Benefit Cap: Child and Family Well-being

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the benefit cap on child and family wellbeing since that cap was lowered in 2016-17.

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

My Lords, since 2013, the benefit cap has provided a strong financial incentive for those who can work to come off welfare and so improve their child and family well-being. While 134,000 households had their benefits capped, figures for February 2018 show that around half are no longer capped because they are working at least part time, and so qualify for their full benefit entitlement and therefore a considerable boost in income and well-being.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, a new study by Policy and Practice, which was founded by one of universal credit’s architects, highlighted the human costs of the cap, arguing that it should be applied only to those who are actively required to seek work. Can the Minister explain what purpose is achieved by imposing this measure, which is designed to get people into paid work, on lone parents of infants, who are not required to seek paid work because of their caring responsibilities, thereby causing, in the words of a High Court judge,

“real misery … to no good purpose”?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I beg to differ from the noble Baroness. I would call it not “imposing” but “empowering”. Our research shows that the best way to lift children out of poverty is by supporting parents into work. Record numbers of lone parents are now working: 1.2 million, with 1 million fewer people living in absolute poverty compared to 2010, including 300,000 children. We know that 75% of children in poverty leave poverty altogether when their parents move into full employment. We have doubled free childcare to 30 hours a week for nearly 400,000 working parents of three and four year-olds, and a parent need work only one hour a month to be eligible for childcare costs.