Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, before I say anything else, I will say two things. First, I was somewhat surprised that this particular amendment was dismissed in the other place on grounds of financial privilege, because I presented this as a revenue-neutral amendment. We were looking at ratios of benefits. As the Minister agreed in discussion, one could of course shift the higher rate in relation to the lower rate without spending any more money. We were not arguing in favour of spending more money, but about the cliff edge between the higher rate and the lower rate. I challenge the other place, if I am permitted to do that from this vantage point. Secondly, I express my personal gratitude to the Minister for the concessions and changes he has driven through as a result of the wonderful work done across all sides of this House. It is a credit to the House—we can feel proud of the work of the House—but also a great credit to the Minister. The aim of this amendment is to ensure that the structure of disability additions for children more closely reflects the real needs and costs of the families affected than is the case in the Government’s proposals. The arguments supporting an amendment at Third Reading on the same issue were comprehensive and powerful, and I thank noble Lords from all sides of the House who contributed so effectively to that debate and to the successful vote on that amendment. I also thank Sue Royston of the CAB service, who supported me throughout this Bill, in view of my other commitments. I will not repeat the Third Reading arguments today, but I point out that the Minister in that Third Reading debate acknowledged that, "““we also need to get severely disabled children, who will move into adulthood still needing to be supported, to this higher rate and not have this cliff edge””.—[Official Report, 31/1/12; col. 1465.]" The Minister thus accepted that there really is a problem with the higher rate and other rate as now envisaged. There are families with severely disabled children who should not be granted additions of only £27 a week. We have a common understanding that that is not acceptable, and for that I am grateful. The reason I have come back with this amendment is that at Third Reading the Minister was not in a position to give an assurance to the House that the DWP would definitely take action, or to say what action would be taken and when. It seemed to me that we owed it to the families across the country who were genuinely fearful—they are very frightened—about the implications of this Bill to seek clarification as far as we possibly could achieve that. It was also important to point out that the issue identified by the Minister was not the only one needing to be addressed. Probably most of the children whom we are talking about here will remain severely disabled into adulthood, but that is not the only point. The additions we are talking about here need to reflect the impact on the families of these children of those disabilities as the children grow up. They need to reflect the severity of the disability and the enormity and cost of the care they need probably throughout their childhood. We are not really talking about when they become adults; we are talking about what happens while they are children. Universal credit, as the noble Lord has said many times, is designed above all else to provide an incentive for claimants to go back to work. The Minister did not explicitly accept at Third Reading—and I hope he will be able to make explicit his understanding of the point today—that we are talking in this amendment about parents for whom work is but a distant dream. These parents do not choose not to work. The only hope for these parents to provide the opportunities their disabled children need, and the only hope of avoiding years—decades—of abject poverty, is if the benefit system is fair and reasonable to those families. That is the essence of what this debate is about. The other point here is that the cost of not supporting these most disadvantaged families will be substantial because of the unacceptable emotional and financial pressures on these parents. If nothing is done through this review, we can expect without doubt that we will have more severely disabled children placed in care, and more of these mothers and fathers suffering with depression in hospitals. My trust in east London will be having these mums and dads coming in; we do not want to have that happen. These adults cannot cope with the extraordinary demands upon them in a state of abject poverty. It is not right in a rich country that we submit these families to that kind of a life. I thank the Minister for his commitment on the Floor of the House to a review of the current definitions of disabled children for the different levels of additions, and for his agreement to work with disabled people and disability organisations on this issue. I think that is fundamentally important. I also thank him and his officials for the time that they have already spent looking into this concession; I am really grateful for that. I shall finish by setting out some of the issues that I hope will be included in the review. First, there are the relative costs of caring for children with different disabilities. The emotional and financial costs of caring for a severely autistic child, for example, may be even greater than caring for a doubly incontinent, wheelchair-ridden child. I would not like to make that comparison myself—this is a very complex matter—but I am asking the review to be sensitive to the very different emotional needs and financial costs of very different disabilities. Secondly, there are the costs of specialist childcare for children with different disabilities at different ages. It probably costs more if your child is doubly incontinent at 15 relative to seven. These things change over time, and all this needs looking at. Thirdly, there are the costs of giving children with different disabilities the opportunities they need to develop their potential. Again, with some disabilities there is probably a lot of potential that you could develop at some considerable cost, but that all needs to be looked at as well. Fourthly, there is the potential of families with severely disabled children to use family members as carers. In some situations, maybe that is a little more possible than others. Fifthly, there is the question of nature of the children’s disabilities in the 37 per cent of such families where no adult has a full-time job. I would have thought that that would illuminate some of the issues that prevent parents from ever getting work; if they do not have work, you can be sure that there are probably good reasons why. I am grateful to the Minister for his commitment to consider the particular barriers to work and the cost implications of a disabled child for single parents. We discussed this when we met. It seems that so many of these single parents have been abandoned by—I am afraid that I have to say it— the father, generally speaking, often within months of the birth of a severely disabled child. Those single parents have particular and enormous demands upon them of every conceivable kind—emotional, social and financial. I am grateful that that will be looked at. I am also grateful for the Minister’s commitment to pay particular attention to the special situation of parents with two or more disabled children. Again, if you have two or more somewhat less disabled children, you surely need to be considered for the higher rate. I agree with the Minister that the needs of children will differ at different stages of development—I think that he said that in his remarks. I understand from him that families with disabled children will be brought within the universal credit towards the end of the period 2013-18, and I trust that that will be the case. I am deeply worried about the provision coming into place before the review is completed and changes can be made because, frankly, that is unacceptable and, in my view, cruel. There are things that I thank the Minister for but there remain considerable concerns. I await his response to these remarks.