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This article titled “Welfare reform bill live blog: the third reading” was written by Patrick Butler, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 31st January 2012 15.54 UTC

3.54pm: Baroness Howarth says the government needs to “take the long view”. She warns the minister:

If you take the short term view many of these families will fall into more disarray than they are already in.

She argues that if we are a civilised society, “appropriate funding” for disabled children is “absolutely crucial”. The finance is crucial to underpin the care, love and continuity that disabled children desperately need.

3.49pm: Lord Peston says the question the amendment speaks to is an ethical one, that should not be treated in economic and financial terms alone.

He says ethical philosophers would be appalled by the burdens of the cuts should fall on the most vulnerable groups on society. He adds:

The government should simply not be going down this path. The minister should be ashamed of himself for trying to defend this unethical behaviour.

Baroness Howe, a crossbencher, asks the minister to give serious consideration to a compromise though she would prefer the amendment to be passed in full. She says there is “widespread support” for the amendment across all the benches.

Baroness Finlay points out that according to the Family Fund charity, 64% of families who it gave financial support to had a child on lower rate DLA.

3.40pm: Lord Wigley says as someone who lost two severely handicapped boys he knows know the cost of disability to the family.

He says the Children’s Society estimates that 40% of children already live in poverty. The cuts would save the public purse millions but it would be unfair to take it from the worst off.

What will be effect of taking £200m off those who are already near to poverty? Surely, my lords that is not acceptable?

Lord Newton, a Tory peer promises an “ambivalent speech”. He’s rebelled before on the bill.

He supports the concerns behing the amendments.

I do think the government need to listen to and take heed and come forward with proposals that address these concerns.

But he says setting benefit rates in primary legisation is not a sensible thing to do. He would prefer ministers to decide the rates in regulations. He wants a “positive response from the minister” before he decides which way to vote.

3.29pm: Baroness Wilkins, a Labour peer, points out that the £1,400 a year lost by children on lower rates amounts to a year’s heating bills for a household.

If every there was robbing poor Peter to pay poor Paul surely the Treasury is able to …find this money from the shoulders of those who would not notice the loss of £1,400 at all.

She adds:

Does the prime minister really wish to leave this as his legacy for disabled children?

Baroness Browning says the raises the notion of “disability lite”. She’s making the point that making artifical divisions between severely disabled and less severely disabled is often difficult to make.

3.17pm: Baroness Meacher introduces the amendment. It’s a less radical version of the one introduced at report stage, which was defeated by two votes.

She says the government’s proposal will create a “cliff edge” between children on higher rate and children on the lower rate. The gap amounts to £1,300 a year, she claims. She says:

Four in every day disabled children are living in poverty so loss of income really does matter.

Shrinking the gap between higher rate and lower rate payments will help parents with essential services and care for children, from clothing to swimming lessons. She says she understands the pressure ministers are under from the Treasury. But she calls the government’s proposals:

Short term fixes.

She says the amendment is seeking to ameliorate the unnaceptable impact of the proposed cuts. She asks:

Would there not be merit in leaving the higher rate at £77 so we can keep the basic level at two thirds, something like £50?

3.08pm: The Lords is filling up now: we are now onto the third reading of the welfare reform bill.

The first amendment to be discussed will be one everyone is waiting for: the crossbench amendment which protects, to some extent, the additional payments currently made to children on lower rates of disability living allowance (DLA).

As I reported earlier the amendment seeks to ameliorate the effects of the govenrment’s proposals on 100,000 disabled children.

12.47pm: There’s been some excellent blogging and tweeting around the welfare reform bill in recent days.

I was struck by this piece by Lisa Egan (@lisybabe) on why she joined the Occupy protests against the bill in London at the weekend. (It’s also a very useful guide to some of the the various bits of this wide-ranging bill.) Lisa writes:

The government is selling these reforms as being about weeding out fraud. As you can see from the four cuts I’ve listed, that’s not the case. The cuts are about removing support from people who really need it: and I will be one of them.

Lisa, who has a condition called osteoegenesis imperfecta, goes on to explain how the disability living allowance cuts wil affect her. It’s powerful stuff. Read on.

Penny, who writes the Penny’s Points blog, makes some powerful points about the psychological effects of being labelled by the media and politicians as a benefits “scrounger”. Here’s an extract:

So what happens to us when we are bombarded every day for months and months with these issues surrounding benefits and sickness and disability?

When you are called a scrounger even though you know you’re not?

When you hear of more and more disabled being abused in the street?

When you are told again and again that surely you are capable of doing ‘some’ work.

When you have to prove again and again that you really are sick/disabled.

When you become conditioned to expect the dreaded brown envelope?

When no one appears to be listening to you?

Do you find yourself acting differently?

Maybe just that little bit more disabled when you go out or even when you are indoors?

Is your hard-fought-for independence now a noose around your neck in case her next door thinks just because you can walk to the car today you are faking it?

