplinary procedure, and that that, in turn, would mean that she would have to discipline them? How does he explain that?
Lord Freud
My Lords, I am not going to pick up a particular case because I do not have the detail on it. It would not be appropriate for me to hazard a guess on what was behind a particular e-mail or a particular concern.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I hear what the Minister has said, and he is held in high regard across the House. In view of what my noble friend Lady Hollis has said, will he therefore initiate an investigation into how this memo came about? Will he come back to the House to explain what action the Government are taking on this? Somebody is clearly acting against government policy, and it should be stopped.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Will the Minister also, therefore, ensure that all DWP local offices receive the same information—that this is to be deplored?
Lord Freud
My Lords, I must repeat what I have just said. Clearly, we have internal management information. It is vital that we keep it, and we publish a lot of it. We need to understand why some areas, some jobcentres, have higher rates than others and why some have lower rates. Some may have very good reasons for having lower or higher rates, while others may not. We therefore need this information to correct the anomalies, and that is normal business practice. It may be that in particular cases a jobcentre manager is told, “You are running very high or very low figures, and you cannot justify the reason for that, so you need to get more into line”. It may happen. I have not got the particular details.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
In that case, what is the difference between coming more into line and targets?
Lord Freud
The noble Lords opposite know exactly how targets operate because they operated a target regime. Targets are when people are incentivised to perform to particular figures.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
What if they are incentivised by the threat of being punished?
Lord Freud
They are usually incentivised to reach targets, and we do not run a target regime. The no-targets message has gone out repeatedly.
Lord Freud
The difference is that where someone is not performing in line with the rest of the business for no good reason—in other words, where there is nothing different in the underlying constituency of the business—they are not operating the business in line with the standards that we have. That is entirely different from having targets, because it is understood that no figures are going out with instructions to achieve something. The message that there are no targets goes out repeatedly to jobcentre managers; there has been a reminder from the Work Services Directorate that there are no targets; and we will investigate if people have misunderstood that approach.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
It is Committee, but the Companion guides us by stating that, during any stages:
“Lengthy or frequent interventions should not be made, even with the consent of the member speaking”.
My noble friend is very tolerant and I know that he will keep responding to interventions. However, the hour is late and there have been several interventions.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I should like to support my noble friend by saying that I am mortified about the additional numbers on the other side as the result of our strenuous debate. I thought that we might have persuaded a few more to abstain.
I hope that the Minister can agree to this amendment. There are three broad reasons why we need new guidance and clarity on the sanctions regime: the issue of targets/norms, good cause and compliance. The Joseph Rowntree research that came out in December 2010 shows that claimants have a low level of awareness of sanctions and that the more disadvantaged they are, the higher the risk of sanctions and the less knowledge they have about them. This applies to young claimants, those with a disability, those with a poor education, those with large families and those from an ethnic minority. The research shows that they are not out to flout the system but that they have poor information or non-intentional behaviour such as forgetfulness. In that context, I want us to support my noble friend’s amendment.
I turn first to the issue of targets. The Minister was at some pains to explain to us earlier that “targets” is a relevant word only where you are rewarding behaviour, but when you are punishing it, that is a “norm”. We know that if you exceed, you get a target, and that if you underachieve, that is a norm. It is clear that targets or norms, whatever we want to call them, are the enemy of mitigation. Using them to allow the Secretary of State to claim clean hands while the staff do the dirty work under pressure from above is completely unacceptable. We need clear evidence, guidance and clarity from the Minister on the sanctions regime to ensure that targets do not stand in the way of mitigation. If people are allowed to mitigate and sanctions numbers therefore reduce, so will the targets, and staff will obviously have an incentive to fail to ensure that claimants follow good procedure and appropriate behaviour because they themselves face disciplinary action. That is a moral, or immoral, position, into which they should not be put.
Secondly, we need this guidance to ensure that claimants are aware that they may be able to mitigate sanctions by establishing good cause. My noble friend gave the example of the lone parent unable to attend an interview. Every parent in this House has had a child who has been sick and they may have missed an interview as a result. There is no doctor’s evidence because, by the next day, the child is well. Certainly that happened to me on numerous occasions. However, in this new, suspicious, look-for-any-benefit-cutting-excuse, hunt-them-down culture, of course we all now assume that any lone parent will keep her child at home and away from school simply to avoid an inconvenient interview. She says that the child was poorly, but why believe her? As she can provide no evidence, the office has got her and another tick is put on the whiteboard.
The third reason for needing guidance on mitigation is that, as the courts have indicated, claimants need to know and have a right to know how they may end their sanction by complying with jobcentre requirements. This issue marks the crucial line as to whether we are using sanctions to reduce the benefit bill or whether we are using them to change behaviour. If it is the first, giving little information or hope for people to find their way back into the system, then the Minister risks creating a growing underclass without income, without much hope and without any help. But people, as Carlyle pointed out 150 years ago, will not starve quietly. Some may have families to help them, and they will be the relatively lucky ones. Some may beg, while others will cross the line into thieving, drug selling and semi-criminal behaviour. This is what the Rowntree trust warns us of. They will come to regard social security laws, in so far as they understand them, and increasingly other laws, as not applicable to them. We will all then pay a high price. If it is the second—that instead of simply trying to cut the benefit bill on any hook we can find, we want people to change their behaviour and sanctions are part of the tough love regime, as I believe they should be—then we absolutely must encourage people to end sanctions by complying with what they are expected to do. When they do so, we should rejoice, even though it means fewer ticks on the whiteboard of targets to be met.
Research evidence shows up that up to two-thirds of those sanctioned do not know the whys or wherefores, or what they can do about it. The Minister, whose integrity we totally respect, accepted at Second Reading that that was indeed the case and that therefore the issue of sanctions had to be revisited. If the issue has to be revisited, he should now accept my noble friend’s amendment, because it amplifies what he himself has already agreed. Mitigation means ending the culture of targets and, incidentally, protecting any whistleblowers in the process. It means ensuring that people have the help that they need to claim good cause where that exists and it ensures mitigation so that claimants will know how they can end the sanction by conforming to benefit requirements. I hope that all in this Committee agree on these three goals. In which case, I hope that the Minister will accept the amendment.
Lord Freud
My Lords, this amendment, which would require the Secretary of State to issue guidance on the way in which claimants can mitigate any penalty imposed under the ESE or MWA regulations after the Act comes into force, is unnecessary, as this information is provided to claimants as a matter of standard practice. When a claimant is issued with a benefit sanction, they are as a matter of course sent a letter explaining the decision made and what effect it will have. The letter clearly tells claimants that if they want to appeal the decision, they should fill in leaflet GL24, If you think our Decision is Wrong, and that claimants can,
“get this leaflet from your Jobcentre or Social Security Office”.
Attached to the sanctions letter are two leaflets: leaflet 1NF1, on appealing against a decision and leaflet JSA9, the hardship leaflet). I have both of these leaflets with me today.
The leaflet on appealing against a decision explains in plain English who the claimant should contact if they want to know more about the decision or, if they think the decision was wrong, how to appeal it and what support they may get in formulating that appeal. The hardship leaflet explains what financial support is available, the eligibility criteria and how to apply for hardship, and provides the form they must fill in to claim hardship. The whole process is done as a matter of course and, indeed, is on the record and available for anyone to see how those leaflets work.
I turn to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, on recompliance. If a claimant has been issued with a 26-week sanction but has complied in the intervening period, they will be served with a four-week sanction. Recompliance is not particular to any scheme and can include participation in any other scheme. Of course, the sanctions regime has changed, so if the failure to participate was before 22 October last year, the old regime, which includes the re-engagement, applies. However, if the failure to participate is after 22 October, the current sanctions regime, which has no engagement and which builds up, will apply. That goes on the time of the failure to participate.
The noble Baroness was concerned about the time between the failure and the sanction being imposed on the stockpiled cases. I am sorry that I have not yet found a better word than stockpiled but it is for cases not people. As I said on an earlier amendment, the process of finding that information takes place immediately on the failure. They receive a letter and need to provide good cause at that point. Clearly, where there is a problem and there needs to be amplification, and there is a problem of information or evidence, the decision-maker will have to take that into account in the normal way, given that there is a gap and it is a justifiable lacuna.
As a matter of course, the cases that we have stockpiled will get issued with a sanction and receive the standard letter, and those accompanying leaflets that I outlined. This amendment is therefore superfluous and I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw it.
Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord German
Yes, I will. It is perfectly obvious that the noble Lord’s party did the same thing when it was in power. There was retrospection in legislation. I can think of the videogames legislation, which has some very great similarities to this Bill. My plea to the Government is to answer the questions posed to them by the Constitution Committee in this debate so that we can have that explanation. I quoted the two paragraphs of the report. I am sure the noble Lord has that in front of him, so he can look at paragraphs 12 and 15. Those are the two questions I want answered.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
In the opening stages of the noble Lord’s speech, which was very interesting, he referred to remarks from the Front Bench in the debate. I have the Hansard here. Could he give me the column reference for his quotation?
Lord German
Certainly. It was col. 825, about half way down towards the bottom of the page.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, like others in this House and like my noble friend Lord McKenzie, I have been in the Minister’s shoes. Let us be clear, therefore, that I, like him I am sure, support work programmes that skill claimants. I remember when one lone parent told me, “I have a future now”. I support them as long as DWP accepts good cause or good reason when the programmes are not appropriate. I therefore also support sanctions for people who can and should seek work but who knowingly refuse to do so without good cause, because without such sanctions the programmes become merely voluntary. I support these sanctions becoming increasingly tough so that the person knowingly refusing to comply becomes aware of the increasingly severe consequences of their actions. However, because I want to change behaviour and encourage good behaviour, I support the lifting of sanctions when the individual complies and comes into the Work Programme. While those sanctions last, I support a level of hardship payments so that vulnerable people—for example, children—have some degree of protection.
Such a simple, clear approach requires simple, clear communication with all claimants. I would hope that that is common ground around this House today. However, I say to the Minister that with this Bill the Government are not simply remedying some minor technical slip-up by the department, as Ministers would want us to believe. This Bill trespasses quite improperly on to new ground in four ways. Two of these have been well argued, by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in particular. It uses emergency legislation, normally reserved for national security issues. Why? It does so because the Government are not willing to trust the British justice system, presumably because they feel that they would lose in the Supreme Court. That is profoundly disrespectful to claimants. Therefore, we cannot scrutinise the Bill as we should, we cannot take it through the proper stages as we should, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, it is an abuse of Parliament. Worse, the Government make the Bill retrospective. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord German, I do not recall any retrospective social security Bill. It means, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has said, that we are punishing people for actions which the courts have ruled were legal at the time they were committed.
My third objection is that the Government knew of the problem. The Social Security Advisory Committee, whose job it is to scrutinise regulations, warned that they were flaky, and the Government, as is their wont, ignored it. The Government, therefore, knowingly disregarded the very body set up to amber or red-light their regulations.
