Welfare Reform Bill

That is absolutely right. The Government mention credit unions as part of the package of alternatives that they want to see picking up the slack. They may have a role for some people, but the hon. Gentleman is right that they are not an emergency response. As I said in my opening remarks, precisely because a disproportionate number of the individuals who need crisis intervention do not have a local connection or a stable household background, they are the ones who will not be in a credit union. They are disproportionately unlikely to be in a credit union or to have the scope to be able to join one. That is precisely why the social workers—expected to be a part, although admittedly not the entirety, of the gatekeeping process for the replacement of the discretionary social fund—are so concerned. Although they will not be alone, they will be very much on the front line of gatekeeping for this dramatically reduced and very different type of service, which is patchy and might be flourishing in some cases and not in others. As I said in Committee, the consortium of community care stated a few months ago that social workers are anxious about having to deliver the social fund, knowing that applications for community care grants are already turned down in 60% of cases. They say that their role as advocates and supporters for people in need through a crisis in their lives is dangerously undermined by the new financial gatekeeping role that they will be asked to take on. In evidence to the Committee, Councillor Steve Reed, speaking on behalf of the London Councils and the Local Government Association, said that local authorities have expressed an in-principle willingness to be part of this process. I understand why he would do that. He also told the Committee that he was worried that the localisation of the discretionary social fund should be fully funded and that it should cover all the costs, including the administration costs, which, for the community care grant alone, were £19 million in 2008-09. As we have drawn out in the debate over the past hour, the likelihood is that the administrative process for local government and the gatekeeping, which will not simply be about deciding whether to give a crisis loan or community care grant but whether to find people alternative levels of support, are likely to put an increased financial burden on local authorities. Some Government Members on the Committee argued that social workers and others will be able to provide more intensive, personalised intervention for people in crisis, helping to end a cycle of repeated loan applications, but that is likely to make the situation worse. If the 3.64 million crisis loan applicants or 640,000 applications for community care grants have to be funnelled through a more intensive and personal level of intervention, who will do that work? Where are the social workers and the available time in local government to improve on this? The answer is that they will not be there. Local authorities are retrenching and they are on the back foot financially, and the likelihood is that they will have a smaller pot of money as they act as gatekeepers for an even wider group of individuals. The Minister tells us that there is an expectation that there will be some form of review process, but the current review process is national and now every local authority will be expected to set up its own, leading to huge complications with differences in approach and the structure and bureaucracy of setting up a process in every local authority to determine how initial decisions will be reviewed and appealed against. I know that that causes a great deal of alarm in the advice sector. Let me return to the vexed concern about local connection. Sample work on discretionary fund cases was carried out by the Department last year, which considered a basket of 500 different cases, and 20% of those cases involved people who were homeless. Some 20% and more of the applicants in such cases—the amount varied between different parts of the country—had no single connection with any individual local authority. That is my single biggest concern about the Government's approach to this agenda. One example, which was highlighted in the media last week, is the case of victims of domestic violence. A group of the women's charities have written to the Minister for Women and Equalities, warning that some councils will not be financially able or willing to help women escape violent partners on the grounds of the provisions in this part of the legislation. They believe that there will be an increased postcode lottery of provision that does not reflect the Government's previous claim that tackling domestic violence is a priority and they fear that councils could impose a local connection test that could disadvantage women fleeing domestic violence who are often, almost by definition, forced to move into another local authority area. They say that many women fleeing the home have to leave everything behind, including household furnishings and essential items, such as cookers, that most families take for granted to rebuild their lives in a new home. They quoted a mother from Croydon, south London, who left her abusive partner in 2003 and said that she had only been able to escape a life of domestic violence thanks to a £700 grant that helped her to rebuild her life. The chief executive of Women's Aid said:"““The social fund is a vital resource for victims attempting to rebuild their lives after domestic abuse and, if it is not available, victims may be forced to return to their abusers.””" The director of Refuge added that if the discretionary social fund is abolished, there is a risk that"““more women will be forced to delay their escape from their partner.””" We flagged up other groups in Committee that deserve to be mentioned again, such as those that deal with the problems for ex-prisoners. About 66,000 people leave prison every year, a third without accommodation. The Prison Reform Trust has lobbied me and others on its concerns about the loss of the discretionary social fund and has flagged up the fact that ex-prisoners have a particularly strong need for early financial assistance to prevent debt, because once they are in debt, there is a grave danger that that will lead to a risk of reoffending, as the two are heavily correlated. I worry that local authorities, which are subject to political pressures from their resident populations and forced into painful choices that, in some cases, involve retrenching youth services, libraries and so on, are hardly likely when allocating a non-ring-fenced grant to make ex-offenders, for example, a priority. That is human nature. It is inevitable that some groups will be less of a priority than others and ex-offenders are likely to be a particularly at-risk group in that context. If we take each local authority on its own merits, we can understand the political reality of that position, but it will come back and bite local communities and the Government many times over if those individuals are not assisted and cannot make a stable life for themselves after they leave prison. Local authorities such as mine and such as those in seaside communities, in particular, have an incredibly high population turnover. In my constituency, 30% of those on the electoral register alone move address every single year. Those individuals do not have a local connection and there will be a real risk that a mechanism will be created to determine who does and who does not have a local connection. Where, then, will those individuals go? When the Committee took evidence, the Secretary of State said that there would be a ““moral duty”” on local councils. I repeat what I said in Committee: I do not know what a moral duty means. We all believe that local authorities have moral obligations and we have a moral obligation to respond to homelessness, to children in need and to the care needs of our elderly people, but in practice, without a legislative framework, people will not necessarily assume that duty if they have grounds to believe, for example, that the person approaching them at a time of crisis is not someone whom that specific local authority has a duty to assist. Although I welcome the principle of a moral duty, I want to see a legislative framework. I want to see it piloted so that local authorities have the opportunity to draw up a code of practice that can be tested and shown to work so that when people do not have a specific local connection they will be dealt with and not turned away. For all those reasons, and for the reasons so well expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington, I shall press amendment 39 to a vote. There might be scope for a localised response to some of these needs, but we are a long way from having anything like the structures, framework and legislation to enable individual needs to be accommodated, including with reviews and when the vexed question of local connection is not resolved. I hope that the House will take the opportunity to say that we should not proceed until we have seen this working in practice and dealt with any of the problems that will undoubtedly arise.