Housing Benefit (Abolition of Social Sector Size Criteria)
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Before I call Rachel Reeves to move the motion, I can inform the House that the Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Have you got something to say, Mr de Bois? [Interruption.] No, you have not.
Madam Deputy Speaker
In that case, you should stand up and indicate at the normal time, rather than shouting from a sedentary position.
Mr Harper
If one is going to lay out a case for the House, one should share all of it. Trading individual cases and trying to politicise them is not the right thing to do; we should discuss the policy. I could cite a number of cases where the spare room subsidy has led to a positive position for someone’s housing, but that is not a very sensible way of proceeding. If one is going to lay out a case, one should lay it out in full and not mislead the House. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The rest of the House might not want to listen to the Minister, but I do. If he is going to give way to a Member, he will indicate that to them. Members on both sides of the House should just chill out a little bit. Let us hear what the Minister has to say.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I have just been prompted about something that I did not hear because of the row. Apparently the Minister said something about misleading the House. Did he accuse the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) of misleading the House? Will he confirm that he did not say that?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Nineteen hon. Members wish to take part in the debate, and we have to reach the wind-ups by 4 o’clock. I am going to start with a time limit of five minutes for each Back Bencher, but if there are a lot of interventions it will be necessary for that to be reduced.
Kwasi Kwarteng
We have established that there is a supply problem, but what we must agree on—and the general public agree—is that reform in this crucial area was needed. Neither of the interventions that I have taken addressed the fact that there is massive overcrowding, and that a quarter of a million families are living in accommodation that is physically too small for them.
In such a situation, surely it is common sense to try to equalise and rationalise the supply. [Interruption.] It is all very well for Labour Members to shake their heads and deny there is a problem, but at least the Government have had the courage to try to address the issue. They are doing so not by applying radical new ideas, but by doing what Labour did in government when they introduced a change to private sector rental agreements. It is time for the Labour party to wise up and get real—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. This afternoon’s debate is following a sort of pattern where the Opposition shout at the Government, the Government shout at the Opposition, and then both sides complain that there has not been a proper debate. I hope that Members who continue to shout across the Chamber will resist the urge to do so and listen to the debate.
Andrew George
I think that is slightly outwith the focus of the debate. Nevertheless, I of course acknowledge the merit of what the hon. Gentleman suggests.
The Conservatives have form when it comes to spending public money on the under-occupancy of residential property. After all, the last time they were in government on their own they introduced a council tax discount for second homes. Hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money was spent every year subsidising the wealthy to have their second homes, when there were thousands of local families who could not afford their first home. That defines the Conservatives’ approach: they reward the wealthy when they under-occupy their second home and they penalise the poor when they under-occupy their council home.
The Conservatives claim that the purpose of the under- occupancy penalty is to save money by cutting benefit where the recipient occupies a property that is larger than they need, and to ensure the efficient use of a scarce public resource—social housing. Those two objectives, however, contradict each other. If the second objective—the effective use of public resource—were achieved and every last cubic centimetre of every council house was fully occupied, it would fail to meet their first objective of saving money.
I have a problem with the Labour party’s motion, partly because it deals only with the social sector, which is odd. If Labour had applied it to the private rented sector, I might have considered voting for it. Above all, I am concerned to deal with this issue seriously. We can either play party politics and come up with the kind of motion the Labour party has come up with today, or we can use the vehicle that is available, the Affordable Homes Bill. Although my amendment has not been accepted for debate, we should still be working together to seek political consensus to help the victims of this policy, instead of using them to score party political points, and that could be done with the money resolution necessary to advance my Bill. The Minister asked how we would pay for it. We could pay for it by driving down rents, rather than driving people out on to the streets. On the money resolution, I am afraid—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Will the hon. Gentleman stop talking about the money resolution and get on with it?
Andrew George
The money resolution concerns my Affordable Homes Bill, which would address this issue, were we to solve the problem with the money resolution.
In conclusion, we should be seeking consensus, rather than scoring party political points.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I am now reducing the time limit to four minutes, and there is a serious danger that some Members will not get to speak even with a four-minute time limit if we do not start making better progress.
Affordable Homes Bill
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I am delighted to note, given my military background, that soldiers, sailors and airmen and women who are away on operations are not penalised and can go home when they return. That is an important part of the policy.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Mr Nuttall, you have been speaking for 35 minutes and you have said on numerous occasions how important it is to make progress through your speech. You are being incredibly generous in taking interventions, but perhaps you could be a little more selfish and get on with making your speech so that other Members can speak. Taking fewer interventions might help.
Mr Nuttall
I will be more selfish with the interventions I accept, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) was not one I have in my speech, so I am grateful to him for making it.
The Government trebled support for discretionary housing payments so that funding for this year is £165 million. In 2013-14, £21 million of central Government funding was unspent by the end of the year. Almost two thirds—63%—of local authorities paid out less than their total discretionary housing payment allocation, and fewer than a quarter applied for a share of the £20 million that the Department for Work and Pensions held back in reserve. Discretionary housing payments exist to provide a safety net for vulnerable tenants, and they offer the best mechanism for local authorities to provide additional support as welfare payments are reformed, enabling them to respond on a case-by-case basis to those who need more assistance.
I appreciate that the hon. Member for St Ives ideally wants the spare room subsidy to be removed. He would like a return to the time before the measure was introduced, when taxpayers in my constituency had to contribute towards those living on benefits and enjoying accommodation that they themselves could only dream about. Clause 1 is seen by those who want to return to those days as a mere stepping stone towards the day when tenants can once more have the benefit of spare rooms at the expense of other hard-working taxpayers. We must strike a balance between the interests of taxpayers and the legitimate needs of welfare claimants, and I do not see the need to introduce the measures in clause 1 to achieve that balance.
Let me turn to clause 3, which has not received the attention it needs so far. Subsection (1) requires the Secretary of State to
“carry out a review of the availability of affordable homes and intermediate housing and produce and lay before Parliament a report which must set out the conclusions of the review.”
within 12 months of the Bill being enacted. We know from clause 7(2) that the Act would come into force
“at the end of the period of 3 months beginning with the day on which it is passed.”
Anyone reading clause 3 would assume that there must be an urgent need for a review, and that for some reason no information is available about the housing stock in this country, and certainly nothing on affordable housing. However, even the most cursory investigation of the subject reveals that our library shelves are simply groaning under the weight of reports and statistics on this matter. In fact, there are so many that—you will be pleased to know this, Madam Deputy Speaker—I will not even begin to list them, never mind quote from them all.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Although one of life’s great pleasures is to ensure that Madam Deputy Speaker is happy, the rest of the House will be desperately disappointed if my hon. Friend does not elaborate on all those points.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I am sure that the House can contain its disappointment and anxiety to progress this debate. I hope, Mr Nuttall, that you are making reasonable progress, and taking your own advice about making the remaining points in your speech so that others can participate in the debate.
Mr Nuttall
I will, indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker, restrict my comments.