My final objection is that these so-called technical mistakes were far from technical. I ask your Lordships to remember that sanctions are not there to cut the benefit bill. They are there to change behaviour and bring people into the Work Programme. To change behaviour, you need to understand your client base and communicate effectively. That client base, at risk of sanction, is not for the most part made up of schemers, skivers or fraudsters, because that requires ingenuity, alertness and a certain competence. No; the sanctions pool includes the chaotic, the incompetent—unlike, of course, the DWP—the confused, often those with poor mental health, learning difficulties, weak organisational skills, and the functionally illiterate. It includes lone parents, the depressed, the poorly educated, and those with needy ADHD children. It includes young men, thrown out of their mother’s home by a new stepfather and now sofa surfing and living hand to mouth without any routine.
How did the Government handle this client group before the court intervened? First, they told clients that their sanctions from the Work Programme could last up to 26 weeks, but the department failed to mention that the first offence would require a sanction of only two weeks, the second of only of only four weeks, and only subsequent offences of six months. Secondly, and more importantly—and this is certainly not technical—they failed to tell claimants that they could end their sanctions by doing what the Government and all of us want them to do, which is to comply with the Work Programme. Thirdly, the Government in their letters failed to draw attention to the underpinning of a hardship regime which protects vulnerable people and children from, frankly, going hungry.
Not to tell people about this step approach to sanctions, not to tell them how they can end the sanctions and not to tell them that they could access a minimal hardship payment is not merely a technical failure but a travesty of our responsibility to claimants, many of whom, I repeat, have chaotic lives, poor mental and physical health, limited literacy and are highly confused and vulnerable.
The Minister assumes, as always, economic rationality, yet he knows as well as I do that most people sanctioned did not know that they could be sanctioned or what they were sanctioned for. The DWP’s own research, report 523 in 2008 and report 767 in 2011, revealed that between a half and two-thirds of those sanctioned did not know that this could happen and that, when it did, they did not know why. In some cases, because they were already having their benefits stopped to repay crisis loans, they were not even aware that they were being sanctioned at all. Benefit cuts therefore appeared to be something just arbitrarily happening to people like them to make them poorer. As the research concluded, not surprisingly the benefit sanction had little impact on their job-seeking behaviour because of the lack of clarity of communication. That is the Minister’s client base. Just think about it.
We are trying to change behaviour, rightly. We may be trying to instil sensible habits, organisation and reliability, rightly. How will that happen if the sanctioned person does not know he is being sanctioned, why he is being sanctioned, what he can do appropriately to end the sanction, or what, if he is in hardship, he and his children can do to survive in the meanwhile? He has been made, so to speak, a financial outlaw without knowing why and what the law is that he is sanctioned for breaking.
I do not challenge at all the right to sanction people who should but knowingly refuse to participate in the Work Programme. The word is “knowingly”. Those letters sent out by DWP did not tell claimants what they could and should expect if they did not comply—claimants who, above all, needed simple, clear information. The Appeal Court held that it should have done and it did not. That is not merely technical—it really is not—it is key to the moral as well as the legal validity of the entire sanctions process.
The noble Lord, Lord Freud, suggests that the Government should not have to pay out the £110 million to £130 million or so to rectify their mistakes to people who should have behaved differently and that the money would therefore have to be found elsewhere. I ask noble Lords on the coalition Benches mentally to replay this miserable tale, but this time substitute HMRC for DWP and taxpayer for claimant. If the Court of Appeal found that HMRC had acted illegally in fining—that is, sanctioning—taxpayers for, say, late submission because HMRC had failed to make taxpayers properly and fully aware of the fining/sanctioning regime, and that as a result the court argued that the fines collected were deemed to be illegal, what would the coalition Back-Benchers be arguing? Would they support emergency retrospective legislation to make legal what the courts found was illegal in order to avoid repaying those improperly collected fines? Somehow, I think not. Noble Lords on the Benches opposite might even be outraged that the Government were seeking to make legal what had been ruled by the courts to be illegal. They might even think that HMRC was trying to put itself above the law because it had the power to change the law by rushing a retrospective Bill through Parliament. They might think that and they would be right.
The DWP got it wrong; it is deeply regrettable, but it happens. What it must not do is rush through retrospective legislation in indecent haste to insulate itself from the consequences of its own mistakes and seek to make legal what was illegal. If any claimant tried that line, they would be sanctioned. Perhaps the department might regard our amendment as such a sanction.
Lord Freud
My Lords, it was clearly laid down in the primary legislation that that was an expectation, and they were informed by their advisers of that expectation. We are looking now at a subsequent finding by the Court of Appeal, on which we have asked for leave to appeal. However, nobody could have anticipated the finding, which is in dispute. There was a lot more information going to clients than was in that letter, because they were in communication with their advisers.
One of the fundamental points at issue here is that we are trying to design a much more flexible welfare system in which we individualise responses. That means that we do not send out loads of generic letters with long lines of prose about what will happen if you do this, that or the other. We are aiming to have a specific conversation with people through a flexible system.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, surely the Minister has accepted his own department’s research that up to two-thirds of those sanctioned did not understand that the failure to do as they were asked or told to do would result in a sanction. They did not know, and his department’s research confirms that.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness on this—the sanctions have not been well designed. We are redesigning the whole regime, as we did in the recent Act, to make sure that people understand what sanctions are about.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Bates
My Lords, I was not intending to speak on this amendment, but I rise at the prodding of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, who seemed to suggest that some kind of operation was going on in the conduct of our discussion. If there was any operation, the strangest thing about it was that there was not a single speech from the Back Benches of Her Majesty’s Opposition. It is amazing. We are talking here about what we recognise as being critical issues. On each amendment, there were probably three speeches from the Back Benches here, but not one single speech from the Back Bench of the Official Opposition. If the noble Lord wants to come back on that, I shall be more than happy to give way.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I overheard one of the government Whips encouraging those who sit on the Privy Council Bench to speak and speak and to string out it out to delay the votes. I heard that myself. Those Members made their own decisions and I do not in any sense criticise the quality of their speeches. I also saw briefing being passed from the Minister and so on. Perhaps the noble Lord could not see from where he was sitting in the same way as we who have a front-stalls view of what is going on might have done, but, certainly, there was active encouragement of three privy counsellors, none of whom has been known to display any interest in social security hitherto—unlike the noble Lord. All credit to the noble Lord: he has stayed with us; he works on these matters; and he tries to take a balanced approach. I make no criticism of him, but, as to today’s proceedings, there was not a shadow of doubt. Perhaps the noble Lord was sitting in the wrong place, in more ways than one.
Lord Bates
That is a wonderful way of expressing it. The noble Baroness has been complimentary to me; let me reciprocate by stating a fact. She knows more about this subject than anybody else in this Chamber and everybody would immediately acknowledge that. Our previous discussions in Committee and at Second Reading were enhanced immeasurably by her thought-provoking contributions. Now, what is more unusual: that a few Members on Her Majesty’s Government’s side should rise to speak in support of the amendments or that the noble Baroness did not make one speech during their consideration?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I am grateful to the noble Lord for letting me come back on this. Today, we started with a key debate on whether it was right to tie future Secretaries of State’s decisions on the rate of uprating of benefits. My noble friend Lord McKenzie moved the relevant amendment and we had an extensive discussion. We then had a hugely important debate on children, a hugely important debate on disabled people and then an important debate led by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, will know as well as I do that, as we had only effectively half a day—because people are not here after dinner—to discuss four key issues, either we had to postpone key debates to a period of time when no one would be here, including his Privy Council colleagues, to listen and take part, or we acted in a way that was self-disciplined in order that the arguments at least in their basic form could be heard, so that those who wished to—and there were not very many on his side—could come in and listen to those points being made to see whether they affected their vote. We were trying to act responsibly. Had we had two days on Report, we could have paced it differently and I for one would have been delighted to have spoken at least three times on each amendment and made a dozen speeches.
Lord Bates
I take the noble Baroness’s point and shall not pursue it further. I had not intended to make that point, but it is important. Perhaps I may say one other thing. Since I have trodden on a few toes, let me tread on truly sacred ground.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I must say to noble Lords on the Benches opposite that we have had a number of debates about the economic context in which we are making these changes, and I have been disappointed that more noble Lords have not found themselves moved to contribute to them so far. I am glad that there have been more contributions to this debate.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I thought that we had discussed this already. Can the noble Baroness help me by describing how we could have made our contributions? As she knows, four or five of us have regularly taken part in social security debates—including my noble friends Lady Lister and Lady Donaghy, and me, among others. If we had made our contributions, does she think that we would have got to the important debates on disability and the 3% trigger amendment before dinner? If not, does she think that it would have been fair to disabled people to exclude them from the possibility of Parliament reconsidering a foolish decision?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
In my short time in this House, we tend to sit until about 10 pm and have debates on amendments at all times that we are sitting. I did not realise that we were expected to have debates before a certain time at night.
Let us focus on statutory maternity pay. I remind the House that the UK has a strong and effective maternity and parental regime. The UK is significantly more generous than the requirements of the EU pregnant workers directive. The directive states that a woman should benefit from 14 weeks paid maternity leave; we provide 39 weeks. The directive states that a woman should receive at least the amount that would be paid for sickness; our standard rate of maternity pay and maternity allowance is £135.45 per week. That compares to the statutory sick pay rate of £85.85 per week. In addition, the latest available data from the OECD show that the proportion of our GDP spent on maternity and parental pay is higher than that in Germany or France.
It is also worth reflecting on the fact that in the past decade, the length of time for which statutory maternity pay was payable more than doubled. Under the previous Government, it was doubled. It is important to be aware of the baseline that we are starting from.
Yes, the decisions that we have to take on statutory maternity pay will mean a slightly smaller increase for people over the next few years, but that is in the context of a strong and effective maternity architecture in our country which will remain firmly in place. Indeed, the Government are committed to make this architecture even stronger. Noble Lords will soon be debating provisions in the Children and Families Bill which allow working parents to choose which parent takes parental leave and parental pay to care for their child in the early years.
It is also important to understand these changes in the context of other government reforms that support women, families and children and help make positive changes to their lives. I said this in Committee, but it is important, so I will repeat it. For example, a woman working full time at the national minimum wage for six months of the tax year who then receives statutory maternity pay for the next six months will still be better off overall as a result of changes to the income tax personal allowance.
We have debated universal credit many times before, and it is acknowledged that its purpose is to make it worth while for people to move back into work. Once universal credit is introduced, some 800,000 out-of-work lone parents would benefit significantly if they started to work just 10 hours per week. In nearly all such cases, these parents would see at least £40 more in their pocket per week than they would have done under the current system. Also as part of universal credit, £200 million extra is being spent to support families with childcare costs. For the first time, this support will be made available for families who work fewer than 16 hours per week. That means 100,000 more working families will be helped with their childcare costs.
Looking ahead, as my noble friend Lord Newby mentioned in one of the earlier debates today, we have set out changes that will increase eligibility of support to five times as many families as currently is the case through a new tax-free childcare scheme. As part of these changes, we have also announced today a further £200 million additional support in universal credit that will provide working families with the equivalent of 85% of their childcare costs where the lone parent or both parents pay income tax.
When referring to various different payments to families, the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said that she could go on; so could I. There are other things that the Government are doing to support families and women. The support for families that the Government provide is about more than income transfers. I do not deny that families value them and they can make an important difference, but money is often better invested in interventions that really can change lives. In demonstrating this today, I have tried to explain what the Government are doing in addition to the comprehensive support that we provide to new mothers and to show how much there is in providing for families in the right way.
