Household Support Fund

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Household Support Fund.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie, and I am delighted that we have the opportunity to debate this matter. Since October 2021, the household support fund has provided £2.5 billion in local crisis support. I am delighted that both of the Ministers responsible for setting it up, the right hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) and the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), are in their places, as is the current Minister, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill). The fund has played a crucial role. At the autumn statement, I asked the Chancellor whether it would be extended into next year. His answer was yes, but it turns out that that was incorrect; the documentation did not bear that answer out, and we still do not know the answer to my question, hence the debate.

In the 1930s, the then Unemployment Assistance Board offered one-off additional payments on top of weekly assistance. From 1988, discretionary payments were centralised in the Department for Work and Pensions social fund. The coalition Government replaced that with local welfare assistance, making the fair argument that local authorities were best placed to distribute the funding. The social fund budget went to local authorities, but it was never ringfenced to the new local welfare assistance. As local council budgets have been squeezed, leading to recent bankruptcy announcements, councils have cut back. Local welfare assistance spending fell 87% from 2010-11 to 2019-20, and 35 councils operated no local welfare assistance at all in 2021-22. That decline was only ended by the household support fund.

The remarkable Liverpool-based charity End Furniture Poverty sent freedom of information requests to every local council about the year 2022-23. Eight said they depend entirely on the household support fund to fund local welfare. In a further 23 councils, the fund provides more than half of their spending. Of the £91 million spent by local authorities on local welfare assistance in 2022-23, only £34.7 million came from councils’ core budgets; 62% came from the household support fund. Failing to extend the fund now, with no replacement, would end vital support in the midst of a continuing crisis, but it would also end a feature of social security that has been supported by every Government since 1934.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing such an important debate. He is right to put the situation in context, because it has to be viewed against the backdrop of 14 years of ideological austerity cuts, combined with the worst cost of living crisis. Not only has destitution increased by 61% in the past three years, but local authorities are poorer and cannot provide this support. Does he agree that, should the fund be cut, it would take away the essential lifeline that many families who struggle to put food on the table rely on?

I agree with my hon. Friend, as I do with the press release issued last Friday by the Minister. It said:

“The Household Support Fund is there for anyone who needs a helping hand.”

The question is whether it will still be there in six weeks’ time, which is the subject of this debate.

I thank my right hon. Friend for securing this important debate. In Manchester, the household support fund provides a vital safety net to 60,000 residents, including providing cost of living support payments for 12,500 vulnerable households. Does he agree that, by not guaranteeing funding for the next financial year, the Government are putting at risk essential support schemes for many vulnerable people? After all, our constituents are struggling financially due to the Government’s economic mismanagement, with soaring inflation, a massive spike in energy bills and sky-high mortgage rates.

Order. I understand why people want to make interventions, but if they are that long, colleagues will be reduced to around two minutes each.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I noticed that the leader of Manchester City Council wrote to the Prime Minister today, on behalf of the eight core cities, calling for the household support fund to be extended, making the point that it would be “catastrophic” for many people in our poorest communities if it is not. Given your remarks, Mr Hosie, perhaps I should not give way again.

I have no doubt that we will hear examples of the positive impact of the household support fund. At the Work and Pensions Committee last week, we heard from the head of benefits and advice at the Royal Borough of Greenwich. Like many councils, Greenwich has used the fund to support, in the school holidays, families entitled to free school meals. She told us how important it has been to those families to receive that £15 a week per child during the holidays. If the fund is not renewed, those families will have problems buying food in the Easter holiday.

One group that depends on the household support fund consists of hard-working, law-abiding families from overseas—often with children born in the UK—who have leave to remain in the UK but not yet indefinite leave, and who therefore have no recourse to public funds. They cannot claim universal credit, however tough their situation. Many councils have been able to support those families through the household support fund. Without it, there would be nothing.

The household support fund contributed £9.6 million towards essential white goods and furniture in 2022-23. The fridge of a pensioner in my borough, Newham, was not working. She is the guardian for her two grandchildren, one of whom has cancer. She was able to buy a fridge thanks to the household support fund.

The need for the fund to continue is clear. One-off help has always been needed, but gas and electricity prices are respectively 60% and 40% higher today than in 2020. The Trussell Trust, which had a reception in Parliament today, gave out 1.5 million emergency food parcels between last April and September—16% more than in the previous year. The continuation of the fund is crucial.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I thank the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) for securing the debate and for his work on this issue as Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, of which I am a member. The Committee has heard evidence on the fund, and it is clear that it has been a vital support to families since its introduction.

The fund has been essential in supporting vulnerable households in need with food, energy and water bills, and other associated tasks, with at least 50% of the total funding required being spent on families with children. The scheme was well received by residents in North Devon and across the UK. Recognising that, the Government have extended the fund several times. We all know that it has been a particularly tough time across the country, not least given rising energy prices as a result of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, but the scheme’s end in March 2024 will come at a cost to vulnerable families.

Despite the Government’s hard work on bringing down inflation, continued economic pressures on vulnerable families mean that the household support fund is still needed in constituencies like mine. In North Devon, 30% of children live in poverty. The campaign by Barnardo’s to extend the fund has been supported by residents back home, as the fund provides a lifeline for families in urgent need of practical help. Throughout the pandemic, the fund allowed councils to significantly expand local support where households were struggling to afford essentials or facing severe hardship.

