The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
(Paul Maynard) I beg to move, That the draft Social Security
Benefits Up-rating Order 2024, which was laid before this House on
15 January, be approved. The draft order will increase relevant
state pension rates by 8.5%, in line with the growth in average
earnings in the year to July 2023. It will also increase most other
benefit rates by 6.7%, in line with the rise in the consumer prices
index in the...Request free trial
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
()
I beg to move,
That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2024,
which was laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.
The draft order will increase relevant state pension rates by
8.5%, in line with the growth in average earnings in the year to
July 2023. It will also increase most other benefit rates by
6.7%, in line with the rise in the consumer prices index in the
year to September 2023. Subject to parliamentary approval, the
changes will take effect from 8 April and will apply for the tax
year 2024-25. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
Order. May I ask those not participating in the debate to leave
quietly? It is difficult to hear the Minister.
The Government’s commitment—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Minister, I have just been asked to clarify that you are
moving motion 3 on social security.
Yes, that is the one I am talking about.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Thank you for clarifying that.
For the information of the House, this order covers state
pensions. Motion 4 covers the guaranteed minimum pension, which
is a sub-element of the pensions issue. As I will explain, the
different elements—
(Glasgow East) (SNP)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can I clarify whether
we are taking motion 3 on social security and motion 4 in one
debate, or will we scrutinise the orders separately? It would be
helpful for the House to have clarity on exactly what is
happening.
Madam Deputy Speaker
We are debating motion 3 on social security. We will then debate
motion 4 on pensions.
Two debates or one debate?
Madam Deputy Speaker
Two separate debates.
Indeed, a few days ago I was asking those questions about whether
to take the motions separately or together. They are being taken
separately.
Sir (East Ham) (Lab)
I am very relieved that we are getting a proper uprating this
year, but the current headline rate of benefits is the lowest it
has been in real terms for 40 years. Why have Ministers set
benefits at a level so much lower in real terms than was chosen
by Margaret Thatcher, , John Major or Norman Fowler?
Why is it so much lower?
There is always a lively debate about the adequacy of the overall
benefits system. I think Beveridge had the debate under the
Labour Government in 1945 on how to understand the concept of
adequacy within the benefit system. What we are doing is ensuring
that the purchasing power of benefits is maintained and that we
are adhering to the triple lock. The right hon. Gentleman’s
intervention allows me to restate, I think for the fifth time,
the Government’s commitment to the triple lock, meaning that the
basic and state pension will be uprated by the highest of growth
in earnings or in prices, or by 2.5%.
This year that will mean an 8.5% rise from 2024-25, taking the
basic state pension from £156.20 to £169.50 a week, and the full
rate of the new state pension from £203.85 to £221.20 a week.
Additional state pensions, such as the state earnings-related
pension schemes and protected payments of the new state pension,
will rise by 6.7%. The Government are committed to supporting
pensioners on the lowest incomes, and accordingly the safety net
provided by the pension credit standard minimum guarantee will
increase by 8.5%. For single pensioners it will increase by
£201.05 to £218.15, and for couples it will increase from £306.85
to £332.95 per week.
When it comes to support for those in the labour market, such as
universal credit and the means-tested benefits it replaces, there
is always a need to take into account work incentives as well as
financial support for those in low-paid work, who are looking for
work or who are unable to work. The Government announced a range
of employment and conditionality measures at the autumn statement
to maintain and improve work incentives. However, in striking a
balance it is also right to increase the rate of those benefits
by 6.7%, in line with the increase in CPI in the year to
September 2023. That 6.7% increase means that universal credit
will retain its purchasing power in the broader context of the
Prime Minister’s delivered commitment to halving the rate of
inflation.
The Government remain mindful of work incentives in the benefit
system, and accordingly this order also increases the universal
credit work allowance by 6.7%. They will increase from £379 to
£404 per month for those also receiving support with housing
costs, and from £631 to £673 per month for those not receiving
support with housing costs. That 6.7% increase will also apply to
the rates for contributory jobseeker’s allowance, contributory
employment and support allowance, additional needs disability
benefits such as the personal independence payment, carer’s
allowance and statutory payments such as statutory maternity pay,
statutory paternity pay and statutory sick pay.
The draft order, if Parliament approves it, commits the
Government to increased expenditure of £19 billion in 2024-25. We
believe it is right to make such a commitment because it
maintains the triple lock, which benefits both pensioners already
in receipt of the basic and new state pensions and younger people
who are building up future entitlements as a foundation for
private saving. It raises the level of the safety net in pension
credit beyond the increase in prices and is part of a package of
support for those in the labour market, which protects the value
of benefits at a time of high, if falling, inflation while
maintaining and increasing work incentives.
