Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Hill Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman]

We believe that the dashboard will be a crucial part of that, but my hon. Friend will be aware that female participation in a workplace pension has increased by 3 million since 2012, thanks to auto-enrolment. In the private sector, female participation in a workplace pension has jumped from 40% to 80% in the last five years.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

In Hartlepool, one in five claimants lose their disability benefit, and we have an estimated nine food banks. We were one of the pilot areas for universal credit. Will the Secretary of State, as part of her investigations, please come to Hartlepool to see for herself the effects of universal credit on my constituents?

[Guy Opperman]

I am not sure that that has much to do with the pensions dashboard, but I can certainly say that universal credit is something that the Government support wholeheartedly, and that the individual matters will be looked into.

State Pension: Women born in the 1950s

Mike Hill Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Grahame Morris]

Absolutely. I could not have put it better myself. I hope, however, that the Minister will come up with some positive solutions to address this terrible injustice.

We have heard that 3.8 million women are affected, many of whom will be driven into poverty and reliance on food banks. That is a disgrace in one of the wealthiest nations on earth. Although the report by Philip Alston, the United Nations expert, has not been greeted with enormous acclaim by Department for Work and Pensions Ministers, we should look at what he says. He talked to various campaign groups, including the Women Against State Pension Inequality. He says that certain women, including the WASPI group, have been affected disproportionately by recent changes in policy, particularly those in relation to the pension age. Philip Alston’s statement on extreme poverty and human rights in the UK showed that in the four years to 2016-17 the number of pensioners living in poverty had risen by 300,000, or 16%. That is despite assurances from the Government that measures such as the triple lock guarantee would ensure that pensioner poverty was a thing of the past.

I mentioned this in an intervention, but it is an important point, which I hope the Minister will address. This is not just about variations in life expectancy—Ministers keep telling us that people are living longer, so in order to make pensions affordable the state retirement age has to be adjusted. There are huge regional variations not only in life expectancy, but in the amount of time that a retired person can expect to live a healthy and active lifestyle. That, too, should be factored into the Government’s calculations.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Two, three, four or five times the number of WASPI women watching in this room are outside. I pay tribute to them for coming to Westminster, and it is a great shame, as you remarked earlier, Mr Bone, that we could not have had a bigger venue to accommodate them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) for bringing this important debate before us, and you, Mr Bone, for allowing me to speak directly after my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), who has worked tirelessly over the years to press this cause. He is a true champion of this subject and a far greater expert on it than me.

There are more than 5,000 WASPI women in Hartlepool. I am proud to say that this Saturday, the inaugural meeting of the first Hartlepool branch will take place. My hon. Friend will be the guest speaker. I pay homage to those women of Hartlepool, two of whom, Barbara Crossman and Lynne Taylor, are here today. The event on Saturday has been organised by Councillor Lesley Hamilton, Unison and local WASPI women activists, and will conclude a week in which we have championed the need for women to be engaged in politics. That irony has not escaped me. As parliamentarians, in the centenary year of women’s enfranchisement, we have campaigned all week for better representation for women in Parliament, celebrating the suffragettes and sporting their colours on both sides of the House. Yet this injustice towards women’s pensions lingers on without resolution.

It is unfortunate that there appears to be a fragmentation of those campaigning on this important issue—there is WASPI, CASPI, which stands for Campaigning Against State Pension Inequality, and the BackTo60 movement—because the main campaign is so important. The Pensions Act 1995 increased the state pension age for women from 60 to 65 in order to equalise it with that for men, with the change to be phased in over 10 years from 2010 for women born between 1950 and 1955. That transition was later sped up by the Pensions Act 2011. Those changes came as a shock to many women who had not been made aware of them. Some women found that they would have to wait up to six years longer for their state pension, which not only affected their retirement plans but pushed some into poverty and forced others to sell their home in order to make ends meet.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his speech. If women were notified, it was more likely to be by those campaign groups than by the Department for Work and Pensions.

[Mike Hill]

The hon. Gentleman makes a poignant point.

Many of my constituents in Hartlepool have been affected in the way that I described. As a member of the Petitions Committee, I am well aware that the WASPI petition easily achieved the 100,000 signatures required to generate a debate in Parliament. Subsequently, there have been numerous debates on the subject, with one clear and stark exception—it has not yet been discussed in the main Chamber as part of official Government business. In fact, the Government continue to reject calls for compensation for the unfair ways in which the 1995 and 2011 changes were implemented, which affected the lives of around 2.6 million women.

