Meeting of the Parliament 26 November 2015
I will raise the issue of carers and those for whom they care. Those two groups feature prominently in the committee’s report on women and social security. They are often interdependent groups who are extremely vulnerable, and they have suffered disproportionately from the cuts to social security and the reduced employment opportunities that have been caused by the economic downturn since 2008.
Unpaid carers save the Scottish economy £10.3 billion a year. As the report documents, 59 per cent of unpaid carers are women, and 74 per cent of those who receive carers allowance, which is awarded to those with the heaviest burden of caring responsibilities, are women.
Women are twice as likely as men are to give up work in order to care. As one of our witnesses, Helen Graham of Edinburgh Napier University, pointed out, much of the differential impact of welfare reform on women, which has been well illustrated by previous speakers, stems from the unequal distribution of caring responsibilities between men and women.
In preparing for the debate, I was reminded that in the very early days of our welfare state—indeed, before Beveridge—feminists struggled in a patriarchal society to get understanding and recognition of the huge amount of unpaid work that women do in the home. A leading suffragette and social reformer, Eleanor Rathbone, campaigned tirelessly to challenge that and eventually secured family allowances. To be politically acceptable, family allowances were presented as support for children—they evolved into child benefit—but Rathbone was primarily motivated by the need to recognise the unpaid work of women in the home and the huge personal sacrifices that poor women made in neglecting their health and wellbeing to prioritise those for whom they cared.
The direction of welfare reforms in the 21st century suggests that we are still fighting the same battles as Eleanor Rathbone and other feminists fought almost 100 years ago to get recognition for women’s unpaid work. In particular, the reforms and cuts do not adequately address the difficulties that are faced by those with caring responsibilities; indeed, they make life considerably more difficult for those people. Carers Scotland, Inclusion Scotland and individual witnesses expressed concern about the change from disability living allowance to the personal independence payment, because the loss of financial support for the cared-for person has a considerable knock-on effect on the carer and on household income. The financial loss in Scotland from DLA and incapacity benefit reform is already estimated to be £600 million a year.
When a disabled person loses their benefits, their carer could be forced to claim jobseekers allowance. That introduces conditionality and the risk of sanctions. Let us remember that those with caring responsibilities are more likely to miss appointments, which invokes sanctions. Sanctions can put the whole family into crisis. They can lead to families running up rent arrears, which hastens eviction. Sanctions have a devastating effect on the ability not just to care but to live with a degree of dignity. I say to Ms Marra that sanctions are specifically excluded from the Scotland Bill, which she admires so much.
Once unpaid carers are on jobseekers allowance or in the work-related activity group of employment and support allowance, they can find themselves on compulsory employability programmes. As Close the Gap pointed out to the committee, those programmes force women into unsuitable gender-specific low-paid work, often on zero-hours contracts. Those zero-hours contract jobs often give women no opportunity to plan their lives and work around caring responsibilities. I point out to Ms Marra that addressing employability and zero-hours contracts remains reserved to Westminster.
Inclusion Scotland and Close the Gap highlighted the particular effect that the reforms at UK level are having on women who are disabled. In Scotland, 55 per cent of those who receive the higher-rate mobility component of DLA are women. However, we know that the DWP has a target of halving the number of DLA claimants who receive that higher-rate mobility payment when they are reassessed for PIP. That will have a disproportionate effect on women, particularly in Scotland.
For some of the people we spoke to, the fear of losing higher-rate mobility payments has caused anxiety. Disabled women already face a number of barriers to the job market. According to Close the Gap, the employment rate for disabled men is 90 per cent, compared with 40 per cent for disabled women.
The evidence that we took suggested that the minority of disabled women who can work—as a result of getting a Motability award, for example—could be further reduced because of DWP targets. Without a car or appropriate transport, they cannot work. One of our witnesses, Moira Sinclair, illustrated the absolute counterproductiveness of that. She said that, if she lost her Motability car, she would have to give up work, and the loss of income tax and national insurance contributions would be £11,500 a year. What better illustration is there of how ill thought out the cuts have been?
A higher proportion of women in Scotland claim DLA and employment and support allowance than in the UK as a whole. We must not forget that, despite their disabilities, many of those same women have caring responsibilities, either for children, a sick partner or a relative. That is why I certainly welcome the commitment from the First Minister to look at carers allowance once it is devolved and bring it up to the level of jobseekers allowance.