The Department for Communities and Local Government publication “Affordable Housing Supply: April 2012 to March 2013”, issued on 21 November 2013, contains a wealth of statistics and information about the availability of affordable homes in England. It contains that much material that it is difficult to imagine what more could be wanted on the subject.
The principal body for delivery in the field is the Homes and Communities Agency. We are fortunate indeed that, only on Tuesday of this week, it issued its latest update—a statistical analysis with a wealth of facts and figures on affordable housing. Jonathan Walters, the HCA deputy director of strategy and performance, has said:
“The Statistical Data Return plays an important role in the HCA’s work as regulator, helping to identify the key issues for the sector and individual providers and to prioritise our regulatory engagement. The 2014 return shows that the sector has continued to grow, and sheds light on some important trends in a changing operating environment, including the growth of Affordable Rent”.
That is just a couple of the reports available on the topic—there are loads of others from charities, academics and pressure groups throughout the country—and I find it difficult to believe that there is any need whatever to carry out another piece of research.
I accept that the hon. Member for St Ives is entirely well meaning. No one would deny that his aims are entirely honourable. No one wants disabled people to be disadvantaged by legislation, but as I hope I have demonstrated, the Government have put in place the means to ensure that those most affected by the removal of the spare room subsidy are properly protected. I see no reason for a further report on affordable homes—there is no shortage of reports or statistics on the subject. The Government provide a wide array of schemes to help to stimulate the housing market. It is difficult to see what could come out of such a review, other than yet more schemes. For all those reasons, I oppose the Bill, and urge the House to vote against it on Second Reading.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. During the debate, many points of great interest have been raised and it has been suggested that further amendments will be made. I therefore think it would be highly beneficial if the Bill were referred to a Select Committee.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of his intention to apply Standing Order No. 63.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 63(2), That the Bill be committed to a Select Committee.—(Jacob Rees-Mogg.)
Mr Andrew Robathan (South Leicestershire) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given the importance of this measure and the fact that there is obviously very great interest in it, I beg to move that the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
That is not in order. The relevant Standing Order has been used, and the House has given its view, so I do not accept that.
Madam Deputy Speaker
It must be a different point of order, because I have ruled on the previous one.
Philip Davies
I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given that those of us who were against the setting up of the coalition in the first place always knew that the Lib Dems were devious and untrustworthy, and given that the vote on the Affordable Homes Bill shows that the coalition Government have come to an end and that we will clearly have a free-for-all for the rest of the Parliament, has the Leader of the House given any indication that he wishes to make a statement to the House to say that the coalition has officially come to an end?
Madam Deputy Speaker
That is not a point of order for the Chair, however much Members may speculate on it. We will move on to the next business. Will Members please leave the Chamber quickly and quietly because we need to proceed to the next Bill?
DWP: Performance
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I regret to say that there are more Members wishing to speak in this debate than there is time for them all to speak at six minutes. I will take the time limit down to five minutes from the next speaker. I have to say that it may not be possible for every Member to get in even on five minutes.
Paul Maynard
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was extremely disturbed to hear over the monitors the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) describe cerebral palsy as an infectious disease, which implies that it can be caught by other people. That is not the case; it is a neurological condition. I wish to place that on the record.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Mr Maynard, I think that you know that that is not a point of order for the Chair, but a continuation of debate in the Chamber. You have got your point on the record and it is now part of the debate. I am sure that others will want to clarify the position.
Paul Maynard
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In my zeal to correct the record, I inadvertently attributed the phrase “infectious disease” to the hon. Member for Hyndburn. I apologise to him; in fact, he said “incurable disease”. I place that on the record.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Five minutes simply will not give enough time for everybody to be able to contribute to the debate. My judgment is that those who have sat in the Chamber all day would rather have four minutes than no minutes at all. Therefore, I am now setting the time limit at four minutes. It will be very tight to get everybody in, but I hope nobody will be disappointed. The time limit is now four minutes.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
All of us across the House are concerned about the most vulnerable people in our constituencies. It is deeply disappointing that many Opposition Members have implied today that universal credit, changes to the benefit system and the PIP are the function of a harsh Government who have no sympathy for the weakest among us. That is wrong: it is precisely because we have recognised that it was unsustainable to struggle on with over 50 separate benefits that did not respond effectively to minor changes in people’s day-to-day lives.
How could it be right that around 50% of decisions on disability living allowance were made on the basis of the claim form alone without a face-to-face assessment, and that changes in circumstances—for good and bad—went unaddressed by a benefits system that was not attuned to individuals and the needs of their conditions? Some 71% of DLA recipients got it for life. That was not right either for the taxpayer or for the people who had been written off callously by the state. More than 4 million working-age people were on out-of-work benefits and almost 2 million children were growing up in workless households under the last Government.
Yes, universal credit is the most ambitious programme to reform welfare in a generation and it is essential that it succeeds. However, as the Government have always said, it cannot happen overnight. It would not happen overnight under any Government. It is a task of substantial complexity. It is therefore unsurprising that there are challenges in its smooth delivery and the smooth delivery of the IT systems that are required to make it work.
Universal credit is just one part of the bigger picture. It is far from the chaos that the Opposition have presented this afternoon. Forty-five welfare reforms are under way, 42,000 people have had their benefits capped, 23,000 staff have been trained in universal credit and 550,000 participants have started a job following on from the Work programme. As we have heard, the welfare reforms are set to save £50 billion over the course of this Parliament, with the cap bringing almost £120 billion of Government spending under control. We have done all that on top of dealing with the backlog of ESA cases that was inherited from the previous Government.
It is crucial that we get universal credit right and that we do not replicate what has happened with previous programmes by rolling it out too quickly. That would be truly irresponsible. Any programme that changes a system that affects more than 7 million people will be challenging. The question is whether the Government have the courage to do the right thing, no matter how difficult, and whether they will give in when emotive political challenges are cynically deployed to give the impression that if only the Government changed, all would be well.
Where universal credit has been implemented, it is working. In the pathfinder areas, more than 60% of claimants said that it was easier to understand, provided a better financial incentive and rewarded small amounts of additional work. People on universal credit are spending twice as long looking for work each week as a result.
I say, let us continue down this difficult pathway—
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
The fact that we know about the work capability assessment is that 700,000 people are still waiting to be assessed.
We have heard a lot of talk about DLA. Disability benefits, including DLA, were basically Margaret Thatcher’s Government’s dumping ground for people she did not want to put on the unemployment register.
Employment and support allowance and PIP are a problem because people are not getting assessed. The problem is not about the delivery company. It is not about whether it is Atos or someone else. It is about the basis of the assessment. I had two recent cases. I had a letter in January from a woman who said, “Thank you for believing in my husband. He got his benefit back. Sadly, he died over the Christmas holidays.” He clearly was not fit to work.
I met another lady who said that the DWP had killed her husband. He had a Co-op book. Perhaps people who do not know about working-class communities do not know what a Co-op book is. It is where people pay their insurance to somebody who comes round every Friday night. He was told that he was fit to work. He got no benefit, so he took a book back. He literally dropped down dead going round the village with his book on a Friday.
