State Pension: Equalisation

Lord Christopher Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Christopher (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Cross Bench!

Employment

Lord Christopher Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

I think the issues for the steel industry go wider than that; there are macroeconomic factors as well.

[Lord Christopher (Lab)]

My Lords, I listened carefully to the figures that the noble Baroness gave. Of course, they sound very creditable. However, can she comment on the fact that six million—about 23% of the workforce—are below the current acknowledged living wage?

[Baroness Altmann]

When Labour was in power, it did not increase the national minimum wage to the national living wage, and pay is increasing rapidly. There has been a 3% increase in average earnings, the fastest rate for many years.

Underoccupancy Charge: Carers

Lord Christopher Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

As I said, we have made sure that long-term discretionary housing payments can be made. We have also provided guidance to make it clear that where claimants are using their disability payments for needs caused by their disability, such as paying for care or Motability schemes, those would not be included in the calculation.

[Lord Christopher (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not the case that it is not just outrageous but downright cruel to require a partner—presumably a wife or a husband—whose day may be appalling anyway, to sleep in the same room as the disabled person? I find that statement utterly outrageous.

[Lord Freud]

About 40,000 couples in which one is looking after the other were covered by the spare room policy when it was introduced. That is about 6% of the total. The discretionary housing payment system was set up precisely to look at circumstances in which the couple could not share a room—because, of course, many of them could, even though there was a disability.

Housing: Underoccupancy Charge

Lord Christopher Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the position is that we have got a large number of overcrowded social homes; we have got a very long waiting list, stretching out to 2 million people; and the job of local authorities is to make sure that available homes are matched with the requirement of people who have larger families.

[Lord Christopher (Lab)]

My Lords, what plans do the Government have to deal with the problem, before it gets widespread, of the growing number of private landlords who have decided not to let any properties to people on benefits?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, there are always flows between private landlords coming into the market and coming out of it. The underlying statistics are that, since we introduced the local authority housing changes, the number of people in private rented accommodation has gone up.

Welfare Reform

Lord Christopher Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Christopher]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether their welfare proposals took account of the International Labour Organisation’s Convention 29 on forced labour.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, I can confirm that the proposals in the White Paper Universal Credit: welfare that works are compatible with the United Kingdom’s obligations under the International Labour Organisation's Convention 29 on forced labour.

[Lord Christopher]

My Lords, I am obliged for the Answer, which does not take us a great deal further than it did last Thursday. I have two concerns. One is the obvious Question that I tabled, and the other is that what is proposed at the tail end of exercises with those who are on benefit is clearly without any constructive objective whatever. This is a fascinating document, written 80 years ago. It is an interesting social read. There are 33 articles and I will read just three lines.

[Noble Lords]

Yes, come on.

[Lord Christopher]

It is no good looking at something if you do not know what it is. The Forced Labour Convention states:

“For the purposes of this Convention the term forced or compulsory labour shall mean all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”.

I have been in touch with the ILO this morning and I believe that it is looking at the jurisprudence that has gone on in the past few years. Will the Minister explain how what they are doing meets that objective?

[Lord Freud]

The mandatory work activity is designed to help a small number of customers to get back into the labour market, with labour market disciplines. If the noble Lord is referring to the attitude of the ILO on the matter, ILO experts produced a report on it in 2007 in which they accepted that this kind of work to help people back into the workplace was acceptable.

Welfare Reform

Lord Christopher Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that question. I not only share his concern but am very firmly on the record as being very concerned about the division between the Work First strategies that we have been adopting in this country and skills and training. One of the mainstream drivers of the work programme philosophy is an attempt to pull training and employment strategies together. It does that partly by price differentiation, so as people become tougher to put into work, the price goes up. We need to find the right mechanisms to make sure that we price up. It does it also by ensuring that the payments system in the work programme is based on sustainment in work, which can be for one, two or three years. You do not sustain someone in work for a long time unless you pull in the whole training and education element. That kind of change should be going through.

[Lord Christopher]

My Lords—

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Afshar]

My Lords—

[Lord Christopher]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Cross Bench!

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar. Children are at the heart of this. In our view, intergenerational poverty and joblessness are the basic reasons for the much too great child poverty that we have. This measure is designed with children in mind—right at the heart.

I take the noble Baroness’s point about cultural differences. One of the things I expect to see in the work programme—I know it is not in Jobcentre Plus—is quite sophisticated addressing of particular cultures. It is designed to force individualisation. In the work programme at least we will see start the kind of responses the noble Baroness is looking for.

[Lord Christopher]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

This side!

[Lord Christopher]

I am not giving away after the 19th minute. I have tried four times.

Following the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, will the Government produce proposals to deal with the situation that is bound to arise where the number of unemployed far outstrips the number of jobs available, which is particularly the case in the north? Will the Minister confirm that the Government have carefully considered ILO Convention No. 29, which Governments of this country have supported for 80 years? Is what the Government doing in accordance with that?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, what we are announcing today is a structure that will encourage people to take the jobs that there are. A snapshot figure of 450,000 vacancies in Jobcentre Plus does not show the whole picture. There were 1 million vacancies in jobcentres in the past three months. In devising this strategy we will have looked at all conventions to make sure that we comply with them.

[Lord Christopher]

What about the second question?