Universal Credit

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Sherlock]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in rolling out Universal Credit.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Buscombe) (Con)]

My Lords, we continue to roll out universal credit in a safe and controlled way, with an expected completion date of December 2018. Any changes to the rollout schedule are carefully considered, and we work together with local authorities and stakeholders to deliver universal credit. Universal credit is working and transforming lives across the country; it continues to deliver real improvements to people’s lives and strengthens the UK economy.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her Answer. The Welfare Reform and Work Act introduced the two-child limit to universal credit and most other benefits and credits. Noble Lords may recall the case I raised in December of Alyssa Vessey. She was 18 when her mother died suddenly and gave up college to raise her three younger siblings. When she later had a baby of her own, she applied for support and was turned down under the two-child policy. This House had secured an exemption for kinship carers, but Ministers applied it in such a way that, if Alyssa had had her own baby and then taken on her siblings she would have got help, but doing it the other way round she did not. Last Thursday, in a case taken by the Child Poverty Action Group, the High Court ruled that to be perverse and struck it down. Will the Minister confirm to the House today that the Government will act immediately to extend the exemption from the two-child policy to all kinship carers?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, the Government acknowledge the immense value of care provided by kinship carers. We are working to ensure that they are supported by enabling them to access benefit entitlement in the same way as parents. We have introduced a number of exceptions to the two-child policy—providing support for a maximum of two children—to protect claimants who are unable to make the same choices about the number of children in their family. These already protect certain groups, including kinship carers. Regarding the court case to which the noble Baroness referred, the department is now closely looking into the impact of this policy on kinship carers.

Universal Credit: Free School Meals

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I have to take issue with the noble Baroness, because I feel that I have answered the question. I want to stress that the reality of this is that every child receiving free school meals now, and any child subsequently given free school meals while the universal credit rollout is under way, will have their entitlement protected until the end of the rollout or until the end of the child’s current phase of education, whichever is later. We want to ensure that, through the universal credit system, we are doing absolutely our best to give our young people the best possibilities in life; this is not the same as the old legacy benefits.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps I may put the question for the third time. At the moment, if someone reaches a certain level of income, they lose free school meals but at that point they gain working tax credit, which is worth much more. What the Government are proposing under universal credit is that, when a household’s earnings exceed a cash fixed point of £7,400 a year, once the system has been rolled out, a household in that situation will immediately lose free school meals for all of the kids. Someone could be offered an extra hour of work or a small pay rise and face the choice of either turning it down or accepting it and losing free school meals for all of their kids. While the Minister has said a great deal about the transitional protection during the rollout, when the system beds down, is not the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, right that this will fly right in the face not only of the quote from Iain Duncan Smith, but of the whole point of universal credit—at such huge expense and great disruption?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I heard quite a lot of what was said in another place yesterday, and I am afraid that quite a lot of it is misinformation. One only has to look at Channel 4’s FactCheck, which looked at the claims made by the Opposition about children losing free school meals and was clear that the Government are not taking free school meals from the 1 million children who currently get them. I quote the article directly:

“This is not a case of the government taking free school meals from a million children who are currently receiving them. It’s about comparing two future, hypothetical scenarios”,


both of which are more generous than the old benefits system.

Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2018

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Grand Committee

Lastly, in this Siberian winter spell, as the beast from the east makes itself known most forcefully, particularly in the north of my homeland, will the Minister say whether any component of these generally welcome upratings is a response to these terribly icy conditions? People on benefits have no spare money and, this week, tens of thousands of our fellow citizens on benefits are facing difficulties in heating their houses, which may well be old and not necessarily draft-proof. The choice may be to pay either the rent or the heating bill or to pay either for meat or for heat. These are troubling days for many people and the Minister might have a view on that when she gives her summation.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the orders and all noble Lords who have spoken today. It is a delight to be reunited with my noble friend Lady Lister and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. I assure my noble friend that I was far from intending to name and shame her; I was in fact paying tribute to her years of service and those of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, in coming back year after year to address these issues in defence of the poor in our society. I commend her for that.

It is also a delight to see my noble friend Lady Primarolo here. It is great to be reunited with her, in a different way. I had the privilege of being able to support her and other Ministers when she was doing such good work as Paymaster-General in developing tax credits, which have been so important in supporting working families and children in this country.

It is a delight also to hear my noble friend Lord Jones battling from the Back Benches. We are glad that he is here. He made a good point. I understand that, in the Commons, this order is always taken on the Floor of the House and not in a Delegated Legislation Committee. The order is of such importance to so many of our citizens that I commend that suggestion to the Government for next year.