The contract had no penalties. Even though 158,000 cases were overturned by the DWP and the benefit appeals system cost £40 million, the contract had no penalties for Atos or anyone else. I hope that the Government will not let a similar contract in the future.
The system must be based on medical assessments. That has gone under this Government. People relied on the assessment of a consultant. That would be taken really seriously and people would keep their benefits. It would be realised that they were not capable of work. That has all gone. Now someone is partly trained to sit at a computer and tap away, without even looking at the person who is asking for the appeal or for the benefits. That has got to stop; we have to go back to medically based assessments.
We are told that there are fewer people on the claimant count—people are in employment—but the fact is, as I said to the Secretary of State, that £13.5 billion more had to be borrowed because of the fall in income tax receipts. He said that that is because the personal allowance has now been raised to £10,000—that is £200 a week; that is 20 hours maximum. People are still getting tax credits to top that up, which is why we still have basically the working poor claiming benefits while they are working.
On jobseeker’s allowance, everyone I talk to about the Universal Jobmatch says, “Oh, it’s out of date. The jobs have gone by the time you apply.” People are searching the world for jobs when they are looking for a job locally, and they may not have the skills or education to take the things that are on offer. Telephones have been removed by the DWP from jobcentres. People cannot phone in to make their claims so they have to go and find some other way of doing it.
The Government refuse to believe diligent jobseekers. I know someone who made 20 job applications a day and was told, “We do not believe you”—sanctioned. Another person was sent for a training or work interview on the same day as they were signing on, so they did not turn up for their interview—sanctioned. Another was told at their job interview, “14 hours at a basic minimum wage”, so they would therefore lose all of their benefit to keep their home, which was a private rent—sanctioned. Those are the case-by-case facts. It is quite clear that the Secretary of State lives in a parallel universe, and so do most of the people who have been defending him.
Pathways to Work worked, and I remember the pleasure of people being trained back into work capability. Finally, we must have some concerns with DWP and jobcentre staff. I opened a telephone bank, and I said at the time, “You need counsellors to support people because they are stressed; they are missing work because they are ill, and that is caused by this Government.”
Jobs and Work
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
There are few issues of more primary importance to our constituents’ lives and our wider economic health than jobs and work. After the deepest recession for a century, the economy, however tentatively, is improving. The news today of another fall in unemployment should be welcomed across the House. I am especially pleased to see the highest level of women’s employment in Scotland since records began. I am also pleased to note a further fall in unemployment in Banff and Buchan.
Nevertheless, employment is still not back to its pre-recession levels. We should all be concerned about some of the significant challenges lurking beneath the surface figures. The first of these is youth unemployment, which remains unacceptably high. I came of age in the 1980s, when mass unemployment left a generation of school leavers languishing on the dole. I remember how that was not only soul destroying for the individuals affected, but destructive of our whole social fabric. Unfortunately, I see the same mistakes and oversights being repeated before our eyes. Youth unemployment is still around 18% across the UK. The economy is recovering and employment is growing in the wider labour market, but young people are not seeing the benefits.
The scale of the problem and its potentially long-term consequences should shake the Government out of any sense of complacency. In Scotland, the modern apprenticeships scheme has meant that 77,000 new apprentices have had an opportunity over the past three years, and the follow-up shows that 92% of them remain in work six months after completion, the vast majority of it full-time. Additionally, the opportunities for all scheme has offered a training position, a work placement or an educational place for every single 16 to 19-year-old in Scotland.
However, from 2014 a new programme of EU funds becomes available to enable member states to deliver a youth guarantee that would offer those opportunities to any young person up to the age of 24. These additional resources would enable the extension of the opportunities for all scheme to other young adults. I would be keen to know what use the Government intend to make of that funding so that all our young citizens can benefit from the EU youth guarantee.
It is clear, however, that we still have an awful lot of work to do. The interim report of the Commission for Developing Scotland’s Young Workforce, chaired by Sir Ian Wood, highlighted the need for schools, colleges and employers to work much more closely together to equip young people for the workplace and to ensure that vocational education meets their needs and those of the labour market. The report also highlighted the need to tackle inequalities, whether the barriers faced by disabled youngsters and minority ethnic groups or the chronic cross-cutting inequality associated with occupational gender segregation.
In my constituency I have seen a lot of good practice, for example in the North East Scotland college in Fraserburgh, which is working with local employers and schools to create pathways for young people into work. Only a couple of weeks ago I presented prizes to pupils from Mintlaw academy who won this year’s Technology Challenge, a competition run by the college, sponsored by several energy and manufacturing companies and involving second-year pupils from schools across northern Aberdeenshire. The competition is a model of good practice because it involves all the pupils in the early years of secondary school, before they make their subject choices, with a view to making them aware of the excellent career opportunities open to those with qualifications in science, technology, engineering and maths. Importantly, the competition insists on the equal participation of girls.
That leads me neatly on to the other key issue I want to address today: the persistent gap between male and female earnings, even 40 years after the Equal Pay Act 1970. Occupational gender segregation continues to be a problem, and too many women are in low-paid, part-time or insecure work. I do not think that anyone would pretend that these problems are easy to resolve, but I would like to have seen the Government attempt to make more headway. As I have said before in the House, the austerity measures of the past few years have fallen wholly disproportionately on women, to a large extent because women are more likely to have caring roles, to be in part-time or low-paid work and to be in receipt of tax credits.
The availability of affordable child care is an acute issue for parents combining work with family life, but we have seen only this week how parents are falling foul of the Department for Work and Pensions’ new sanctions regime, which is making it impossible for some parents to meet their family commitments. This is carers week and it is also important to acknowledge the role that carers play in providing social care and the impact that has on their employment prospects.
It has become a truism of political discourse to say that work is the route out of poverty—indeed, the Prime Minister said it twice this afternoon. Of course, at the most obvious level, well-paid, full-time work is a route out of poverty, but over recent decades rapidly increasing wage inequality has meant the rise of the working poor. For those in minimum-wage jobs who are unable to secure full-time hours, in-work poverty has become a new reality. We are in a situation in which a family with two children, paying average rent, with both parents working full time in low-paid jobs, will be a family on the breadline. If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation, those in the lowest paid jobs would be over £600 a year better off. We need to acknowledge that the minimum wage is no longer a living wage and that it needs to catch up with the cost of living.
Meeting these substantial challenges requires strategic interventions and a willingness to try innovative approaches, so I am disappointed that the Gracious Speech failed to address youth unemployment—
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Mr Ellwood
I know that time stands still when the hon. Gentleman speaks, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the clock does not seem to be moving, and I wonder whether it is possible to make sure that the time limit is placed on it.
Madam Deputy Speaker
That absolutely is a point of order, Mr Ellwood, and I am very grateful to you. The clock has to be operated manually at the moment, so we will do our best to make sure that it works.
Austin Mitchell
If it is any consolation, Madam Deputy Speaker, my clock stopped in 1979. I hope that that qualifies me for an extension of my speaking time.
This kind of society where wealth accumulates and wages and salaries fall as a share of GDP is very undesirable. As Goldsmith put it,
“wealth accumulates, and men decay”.