This amendment would reduce savings from the Bill by around £50 million in 2015-16. As I have said, we have taken none of the decisions in this Bill lightly, but we have to recognise that if the savings do not come from the measures set out in the Bill, that could clearly put additional pressures on to public services. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, mentioned alternatives that he would like to propose. They are not ones that I would point to because these amendments are part of a Bill that is about reducing by a smaller amount the increase that we pay in benefits.
To answer the noble Baroness’s question about why we are including statutory maternity pay, we have sought to address the very significant welfare bill, which I am afraid is unsustainable, but doing so in way to protect the most vulnerable. We discussed and debated that at length earlier today. Regrettable as it is to have to make any reductions or cap any of the increases in the way that we have, the infrastructure and architecture there for women and families are strong. They provide sound support that will make a real change to people’s lives. While I recognise that these are difficult decisions, I hope that I have provided enough assurance to the House to show that the Government take their obligations to parents seriously and that we will continue to provide a supportive environment for new mothers in the years to come. I hope therefore that the noble Baroness can withdraw her amendment.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Would the Minister agree that the last increase she mentioned has come about by increasing the additional cuts that people will have to face as a result of the bedroom tax?
Baroness Sherlock
I am sure the Minister is aware that the IFS analysed the distributional impact of tax and benefit changes between January 2010 and April 2015 as if universal credit were fully in place. It modelled the real-terms changes in household income at today’s prices with all the measures announced and UC fully implemented. It suggests that a one-earner couple with children will be £64 a week worse off. How does that equate to what she is saying?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, to add to my noble friend’s point, my obviously localised and limited experience of food banks has been that before about 2010, in so far as they were in play, food banks were mostly drawn upon by young people. These were very often young men aged under 25 who were getting the shared rate for housing benefit in the private rented sector and found, as Shelter and others have told us over the years, that it did not match the rent they were required to pay; it was a very discrete group. They, in my localised experience, often had to turn to food banks to cope. Now the Government have extended that limitation on housing benefit from 25 to 35, while producing additional pressures right across the benefits spectrum, as my noble friend Lady Farrington has said. It is a disgraceful aspect of the fifth-richest nation in the world that so many of our people have to make recourse to food banks because our benefit system does not sustain them in the way it should.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I do not for one moment suggest that food banks are something on which anybody would want to have to rely. I completely agree with the noble Baroness in that regard. My point is simply that the fact they exist—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, the Minister seems to imply throughout her speeches that there is a distinction between those receiving benefits and those who are in work, and that you have to maintain that gap to produce work incentives. That seems to be her argument. However, she knows that two-thirds of the current expenditure on housing benefit and tax credits goes to people in work on the minimum wage to make that wage adequate to enable them and their families to survive. Therefore, will she please refrain from talking about the need to maintain work incentives when the only way that there is an incentive to work is when it is underpinned by benefits?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
With the introduction of universal credit, we will make sure that that is always the case. Therefore, I do not disagree with the noble Baroness at all.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to the Government’s decision to move from RPI to CPI as the appropriate index of inflation. The Government believe that CPI is a more appropriate measure than RPI when considering the impact of inflation on benefits and pensions. It is worth saying that the judicial review of the switch from RPI to CPI found in the Government’s favour and we continue to believe that CPI is a more appropriate index. As an example of the costs involved, uprating the benefits and payments in this Bill by earnings would reduce the savings by £1.8 billion of the total of £1.9 billion in 2015-16 and, if we did so by RPI, would wipe out all the savings and cost an additional £700 million in 2015-16.
As regards paragraph (b) of the amendment, while I cannot predict the decisions that will be made by future Governments, once the provisions in the current Bill cease to have effect, the default position will be for uprating decisions to be made in line with pre-existing legislation.
In referring noble Lords to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, during last week’s debate, I was going to mention his reluctance to say what his party would do if it was in government. Indeed, he was even more than reluctant; he refused to say what it would do. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has commented on that point today.
For social security benefits and statutory payments, the default position will be for uprating decisions to be made under Section 150 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, meaning that the Secretary of State will make an annual review of benefit levels to see whether they have kept pace with the increase in the general level of prices. If prices have increased, he will then make a decision about how he should uprate the benefits covered by the Bill, based on the national economic situation and other factors he considers relevant. For tax credits, the default position is that the Treasury is required under Section 41 of the Tax Credits Act 2002 to review the amounts of certain elements of tax credits each year to determine whether they have retained their value in relation to the general level of prices.
Before I conclude, I refer to the question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, about an assessment of the changes that we are making via this Bill on the well-being of adults and children. In response—and it was a point that I made in Committee last week—this Government publish cumulative impacts of government policy at every major fiscal event. We did so at the time of the Autumn Statement last year. Those assessments include the effects of any changes in welfare and ensure that the other positive measures being introduced in relation to tax rates and so on are taken into account. That represents an increase in transparency when compared with what was in place hitherto. The assessments are publicly available on the Treasury’s website.
This has clearly been a serious debate and I am grateful for the opportunity to respond. I hope that in future debates I am able to expand a little further on some of my comments because I am concerned that in some of my points I was not as clear as I intended to be. I will ensure that when I speak in later debates I am much clearer about the importance we place on ensuring that proper consideration and monitoring are taking place in the implementation of all these changes. If any additional measures are required to support people who are affected in a way that goes beyond that which we are expecting, we will make sure that they have the support they need.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I accept that, but I wrote down what the noble Baroness said. She said: “It has never been the intention to alleviate poverty through benefit payment”. I wrote it down. If she wants to retract that statement, I would be delighted.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I think it was at the point when the Minister said that unemployment benefits were only intended to be temporary while people were in between work, and that therefore they were never expected to address poverty as such. That is the problem that we are worried about.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
This is a debate about the adequacy of benefit rates, not about benefits in a package of what people receive. The difference here is that if somebody is in receipt of a combination of different benefits—housing benefit, jobseeker’s allowance and so on—I can absolutely see the point that the noble Baroness is making. What I am saying in the context of a debate about how to set the rate of a benefit is that benefits alone do not alleviate poverty.
Lord Bates
My Lords, I rise with trepidation following the noble Baroness, who has immense expertise in this area. Even if I had not intended to speak on the technical aspects of this amendment, the claim by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, whose approach is always sharp and pointed in proposing such matters, that this Government is not serious about tackling child poverty would demand a response. Not only is it there for us to read repeatedly in government statements that this Government, as with their predecessor, are committed to the eradication of child poverty, but when we are tempted to get a little too high and mighty about that, one might look at the targets which the previous Government set in respect of halving child poverty by 2010 and how they performed against that measure—they did not tackle it. The commitment is real and is what is driving the whole argument towards universal credit, the raising of tax thresholds, the freeing up of the economy to create 1 million new jobs—which is a pathway out of poverty—the troubled families programme and the pupil premium. This is an immense drive across all departments within government to tackle what we accept is a shame on a country which is still the seventh-richest nation on earth—that 2.3 million children should be in poverty. I just make that point initially.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Given the Minister’s very welcome and obviously understandable sympathies and sensitivities towards the issue of child poverty, does that mean that we can expect the noble Lord to table an amendment at Report stage to protect child benefits, including the child benefits within tax credits, from this Bill altogether?
Lord Bates
I will come to that point in a minute because it is an interesting one about the effectiveness of the cash measure alone in eradicating child poverty. The previous Government failed to meet their target of reducing child poverty by the level they set themselves, despite spending £171 billion between 2003 and 2010. Here, in a sense, is something that almost makes the case for the Opposition, were they to take it. Those of us on the government Benches could stand here and point to the fact that, in 2010-11, 300,000 children were taken out of relative poverty. We could say that, but of course we realise that that is not actually happening on the ground. We recognise that those immense pressures are there. I do not dispute the quotes that the noble Baroness has used in introducing this but the Institute for Fiscal Studies, in its helpful analysis, points to the fact that all that happened with that 300,000 was that you had private sector incomes—predominantly—being repressed or flat-lining. I am trying to follow the gestures of the noble Baroness but being a man I can do only one thing at a time. Private sector incomes increased by 10% over the years 2007 to 2012 while benefit levels increased by 20%. That is one of the arguments that is put. Because it is pitched at median income, you then find that, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows in its graph, the measure comes down, the benefits go up and effectively you say, almost like a card trick, “We have reduced child poverty by 300,000”. In fact, you have done nothing of the sort. All that has happened is that, during a recession, private sector incomes have fallen and therefore, as the IFS says:
“If earnings fall relative to benefit levels, then being in work becomes less financially attractive”.
Those are the IFS’s words, not mine.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, I apologise to the Committee. I was unable to be present for the beginning and I have obviously missed the explanation of a phrase that I cannot understand. The noble Lord has just repeated that the answer to child poverty is not money. I do not know the explanation for the Government’s view that you do not eradicate child poverty by providing money. I wonder whether the noble Lord could refresh my memory.
Secondly, the noble Lord comes from a different northern region from mine. The biggest problem that people face is poverty when they are struggling to go to work. They are struggling to get extra hours, which the Government are insisting that people have to try to do, when their employers will not give them extra hours; when the only extra hours they can get may be two hours further away from their home and the cost of travel there is impossible. I think that noble Lords opposite are not living in the same world as I am. My only reassurance is that the right reverend Prelate appears to be living in my world.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, perhaps I may add to my noble friend’s comments. The noble Lord perfectly accurately described what was happening to the 300,000 children who were lifted out of poverty because the median income line fell by virtue of the recession and the downward pressure on incomes. Of course, he is completely right, but the other way of stating that was that as a result of what the previous Government did, the incomes of those children—the poorest of the poor—were protected against the effects of the recession, for which most of us are grateful and appreciative, including the noble Lord, I am sure.
Lord Bates
I accept that point. On the first point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, of course I am not saying that child poverty has got nothing to do with money. It is vastly to do with money, but is that the only thing that impacts on child poverty? If we want to impact on child poverty, do not the quality of housing, the quality of education and the opportunity to work have some bearing on the fact? Does the fact that the parents are in debt or are drug-dependent or alcohol-dependent have any bearing on it? Does living in a one-parent family or with two parents make any difference to the life chances of the child in poverty? One would probably have to say: yes, to a degree. I am simply saying that there is more to this.
That fact is borne out by international comparisons. I found a report card of child well-being, which was produced while the previous Government were in power. It was undertaken by UNICEF and it is an international comparison. Yes, it looks at cash, although interestingly it looks at 50% of the median, not 60%; it also looks at health and safety, educational opportunities, work opportunities, family and peer relationships, behaviours and risks, and subjective well-being—a broad range of indicators in a basket of trying to assess international child well-being. By the way, if the party opposite is interested, it actually came last: 18.2 was that Government’s average ranking position out of the most advanced countries in the world, but that is not my point.
