My Lords, I must begin, as others have, by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, both for tabling these amendments and for her excellent and comprehensive introduction to them. I shall speak to Amendment 34, in her name and signed also by the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Sherlock. I also offer the Green Party’s strong support for Amendments 150, 152, 153 and 190. It is a pity that the systems of your Lordships’ House do not allow more than four signatures and so a chance to show the full breadth of political support for all amendments, particularly these very important ones.
I shall treat the amendments as a group because they very much fit together. I want to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for her reference, in relation to Amendment 153, to the bedroom tax. It is worth highlighting again, in the age of Covid-19, the pernicious effects of forcing siblings into sharing rooms, with the impossibility of self-isolating should that be needed. Where households are fleeing domestic abuse, we should think about the impact that being forced to share rooms might have.
The noble Baroness said that the Government had a moral duty not to facilitate abuse, which she indicated was acknowledged. Even if we look at this issue simply on a financial scale, as some might want to do, we need to consider that the costs of keeping victims of domestic abuse and children in those families in situations of domestic abuse are enormous.
Amendments 150 and 152, which propose that the advance need not be repaid and that the benefit cap be not applied, relate to policies which are hugely damaging to everybody affected by them. Let us think about the domestic abuse situation. Others have focused on the negative impacts; I would invite the Committee to consider the positive impacts of the amendment. If the Government were to give way and this amendment were to be adopted, just think of the relief and the improvement in lives created for victims fleeing domestic abuse by being able to get that modest sum of money, not as an advance but as a payment that could meet essential needs in those five weeks before universal credit kicked in, with no debt burden applied afterwards as a result. If we were to think about simple measures that could be taken at very modest cost, that would be a great case study.
The benefit cap is a hideous, populist, nonsensical measure that plays to the worst of the tabloids. It is often suggested that people would not have children if the benefit cap were applied, but for those fleeing domestic abuse, in almost all cases, when they chose to bear those children, this would not have been at the forefront of their mind.
On Amendment 34, to which I have attached my name, there is a matter that I particularly want to address. In some ways, it could be argued that calling for a report on the impact of universal credit should be unnecessary, but it becomes obvious when thinking about the underlying assumption of universal credit being paid as a household payment. The assumption is that couples work in unison and unity, but that may well not be the case, and not only where domestic abuse happens. It is not reasonable to assume that all money that goes into a household is equally available, or available according to need, to all members of that household. Any kind of power imbalance—it does not need to go to the lengths of domestic abuse—means that there is unequal access to household resources. That is one reason why I very strongly believe in a universal basic income. It would give people agency and control over their lives.
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It could be argued that such a report is not necessary, but I refer noble Lords to an excellent report from the Women’s Budget Group entitled Universal Credit and Financial Abuse: Exploring the Links. One element of it looks particularly at financial autonomy, which it defines as reflecting
“independence (having an independent income and a sense of ownership and not having to ask for money); privacy”,
being able to make your financial decisions without surveillance or oversight, and “agency”, which means simply having access to the money. If the Government were to announce that they plan to end the single payment immediately, we would not need this amendment at all. I can but live in hope.
I also want to raise an issue that has not been referred to by anyone else. It was raised by Women’s Aid in 2019 but I do not believe that it has been addressed, although I shall be delighted if the Minister can tell me that I am wrong. I refer to the need to have evidence of universal credit payments to access legal aid. At this point, I should perhaps declare my position on the APPG on Legal Aid. A blog on the Trussell Trust website in the middle of 2019 pointed out that, as it takes time—about five weeks—to get the evidence that universal credit is being received, people are not able to access legal aid, but in that time the victim of domestic abuse might well have to attend court, particularly if there are questions of child access and child residency. That is the nightmare situation for survivors: having escaped an abuser, they are then expected to represent themselves in the family courts and are not even able to have a representative who is not a lawyer to speak for them.
One more issue that I would like to raise is child benefit. It was a universal benefit won by pioneering women MPs in 1975 but, tragically, it was lost in 2013, when the universality was removed with, sadly, little attention or debate. This is applied by means of the
high-income child benefit charge, and, from 1 April, it will hit some basic-rate taxpayers for the first time. Is the Minister able, either now or in writing, to address how the high-income child benefit charge interacts with victims of domestic abuse? Clearly, it is a very complex situation.
Again, we come back to the assumption that everyone in a household has access to the resources they need. Even if the household has adequate resources, that is not necessarily the case, and there does not have to be domestic abuse for that to be so. We need benefits for children and individuals—a universal basic income—but, in the meantime, the inclusion of all these amendments in the Bill would be a significant and important step, and I really hope that we will see movement from the Government on this issue.