And it is an economically inefficient society, because purchasing power and stimulus to the economy, then growth, come from the purchasing power of the masses, not the classes. If we are transferring more money to the classes, we will have a slow-growing, stagnant economy. Under the policy pursued by this Government, the only real long-term plan is to slash public spending, benefits and the living standards of the working classes, to transfer money to tax cuts for the rich. The theory is that this will stimulate enterprise and money will trickle down to the poor and the working class, in the same way that the trickle-down effect of horses improves roads. That is the plan, and it is a disastrous development for our economy.
I agree with the proposed measures on raising the minimum wage, promoting the living wage and improving skills, but other measures need to be taken as well. The only real solution to the problem is economic growth to put the people back to work, because full employment is the only adequate form of social security that we have ever developed in this country. That means, first, a massive house-building programme, particularly one of public housing for rent that people can move into, because most people now cannot afford a mortgage and could not get one if they tried. That could be financed by municipal bonds or quantitative easing. Why should the money from quantitative easing—which is, in effect, the Bank of England printing money—all go into the vaults of the banks? Why should it not be used to finance contracts for massive public spending and investment in work on new towns, for instance, provided that there are proper contracts and a proper rate of return? We should use quantitative easing to improve public spending.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again; it is the second time that I have done so. However, this is a named debate with a subject and an amendment. The subject is jobs and work, so he needs to make sure that he focuses on that.
Mr Ellwood
I seek your clarification, Madam Deputy Speaker. My understanding was that Members of Parliament could contribute to any day of the Queen’s Speech debate and give a consideration of all aspects of the Queen’s Speech. If I had been aware that that rule was in place, I certainly would not have chosen today to speak.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Mr Ellwood, what has happened is that today we are considering an amendment. In the Queen’s Speech debates every day before today, Members could raise anything. Today’s debate is more focused, and to be in order speeches need to be about jobs and work. I hope that all other Members will focus on that, but, given the misunderstanding, on this occasion I will allow you to make your points, Mr Ellwood. I should make it absolutely clear that that is out of order, but given that you have been so helpful to me about the clock, it is only fair to let you make your points—perhaps briefly.
Mr Ellwood
I am grateful for your latitude, Madam Deputy Speaker. As I said, I understood that I could take a broad-brush approach to matters in the Queen’s Speech.
I return to our role in Afghanistan, which was mentioned in the Queen’s Speech. NATO did well, but I am afraid that the other international agencies did not do so well. We were not good at creating the governance and economic development that were needed in that country. That responsibility was given to other international agencies and they were found wanting. Indeed, our experience in Afghanistan and Iraq now haunts this Chamber, as was shown in the Syria vote last year. It is also making us review Britain’s place and role in the world.
The nation’s attention has rightly focused on the UK economy, business and jobs as well as on strengthening the fundamental pillars of our society, including health, education and the benefits system. However, as we emerge from the biggest recession ever experienced, events such as 9/11, the Arab spring and, most recently, what has happened in Ukraine and the Sahel show that we have entered a prolonged period of instability with which I am not sure that Britain—and, indeed, NATO—has come to terms.
Conflict itself has also changed. There is no longer unconditional surrender, but agencies such as the EU, the Department for International Development, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are involved in stabilisation and nation-building activities that they were never designed to perform. We are essentially winning the wars, but losing the peace.
In an increasingly interdependent world, as the Government’s national maritime strategy states:
“Almost every aspect of British national life… depends on our connections with the wider world.”
We are now more reliant on a stable market for raw materials, energy and manufactured goods from overseas, but recent trends such as globalisation, resource competition, population growth and climate change will challenge that stability, and developments and crises in distant regions will have an immediate and direct impact on our prosperity and security in this country.
As a nation, we have always led from the front in helping shape and influence the wider world. As I have implied, the pace of change has not only increased but become more complicated. In a week when we have been debating the importance of British values, we must also agree the extent to which those values should be defended here and abroad when challenged. There are ever fewer countries in the world that are willing and able to promote, support and, when required, defend our shared values.
However, there is an increasing number of regimes, organisations, groups and movements that wish us harm. It is therefore not the time to turn our back on the world and ignore events around us. This week alone, ISIS has taken control of Iraq’s second city, Mosul, while Boko Haram continues its reign of terror in Nigeria and the Taliban have retaken Karachi airport. Of course, there is also the continuing drama that is unfolding for the fourth year in Syria, not to mention Russia’s hiding its long-term economic weakness in aggression and deniable intervention. Those events do not happen in isolation.
The solutions to those challenges are diplomatic, economic and political as well as military. As we mark the 70th anniversary of D-day, many of the Bretton Woods organisations that were created to secure peace after the second world war, such as the United Nations, the IMF and the World Bank, are out of date and in severe need of reform. I believe that Britain is well placed in the international community to lead the call for the modernisation of those agencies so that they are fit for purpose in meeting 21st century challenges. However, we should also be prepared for instability to increase. I greatly welcome the manner in which the Government are moving Britain back to prosperity, but it is also time to think of the wider world and the role that Britain should play as we face a challenging chapter of instability.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Several Members have now approached the Chair, and I therefore think it is necessary for me to make it clear before I call the next speaker that today’s debate is focused on jobs and work. It is not the full, general debate that we have had on the previous days of considering the Queen’s Speech. It may be necessary for some Members to refocus their points so that they stay in order. Mr Ellwood did not have time to do that so he got more latitude than anyone else will get this afternoon. I hope that that is absolutely clear and that Members understand that we are debating the amendment on jobs and work. That is why the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions himself is here to listen to the debate.
Now that that is clear, I call Nick Smith.
Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery). The Government claim this Queen’s Speech is unashamedly pro-work, pro-business and pro-aspiration, but that statement is an attempt to show a united front between the two coalition partners rather than a reflection of the reality of the content of this Queen’s Speech. Yet again, this Queen’s Speech is notably weak on something that matters crucially to the people of Britain: the quality of jobs and work. Once again, my constituents could be forgiven for seeing little in it for them: very little on jobs, very little for families, nothing to deal with the cost of living crisis, and nothing to instil confidence in the future for our young people.
The Government claim to have turned the economy around, yet they ignore the everyday struggle of ordinary people. Under this Government we have seen a rising tide of insecurity at work, which is adding to the costs of social security as people are forced to rely on benefits to make ends meet. The truth is that most people across the UK are experiencing squeezed living standards. Families are working harder, for longer, for less, yet they are seeing prices go up and up. In addition, the talents of millions of our young people are going to waste, and small businesses feel that this Government are not on their side.
For the Government to declare their economic plan a success, they must continue to deny the cost of living crisis that is engulfing the country. Even people in work see that wages are falling, because of the increase in the cost of living, and there have been unprecedented falls in real wages in the UK since the start of this recession. If we cast our minds back—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Minister of State, I can hear your conversation clearly. Members have sat in this Chamber all day waiting to speak and we should pay them the courtesy of listening to what they have to say, even if we do not necessarily agree with them.