My point is that we must come back to the median income. The median income is worth looking at in itself because that is the test that we are using to measure all benefits. It relates to a level of income—not an average income but a median income, the most frequent across the distribution. The latest figures I could find on the ONS website showed that median incomes vary quite substantially across the United Kingdom—nothing unusual there; you would expect that to happen. For example, in London the median gross wage is £651.80 per week, but in the north-east the figure is £451.80 per week. These are the latest figures; I accept that there might be a shift slightly in one direction—well, upwards only.
There is a difference of 44% across the range. Therefore, when we are applying a national target of 60% of the median, we need to examine whether that is giving us an accurate reflection of child poverty levels in all parts of the country. It might be that we are understating it in parts of the north, Wales and the south-west; it may be that we are overstating it in London—I do not know. None the less, using that as the sole measure to test median income across a national rating by which we actually assess those in child poverty is worth taking a more careful look at.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, two sentences ago the Minister said that one of the reasons for bringing the rate of £57 down to £28 was in order not only to align it with the adult rate but to increase simplicity. Will he explain why halving the amount increases simplicity, as opposed to hardship?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
That is a fair point. The people who were posting on the internet at that time were responding to the comments of Rachel Reeves about the proposals having a disproportionate impact on women, and only women.
Away from the debate on Mumsnet, the Government are committed to make this architecture for women stronger. The provisions in the Children and Families Bill, which had its Second Reading in another place last week, will allow working parents to choose which parent takes parental leave and pay to care for their child in the early years. This will give mothers real choice over when and whether they return to work. This is helpful in two big ways—where the woman is the higher earner and in starting to chip away at the inequality that some women face at work just because it is assumed that they and only they will take a break in their careers to have children. Our proposals will start to make a big difference.
It is also important to remember that the Government have introduced other reforms that will help to offset the impacts of these changes. For example, a woman working full time at national minimum wage for six months of the tax year, who then receives statutory maternity pay for the next six months, will still be better off overall as a result of changes to the income tax personal allowance. The introduction of universal credit will also provide a big boost for many mothers and lone parents, with 2.6 million women and 700,000 lone parents expected to gain through increased take-up and improved financial incentives to work. In addition, as part of the introduction of universal credit, £200 million extra is being spent to support families with childcare costs. For the first time, this support will be made available for families who work less than 16 hours a week. This will mean that 100,000 more working families will be helped with their childcare costs. That is important, because it means that even if someone is able to take on only a small amount of work, they will get that support for childcare costs to which they previously would not have had access. In another move that will be helpful to mothers and parents, as my noble friend Lord Newby mentioned, we have committed to introduce 15 hours a week of early education for 40% of two year-olds, starting with the most disadvantaged.
The Government will also continue to make extra support available for mothers on low incomes to buy the basic goods that they need. We have a programme called Healthy Start, and the Sure Start maternity grant—a lump sum payment of £500—is available to help parents with the costs of having a new child. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said that this is now available only to parents who have a child and no other child under the age of 16. However, this support is additional to the money that parents receive through their statutory maternity pay. Bear in mind that if there is another child in the home, some of the initial substantial expenses of having a family often are not repeated if they have a second child.
The amendment would reduce savings from the Bill by around £50 million in 2015-16. None of the decisions contained in the Bill are easy. I recognise that the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, would prefer that we did not include statutory maternity pay in the Bill. I would like that, too. I would love it if we could say, “Let’s exclude this or that”. However, as my noble friend said in our previous debates, every time we say that we will not include something in the Bill, we have to look somewhere else for the money. That £50 million is not a small sum and is equivalent to more than 20,000 part-time nursery places for three to four year-olds. This is money that will cover substantial support that rightly we provide to mothers and families in other ways.
I hope that I have been able to demonstrate that there is a strong architecture to support women when they have children. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, the Minister regularly makes the point that if we do not have these savings the money must come from somewhere else, such as nurses’ salaries, teachers, the NHS, schools or whatever. I hope that she appreciates that most of us on this side believe that the Government are making a political policy choice. It does not have to fall on children, disabled children or statutory maternity pay. As some of us argued at Second Reading—there were different shopping lists—we are spending £32 billion on tax relief for private pensions, of which £8 billion goes to subsidise the tax relief that higher-rate taxpayers currently enjoy. To continue that is a political policy choice. The money would pay for most of these cuts twice over.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
As I have said on several occasions, these cuts are necessary because of the financial situation that we found ourselves in. They are not something that we want to have to do, but we believe that these are the right cuts to make because we have made sure that we have, wherever possible, protected those who are least able to increase their income by different means. While these are not cuts that we want to introduce at all, we think that we have done so sensibly and by addressing people in the right way, as anybody would expect us to do. That is the situation that we have found ourselves in and the decision that we have made.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I do not think that anyone doubts the Minister’s good will, integrity or concern about these issues. That is not the issue. All that I am saying—and she has not answered this—is that those cuts could fall elsewhere, and she, on behalf of the Government, is choosing for them not to fall elsewhere on people who could afford to pay for them.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I would say to the noble Baroness that while she and the right reverend Prelate are willing to put forward their alternatives on where they would target cuts if they were in a position to make those decisions—and I respect them for doing that—her colleagues on her own Front Bench have so far refused to do so. We have made these decisions in this area. We have done so in a way whereby we have protected those who are most vulnerable. We would much rather not have to do this but we believe that it is necessary because of the economic situation that we find ourselves in and because we think that this is, in the end, the right thing to do to secure a strong economy for the future.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I think I am right in saying that the noble Baroness was not here at Second Reading when I laid out the purpose of the Bill and its wider context. In response to her question, my point is that this proposal is about certainty, so that in the long-term it will result in a better future for everyone. It is also about taking measures now which are difficult and will affect people but which have the sole purpose of helping us to achieve a stronger economy so that in future years all of us will benefit. That is what I mean when I talk about certainty.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, as the Minister will recall, that is not exactly what the impact analysis said nor exactly what she said at the pre-meeting on this Bill, which was very helpful. I am sure that we all appreciated it. She made the point that it was about certainty for the markets, certainty for the Government and certainty for the claimants. Many of us pressed her on the fact that certainty for the Government, the markets or the claimants depended not just on what the level of inflation would be but also on what the number of claimants would be in order to get some estimate of what spending would be. The Government had no way at all of forecasting two out of the three factors that went into giving themselves some comfort about their uncertainty.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The point that I was making at Second Reading and continue to make is that certainty is a means to an end. It is through certainty for the Government, certainty for the markets and certainty in these measures that we will achieve a stronger economy. That is what I am talking about.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, this simply will not give you certainty. The whole of the impact analysis brief was a set of mythological language. This will not do what the Government claim. I understand that they are seeking to cut possible expenditure demands but to say that this is about certainty is simply an abuse of language, if I may say so.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in favour of Amendment 2: the noble Lord, Lord Low, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and my noble friend Lady Lister. From the Minister’s response it seems that this is all about a better future for everyone, and that seems to encompass a rather strange load of decisions. My noble friend Lady Lister asked a question which I do not believe was answered. She raised the comparison with pensioners who are being protected—and we support that because they are not so readily in a position to make up their income by accessing the labour market. However, people are in the support group because they are not expected to be able to be in, or are some distance from, the labour market.
In respect of the WRAG, I think that the Government are generally drawing closer together the JSA group and the WRAG to blur that distinction. People in the WRAG were not expected to look for work. Yes, they were expected to be fit and were deemed to be fit for work-related activity, but there is a constant push by the Government to blur that distinction and ease them much more towards the JSA category, if that job is not being done, in any event, by the WCA and Atos.
The noble Lord, Lord German, asked whether this is a rough edge. It seems to me that it clearly is a rough edge—it has not been overlooked, and it is not being dealt with in any other way. It is a hit that people in the support group and the WRAG have got to take. It seems to me that this is incredibly mean-spirited. It just focuses on the support group—the people who are in the most difficult position and not able to access employment. The noble Baroness said that 65% of them were on DLA and acknowledged that DLA is outwith the Bill. What is the Minister’s understanding of the percentage of people in the support group who will end up on PIP rather than DLA?
In Amendment 3, the noble Lord, Lord Low, makes a broader case for removing ESA from the scope of the 1% restriction on uprating for those who are in the WRAG. It obviously goes further than our Amendment 2. We have made clear that the 1% uprating restriction should be removed in its entirety from all the relevant sums and amounts as defined, and we are grateful for the support of the noble Lord in that endeavour. If we are successful, the noble Lord’s amendment, and several others including our own, would fall by the wayside. Should we be unsuccessful we need to consider how we can at least move some way towards that objective.
As we have just discussed, we focused in our Amendment 2 on those in the support group. We did that because those affected are the most seriously disadvantaged—the furthest from the labour market—and because the Minister has made a commitment that this group would be protected. That commitment clearly is not being met. The noble Lord’s proposal that we should go further, beyond the support group, is entirely reasonable. Those in the WRAG are similarly judged under the WCA as not being fit for work although capable of work-related activity. But for those who seek work, we know that the prospects are not good. Not only do we have a work programme which is failing overall but there is at least anecdotal evidence to suggest that the hardest to help are not being properly supported. We have the shutting of Remploy factories, concerns over the looming bedroom tax, the restrictions on contributory ESA and the loss of the severe disability premium in universal credit. These have all added to the pressure on disabled people.
As the noble Lord, Lord Low, has said, the Bill will mean that people in the WRAG will be some £191 a year worse off by 2015. If we cannot carry the day on removing the 1% restriction across the board, we would look to support the noble Lord should he decide to pursue his line on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
I am happy to support these amendments and have added my name to most of them. The House owes a debt of gratitude to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester for raising these points. I particularly support his concerns about lone parents. Over the whole systematic process of change, my concerns are getting greater and greater about the compounding effect of all these changes that we see in the social protection available in the United Kingdom. Lone parents, who are mainly women, are struggling already, and we need to watch their situation with great concern in future.
My heart absolutely sank when I saw that this Bill was being applied to universal credit, because universal credit should be the future; it is the architecture around which we as a country should and must have serious consideration about provision for low-income households. We need to have a discussion with people such as my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean as well, between now and the next election. I hope that there will be a grown-up discussion about how the United Kingdom, as a poorer country, accommodates some of these new pressures, and I am willing to engage in that to the best of my ability. However, what is wrong about applying these two years of locked-down 1% increases is that they risk prejudicing the whole new future, as I see it, of how we cope.
In my experience, the administrative cuts in the health service prejudiced the view of a lot of people towards some of the NHS reforms. My real fear is that people will not know that the cuts are being introduced by the uprating Bill and will think, in the early years of universal credit, when they are transitioned across into the new system, that they are being sold a pup. That will potentially damage the public’s understanding of what universal credit is about and that is a real shame. I understand perfectly well all the arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, makes, and we have to put up with them in the best way we can, but we should have isolated universal credit for the reasons that I have explained.
Further, I do not think that we know how universal credit will work out when it is in steady state, and it will take a long time to get there. I come back to the costs that will be saved by applying this uprating Bill to universal credit because I am a bit confused about exactly what the Government think they are going to save. Therefore, I make my first complaint—it is another moan—with conviction. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, bless him, has worked very hard to try to get universal credit to stand up. I read a worrying story in the Financial Times, which said that the self-employed have not yet been told that there is a real-time HMRC system heading in their direction. Not many of them know about it. That is more than slightly worrying—it is very worrying, because the computer system is essential to that measure working sensibly. However, we must try to do the best we can to make it work in future.