I will deal first with the benefits uprating order. As we have heard, its purpose is to uprate those social security payments that are fortunate enough to have escaped the clutches of the Government’s damaging benefit freeze, of which we have heard so much. We will see them uprated by 3%, as that is the level of the CPI. That also applies to the new state pension, in accordance with the triple lock, and the pension credit. But the main means-tested working age benefits are not covered so, although I welcome the uprating of those elements that are being uprated, I am deeply concerned to see the value of the main means-tested working age benefits being cut yet again.

By way of background, the principle should be that all social security benefits should be uprated by the rate of inflation so that they retain the value that Parliament voted to set them at, unless Parliament decides to do something different. Anything other than that is undemocratic, as well as being unfair in its consequences to recipients. Of course, before 2011 they were tied to the RPI—or in fact to Rossi, a variant on RPI that excludes housing and council tax—then in 2011 it shifted to the CPI. That saved the Treasury a lot of money. Although that was contested, at least it retained the concept that benefits should retain their value year on year.

In 2013-14, the coalition limited most working-age benefits to a 1% annual increase. This Government then went further and froze them in cash terms at 2015-16 levels for four years, so they will not rise again in cash terms until 2020. That includes some of the benefits on which the poorest of our society depend, including JSA, ESA, income support, housing benefit for those under women’s state pension age, and LHA, as well as the benefits for children, a point made clearly by my noble friends Lady Lister and Lady Primarolo. While I welcome the uprating of disability premiums, the support group component of ESA and the limited capability for work and work-related activity element of UC, I express deep concern that nothing else has been included.

As we have heard, the freeze of payments and support is having a damaging impact on millions of people on low incomes across the UK. Inflation is now far higher than when the Welfare Reform and Work Bill was passed. I went back again to the impact assessment for that Bill, which cited the OBR’s forecasts for CPI inflation for each year of the freeze period. At the time, they varied between 0% and 1.9%. The forecast when Parliament passed the Bill was 1.7% for this year. In fact, the CPI 12-month rate was 3% last month. That difference is good news for the Exchequer, which is saving a lot of money, but that money is coming directly out of the pockets of those who would have got and depend on these benefits. David Finch of the Resolution Foundation points out that his team’s estimate is that by 2020 the freeze will save the Exchequer £4.7 billion. That is £1.2 billion more than previously forecast.

Of course, inflation for the poor is always higher. Food prices are up 4.1% and transport costs up 4.5%. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has shown that the price of essentials has risen three times faster than wages over the last 10 years. Of course, the context for this freeze has been a whole range of other cuts to social security benefits and tax credits. We have already seen the cuts in the work allowance for universal credit: the Government scrapped the severe disability premium in UC, cut help for the self-employed, limited benefits and tax credits for the first two children—I could go on. As a result, UC is already failing to make work pay. Instead of reducing poverty, as we were promised, it is exacerbating it. The final straw is the Government’s plans to change the way free school meals are provided to those on universal credit, which will introduce the mother of all cliff edges, but I will come back to that another day.

By continuing the freeze on social security payments not in this order, as my noble friend Lady Primarolo said, the Government are subjecting 10.5 million households to an average cut of £450 a year up to 2020. The order underscores the fact that, because the Government are choosing to uprate some discretionary payments, they recognise that some benefits need to increase because inflation is increasing. Yet we have not seen any such increase for the ones that are most needed by many people in our country. When the Minister replies, could she give us a reason why some of those need increasing and some do not? These are choices, as my noble friend Lady Lister clearly expressed. The point was well made because austerity, as she pointed out, as experienced by the poor is a choice made by the Government.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, raised the question of affordability. He is right. The best indicator of the affordability of our social security system is the spend we have on social security as a proportion of GDP. That has been broadly similar for decades now, but I have no doubt that the Minister will be aware of the work done by Ruth Lupton et al, who looked at the coalition’s social policy record. She found that overall on the decisions made the welfare cuts and more generous tax allowances balanced each other out, contributing nothing to deficit reduction.

The Welfare Trends Report from the OBI states that by 2021 social security support for children will be at the lowest share of GDP since 1990-91. I do not think that the affordability arguments work. These are choices and I suggest to the Minister that they are bad choices, so I would like to ask her some questions. I am very much with my noble friend Lady Primarolo in wanting to know what assessment the Government have made of the impact of the social security freeze on poverty levels. I would also like to know the Government’s latest estimate of the savings to the Exchequer of this four-year benefit freeze, over and above the amount originally scored and showed to Parliament in the impact assessment when we were asked to vote through these measures in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. Do the Government have a view about how big that gap would have to get before they felt obliged to revisit the question?