The Government argue that they had to make the state pension more affordable to taxpayers. It has been estimated that the reforms have delivered £5.1 billion back to the Treasury. A study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that women’s household incomes reduced by an average of £32 a week as a result of the increase in the state pension age from 60 in 2010 to 63 in 2016. The IFS also says that the implementation has had a bigger impact on lower-income households—the knock-on effect was a 6.4% increase in the absolute poverty rate.

How can an estimated 3.5 million women, all upstanding citizens who have paid their dues to the state, be treated like this? They were the subject of legislation aimed at equalising the state pension age, but in the process of that happening, they were not properly notified, and therefore not given the necessary warning to make provision for the changes. They were quite simply caught out, which led to a sharp increase in income poverty among 60 to 62-year-old women. The changes have had devastating consequences for the women affected, including many in my constituency. For the Government to allow this state of affairs to continue is nothing short of a disgrace and a scandal.

UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Mike Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) on her excellent speech.

I wish to focus on the effect of universal credit on disabled people, and others. As we know, the National Audit Office has released a report ahead of the roll-out of universal credit, stating that the new benefits cost more to administer than the previous system of the six benefits it replaced, which include jobseeker’s allowance, tax credits, housing benefit, personal independence payment, and employment and support allowance. The spending watchdog also said that it was uncertain whether universal credit would ever deliver value for money. The report proves that the assertion by the Department for Work and Pensions that everything is going well is false, as many of my constituents in Hartlepool can testify.

Hartlepool was one of the early implementers of universal credit. My office is informed about issues with universal credit on a daily basis, and many people in the town have become accustomed to that unjust and arbitrary system. Some have not just experienced hardship, but suffered near destitution through delayed payments or through sanctions that affect all six benefits, not just one, which mean that they experience a drop in the level of benefit that they receive compared with the income derived from previous benefits.

Hon. Members will be aware of the recent High Court judgment on the roll-out of the new payment system. Two severely disabled men, one of whom is a constituent of mine, experienced unlawful discrimination when their benefits were significantly reduced after moving from one area to another, and subsequently on to universal credit. My constituent, who can be identified only by the initials AR, is 36 years old and moved from Middlesbrough to Hartlepool in 2017. AR has severe mental health problems and was forced to move because he could no longer afford the property where he was living, because of the bedroom tax. Unfortunately for him, he moved to an area where universal credit was already being rolled out and was therefore required to make a claim under the new scheme. Both my constituent and the other complainant were advised by DWP staff that their benefit entitlement would not change. However, they experienced a monthly drop of £178 under universal credit. Following the judgment, their solicitor Tessa Gregory from Leigh Day said:

“Nothing about either of the claimants’ disability or care needs changed. They were simply unfortunate enough to need to move local authorities into a universal credit full service area. The Government need to halt the roll out and completely overhaul the system to meet people’s needs, not condemn them to destitution. If this doesn’t happen, further legal challenges will inevitably follow.”

Universal credit has taken significantly longer than intended to roll out and it may cost more—as determined by the NAO—than the benefits system it replaces. Also, the DWP will never be able to measure properly whether it has achieved its stated goal of increasing employment. On the contrary, thanks partly to the fact that universal credit covers a broader span of claimants who are required to look for work—such as the disabled—than jobseeker’s allowance does, the count of the number of unemployed people in “full service” areas has been inflated. Because of that, my constituency currently holds the unenviable record of having the highest rate of unemployment in the country. The total number of unemployed claimants there in May 2018 was 4,080, which is 9.6% of the economically active population of the town. The UK average is 2.8%. I am confident that when universal credit is rolled out across other constituencies, we will lose that unwanted title, particularly as I am proud to say that our figures for youth unemployment are among the best in the UK.

The NAO report concludes that the DWP has not shown significant sensitivity towards some claimants, and it does not know how many claimants are having problems with the programme or whether they have suffered hardship, as in the case of AR. In 2017, about a quarter of new claims were not paid in full or on time. Late payments were delayed on average by four weeks between January and October of that year, with 40% of those affected waiting for 11 weeks or more, and 20% waiting for about five months. Never mind the able-bodied—just imagine the effect on disabled people. The report is talking about my constituents and a system that renders people homeless, destitute and desperate. It is simply unacceptable—chaotic and catastrophic. I pity those in other areas who are about to feel its full force.

