Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-26
Topic: Social Welfare
Maeve Christina Mary Sherlock (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have signed my amendments. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Boycott and Lady Altmann, and my noble friend Lady Drake and others. I am most grateful to those who spoke My noble friend Lady Drake summed up the problem when she said: "There are going to be a lot of old people this winter with very little money, sitting in cold houses, worrying that they will not get the help they need." I think there really will be Listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, I was very moved by the vision. I think that her parents must be terribly proud. They took her out to do meals on wheels when she was young and she in her turn is now doing such amazing work supporting people who cannot afford to eat. I really commend her for that—it was a wonderful image Like the noble Baroness I have been involved with many organisations such as churches and others that do food banks. I know how older people do not like to use food banks and how difficult it is. I think how shameful it is that we have come to the point where they have to, or indeed anyone has to, on the scale that we have in our country. We have somehow lost our way The worrying levels of pensioners on low income and those approaching low income should really concern us. My noble friend Lady Drake mentioned a figure from the PPI. If we are heading for a quarter of all people approaching retirement being unlikely to receive even the minimum income level, something has gone badly wrong. What has happened to the vision that was meant to lift people away from that situation? Can the Minister tell us what has gone wrong there The noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, in her amendment, mentioned women pensioners in particular. Those drivers of the gender pay gap are driving the gender pensions gap as well. If we do not get things right earlier on, we are not going to be able to put it right later. This means that it is not just a legacy problem. It has been clear from the comments and contributions from noble Lords tonight that this is not a problem just of older systems in days when, for example, caring was not recognised. This is happening now and is going to drive pensioner poverty into the future On the question of poverty measurements, I am so grateful to my noble friend Lady Lister who has literally written the book on poverty and is therefore in a very strong position to be able to take apart the Government’s arguments. It just does not work to say that relative poverty is some hopeless measure that no one uses when, frankly, it is used robustly by academics all over this country, Governments and international bodies. It has been used over very long periods for longitudinal studies. It is fine to use other measures as well. It is fine, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, has done in her work, to look at baskets of measures. However, simply to say that relative poverty does not matter and cannot be measured is not a credible stance if we are to have a serious conversation about social policy The point about trends was really well made. Even if the noble Baroness does not like measures year to year, in 1997, pensioner poverty in the UK was at 29%; in 2010 it was 14% and in 2012 it starts to rise. Last year it was 18%. There are huge trends there. Something is happening with pensioner poverty and the Government cannot simply turn a blind eye to it The Government argue that they cannot do an impact assessment and that they have data such as households below average income. That is nonsense. HBAI is simply a statement of the state of income across the nation. It is not a measure of the impact of any legislation. Whenever the Government do an impact assessment, of course they have to make assumptions about what will happen and how people will respond. It is called modelling. All I am asking is for them to do it on things they do not want to do it on, as well as the things they do want to do it on. That does not seem to me to be an unreasonable request To be honest, a lot of the people that we are talking about here are so close to the poverty line that I do not think it would be very hard to make assumptions about what was going to happen to their income, and how far they are going to draw down extensively on assets, as a result of measures the Government are taking The Minister says that we do not have time to discuss pension credit take-up tonight. This is the Committee stage of a Bill in which we are meant to do line-by-line analysis. We have been asking this for quite a long time and if we do not have time to do it tonight then, frankly, proceedings should carry on at another time when we do have time to do it. It should not be that we do not get to discuss things and to have questions answered because the timing, which was entirely in the Government’s hands, is such that the noble Baroness feels that we do not have time to discuss it tonight. Take-up of pensioner credit is fundamental to pensioner poverty. This is a group of amendments about pensioner poverty so I think it would have been helpful if she had anything else to say on that I am disappointed that the Minister is not willing to move on this. These are gentle, simple and reasonable amendments. If the Government will the ends of this, they should will the ability to assess the impact of their ends. I hope that the noble Baroness will revisit this idea and be more willing to accept it before we come back to these matters later in the Bill. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.