Baroness Buscombe: I entirely agree with the noble Lord that we must think carefully about how we encourage and support people to save for the long term and their retirement. That is why we are so pleased about the success of auto-enrolment. Our priority remains establishing long-term savings behaviour, so that people are enabled to save for greater security. Automatic enrolment has already reversed the decline...
Baroness Buscombe: I entirely agree with the noble Baroness that one of our key concerns is to ensure that we encourage this culture of young people saving for their retirement. Of course, we do not want to do anything which would expedite them getting into financial difficulty by accessing their pension pots early. We are very excited by young people’s level of uptake of the auto-enrolment pension scheme....
Baroness Buscombe: I do agree. I am sorry that I am not the Housing Minister answering this Question, but it is important that we are committed to ensuring the housing market works for everyone. Of course, there is more to do. That is why we have announced an extra £17 billion in funding for Help to Buy since 2017 and reformed stamp duty so that 80% of first-time buyers will not pay tax. We are absolutely on a...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, I am very grateful that the noble Baroness has formed a new friendship over this topical Question. In short, our focus in the Department for Work and Pensions is on ensuring we support young people in every way we can to save for the long-term, for their retirement and security. I have to say to noble Lords opposite that, if they feel as I do, perhaps it is not right that we should...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, as I said, I am not the Housing Minister, but I will say this. Clearly, we must be very careful about how we develop our policies in this area. The reality is that our schemes are working. We are building a record number of homes. The latest evaluation has found that there is no evidence of a significant impact on house prices overall. The Help to Buy scheme is a hugely important...
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: The information on numbers of children entering and exiting poverty is not available. However, figures for percentages of children moving in and out of poverty are collected in the Income Dynamics publication. These are available in Table 8.1, and in the table below: 2010-2011 to 2011-2012 2011-2012 to 2012-2013 2012-2013 to 2013-2014 2013-2014 to 2014-2015 2014-2015 to 2015-2016...
Baroness Buscombe: On 9 May 2019 the current number of staff in Office for Disability Issues is 16. The numbers of staff in preceding years was; 1 Jan 2019 15 1 Jan 2018 11.5 1 Jan 2017 13.65 1 Jan 2016 20.4 Information not available between April 2012 to December 2015 as the ODI data was subsumed into that of a larger team. For 2010 to 2012 figures are available for end...
Baroness Buscombe: We have worked with large employers and expert partners to develop a voluntary reporting framework to support organisations to record and voluntarily report information on disability, mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. This framework was published on 22nd November 2018 and is aimed at large employers with 250 or more employees. The framework encourages employers to report what...
Baroness Buscombe: The Universal Credit Full Service Claimant Survey found that 98 per cent of claimants claimed online. For those claimants who are unable to access or use our digital services, assistance to make and maintain their claim is available via the Freephone Universal Credit helpline. Face-to-face support is also available in Jobcentres. In exceptional circumstances, a home visit can be arranged to...
Baroness Buscombe: The Department considered the impact on stakeholders and sub-contractors, based on the Administrator’s statement of affairs at the point of Working Links going into administration, and has worked with both the Administrator and Fedcap, who have taken over a number of Working Links contracts, to minimise the impact on those supply chain partners owed monies by Working Links at the point of...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, the Government are committed to a sustainable solution to poverty so that we can improve children’s long-term outcomes. This means a strong economy and a benefits system that supports employment and higher pay. Children in households where all the adults are working are around five times less likely to be in poverty than those in workless households. However, 13.9% of all UK...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, of course we take the issue of poverty very seriously, although inequality has fallen. Tackling disadvantage will always be a priority for this Government. We have already taken steps to tackle food inequality by providing free school meals and our Healthy Start vouchers. We are also investing up to £26 million in school breakfast clubs along with £9 million to provide meals and...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, we have taken strong action to support working families. We now have the national living wage and so on, but I agree entirely with the noble Lord that it is incredibly important to look closely at low pay and issues around debt. The Government are doing this, and indeed it is something that is close to my heart. Sometimes debt goes to the heart of why people are in poverty. We need...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, I cannot agree with the noble Baroness that our policies are doing that; in fact, they are doing precisely the opposite. We have increased in an enormous number of ways the support—not just financial but practical—we give to children in low-income families. Indeed, the previous Question illustrates that. On how we measure poverty, the noble Baroness is right: we should debate,...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Farmer for the enormous amount of work he has done and continues to do so selflessly in this area. He is absolutely right: this is not just about money. The truth is that support for the family structure is critical. Parents play a critical role in giving children the experiences and skills they need to succeed. Children exposed to parental...
Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate referenced holidays, which is a really important issue because children are outside school protection. In 2018 the Government announced a programme of work to explore how best to ensure that disadvantaged young people can access healthy food and enriching activities over the school holidays. This included awarding contracts to seven organisations to...
Baroness Buscombe: The Government does not collect official data on the use of food banks, therefore has not made such assessments. We have worked with food insecurity experts, the Office for National Statistics and the Scottish Government to introduce a new set of food security questions in the Family Resources Survey starting from April 2019. This means that we will in future be able to monitor the prevalence...
Baroness Buscombe: The Pension Protection Fund is a statutory public corporation led by its Board and accountable to Parliament through the Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions. The original decision in the Kodak case, which provided savers with the potential to receive benefits above Pension Protection Fund levels, was finely balanced and carefully assessed with the benefit of the due...
Baroness Buscombe: We have had a number of workshops with stakeholders during which consent has been discussed, and we plan to do further work. This will include working with claimants and their representatives to ensure the process works effectively for vulnerable claimants to access the service.