The draft order maintains the purchasing power of benefits to
help with additional costs arising from disability. It also
provides protection against inflation for people who are
currently unable to participate in the labour market, such as
full-time carers, who provide such an essential service to those
they care for. On that basis, I commend this order to the
House.
4.23pm
(Wirral South) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for clarifying the way we are taking these
orders today. We welcome the social security uprating, because we
want to see social security keep pace with prices, particularly
at a time of spiking inflation and economic instability. However,
it is worth pointing out that before 2010, uprating in the manner
we are doing it today was the norm for both Labour and
Conservative Governments, but the past decade and a half has seen
a change, and a variable approach to uprating from this
Government. The debate about uprating has become almost farcical.
Year by year there is speculation—I presume from some part of
Government—that the uprating that was standard year in, year out
under previous Governments may or may not happen.
That speculation does not come out of thin air. It causes immense
amounts of distress and worry for people. It is almost as though
there has to be a campaign for the status quo, which is not
acceptable. I wonder why we are in what seems to be a policy
roundabout where every time we have this debate about uprating,
only for the Government to do it. That is a problematic way to do
what is a normal function of social security: to keep pace with
the cost of living.
We have to be honest about the reality of the situation we face.
We have had universal credit for a decade or more, and I have
been in this House long enough to have heard promise after
promise that it would radically improve people’s work incentives,
and that people’s position in life would be made much better by
universal credit reforms. The DWP has many talented civil
servants, who I am sure have worked hard to try to make the
customer service elements function better, but we have to look at
reality: 400,000 more children are now in poverty than when
Labour left office in 2010. That is not acceptable to me.
Most people in poverty today are in work, so the idea that we
hear again and again in this Chamber, that the best route out of
poverty is work, is simply not true. Two thirds of children in
poverty live in a house where someone goes out to work. I would
like the Government to recognise that fact. We have had a decade
and a half of so-called reform, and all we have done is get back
to the situation where children are growing up dealing with the
stress of not having enough money in the family home to give them
a proper childhood. That is not acceptable. We see the
consequences of a decade and a half of Tory rule all around us,
whether the food bank parcels in the school office, the nurses
who do a 12-hour shift but cannot make ends meet or, in the worst
case, the man curled up in a sleeping bag in Westminster tube
station as we leave this House. We see the consequences of
Conservative Government all around us.
Labour has a plan to get people a better life, able to make ends
meet and with a good start for their children. We will ensure
that there is a breakfast club in every primary school. We will
help people have access to cheaper energy and an insulated home,
to deal with the spike in costs that people have faced in recent
years. We will reform universal credit, jobcentres and employment
support to ensure that people get a better job with better pay,
to help them live their life properly and save money for the
Treasury. We will have a child poverty strategy that will
overhaul universal credit.
On social security, I simply say this: we need an end to the
uprating roundabout. We are simply asking for consistency of
approach so that, as in previous decades under Governments of all
kinds, we have the proper uprating of social security without the
constant speculation from wherever it is in the Conservative
Government that, somehow, ordinary working people must pay the
price of the Government’s economic chaos. That is not fair. Let
us end the chaos and have proper, normal uprating in the usual
way.
4.29pm
(Amber Valley) (Con)
I welcome the rises in benefits and the state pension. It would
have been unthinkable not to raise benefits by inflation and
equally unthinkable not to increase the state pension in line
with the triple lock. The Government have done the right
thing—these are the right decisions—and I will happily support
these orders in the unlikely event of a Division.
I agree with the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Wirral
South (), that this is not the most
exciting piece of parliamentary theatre, even though we are
spending tens of billions through these orders. The House is
empty, these instruments go through on the nod, we cannot amend
them, and the whole process creates a load of uncertainty for
people who have to live on these benefits. I agree that, if we
are going to find the money to put these benefits up—quite
rightly by the two highest amounts in my 14 years in this place
and probably going back a lot further—let us just change the
process and have a default increase by CPI and in line with the
triple lock so that we do not have to go through all this
uncertainty. In what scenario now are we not going to increase
benefits and the state pension by CPI or the triple lock?
If any future Government want to do something different, they
could just bring in a Bill, as did in the early years of
the coalition. The House would be required to give its assent to
that change, but we would not have to go through the uncertainty
and the annual campaign to get to where we all think we are going
to get to anyway, which does not help anybody. It would spare the
Minister this afternoon’s excitement and the confusion of what is
in which of these orders, which he might appreciate. I will leave
that one for the Minister and see whether he is remotely tempted
by it.
