Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, we have responded fully to the special rapporteur’s recommendations. A sustainable solution to poverty needs a strong economy and a benefits system that works with the tax system and the labour market to support employment and higher pay. Under this Government, employment is at its highest level since the 1970s. Wages are rising at their fastest in a decade. Income inequality has...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, nobody wants to see poverty rising and we treat the issues raised by the special rapporteur seriously. However, we seriously regret the inflammatory and overtly political tone of his report and strongly refute the suggestion that we have failed to listen to stakeholders. As set out in our published response, we have taken action in a number of areas, including the recently announced...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, I believe in equality. Some of the rapporteur’s recommendations show a rather myopic understanding of universal credit. When I broached the subject of this report while representing Her Majesty’s Government at the UN last week, it was clear that everyone who knew about it was keen to distance themselves from it, preferring to compliment this Government on, “Groundbreaking,...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, we have done an enormous amount to tackle poverty since we came into government. We have invested huge sums of additional money into developing a welfare system that encourages people into work and supports them in work and with progression in their jobs, so that they can better provide, because we know that the best way to get out of poverty and save children from it is to work. As...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, we are tackling poverty across the country. I refer noble Lords to the leader article in the Times of 25 May: “The failings of Mr Alston’s report are legion … it is padded out with such accusations as that the government evinces a ‘punitive, mean-spirited and often callous approach’”. This is the Times. It said, “This is nonsense”. It goes on: “yet poverty in this...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, we continue to listen and to learn. The Government continue to spend more than £95 billion a year on benefits for people of working age. I say again, as I have said so many times before, that when the party opposite were in government, 20% of all working-age households in the United Kingdom—including Wales—were entirely workless. We have brought that figure down to 13.9% and we...
Baroness Buscombe: I have answered it. We have listened; we have taken the questions and statements of the rapporteur very seriously. We do not accept, in the words of people at the United Nations last week, the political scaremongering, the hyperbole, the inflammatory and scaremongering approach to the whole subject. It is not helpful from someone who was not keen to engage with our officials.
Baroness Buscombe: I refer the Noble Lord to my previous responses. The Government will bring forward legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Baroness Buscombe: Ministers and officials have regular meetings with key stakeholders to discuss a diverse range of issues that fall within the Department’s remit and impact on the lives of claimants. Many of these contacts occur at a local level between Jobcentres and external stakeholders which serve or represent their local communities, and such contacts are not recorded centrally, and to provide this...
Baroness Buscombe: The Department recognises the importance of safeguarding the welfare of claimants who have incurred debt. Universal Credit already has procedures and regulations in place to protect claimants from excessive deductions. The maximum rate of deductions cannot normally exceed 40 per cent of the Universal Credit standard allowance, and from October 2019 this will be reduced to 30 per cent. The...
Baroness Buscombe: The Government cannot intervene with the decisions taken by trustees of pension schemes. The Pensions Regulator is an independent body, and as such the Government cannot comment on any cases dealt with by the Regulator. Due to this, the Government does not have plans to review the oversight exercised over the Arcadia scheme, or the use of powers in relation to the scheme.
Baroness Buscombe: This Government has recently published a response to a Collective Defined Contribution schemes consultation setting out its plans, and has engaged extensively with key stakeholders.
Baroness Buscombe: Neither Ministers nor officials have written to, had meetings with, or communicated in other forms with Sir Philip Green or Lady Christina Green. Ministers and officials have quarterly meetings with the Pensions Regulator, but not specifically concerning Sir Philip Green or the Arcadia Group. This is because the Pensions Regulator is an independent body, and as such the Government cannot...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, there are 1.7 million children in families where at least one adult is in work in absolute poverty, before housing costs. However, the evidence shows that nearly half of these families are in part-time work or are self-employed. A child living in a household where every adult is working is about five times less likely to be in relative poverty than a child in a household where...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, the statistics expressed by the noble Baroness do not reflect the £1.7 billion a year cash boost to our welfare system announced in the Budget, which will enable 2.4 million households to keep more of what they earn. We have taken strong action to support working families. The latest rise in the national living wage will increase a full-time worker’s annual pay by over £2,750...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, I have already made it clear at this Dispatch Box that we intend to end the benefit freeze next year. Again, the stats produced by the Social Metrics Commission last year predate much of the additional support that we have invested in the system since the last Autumn Budget. We have done a huge amount to help families through transforming the welfare system so that people are not...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, again, we are doing a huge amount, quite a lot of which is not reported or reflected in the additional support we have injected. I have just returned from the G7 in Paris, where we focused on labour. There is no question that, across the world, the changing world of work presents challenges. We are at the forefront on this issue; other countries look to us. Our living wage is way in...
Baroness Buscombe: Absolutely. The increase in weekly earnings makes a huge difference. Tackling poverty will always be a priority for this Government; they have lifted 400,000 people out of absolute poverty since the party opposite was in government. Inequality has fallen. Our reforms have made sure—this is important—that our welfare system encourages people into work, but is also fairer for the taxpayer...
Baroness Buscombe: Universal Credit is designed to react and respond quickly to feedback from our stakeholders and claimants to improve the service we offer. This means that any report based on a view of the service at a given date may well be inaccurate only a short period afterwards. This is the case with this Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) report. The report does not take into account recent changes to...
Baroness Buscombe: National statistics on income inequality are published annually in the “Households Below Average Income” publication using the Gini coefficient. The Gini coefficient is an international standard technical measure of how incomes are distributed across all individuals. It ranges from 0% (when everyone has identical incomes) to 100% (when all income goes to only one person). From 2009/10...
