Secretary of State's Report

Family Income Supplements Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 1 December 1970.

Alert me about debates like this

The Secretary of State shall as respects each year lay before Parliament a report on the manner and extent to which the rights, powers and duties provided for by this Act have been exercised, in particular relating to the numbers eligible, the number who apply, and the number who receive, family incomes supplement, and on such related matters as he shall consider expedient.—[Mr. Brian O'Malley.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Photo of Mr Brian O'Malley Mr Brian O'Malley , Rotherham

I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

The House will recall that, in Committee, we on this side moved a new Clause which sought to set up a family income supplementary advisory committee. The functions of the proposed committee were that it should act as a consultative body and be required to report yearly to Parliament on the operations of the Act.

The new Clause that we moved in Committee reflected our concern on the question of take-up. We wanted information estimating the number of families which, during the first year of operation of the Act, were entitled to F.I.S. benefit and whether such families had received such benefit.

The Secretary of State assured hon. Members both on Second Reading and in Committee that a vigorous take-up campaign would be carried out by his Department. We welcomed those assurances. However, our new Clause was rejected by the right hon. Gentleman on two grounds. The first was that the Department was already under pressure to bring the Act into operation as from 1st August of next year and there would not be time to refer many questions to the kind of body that we proposed. The second was that, in any case, he did not want to set up another advisory body because no one knew how permanent this form of family income supplement would be. I will return to that point later—

Photo of Dr Horace King Dr Horace King , Southampton, Itchen

Order. With respect, that Amendment was defeated. That debate is over. The hon. Gentleman must come to this new Clause.

Photo of Mr Brian O'Malley Mr Brian O'Malley , Rotherham

Of course, Mr. Speaker. I was seeking merely to explain briefly the background against which we move this new Clause.

The right hon. Gentleman assured us that he was anxious to give all the information that he could. This Clause is one method of obtaining such information from the Administration. The right hon. Gentleman envisaged a situation where information could be extracted by means of Parliamentary Questions and statements in the House. He went on to say that it could be obtained by any other mechanism which seems appropriate. We on this side of the House feel that it would be inadequate if the information could only be got by means of Parliamentary Questions and statements.

It is the case already that the Department of Health and Social Security issues an annual report. It is also the case that there is a separate report on war pensioners. Those reports provide valuable information on the work carried out by the Department at the moment and, therefore, one would assume that the right hon. Gentleman would point out in replying to this debate that, since the F.I.S. scheme was part of the operations of his Department, obviously in future there would be a section on it in the Department's annual reports.

The Department's annual report provides up to date information, for example, on current rates, and it examines trends in applications for sickness benefit. A section dealing with the Supplementary Benefits Commission gives us a vast amount of valuable information on claims, on the break up of claims, their length, and so on. It tells us the number of people in receipt of supplementary benefit, but it does not say the number of people entitled to it and the proportion who do not get it.

We hope to see substantially more information laid before Parliament than it appears that we are likely to get if the present practice is followed and we have merely a section in the annual report dealing with the F.I.S. scheme. The kind of information that we seek goes beyond the type that we receive at the moment in the Department's annual report.

On Second Reading and in Committee, a number of hon. Members on both sides expressed serious doubts and worries about the long term effects of subsidising wages. The Speenhamland system was called in evidence by a number of hon. Members on Second Reading. When any report on the workings of the F.I.S. scheme is published, the Government are bound to take note of the concern expressed in the House at that time, and we hope that a good deal of information will be contained in a report of the kind that we envisage in this Clause.

Secondly, we would want as much information as the Government had about take-up.

Thirdly, we would like information about the effects on the entitlement of individual families as the result of the operation or the non-operation of the system of disregards, on the one hand, and the existing £3 cut-off, on the other.

During previous stages of the Bill, it was suggested that, as drafted, the Act would act as a serious disincentive on women in a household taking part-time work of any kind. We would want to know whether this view had proven correct in the operation of the Act.

Looking at the difficulties into which the Government have run in deciding what what the period of assessment should be and how that period should be varied according to different categories of applicants, we would want to know how that was working. We understand that at the moment capital will not be taken into account. I think that the Secretary of State mentioned this in Committee. However, we would want some information on this subject We would want information on the operation of the family income supplement scheme concerning special categories of persons. I will explain what I mean. I asked the Secretary of State to comment, on, for example, the actor, who does not work a 30-hour week and may have an income varying from one month to another. We ought to be able to expect that kind of information in any future reports from the Government, and certainly in reports envisaged by the new Clause.

