Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-14
Topic: Social Welfare
Margot Aline (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I rise to speak in support of Amendment 53, to which I have added my name, which was moved so ably by my noble friend Lord Rosser. I am sure that I also support Amendment 73, but that has not been explained yet The recent report of the Food, Poverty, Health and Environment Committee identified those with no recourse to public funds as particularly vulnerable to food poverty and insecurity. The impact on children has to be of particular concern A pre-Covid study of children and food by the Child Poverty Action Group—of which I am honorary president—found that children in families subject to the rule were among the most deprived in the study. Both children and their parents were going hungry, and denial of entitlement to free school meals was a particular problem. One child said of his hunger that "it was like I got stabbed with a knife and it’s still there." Another explained: "Sometimes you don’t have enough energy, you cannot cope in the classroom so you have to, like, try and rest a bit. You just put your head on the table and you end up falling asleep in the classroom and you get in trouble for it." The partial concession, which allowed some children in families with NRPF to claim free school meal support this summer, was very welcome as far as it went. But what possible justification could there be for withdrawing it now that these children are back at school, with the pandemic very much still with us? A letter from 60 organisations to the Education Secretary last month put it very well; it said that "the Covid-19 pandemic simply exposed the precariousness of daily life for thousands of NRPF families, where the absence of a safety net leaves them only one crisis away from catastrophe. No matter where the next few months lead us, this basic fact will not change. Meanwhile, the effects of this crisis will continue to be felt for years to come. While much effort is being made to ensure children do not fall behind, without access to free school meals many children in NRPF families will face having to make up for half a year of lost learning on empty stomachs, at a time when they may still be struggling to cope with the mental and emotional aftershocks of lockdown." As we have heard, the Government have devolved to local authorities much of the responsibility for this extremely vulnerable group, without willing them the means to provide the support needed and without providing clear enough guidance during the pandemic. In particular, as the Work and Pensions Committee noted, there is lack of clarity on whether local welfare assistance funds, which have been boosted during the pandemic, count as public funds for these purposes. Could the Minister provide a definitive clarification on this Another concern, as we have heard, is the lack of official data. There has been an exchange between the chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the UK Statistics Authority and the Home Office on the issue. While it is welcome that the Home Office has now published data on the change of condition applications, this is only a rough indicator of the extent of hardship caused and the data need to be disaggregated. Could the Minister undertake to see what can be done to improve the provision of data, possibly in consultation with the Children’s Society, which has done a lot of work on this? Without it, how can the Home Office assess the impact of the policy The amendments raise important social policy issues, but more fundamentally they raise crucial human rights issues. As Project 17 and Sustain point out, the UK Government have signed up to a number of international human rights standards that uphold the right to food, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I agree with them that, to uphold these obligations, "our Government should ensure that all children, regardless of immigration status or any other characteristic, are able to access food in a dignified way and this should include universal entitlement to healthy free school meals." Of course the "no recourse" rule does not only affect access to food—for example, there are serious concerns about its impact on survivors of domestic abuse, which we will be raising when the Domestic Abuse Bill is with us—but the right to food is crucial to both healthy development and education Amendment 53 is a very modest amendment—indeed, some might say too modest—but it could make a real difference to a significant number of extremely vulnerable people, including children and women subject to domestic abuse. The Work and Pensions Committee suggested that the total number exceeds a million, of whom at least 100,000 are children. Moreover, as the committee underlined and my noble friend has already pointed out, there is a very strong case on public health grounds for the immediate suspension of the rule at least for the duration of the outbreak I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that the Government are giving serious consideration to the recommendations of the Work and Pensions Committee and the Home Affairs Committee, and will not dismiss this amendment in the frankly complacent way that the Immigration Minister did in the Commons, with reference to "a range of safeguards" that evidence from a range of organisations indicates simply are not sufficient to prevent severe hardship and destitution.