I have written to Ministers at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities about disparities in rural council funding. Councils and other frontline services report record demand for local welfare support. Devon County Council has warmly welcomed the more than £10 million it has received from the fund in this financial year. In a six-month window, the fund provided help in over 50,000 different cases.

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate with you in the Chair, Mr Hosie. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) for securing this debate on such an important issue.

In Salford City Council, the household support fund is run by the excellent Salford Assist service. Last year, nearly 19,000 people accessed emergency funds. As in the example given by my right hon. Friend, the fund also provided vouchers to ensure that children entitled to free school meals had food in the school holidays.

I am deeply concerned that the future of the fund is not secure past the end of March. Salford City Council has had its funding cut by £245 million since 2010. There are literally no funds to fill the gap that ending the household support fund would leave. Eighty-four per cent of councils that responded to a recent Local Government Association survey said that hardship had increased in their area, and in Salford, demand for the fund has increased by 86% in the last year.

Carers are particularly hard hit by the cost of living crisis; according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a third of them live in poverty. Carers Trust highlighted that the household support fund has enabled carer organisations to work with local councils to ensure that carers who are in need of financial help have access to the household support fund.

I will give a couple of examples of how the fund has been used to support my constituents. One constituent had lost everything when she fled a domestic violence situation with her two small children. She was offered social housing but it was unfurnished. The household support fund was essential in helping to provide basic furnishings for her new home.

Another constituent contacted me when a change of job meant she was put on an emergency tax rate. She was living in private rented accommodation with her partner and two children, who both have long-term health conditions. The children’s health issues meant that her partner had to stop work to look after them, and the family was finding it more and more difficult to meet the cost of their rent. She said:

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) for securing this important debate. As we worked closely when I was a Minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, he knows how strongly I feel about the subject.

In 2020, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis)—then a Minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—and I set up a small ministerial working group on food and essential items. We recognised that despite the significant support given to the most vulnerable during the pandemic, including free school meals, healthy start payments and the holiday activities and food programme, on top of the additional support specifically relating to covid, some families were still struggling, especially during the school holidays. We wanted to design a scheme that provided targeted support with a focus on food and bills. We also believed, as the right hon. Member for East Ham rightly pointed out, that local councils were best placed to understand which groups needed extra support and to get to the families most in need.

We initially started with £63 million secured from the Treasury for local welfare assistance. That then morphed into an additional £170 million through the covid winter grant scheme and then became, in October 2021, what it is today, which is the household support fund, with £842 million. Indeed, I understand that, so far, more than £2 billion has been distributed. As the right hon. Member for East Ham rightly set out, it has already helped millions of people and families, and like him I urge the Government to continue it so that it can continue to support millions more.

I understand that the fund is the Minister’s responsibility, but ultimately it is down to the Treasury. She is an excellent Minister, for whom I have so much time, and I have no doubt that she will point rightly to the considerable support currently available to families. However, we know that despite that there will sadly continue to be households that will struggle; they will struggle to afford the essentials and face severe hardship. The household support fund allows councils directly to target help to the hardest-hit families and individuals, as well as providing food for children who need it over the holidays.

I will take up the theme of the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), but I first thank my friend the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) for the able way in which he introduced the topic. Views are probably widely held and similar across the Chamber.

I thank the Minister for replying to the letter that I sent to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up. The reply arrived this morning, and it gets straight to the heart of the matter. The question, of course, is: will there be a continuation of the scheme? The Government’s position as of this morning, set out by the Minister in the letter, is as follows:

“No further decisions have been taken on the Fund and the Government continues to keep its existing programmes under review in the usual way.”

Apart from thanking the Minister for her candour, I have two observations: this is not fair, and we are running out of time. Local authorities must plan ahead for the rest of the financial year, and there is absolutely no chance whatsoever of them finding the money from their own resources, particularly in the metropolitan districts, whose budgets have been constrained yet further.

I have been an opponent of the Conservative party all my life, but at least there was an element of it that believed in social justice and helping those who, through no fault of their own, needed extra help because they were the poorest. This is not doing such a thing. I usually argue my case in practical terms, but this is immoral and wrong. The Minister should announce a reversal of the policy, or at least a further implementation —that might be a better way of putting it—at the end of the debate.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I thank the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) and very much agree in particular with the starting point of his contribution. It has been my experience—I speak as a councillor in London for 24 years—that local authorities know their communities best and are always in a stronger position than anyone in central Government to deploy resources in a way that reflects the needs of a particular community.

My constituents have had the benefit, for many years, of a local authority that has worked both with its own resources and with a network of charitable and voluntary organisations, ranging from some that are relatively new and sprung up to support refugees, such as the recent one in response to the arrival of large numbers of people from Ukraine, to those that have long-standing roots, such as Charlotte Gell’s Ickenham coal charity, which was established to give a free bag of coal to people in need of heating and today provides grants to those struggling with energy costs. It is that range and depth of resources that is so important. The local authority adds to that the ability both to identify households that are in acute need and, often, to signpost those who may not qualify for a particular type of support to another organisation that may be in a position to assist.

As we know, it has been part of the mission of local authorities, since their very inception, to address the relief of poverty. That is one of the reasons why, in my time as a councillor, I was keen to support the efforts in the late 2000s to establish the food banks, such as the Hillingdon food bank in 2009. However generous a safety net of benefits system we think we have, there will always be individuals and households that are at risk of falling between the cracks.