Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2015-12-21
Topic: Social Welfare
Maeve Christina Mary Sherlock (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this extensive debate. There are three more groups to come on the same subject, so we are going to do it very good justice. Given the extent of the debate, I will not try to respond to all the many points that were made. I am grateful to all those who have contributed, particularly in trying to highlight the impact of this lower benefit cap on a number of different groups: on single parents, as the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, said; on disabled people, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said; on carers, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley pointed out; and on children I decline to rise to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and engage in political debates about who said what and when, but I confirm that it is the policy of the Labour Front Bench in both this House and another place that we oppose the reduction in the benefit cap to the new levels. I was hoping to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, but, sadly, he is not in his place. Perhaps when he comes to read this debate he will start to reflect that it is important for us as a House to understand what the Government are trying to do here. They have always offered two arguments for this measure: one is that it is related to work incentives; the second is that it is fair On work incentives, the noble Lord may not be aware that significant work incentives are already built into the system. In fact, the CPAG did a report on this very recently showing how much better off families with children already are if they work. The point is that this is comparing individual wages and household income. Someone may earn a certain amount in wages but how much the household needs depends on where they live, how many children there are, whether they have a disability and whether they are carers. As my noble friend Lord Beecham said, this is primarily driven by high housing costs in the private sector. Most people do not get anything like these amounts of money in benefits. Where they do, it is almost always because they have very high rents. That is not their fault; it is the fault of the state, which has failed to get a grip on the housing market, have enough supply and make sure that people can afford to rent in places where there are jobs without driving themselves into this situation. I urge the Government to consider that very carefully The point about the comparator really matters. Whether or not the Government are going to set it at 50% or something else, there needs to be a way of understanding at what point the Government would do this. I can create brilliant work incentives tomorrow: I will abolish all benefits. That would be a fantastic work incentive but it would not be reasonable. The point of a social security system is to support people who cannot work—to enable them to meet their needs and feed their children—and then, where appropriate, to support them in work. We have to get an appropriate balance between, on the one hand, the needs of families, and particularly of children and vulnerable people, and the ability of the state to afford it; and, on the other hand, work incentives It is not unreasonable for this House to want to understand how the Government reach that judgment. Once you take away any external benchmark, it can simply become an annual whim. That is not appropriate, but it is completely appropriate for this House not to get into the micropolitics but to say, "We want to understand the impact on individual families, and we press the Government to make clear their thinking so that each year we can judge what is a fair amount of money to give to families", as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, pointed out In this country we have a very long tradition of Parliament looking carefully at what families need to survive and building up components of a social security system to address the different sets of needs. The benefit cap overrides all that, so it matters very much how it is constructed and it matters very much that the Government are transparent and accountable in the way that they go about creating it I shall not go into the other areas as we have a number of different debates coming up, but on the question of work incentives I point out that 85% of those who are capped at the moment are not in categories required to work, as we will come on to look at in two of the next three groups. Given all that has gone before and given all that we have yet to come, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.