Secondly—again, the right reverend Prelate was right to give this priority—one of the best elements of universal credit is the way it deals with what used to be known in the old language as income disregard. Some of us have fought for years to do something constructive about income disregard. It is a very intractable problem and universal credit has given us an opportunity to get hold of that and provide incentives to get into work. Universal credit does that, but the first thing that the Government do after bringing in this new progressive reform is to cap it at 1%. How that is supposed to meld with everything else that has been done in connection with the Work Programme makes no sense to me. It will save relatively small amounts of money in terms of the big picture savings that the Government are trying to lock in, but for the life of me it seems a counterproductive, silly cut to introduce and it compounds my first point in that it makes the universal credit system look worse than it is.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester made eloquent and important points about child poverty targets. I concur with everything that he said, so I do not need to elaborate on that. My final point is about costs because I am struggling to understand the savings that have been alluded to. I do not expect the Minister to be able to do this off the top of her head but it would be helpful to me if, before Report, I could be told what the universal credit cost savings are in this measure because I cannot make any sense of the impact assessment. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, that it is—
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
Indeed. I am looking at the Treasury Autumn Statement 2012, Table 2.1, which has a category headed, “Exchequer savings resulting from 1% uprating of benefits and tax credits”. This is over the three years, not just the two years in the Bill. The table also has a category headed, “Universal Credit: finalise disregards and increase by 1% for two years from 2014-15”. The figure given suggests that the saving for 2015-16 will be £640 million. However, my honourable friend Steve Webb, in a Written Answer to Stephen Timms on 13 February, identified universal credit additional savings as £20 million in 2014-15, £100 million in 2015-16 and £150 million in 2016-17. I am not sure how these figures relate to one another. I may be misreading the statistics and the tables may be drawn up using different bases, but between now and Report I would like to understand how these figures are worked out.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said, the assumptions about how many people will be translated on to universal credit are best guesses, to put it mildly. I think the roll-out programme will take much longer, for the reasons that I explained earlier, and the story in the Financial Times compounds my anxieties in this regard. I think the figures that the right reverend Prelate gave of 10% of claimants being on universal credit by 2014-15 and 30% by 2015-16 are ambitious, to put it mildly, so can we have some greater clarity?
This is an important Bill. I understand the significance of the situation in which the Government find themselves. If I did not believe that before this weekend, all the financial circumstances of the past few days have confirmed the difficulty of the situation. However, before Report, we must try to get a better fix, in particular on the savings related to the universal credit inclusion in the Bill, because it is unclear to me. It is important and, from where I am sitting at the moment, I do not think that the savings are worth the candle. I would be much happier leaving universal credit out of the Bill. Let it be the future and let us all work on it, try to protect it and build on it in the best way we can. The Bill is a retrograde step as it affects universal credit, and I support these amendments for that reason.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
When the Minister talks about housing benefit, does she include local housing allowance? I think not.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
No, I do not. The Bill relates to the personal allowance element of housing benefit. The noble Baroness refers to another announcement in the Autumn Statement. This Bill concerns the personal allowance component of housing benefit.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
What about the personal allowance in local housing allowance?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I do not think that it is included, but I will check.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I think I am clear that the Bill refers just to the personal allowance for housing benefit. If I am wrong, I will of course correct that.
As I said, if we were to change the personal allowance for housing benefit, we would introduce inconsistency to the way in which this part of in-work benefit is calculated. There would no longer be consistency between the different kinds of personal allowances that apply to different benefits. In addition to increasing the complexity of the system, this would lead to additional costs.
Before I conclude, I will respond to a question from my noble friend Lord Kirkwood, who asked about costing methodology. I confirm that costs have been modelled and presented in a way that is consistent with the Autumn Statement. I will be happy to provide further details to the noble Lord before Report.
The Government are supporting working households. One of the key ways in which we are doing that is by taking tough decisions to reduce public spending, reduce the deficit and restore economic growth. The amendments tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, including Amendment 13, would reduce the savings of the Bill by about 40%—or £800 million—in 2015-16 alone. Not including in-work benefits in the Bill would be simply unaffordable. Therefore, I ask the right reverend Prelate to withdraw his amendment.
“Review of housing welfare benefits
(1) The Secretary of State must undertake a review of the current relationship between the amounts of housing welfare benefits in each local authority area and market rents in the same area during the relevant period.
(2) The relevant period in subsection (1) shall be each period of twelve months starting on 1 April 2013 and ending on 31 March 2016.
(3) A review under subsection (1) shall include an analysis of the effect of the levels of housing welfare benefits on the amount of private sector housing which is currently affordable by those in receipt of or entitled to such benefits.
(4) The Secretary of State shall cause to be published at twelve monthly intervals starting on 31 March 2014 a report of the evidence and conclusions of each review undertaken under subsection (1).
(5) The Secretary of State shall publish a response to each report under subsection (4) within three months of its due date, and shall take steps to amend the method used to uprate housing welfare benefits if there is shown to be a significant divergence between rent levels in the private rented sector and housing welfare benefits.
(6) In this section “housing welfare benefits” means housing benefit in the form of the local housing allowance or (as the case may be) the housing component of universal credit and “significant divergence” within the meaning of subsection (5) is to be defined in regulations.”
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, as others have said, this is a modest amendment, so modest that I hope it is not only going to be acceptable to the Government but it might even be welcomed by them—you never know—as it only specifies how the firm undertaking given on 14 December 2011 by the noble Lord, Lord Freud, on Report of the Welfare Reform Bill will be followed through.
The noble Lord, Lord Freud, agreed:
“If it then becomes apparent that local allowance rates”—
that is, private sector HB—
“and rents are out of step, they can be reconsidered”.—[Official Report, 14/12/11; col. 1324.]
After I pressed him, he agreed to,
“change the word from ‘can’ to ‘will’”.—[Official Report, 14/12/11; col. 1325.]
So the substance of this amendment has already been agreed. This amendment is merely about process. The commitment made by the noble Lord, Lord Freud, needs to be embedded in primary legislation with follow-up regs so that we can have an agreed timetable and we can all enjoy what the Minister referred to as the certainty that would follow—certainty for the markets, should they be so interested, for the public, for the recipients and, above all, of course, for Parliament.
The noble Lord, Lord Newby, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, did not have the considerable and extended pleasure of being active in the Welfare Reform Bill—how wise of them—so it might be helpful to them and the House if I retrace our steps a little. Why, first in Committee and then on Report, did we press for this review, which the noble Lord, Lord Freud, agreed to? The noble Lord, Lord Best, had already persuaded the noble Lord, Lord Freud, of the need for a high-powered independent review of the full housing implications of the Welfare Reform Bill for families. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for persuading the Minister, and to the noble Lord, Lord Freud, for the open-minded, evidence-based way he responded, which was to agree to the review.
None the less, a partial and particular problem seemed to many of us to persist: the connection of the private rented sector—PRS—rents and local housing allowance; that is, LHA. Why? It is clear that we have three housing tenures—owner-occupation, PRS and social housing—but we have only one housing market and that housing market works effectively and efficiently only if there is a rough match between supply and demand, which there is not. We can all see that the housing market is currently in crisis.
Burdened with student debt and unable to build a deposit for owner-occupation while and because they are paying very high rents in the private rented sector, people in their 20s are now living in that sector not for five years but for 15. It is no longer tenure of transit but a permanent tenure of long stay. Rather like in the 19th century, when people consumed more potatoes whenever their price went up, as more people unable to afford to buy remain in the private rented sector, the more they push up demand and push up rents—which absorb more of their income and make it impossible for them to afford a deposit, move out and buy. So the higher the rent, the longer you stay in the private rented sector.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I thank noble Lords very much for this debate. I should say at the start that although Amendment 13 is caught in this group, as I covered quite a bit of it in the previous discussion I will not go over it again, except to say that since the noble Lord, Lord Best, referred to the personal allowance of housing benefit, it is worth me repeating this for clarity’s sake. First, eligible rent will continue to be wholly covered by housing benefit for those who continue to satisfy the income test for all income-related benefits, including housing benefit. Secondly, renters in low-paid work will still be better off than they would be on out-of-work benefits. Work will continue to pay. Although that relates to the previous discussion, I wanted to say that again because the noble Lord, Lord Best, had raised it.
I turn to Amendment 7, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and Amendment 12A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best. As they have explained, their amendments seek to specify how the Government should monitor and review the uprating of local housing allowance. It is probably worth my saying from the outset that, as noble Lords know, I am new to this policy area and on housing I very much bow to the long-term experience and expertise of the noble Baroness and the noble Lord. I know that they have a huge amount of knowledge in this area.
Noble Lords should be aware that the uprating of local housing allowance is not covered by this Bill. Reference has been made to that; it is made under separate secondary legislation, providing independent rent officers with a remit to set rates under specified rules. None the less, I will try to respond fully to the issues that these amendments cover. Now might be a good point for me to reconfirm a point that I made in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, about personal allowance in LHA. What I said to her in response to the previous debate is correct: the local housing allowance simply sets the local maximum for eligible rents, and calculation of housing benefit to meet that eligible rent is not part of the Bill.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Can the Minister help me on the point that she made slightly before saying that it was not covered by the Bill, et cetera? It is certainly the case, is it not, that housing benefit and local housing allowance in the forthcoming year will rise by CPI? It is not caught by the 1% figure that other benefits are but thereafter, for the following two years, it will be capped by 1%. Is the Minister saying that that will not happen, or that it will but that it will done through the route of looping it through advice or instructions to rent officers by regulations?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
Absolutely; it is the second. I am not disputing the fact that it will be capped at 1% for 2014-15 and 2015-16, but that will not be done via this Bill. That is just a point of process.
As noble Lords will know, the total bill for housing benefit has doubled in cash terms over the past decade and if unreformed by 2014-15, it would cost us more than £25 billion. This is why we are taking a number of measures to reduce housing benefit expenditure, including limiting increases in the local housing allowance to 1% for two years from 2014-15, as we have just discussed. This change will make a crucial contribution to the essential deficit reduction strategy but it will do more than that. As the Government are a major player in the private rented market, it will also exert downward pressure on rents—a point made by my noble friend Lord Bates. Where rents are increasing rapidly, there should be no presumption that the taxpayer should pick up the bill.
Noble Lords referred to the need to monitor affordability of accommodation for benefit claimants during the period where the limits are in place. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, paid tribute to my noble friend Lord Freud and his response when this matter was discussed during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill. I certainly agree with what she described; I also agree with his decision. That is why we have already put in place a strong monitoring and evaluation plan. I reassure noble Lords that this is in place in light of that discussion that took place during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill. My noble friend has honoured his commitment made at that time.
The Government have introduced a number of changes to the way that local housing allowance rates are calculated, including a cap on rates.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister again but, before she goes on, she is saying that she confirms that the noble Lord, Lord Freud, made the commitment and that that commitment is now in the process of being delivered by a current review. Is she referring to the original review that was established by the noble Lord, Lord Best, is she saying that the terms of reference of that original review have been extended or, thirdly, is she saying that there is a further review for this particular aspect in order to deliver the pledge made by the noble Lord, Lord Freud, that he would keep under review any possibility of significant divergence between market trends and housing benefit?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I hope that as I continue to respond to the debate I will answer the question that the noble Baroness has just asked.