In my final point on the Social Security Benefits Up-Rating Order, I am very much with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, on the nature of the information that we now get. I have been doing this work for quite a long time, but we are now at a level of such complexity, where some benefits have to be uprated, some are discretionary and some are not being uprated, that just by reading the order and the Explanatory Memorandum it is not easy to find out what falls into what category, let alone its impact. Will the Minister be willing to go back and have a think about how that information is presented and about ways in which it will be more accessible? There are a fair few geeks on social security in this Room and, if we are struggling, I suspect that others may be finding it even less appealing. Perhaps she can dwell further on that.

Moving on to the pensions element, we welcome the uprating of the state pension by the triple lock, but I want to put on record concerns about levels of public understanding about the new single-tier pension. We know that there are winners and losers as a result of the Government’s changes and we also know that most new pensioners will not receive the full single-tier pension. Before its introduction, it was estimated that only around 22% of women and half of men reaching state pension age would be entitled to the full single-tier pension. Can the Minister update the Committee with any figures on this point?

I also note that, in addition to the various social security payments that are subject to the freezes and are not uprated in this order, there are other omissions in this area. While the state pension is being uprated, people with frozen pensions are excluded from the uprating and will not see an increase in their state pension in line with inflation. Also, the Government have still failed to address the injustice faced by many millions of women born in the 1950s. At the very least, they should bring forward retirement for women born in the 1950s and enable an early draw-down of their pension. If that were possible alongside our proposals to extend pension credit, they would at least have the option to retire early with some much needed financial support.

Turning to the specifics of the Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2018, we support the uprating of the guaranteed minimum pension in line with inflation as set out in this order, but I have some questions for the Minister. They were raised by my honourable friend Debbie Abrahams when this order was considered in another place but they received no reply. I am sure that the Minister can do better than that, not just because, obviously, the Lords is a marvellous place, but because, one hopes, she will have had an opportunity to read the exchanges in another place and so will know the questions that are coming.

Under the old state pension, there were two main components: the basic state pension and SERPS. People who paid national insurance contributions at the full rate built up a basic state pension, but an option was created in 1978 in which somebody could contract out into another pension scheme if the scheme met certain criteria. Schemes taking on such new members were required to provide a guaranteed minimum pension, but the scheme was discontinued by the Government in 1997. In 2016, the Government’s introduction of the new state pension ended contracting out by replacing the additional state pension with a single pension. Working-age people now have their existing state pension entitlement adjusted for previous periods of contracting out and transferred to the new state pension scheme. For people who have guaranteed minimum pension rights under an old scheme but who reach retirement age after April 2016, when the new system kicked in, the Government no longer take account of inflation increases to guaranteed minimum pensions when uprating their new state pension. That means that any guaranteed minimum pensions accrued between 1978 and 1988 will not be uprated and the scheme provider will uprate guaranteed minimum pensions built up between 1988 and 1997 only, up to a maximum of 3% each year.

The National Audit Office investigated the impact of the changes in a report in 2016 and concluded that there would be winners and losers under the new arrangements depending on the amount of time that people were contracted into a scheme. Those whose state pension has been pushed back because of the rise in state pension age will lose out on the guaranteed minimum pensions inflation-linked increases that they would have received under the old rules. But it noted that those who lose out under the new rules might be able to build up additional entitlement to the state pension. The issue was one about lack of information. The NAO said in its report:

“Some people are likely to lose out and they have not been able to find the information they need”.


How did that come about? The NAO concluded:

“We are concerned that the Department has limited information about who is affected by the impact of pension reforms on Guaranteed Minimum Pensions … It … will need to help people identify how they are affected and provide them with accurate and more complete information so that they can make informed decisions about their future pension arrangements”.


In the light of that, I ask the Government two questions. Can the Minister provide an update on the numbers of people affected since the new legislation came into effect? Secondly, what help is currently available to support people in their understanding of the changes? I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to address those issues and I look forward to her reply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank the noble Lord. I have just found the answers in my array of papers. He asked about different benefits, particularly disability and carer benefits. We now spend over £50 billion a year on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions, which is over £7 billion more than in 2010. The noble Lord asked about disability living allowance and benefits for carers. We are increasing benefits for the additional costs of disability and for carers in line with inflation. Recipients of carer’s allowance will now get £550 more per year than in 2010, while the monthly rate of disability living allowance paid to the most disabled children will have risen by more than £104. On a before-housing-cost basis, the absolute poverty rate among people living in a family where someone is disabled has fallen to a record low.

I am sorry that I have not been able to respond to noble Lords’ questions, particularly those of the noble Lord, Lord Jones, in relation to cold weather payments. That was discussed in the department yesterday, but I will write to the noble Lord.

