My Lords, I support Amendment 1, which seeks to ensure that the Government have flexibility to increase benefits in 2014-15 and 2015-16 taking account of the level of inflation at the time. The amendment does not seek to impose a particular percentage increase in benefits in any year. It simply seeks to avoid the straitjacket imposed by the Bill as it stands.
Amendment 1 covers all the benefits and claimant groups referred to in Schedule 1. It would therefore leave open the possibility of a Government deciding to protect a particular group, perhaps disabled people or children. This amendment has become particularly pertinent in the light of the downgrading of the British economy by the ratings agency Moody’s at the end of last week, along with the anticipation of yet more quantitative easing and the expectation that in these circumstances we will have more inflation year by year. That inflation comes on top of a level of inflation which is already above 1%, which is vital to this set of amendments and, indeed, to the Bill.
This Bill has to be considered in context. As noble Lords know very well, last year’s Welfare Reform Act has already capped benefits and imposed the bedroom tax so that an increasing percentage of everyone’s rent will be paid out of their personal allowance, leaving them with the most pathetically small amount of money to cover food, heating, clothing and other necessities. Also, the Government have already changed the basis of annual welfare benefit increases from the RPI to the CPI. This is absolutely crucial because that measure alone, before this Bill, is expected to save £5.8 billion a year. Such savings can be achieved only through imposing the most incredible hardship on many of the most vulnerable people in this country. The proposed limiting of upratings to an increase of 1% will be an increase in the consumer prices index, not the retail prices index, so it is not even going to cover an inflation rate of 1%. That is how bad it is. It is the compounding of the previous Welfare Reform Act with this Bill that is so deeply shocking to many of us.
The cumulative impact of all these changes and the proposed 1% uprating limit is not yet fully understood even by the experts in the field, let alone by its victims. But it is not surprising that there is deep concern in those organisations which have to work with vulnerable people, including the CAB service. It is worried stiff
about its clients and the capacity of the bureaux to cope with what is going to be an unimaginable flood of people in desperate circumstances. The Government are breaking the long-standing link between annual incremental increases in benefits and prices. Once lost, it will be very difficult to restore it. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that happening for decades. That is how serious this is. It is not just one little part of a Bill; it is actually historic because it changes the whole way we look at increases in welfare benefits.
Has the Minister undertaken an impact assessment on this Bill, including an estimate of the likely cost of increased mental breakdowns and the resulting impact on mental health services? Has the Minister assessed the costs arising from the result of increased crime rates and the impact on the criminal justice system, and from the impact of increased homelessness on local authorities? Also, I refer to the overall impact on communities of what I fear we will see in terms of increased unrest. It is very difficult to believe that we will not experience unrest in communities that are profoundly hit by the combination of all these changes—not just arising from this Bill, but from a combination of everything that is being done. I would be grateful if the Minister would reply to this question: has the impact of this Bill, combined with the previous Bill, been fully assessed in terms of services and costs? If these implications have not yet been estimated, does the Minister agree that that must be done before implementation of this Bill?
I want to challenge the Government’s rationale for this uprating Bill—that welfare benefit increases must take account of the public sector pay freeze and the low level of pay increases across the economy in recent years. Citizens Advice is right to argue that a 1% increase means something very different to somebody on an average wage from what it means to somebody on welfare benefits. A 20% increase in out-of-work benefits in the period 2007-12 resulted in an average annual increase in income of only £2.37 per week. A lower percentage increase, of 15%, in public sector pay during the same period provided an average increase in income for public sector workers more than five times greater. It was a lower percentage but a much greater increase in actual terms.
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What matters for families is how many pounds’ increase they have, not some airy-fairy percentage; they want the pounds. Public sector workers had on average an increase of £12.40, compared with the benefits average of £2.37. I accept that it would not be fair to enable those on benefits to leap ahead of those on low public sector wages in absolute terms, but there is no danger of that happening. Does the Minister agree?
My final point takes us back to the debates we had about direct payments of rent to landlords and the payment of benefits weekly rather than monthly. You could say that that is irrelevant to this Bill; I do not think that it is. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Freud, for explaining to me that he has done a lot of work since the previous Act and those earlier debates, and that built into the system now are exceptions to
try to protect particularly vulnerable people; in other words, by enabling some peculiarly vulnerable people to be paid more regularly and to have their rent paid direct to landlords. I am referring to the noble Lord, Lord Freud, because I had a meeting with him recently, and I know he has real concerns about some groups, particularly those with mental health problems, and how on earth they are going to cope with these reforms.
Perhaps the Minister will spell out the exceptions for the benefit of this House. It would be helpful to know how broad or narrow these exceptions are going to be. Undoubtedly, exceptions to the requirement for monthly payments and ending the direct payment of rent to landlords will help but, whatever amendments may be agreed to this Bill, would it not be wise to put on hold altogether, for a period of perhaps three years, the changes to the frequency of welfare payments and the direct payments to landlords? Such concessions would be relatively cost-free but would make a very big difference to people’s capacity to cope as they find their tiny incomes declining in real terms month by month.
In two years’ time the Government can measure the extent of the inevitable increases in rent and council tax arrears, homelessness and other social consequences. When that evaluation has taken place, a decision could then be made on a rational basis about whether it is remotely sensible to implement the other provisions of the previous Welfare Reform Act. I do not expect the Minister to respond to these points today but would be grateful if she could write to me with the response before Report.