Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I support this amendment, but in so doing I understand the position in which the noble Lord finds himself with a set of sealed envelopes. Like many other noble Lords, I encourage him to go back to the Treasury, or at least to have a look at how the available funding can be properly distributed. After all, this is a compromise. Personally, I would like us not to be in this position at all but rather to ensure that we do not make any cuts, because these are cuts—unlike some of the other reforms—to the budgets of families with disabled children. I do not want to repeat the eloquent speeches that have already been made but to make three brief and, I hope, slightly different points. First, the Government need to take the long view as regards financial management. If we take the short-term view, we will find that many of these families will fall into even more disarray than they are in already. We should remember that, as has been said—I reinforce this point—the majority of these families are single-parent families looked after by mothers. These are not women who have had a child for some feckless reason, as is often portrayed in the newspapers, but women whose husbands cannot tolerate the pressure of having a disabled child in the household and have simply gone out of the picture—so these women are alone. Often that means that they cannot support their child’s situation, which results in many children going into care. I shall not quote more statistics, but noble Lords know that there are large numbers of disabled children in care at the moment and placing them in foster homes is very difficult; in fact, to get them adopted is almost impossible. The state’s burden of caring for such children is huge; the costs per week of caring for a disabled child can run into thousands. In taking the long view, we have to remember the number of children in care. My last point is that, as several people have said, if we are a civilised society, we want children to grow up to be active young people and to have a proper transition into adulthood. I declare an interest as the president of Livability, a charity which looks after young people in schools, in colleges and through into adult care. I understand the need for that transition. If we are to do that and if we are to ensure that such families have a proper life, appropriate funding is crucial. Noble Lords may have disabled children but, if you are trying to bring them up on the kind of money that these families have and in the housing conditions and relationship situations of these families, funding is absolutely crucial to underpin the care, love and continuity that these children desperately need. I ask the Minister to look in his envelopes again to see whether there is not some way in which the money can be redistributed to ensure that that does not happen.