[Baroness Sherlock]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving me quite a lot of information about the way the GMP system will work. The specific questions that I raised were raised by the NAO—whether the department had enough information about who would be affected in terms of the GMP and what it was doing to tell people about that. I am happy for the noble Baroness to write to me, but perhaps she could have a look at the specific questions in the record and write to me on those. I do not know whether I missed it, but will she confirm that she told the Committee what the latest estimate is of the savings to the Exchequer of the four-year benefit freeze over and above the amount originally scored? I apologise if I missed that.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I apologise to the noble Baroness; I had hoped that I would be able to reply to those questions today but, given the time as well, it is much better that I write to her and copy in others.

To conclude my closing remarks, the Government are maintaining their commitment to the triple lock for both the basic state pension and full rate of the new state pension, increasing the pension credit standard minimum guarantee so that the poorest pensioners see the full benefit of the increase in their basic state pension and increasing benefits to meet additional disability needs and carer benefits in line with inflation. I commend these orders to the Committee.

Personal Independence Payments

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating that Answer. I remind the House that these regulations were rushed through after the tribunal specifically to deny the higher-rate mobility component of PIP to people who were claiming on grounds of psychological distress, affecting people with Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia or various other mental health conditions.

In the High Court judgment, Mr Justice Mostyn said that these new criteria were “blatantly discriminatory” against those with mental health impairments and that they “cannot be objectively justified”. Ministers should have known that. On 27 March this House voted for a regret Motion in my name objecting to these regulations precisely because they discriminate against people with mental health conditions. I then wrote to Damian Green, with the support of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Baronesses, Lady Browning and Lady Bakewell, asking him to conduct a review mandated by that Motion. He declined to do so, so we ended up in the High Court.

I am glad that Ministers are not appealing the decision, but it leaves many questions, of which I can ask only two. First, will there be an appeal process for PIP claimants who are not contacted by the department but who believe they should receive back payments? Secondly, will applicants be entitled to a reassessment if they were given only the standard rate of the PIP mobility component after the regulations came through, where the cause of the claim was “psychological distress”?

If Ministers had, once again, only listened to this House, this confusion and distress for claimants could have been avoided. I dearly hope they do so next time.

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I shall respond robustly to what the noble Baroness opposite has just said by making it absolutely clear that this Government have been far more generous in supporting people with mental health conditions than the previous Labour Government, who put off any changes to disability support, particularly in relation to mental health conditions, until after the general election of 2010, which by then was too late.

This is not a policy change. We are going back to the heart of the policy intent and relates to those in psychological distress. We have accepted the Stevenson/Farmer recommendations, which shows that we are committed to supporting claimants with disabilities. We are also working with a range of disability charities to implement the judgment in the best way. We will look at appeals, to which the noble Baroness opposite made reference, but we want to make sure that we get the process right. We have already spoken with the charity Mind on how we implement the judgment. The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work in another place talked only yesterday with a disability charity consortium to discuss the decision and to hear its views on implementation. We will reach out to claimants and look at every one of them.

To be clear, we are spending over £50 billion on disabilities. We are entirely committed to this issue—indeed, it is one of the Prime Minister’s top priorities. I can confirm that this was never a cost-saving measure. The judge in the case made references to cost saving but we do not agree with that. Indeed, we have focused on being more generous through the introduction of PIP and, as a result of the judgment, we will rightly become even more generous in supporting people with mental health conditions.

Poverty and Disadvantage

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and all noble Lords who are speaking today. Before I speak, I want to correct something I said in the House on Monday. In asking a Question about why kinship carers were being hit by the two-child policy, I said that the House had voted to exempt them from the rule. In fact, the House did not divide because the Minister responded to our amendment by conceding the argument and promising to bring forward regulations to exempt kinship carers. I am pleased to put the record straight and I apologise to the Minister and the House.

I cannot analyse the causes of poverty in three minutes, so I am not going to try. I am just going to do one thing and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Bird, will forgive me. I want to make the case for why the welfare state is the best bulwark against poverty—the best preventer of it that we have. It was created alongside our NHS and with a similar aim: that as a nation, as a community, we will pool our risks and ensure that if anyone falls on hard times, we will not leave them to suffer alone.

Social security plays a variety of roles. There is a safety net which is meant to stop anyone from being destitute—although it is being severely tested at the moment. Other bits of the system have different functions: some, like tax credits, are there to make work pay; some, like child benefit or child tax credit, are a transfer from the population as a whole to those with dependent children, because we all recognise that children are our future; some, like DLA or PIP, are there to recognise that some people have extra costs because they are disabled or chronically ill, or have disabled kids. Some recognise that bad things can happen to anyone—so, if you lose your job, get widowed, have an accident or get sick and cannot work, JSA or ESA kicks in. Having contributory versions of those benefits is really important as a collective insurance process for which the welfare state can pay. Some recognise that there are life stages when you need extra help: for the birth of a child or at retirement age, when the state pension kicks in. Of course, the state pension accounts for 41% of our total social security bill; JSA is just 1%.

