Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Third sitting)

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Who is “we” in this context?

Professor Gordon: The University of Bristol and a consortium of eight other universities: about 120 academics were involved, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. We looked at employment in terms of stress, control, physical conditions, security and satisfaction. We looked at the bottom 20%, the worst conditions of employment, and we found that there were very high rates of child poverty, that the health and wellbeing of children and adults where parents worked in those conditions was no better than for the unemployed.

Although it is often argued that it is a stepping stone to better employment if you go into one of these bad low-paid jobs with bad conditions, about a third of people in those jobs have been stuck there with no prospect of improvement. So it is not just about low pay in those jobs; it is also about regulation to ensure that the physical working environment is safe and that people have some control and flexibility over their jobs, and to ensure that they have some kind of security in those jobs. Those bad working conditions harm the children, as well as the adults, in those households.

Alison Garnham: I just wanted to point out briefly, in answer to what Samantha was saying, that when child poverty was falling, it was not just about raising people’s incomes. Tax credits and child benefit were important, but there were also other things going on. There was the first childcare strategy, there was welfare to work and there was a big increase in lone parent employment. In fact, the increase in lone parent employment from 45% to 57% accounts for a third of the falls in child poverty between 1998 and 2010. All of things that Samantha is talking about are still all of the things that you need to do. It is not just about improving income, but they then have an impact on the poverty figures, and that is what we are looking for.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

Q 176 I want to look specifically at the troubled families programme, which is helping to tackle deep-rooted problems in families. What effect is that programme having on child poverty? That question is for all the panel.

Professor Gordon: The troubled families idea came out of some work that was done for the Cabinet Office on multiple social exclusion by ourselves at Bristol, York, the National Centre for Social Research and the Cabinet Office itself. It looked at some families that had multiple difficulties—five or more problems. They were about 2%, on a guesstimate, although there is quite a lot of uncertainty and we had data only for England. It only looks at people who have multiple problems, of which poverty may or may not have been one of those problems. It can only have quite a small effect on poverty overall. Although, for those families, high quality social work, and combined and improving services are obviously very good things, it will not affect child poverty overall.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q 177 Well, it will for those children.

Professor Gordon: For a small number of children.

Dr Callan: I was in the Isle of Wight recently, looking at the family hubs that I mentioned a bit earlier. They are putting their troubled families programme very much at the heart of how they are helping families right across the Isle of Wight. It does not mean that they are treating all the families as troubled families. The fairly narrow criteria have been broadened. It is enabling that transformation and reorganisation of services, so that you do not have families with multiple problems having multiple professionals trying to help them and further complicating things.

In terms of how the programme is affecting children growing up in poor life circumstances, if it is driving more effective local government working and ensuring that far more people are getting family support than they were, it can be a really a good thing, for all the reasons that I have said. It is about getting underneath the life chances—things such as why children are not going to school, why the parents are not getting into work and so on. Health is also hugely important—the mental health and addiction issues that many families face.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q 178 Just touching on that—I know that Anna raised this as well, and this is a very specific example—if a parent has an addiction of some sort, it can mean that the family income, sadly, is being spent to support that addiction, rather than to help the child grow up and so on. My broader question to the panel is that we have heard a lot about income, but is it not just as vital to focus on how that income is spent, as Alison said, on fresh fruit and vegetables and so on, rather than—I think you gave this example—on tobacco and alcohol?

Dr Callan: That is really important. CSJ works with several hundred organisations that are working in the community to help tackle these root causes. I have gone and visited a lot. I have talked to a lot of people who have used the services they offer. One thing that people say is, “I feel so bad about how my addiction is affecting my kids that when I get a dollop of cash I just want to treat them.” It is so understandable; it is kind of spending out of guilt. They may be buying them fantastic food, but—I am not saying this is everybody—there is a sense of “If I have money, I will buy them expensive luxuries because I had to make up for the fact that I haven’t been emotionally available as a parent.” You may think that is just an anecdote, but if it is happening in lots of families where there are addictions—that is what we are hearing from people working at the grassroots level—we have to pay attention because there may be money going to that family, but it is not, as you say, necessarily improving the future life chances for the children.

Professor Gordon: Alcohol and drug dependency are devastating for families and obviously a key issue in child protection services, but it has to be remembered that the overwhelming majority of families where someone has an alcohol dependency or even a drug dependency are not poor. They have higher incomes—sometimes very high incomes. It is a very important issue for child wellbeing and life chances, but tackling that will not necessarily reduce child poverty. There are very few households in which alcohol and drug dependency is causing child poverty.

Alison Garnham: I agree with that. Alcohol and drug dependency are not a good indicator of poverty. Troubled families is allowing and funding a lot of local authorities to do a lot of admirable work with very disadvantaged families. Part of the problem is tracking it. We do not actually have much evidence yet about how it is doing, partly because the schemes are different in different areas, so the data is not comparable. It will be a while before we are able to tell what impact it has actually had.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q 179 Drawing on that, the other indicator the legislation allows for focuses on children’s attainment at key stage 4. How important is that key stage to helping us to understand a child’s life chances?

Professor Gordon: The indicator will be only for England; it will not be for the whole of the UK. Also, I would have thought that was an indicator that the Education Minister should report rather than the DWP Minister. It will also change, because the grading system will change, so it will be reported and then the next set of reports will not be comparable with the previous set, so you will not know whether things have got worse or better for either of the two indicators suggested. So although it is important, it has not been very well thought through as an indicator, because it will not mean anything for at least a few years. There is also no target attached, as there is in Wales, for example.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q 180 You have been talking about income a lot, and the point I am trying to make is that there is an holistic approach in this Bill and the Finance Bill. We have discussed the national living wage, the higher personal allowance in tax, free childcare and so on, which are factors against which the Government will be judged on child poverty and how the low-paid are faring generally. Do you accept that these factors in the Bill are part of a general package?

Professor Gordon: The indicator will not be meaningful. It will be only for England and it will not be comparable. Because of the grading changes from A to E to 1 to 9 and because the boundaries are changing, you will not know whether it has got better or worse.

Dr Callan: I think we absolutely have to look at educational attainment. Children doing well, perhaps against all the odds, boosts their self-esteem. A really quick point: if we are saying that we are not interested in the kids of people who have addictions or high incomes, actually that high income can be drained away completely almost overnight by addictions. That is exactly the reason why we need to look at the lives of all children across our country rather than just the ones that seem to be under those financial circumstances.

[The Chair]

A quick response from the next two panel members.

Alison Garnham: Everybody wants a multidimensional approach to child poverty. Everybody wants to look at housing, health, education. All of these things are relevant factors and they should all be tracked, but you will not know whether you have made any progress unless you have got some indicators that show if that has improved the family’s circumstances.

Matt Padley: Many of the things you are talking about may indeed have an impact on child poverty levels and may have an impact on income. Generally, what we have all been saying is that you need something that is multidimensional, not something that just measures income.