With the crazy process we currently have, we have come to the
right answer, but I still do not really believe that we are in a
sensible position. We have to use September’s inflation for an
April increase in benefits, and we have to have an uprating order
quite a while after the Chancellor has announced it in the
Budget. The Work and Pensions Committee recommended that the
Government bring these orders before the House earlier than
February, so I commend the Government—we are still in January. I
suppose that is positive progress, although I do not quite know
why we could not have done this in November, to get that
certainty.
I hope, as the years go by, one year we will get some good news,
and the Minister will say, “We have so many people on universal
credit who we know we can uprate far more quickly, but actually
we can use a much later inflation number because the amount of
manual processing we have to do for the old benefits is much less
of a work demand than it used to be.” We could then move to using
December’s inflation figure to bring the benefit increase much
nearer the actual cost of living and avoid the horrible situation
we have currently where we are effectively six months behind,
and, in the meantime, there has been a huge spike and people
cannot afford to pay their bills. Perhaps the Minister could
update the House on whether we are any nearer the prospect of a
slightly more sensible process where we are not using out-of-date
information to give people a rise in benefits that is already six
months old, which exposes a load of risk in that situation.
There is also a lot of noise about the triple lock being
unsustainable and suggestions that we will have to get rid of it
because we cannot afford to give pensioners that level of
increase. I cannot think of any justification for ever giving
people who are reliant on a state pension and who have no
possibility of going back to work an increase of less than
inflation; it would be an intolerable situation to put people in.
I think we have established over many long and painful years that
giving pensioners less than earnings is not a very attractive
position. We had that for a while, before the coalition
Government quite rightly reversed it as one of the first things
we did when we came to power 14 years ago.
I do not know why we have to have speculation around the idea of
taking away the link to inflation or earnings—it is utterly
impossible. I suppose we all wish that the 2.5% was a relevant
consideration for us, but it looks like it might be a few years
before we have to worry about that part of the triple lock
kicking in. The problem is that the rise in earnings and the rise
of inflation have got out of step and are in two different
financial years. We are therefore effectively giving that
increase twice, because we give it on inflation in year one, and
then, when pay rises catch up in year two, we end up giving it
again, and we have accidentally given a much higher amount over a
period than either inflation or earnings. If that is what risks
the long-term future of the triple lock, does the Minister think
that a rolling two-year or three-year average would fix that? If
that is the price of making the triple lock safe in the long
term, I would pay it. I would not choose it, but if that stops
the uncertainty over the whole thing being affordable, it would
be better. Perhaps the Minister could help us with a better
process for future years.
I fully support these orders and I will happily vote for them in
the unlikely event that we get to a vote.
4.34pm
(Glasgow East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Amber Valley
(), a fellow member of the Work
and Pensions Committee.
I stand here with a somewhat renewed sense of frustration
following the release of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s “UK
Poverty 2024” report, which I will refer to throughout the course
of my contribution. I find myself again speaking in this
Parliament against a backdrop of a truly dire situation
characterised by destitution. I wonder what more can be said or
done to make the British Government realise the true extent of
the hardship they have inflicted on people across these islands.
The SNP will not oppose the orders for 2024-25, but to keep it
plain and simple: the damage has already been done. No amount of
uprating will address the long-term consequences of entrenched
destitution inflicted on households as a result of the British
Government, who, I would argue, have been asleep at the wheel now
for 14 years.
Although the Government’s announcement to uprate social security
benefits means that shortfalls should not increase any further
this year, the orders still fail to undo any of the cumulative
impact of years of cuts to social security that households across
these islands have endured. While the British Government have
been asleep at the wheel, people across the country have been
kept awake at night due to the sheer amount of stress and
anxiety, wondering how they will feed themselves and their
families, and how they can afford—they often cannot afford
them—the essentials. We are faced with an horrendous picture, but
that is the stark reality of living with this Westminster
Government. Young children, school children, pensioners, young
adults, those in and out of work—no one is left unscathed when
they have the misfortune of interacting with the UK’s social
security system.
As the Minister comes back to the Dispatch Box, I am sure full of
civil service-inspired lines that do not meet the reality outside
Whitehall, we are faced with a cold hard truth from which we
cannot escape: people are suffering, and will only continue to
suffer as long as this Government refuse to fix the known policy
issues, on which I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow
South West () will elaborate.
(Glasgow South West)
(SNP)
We are debating what is supposed to be an adequate payment for
social security. The Government’s case is completely weakened, is
it not, by the ridiculous system of loans and reductions? My hon.