Universal Credit

Mike Hill Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Hodgson]

Yes, absolutely. We know that the Government are today reneging on the former Secretary of State’s commitment.

Free school meals are worth far more to a family than £400 a year per child. That might not seem to be a lot to some hon. Members, but to those families it is an absolute lifeline. By introducing a £7,400 threshold for eligibility, the Government are forcibly creating a cliff edge that will be detrimental to families, especially children. To give just one example, someone with three children in their family who earns just below the £7,400 threshold is set to lose out on £1,200-worth of free school meals if they work only a few extra hours or get a pay rise. The Opposition’s proposal would simply remove the huge cliff edge and the work disincentive for families who most need support. It would take away the barrier to working extra hours or seeking promotion. Our proposals would therefore make work pay. The Government’s proposal is in fact the new 16 hours, which they said was a disincentive.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that in Hartlepool, where universal credit is not being rolled out—it is already in—more than 1,000 children are being denied free school meals on the basis of the new proposal?

[Mrs Hodgson]

Yes. We can all cite the numbers from our constituencies. Even Conservative Members need to think about what they are doing to some of the poorest children in their constituencies. In the example I just quoted, the family’s annual wages would need to increase from £7,400 to almost £11,000 to make up for what they would lose by rising above the eligibility cliff edge. That problem did not occur under the old tax credit system, because that provided an offsetting income boost at the point at which free school meals were withdrawn. However, there is no equivalent mitigation under universal credit.

The Children’s Society has been much maligned today and has been cited as giving duff statistics—Conservative Members should be ashamed of themselves. It estimates that the cliff edge will mean that a million children in poverty will miss out on free school meals once universal credit is fully rolled out. They will miss out on something that is crucial for their physical and mental development.

The Government have said that 50,000 more children will benefit by the end of the roll-out in 2022, when the transitional protections are at capacity, but I and many others struggle to understand how that can be the case. Parliamentary questions tabled by my hon. Friends and others have gone unanswered, and the Government cannot just pluck figures out of the air, as they claim so many others have done. At least we can back up our claims with evidence from the Children’s Society, Gingerbread, the Child Poverty Action Group and Citizens Advice, all of which agree that this statutory instrument would take free school meals away from a million future children—[Interruption.] It would. If the SI does not come into force, a million more children will receive free school meals—[Interruption.] Conservative Members can shake their heads all they like.

During my recent Westminster Hall debate, I offered Ministers a solution that would mean that all children in universal credit households would continue to receive free school meals. As somebody asked earlier, I can say that it would cost half a billion pounds—not a huge cost to feed over a million of the poorest children. My proposal would see around 1.1 million more children in years 3 and above from low-income families receiving free school meals compared with under this change.

Personal Independence Payments

Mike Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Marsha De Cordova]

Perhaps the Minister can clarify what my hon. Friend’s constituent should do. We cannot have individuals losing their vehicles unnecessarily.

Poor decision making is taking place. It has become so bad that the most senior tribunal judge said that the evidence provided by the Department was so poor that it would be “wholly inadmissible” in any other court. There has been a 900% increase in complaints about PIP.

I will talk briefly about the High Court decision. There was an urgent question yesterday, but I am not sure that the Minister answered all the points that were made. The regulations were introduced to reduce the number of claimants who qualify for PIP. The High Court said that they were “blatantly discriminatory” against people with mental health conditions. What is most scary is that but for the High Court decision, the Government could have just carried on as usual.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Marsha De Cordova]

I cannot take any more interventions—I apologise.

Where do we go from here? Clearly, the Government have no idea when the examination of those 1.6 million claimants will take place. Will it be weeks, months or years? The Minister has not provided a good timeframe and I ask again if she can give us a timeframe as to when the PIP assessment guide will be updated. When will the backdated payments begin to be paid? Will there be compensation for PIP recipients who have incurred debt as a result of those regulations? Will the Department update its administration and staffing costs, which are also expected to be published? Will the Minister guarantee that no claimant will lose out as a result of their case being reconsidered? Given the damage that has already been caused, it is simply not good enough that Parliament and PIP claimants are being left in limbo while Ministers are trying to get their house in order. There have already been two independent reviews by Paul Gray, but the recommendations of the most recent one were accepted only in part by the Government.