We always need to make it better and it is never just about money but I believe that our welfare state, along with our NHS, is a testament to our values of social solidarity. But if we value it, we need to pay for it. The last OBR Welfare Trends Report stated that coalition policies would cut £33 billion a year from social security spending by the end of this Parliament, and this Government’s policies another £11 billion by 2020-21. The IFS, using Treasury and OBR data, projects that inequality will rise over the next four years and that child poverty will rise by seven percentage points.

Ministers often say that the system is unsustainable, but the best test of sustainability is the cost of social security as a percentage of GDP, which has barely changed for decades. However, the OBR predicts that if these cuts go ahead until 2020-21, the money being spent on children and working-age people will account for the lowest share of GDP since 1990-91. Politics is about choice. When Lupton et al analysed the coalition policies, they found that the social security cuts and tax breaks balanced each other out; they contributed nothing to deficit reduction. So it is about choices. Trouble could be around the corner for any one of us. Let us be proud of our commitment to walk with each other along the road of life. Let us be proud of the welfare state.

Kinship Carers: Two-child Limit Policy

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Sherlock]

To ask Her Majesty's Government why kinship carers who subsequently have their own child are not exempt from the two child limit.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Buscombe) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government acknowledge the immense value of care provided by kinship carers. We are working to ensure that they are supported by enabling them to access benefit entitlement in the same way as parents. We have introduced a number of exceptions to the policy providing support for a maximum of two children, to protect claimants who are unable to make choices about the size of their family. These already protected certain groups, including kindship carers. The department will keep, and is keeping, the impact of its policies on kinship carers under consideration.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, the reason why kinship carers were exempted from the two-child policy is that this House voted that it should be so. The Minister will be aware of the case, raised by my honourable friend Melanie Onn, of Alyssa Vessey. When Alyssa was 18, her mother died suddenly so she gave up college to care for her three younger siblings. This year, four years later, she has had her own baby. She applied for tax credits and a Sure Start maternity grant but she was turned down under the two-child policy. The reason is that the Government chose to implement the exemption in such a way that if Alyssa already had her own child and then took on her siblings she could get benefits for them, but because she took her siblings on and then had her own baby she was denied that support. Can the Minister explain this? When will the Government put it right?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I think the noble Baroness opposite is aware that we are very much cognisant of this particular case. Indeed, my honourable friend in the other place who is the Minister responsible for this area, Caroline Dinenage MP, has responded with considerable sympathy with regard to this particular case. However, the Government believe all children should be treated equally and encourage parents to take the decision to have more children based on whether they can afford to support additional children.

Improving Lives: The Future of Work, Health and Disability

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and for advance sight of it.

I am sure that we all share the same ambition: to become the kind of society where all people, including people with a disability, can have the opportunity to fulfil their potential. For most that will mean the chance to take on meaningful work, but any strategy to support that aim must also be set alongside a commitment to give adequate support so that those who cannot provide for themselves through work can be assured of being able to live in comfort and dignity. I will briefly do three things: welcome the parts of the strategy which are going in the right direction, flag up concerns, and then ask the Minister some questions at the end.

I welcome the focus on disability employment, and some of the steps announced today will undoubtedly be helpful. I welcome the ongoing commitment to work with employers, and in particular the commitment to work directly with disabled people who experience barriers to work, to identify solutions. They are of course by far the best-placed people to understand what those barriers are. I welcome the attention given to what public sector employers and the Civil Service can do, and I encourage Ministers to go even further in that direction in leading the way. I am glad that Ministers are considering carefully the recommendations of both the Stevenson/Farmer review and the Taylor review, and I look forward to hearing more about those in due course. I also welcome the attempt to link up both sectors and different parts of society in trying to address the problem. In the end, only a cross-departmental approach and a cross-sectoral approach will make a difference.

However, there are some significant problems with the document published today, or at least the context for it. First, I could not find in my first reading enough detail to allow us to assess whether the Government are putting enough resources behind this strategy to make a difference. Secondly, I am a bit worried about the timescale, which seems to have been pushed quite a long way back. The Government’s previous commitment was to halve the disability employment gap by 2020. Their new commitment is about getting more disabled people into work within 10 years. We are seeing the results of that, as far as I can understand the timeline; perhaps the Minister can help me. There is a timeline for what will happen, but some of the hardest actions here have no hard deadlines; for example, the commitment to engage in further reform of the work capability assessment; the response to the Taylor recommendations on SSP and the right to return after absence; and the Stevenson/Farmer proposals on extending certification of fit notes. I hope that I am misreading it, but it looks as if most of those are in the section headed “Future actions”, which could be run until 2027. That simply will not be soon enough. I very much hope that it will not be the case.

