Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-11-02
Topic: Social Welfare
David Freud (Conservative, Centre-right): I ask your Lordships’ indulgence to make a few observations following events last week, in the context of Amendment 5 on poverty, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. My noble friend Lady Stroud and I are not pursuing our amendment on universal credit at this time I was delighted with the Chancellor's decision to improve work allowances and reduce the universal credit taper to 55%. According to my intelligence, this was very much a last-minute decision. I have always felt that there is a tipping point in terms of encouraging people to work more, and a taper of 55% is much more likely to be near that point than the 65% at which we were forced to start the new welfare system. However, I am much more concerned that the Chancellor did not feel able to improve the standard allowances, which have been eroded by 9% in real terms over the last decade, and which are now too low. There would be no point in an amendment which sought a vote on the standard allowance, since I believe that the Chancellor has done enough to eliminate any risk of rebellion among Conservative Back-Benchers on the issue. I am conscious, also, that Lady Stroud and I have tried the patience of the House by moving an amendment considered inadmissible by the Clerks Nevertheless, I sense that a sea change in public attitudes to welfare is now under way. In my account of the traumatic reform of the welfare system Clashing Agendas, I quote Rupert Harrison, the then-Chancellor’s chief of staff, on why the benefit cap was introduced. He told me: "I know it didn’t make much in the way of savings but when we tested the policy it polled off the charts. We’ve never had such a popular policy." That was in 2010. This year, there have been a number of polls showing that most people in the country support extending the universal credit uplift. I do not believe that turn-round in attitudes has been purely because of the perceived meanness of the standard allowance. Universal credit is perceived as a fair and rationale safety net which eliminates the arbitrary nature of the legacy systems So, as the Chancellor contemplates the £25 billion of headroom that he is reported to have built into his Budget arithmetic, I urge him to use a small proportion of that figure to alleviate the real hardship being suffered by our very poorest citizens as soon as possible. My three-point recommendation to him is: first, restore the 9% erosion in standard allowances; secondly, tie the standard allowance to average earnings, something that we are debating in the context of pensions right now; and, thirdly, start getting rid of the excrescences such as the two-child policy and the benefit cap. There is no need for late-night reactive decisions by a UK Chancellor on the shape of our welfare system. One of the clauses that I inserted into the Welfare Reform Act 2012 allows comprehensive trialling by the DWP of all the major elements within universal credit to discover the econometric impact of changes. For instance, the department can discover the exact optimal point of the taper, among many other aspects of the benefit. It may be that the point at which the Treasury makes the most tax and loses the least welfare revenue is a taper of 50%, for example, rather than 55%. The department can test and keep testing as society changes I thank my long-time colleague, my noble friend Lady Stroud, for her indefatigable efforts to find a way to help the most vulnerable in our society. Without all her energy and passion, I do not believe we would have achieved the progress that we have.