Lastly, I come to the proposition put forward by the Secretary of State in Committee when he said that we did not know how permanent this scheme would be. It would be useful to the House if in future in any published report the Government could give their thinking on how the economy had moved and how they saw the problem of this category of families with which the Bill deals in the light of changing circumstances.

It is for these reasons that we propose the new Clause. We do not feel that merely another section in the annual report of the Department would be adequate unless the Minister can assure us that it would be a very much fuller report dealing with the kind of issues which I have been describing. We strongly believe that the Government should accept the new Clause, which is designed to be helpful in future years, so that Parliament can carry out its rôle properly and see whether some of the doubts and reservations raised by hon. Members have proven true and how the major difficulties envisaged by hon. Members have been worked out or ironed out of the system as the result of its operation in the early years.

7.15 p.m.

Photo of Mr Hugh Brown Mr Hugh Brown , Glasgow Provan

I should be willing to accept an assurance from the Minister that the information will be included in the annual report of the Department. This is a technicality. I should be content, provided we got the information. There is no difference on this side of the House.

One of the most pleasing things in the House is to refer to one's own speeches. That is what I want to do on this aspect of information. Dealing with the low wage earner, can we not get some kind of assurance in line with what my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) has suggested? Apart from the distinct social categories which will be helped by the Bill—the unmarried mother, the separated wife, or some of the sections of the community which have peculiar social problems over and above the fact of being low wage earners—can we isolate the low wage earner in full-time employment and provide information about the employers?

I do not want to set up a witch hunt. We are not trying to find whether Joe Bloggs in the main street is the worst employer in the city. I am speaking in general terms, because there was some confusion between wage rates and earnings. This point was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth). It seems that wage rates can tell us some things and earnings can tell us other factors. Is there any common feature which would enable us to identify the low paid full-time wage earners? This is a relevant point which must be kept in mind in the light of what has been said about it being hoped that this is a temporary scheme for the low wage earner.

Is there any objection by the Supplementary Benefits Commission? This seems to be a departmental scheme, "departmental" meaning a D.H.S.S. scheme, being operated to some extent presumably by the Supplementary Benefits Commission. Is there any technical or real difficulty? Presumably, it would further identify the S.B.C. with this scheme. I take it that that is the department which would produce the statistics and information for the report.

I want now to refer to the Minister's speech on 18th November at column 1382. I am not doubting the Minister's genuine intention to give the House information, but it is not good enough to say that we can get all the information we want By Parliamentary Question, by statement".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th November, 1970; Vol. 806, c. 1382.] I am sure that the Minister appreciates this. If there are any technical difficulties or departmental considerations which are not obvious to me, I should accept the Minister's assurance, provided we are assured that there will be some kind of annual report and that we can argue about what might or might not be in it in future. Of course, there must be something in it which would enable us to get information. For instance, we would surely want to include rents. This is the kind of information which is available in the S.B.C. annual report relating to the level of rent allowances which are being paid. These are relevant factors, and I hope that the Minister can assure us that there will be an annual report of some kind.

Photo of Mr Paul Dean Mr Paul Dean , Somerset North

I think that this, too, has been a helpful debate. We shall certainly take very careful note of the points raised by the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) and the helpful points mentioned by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown), who has long and intimate knowledge of the working of our social security schemes.

Both hon. Gentlemen referred to what my right hon. Friend said at an earlier stage. My right hon. Friend certainly mentioned the possibility of soliciting information through Questions in this House and by statements; but he also went on to say that these are just two of many other methods by which information can be made available. My right hon. Friend spoke, for example, about any other mechanism which seems appropriate".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th November, 1970; Vol. 806, c. 1382.] The hon. Gentlemen have taken the first two words of my right hon. Friend's answer without realising that he also dwelt on other possible methods of making information available.

We firmly intend, as I mentioned in an earlier debate, making as much information available as possible. There is no intention of being coy or shy about the scheme. The more light that can be thrown upon it, the more effective this first step will be in dealing with family poverty amongst these low wage earners. All the points that have been made will be valuable in our study to decide the most convenient form in which we can make the information available to the House.

Photo of Mr Brian O'Malley Mr Brian O'Malley , Rotherham

I have raised a number of items which I think should be included, but there is one matter of particular importance, and that is the ques- tin. of take-up. Can the Minister, even at this stage, give us an assurance that any report will contain that kind of information?

Photo of Mr Paul Dean Mr Paul Dean , Somerset North

I shall try to deal with all the very fair points raised by the hon. Gentleman.

