Mr.
Stuart: The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. By way
of example, I would cite the Humber bridge toll, which is one of the
highest and most expensive tolls in the country to use a piece of
infrastructure completed nearly 30 years ago. Anyone with a part-time
job or who is working for minimum wage is unable to use the bridge, and
thus employment in an area of lower than average income is constrained.
Transport absolutely needs to be understood within the poverty
context.
Steve
Webb: The cost of transport is important, even for those
who have a car—there are issues such as the cost of
petrol—but I am thinking particularly of those who do not have
access to private transport. Many of us know that public transport is
little short of a joke in many parts of the country. It either does not
exist at all or, if it does, it is expensive. If someone uses public
transport to get to work, they can have a season ticket and get
relatively cheap fares—that is one thing—but if someone
needs an occasional bus to a Sure Start centre, a leisure activity or
whatever, they pay the full fare—they do not get a discounted
fare. There is a risk of being ever so slightly London-centric about
this. Those of us who represent constituencies outside London are
sometimes astonished by the comparison between cheap bulk public
transport in central London and the kind of fares that our constituents
experience. There
is a particular issue about housing allocations—I believe that
the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North has mentioned
this—that links to transport. For example, the DWP local housing
allowance scheme can result in particular areas of a local authority
being inaccessible to people on housing benefit because there is, in
essence, a cap on the rent that will be covered, so people tend to
cluster in the low-rent parts of a housing market area where transport
might not be good. That is partly why the rent is so low—it is
cheap to rent there because no one wants to live there because there is
no transport. There is a danger that the policies will interact.
Putting a provision on transport in the Bill would encourage the
Secretary of State to think broadly about one of the barriers to
improving child welfare and dealing with child
poverty. Another
issue is child care, which is covered in our amendment 47 and also in
amendment 50—I hope that the hon. Lady will make some further
observations on child care. This partly comes back to the point made by
the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire about the link between lone
parenthood and poverty. One of
the reasons why there is a much stronger correlation
between lone parenthood and child poverty in Britain than in many other
countries is that, despite the progress that has been made, there is
still a lack of affordable, accessible, flexible, quality child
care. We
know that in-work poverty is significant—a job is not enough on
its own to get someone out of poverty—and, interestingly, the
poverty measures that are used in the Bill do not net off child care
costs. Again, we are probably understating child poverty in working
households because many parents, particularly lone parents who work but
do not receive working tax credit or child care tax credit and all the
rest of it, pay a significant part of their after-tax income in child
care costs, so their real living standards are much
lower. We
must think about the accessibility of affordable, quality child
care—and flexible child care. Those who have regular,
predictable working patterns and pre-school age children might face one
set of issues relating to child care, but if the kids are off at
primary school, and perhaps there is an in-service day in the middle of
the week, or cover is needed for half term, or one of them is
ill—all those kinds of things—people’s ability to
hold down a regular job may be undermined. Fill-in child care can be
very expensive and can affect living standards. We need to have child
care on the list as well, if we are to have a list at
all. I
shall not go through the rest of the amendments, but I would like to
make an observation about family breakdown, because it is obviously
important. It is clearly the case that the children of lone parents are
at a higher risk of child poverty than the children of two-parent
families. Interestingly, the policy response of the hon. Member for
South-West Bedfordshire, as I understand it, is within a fixed pot of
money to put extra money into two-parent families. Is not that what
getting rid of the couple premium would actually
mean?
Andrew
Selous: It would provide a level playing field, as
elsewhere in the benefit system there is not the discrimination against
two-parent families that currently exists with working tax credit. It
would be a levelling up, not a levelling down. It would not take money
away from any single parents at all. There is also the whole area of
trying to strengthen and support families to give them a chance of
staying together in the first place, rather than dealing with the
consequences when they split
up.
Steve
Webb: But as with all spending commitments, there is no
such thing as a free lunch. The hon. Gentleman has told us with some
passion, which I believe is sincere, that he is concerned about the
high rates of child poverty in lone-parent families but wants some
additional support to be available to two-parent families in priority
over lone-parent families. That would presumably give him less bang for
his buck on child
poverty.