Friend’s constituents in Glasgow East and mine in Glasgow South
West are, on average, having their universal credit payments
deducted by £60 a month because of this ridiculous system.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who is an assiduous questioner
of the Government through Work and Pensions questions on the
issue of debt and deductions. He is right to cite the figures in
Glasgow, which are well known—local citizens advice bureaux all
over our constituencies refer to them—but of course, we are not
the only Members whose constituents are impacted by the debt and
deductions policy of this Government, which is often found
wanting. If the Minister could touch on debt and deductions when
he sums up, that would be helpful.
In a Westminster Hall debate I held three weeks ago on the cost
of living crisis, I compared the UK’s social security system,
which used to be hailed as a safety net for those who needed it,
to something that now resembles nothing more than a frayed rope,
unable to bear the weight of the individuals who rely on it as a
lifeline. After reading the new report and statistics produced by
the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, I have never been more assured in
my assessment of the state of the social security policies
enforced by this Westminster Government.
The JRF report outlines that more than one in five people in the
UK were in poverty in 2021-22. That is 14.4 million people, 4.2
million of whom were children and 2.1 million were pensioners.
Just as the statistics from Save the Children and Age Scotland
show—I will outline them shortly—the JRF report has to be a
wake-up call for this Government, and indeed the Government who
may follow, if we are to make any tangible change to the broken
system that lies before us. In its report, the graph that
illustrates the percentage of people in poverty is broken down
into the following categories: in poverty, but not in deep
poverty; in deep poverty, but not in very deep poverty; and, in
very deep poverty. I must be honest: I find it completely surreal
that we have reached a point at which statistical analysis has to
be broken down into such categories to illustrate the situation
that people are having to endure. It is utterly shameful that
such categories even have to exist in one of the richest
countries on the planet.
I understand that to Members who are present today I seem
frustrated, but that is because I am. The statistics in this
report are not just numbers; they are the very reality of people
in the communities that I represent, such as Parkhead and
Shettleston, and those, such as Mosspark or Cardonald, that are
represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West.
They are truly harrowing findings.
I want to say something about universal credit, which was also
raised by the hon. Member for Wirral South (). This policy is failing
the very people whom it is, in theory, supposed to support:
rather than supporting them, it drives destitution and food bank
usage. It has been reported that 68% of people referred to a
Trussell Trust food bank in Scotland who are in receipt of
universal credit have money automatically deducted from their
payments to repay debts, such as a DWP advance—a point made by my
hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West. Moreover, food
banks in the Trussell Trust network distributed about 3 million
emergency food parcels across the UK in 2022-23, more than 1
million of which were for children.
The Government also refuse to scrap abhorrent policies such as
the two-child cap and the associated rape clause. The DWP’s own
figures show that in April last year, 1.5 million children were
affected by the two-child limit—and I say that in the context of
those 1 million children who were in receipt of food parcels.
This is in addition to data from Save the Children, which found
that 60% of households affected by the two-child cap included at
least one adult in paid employment. No doubt the Minister will
stand up and say that the two-child cap is about making sure that
people get into work, but the fact is that it has an impact on
people who are already in work. Punitive sanctions, deductions,
the two-child limit and the five-week wait are all defining
characteristics that are inherent in this British Government's
social security system—policies that have caused, and continue to
cause, hardship to so many.
Although I could stand here and generate endless amounts of
research and statistics for the Minister, my plea is simple.
Social security does not have to be done this way: we do not have
to continue down this road of sanctions, deductions, rape clauses
and five-week waits. It is an undeniable fact that the Scottish
Government cannot make any tangible change to these policies
while 85% of welfare expenditure and income-related benefits
remains reserved to the Government here in Westminster. For every
step forward that the Scottish Government try to make,
Westminster drags us back two.
The Scottish Government desperately need the opportunity to
create a system, one designed to tackle poverty actively and
empower those who interact with the system, without one hand
being tied behind their back. When we have had the power to do
so, we have introduced game-changing policies, such as the
Scottish child payment. Analysis shows that the Scottish child
payment could lift up to 50,000 children out of relative poverty
in 2023-24, which is because the Scottish Government choose to
prioritise that. Child poverty rates in Scotland sit at 24%,
which is still far too high, but they should be seen in the
context of the 31% rate in England and the 28% rate in Wales.
That is likely to be due, at least in part, to the Scottish child
payment.
Fundamentally, it is a political choice to lift children out of
poverty. If this Westminster Government are unwilling to make
that choice, I simply ask them to hand over the reins of power to
the Scottish Government, who are more than willing, and certainly
ready, to implement a system that will allow people to thrive
rather than being punished for their circumstances. Until that
happens, the Scottish Government are left fighting an uphill
battle against a Westminster social security system that is
broken beyond repair. Again, I am left wondering how different
things might be if Scotland were able to take all the legislative
and fiscal responsibility for these issues through the normal
powers of independence.
