My Lords, I too support Amendment 90B, which seeks to exclude kinship carers from the benefit cap. The amendment is, indeed, a logical extension of our discussion on the first day of Committee on kinship carers and their exemption from the two-child limit. To reiterate, care proceedings cost an average of £25,000 and foster care £40,000 a year, yet most kinship care arrangements can be fixed without recourse to the courts, with dramatic savings to the public purse as well as significantly improving outcomes for the children. However, much of the financial cost of raising the child typically falls directly on the carers themselves.
When we discussed this issue on 7 December, I found the Minister’s response on kinship care profoundly worrying. He was pressed on his failure to acknowledge that a family taking in other people’s children is not doing so through some concept of voluntary freedom of choice, as normally understood, but is choosing to take on the responsibility of vulnerable children rather than abandon them. The Minister responded:
“Clearly there is a difference between the voluntary and involuntary taking on of children, whether they are your own or anyone else’s. That is what our exemptions are for. We are seeking to try to draw the line between where it is involuntary, as in the case of rape, and where it is not”.—[Official Report, 7/12/15; col. 1332.]
That statement shocked many in this House because in effect the Minister was saying that if a kinship carer takes on responsibility for vulnerable and distressed children, that decision is voluntary and therefore not worthy of state support if it means that there are more than two children in the household. I find that reasoning quite extraordinary and, indeed, quite dreadful.
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I have two questions for the Minister on this issue. First, does he accept that taking in vulnerable children because their parents have died or are unable to take care of them is not what most people would call a voluntary choice? Secondly, he reminded us on the first day of Committee that the Government had agreed during the passage of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 to make a distinction in the treatment of kinship carers in relation to conditionality for those claiming universal credit, so that, as he put it,
“kinship carers will have to attend periodic interviews only for the first year after a child joins their household, which enables the carer to focus on helping the child through this difficult period”.—[Official Report, 7/12/15; col. 1329.]
Given that, can he explain why kinship carers who find themselves subject to the benefit cap and could escape it only by working 16 hours a week should not now focus on helping the child through this difficult period?
The reasons for exempting kinship carers from the benefit cap are persuasive and have already been put
in some detail so I will not risk too much repetition. The vast majority of them have to either give up work permanently or temporarily or reduce their hours to look after what is often a traumatised child, and at the requirement of the social worker, while indeed meeting both equipment and maintenance costs. Some 76% of kinship carers are in deprived households in receipt of housing benefit so the lower benefit cap is likely to particularly affect families in London, which has one of the highest rates of kinship care of children, in view of the very high housing costs, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, identified. I ask the Minister: how many kinship carers do the Government estimate will be affected by the benefit cap in London and outside it?
My noble friend Lady Sherlock reminded us again of the very confusing reference in the impact assessment to the “behavioural response” that is being sought by the benefit cap and the average reduction of £63 a week for people who do not make the appropriate behavioural response. In effect, this is a punishment of kinship carers for taking on the responsibility of vulnerable children, because they have not made the correct behavioural response. Presumably, under the logic of the way in which the benefit cap is operating, taking on the care of the child is not an appropriate behavioural response.
The reduced benefits resulting from the lower benefit cap could jeopardise existing kinship care arrangements, deter potential kinship carers and work against the child’s best interests—and, indeed, increase the cost to the Government if more children go into the care system rather than stay with kinship carers. But the impact assessment provides little or no assessment of these effects or the deterrent effect on kinship carers. State expenditure simply trumps the interests of these children and their kinship families, even though that reduction in state expenditure would not be delivered at all—let alone the interests of the child protected—if more children went into the care system because of the deterrent effect on kinship carers. The case for exempting kinship carers from the benefit cap is quite compelling.