Mr McKenzie
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Let us cast our minds back. We recall that this did not happen in previous economic downturns, when median real wage growth slowed, or at worst stalled, but did not fall. Under this government, the real wages of the typical worker have fallen by about 8% to 10%, meaning that most people, except those at the very top, have experienced falling living standards. There is a cost of living crisis across the UK, and young people have been particularly badly hit. Those aged 25 to 29 have seen real wage falls in the order of 12%, with falls of 15% for those aged 18 to 24. In addition, many young people cannot find a job at all. Some three quarters of a million under-25s are unemployed, with 25% of them having been unemployed for more than a year. Our young people need work—and on decent contracts; they do not need the rise of the zero-hours contracts that many now find themselves on. The Queen’s Speech does, however, offer a concession on zero-hours contracts, whereby firms will not be able to prevent workers on zero-hours deals from working elsewhere as well—I expect we should be grateful for this.
Let us consider another obscenity that is still occurring: the incidence of people paying below the national minimum wage. The Government have made re-announcement after re-announcement about cracking down on employers who do not pay the minimum wage. They have announced their name and shame policy on several occasions, but very few employers have been named or shamed. The Government need to match Labour’s plans for more robust enforcement. Labour plans to increase the value of the national minimum wage over the next Parliament to a higher proportion of average earnings and to help businesses pay a living wage through Make Work Pay contracts.
The truth is that under this Government, life has become more insecure for people at work, and it has become harder for employees to seek redress. This Queen’s Speech offers little hope to families in Inverclyde who are faced with spending cuts, pay freezes and rising prices. There is little to help the 178,000 unemployed Scots to get a job. In Inverclyde, we have been fortunate to have a Labour MP, a Labour MSP and a Labour council focused on what matters most, which is jobs and work.
A continuation of the future jobs fund has meant that Inverclyde has one of the lowest rates of youth unemployment in Scotland, but we could have achieved more if we did not have a Government in Westminster fixated on the rich and a Government in Holyrood fixated on independence.
If this had been Labour’s Queen's Speech, we would have introduced Bills to make work pay, reform our banks, freeze energy bills and build homes again. Labour would have recognised as wealth creators not just those who set up businesses, but those who put in the hours and do the shifts to make a successful business. Labour recognises that a recovery is created by the many and not the few. We want a plan for jobs. We need to identify industries of the future and to get Britain back to work.
amendment of the law
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Cunningham
I agree with my hon. Friend. The majority of jobs created that are part time and have limiting career prospects have gone to overqualified women. Since 2010, male unemployment has decreased by 17% whereas female unemployment has risen by 7%. Disgracefully, women still tend to have lower end-of-career salaries than men and so often have lower pensions. Women are under-represented in the Government and that shows in their policies. What in the Budget will address that?
I want also to raise my concerns about local government finance. I have raised the issue on a number of occasions, but I cannot stress enough how much it matters. It needs to be made clear that a crisis is coming in many local authorities. Coventry city council has already lost approximately £45 million in core Government grant in the past three years and has had to implement a significant savings programme to minimise the impact on front-line services. That has, of course, put a huge strain on services. Coventry will face a—
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
This is the third day of the Budget debate that I have sat through, and I surely cannot be the only one who is finding it incredibly depressing. Too often in this House, we pretend that the reality is either black or white, but people outside this place know full well that real life is much more complex than that. I want to say from the outset that of course the last Government made mistakes. It is right that my party should and does acknowledge those mistakes. It is also right that Government Members should acknowledge that when my party was making some of those mistakes, they did not just agree with us, but were urging us to go further.
The Secretary of State expressed dismay that we were not talking about the fall in unemployment. He is no longer here, but I wanted to say to him that of course I welcome the fall in the unemployment figures. Unemployment is a tragedy that affects not just individuals, but entire families and communities. I know that only too well from my constituency of Wigan.
Although I welcome any fall in the unemployment figures, we should not pretend for one moment that that is where the picture ends and that, as a consequence, life for people outside this place is rosy and is getting much better. The fall in the headline unemployment figures masks a much more complicated picture for many people, including many of those whom I represent. It masks a sharp rise in under employment, which has been a feature of the economic recovery. It masks particular problems for women and young people, especially in relation to long-term unemployment.
Many people in the workplace not only have low wages, but face extreme job insecurity. When we talk about the strivers and the shirkers or, to use the Chancellor’s new language, the doers, we need to remember that the people we are labelling doers or strivers today might be labelled something much more offensive tomorrow, because many people are moving in and out of insecure, low-paid jobs at an alarming rate. To label people strivers or shirkers depending on which day we happen to catch them is not just offensive, but utterly stupid. In parts of the country such as mine, a combination of those factors —low pay, job insecurity and long-term unemployment among particular groups—contributes to the entrenched problems that we face. I am concerned that the Budget has very little to say to those people, and the Chancellor has had little to say about the problems.
In the brief time available to me, I shall outline a few of the major problems that we have and some of the things we could do about them. First, we have seen over recent years that, as has been the case in every major recession in history, Government intervention increases growth. For four years I have sat in the Chamber and listened to the Chancellor delivering Budgets. Over that time his language has not changed, but slowly, gradually I have heard the policies change slightly. The changes have been too small and too late, but in recent years I have heard him talking about the need to build houses, Government investment in mending roads, and underwriting exports. If only we had been talking about that four years ago, what would we have seen?
The public and the private sectors are not separate; they are heavily interdependent. In my constituency, which is a good case in point, many people are employed in the public sector, and every time they go out and spend in local shops, those small businesses get a boost and they are able to keep the staff they have and employ more people. We have to understand the role of Government if we are to get out of the present mess. I am concerned that small businesses are not getting the support they need and deserve. When I talked to small business people in my constituency after the Budget, they said that they are still struggling to get lending—net lending to small and medium-sized enterprises continues to fall—and that business rates are crippling. Although there were measures in the Budget to help larger businesses, SMEs need help now as they are some of the biggest employers in this country.
The Government need to take seriously the issue of underemployment. If the people on low and middle incomes do not have enough money to make ends meet at the end of the week, they cannot go out and spend in local shops and businesses, and areas such as mine will continue to sink under the weight of unemployment and all the other challenges we face.
I pay tribute to people at this time. One Government Member said that doom and gloom does not chime with the public mood. I believe that. People are experiencing horrendous problems, yet they are still optimistic, they are volunteering and they are trying everything they can to make their communities work.
One thing we need to understand is that subsidies do work. I have heard too many Government Members, including the Secretary of State, saying that they do not. Youth unemployment is our biggest and most urgent national challenge. I see young people losing confidence by the day because they are unable to get a job. Many of them are the first in their families to go to university and they are now competing with 16-year-olds for jobs that they could have done years earlier. If young people get a job and remain in it for long enough, they get the skills and the confidence and they are worth it to their employers, and those jobs persist. That is why the Conservatives should not rubbish Labour’s youth jobs guarantee. That is the way to get young people on to the ladder and out of the revolving door of apprenticeships and unpaid work.