Thirdly, I am concerned that in some areas the actions do not deal with the core problem. The most obvious of those is the work capability assessment. The Government consulted on a proposal to split parts of the assessment but there was not unanimous support for that from respondents. In fact, there is now a widespread view that the WCA simply is not fit for purpose. Leonard Cheshire said in response:

“We’ve consistently highlighted that work capability assessments are not fit for purpose and the system needs a complete overhaul”.


Precisely. That is a widespread view, and I am afraid that what is being done today will not address that fundamental problem.

I am also concerned that there is nothing about the impact of social security reform on the ability of sick and disabled people to prepare for work, to get jobs and to keep them. In fact, there have been repeated cuts in support for disabled people, of which only the most recent was the decision not to bring across into universal credit the severe disability premium, which was worth £3,200 a year for a single person. The Government have always refused to conduct a cumulative impact assessment. One of the problems with that is that they do not know what the consequences have been for disabled people of their decision repeatedly to cut or to change the social security system. If there is a strategy on the one hand to support people getting jobs, but a completely independent approach to social security, which is Treasury-driven and keeps cutting the benefits that help people to manage work, inevitably the two are not sitting together. So I do not think that the Government have been able to look at this whole position in the round.

I would like to ask the Minister some questions. First, how much extra money is being announced today other than that scored previously to support the moving of disabled people into work? Secondly, can the Minister be more precise on timings? When will the Government consult on reform to SSP and on legislating to extend the authorisation of fit notes? Thirdly, what is there in this strategy to support disabled people who are not either in jobs or on disability benefits like ESA? I think, for example, of the issue raised by Mencap of the hundreds of thousands of people with mild or moderate learning disabilities, who do not get any help from either ESA or social services but are struggling to get work.

Will the Government commit to a fundamental overhaul of the WCA at some point during the lifetime of this strategy? I would like to see it done straight away, but I would be grateful if they could at least commit that that will happen. Finally, what work is being undertaken to test the processes for applying for universal credit to ensure that they are suitable for all disabled people before the system is rolled out any further? If that does not work, any attempts to help people to apply for jobs will fail if they cannot get the support they need to be able to maintain them when they get there.

We all want to see disabled people supported into work. However, for this to become a reality, the Government need to put their money behind their promises and push themselves to be ever more ambitious. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is also time that I declared a few interests that are relevant here: I am president of the British Dyslexia Association and chairman of a company called Microlink PC. That is important because Microlink provides assistive technology and designs support for those who are disabled and in work or education, starting with education.

As I went through this document and scanned the original one it became clear that we have hit the buffers, the point at which a great idea hits the practicalities and starts to fracture in terms of what can be done. My own disability—and the one that the group that I work for is concerned with—is regarded as an education disability. In fact, we are the biggest disability group, as those in the neurodiverse group make up 15% of the population. Very little in this document refers to this group. Our problems relate not to accessing buildings but to accessing systems involving, for example, computers or paperwork. This document does not really seem to have got hold of that. It has missed a group. It has also missed a group when it comes to access problems when dealing with, for example, form-filling and work and pensions support. Therefore, when the noble Baroness talks about assistive technology, will she make sure that every single government website is accessible through the assistive technology of voice recognition? If she cannot answer that, she has effectively already broken the terms of the Equality Act for this group.

To carry on in that vein, we all know that each group considers the problems they have to be the most serious, but other groups will emphasise the importance of other activities. However, one important question is: are people being maintained in work? Access to work—it is one thing that I can give a rousing cheer to—is probably the best kept secret. It is the most underused thing in the Government’s arsenal. Expanding that to support for maintaining people in work and allowing them to expand or change their roles will encourage people to stay on.

We have also been talking about mental health. A person with a disability generally suffers more stress, and stress can trigger or create mental health problems. Are we making sure that people are maintained and supported in jobs and allowed to expand their roles? Once again, I am not absolutely sure about that. There is a great deal of emphasis on getting people into work but not on maintaining them in work and giving them a career into the future. I would like to know where the emphasis is there.

So we seem to be missing a large group—dyslexics, dyspraxics and dyscalculics—and, to a lesser extent, those with high-functioning autism. They do not seem to have been referenced here, probably because, to be perfectly honest, they are a lower priority in the Department of Health. How will we access these groups? How will we make sure that individual support is available and that people can get the right support? Nearly 20 years ago when the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, was the Minister in charge in this area, I had a ritual dance with her when we talked about the interview. Are the Government going to allow the person who conducts the interview to call in an expert? The interviewer will be awfully well trained but will an expert be brought in? If not, things will go wrong. Unless the noble Baroness can give me an assurance that some expertise will be structured in, the problems will continue. Expertise is needed to deal with the individual cocktail of needs in individual cases. Unless we can start to address these questions, we will continue to fail in this area.