Whether it is the British Government’s cruel sanctions regime or
their refusal to fix known policy failures that only push people
further into hardship, we are seeing what will sadly be one of
the defining legacies of this Tory Government. As a result,
poverty no longer just exists within our society. It is
deepening, it is ingrained, and it is causing insurmountable pain
to people right across these islands. As we are faced with the
reality of more food parcels than ever being delivered through
the Trussell Trust networks and shockingly high levels of child
poverty, the only conclusion I can draw is that these are all
signs of a Government, and indeed a Union, that the people in
Scotland must escape if they are to have any hope of a fair and
prosperous future.
4.45pm
(Oldham East and
Saddleworth) (Lab)
I start by welcoming the uprating order, including the uprating
of the local housing allowance, which has been frozen for over 10
years now. That is a significant move forward, but as my hon.
Friend the Member for Wirral South () said, we need to recognise
the context in which this apparently positive uprating is being
brought in. We need to look at what has happened since 2010,
particularly the various cuts and freezes to working-age support
over the past 14 years.
I was going through some figures just before the debate started,
and I noted that between 2010 and 2012, the uprating was about
1.5%; between 2012 and 2016, it was 1% a year, and between 2016
and 2020 it was zero. Of course, the average annual CPI increase
for each of those years was about 3%. That is the context. There
has been a steady and consistent erosion in the value of social
security, and this has affected universal credit, jobseeker’s
allowance, employment and support allowance, income support,
housing benefit, child tax credits, working tax credits and child
benefits.
The Resolution Foundation estimated at the time that this was the
equivalent of a cut of over £20 billion a year. That is £20
billion a year taken out of the support for working-age people.
What is not well understood is that these are predominantly
people in low-paid work; yes, a small proportion of people are on
unemployment support or in long-term unemployment, but they are a
tiny fraction of the population. This is predominantly support
for people in low-paid work.
The hon. Member for Glasgow East (), a fellow member of the
Select Committee, mentioned the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s “UK
Poverty 2024” report. I invite people to read it, and if they
cannot read the whole document, they should read the summary. It
is absolutely shocking. The headlines are that levels of relative
poverty now are equivalent to those we had before the pandemic.
The Government prefer to talk about absolute poverty because that
is to their advantage, but in terms of relative poverty, we are
back to where we were before the pandemic. So that everyone
understands, what happened during the pandemic—who was affected,
where was affected—reflected that poverty; those inequalities
drove who was going to get ill. They drove what happened during
the pandemic, and now we are back there, not having learned very
much.
There are 14.5 million people living in relative poverty, of whom
6 million are in deep poverty. Deep poverty describes people who
are living on less than 40% of median income. My fellow Select
Committee member mentioned another level below that: very deep
poverty. That is even worse poverty. The average income of
somebody in very deep poverty is 59% below what we recognise as
the relative poverty level. How on earth can we think that is
acceptable in this country? We heard last year about the increase
in destitution, which is another category altogether. There is
deep poverty, very deep poverty and—the worst of the
worst—destitution. The number of people in destitution has
doubled, meaning there are 3.8 million people who cannot afford
to meet their basic physical needs to stay warm, dry and clean,
and to feed themselves.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South talked about the
children in the families who are affected. For every 1% increase
in child poverty, 5.8 extra children out of 100,000 live births—I
apologise for the fractions—will not reach their first birthday.
That is the consequence of poverty. For those who survive,
poverty affects every aspect of their development, including how
their brains are wired, how they will develop and their
attainment at school. It is a disgrace that we have such levels
of poverty in this country.
(Hayes and Harlington)
(Lab)
We have this debate every year and it becomes increasingly
distressing. For me, one of the most distressing statistics this
year is the European comparison of growth rates: the height of
children in this country is now falling behind the height of
children in Europe. What does that mean? That is not a cosmetic
issue, but one that concerns the health of the child and their
ability to flourish.
My right hon. Friend makes a very important point, which I will
come on to.
We have talked about children, but disabled people are another
cohort who have been punished over the last 14 years. Again, that
is disgraceful—I apologise for repeating the same phrases, but I
cannot think of adequate vocabulary to express my rage about what
is happening in different terms. Ethnic minority communities are
also disproportionately affected.
(Reading East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a deeply important speech. Does she
agree that it is also important to consider the effect
poor-quality housing has on all the groups she mentions, in
particular the combination of poverty and poor-quality housing,
which leads to actions such as parents turning heating down?