Over the past four years the richest 10% have indeed paid a price as a result of Budgets, but the poorest 10% have come off second worst. When we look at where the economic burden has fallen, it makes no economic sense. Every pound that goes into the pocket of one of my constituents who does not earn very much money at all goes straight back out into the local economy, boosting jobs and boosting the economy.
Finally, the benefits cap does nothing to deal with the real structural challenges that we face. We need to have an urgent debate about how to deal with entrenched problems such as child poverty—
Welfare Reform (Sick and Disabled People)
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. There will be a six-minute time limit on Back-Bench speeches starting now. It will be necessary to reduce the time further if it takes longer to get through the speakers, and because there are two debates today, this one must finish promptly.
George Hollingbery
I hope the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that in prefacing my remarks I made it clear that this cannot be a mechanistic process, like some sort of quality control process. It has to involve the human. I acknowledge that there are many cases where results have been, shall we say, questionable—there is no doubt about that. Nevertheless, that it is necessary to have such a test is, I think, undeniable: the Government cannot, will-nilly, go judging entitlement to benefits without any test of any sort. Yes, it is difficult to make the case that I am making without sounding dry and technocratic—I take his point absolutely.
In the time remaining, I would like to draw the House’s attention to some real outcomes produced by my local providers, which I hope the hon. Gentleman will take as a human face of what can be a reasonably successful programme. My local providers are the Shaw Trust in Portsmouth and A4e in Southampton, which is run by a team led by George Gallop. I hope that we can all celebrate some of the results of their work.
Alex, aged 20, was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and found it almost impossible to settle down to any kind of work. A4e’s relationship with Harsco, a large building services company, was crucial in enabling Alex to train for a certificate under the construction skills certification scheme, and to become a scaffolder. Alex said:
“I felt like nobody would ever employ me. I didn’t even know what 1 was doing wrong…it is the kind of job that sets you up for life and I love it. If 1 look at how my life has changed in the last year I can’t believe it”.
Daniel, aged 19, was homeless and unable to look after his young family because he suffered from depression. He was one of the first young people to enter Radian Housing’s “proving talent” programme, delivered by A4e in Southampton. He came through the scheme, and now has a permanent job in technical services with Radian. He said:
“it feels amazing to be back on track, in employment providing for my family and feeling good about myself.”
Sandra, aged 45, was a proud working mum of two, trapped in a wheelchair. Because of ill health, she was made unemployed and became dependent on employment and support allowance. At first she resented being referred to the Work programme, but her advisers and trainers helped to motivate her, and to give her the confidence and skills that she needed in order to return to work. She said:
“Now I think about what I can do, instead of what I can’t”.
David broke his back in an accident in 1997, and received incapacity benefit for more than 15 years. At an ESA work-focused interview in December 2012, he was asked when he had last had a good laugh and when he had last smiled. He replied that what had saved his life was a passion for his reptile collection. David and his wife have now signed off from ESA, and have set up their own business in a shop in Copnor road, Portsmouth, selling and boarding exotic pets.
To me, those are inspiring stories of people afflicted by disability and sickness who, with the right help from the right people at the right time, have managed to find their way back into employment, and, in so doing, have rediscovered their sense of self-confidence and self-worth. Of course there is much more to do and many improvements can be made to the system, but surely those are outcomes that we should all celebrate.
Is all rosy in the garden? Of course not. There are still many challenges, and many changes are required. There are still too many people who do not find permanent employment. There are many whose benefit applications and assessments take far too long to process, and who are left without an income in the meantime. As has already been said, the transition from disability living allowance to personal independence payments is proving to be a challenge. For all that, however, the evidence that I see on my visits suggests that many of our fellow citizens are being given a new lease of life by the Government’s approach to welfare, and the central assumption that there is nothing compassionate about—
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
Just after 1970, when I was first elected, I remember speaking in a debate about social security with Sir Keith Joseph, the arch-right winger of the Heath days. We all believed at the time that he was going to hit the poor, and of course—in a marginal way, compared with today—he did. However, remarkably, in the Macmillan era and even the in Heath-Keith Joseph era, the welfare state was by and large a status quo. I have to say—I will probably never say it again—that even in the Thatcher years this chaos did not happen. She did a lot of things—she privatised all the public utilities, smashed the pits and all the rest of it—but, by and large, we never had capability assessments or a march by 3,000 blind and disabled people, which was what heralded the beginning of this coalition.
I had never seen such a march. I was on crutches at the time, having had a hip replacement, so I thought that as I qualified for the march, I had better get on it. Blind people were telling me then about what was likely to happen. I hardly believed them, but we now know the truth about the mess that has been created for the people I met at the Atos headquarters last Wednesday. It was not a trade union gathering; it was a different gathering altogether. There were more wheelchairs than there were police. Fancy speaking to a crowd of 70 to 100 people surrounded by wheelchairs. Those people had been crippled for years. Like my constituent, David Cowpe, many of them had been turned down after their work capability assessment, although they were too disabled even to get out of their wheelchair without help.
That crowd I was speaking to was totally different from those at the meetings I took part in at Tower Hill, Pentonville jail and wherever. These were disabled people who wanted someone to speak up for them. There are many of them in the House of Commons today. We met some this morning and there are loads of them—I am told I am not supposed to refer to them—in the Public Gallery, and they are different. This country is made of money, so we are told. The Prime Minister tells us that money is no object—that was what he said—and that was what I told those people last Wednesday. I said, “You know, I wish he’d say money was no object for disabled people.”
It really is a scandal. When I used to do the tribunals for the National Union of Mineworkers, I would represent five people and there would be probably only nine in total at a meeting in Nottingham, but we regarded that as a busy day. Now, with this business of Atos, that lousy, rotten firm that is in charge—for a while anyway, so I am told, before it moves on to other pastures—literally hundreds of thousands of people are being turned down. When I represented people at tribunals, it used to be that we would have an appeal in four weeks and I would be off to Nottingham with those miners, but David Cowpe had cancer and waited 10 months for an appeal, and he died before he had a chance. It is high time that people understood that that is the chaos we are living in today and got rid of this mess.
We need to realise that this is a country with enough money to give those on millionaires’ row a tax cut of more than £150,000 a year. There is enough money for Trident and all kinds of things that Governments love to do, but here we are with an ageing society and a lot more disabled people—what is wrong with that; we should be providing for them—and the reason they are on demonstrations like they never were before is that they are desperate, desperate people who want us to do something to help them. That is what this debate is really about. It is about that Atos demonstration last week when people were saying—not cheering me on, but asking me—“Dennis, do something about it,” and that is what we should be doing today.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
This is one of the most important debates that we have had, certainly since I have been a Member of Parliament, because it concerns 11.3 million people who are the most vulnerable in our society. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and those who signed the petition on securing the debate, and the Backbench Business Committee on providing time for it. We know that the mark of a decent society is how it treats the vulnerable—the sick, the disabled, the elderly. There may be a case for reforming welfare and introducing reforms, but reforms that impact most on the disabled are wrong. I will not go into the statistics because they have already been referred to, but I think it is universally accepted that the benefit cuts hitting the disabled mean that they are about 30% worse off than other people. My mind boggles as to why we should put the greatest burden of cuts on the disabled and the unwell—the vulnerable in society. That is why I welcome the opportunity to debate this matter.
