Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2015-12-14
Topic: Social Welfare
Maeve Christina Mary Sherlock (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I will say a brief word on Amendment 62D and move on to the main amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has clearly made the point about the particular vulnerability of young care leavers and the way the changes to the provision of support for under-25s and universal credit will affect them. In 2013, half of 22 year-olds in the UK still lived with their parents. This Bill makes it more likely that even more young people will need to live at home. The issue, of course, for care leavers is that they do not have a home to live in. One of the problems is that they are simply not in a position to depend on the kind of support and home environment that other young people can turn to as an alternative. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that in responding to this amendment Likewise, an important point was made by the noble Earl about the position of care leavers who are much more likely to become teenage mothers and, in turn, lose their children. Certainly, when they are supported appropriately by charities and given appropriate financial support, there is much more chance of their being able to keep the children with them and then try to break the cycle. Without that, there must be some risks. I will be very interested to hear the Minister’s comments I really want to talk about universal credit and the implications of the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor. We on these Benches have long supported the principle of universal credit. I know the Minister has done a lot of work to make sure that the new system will make work pay and will work for working families. But I am getting increasingly concerned, as are many people, about the Treasury’s continuous slashing away at the money involved, which makes it harder and harder for universal credit to do the job. I do not expect him to comment on that, but he has my sympathies The speed at which this is being rolled out is also making a difference. As we know, from October 2013 there should have been no more claims for the old legacy working-age benefits. In fact, everyone would have been transferred over by April 2017. By last March, we should have had 4.5 million households on universal credit. The last time I saw the figure, it was about 141,000. There have been various slippages in timing and now it will not be fully rolled out until, I think, 2021. That matters because it goes right to the heart of the transitional protection arrangements for people moving across, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor. Along the way, the Treasury has made six—this is the seventh—cuts to universal credit: £6 billion has been slashed from the budget before it has even been fully rolled out. There are some potentially serious traps down the line I unreservedly welcome the fact that, after pressure from all quarters and being asked to think again by this House—I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Hollis and congratulate her on her successful delaying Motion, which caused Mr Osborne to have the opportunity to think again—the Chancellor decided not to proceed with the tax credit cuts. Three million working families would have lost an average of £1,300 a year However, as has been mentioned, he did not reverse the comparable cuts in universal credit. I want to understand the implications of that, so I hope the Minister can help us. The Autumn Statement suggested that the Government are still planning to take £10 billion from working families through cuts to universal credit during this Parliament, as a result of removing work incentives and work allowances. That means that 2.6 million families will still be £1,600 worse off by 2020, on average. Therefore, I am trying to understand why the Secretary of State, Iain Duncan Smith, when touring TV and radio stations last week, was able to say that universal credit is a big success. He said on "The Andrew Marr Show" that nobody will lose a penny from the UC cuts. How can that be true In the wake of the Autumn Statement, the OBR put more figures out to help people understand. I have been poring over them with a wet towel around my head to try to make sense of them. I suspect that I have not, but the Minister will put me right. There are three issues: whether people on UC will be better off than those on tax credits, whether people transferring from tax credits to universal credit will lose out, and whether anyone will lose out in cash terms come next April.