The Minister has accused the Labour party of scaremongering. That is wholly untrue. The wealth of evidence presented today has highlighted the human impact of these benefits policies. The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has found the Government in breach and is still waiting for them to respond. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has called on the Government to carry out a full cumulative impact assessment of their welfare reforms, but they still have not done so. Only last week, the European Committee of Social Rights found the Government to be in violation of the European social charter. Something is clearly wrong. Labour has made it clear that we would scrap the assessment regime and replace it with a good, open and holistic assessment framework.

Pension Equality for Women

Mike Hill Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris]

That case is doubly relevant to me. The Walkers crisps factory in my constituency is closing this week—just before Christmas—and 400 people will lose their jobs. Many of them are long-serving employees who have worked hard. Some are in their late 50s and early 60s, and had expected to receive their state pensions.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way. I take great pleasure in praising him for his work on behalf of the WASPI women. Some 5,500 women in my constituency have suffered because of the Government’s lack of action. Some have been forced to go to food banks, and in all cases the women feel victimised.

[Grahame Morris]

These women are disadvantaged in a number of ways, and Members might not realise how many. For instance, people have raised with me the issue of free bus passes. Many women who live outside London—in regions such as the north-east and the south-west—do not drive, and without those bus passes, they cannot travel.

Work Capability Assessments

Mike Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[David Linden]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

The quotation from James ends:

“I came out of the assessment feeling let down, and not listened to, and later I made two attempts on my life. I’m still waiting for the result of my WCA.”

That should certainly sound alarm bells in this House. Closer to home, Michelle Ferns, a member of my constituency casework team, has a profoundly autistic son, Richard, who is non-verbal. During Richard’s assessment, Michelle was asked by the professional—the professional!—whether Richard still had autism. That is the kind of ridiculous behaviour that we are seeing in the process.

An ongoing case that I would like to press with the Minister is that of a constituent from Tollcross; I hope you will indulge me, Ms McDonagh, because it relates to a PIP assessment rather than a work capability assessment. My constituent was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis seven years ago. She is fiercely independent, but in the past two years her memory and physical mobility have declined steadily. She was awarded the standard rate for PIP but nothing for the mobility component. She submitted a mandatory reconsideration but, despite new information, it was still rejected. As a constituency Member of Parliament, I am certain beyond doubt that the wrong decision was made in that case, and I will be writing to the Minister to ask her to intervene personally and review it.

At this juncture, with a sense of trepidation, I must ask the Minister whether she has ever sat in on a work capability assessment. When I asked the Secretary of State that question in the main Chamber two weeks ago, I was quite shocked to learn that in his seven years as a Minister, he had never sat in on a work capability assessment.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech, particularly with respect to mental health, which is one of my specialities. In my constituency, Hartlepool, a man waiting for a double kidney transplant was declared fit for work despite having to make four trips a week to his local hospital. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that such cases are abhorrent?

State Pension Age: Women

Mike Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Scottish National party on selecting this topic for its Opposition day debate. It is one on which I and many other Members—too many to mention them all—have been working. However, I do wish to mention the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for the sterling work that he has done, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black), and my hon. Friends the Members for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) and for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who have raised this issue time and again and have worked hard to encourage Members from all parts of the House to speak in the debate. I agree with the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) that the motion has been carefully crafted to allow anyone to support it—both Government and Opposition Members—and I urge everyone to do so.

If the Government do not take this opportunity to resolve the issue, I remind them that we will have another big debate on this matter in the Chamber on Wednesday 14 December, and I encourage all Members to come along. I say to Ministers: please do not think that you will get off the hook. If this new Session of Parliament has taught us anything, it is that the Government have been prepared, on more than one occasion, to cover their eyes and ears to pretend that suffering is not happening—on universal credit, employment and support allowance, personal independence payments, food banks and now on WASPI. While I have the attention of Ministers for a very brief period, I therefore want to tell them some of the reasons why they should act.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend and neighbour agree that 5,500 women in Hartlepool have been victimised by the Department for Work and Pensions, and the consequences have been devastating? They have been robbed of the happy retirement that they deserve and forced into food banks and the dysfunctional benefits system.

[Grahame Morris]

Absolutely. It is something that affects every Member. Often we bring up issues that affect only the north, only Scotland or only Wales. This time, people in every constituency are affected.