I want to refer in detail to the effects on deafblind people. The changes—the stress from the form filling, the assessment and the convoluted process, and the changes in the payments—are having a tremendous impact on the 365,000 people who are both deaf and blind. A mother of two deafblind adult sons describes how one of them uses the disability living allowance. She says:
“I worry that MPs don’t understand how deafblind people communicate and just how important communicating is to them. It can be very lonely and frustrating for the deafblind person and can ultimately affect the deafblind person’s mental health. My eldest son uses his DLA to pay for his 1-to-1 support; that money gets him the life he wants. Before he had the right support, he exhibited very difficult behaviours because he was frustrated.”
She says that he could cause danger to himself and to others, but when he got his one-to-one support, his life completely changed. She continued:
“My son is a sociable friendly man who is now able to take a full part in everyday life and make decisions for himself, the difference is amazing! It would have been a waste of money”—
and obviously cost more—
“to place him in the secure residential accommodation.”
He is now much happier and his family is happier as well. We must always remember that saving money at one end might mean spending more money later and so be a false economy.
I also want to mention the closure of Remploy factories. I used to visit my Remploy factory in Bolton all the time. The people there were really happy to have a job to go to. They wanted to work and earn a living, not to take state benefits. The closures were very much an ideological decision by the Government. There were difficulties in the Remploy system, but they were with the management at the top of the hierarchy, who were keeping a lot of the money. The changes that were needed to make Remploy more effective should have been made at the top, where money was being wasted. The ordinary disabled person working in the factory was not causing that waste. Rather than looking properly at how to make Remploy work better, the Government managed to abolish it. As a result, many of the people who worked there have ended up unemployed. They are sitting at home, claiming state benefits and getting incredibly depressed, because—let us face it—with so many people unemployed, their chances of getting a job are negligible.
Lastly, I want to talk about work capability assessments and Atos. Much has been said about that in Parliament. My constituent, Mr Jason Froggatt, lost his job because of illness, but Atos then said that he was fit to work but needed to do so near a toilet—that was actually in the assessment. He, his wife and their son now face losing their home because they do not have enough money. I wrote to the Secretary of State a few weeks ago about that case but am yet to receive a response. We have heard many other examples of people who are very ill being told that they are fit for work.
Benefit Entitlement (Restriction) Bill
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Mike Penning
I was coming on to that, as it was one of the questions I was asked. Indeed, it is a question that I have asked as a Minister in the Department. Although employment benefits are not exactly my—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I am sorry, Minister, but every time you turn around from the Chair and the microphone to face your hon. Friend, I have difficulty hearing you. Not only that, but turning away from the microphones will cause difficulties for Hansard. I would be grateful if the Minister kept facing the House rather turning around. I am sure that the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) will not be offended; it is the Minister’s words that he is listening to.
Mike Penning
Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker. I shall try to speak up, too, so that Hansard can get every last nuance of what I say.
As I was saying, I was asked the same question when I became a Minister some three and a half months ago. That question is asked. I have officials of different nationalities who worked in Jobcentre Plus, but the difference is that it does not tie up directly with the Home Office systems at the moment. It will, however, when the excellent universal credit system comes into force. [Interruption.] I hear derogatory comments from a sedentary position coming from the Opposition side, so let me ask them whether they are going to scrap universal credit when they come into power—should this country be silly enough to allow a Labour Government back in again.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. However tempted the right hon. Gentleman might be to respond, we are not discussing universal credit today. I am happy for him to speak from the Dispatch Box, but he should not take us off the subject of this Bill. I expect the House to return to it.
Stephen Timms
I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I have to respond to the Minister. We have, of course, always supported the principle of universal credit; it is a shame that the Government have made such a terrible mess of implementing it.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. That is enough. We are not debating universal credit. I require the Minister to speak only to the Bill and to ensure that the Government’s view of it is clearly heard, before we return to the promoter for his final comments.
Mike Penning
I fully accept your ruling, Madam Deputy Speaker. I had to mention universal credit because that provides the answer to how we would know which country people claiming benefit come from. We are working closely, too, on making changes to the legal framework at the EU level, particularly in respect of family benefits for children who are not resident in this country. We think—and I think hon. Members would agree with me—that child benefit and child tax credit should not be paid to non-EU member families that are not resident in this country; we need to work on changing that.
The key issue is whether the scope of the Bill is such that the Government could support it. I am afraid that it is not. We sympathise with much of the intention—and so would my constituents—but as we run into the next election and the referendum, the Prime Minister will be participating in attempts to renegotiate our position to give this Parliament the sort of control over benefits and other issues that we would expect. Sadly, on behalf of the Government, I cannot support the Bill today.
Welfare Reforms and Poverty
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. To try to ensure that every Member who has indicated that they want to participate in the debate may do so, I am going to reduce the time limit to seven minutes. I hope that that will mean that everyone will be able to contribute, although I cannot guarantee it. It might be necessary to reduce the time limit further.
Katy Clark
I agree with my hon. Friend. I am sure that that is the case in his constituency, as it is in mine. In areas that are disproportionately reliant on the public sector and the welfare state, cutting benefits is taking millions of pounds out of the economy every year, which is simply putting us in a worse situation.
We have also seen a massive increase in the impact of benefit sanctions, as I am sure many Members are only too aware from their constituencies. It is often the same people receiving those benefit sanctions again and again, and each time it is for a longer period. Many of those people have nowhere to go, because they can go to a food bank only three times.
The other major concern is the bedroom tax, which constituents come to see me about all the time. In North Ayrshire we have seen a 756% increase in discretionary housing payment applications. Only 66% are accepted, which means that a third of those people do not get the payment. Indeed, when people go back to apply the next time, because it is a time-limited payment, they are often refused. That is having an impact on council rent arrears. Rent arrears in North Ayrshire, for example, have increased from 3.6% of annual rent to 5.5%.
Those are just a few examples from my constituency, but we all have many others. This is having a massive impact on our country. We are seeing a massive shift in wealth. We need someone to look at that seriously, which is why I think that the motion before us—
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
May I start by congratulating my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk)? I agree with him that we must reform the welfare system and make it sensitive to the needs of the 21st century. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), who is another constituency neighbour of mine—I am in total agreement with the points he raised—and the other hon. Members responsible for securing this debate.
I want to spend the next few minutes discussing a few points, particularly those that constituents have raised with me in my surgeries and elsewhere. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation annually monitors social exclusion and poverty and produces data on them. Its most recent report, which was published last month, shows that 3.5 million children, or 27%, live in poverty. In some parts of my constituency, the figure is nearly one in two. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that it expects an increase of 1.1 million children living in poverty by 2020 as a result of tax and benefit changes.
Three million parents also live in poverty. The number of pensioners living in poverty has fallen to 1.5 million, or 14%, which is the lowest level in 30 years, but the number of working-age adults without children living in poverty has risen to 4.5 million, which is the highest level in 30 years.