I am glad the hon. Gentleman recognises that the Department provides a great deal of information about the working of our social security arrangements by means of annual reports. It is significant that these annual reports are provided, not because of a statutory obligation, but because it is considered that this is a convenient mechanism for making available information about the workings of these schemes. These reports have been provided for a number of years, even though there is no statutory obligation to provide them, and I hope the House will feel that the very fact that the Department has of its own free will regarded it as in the interests of the country as well as in the interests of the Department to make this information available in substantial annual reports suggests strongly that it is probably better to leave it this way than to try to make this a statutory obligation.

I now come to what has been said about the kind of things that should be in this report. The hon. Member for Provan said that he would be satisfied with a separate section in the annual report, and I was glad to have his support on that. Our present thinking is that this would probably be the most suitable and convenient form in which to make this information available to the House and to the country, but I am not saying that that will definitely be the case.

The hon. Gentleman said that one of the things that we want to try to discover is whether there are any common features amongst these low wage earners, the people who are in full time work but whose earnings are below the supplementary benefit level. We hope very much that as the result of the information that we gain about this scheme, and as a result of the information which the Supplementary Benefits Commission has about its clients, we might discover some common factors. At the moment we know very little about this. We hope that this is one of the things that will come out.

I suspect—but I am not speaking from very much knowledge—that we shall find that there are very few common features, that we are dealing with a whole range of human problems. We may find that the number of common features is very few, but at the moment this is speculation. We shall look to see whether there are common features which perhaps can be solved by one or a number of methods.

I now deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Rotherham about the numbers eligible. The questions that he asked fall broadly into two categories. First, we have to speculate or assess the percentage of people who might be eligible who are getting the benefits of the scheme. The other is the hard facts about the number of people who are getting the benefits, the level of benefits they are getting, the type of people they are, whether they are one-child families, two parent families, and so on. I think the hon. Gentleman will accept that the first type of information is to some extent speculative, whereas the second is really a report on the scheme and the workings of it.

With regard to the numbers eligible, and therefore the take-up, I think the hon. Gentleman will recognise, as I am sure the House will, that on that issue, in the same way as we were when we were dealing with supplementary benefits, we are dealing with questions which must to some extent be speculative. We have information from the Family Expenditure Survey. We have information from various surveys which are taken from time to time to try to establish people who might be eligible to benefit if they knew about the benefits, or if we knew about the people.

We shall endeavour, in every way we possibly can, to assess the number of people who are eligible, but I think the House will recognise that this is a very much more difficult operation, because of the speculation involved, than reporting on the actual workings of the scheme. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the points that he has made about eligibility and take-up are clearly relevant so that the House and the country can judge the success of the scheme. We shall use our best endeavours to make available as much information as we possibly can.

The other points made by the hon. Gentleman fall more into the second category. They concern the hard facts about the scheme, and this information will be much easier to provide. It is the sort of information which appears year by year in the annual reports.

I hope the House will feel that here, as with the debate that we have just concluded, the Government's intentions are exactly those which have been expressed by the two hon. Gentlemen who have taken part in the debate. It is our intention to make information available in the most suitable form. Our present thinking is that a separate section in the annual report may be the most suitable form, and we do not feel—and I think the House will agree with us—that it would be appropriate for us to be tied down to the precise wording of the new Clause.

Photo of Mr Brian O'Malley Mr Brian O'Malley , Rotherham

The Minister has been most helpful, and I think that he has met me almost all the way. There is only one matter on which I should like him to comment, the Speenhamland argument. Will this be a charter for bad employers? Does not the hon. Gentleman think that the early reports, whether in the larger annual report or not, ought to examine this proposition, in view of what has been said in the House, and offer some advice and conclusion on whether the fears that have been expressed have been realised?

Photo of Mr Paul Dean Mr Paul Dean , Somerset North

If it is possible to do so, certainly, but I think the hon. Gentleman will recognise that there must be an element of speculation. We do not feel that the fears which have been expressed about Speenhamland will be realised in practice. We are dealing with a comparatively small number of people, the poorest of the poor who are in full-time work, quite a large percentage of them one child families. We think it highly unlikely that a scheme of this kind will have the effect of depressing wages, but the fears which have been expressed will be watched carefully by the Government. We are moving into an uncharted scheme, and nobody can be dogmatic about the effects of it. I hope the hon. Gentleman will feel that that is an adequate assurance.

Question put and negatived.