Are you scared to do things that you were actually proud of yourself for still being able to do before all this?

Do you look at yourself and question if you are entitled to the support you get?

Thanks to my colleague Clare Horton, who runs the Society daily blog and the Guardian’s social care network for spotting that one.

Clare also spotted this tweet, in a similar vein, by Naomi Jacobs (@naomi_jacobs):

Just had a v nasty lecture about ‘scroungers’ from someone because they saw my walking frame. Nice society we live in. Well done, DWP.

The formidable Declan Gaffney brilliantly takes us back to basics on the benefit cap proposals, and explains why, when it comes down to it, support for the cap in principle (which all parties assert as a matter of routine) rests on a fundamental, widespread and shabby political dishonesty:

Whether they are government ministers spouting inanities about ‘fairness’, Lib Dem critical friends seeking exemptions of some benefits from the cap or members of the opposition saying they support the cap in principle and want to ensure its success, their positions all derive from backroom discussion about the ignorance of the public and how best to exploit it or adapt to it.

The only truly honest proponents of the benefit cap are those who are too uninformed or too far out of the loop to be party to the backroom consensus: the only truly honest critics are those who refuse to say they support it in principle.

Follow Declan on Twitter at @djmgaffneyw4

Last but not least, here’s a useful guide to today’s amendments by the Labour Representation Committee on the Ekklesia website.

Please send me links and tweets with your recommendations.

11.26am: The new amendment most likely to spark drama in the Lords this afternoon seeks to reintroduce a vote on protecting benefit payments to children on lower rates of disability living allowance (DLA).

The amendment (number 1 on the official list) was, in an earlier form, defeated in the Lords in December by just two votes.

It is submitted again by the crossbenchers Baroness Meacher and Baroness Grey-Thompson, and is supported by the Labour peer Baroness Wilkins.

The disability researcher Jenny Morris has this excellent analysis of the government’s proposal on her blog.

Jenny (who tweets at @jennifermor) explains:

At the moment, children in receipt of Disability Living Allowance, whose parents earn a low income or are out of work, receive a “disability addition” worth £53.62 p.w. Children in receipt of higher rate DLA receive an additional £21 p.w. on top of this. Under the new Universal Credit system, the government proposes that children in receipt of the higher-rate DLA will receive a total disability addition of £77 while children in receipt of medium and lower rates of DLA will only receive £26.75.

As Jenny points out, the government has admitted that approximately 100,000 children will be affected by the change.

Ministers say benefit payments to children have outpaced those to adults in recent years, and need to be realigned. More contentiously, as Jenny points out, they have argued that the higher child rates fail to prepare disabled youngsters for the “difficult” drop in income when they reach adulthood.

Jenny argues:

In other words, disabled children should get used to living in poverty in childhood as that is what awaits them as they move into adulthood.

The shift to a more targeted approach, focusing benefits only on the most disabled, is a constant theme of government welfare reform, Jenny points out.

Another of the government’s justifications for changes to the ‘disability addition’ for disabled children is that it is targeting help to those who are most ‘severely disabled’. This is part and parcel of the residualisation of the welfare state – the process by which it is becoming something that only those in the greatest need can look to receive help from. This is not a social security system on which we can all rely at times of misfortune and need, something in which therefore we all have stake. Instead it is a benefit system which – like social housing has become – is only available to the most marginalised of social groups.

The amendment itself proposes:

Clause 10, Page 4, line 36, after “disabled” insert “such additional amount to be paid at either a higher rate, or a lower rate, which shall be no less than two-thirds of the higher rate as may be prescribed”.

In other words, it proposes that the disability addition for children on lower rate of DLA should be no less than two-thirds of the £77 proposed for disabled children on higher rate DLA under Universal Credit.

Essentially, the amendment seeks to ameliorate, as far as is possible, the impact of the changes on disabled children’s benefits.

10.00am: Welcome to day 11 of the welfare reform bill live blog.

We are back again for the bill’s third reading of the bill in the House of Lords, where peers have the opportunity to “clarify and make further undiscussed amendments” before it is sent back to the House of Commons. The third reading in the chamber is the final chance for the Lords to change the wording of the bill.

As you’ll recall, the government has been defeated six times over amendments to the bill, a record thought to be unprecedented in modern times. Peers will discuss those amendments again this afternoon, though the government is adamant it will overturn all the amendments in the Commons.

The amendments are:

• Amendment 12: Protecting housing benefit for social tenants deemed to have un-needed spare rooms

• Amendment 36a: Protecting young disabled people’s eligibility for contributory Employment Support Allowance (ESA)

• Amendment 38: Raising two 24 months the proposed 12-month limit on claiming contributory ESA.

• Amendment 38a: Exempting cancer patients from the contributory ESA limits

• Amendment 59: Excluding child benefit from the £26,000 household benefit cap.