That is a very good point. The Department for Work and Pensions
has the largest spending across Government. The state pension
accounts for the largest part of the Department’s spending,
followed by universal credit, but third on the list is housing
benefit and the support provided through the housing element of
universal credit. Given that the Government are investing a large
amount of taxpayers’ money in housing, one would think there was
some way to safeguard its quality.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South made important points
about the escalation in the use of food banks. As I have said
before, we did not have a food bank in Oldham before 2010; we now
have several to meet the need. We are aware of the impact of
poverty on the labour market, which I know is of interest to the
Minister. We need a healthy labour market to be able to provide
the growth we all want to see across the country, but, again, all
the evidence suggests that will not happen for the reasons set
out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington
().
This is becoming an increasingly unhealthy country. Our healthy
life expectancy is declining and our life expectancy is
declining, and that has been happening since 2017. At the time,
Professor Sir Michael Marmot warned what the consequences would
be, and he was right. In the report that he produced at the
beginning of the year—I asked the Prime Minister a question about
this just last week—he said that
“if everyone had the good health of the least deprived 10% of the
population there would have been 1 million fewer deaths in
England in the period 2012 to 2019. Of these, 148,000 can be
linked to austerity”—
directly linked to austerity.
“In 2020, the first year of the covid pandemic, there were a
further 28,000 deaths”
that could have been prevented. Those are the consequences of the
poverty and inequality that we have in this country.
The Select Committee is undertaking an inquiry into the adequacy
of social security support. With that in mind, I once more
commend the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Trussell Trust,
which have put together some interesting recommendations on the
essentials guarantee. They suggest that what we provide should be
based on need rather than on some quite subjective view of what
the level of support should be. I hope the Work and Pensions
Committee can support some aspect of that. Finally, I will just
mention that £120 per week for a single person, instead of the
£70 currently, would be a good step in the right direction. Thank
you for your latitude, Madam Deputy Speaker.
4.56pm
(North East Fife)
(LD)
Given the number of us in the Chamber, I do not think that this
will be an afternoon of high drama. I, like others, do not intend
to divide the House on the motion before us.
The Government made their decision on uprating last year.
Pensioners around the country let out a collective sigh of relief
that the triple lock had been kept. No one here today will vote
down either this or the next statutory instrument. Clearly, we on
the Opposition Benches would like the measures to go further, but
we know that the harm from torpedoing them would be catastrophic,
because it would prevent the proposed increases from taking
place. None the less, as the hon. Member for Amber Valley () said, there are different ways
of doing this, and given that we have this opportunity to speak
today, I will do so to allow the Minister to get a feel for the
mood of the House—how we feel the Government are performing in
this area, and, more importantly in an election year, how our
constituents feel that they are performing.
It is quite clear that the outcomes of Government policy are hard
to swallow. What we are seeing is women dying as they fight for
compensation because of the Government’s maladministration of
their state pensions, and that is clearly not acceptable. We see
pensioners going hungry and risking illness because they cannot
afford to either eat or stay warm, and that is not acceptable. I
raised a number of these issues relating to pensioner poverty in
my recent Adjournment debate, and I look forward to meeting the
Minister, as was promised, to discuss some of them. As Members
have already said, we know that one in three children are living
in poverty, and that is not acceptable.
Madam Deputy Speaker, the report card is in, and it is a fail.
Record numbers of families are relying on emergency food parcels.
In April to September last year, 320,000 people turned to a food
bank for the first time. The hon. Member for Oldham East and
Saddleworth () mentioned the Joseph
Rowntree Foundation’s essentials guarantee. I find it interesting
that we are here debating how much the uprating to benefits is,
but we never seem to debate what is the correct amount in the
first place that can allow people to live in dignity and obtain
their essentials. Perhaps if people had that certainty, they
would be better placed to improve their health and often their
employment opportunities.
Incidentally, the Trussell Trust is on the estate today—indeed,
Madam Deputy Speaker, I think I saw you at the meeting—and I hope
the Minister has had the time to visit its staff in the Churchill
Room to hear directly from them. The Minister and I have worked
together on the all-party parliamentary group on ending the need
for food banks and our inquiry report into cash or food. There
today I learned my own statistics for North East Fife. I have one
main Trussell Trust food bank, in Cupar, which until recently was
ably run by Joe Preece—he has just stepped down after a number of
years in charge. Those statistics showed me that there has been a
25% increase in the use of the Cupar food bank since 2018. That
is before covid; the Government give lots of reasons about people
experiencing pressures due to the cost of living but we all know
in this place that food bank use was increasing long before covid
came along.
