Domestic Abuse: Universal Credit Payments

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, we have a range of measures to ensure that a family’s basic needs are met, including housing benefit and universal credit housing support. Victims do not need a bank account to claim immediate advance payments from universal credit to cover immediate needs. Fast-track payments can be made into alternative accounts to avoid rent arrears. In addition, child maintenance fees are excepted and a parent can apply for child benefit to be paid direct to them. Work coaches may also signpost and refer domestic violence victims to organisations that can provide further support.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister has properly understood what Members of the House are saying to her today. The old system used to separate out payments for children, which were paid every two weeks to the main carer, and in-work benefits, which were paid directly into the bank account of the main earner. Universal credit has taken all these payments, and housing payment, and made them available only once a month, all into the bank account of one partner. What happens in practice if the relationship breaks down? The Government have been very good at recognising that financial and economic abuse are part of domestic abuse. It means that a person, often a woman, who is in that situation simply has no access to funds to protect herself and her children. Will the Government please listen? The Scottish Government consulted and decided to commit to going to split payments. Will the Government please think again?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, with regard to Scotland, the Scottish Government have discussed split payments with stakeholders and are now starting to think about developing their own policy. We will continue to watch and observe how that proceeds. But I have entirely understood what we are talking about today and I think it is really important to make clear that we want to simplify the system for everyone making claims under universal credit. It is important that we simplify the system. Noble Lords shake their heads, but we want to treat people in the normal way, whereby they have a joint approach, in most instances, to receipt of their income, to managing their household bills and to managing how they can cover their costs on a monthly basis—but with exceptions where people who are suffering abuse or any other kind of coercive action can ask for and will be given split payments as a matter of course.

Employment and Support Allowance

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating that Answer—another day, another DWP mistake. Back in 2011, 70,000 sick and disabled people were underpaid thousands of pounds after they had been migrated from incapacity benefit to contributory-based employment support allowance, without the possibility being recognised that they had paid enough stamps to entitle them to non-contributory ESA. The result was to deny them access to additional premia that they might have been able to get had the Government done that correctly.

The error here is that the Government have now accepted their mistake but have decided that people’s payments could be backdated only to 2014, because in 2014 a tribunal judgment made it clear that the Government had been doing this the wrong way. Yet again, therefore, it took a small charity to go to court to judicially review the department. And yet again, at the very last minute the DWP caves in and says, “Fair enough, we will now backdate payments to 2011”.

This raises a couple of questions. The scale is enormous: the National Audit Office said that the decision not to go back before October 2014 would have resulted in that group of disabled claimants losing out to the tune of between £100 million and £150 million. Individuals might be entitled to up to £10,000 of wrongly underpaid benefits.

There is a pattern to this. Six reviews are in progress to identify disabled people who may be entitled to back-payments, five as a result of legal cases against the Government. I therefore have two questions for the Government. First, why did it yet again take a tiny charity—the CPAG, to which I pay tribute—to use money donated to it to go to court to get Ministers to do the right thing? Secondly, there is the systemic issue: the PAC, in its report on ESA, and the NAO, in its report on universal credit, described a department that was defensive when dealing with outside organisations, and unwilling to listen to warnings about problems that were occurring. What steps, therefore, is the Minister’s department taking to make sure that in future it listens to warnings—from inside and outside—and does not wait until someone takes it to court?

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank the noble Baroness for her response. I turn straightaway to her point about restricting—as it were—the payments. Initially the department believed that we were legally restricted to calculating repayments from 2014 due to a statutory rule—Section 27 of the Social Security Act 1998—which governs the position with regard to payment of arrears when a court of tribunal finds that the department has made an error of law. Following a thorough investigation, however, we realised that this interpretation was incorrect. We have made this very clear in previous Statements to the House and we have made it clear that we have been working extremely hard to do everything we can to correct a mistake that should never have been made in the first place. We believed, however, that the law prevented our paying benefit back to the date of conversion. We now understand that we can do that. We have listened to a range of opinions, including those of the CPAG, undertaken a thorough investigation of the legal position and realised that the law that dictated that we could not do this in the first place was wrong.

We want to be sure, therefore, that we pay back everything that is owed. I would add that the staff have been working extremely hard to put this right and to help everybody who may have lost out from these payments since the whole process of migrating people from incapacity benefit to ESA began in 2008.

Universal Credit

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating that deeply unsatisfactory Statement. This is quite extraordinary. The Comptroller and Auditor-General has been forced to issue an open letter to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to point out that she repeatedly misrepresented to Parliament the content of the highly critical NAO report on the rollout of universal credit. She has now apologised, up to a point, for one of the errors, in which she wrongly claimed that the NAO wanted UC rolled out more quickly.

