Personal Independence Payment and Universal Credit
Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts(1 day, 10 hours ago)
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Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I apologise: clearly, I have not explained myself clearly enough. Let me try again, because we are absolutely not doing what used to happen. We are doing different things, and they are starting to have an effect. For example, when I say that we have rebalanced universal credit, what the previous Government did was to freeze the rates for universal credit but not for disability benefits. What then happened was that people were either driven into poverty or were diverted into sickness and disability benefits. What we have done is to rebalance universal credit. We have invested in right to try, so that people who are disabled can take a risk on work, knowing that if it does not work, they can still get support. Crucially, we are investing in employment support to help people to get out there and into work. If the noble Lord looks at the trends, the number of people who are economically inactive because of long-term sickness has been going up stratospherically; that rise has finally levelled off. That is the difference that we are beginning to make. We will not do this overnight. Nobody has ever fixed this overnight. Oppositions often pretend too; Governments do not. We are going to make a difference.
Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)
My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that Labour’s commitment to strengthen rights to flexible working will help to lower the barriers to employment that many people with disabilities and mental health problems have experienced? Does she agree that, rather than punishing people with health conditions, one of the best ways to get more money into the Exchequer is by improving dignity at work?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My noble friend raises a really important point. We know that many people would like to work but struggle to. We have to do a number of things. We have to invest in them—for example, our Connect to Work programme involves working with people who have disabilities or other barriers to try to find out what work they could do and what they would like to do, match them to a job and, crucially, support the employers to make that possible.
Charlie Mayfield, who did the brilliant Keep Britain Working review for us, produced recommendations for employers. Ten months on from that, we are now developing Britain’s first workplace health system, bringing together better workplaces, support and intelligence. Our job is to make sure that everyone who can work should be working. If they need help to do that, it is the Government’s job to give them that help and make sure that employers can encourage those people into the workplace and enable them to stay there.
Working-age Welfare System
Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts(2 months ago)
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Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)
Can my noble friend the Minister confirm that official figures show that spending on non-pensions social security will remain at the same percentage of GDP for this Parliament—at around 5%—and that we should deal with the root causes rather than the symptoms of dependence on social security by creating decent jobs, decent homes and decent healthcare?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right about the level of GDP. It is around 4.9% of GDP and, as a share of GDP, spending on social security is due to remain broadly stable all the way up to 2030-31—I say in passing that, on that basis, overall welfare spending is in fact forecast to rise by less than half as much as it did under the previous Government. What is most important is that as a Government we are still committed to reforming the system. Certainly, we want to make spending sustainable, but we also want to improve outcomes. It is not good for people to spend most of their lives with no opportunity to work. We know that is the problem. We have to reform the system, and we are committed to doing that.
Maximum Temperature for Indoor Workplaces
Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Obviously, the responsibility for ensuring the safety of their workforce rests directly with employers. The HSE provides important guidance about how to ensure that that happens. I do not believe it covers the point about wearable tech that the noble Earl made—I will take that back to the HSE—but it expects employers to think about a whole range of different ways in which workers can be protected, whether inside or, as he says, outside.
Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)
My Lords, currently it seems impossible to buy air cooling systems—there are a variety—for love nor money. Can my noble friend guarantee that any new rules on maximum temperatures will give plenty of time and notice for employers to introduce those adaptations to the workplace, and guarantee the workforce some relief from unbearable temperatures next summer?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I know that this is something that my noble friend has raised on numerous occasions, quite rightly. That is the reason why the Health and Safety Executive is and will be engaged in a consultation on improving guidance. Guidance, of course, already exists for employers on how they should be taking action with respect to excessive heat. It is important, on the wide range of different things that employers could do to support their workforce, that the additional guidance that the Health and Safety Executive produces is done in consultation with the representatives of both workers and employers, so that these are practical and proportionate ways in which we can achieve the objective that I think we all share, which is that people are able to go to work, be productive and be safe even when temperatures are excessive.
Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper
Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts(8 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is right. When we were talking yesterday about the opportunities provided by V-levels and T-levels, I also talked about the way in which they would increase the numbers of people who would take level 4 and 5 courses. We all have a responsibility to show the credibility and the currency that both vocational and technical education can provide for young people.
Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)
My Lords, this year marks the 20th anniversary of Unionlearn, which my noble friend Lord Blunkett should take a good deal of credit for, and which, at its peak, together with union learning reps, helped a quarter of a million workers into learning for the first time. Many of them would never have gone through a conventional classroom. Can my noble friend the Minister say what progress there is for supporting Unionlearn and enabling it to get back to helping more working people back into learning in the workplace?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right. I can remember the contribution made by the union learning fund to support trade unions to enable the development of skills in their workplaces. It is a real shame that the last Government removed the funding from it. I can tell my noble friend that this is something that, relatively recently, we have been discussing within one of the two departments that I operate within. We are thinking about how we can get some of those benefits back and ensure that trade unions are able to contribute in a way in which they historically have done, to not only the representation of the workforce but the development of the workforce.
Parental Leave and Pay Review
Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway
To ask His Majesty’s Government when they plan to conclude the parental leave and pay review, launched in July 2025.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)
My Lords, the parental leave and pay review launched on 1 July 2025, and we expect it to run for a period of 18 months. The review will conclude in early 2027 with a set of findings in which the Government will outline next steps for taking any reform forward to implementation.
Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer, but does she accept that the case for change is urgent? Most forms of parental leave are unpaid or pitifully low paid: £187 a week equates to less than half the national minimum wage, and many mums and dads and partners simply cannot afford to take the pay cut necessary to spend time with their babies and children. The benefits are clear: there is compelling evidence that if, for example, paternity leave were increased to six weeks at 90% of pay, that would improve economic participation and growth and, of course, narrow the gender pay gap. Will my noble friend agree to consider urgently bringing the conclusions of the review forward so that young families can get the start in life they deserve?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the advocacy not only of my noble friend but of her former employer, the TUC. The Government have met with many stakeholders and had many encouragements to act in lots of different directions. My noble friend is absolutely right that the system needs reform. We know that it does not work for everybody at the moment. Having a child is a joyous occasion, but it is a challenge for many parents. We need to get this right. The Government opened a call for evidence, and we had almost 1,500 responses. We need to consider those carefully and find a way forward that provides a proper balance for employers, employees and the Exchequer. We will get this right.