Universal Credit

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and for advance sight of it. We welcome the concessions, modest though they are. However, we also need to recognise the limitations of what is on offer compared to the scale of the problem, an issue to which I shall return in a moment. The decision to remove the waiting days is particularly welcome. That period was increased to seven days by the Government as a cost-saving measure and it has significantly added to the pressure on universal credit claimants. So that is good news, although it is disappointing that that will not start until next February.

It is good that people who are in receipt of housing benefit when they begin to claim universal credit will have their housing benefit payments run on for two weeks. However, I have a number of questions about that. There is quite a lot of ambiguity in the documentation—one hopes it is not studied ambiguity, but certainly it is not clear quite what a lot of these things will mean. First, can the Minister confirm that that payment will be available to anyone moving on to universal credit, not just those who are going to get moved on en masse by the DWP in what it calls the managed migration programme? I am sure the answer is yes. If it is not, that would of course mean that if you happened to live in a universal credit area and something changed in your life—you had a baby, you started a new job, you got married or divorced—you would be forced on to universal credit, and you would need that money every bit as much as someone who was moved on in a year’s time. So will the Minister clarify that?

Secondly, if it is available to those who are “migrating naturally”—as the jargon has it—as opposed to in a group, what will someone get in housing benefit? Is it two weeks of whatever they happen to be getting? For example, if I were in low-paid work and getting a little bit of housing benefit, do I get two weeks of that, even though the reason why I am going on to universal credit might be that I have lost my job and normally I would get all my rent paid? Is it two weeks of my little bit or two weeks of the amount that I would be entitled to? Who will pay that? Is it the local authority? Is it actually a run-on of housing benefit or is the DWP paying an equivalent amount from the centre? If it is the latter, will anyone have to apply for it?

On the advances, it is good that from January 2018 new claimants will be able to borrow a 100% advance on their first month’s universal credit and that all advances can then be repaid over 12 months, as I believe is the case already for those transferring in from benefits, rather than six months for new claimants. When this is discussed in another place, though, Ministers often sound as if they think that giving people access to money is the same thing as giving them money. My bank gives me ready access to money. Unfortunately, that is called an overdraft; it is not in fact extra money. The Government have created a problem by forcing poor people on to a system where they have to wait six weeks—now five—for money, and the solution that they have come up with is to make them take on more debt. In effect, the system moves them from a six-week wait to a five-week wait and a large extra amount of debt. If you can borrow twice as much money but over twice as long a period, you are still paying back the same amount each month. The fact that UC is less generous than before also means that for a whole year, as well as getting less money, you have to survive on even less because you have to repay each month some of the debt that you were given to enable you to get through the first month.

So I ask for some clarification. Will this higher advance of 100% be offered to all claimants, not just to those coming over through natural or managed migration? Will it be an entitlement? At the moment, the DWP can refuse to give you an advance if it thinks either that you cannot afford to repay it or that you have money anyway or could get it. Will everyone be allowed to do it?

Most obviously, why did the Government not just move to two-weekly payments? There is already provision in DWP guidance for some people to ask, and to be allowed, to be paid fortnightly. Why did they not let everyone choose to do that instead of creating this five-week problem? Most people will not benefit from the housing benefit extra bit and will just get a six-week wait reduced to a five-week wait.

My other big point concerns the rollout. The Minister explained that the Government will slow down the rollout of universal credit, but the various things that she mentioned come on at different times. Some things start in January, there are other bits of help in February and the housing help starts in April. Why do the Government not pause universal credit for, say, six months, so that at least by the time it starts again, all those bits of help are in place? Otherwise, if you have the misfortune to find that it comes to your area in January, February, March or April, you will not benefit from some of them, although that is not your fault. Why do they not just pause it?

The Government pledged that universal credit will be simple to access, make work pay and lift nearly 1 million people out of poverty. In the excellent debate we had last week led by my noble friend Lady Hollis, we heard that it is failing on all fronts. During that debate, with the exception of a few touchingly loyal Members on the Government Benches, Members raised a whole range of problems about universal credit, of which only the most obvious was the six-week wait. None of those have been addressed at all. There was nothing in the Budget Statement to improve the taper or restore work allowances to make work pay, nothing to deal with the mess for self-employed people on UC.

The Minister mentioned in the Statement the problem of cliff edges in the previous system, but there is nothing to deal with passported benefits. A consultation out at the moment suggests that if a family earns over a certain amount, it immediately loses all entitlement to free school meals, so an extra hour’s work can mean that you lose free school meals for all your kids. That is the very definition of a cliff edge. Crucially, there is nothing to deal with the year-on-year cut in the real-terms value of universal credit, which has been frozen, along with most other working-age benefits. So I am sorry to say that there is nothing to stop the inexorable rise in inequality—especially child poverty, which the IFS has modelled so carefully.

