Family Relationships (Impact Assessment and Targets) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-02-23
Topic: Social Welfare
Archibald Kirkwood (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Ministers have their uses. There is a mine of information in the DWP, and Ministers should go back and ask whether some assistance can be given to this kind of policy programme. The data needs to be made available to local authorities, although you obviously have to be careful about data protection. There are rules about that, but you should be testing them to the limit of what is useful if that makes a difference to identifying some of the anticipated problem families. Big data is now so clever that you could begin to get, not algorithms but almost algorithms, which would anticipate where the problems were. You could make available the priorities in terms of the spatial dimension in deprived areas; and professionals in the department, and in local authorities, could start to be provided with data on circumstances that would help them to anticipate where future problems would arise. In support of family impact assessments, the department should do a little bit of work to see whether any help could be provided in that direction I spent a very interesting morning at the universal credit centre in Dover, where I observed two applications. I am saying this against myself—I was really looking for problems that I could come back and attack the DWP about, but they both went swimmingly well. It was clear that the job coaches were signposting people who had individual problems. That is what they should be doing, but they could be doing more of it. The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, rightly said that policy is pointed at individuals. Universal credit is actually pointed at households. The claimant commitment could go as far as saying to people coming on to universal credit for the first time that, if anyone who has signed up to it sees problems arising in their household that might lead to family breakdown, they could phone. The "Ghostbusters" number should be that of the universal credit coach who could hold the ring and say, "Let’s see what we can do". I know that they have only got a certain amount of time available and they are not looking for things to do. However, in the course of these interactions with people coming on to universal credit, we might start to look at family problems a bit more broadly. That is a good place to start the discussion Finally, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, that if this does not work, we should think about getting more robust about enforcing it. If the DWP cannot do it, it should go to the Cabinet Office or to somebody who has control of all the Secretaries of State, now that I hear they are all in play—I hope that includes the Treasury. In the course of discussing the Bill, I hope that this House will send a clear signal to central government that we are not going to allow the family test failure to happen again on this Bill. If they do not get it right, we will come back looking for more and we will not be long in doing it. I support the Bill and encourage the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, whom I thank for the opportunity for this debate. I will stand shoulder to shoulder with him in his future work in this important area.