Child poverty costs the Government £39 billion each year through
immediate additional public services and the delayed costs
associated with the higher risk of unemployment in adults who
grew up in poverty. That £39 billion per year is a huge amount of
what is to some extent avoidable spending, and I find it hard to
believe that we could find a voter who thought that letting a
child live in poverty was acceptable if we could avoid it. Even
if we could find that voter, I am pretty sure they would be
horrified by the amount it is costing them, the taxpayer, to
effectively do nothing. So I put it to the Minister and the
Government that they are shooting themselves in the foot by
uprating benefits with inflation while keeping the two-child
limit and freezing the benefit cap. The Minister might say in his
closing remarks that the cap was increased last year but that is
disingenuous because it had been frozen since 2016, when it was
actually lowered. Last year’s uprating was vital but totally
insufficient in ending poverty.
When I was elected in December 2019 some 41,000 families across
the UK were subject to the benefit cap and now there are over
75,000. The drop in numbers from the uprating last April will
quickly vanish if the cap is frozen for another seven years.
Indeed, these are the two policies which, if changed, would be
the most effective and efficient means of lifting hundreds of
thousands of children out of poverty. I do not know for how long
the Minister will be in his current position—we do not know when
the general election will be this year and the change that might
bring—but what a legacy it would be to take hundreds of thousands
of children out of poverty. I hope he agrees with me on that.
It would not be a DWP debate for me without raising the issue of
unpaid carers and in particular carer’s allowance. Following this
uprating, carer’s allowance will be £81.90 each week, claimable
by the 1.3 million carers who do 35 hours of unpaid care each
week—full-time work. That is just £15.75 per week more than when
I was elected four years ago—for each hour of cooking, cleaning,
bathing, appointments, admin and worrying, an extra 45p. So yes I
am bringing it up again.
I am looking forward to meeting the Chief Treasury to the
Secretary next month to discuss carer’s allowance, particularly
the much-needed reforms of it, because I believe that carer’s
allowance creates barriers to work. Almost half of carers
receiving carer’s allowance report that they are struggling to
make ends meet, and if they are struggling, the people they are
caring for are struggling too.
I am going to end with a local gripe. Yesterday I received a
letter from the DWP north-east Scotland service leader. This
followed from the Department’s written statement six days ago
about starting the next phase of the transition to universal
credit. The letter was dated seven days ago and it told me that
the move to universal credit expansion into North East Fife had
been moved forward, to nine days ago—two days before the letter
was written, three before the announcement was made by the
Government, and over a week before I was actually told. MPs rely
on timely communications to be able to do our job, to scrutinise
Government activity and to support our constituents. I very much
hope that that was a one-off error but I raise it here in the
hope that future errors can be prevented.
These orders are a technical necessity, but when we look past
that—when we look past the different ways of calculating
inflation and the actuarial arguments—what we are talking about
is what kind of society we want to live in. During covid many
found out for the first time about the inadequacies of our social
security system and for those remaining on it, it remains deeply
inadequate.
5.03pm
(Islington North) (Ind)
I cannot better what the hon. Member for Oldham East and
Saddleworth () said about poverty in this
country and we should reflect on that if we are passing social
security uprating orders because the levels of poverty are an
utter disgrace. One has only to spend a short time in a food bank
anywhere across the country to realise the desperation of many
people who are prepared to queue, often for a very long time,
just to get a few packets of pasta to keep their family together
for another week. The numbers accessing food banks are going up
all the time. People are increasingly going to community centres
to try to get food that has been donated by others. The level of
poverty is huge.
I will bring two specific areas to the House’s attention. The
hon. Member for North East Fife () just talked about the
first: the two-child benefit policy, which limits universal
credit to claimants’ first two children. Like all Members, I have
many constituents who are part of large families. The Somali
community, the Haredi Jewish community, the Congolese community,
the Bengali community and a number of others often have quite
large families. Is there anything morally right in saying that
the third, fourth, fifth or sixth child in a family is less
valuable than the first or second? Can anyone justify that? I do
not believe that they can, yet the policy persists.
The cost of changing the policy would be £1.3 billion. That might
sound like a lot. It does not sound very much compared with
overall Government expenditure, nor compared with the benefits
that it would bring in lifting a lot of children and families out
of poverty. At the moment, around 1.3 million children are
affected. They come from around 400,000 households.
[Interruption.] Is the hon. Member for Glasgow East () trying to intervene?
No, I was just enjoying the right hon. Member’s speech.
The hon. Member was looking with interest. I am grateful to him
for that, and for what he said.