However, Sir Amyas challenged two other misleading claims for which she has not apologised. The Secretary of State claimed that the NAO report had not taken account of the impact of recent changes to universal credit, even though her department had agreed the report just one week earlier, based on the latest information, and she repeated her unfounded claim that universal credit is working. Sir Amyas pointed out that the DWP has not even measured how many UC claimants are facing difficulties and hardship. I was particularly disappointed to see her repeat the claim that universal credit will help an extra 200,000 people into work, even though the NAO said:

“The Department will never be able to measure whether Universal Credit actually leads to 200,000 more people in work”,


because it is not able to separate other factors.

Anyone can misspeak—goodness knows, I have done it myself—but if the NAO says there is not and never can be evidence for a claim, you cannot simply say that it is a matter of interpretation. This is dangerous ground. The Secretary of State is entitled to her own opinion; she is not entitled to her own facts. The Government have told this House too many times that all is well with universal credit when manifestly that is not the case, so I have just two questions for the Minister. First, will the Government stop pretending that all is well and will they, in particular, stop using the misleading 200,000 figure and start telling the House how things really are? Secondly, will they implement all the recommendations in the NAO report? The DWP needs to put things right before anybody else is put through the misery of universal credit.

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, first, I make it absolutely clear to your Lordships’ House that right from the start, when the report was published, there has been no issue with the factual information that the National Audit Office has used. In collating that information, there has been and continues to be a strong relationship between the National Audit Office, the Department for Work and Pensions and the officials. That is important. It is the interpretation of these facts and the conclusions drawn as a result that the department questions, as I said in the Statement. A lot of it is about context rather than saying that there is any issue with the facts.

We are absolutely clear that, as the report says, the National Audit Office completed its independent review of the universal credit programme after analysing evidence that we collected between August 2017 and April 2018. The issue we have is that we are still not able to judge, and nor is anyone, the full impact of significant policy changes that we have announced and implemented since the Budget last autumn. They include extending advances, which was implemented in January 2018, removing waiting days in February 2018 and the housing benefit run-on. The report makes it clear that it is referencing evidence up to April 2018. On the housing benefit run-on, it was impossible for us to measure the extra two weeks’ additional cash to cover people transferring from the old legacy benefit on to universal credit, which they would not have to repay. Each of these measures will take time to impact on the experience of claimants and stakeholders. Although some of these measures were mentioned in the report, their impact would not have been felt during the evidence-gathering period.

Bereavement Benefits

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 11th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, when an individual registers the death of their spouse or civil partner, the registrar provides information on how to contact the Department for Work and Pensions bereavement service. That includes giving advice on what benefits will be available, including the bereavement support payment. The time limit for claiming the initial lump sum is now more generous, at 12 months from the date of death—that is £2,500 for those who do not have dependent children and £3,500 for those who do. The time limit is three months from the date of death for claiming the additional monthly bereavement support payment, which is £100 a month for 18 months for those without children and £350 for those with dependent children. We take every opportunity to encourage claimants to make a claim for bereavement support as early as possible.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, when the Government brought this in, they said that it was not about saving money—although, as it happens, it will cost less than half what the old system did. They said that the aims were to be simple and encourage self-dependency, but we are talking about people who got married, had children and thought that they would be looking after themselves as a family until the worst possible thing happened. We end up then with somebody becoming a single parent; they are themselves bereaved and having to raise children who are bereaved. That is surely the situation for which the welfare state was pretty much invented. If the Government are going to think again, would they please think really hard, recycle some of those savings and do the right thing?

[Baroness Buscombe]

The noble Baroness will know that those in need of additional income-related benefits will receive them, as well as child benefit for those with dependent children, for example. This is not a cost-cutting exercise. We are investing an extra £40 million in each of the first two years after the reform. This is a modernisation of an outdated system, which relates to a time when women were not expected to work and, indeed, there were not jobs available for them. We are spending more than £95 billion on working-age benefits to help those in need. People in receipt of the bereavement support payment can access other parts of the welfare system if they need it. With regard to being a lone parent, it is important to add that the problem with the old system was that, if one remarried or went into a civil partnership, one lost that entitlement altogether. People do not lose it under this system.

Personal Independence Payment

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating that Answer. This refers to the fact that the First-tier Tribunal ruled that two claimants with chronic conditions were entitled to PIP. The Secretary of State appealed but withdrew the appeals shortly before the Upper Tribunal was due to hear them on 21 May. The appeals concerned the meaning of daily living activity 3. One claimant needed watching at night in case urgent treatment were needed to prevent him falling into a fatal diabetic coma. The tribunal decided that he should qualify for PIP. According to the lawyers representing him, the Government argued in the appeal that he should be awarded only one of the minimum eight points needed to qualify for PIP.

This is the second time in a year that we are debating a serious error of judgment by the DWP in lawfully implementing the benefit it created. Noble Lords will remember that the High Court previously ruled against the Government on mobility payments, and in January the Government said that they were no longer appealing that judgment, either.