That is only half the story, because those relative levels of poverty relate to median incomes. The average income has gone down by 8% since 2008, which means that 2 million people who would have been deemed to be in poverty in 2008 are not classified as such now, because incomes have dropped. Incomes are going down, but prices are rising. The energy prices of the big six have gone up by 37% since 2010 and food prices went up by 32% between 2007 and 2012.
The most worrying thing—this point has already been made—is that we are seeing an increase in the working poor. For the first time since the data series started back in the 1980s, poverty in working households is higher than that in workless and retired families combined. Therefore, work is clearly not paying. In spite of a shared objective of wanting our welfare system to make work pay, it is not. I was very interested in what the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said about phasing in the introduction of some of the welfare measures. They have been brought in too soon, and they are having a huge impact on families.
Related to the increase in the number of working households living in poverty is the increase of the number of people in low-paid work. For 46% of working families in poverty, one or more of the adults is paid less than the living wage. In total, about 5 million people are being paid below that level, which disproportionately affects women, 27% of whom are paid less than £7.40 an hour.
If we look at the effects of welfare reforms on poverty, we find that instead of alleviating poverty, it is exacerbating it. Our social welfare model is based on principles of inclusion, support and security for all—protecting any one of us should we fall on hard times, or become ill or disabled. Welfare is there to assure us of our dignity, as well as the basics of life, and to give us a hand up, not a handout; the current welfare reforms are doing anything but that.
I want to mention Rebecca, who came to see me at my surgery on Saturday. She is blind, and not only has she had her care package reduced from 13 hours to eight hours, but she is absolutely terrified about what the migration from disability living allowance to personal independence payments will mean to her. She said, “I will not see anybody from when I see you”—her personal adviser was with her—“until Monday, because of the lack of support that I am getting.” She is not alone. A raft of measures is affecting the ability of disabled people to live as normal a life as possible.
We have heard about people on employment and support allowance, and the trials and tribulations of going through the work capability assessment. One constituent on ESA, who has a heart condition, had a heart attack in the middle of going through the WCA process. He was advised to leave and he went to hospital, but a week later he got a letter saying that he had been sanctioned because he had left the work capability assessment. That is not atypical. We have also heard about the bedroom tax, with 500,000 people affected nationally. In Oldham, where 2,048 people are affected, there are only 500 properties for them to move into, which is absolutely absurd.
We still do not know the cumulative effects of all these measures. Despite the valiant efforts of the people behind the WOW—War on Welfare—petition, which has got 100,000 signatures, we still do not have an agreement on a cumulative assessment of all the different measures.
Sanctions have been mentioned. One person who came to see me had been a Jobcentre Plus adviser until relatively recently, and he told me that there is a deliberate culture to develop a sanctions target mentality. Even if people have followed everything they are meant to do, they are still sanctioned, with bogus appointments being made to set them up to fail. That is not just, and it is not what we expect of our welfare system. The implications for health and the social effects on our communities are dire. I commend the commission—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. In order to fit the last two speakers in before the Minister and the shadow Minister speak, I am reducing the time limit on speeches to five minutes.
Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Kate Green
I beg to move amendment 10, page 3, line 32, at end add—
‘(3) Clause 18(2)(a) of the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005 is amended as follows—
After sub-paragraph (ii) there is inserted—
(a)
(i) is made to representatives of persons preparing an application to the Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme or being assisted by that scheme to bring a claim under the Fatal Accidents Act 1976, and/or the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934.”.’.
I apologise to the House for what will prove to be a rather technical and nerdy amendment. To reassure the Minister and the House before we start—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Will Members please leave the Chamber quietly so that we can complete the business before the knife at 6 o’clock?
Kate Green
I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that I have had a response. In fairness to the Justice Secretary, I should say that a response was received before Christmas. Clearly, he took note of the debates that were happening in our Committee, and the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) was extremely helpful in expediting a response to a query that I had first raised in Justice questions on 11 November. I would be lying, however, if I said that I could now answer my hon. Friend’s substantive question as to what that connection is. It is not for me to put words into the mouths of Ministers or to suggest what Ministers think the connection is, but let me roughly paraphrase the letter. It said, “We think the two are connected because we are going to do them at the same time.” If I am doing wrong to the Minister’s colleagues in the Ministry of Justice, I am sure that they will want to make it clear how I am being unfair to them—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I have given the hon. Lady quite a lot of latitude in respect of her comments about a parliamentary question, but I would like her to return now, however tempting the question is from the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), to the Third Reading and what is in this Bill.
Mr Slaughter
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this Third Reading debate. I have not taken part in the Bill’s previous stages, but I have followed it very closely and I will confine my comments to one specific point. It was raised in Committee on 13 December and was the subject of new clause 3, which was not selected for debate on Report.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I am sorry to say to the hon. Gentleman that this is the Third Reading debate. It is not a debate about amendments that were not selected or a Second Reading debate. The Third Reading debate is about the Bill as it now exists. I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman will be out of order if he tries to make a speech that goes beyond the contents of the Bill as it appears now before the House. The hon. Gentleman is experienced in this House and I know that he will stick closely to that.
Mr Slaughter
I will indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker. I referred to new clause 3 simply because it was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins). I was present when the Minister paid tribute to him earlier and I just wanted to add my voice to that, because my right hon. Friend has been of great assistance to me on this issue elsewhere. I think he would have wanted to address the issue.
If the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), was right to say in her response to my earlier intervention that the Bill no longer gives recourse to the matters dealt with under sections 44 and 46 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, it would be helpful if the Government could make that clear. The Bill has received qualified support from Members on both sides of the House and it would be helpful if those outstanding matters could be satisfactorily addressed.
There is an outstanding consultation or review to be had; the Government have not been clear about exactly what it will be. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East raised matters of serious concern. There has not been a proper consultation so far with regard to LASPO. The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) has just alluded to the fact that when the issue was debated in both Houses there was a very strong feeling that mesothelioma should be exempt, but that is not being honoured by the Government.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman will sit down. I spoke to him very gently earlier. He has been in this House a long time and we all hold the right hon. Gentleman to whom he is referring in the very highest regard, but, frankly, the hon. Gentleman is now drifting considerably from this Bill and I now want him to refer only to the Bill or to conclude his remarks. I do not want him to refer to justice or other things; I want him to refer to this Bill and its contents.
Mr Slaughter
I am grateful for that guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have made the point that I wanted to make. I simply say to the Minister that, as this Bill stands on Third Reading, it would be helpful if the outstanding matters connected with mesothelioma could be dealt with properly and the Bill was not used as a way of occluding them.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with an amendment.
Ford and Visteon UK Ltd
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Before I call the mover of the motion, I should inform the House that there is a case awaiting adjudication in the courts on this matter. In view of the length of time for which the case has continued and the distance of the date on which it is next to be heard, Mr Speaker has agreed to waive the sub judice rule to allow reference to be made to the matter. However, I ask Members to make every effort to avoid direct reference in debate to the matters awaiting adjudication and to focus their remarks on the facts of the case and any non-legal remedies that are available. I hope that that is helpful.