Andrew
Selous: Yes, but we are not talking about fixed states.
There is the whole phenomenon of LATs—those who are living apart
together. The hon. Gentleman must be aware that many people who are an
item, to use the popular vernacular, are forced to live apart because
of the way in which the benefit system acts against them. People are
taking decisions in their personal lives because the benefit system
would be stacked against them if they moved in with each
other.
Ms
Buck: Will the hon. Gentleman give
way?
Steve
Webb: I will be interested to hear the hon. Lady’s
views on that
point.
Ms
Buck: I am interested in the point that the hon. Member
for South-West Bedfordshire just made because it seemed to be based on
the assumption that the benefit system effectively does not
disincentivise a couple from separating because the two people will not
have additional costs as a result. In my experience, the housing costs
of two people separating would heavily outweigh any possible advantage
within the tax credit and benefit system of them separating, so I
wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has thought that point
through.
Steve
Webb: Were the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire to
respond to that point, I am sure that he would cite some recently
published research about those relative costs, but I am with the hon.
Lady on that. One of the things that people do not value adequately
enough in such calculations is the value, in the case of couples, of
what might be called free child care. Couples can live together and
save certain costs by doing so, leaving aside the psychic or emotional
benefits—whatever they are called—of being together,
which are rather difficult to include in a cost-benefit calculation. If
one parent works, however, the other can provide free child care,
whereas a lone parent does not have that
option.
Judy
Mallaber: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that levels of
financial support should be determined by need and based on the number
of children and the amount of finance available to that unit, rather
than on whether the family arrangement is that of two parents or of a
lone parent? As I understand it, the current arrangements seek to put
financial need as the criterion.
Steve
Webb: Yes, the focus clearly must be on need. I do not
want the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire to think that any of
us in the Committee do not think that fostering an environment that
enables people who want to stay together as a couple to do so is a good
thing. We all believe that, so the point of difference is between the
causality of what he talks about inevitably leading to poverty, and the
ability of the state to do as much as it can about it. He is involved
in voluntary sector projects in his constituency that are very
effective in that area and that could be better resourced. This is not
a council of despair, and I am not saying that we cannot do anything.
This is a question of whether a national child poverty strategy with
local implementation should make the causal link that he
assumes.
A further
point relates to marriage, which the hon. Gentleman did not mention,
and I appreciate that that was because he did not want to be
pigeonholed. The evidence that financial incentives keep people
together specifically in marriage is staggeringly weak. He will know
that his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe
(Mr. Clarke), when Chancellor, like other Conservative
Chancellors, cut the married couple’s tax allowance
repeatedly—the current lot finished it off, but they started it,
as it were. There is no correlation between
the point at which the married couple’s tax
allowance was degraded, and marriage and divorce. We must be careful
about the assumption that relatively small financial incentives will
affect big life choices in a simplistic, causal
way. 9.45
am
Mr.
Stuart: It is extraordinary that both left-wing parties on
the Committee are so determined to deny that disincentives for couples
to stay together exist or have any import. The further up the income
levels someone is, the freer they are to make decisions. It is the poor
and vulnerable whose decisions are particularly driven by financial
incentive, because of the immediacy of finances in their daily lives.
Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that, despite the evidence provided by
work such as “Dynamic benefits”, there is no financial
disincentive for people on low incomes and benefits to be a
couple?
Steve
Webb: I certainly take one of the hon. Gentleman’s
points: lower down the income scale, these incentives matter more. The
“Dynamic Benefits” report is packed full of assertions,
but there is relatively little substance behind a lot of it. Some of
those assertions may be true, but in my view they are not
substantiated. They underestimate the benefits of being a couple and
what it is that prompts many people to remain as a couple,
notwithstanding, as the hon. Gentleman says, some financial issues in
doing so. We risk relying too much on anecdote in this area. There is
not a lot of hard evidence of people
[Interruption.] It is asserted that this goes on a
lot. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire says, “We all
know people
who—”
Steve
Webb: I am not sure that I do either. This is a marginal
rather than a central feature of the system, and that is perhaps where
we disagree.