We have commissioned a consortium, led by Ian Cole of Sheffield University, to carry out an independent review of these changes. The interim report is due to be published in spring this year and the final report in early 2014. In addition, to monitor the specific effects of LHA uprating we have put in place a process for publishing on an annual basis a comparison of local housing allowance rates and the 30th percentile of market rents.
The first annual publication of these data took place in November last year and was carried out independently by the rent officers who set LHA rates and collect the most authoritative data on market rents. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, asked for some evidence. The published data show that only one-quarter of LHA rates have been subject to the CPI limit and more than one in 10 rates have actually fallen in line with local rents, to answer the point that my noble friend Lord Bates raised. At this moment we are not seeing a general divergence between LHA rates and market rents.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, referred to several different potential outcomes from the changes that we have made. A couple of things were proposed, suggested or estimated during the passage of the Welfare Reform Act, one of them being a suggestion that 42% of landlords would scale back on housing benefit tenants. The reality is that the housing benefit caseload has actually risen in London by 5% in, I think, the past year.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, suggested that no properties would be available to benefit claimants. Private sector landlords are not turning away housing benefit claimants. Since April 2011, when we introduced our first reforms of the LHA, the PRS caseload, as I just said, increased, and that includes London and the south-east.
The noble Baroness also made reference to rent control and suggested that that might be the way forward. We absolutely dispute that; we say that it would not make more homes available at rents that people could afford. We experienced regulated rents in the private sector some decades ago and they shrank from 55% of households in 1939 to 8% by the late 1980s.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I was not recommending rent control. I was merely saying that if you are not going to increase the supply and rents continue to rise—and all the evidence is that they are—then that is one possibility. It is not one that I support because I would much prefer the Government increasing the supply of stock.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I think that I have just provided the noble Baroness with some evidence to show that rents are not actually increasing in light of the changes that we have made. Rents are actually coming down. We are having some success in downward pressure on rents.
We have taken care to retain some flexibility to react if problems with affordability emerge along with the need to take action should significant divergences emerge between LHA rates and market rents. We have set aside £140 million over two years from 2014-15 to help people most affected by the new 1% limit. The noble Lord, Lord Best, referred specifically to effects in London, and I can confirm that the funding that has been set aside will be there to address areas precisely such as London and the south-east. Our intention is to increase the local housing allowance rates by more than 1% in areas where rent increases are causing a shortage of affordable accommodation. Rather than specifying the details in legislation now, however, we plan to develop our approach in spring this year before making final details available in the autumn so that we can reflect the views of key stakeholders and take account of the most up-to-date evidence before making decisions.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this small debate. The noble Lord, Lord Best, emphasised that housing benefit was a high-ticket item. He is right, so any percentage cuts to that benefit are highly significant in terms of the income as it affects tenant recipients. He also emphasised, and he was absolutely right to do so, the folly as well as the cruelty of sending thousands of families into higher cost temporary accommodation. I agreed with every word he said—I hope that that does not damn his speech.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bates, for a thoughtful contribution to the debate supporting the review. I am delighted that he agrees with the commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, that such a review is desirable and necessary. Contrary to what the Minister was saying, he is right that private sector rents are alone among the housing triple tenures in rising fast. They are rising faster than inflation. That, as I tried to argue, means that it is impossible to leave that sector because by paying those higher rents you cannot afford to save for the deposit that takes you out of it. In turn, that raises rents still higher because nobody is leaving that sector but other people are trying to enter, which makes it even more impossible to leave it in the future. It becomes a vicious upward spiral in which people are trapped. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, is absolutely right that that is exactly what is happening. Poorer tenants are also faced with that higher increased pressure on rents with only housing benefit to help them cope with it, and that housing benefit is being cut three times over—first by being connected not to the 50th percentile of rents but to the 30th percentile, secondly by being capped by CPI for the forthcoming year instead of actual rent levels, and thirdly, in the subsequent two years, by a further cap of only 1%, which the Minister has confirmed to us. That means that more tenants will follow the desperately sad route that the noble Lord, Lord Best, emphasised.
As my noble friend Lord McKenzie said, quoting the Guardian article that I missed, that will mean more families with children being uprooted and spending longer periods in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Many years ago, as a former chair of a housing committee, I saw how long it took those children, who were often traumatised by those events, to get over them. They had had to move home, move school and lose connection with their friends. At the age of seven or eight, they were reverting to bedwetting and the rest. That is what we are now going to be imposing on thousands more children because of the folly of this policy.
Finally, I come to the Minister’s comments. She emphasised that she thinks the policy is working and that according to her figures rents are already being driven down as a result. I listened carefully and I would very much like to see the evidence she has because it runs contrary to what the noble Lords, Lord Bates and Lord Best, and the National Landlords Association are saying; it runs contrary to my brief from Shelter and my experience of the housing market. It may be that the Department for Work and Pensions has a unique insight and extra special information denied to the rest of us, but it does not conform to what I know. Certainly it is the case that so far the CPI cap has applied for only something like 10 months of the current year. None the less, for the years thereafter—not next year, but two years thereafter—it is going to come down to 1%, so there is going to be an accelerating effect, a depression, on rent levels as a result of the rent benefit and housing benefit caps arising from the Government’s policy.
The Government are banking absolutely everything on the fact that by pressing and cutting down on HB, even though only 20% of those in the market have HB, you will reduce the overall level of rents and therefore tenants will not suffer. There is not a shred of evidence that I have seen or that has been offered tonight to support that contention. The Minister is gambling on the lives of children going into bed-and-breakfast accommodation in the ideological hope that 20% of those in the market can affect the rents that the other 80% will pay. They will not do it because landlords do not have to let, and they will not let, except those who have substandard accommodation that people who do not need housing benefit will avoid. That is a form of Russian roulette that none of us should be party to.
I hope that the Minister will write to me with her evidence because it does not conform to anything that I am aware of. In the light of that, I would like to reflect on what she has said and on what evidence she can send me. I will also reflect on whether what she is saying means that the Government are continuing adequately to keep under review the possible divergence that, from all the evidence we have, is already beginning to occur between rents and housing benefit. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I am very surprised to see the need for this amendment. Usually, when benefit changes are introduced, it is standard practice not to take them away from those who are currently in receipt of them. If the Government go ahead with the provisions in the way that is currently envisaged, it is clear that they will effectively be depriving people of a benefit which they currently enjoy, because what is a Motability car if not a benefit? It is every bit as valuable as a cash benefit and I find it difficult to imagine that the Government seriously intend to strip people of benefits which they currently enjoy.
I am very sorry that I missed the first couple of minutes of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I do not know whether he referred to the numbers but he cited the figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Freud: that in a steady state the number of disabled people with mobility difficulties in receipt of personal independence payment will reduce from about 1,000,000 to 600,000. I am given to understand that of those, it is estimated that 27% might have a Motability car. I believe this equates to about 200 Motability cars per constituency. That is a large number of people who are likely to be beating a path to their MP’s surgery with a very real grievance. I hope that the Government will take that into their calculations when considering whether to press ahead with this provision.
I remember several occasions when Lord Newton, who is sadly no longer with us, would taunt the Government when we came to debate provisions of this sort—the bedroom tax was an example and others could be thought of—with the fact that changes of this character would not survive five minutes once they had been introduced and aggrieved constituents were beating a path to their MP’s surgery. That is the situation which the Government are facing with this provision, if they press ahead with it.
I cannot believe that the Government seriously intend to proceed with a measure which will take Motability cars out of the hands of disabled people who currently rely on them for their mobility and without which they will effectively be rendered prisoners in their own house. I will be interested to see what the sense of this Committee is as we listen to the debate but I would be very surprised if there was not widespread sympathy for this amendment right across the House. I beg the Government to take this one seriously and to make a constructive response to the very full case set out by my noble friend Lord Alton and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I also support the intention behind the amendment. I declare an interest as a vice-patron of Motability, while two members of my extended family—though not my immediate family—enjoy the use of Motability cars.
A number of us at first welcomed and were appreciative of the amount of consultation that the department engaged in concerning the new regulations for PIP, only to learn that, at the very last moment and without consultation, the Government had made two amendments, one of which was to withdraw the magic words “safely”, “reliably” and so on, while the other allegedly clarified what was meant by “virtually unable to walk” by confining it, as of right, to a territory of 20 metres, as opposed to the original territory of 20 to 50 metres that had informed previous decisions.
The Government, rightly and sensibly, moved on the first of these amendments and reinstated the test for the higher-rate DLA mobility component by introducing the key words “reliably”, “regularly”, “accessible” and so on, but failed to move on the second on the issue of 20 to 50 metres, assuring us that it made no difference in practice. When they were pressed on the statistics, however, the “no difference in practice” turned out to be a very real difference. Although the noble Lord, Lord Freud, suggested that of the 1 million, 600,000 would retain it and 400,000 would lose it, that was not the complete figure because 200,000 people who are currently on the lower-rate mobility allowance—needing psychological supervision and so on—would move up into the higher group, so there was a net loss of 400,000 but a gross loss of 600,000 people in higher-rate DLA who would now lose it, although to some extent that would be compensated for by the further 200,000 coming in from the lower group. Still, the gross figure is something like 600,000.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I am delighted to acknowledge that I am drawing on the Oxford Economics report that came out in December 2010, which is full of very valuable figures on this. We know from that report that about 28% of people on higher-rate DLA turn that mobility component into a Motability car. There are currently around 543,000 people driving a Motability car on the basis of three-year leases, and around 185,000 new cars are bought each year by Motability. It is the largest purchaser of new cars in the country, accounting for about 10% of them. This will have serious ramifications for jobs and the car industry, which Motability does so much to support.
However, I am not even going to argue about that. I am arguing on behalf of what Motability does for people’s independence. I remember being struck many years ago, back in the late 1990s when I first met the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, by what she said about the Independent Living Foundation. She said, and for me this was a mind-changing moment, that the ILF, which gave people what we now call personal budgets—generous, or at least adequately generous, sums of money to enable them to employ their own carers and so on—put that disabled person at the centre of the care system, not as a recipient at the end of that system, so that people could determine what time they went to bed and so on. The same is true of a Motability car; it puts the person who is enabled to drive it at the centre of their mobility, not dependent on the charity, good will, altruism, convenience and so on of other people. Of those people who have a Motability car, something like 76% of them drive it themselves, so it becomes their means of movement. The result of that is that it frees not only them to be mobile but their informal carer as well, because without that transport they are totally dependent on someone else to take them to places where they need to go. As one person quoted in the Oxford Economics study said, if they are housebound—that is, without that car—it makes their informal carers housebound too. Removing the car locks two parties into immobility.
