Welfare Reform Bill

I shall speak also to our other amendments in the group, Amendments 30C, 31A and 33A and will comment on the others in due course. I start with a confession: the reason we introduced the amendment was to be able to get a more sensible grouping arrangement which separated amounts in respect of children and qualifying young people who are disabled from the broader, but clearly important issue of childcare. I accept that the inclusion of ““primarily”” is unnecessary, but it gives us the opportunity to probe what is likely to be in the regulations in this regard. The existing rules have a variety of criteria: income-based JSA or ESA is different from housing benefit and council tax benefit. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what formulation is to be adopted for universal credit and why. He may say that it is in the draft regulations that we already have, in which case he might kindly direct us to which of the 100-odd pages it is on. The amendments are otherwise focused on additional amounts included in the calculation of the universal credit award for a child or qualifying young person who is disabled. Amendment 30C requires an additional amount to be included, and Amendment 31A provides for a further additional amount in the case of severe disability. Amendment 33A replicates an amendment that we moved in the other place and is a duplicate of Amendment 33. It would provide a safety net by requiring that amounts included should not be less than additional support provided for disabled children prior to the introduction of universal credit. The Government state that they intend that the support for disabled children be ““more generous””—that is their description; I am not sure that I agree with it—but at a higher level than for those who are not disabled. Obviously, we support that. For adults, the assessment is to be built on the framework of the WCA, which we discussed last week and will doubtless return to many times during the course of the Committee. There are to be two additions for adults: an amount worth £26.75 equivalent to the work-related activity component of ESA; and a support component equivalent, which will eventually rise to £74 a week from the current ESA support rate of £32. That the WCA is to be the gateway for those additions for adults is something to which we shall return, but the Government propose to equalise additions for children with those for adults. We understand that eligibility for children will remain linked to the rates of DLA that they receive, and that DLA for children will remain as is and there are no early plans to replace it with PIP. The Minister by nodding his head has perhaps confirmed that. We note, support and welcome the inclusion of children who are severely visually impaired in those for whom a higher addition is payable. However, overall, the Minister will be aware that the proposals have caused considerable alarm. While the higher rate will bring an extra £1.42 per week for claimants, receipt of the lower rate will cause a loss of some £26 per week for out-of-work and low-income families. The higher rate adult amount of £74 is, in stages, to be phased in. Can the Minister confirm that there will not be any phasing in of the severely disabled children’s component? Every Disabled Child Matters asserts: "““Childhood disability is frequently a ‘trigger event’ for poverty … The two main factors that contribute to child poverty … are the considerable additional and ongoing expenses related to bringing up a disabled child, and the barriers to entering work and resulting income penalties””." Families with disabled children are less likely to have two working adults, due to their caring responsibilities, and a Carers UK analysis of the 2001 census data found that among families with a sick or disabled child 38 per cent had two working adults, compared with 55 per cent of families generally. Contact a Family’s 2010 survey, Counting the Cost, demonstrated that almost a quarter, 23 per cent, of families with disabled children are going without heating, and one in seven—14 per cent—are going without food. Families with disabled children are currently able to access two additional means-tested disability payments. The purpose of these benefits is to provide financial support to families on low-incomes or who are out of work. These additions are intended to reflect not the extra costs experienced by families with disabled children met through DLA, but the costs, such as those for extra heating, that were met under the system of supplementary benefits. Families who receive DLA and qualify for the child tax credit are able to access the disability element of child tax credit. It is mirrored for those in receipt of income support and income-based jobseeker’s allowance, housing benefit and council tax benefit as the disabled child premium, and is worth £2,715 a year—equivalent to £52 a week. Each child registered blind in a family receiving the high-rate component of DLA can also receive the severe disability element of child tax credit—mirrored for those in receipt of income support and other means-tested benefits such as the enhanced disability premium of child support. This is paid in addition to the disability element and provides an additional £1,095 per year for each child receiving the higher-rate care component of DLA. These premiums are crucial tools for families with disabled children to meet the significantly higher outgoings that they have to pay out of a household income that is often reduced by additional barriers to work. In terms of numbers, some 200,000 children will potentially lose £26 per week as a result of these changes, and 120,000 children will receive an additional £1.42 per week. It is understood that there are two justifications for this drop in support: to align the adult and child systems for simplicity and to ensure a smooth transition for disabled young people moving from child to adult welfare systems. Every Disabled Child Matters would certainly contest this. It does not believe that the aligning of additions within the universal credit for children and adults makes the system simpler. These additions have different purposes. The additions for disabled adults are to help them meet the higher costs they face due to barriers to employment and the higher costs for people living on their own. The additions for families with disabled children are to meet the higher costs they face that are not met under DLA. These include higher utility bills, additional laundry requirements, funding safety measures within the household, buying additional clothing for their child, and meeting their child’s specific dietary requirements—to name just a few examples. Additionally, the consequence of aligning these benefits will be a reduction in the household income of many thousands of families with disabled children, who are already at very high risk of living in poverty. Transitional protection is of little comfort to the hundreds of thousands of families with disabled children who risk having their premiums substantially dropped in the future when this transitional protection may end. This policy also fails to support families with disabled children to meet the additional costs of care that they face in the future and to help them remain out of poverty. Specifically, on transitional protection, will the Minister say something about the changes in circumstances that would remove it? Would it be a change in the circumstances of any member of the claimant unit, or would it relate only to the child or children for whom these additional premiums are paid? It is a crucial question in understanding what changes to the life of the family could result from this dramatic drop in support for young disabled children. I beg to move.