I think I
should wrap up my point. If we are going to have a Christmas tree, our
baubles are nice, so we would like to see child care and transport on
the list. However, I ask the Minister to consider whether a Christmas
tree is the best
idea.
Ms
Keeble: I want to add another bauble to the Christmas
tree. I have tabled an amendment on asylum-seeking, Traveller and
looked-after children, but we have discussed those issues previously. I
do not want to say much more, except to point out that looked-after
children need services particularly when they come out of care, to help
them enter economic activity.
I want to
speak to amendment 20, which is about the criminal justice system. I
agree with the hon. Member for Northavon that things can be added on
for ever, and that all kinds of issues would be suitable. However, I am
not sure that the criminal justice system is referred to anywhere in
the Bill. I am not thinking about children who are in the criminal
justice system because, as I have said, children in institutions might
be vulnerable and have multiple difficulties, but I am not sure that
poverty is the biggest issue for them. I do not think that we can
measure poverty if such children are in an institution that is properly
resourced.
I am thinking
about the involvement of parents in the criminal justice system, and
the impact that that has on family income and on levels of child
poverty in particular. That applies to both men and women. However, in
the Corston report on women offenders and the sentencing of women,
there are particular issues regarding women who are put into prison,
their experiences in prison and difficulties with resettlement. Often,
women are more likely to face custodial sentences for non-violent
crimes, despite their family responsibilities. There are major issues
around that, and maintaining relationships with the children. May I
just give a practical example, as it always helps to focus attention a
bit?
The mother of
one of the families I have spoken about previously was sent to prison
for stabbing her partner. When she came out, her benefits had been
disrupted because she had been in prison and it took about three or
four months to get them sorted out, because the benefits system is not
the fastest thing that has ever happened. Worse than that, while she
was in prison, her housing benefit lapsed and she built up rent
arrears. So when she came out, she had no income and she had to go back
to sharing a cramped flat with the partner she had stabbed. She was
pregnant and was being pursued by the council for rent arrears. By any
standards, a local authority that is looking at how to tackle child
poverty must consider what happens with this group of parents, which
will not be
huge.
Andrew
Selous: Does the hon. Lady know how long the prison
sentence was, because it is my understanding that housing benefit is
supposed to stay in place and is not supposed to be disrupted if the
sentence is less than 13
weeks?
Ms
Keeble: She received a longer sentence than that. It also
seemed that the courts had not made a proper assessment of how many
children she had. She did not have proper legal representation and I
think the courts thought—it was not absolutely clear—that
she had only one child, but she had three and she was
pregnant. She got quite a long custodial sentence—longer
than 13 weeks—and it was only by starting to get proper
legal representation and unpicking things that it was possible to
resolve her situation a
bit. I
suspect—I do not have all the data—that although this
group of parents might not be huge, 100 per cent. of their children
would be found to be living in poverty and suffering compound material
deprivation. I understand that the Minister does not want to have a
wish list that goes on and on, but will he consider giving some
assurances about how the assessments locally and the strategy
nationally can take into account the criminal justice system? That is
particularly necessary because of the pressures on families in which
the parents are involved with the criminal justice system, with a
devastating impact on the family’s income. Will he make sure
that he looks at not just the issues surrounding fathers but those
relating to mothers?
I shall give
an example of the particular impact on lone parents. One of my more
instructive mornings was spent in a youth court, where all the young
men were being done for nicking and driving cars, and they were getting
community sentences. There were only a couple of women who were up in
the youth court, one of whom was a very poor young mother. She was a
teenager
and had a couple of children. She was done for
committing credit card fraud to get money to support her children.
There are real issues about focusing on this difficult group and making
sure that they are properly included. If my right hon. Friend the
Minister cannot include them in the Bill, will he say exactly where the
criminal justice system will come into play in looking at strategies to
deal with child
poverty? | 