State Pension Age

Mike Hill Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

I sincerely hope to see movement from the Government on the default retirement age for civil nuclear police, which is an issue that has remained unresolved for far too long, as has the unresolved matter of overseas pensions freezes, but for the purposes of this speech, I will focus on another epic struggle: WASPI. In Hartlepool, an estimated 5,500 women have lost out thanks to changes to the state pension age. Women in the town who were born between December 1953 and October 1954 and expected to retire at 60 now have to wait 18 months or two years longer to draw their state pension. For my constituents, many of whom have contributed to this scheme for 44 years and expected to retire at 60, this is simply not acceptable, and in some cases is causing genuine hardship—including, for one of my constituents, the forced sale of her home. The women were either given no notice of the changes by the Government or given inadequate notice, and the changes are causing a lot of worry and anger. It will be the poorest women who suffer the most as a result of the Government’s implementation of the changes to the state pension scheme, and I for one stand shoulder to shoulder with the Women Against State Pension Inequality activists, who are rightly challenging this injustice.

In 2013, my predecessor Iain Wright said that,

“many of the women affected by these…changes might have worked part time to raise families and might have not had the opportunity to pay into an occupational scheme. Women in Hartlepool…who are often the foundation of a household’s budget, are certainly not in a position to prepare properly for a sudden two year rise in their pension age”.

Sadly, it is now 2017 and the fight goes on. I fully support the WASPI women, as does my local authority, passing a resolution as recently as October this year demanding Government intervention to help.

[Danielle Rowley (Midlothian) (Lab)]

I have many constituents who have come to me for help, and many of them are WASPI women. They are nearing pension age but many of them have had to leave work early because of physically, mentally and emotionally demanding jobs, and they are really struggling. Many of them are also facing the difficulty of the fully digital universal credit system. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government are victimising, and making life harder for, our mature citizens?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Hill]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and it is a point well made.

Hartlepool women who have been left worst off will not be able to afford to bridge the pension gap. The WASPI campaign recognises that the equalisation of the state pension age is necessary, but the manner in which it has been introduced has been unfair, unjust and has had devastating consequences for the retirement plans of thousands of women in Hartlepool and millions across the country. I strongly support the demand for this matter to be debated in the Chamber and voted on so that this intolerable situation can be resolved once and for all if the Government continue to refuse to take action. I am not so well, Mr Hollobone, so I do apologise for my manner.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Thank you. We now come to the first of the Front-Bench speeches. The guideline limits are five minutes for the SNP, five minutes for the Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister.

Supported Housing

Mike Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

The proposed changes to funding for supported housing, namely the implementation of the local housing allowance cap, has created considerable uncertainty for the sector and for people who live in supported housing in Hartlepool. The proposed funding model of implementing the LHA cap and then devolving additional top-up funding to local councils would have created a postcode lottery, meaning that tenants in certain areas could lose out and be forced to make up any shortfall in funding.

Rents and service charges in housing association supported housing schemes are regulated, but they are usually higher than in general social housing due to the extra cost of building adaptations and meeting tenants’ care and support needs. A typical example of such accommodation is Bamburgh Court in Hartlepool, which I have had the pleasure of visiting. Bamburgh Court provides extra care housing to help over-55s with a range of care needs to live independently within the community. There are 72 properties at Bamburgh Court, including 41 one-bedroom flats, 24 two-bedroom bungalows and two three-bedroom houses. Care for residents is provided 24/7 through personal support plans.

Bamburgh Court is a fine example of a modern, state-of-the-art complex for the provision of supported independent living for the vulnerable and people with special needs. The weekly rent for a property is £84.89, with a £38.04 service charge to cover all maintenance, fire safety measures and general upkeep. Under current housing benefit rules, most tenants qualify for the cost of their accommodation in full. However, despite their need for specialist accommodation, under the LHA cap these vulnerable people would have received only the maximum of £97.81 for a two-bedroom property and £83.78 for a one-bedroom property. If residents had been forced to fund the shortfall, that would have meant serious hardship and the possible loss of their homes.

Such accommodation as that run by Thirteen housing group at Bamburgh Court gives comfort, support, hope and security to so many people. Such schemes would have been in serious jeopardy if the proposed cap were to be implemented. In my original speech I would have urged the Government to think again, and I hope that next Tuesday’s statement will prove that they indeed intend to do so. Given that only a partial statement on the cap was made this morning, I await the full statement with bated breath.