I really do welcome these measures, but they are modest. They are worth about £300 million a year in the context of many billions of pounds of cuts. I fear that universal credit is like a great big liner. As it steams along, the Government have put a bit of water on the fire on the deck that everybody was pointing to while not, I am sorry to say, doing anything to stop the ship heading for the rocks, having already been holed by the Treasury in successive, very significant cuts. I urge the Minister to turn her attention next to the substantial problems within universal credit.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, I am happy to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and I agree that the statement that we had in the Budget deals only with the journey on to—the gateway into—universal credit. I welcome the Statement. To be realistic, if the Government had not said something, it would have been impossible to resist the pressure to delay the further rollout of universal credit, and I do not agree that that would be sensible—I never have.

I have two questions for the Minister. For the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, set out at length, the delivery of these changes will be difficult. Can she assure us that they will land, be locked in and operate to the benefit of claimants in future, without fear of further disruption, letdown and distress? It is a very tall order. Some of these changes start next month. Given the background to the operational implementation of universal credit, it is not unreasonable to be suspicious about the implementation of the immediate changes that have been announced, welcome as they are. Can the Minister assure us that she personally will ensure that they all work and will make claimants’ lives easier, and that she will report to the House regularly on the success or otherwise of the rollout?

But these are only gateway measures; they are only easing the transition to universal credit. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, is quite right: the rising costs and fixed benefits that low-income households are facing will condemn some of these families to a very bleak future. That necessitates my second question: will the Government start planning to use some of the £3 billion annual savings within UC alone—never mind the other ongoing cuts and freezes—to ease people’s road into work by increasing work allowances and tapers? If we do not do something of that kind, it will be very difficult successfully to promote the programme of progression through work into sustainable longer-term jobs and careers.

Once the difficulties of getting people on to universal credit are overcome, and people are in a steady state of receiving their universal credit payments monthly, the next big political battle will be trying to get the Government to be more realistic about the money available to support people when they are on universal credit.

Mental Health at Work

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord and thank him for giving me early notice of his question. The West Midlands commission has undertaken important research into mental health and its impact on the public sector. Government officials are working positively with the West Midlands Combined Authority to explore ideas and undertake work that will support positive action on mental health in the region. The noble Lord is right to say that different things have to be looked at, including different ways of improving people’s health and well-being. Indeed, as the immediate past chairman of the advisory board of the Samaritans, this is something very close to my heart. However, I cannot confirm an answer to his question referring to costs, so I will write to him.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome this report. The authors state at the beginning:

“We start from the position that the correct way to view mental health is that we all have it and we fluctuate between thriving, struggling and being ill and possibly off work”.


I have to say that I love that; it is a really positive way to understand mental health. I realise that the Minister will need to take time to reflect on the recommendations in the report, but when she comes to respond, will she acknowledge that her department has a couple of specific responsibilities? The first is that it is an enormous employer with more than 80,000 staff: and, secondly, it runs programmes with the unemployed. Will she ask her department to think about recommending how it might go about modelling with its own employees a healthy environment for mental health? More specifically and perhaps more challengingly, will she reflect again on the programmes for assessing whether people who are suffering with mental health problems should be in work? I ask this because there have been a number of concerns that the nature of the assessments is actually making people’s mental health worse rather than better.

Benefit Rate Freeze

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, we do care, and that is why we are incentivising people into work. All our research shows that workless families are most likely to drive children into poverty. In terms of our reforms, we introduced 15 hours of free childcare for working families. From September this year, we have doubled that from 15 to 30 hours a week in England, worth on average up to £5,000 a child. Since April 2016, the universal credit childcare element has covered up to 85% of eligible childcare costs compared with 70% with working tax credits.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, these benefit freezes are not reforms; they are simply a cut. Benefits used to rise in line with inflation every year until the Government decided that in future they would not. They have been frozen in cash terms, so all that happens is that people have the same amount of money to pay for food and rent in 2020 as they did in 2015 while inflation goes up. That simply cannot be right. These are people who are too sick to work, who have small children or who are in work but cannot earn enough to pay for the running costs of their household. Therefore, I ask the Minister again: do the Government care about the poorest in our society? If they do, what are they going to do about it, because fine words butter no parsnips?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, as I have said to noble Lords opposite, we do care, but we are absolutely clear that work is the best way to get children, in particular, out of poverty. That is why we want to incentivise work, which is the best route, but we need to focus on making sure that people see their wages rise and take home more of their pay packet once they are in work. Our reforms include increasing the national living wage for workers aged 25 and over, cutting income tax for over 30 million people and extending free childcare for working parents.