The report goes on to show us how effective the Motability car has been in enlarging the horizons of people’s lives. It shows that, for example, most of the recipients had cars in the past that they could no longer use by virtue of their arthritis or their heart problems. Whereas before their disability two-thirds of the recipients of cars were in work, subsequently only 16% were able to hold down paid employment. The Motability car helped 12,500 of them get a job and 56,000 to keep their job. It was crucial for those who needed specially adapted cars that they could not provide for themselves or for people in rural areas, such as my county of Norfolk where, frankly, public transport is non-existent and a complete myth. That car took some of them—16%—to work; it took younger ones into education and training, allowing them, in due course, to get work; it took them to their medical appointments, the shops, their children’s schools and to see their families. It allowed them, as one of them said, to access life. This is what the Government are apparently proposing to take away.
We all accept that people’s disability needs can diminish over time, or may increase over time, but for the most part, those who have reached the threshold of higher-rate DLA continue to have very real and substantial mobility problems wherever that line is to be drawn, whether at 20 metres or 50 metres. Therefore, like the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I urge the Government before Report to hold discussions with the noble Lords, Lord Sterling and Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and come up with a way forward on this. We have to have a transitional period—a period of grace—on this, either to the end of the lease or for a two-year period, whichever comes last, which would, at the very least, allow adequate time for the appeals procedure to go through without people losing a car in the mean time and then having to go through the routine that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, described to regain it.
We had a similar discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Freud, about adapted houses. At one stage, if people were underoccupying a house that had had £20,000 spent on adapting it, they were to move from there, go somewhere smaller and have all the adaptation put in again, but good sense prevailed. The Minister agreed that where such money had been invested it was wise for those people to be allowed to stay. That argument makes sense for the home, and it makes sense for the agency of mobility which is the Motability car. That transitional period of grace, whether it is to the end of the lease or for a two-year period, whichever comes last, would prevent the awful situation of cars being taken back in and piled up in scrapyards because nobody would want that supply of used cars on the market when there will not be the purchasing power to buy them. We would not see Ford and the rest of them finding that they suddenly had closed order books, and we would not see people losing their cars, appealing, regaining them and having to go through all the trauma of these arrangements.
At the very least, there is a huge moral, legal, practical and economic obligation on the Government to provide a way forward to allow that transitional period—that period of grace—to allow those who feel that they should keep their car to appeal and, I hope, to retain it and to allow those whom it is deemed must lose their car time to adapt. Without it, I warn the Minister that she has seen nothing yet.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I shall start by setting out our position. We certainly support the thrust of this amendment and the intention behind it. We certainly support the concept that there needs to be consultation between the Secretary of State and Motability. The precise formulation of proposed new subsection (2) of the amendment needs careful consideration of the idea of benefits being on an individual basis rather than more generally, but I do not think that particularly concerns the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I think the idea is to press the Government to come forward with some transitional arrangements.
We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, a comprehensive and passionate argument in favour of the amendment. Indeed, he has been assiduous in following this issue and has been leading on it now for some months. It is probably fair to say that, in all the discussion, the to-ing and fro-ing and all the consultation that was undertaken on the move from DLA to PIP, this did not originally have the prominence that it should have had. The efforts now to ensure that it is properly focused on are very important.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. In responding, first, I will address the points that I have put under the heading of “uprating” and then come to issues linked specifically to Motability and PIP. I want to make it clear, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Alton, acknowledged, that this Bill, which is about capping the annual increases of certain benefits to 1%, does not include DLA or personal independence payments. It is really important that that is properly understood by everyone when we are discussing this matter.
If I understood the noble Lord, Lord Alton, correctly, having acknowledged that PIP is not part of this Bill, his amendment would seek to require the Secretary of State to consult Motability every year before he sets the annual rate of increase on PIP. However, I do not think that that is necessary. As I have said, PIP is excluded from this Bill and would be subject to a CPI increase. If there were any shortfall in the benefits over the course of a three-year lease and if the PIP annual uprating was to affect the level of benefit that a person was due to receive, any change in the rate of the enhanced mobility component would not impact on a claimant with a Motability lease directly because that would be borne by Motability as part of the risk to it of operating the lease.
Governments have worked with Motability for more than 30 years and, as I understand it, thus far we have never required protection for Motability leaseholders in the way that the amendment suggests. As noble Lords are well aware, the Motability lease is a private agreement between the claimant and Motability. It is entered into without any influence from the department. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said, just under one-third of eligible claimants uses Motability.
That being said, I absolutely understand the points made in this debate about how those who take advantage of the Motability scheme value the vehicle provided. Therefore, it is essential that Motability remains available to those deemed eligible to receive it. Sometimes, as regards the way in which noble Lords talk about the changes that are being made, the impression could be given that the Motability scheme is coming to an end for everyone. We absolutely understand the importance of Motability. It is an important scheme and people must continue to have access to it, albeit that fewer numbers will have access than up to now.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
This is the Committee stage, not Report. The Minister said that we were suggesting in the way we talked about the numbers that this was in some sense a catastrophic activity—that the Motability scheme might come to a close, and so on. But on the figures that she has more or less confirmed for us, something like 600,000 people currently getting a higher rate of DLA will not get the enhanced rate of PIP. Just under 30% of all those on higher rate DLA turn that into a vehicle; that is just under one-third. So of the 600,000 people who lose the benefit, something like 185,000 or thereabouts of people who currently have a car will lose their car. That is not small beer.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I do not think that the noble Baroness heard me say that it was small beer. That is not the point that I am making at all; I am making the point that Motability is incredibly important to people, but it will still continue. Yes, some people will not be eligible for it in future, and I know that those who will be affected will feel it very strongly. However, I want to make the point that sometimes in the way in which this is talked about the impression can be given that we are removing Motability from everyone. That is clearly not what is happening.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
The noble Baroness made two points. The first was that the vehicles will be offered for sale to existing users rather than them necessarily being repatriated. Will she explain to the House what research has been done by the department and by Motability to establish how many people would be in a position to afford to buy their own vehicle? What work has been done to look at the maintenance costs of those vehicles, should they purchase them?
The noble Baroness went on to describe the circumstances in which people would be able to keep the vehicles if an appeal was pending. Surely that is precisely what this amendment is seeking to do: that is, to find transitional arrangements in all those circumstances. Would it not therefore be sensible for the Government to take the amendment away and to come forward with an amendment that does all the things that it seems to me we are agreed we need to address?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
On the point about the cost of purchasing, all the evidence suggests that a Motability car in effect acquires through its VAT exemptions and tax exemptions something like a 40% discount on what it would cost to hire a similar car in the private market, and that is before any adaptations. Given the level of income of disabled people and the poverty that we know so many of them face by being out of the labour market and having the additional costs of heating and so on associated with their disability, I cannot see how that would be a realistic option for all but a very few of them.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
All I am able to add to what I have already said is that the department is continuing its discussions with Motability to see what arrangements can be put in place to ease this burden on people as the process of replacing DLA with PIP comes on board. We expect Motability to have some measures in place by the autumn of this year. However, on the basis of this debate, I will certainly go back to the department and obtain further information about where we are with those discussions and what evidence is being examined as part of that process.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, asked about advance payments that people make when leasing an expensive car with specialist adaptations and whether they lose that money if they lose eligibility, even if they are successful on appeal, as they will have lost the car. If someone loses their car as a result of PIP reassessment, any advance payment outstanding will be returned on a pro rata basis. I realise that that does not address the whole point, but I hope that it goes at least some way to addressing it.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, asked about the use of Motability cars for work and whether people who might not have access to a Motability car might be affected by this and lose their jobs. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said that in any case he thought that what my noble friend Lord Freud had said about the possibility of the use of access to work as a way of addressing some of these measures might not be an adequate response.
Although my noble friend had said that discussions were going on to see whether access to work was one way of addressing the concerns of some people who would lose Motability under PIP but who might be able to use access to work as a way of funding a car for use for work, if I understood the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie correctly I think he said that this was not satisfactory because it would not address social issues. I understand what he is saying, but I think that none the less while not addressing all the issues he has raised this is an important facility that is available to disabled people to apply for. If there is a way of using that facility to help people to fund their Motability vehicles in the future, I hope it could be made possible. I would not want it to be diminished just because it does not address everything.
Finally, my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson, if I may call her my noble friend, also raised the issue of public transport, particularly outside London. I will not go into any great detail, but I am aware that the Department for Transport as recently as December published an accessibility action plan for public transport, particularly focusing on transport outside of London, and outlined what measures could be taken to improve facilities on public transport. If she would like more information on that, I will happily give it to her and put her in direct contact with the Department for Transport if she would find that helpful. I am sure the department would welcome hearing about the experiences she faces regularly on her extensive travel up and down the country.
I absolutely appreciate the concern that has been raised by noble Lords in the debate tonight that people want to see Motability remaining available for disabled people as an affordable scheme. The benefits in question are not part of this Bill, as I have already said, and I do not believe that there will be a shortfall between these benefit rates and the obligations that people have as part of an outstanding lease in the years in question. However, even if such a shortfall were to arise, Motability would absorb the cost, so the impact would not fall on the claimant. I hope that the noble Lord and the noble Baroness feel able not to press their amendments.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
As we are in Committee, we can come back to the Minister as many times as we wish on this. I just want to pick her up on this, if I may. She has said nothing at all—unless I am being unfair to her, and I certainly do not mean to be—about the main thrust of all the arguments put by my noble friend Lord McKenzie, myself, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, the noble Lord, Lord Low, and, above all, the noble Lord, Lord Alton: that what is needed, at the very least, is a decent transitional period of grace. All that the noble Baroness has offered is the existing 28 days. That applies now, so there is no change. What movement, if any, is the Minister willing to offer us on the key point about having a transitional period of grace for those who will lose? Some 100,000 people—or 185,000, which is my crude estimate—could lose their cars in a relatively small space of time. Without a transitional period, there will be huge problems. What can the Minister tell us about that transitional period?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I regret that in the context of this Bill I am not in a position to be able to offer the noble Baroness the kind of response that I know she is looking for. I will, as I have promised, go back to the department and discuss further with colleagues and Ministers the issues that have been raised in the debate tonight. They are clearly important issues. I can see why people wanted to raise these concerns in the context of this Bill and I do not have any problem with the fact that this has been debated and discussed tonight. However, I am not in a position to offer the kind of assurance that the noble Baroness is looking for, but I will go back to the department and follow up in writing with further information, as I am able to, after I have had those discussions.
Universal Credit Regulations 2013
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, like my noble friend, I thank the Minister and the Box for the papers and seminars that we have found so helpful. I congratulate my noble friend on her powerful scrutiny of some very extensive regulations that effectively took 17 days in Committee to debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Freud, admitted that the regulations assume economic rationality. As a result, they are heavy on sanctions—in my view, appallingly heavy sanctions in Regulation 102 lasting for up to three years—believing that they can sanction people into the behaviour they want. However, as abundant research shows—I am sure that the Minister is familiar with it—and as the Trussell food bank network confirms, most people do not know why they have been sanctioned. It is as though it has happened to them. They live chaotic and confusing lives, to the intense irritation of the benefits staff. The CAB says that the claimant does not understand the responsibilities and the adviser does not understand the claimant. The personalised claimant commitment will, we hope, introduce an essential flexibility and headspace into the regulations, but I fear that the very clarity produces a yes/no, either/or approach to regulations and guidance that is not reflected in real life. Some of these issues have been raised by the noble Lord, Lord German.
