Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2015-12-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Molly Christine Meacher (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, Amendment 55 seeks to ensure that the work-related requirements or benefit conditions under universal credit will not apply to the carers of disabled children aged three and four unless appropriate childcare for these children can be secured. I recognise that several noble Lords have already referred to these conditions Many carers of disabled children aged three or four will not be subject to benefit conditionality anyway. Responsible carers who receive the carer element will fall into the "no conditionality" group in universal credit, which of course I applaud. This means that parents of children who receive the middle or highest rate of disability living allowance will be in the "no work-related requirements group" and will therefore not be subject to the conditionality this clause introduces. Government will therefore probably feel that there is not a problem, but in fact there are two reasons why there is a problem. One is that several thousand families with disabled children under five which receive DLA will not be exempt from the conditionality requirements due to difficulties in identification of need during the early years and administrative delays in processing claims which are wide-scale and well known. In addition, I understand that the majority of families of children under five do not have access to DLA at all. More than three times the number of children aged five to 11 receive DLA as children aged nought to five. A large number of disabled young children under five do not receive DLA but then their families go on to claim it when they are older The other concern is that, with the move from DLA to PIP, fewer children will be eligible for the benefit, and these numbers will grow. To date, the introduction of PIP has not achieved the Government’s required drop in the number of eligible children to achieve the required savings, therefore the eligibility criteria will, I understand, be tightened. All this will mean that more families with disabled children will be subject to benefit conditionality and the sanctions associated with it. Amendment 55 would go some way to ameliorate the consequences of the PIP change by broadening the exemption from the conditionality requirements to include children in receipt of a statement of special educational needs and its replacement, the new education, health and care plan, which is designed to run from birth for those who need it. Under the amendment, the exemption could also include those with "child in need" status, as defined by the Equality Act The availability of suitable childcare for disabled children is also a serious problem, as others have already mentioned. Of course, the Government’s increase in the number of hours of free childcare from 15 to 30 is incredibly welcome, but I hope that the Minister agrees that the legislation needs to make it absolutely clear that if suitable childcare is not available then the conditionality requirements simply must not be applied With regard to the parliamentary inquiry into childcare for disabled children, two-fifths of respondents with three and four year-olds said that they were not able to access even the 15-hour entitlement. I repeat: two-fifths of respondents. What will be the proportion of those unable to access 30 hours of childcare? I understand that the shortage in childcare provision is backed up by the Government’s own findings. Perhaps the Minister would like to confirm that My concern is that the situation could well deteriorate due to the financial squeeze on local authorities. To make childcare work for parents of disabled children, there must be sufficient financial support for local authorities to develop an adequate workforce and general support for these facilities. I realise that the issue of appropriate childcare for this group was raised during debate in your Lordships’ House on the Childcare Bill, and I would appreciate an update from the Minister on developments since then. Does the Minister agree that it cannot be acceptable to sanction carers of disabled children, generally parents, who choose to care for their disabled child at home—for the most disabled children, this may be the only feasible option—rather than work, or indeed who feel obliged to do so due to the lack of adequate childcare I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Pitkeathley, Lady Hollins and Lady Manzoor, for adding their names to this amendment and I am grateful for the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor. I appreciate that the Minister is under great pressure to achieve all the cuts envisaged in the Bill, but I hope that he can recognise the absolute reasonableness of this amendment.