• Amendment 62c: Dropping the proposal to charge single parents for using the Child Support Agency.

It is believed crossbenchers and Labour will also try to force a vote on a further amendment seeking to reduce the amount of money paid to children currently on the lower rates of disability living allowance. A separate amendment to reverse this was defeated by just two votes in the Lords in December.

We’ll be examining those amendments again today, and tracking attempts to persuade ministers to accommodate changes before the bill returns to the Commons tomorrow.

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This article titled “Free audiobook download: Sophie’s World” was written by , for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 31st January 2012 15.56 UTC

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Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

 

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This article titled “Obama says he will help unemployed engineer find job during video ‘hangout’” was written by Chris McGreal in Miami, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 31st January 2012 02.16 UTC

Barack Obama promised to help an unemployed engineer find a job during an online video “hangout” to answer questions posted on YouTube and by text.

The president responded to some of more than 133,000 questions submitted ranging from a number about the economy to foreign aid, drone strikes and the case of a British man the US is attempting to extradite over alleged breach of copyright law. Five people were selected to ask their questions live and put “Obama in the hot seat” in the forum arranged by Google Plus.

Obama was pressed repeatedly on the economy including by Jennifer Weddel, a mother from Texas, who wanted to know why the government continues to issue work visas for foreigners when her husband, an engineer, can’t find a job. He has been out of work for three years.

The president said visas were only issued to people with skills needed in the US.

“There’s a huge demand around the country for engineers,” said Obama.

“Where you’re seeing a lot of specialised demand is in engineering that is related to the hi-tech industries.”

The president enquired as to what kind of engineer Jennifer’s husband is. A semi-conductor engineer, came the reply. Obama appeared baffled.

“If you send me your husband’s resume I’d be interested in finding out exactly what’s happening right there because the word we’re getting is that somebody in that kind of hi-tech field, that kind of engineer, should be able to find something right away,” he said.

Weddel replied: “I’ll have to take you up on that.”

Another woman, Christine Wolf of Illinois, wanted to know how to help children to look optimistically beyond the economic crisis.

Obama said he tries to explain the crisis to his own daughters at the dinner table. His solution was to tell them that others have had it worse.

“One of the most important things I can do as president is to remind this generation that previous generations have had tougher times, whether it’s my grandparents going through the great depression or some of the touch recessions we went through in the eighties,” he said.

“I think it’s very important for all of us to remember that whatever the challenges that are out there, we can work through this.”

A homeless military veteran in Boston wanted to know why the US is sending foreign aid to Pakistan and other countries that “give money to terrorism”.

“We only spend about 1% of our budget on foreign aid but it pays off in a lot of ways because if we are contributing to improving an economy in a country, if we’re giving people more opportunity, if we’re preventing a famine that results in huge numbers of refugees, that potentially saves us from having to deal with some military crisis somewhere down the road that could be even more expensive,” said Obama.

“So aside from it being the right thing to do, as a very wealthy country, us trying to help develop other countries, it’s also important to make sure that this is part of our overall security strategy.”

Obama recognised that Pakistan is not always as cooperative in dealing with extremists as the US would like.

“I do agree that a country like Pakistan is one where our relations have gotten more strained because there are a lot of extremists inside that country and either for a lack of capacity or political will they haven’t taken them all on,” he said.

But, the president said, giving Pakistan aid helps to win greater cooperation.

Pakistan also featured in a question about the sharp increase in the use of drone attacks since Obama became president. How do they help, the questioner asked, when they cause civilian casualties?

“Drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties. For the most part, they have been very precise, precision strikes against al-Qaida and their affiliates. We are very careful in terms of how it’s been applied. I think there’s this perception that we’re just sending in a whole bunch of strikes willy nilly. This is a targeted focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists,” he said. “This thing is kept on a very tight leash”.

Obama said the advantage of drone strikes is that they are “less intrusive than the alternatives”.

The moderator said that most popular question among Google Plus users asked to vote was about the case of Richard O’Dwyer, a 23 year-old British student who the US justice department has spent nearly a year trying to extradite to stand trial for alleged breaches of copyright by providing links on his website, TVShack.net. Earlier this month a judge in the UK ruled that O’Dwyer can be extradited.

A questioner asked why extradition laws written to combat terrorism were being used in the case.

Obama said that separation of powers meant that he played no role in the case but that more broadly defending intellectual copyright protects American jobs.

However, he repeated concerns about the two bills aimed at cracking down on online piracy that have stalled in the US Congress in the face of widespread objections. Obama said the need is to balance protection of intellectual property without undermining the openness and transparency of the internet.

The president was also asked a series of less serious questions. One was by a comedian doing an Obama impression who wanted to know if comedy influence outcome of election. The question came in the wake of Stephen Colbert’s failed attempts to influence the South Carolina Republican primary.

Obama dodged the question but said that it “makes our country stronger that you can make fun of the president”.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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