The second issue is that we face major delivery problems, an issue perhaps associated with transitional arrangements. I want UC to work. I fear that on delivery we will be heading for a train crash. At one and the same time, the Minister is rightly introducing a new benefit architecture that will, however, confuse most people with its new rules, new conditionality, new sanctions, new tapers and new backdating rules and that has most benefits in, but some, from DLA to council tax benefit, out. That is the first thing that is happening.
Then, on top of that, come the cuts. Some benefits, such as HB, will be cut because of the bedroom tax. Claimants will think that it is DWP error and will go frantic trying to correct it. Thirdly, in the past they will have received their benefits weekly or fortnightly, but now it will be monthly in arrears. As nearly half of those in the bottom two quintiles are in work paid weekly, many will not cope and debt will grow.
Fourthly, for the first time, they will find their housing benefit paid to them and not to their landlord. Inevitably, on a monthly basis, it will be raided before the month is out to meet other bills. The DWP’s demonstration projects show that 40% of tenants will find it difficult, and a quarter will need substantial, long-term support. The chief executive of Wakefield, one of the pilot areas, is reported to have said that people are now ceasing to pay their rent at all. That is from a pilot area where tenants have had considerable support. It is worth reminding ourselves that this demonstration project showed that 40% of tenants were in debt, already excluding rent arrears. Over 90% had no savings as a buffer. Over a third had sought help from the CAB.
Fifthly, these arrangements come as a single electronic payment, paid probably to him, leaving her and the children potentially vulnerable, when claimants have been used the past to separate flows of benefit, particularly to the one with children, and to a cash economy for food. And all the claims are online, although 30% of the poorest have no access to IT at all. Citizens Advice, which would have helped them, has lost nearly half its grant thanks to coalition Government cuts. Claiming benefits online would certainly terrify me. However, in exceptional cases, there will be face-to-face support. Will the Minister tell us what percentage of people he expects to take up that proposal? As these tenants do not have and cannot afford a word processor at home, their benefit claims cannot be interactive. They go to a community centre and fill in their forms online with the help of someone present, and then they go home. And then what? How do they get any interactive dialogue going should there be any query over, or error in, their submission? How will DWP manage this?
I greatly welcome the local support service, but the obvious hard questions are how many centres there will be, how many claimants there will be and how much new money there will be. Or is it another slice off the HB under-occupancy test for someone else? It cannot be left to district managers to decide, as is proposed. As it is, my housing association will be employing and paying new staff out of tenants’ rents to provide the self-same welfare advice that, hitherto, trained CAB volunteers offered for free.
The delivery of any one of these seven major changes to benefits would need careful implementation. To bring in all seven at the same time seems like folly. I think that we are setting up UC to fail, and causing much misery in the process—and that is before the IT plays up and falls over.
UC is for the benefit of claimants. I fear that most of the delivery changes which I have listed will destabilise it and are for the benefit of the department, making UC harder for claimants to embrace and understand. I have been through ambitious change programmes, but nothing as ambitious as this. I beg the Minister to sequence these seven changes properly—to introduce them incrementally on an agreed timeline so as to take people with him. Yes, claimants will come across in manageable cohorts; that is entirely right. However, once in UC, they face all these seven delivery changes simultaneously. Those changes need to be phased in, as well as the claimants themselves.
I beg the Minister to consider, even at this late stage, a transitional year for claimants to be able to opt for fortnightly payments, split payments within couples and direct housing benefit payment to their landlord, while the claimants get their heads around UC and learn to work IT—itself a big enough challenge over the course of a year. At the very least, we should ensure that those who are treated as exceptional or vulnerable for the purposes of housing benefit payment are passported to the exceptional payment grounds within UC and vice versa. What estimate has the Minister made of the percentage of people who will be protected in this way under the heading of “exceptional or vulnerable”?
Finally, the regulations that worry me most are sanctions, hardship and housing. First, as regards sanctions and Regulation 102, if you are economically rational, as the Minister surely is, you also surely reward people who become compliant. You reward them for good behaviour. With three-year sanctions, what is the point of the claimant changing his behaviour if nothing happens as a result and he continues to be sanctioned? What message does the Minister think he is sending? The concession on holding down a job for six months is empty in this situation. Will the Minister at least follow the SSAC recommendation that when a claimant has complied, the sanction should be suspended? That is the message to get across. It then can be reimposed if the claimant breaches his conditionality subsequently. Otherwise, I expect this to be judicially reviewed. Will the Minister also ensure that when one person in a couple—for these purposes, I will assume that it is a male—is sanctioned, the payment is automatically switched to the main carer to protect the children?
Secondly, I should like to make a few comments on hardship and Regulation 116. The guidance is really helpful and very worrying. I believe that there are three problems. At the moment, you are automatically entitled to hardship payments if you are vulnerable—for example, if you have children—but you will not be entitled in future. All expenditure is to be scrutinised to see if the family is truly and deeply in hardship. Should they return the TV? What about smokers, Christmas presents, or train fares to attend granny’s funeral? None of those is covered in the four basic criteria of health, housing, hygiene, food and so on that the Minister has put into regulations and guidance.
Iain Duncan Smith, I think, believes that poverty is primarily a moral failing. Like the Victorians, he is insisting that the poor must always live in the light and display their income and behaviour for scrutiny by their betters; that is, young, local office staff with often little experience of difficult lives. The intrusiveness of it all appals me. What is worse is that the hardship handouts will be, as far as I know for the first time ever, clawed back. A hardship handout now is a loan and not a reduced benefit entitlement secured for the vulnerable. Paying it back will in future cut the UC a claimant gets and will further increase debt, which is one of the major problems that all claimants will face.
Most disgraceful of all is that under Regulation 116 (1)(b), households get hardship payments for the vulnerable only if they have met compliance conditions. So why are we still sanctioning them? Why do they need to claim hardship payments at all? We have never made hardship payments conditional in this way, nor should we. Hardship payments meet needs—above all, those of children. They are a safety net. Instead, in these regulations, they are being treated as another lever to make sanctions and compliance bite. It is ugly and indecent. Are we going to refuse hardship payments to a lone parent where she and the decision-maker disagree about her availability for work given the age and vulnerability of her children? That is the sort of example that my noble friend Lady Sherlock described so effectively. The lone parent is sanctioned and is not compliant. She is refused hardship money. I hope and expect that this will also be judicially reviewed.
Finally, on housing benefit and Schedule 4, we now find that the bedroom tax may affect one-third of working-age tenants. They will be fined—because they cannot move—£14 a week for accepting the home which was offered to them in good faith a decade previously, which is where they have brought up their family. As a result, unable to pay that £14—they have no savings—they will go into debt, arrears, be evicted, bed and breakfasted, children traumatised. Then they will be rehoused, either in the private sector at higher housing benefit costs or back again in the same size accommodation that they left, since that is all that we have. This is simply because the DWP and the coalition have so decided. The issue of overcrowding, which the noble Lord sometimes quotes, is, as my noble friend said, utterly irrelevant because they are in different places.
So why are the Government appealing the Court of Appeal judgment in the Burnip case, which allowed disabled children to have their own bedroom? A decent coalition Government would not fight on. If they lose, as I fervently hope—we will not know until December—what estimate have they made of the numbers who will then be protected? What are the implications for middle-aged couples, whose ill-health requires separate bedrooms, or do we need to judicially review that as well? Will the Minister tell us what level of disability aids and adaptions have to be fitted into a property and at what approximate cost before the Government accept that it makes no sense for the household to move and to refit another, but smaller, property in its place? Housing bodies need to know to make sensible forecasts. Foster carers have been mentioned and I am sure that the Minister will respond.
Turning to another issue, following bereavement the Minister is allowing only three months’ grace if someone is required to move house. I think that I am resilient, but I could not have coped with finding a house, packing up and moving within three months of my bereavement. I was wiped out. The distress of a forced, speedy move from the home built together is like being bereaved twice over. SSAC called for 12 months’ grace, not three months. Will the Minister, in all decency and compassion, please agree?
I have one final housing point. At the moment, households where an unemployed person under 25 years old lives at home getting £56 a week JSA do not incur non-dependant adult deductions. In future, they will lose £68 a month, the same as those on higher benefits or in work. That seems grossly unfair. If he is economically rational, as no doubt he is, he will increase the HB bill by finding separate accommodation of his own and leaving home.
We have more regulations to come in October and, I am sure, amending regulations of regulations. We are already starting to see them. We also have negative regulations, some of which I am sure we shall pray against. However, we cannot amend these regulations. Will the Minister at least attend to some of the concerns being expressed all around this House in regulations that we have yet to examine?
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
I have one small point to raise under these regulations, which I expect the House will welcome. Before I do that, whatever we think of the detail of these regulations I pay tribute to the Minister and his staff in the DWP, who have worked absolutely non-stop to get out these regulations and all the guidance. We might complain about having so many piles of paper, but somebody has had to prepare them. It has been a tremendous effort, so I thank him very much.
Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that the one matter I address in these regulations is a success story. It is possibly the end of a long road leading to the better treatment of all those service users and carers who are involved in helping to improve health and social care services. This is about having their expenses disregarded for benefits.
There is one matter to ask my noble friend about: the word “consult”. When service users and carers report their involvement to Jobcentre Plus, they are likely to do so by using the terms that are used by the health and social care organisation that has asked for their help rather than the term “consult”, which is used by the DWP in these regulations. We were told that the lawyers insisted on this word. In order to avoid misunderstandings in Jobcentre Plus offices, it would be helpful to explain that service user and carer consultation may be described as “involvement” or “participation” and “co-production” by the Department of Health. Other health and social care organisations also use the expressions “experts by experience” and “acting together”. Will my noble friend ensure that the guidance for Jobcentre Plus staff will include an explanation about the terminology likely to be used? This will prevent a great deal of misunderstanding and I am sure will reap dividends.
Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) Regulations 2013
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Freud
My Lords, we know how many people will get the higher mobility component, a figure that will clearly be fewer under PIP than under DLA. I have provided those figures but, just for the record, the figure of roughly 1 million people on the DLA component in a steady state will reduce to roughly 600,000. That is the decline. What we do not have, and therefore find it difficult to comment on, is a read-across from how many people are on the full mobility allowance to those who have a Motability contract, because that is a private matter. Motability runs its operation separately from us; it is a charitable operation. It is therefore impossible for us or anyone to calculate a read-across of the percentage of people on Motability contracts who will be affected.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, perhaps I may pursue the Minister on that point about statistics. When we were discussing this elsewhere, he agreed that actually 200,000 people who currently get the lower rate because of problems of supervision, psychological issues associated with outside movement and so on would now get the enhanced rate. Therefore, the number of those who are losing the allowance on the grounds of physical disability only is not 400,000 but 600,000.
Lord Freud
Yes, my Lords, there is some churn. By the time we reach 2018, we will be out beyond the major review process that we will have. The figures are therefore quite tentative for that stage. I am providing them to your Lordships but they are indicative. Clearly, there will be some churn, but the point is that we are trying to direct PIP at the people who really need it.
In closing, it is simply not possible for me to confirm, deny or reach any figures in answer to the noble Lord’s question on how many cars will go.