I hope that as a result of this debate the Minister will
seriously examine the poverty created by the two-child policy,
and that all parties in this House will recognise that we ill
serve the community if we deliberately discriminate against
children in large families. Children living in poverty are less
likely to achieve their full potential in school, and the jobs
and careers that they want. As a result, we all lose. We all lose
out on their talents because we disregarded their needs when they
were at their most desperate. I hope that the Minister will
recognise that.
Secondly, the uprating order includes an increase in housing
benefit in line with the rate of inflation that is applicable.
The problem is that in constituencies such as mine, where a third
of the population live in the private rented sector, housing
benefit never quite catches up with the increase in rents imposed
by private sector landlords. It is not just a London problem; it
exists in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle—all over the country.
Yes, local housing allowance is being increased in line with a
perception of what the affordable rent level is within the
community, but it never quite catches up.
A friend of mine was helping somebody to find a flat locally.
They spent days trawling through agents, and all the other places
one goes to try to find a flat. They found fewer than half a
dozen flats available to rent within the local housing allowance.
In lots of inner urban areas, having neither rent controls nor a
sufficient level of housing benefit or local housing allowance
effectively leads to an expulsion of the poorest from those
communities. We need to come back to that and introduce private
sector rent controls, and we need a local housing allowance that
is realistic and meets people’s housing costs. Otherwise, it is
often the poorest and largest families who get shifted from one
private rented sector flat to another, thus damaging those
children’s education and life chances.
If we are to live in a society where we are proud of our welfare
state, the welfare state has to work for the poorest in our
community. At the moment, frankly, it does not.
5.09pm
I thank everyone who has participated in this debate. I am very
disappointed in the hon. Member for Glasgow East (), who seems to think that I
do not write my own material. He should know that my private
office staff are sitting in trepidation, as I write across every
speech they give me in blue and red ink. They never know what
will emerge from my mouth. I can assure him that it is all my own
work, and he can criticise it all the more for that reason.
I am also disappointed that people think this order is just a
technical necessity. I do not call £19 billion of Government
spending a technical necessity. It is one of the largest amounts
of extra spending in which the Government engage in any
particular year, and it will make a considerable difference to
the lives of people across the country.
Do you want a round of applause?
No, I certainly do not, but I would want to think that those of
us in this Chamber did not dismiss the order as a technical
measure.
My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley () repeated a point that I think
he made this time last year—I also made this point when I was
sitting in the far corner of the Chamber as a Back Bencher—on the
timely application of these measures and whether we ought to make
them more promptly after inflation is measured. As a member of
the Work and Pensions Committee, he will know that this issue is
often discussed, with the discussion often revolving around the
robustness of universal credit’s IT system compared with the IT
systems for legacy benefits. I am told the hopefully promising
news that state pension benefits, in particular, will be moving
to a more modern IT platform by 2025, followed by disability
benefits, contributory benefits and carer’s allowance, so there
is a pathway towards getting all our benefits on to modern IT
systems that are more agile in responding to economic situations.
I hear his point, and work is under way.
The hon. Members for Glasgow East and for Oldham East and
Saddleworth () both talked about the
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and I am a great admirer of its work.
As a Back Bencher, I sat on many Zoom meetings and Teams meetings
to listen to its briefings. The hon. Member for North East Fife
() and I have discussed
the essentials guarantee many times, so I take a personal
interest in what the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says. Since the
period covered by its report, the Government have provided over
£104 billion of extra support to help households with the high
cost of living. Although I understand that the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation will stick to the broad themes of its argument, we
need to recognise that Government support has moved on.
I do not want to pre-empt the meeting of the hon. Member for
North East Fife with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, which I
hope will bring better news than I am able to deliver from the
Dispatch Box. I have heard about her letter. My favourite episode
of “Fawlty Towers” is “Communication Problems”, which is a comic
classic, and the tale she tells is such an example. I am sure my
officials have made a note, and we will hopefully follow up with
a clarifying letter.
Finally, I turn to the right hon. Member for Islington North
(). Not being the Minister in
charge of local housing allowance, I am a little cautious about
giving him a more definitive answer at this stage—[Interruption.]
Nothing annoys me more than when other Ministers intrude on my
brief without telling me, so it is a courtesy to them, nothing
more.
The draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order will increase
the state pension by 8.5%, in line with the rise in average
earnings, and it will increase most other benefit rates by 6.7%,
in line with the rise in consumer prices. These changes commit
the Government to increased expenditure of £19 billion in
2024-25. They maintain the triple lock, protect pensioners on the
lowest incomes and support those in the labour market, while
maintaining work incentives and protecting the value of benefits
for those who cannot work and who have additional disability
needs.
I commend this statutory instrument to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2024,
which was laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.
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