Normally when we ask questions on the meaning of judgments—and in the past when I have raised questions—Ministers stand up and say, “We are really generous to disabled people”, and the same thing has happened in another place. That is not a conversation. So I urge the Minister today to listen carefully to the questions and to try to answer them as best she can, and to write to us if she cannot. I have two. First, will she tell the House how many other cases are potentially affected by this ruling, and over what period and by what means her department will identify these people and notify them? Secondly, have Ministers taken legal advice on whether the regulations rushed through in March 2017 are definitely lawful?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, it gives me pleasure to respond to the noble Baroness. First, let me make it clear that, in our amendments to the regulations in March 2017, we were responding not to an error in the policy or in the PIP system but to a lack of clarity. The March 2017 amendments clarify the department’s position going forward, and further litigation is therefore unnecessary. The Secretary of State made it clear when she first arrived at the department that she wanted to withdraw these appeals on the basis that she wanted to provide these claimants with certainty. I want to be clear that this Urgent Question relates to the withdrawal of two appeals on 18 May and is about two specific cases. Therefore, there is no question about how many other cases it is concerned with and over what period.

On legal advice, we always confer and consult with lawyers to ensure that we are, to the best of our ability, making the right decisions on the regulations. We are clear in our minds that the regulations as they stand are lawful.

British and Irish Sign Language

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 3rd May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend. I entirely agree with him that in supporting access to communication for everyone, the exciting work of the NHS in fitting cochlear implants to babies and children is one example of why, as the Minister of State for Disabled People has said, it is clear that there is now a wealth of technological solutions with the power to make a real difference to someone’s ability to progress in education and also to find and keep a job. This means that we can use more of our devices. It offers more opportunities and a wider range of ways in which people can break down the barriers of hearing impairment. Of course, the majority of people with a hearing impairment are elderly and for the most part they do not use sign language.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister would not in any way mean to suggest that people who use BSL should be thinking about other ways of communicating. I want to bring her back to the fact that in 2016, the Department for Work and Pensions introduced VRS for some of its services as a result of a recommendation from the DWP Select Committee that the department ought to be more accessible to BSL users. The Government said at the time:

“In the future, it is hoped that VRS can be rolled out across DWP’s complete range of services”.


I have had a look at the website and some services, such as applying for ESA or PIP, do seem to be available via this mechanism. But I looked on the universal credit website and could find no reference to it at all. Are the Government now saying that they no longer wish to do this at all and will therefore not be rolling it out, or that they will be rolling it out but have not got round to it yet?

[Baroness Buscombe]

I assure the noble Baroness that there is no question of our not supporting the use of BSL services. In fact, good, accessible services are the best way to remove or overcome barriers that BSL users and people with hearing loss face. We have worked closely with deaf people and their organisations on delivering improvements across a wide range of services, including those provided by the Department for Work and Pensions and across much of the public sector; this is also the case in private companies such as Barclays, Lloyds, Sky and Virgin Media. The reality is that a growing number of organisations in the private, public and voluntary sectors are providing access to their services for deaf BSL users via the video relay services. With respect to the Department for Work and Pensions, I reassure her that there is no question of our not considering this service for UC rollout, but I will certainly take that point back to the department to ensure that that is the case.

Benefit Cap: Child and Family Well-being

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I would not call it a perverse incentive. Our reforms of support for children make sure that people on benefits and those supporting themselves solely through work have the same choices, including whether or not they can afford to have another child. Our policy is about fairness and incentivising work. Of course, child tax credits were not available before 2003, and, no matter how many children someone might have, they continue to be paid child benefit for each and every child.

We welcome last week’s decision by the High Court in relation to kinship carers. We have considered that part of the judgment, which I referred to during a Question last week, pertaining to non-parental carers, alongside internal reviews that the Department for Work and Pensions carried out in parallel to the legal case. We are pleased to announce that it is right that this change should be extended, not just to those in non-parental caring arrangements but also to include children who are adopted who would otherwise be in local authority care. We can respond positively to all noble Lords who have been pressing us on this point.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that and I commend the Government for having made the right decision, but will she think about what the next stage is? My honourable friend Anna Turley has raised the case of a constituent who had two dependent children in her care and was then asked by social services to take in two of her grandchildren. As a result, the household was hit by the benefit cap. Will the Minister think about that for a moment? There is not much point in exempting kinship carers from the two-child policy if, in practice, they cannot claim those benefits because the benefit cap then kicks in. Might the Government either review who is affected by the benefit cap or, at the very least, consider exempting the benefits given on behalf of the children that a kinship carer has taken in when the benefit cap is considered?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I cannot assure the noble Baroness that we will consider this any further. It is right that I articulate the fact that we are already spending £95 billion a year on benefits for people of working age. We have a budget in our department of £200 billion, which is 25% of the whole of the budget for government. We have to think about affordability before we can continue to extend our policies, notwithstanding that each and every individual case is of great importance to us. Our concern is to ensure that we help those who are genuinely in need.

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.