Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

I agree very much with my hon. Friend’s point about the leadership role that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has played—it has been critical in driving this agenda forward—and I am delighted that the future Prime Minister also shares his commitment. My hon. Friend is also right about the troubled families programme. It is important that we stay positive about the changes and that we do not stigmatise any particular communities, families or households.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has mentioned support for working parents several times, but those hit hardest by the Government’s cuts to in-work support for parents are single parents—those who least deserve it—so, on this issue and that of helping single parents, will he think again?

[Stephen Crabb]

I share the hon. Lady’s passion for helping single parents. The current statistics all demonstrate and underline that when lone parents are supported back into work, they can achieve remarkable things in bringing children in those households out of poverty. The trends are moving in the right direction. She should welcome initiatives such as universal credit and our support for childcare costs.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is the fundamental difference between our party and the Labour party in government. We are committed to supporting people to get into sustained employment, rather than consigning them to a life of dependency on benefits, which has counterproductive consequences.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The Minister is wrong, isn’t she? The new deal got more people into work than ever before, whereas this Government are taking money out of the pockets of working families. How can she say that she wants working people to feel the benefit when universal credit will make them poorer?

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady is wrong in many, many ways. For a start, this Government have supported more people back into work than ever before. Our welfare reforms are helping, through universal credit and our work coaches in particular, and by giving individuals dedicated support to help them not just get into work but remain in work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Debbie Abrahams]

My hon. Friend is spot-on, and again this is what the Lords amendment is asking for: that the exact same measures be included.

I want to sum up on this point by referring to one of the witnesses, who is a clinical expert in child health. He said the Government are trying to refocus child poverty from “income-based indicators” to factors related to

“family breakdown, debt and addiction”,

conflating

“the consequences of child poverty, with the cause—a lack of material resources.”

That sums it up so well.

Let us turn now to the UK’s infant mortality rate, a proxy for the health of the nation. It is currently in the highest quarter of all EU15 countries. I was shocked when I heard that, and for under-fives we have the worst mortality rate in all of northern Europe. We should be ashamed of that. We know that infant mortality is strongly linked to poverty and material deprivation. We know from national statistics that there is a fivefold difference in the infant mortality rates between the lowest and highest socioeconomic groups. There is not a law of nature that says that children from poor families have to die at five times the rate of children from rich families.

[Alison McGovern]

My hon. Friend is giving a characteristically calm, evidence-based explanation of why money matters, so does she agree that it is disappointing continually to hear the myth from the Government Benches that educational attainment or poor health is what causes poverty, rather than poverty that causes those things?

[Debbie Abrahams]

Again, my hon. Friend sums it up perfectly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I shall take what you say as a gentle reminder for me to move things on, too. I shall do so.

Moving households closer to employment is what improves the life chances of young people in the long term. That is why the Government are focusing on getting parents into work, and then getting their children into work through education. We are tackling the cycle of deprivation that has stifled the ability of too many children to reach their full potential for too long, and has condemned generation after generation to a life in which underachievement and a lack of aspiration become inevitable.

The Government are seeking to change that cycle fundamentally. We are committed to the far more effective approach of targeting the root causes of poverty, which include a lack of educational attainment and family stability. Work remains the best route out of poverty, and higher educational attainment is the best route into work. That is why the Bill that was passed in the House of Commons seeks to introduce two key measures of poverty, namely the proportion of children living in workless households and educational attainment at the age of 16. The Government are focusing on those factors because they have the greatest impact on child poverty and the life chances of children. The Lords amendments propose a reliance on spurious measures which will do nothing to tackle the problems at their sources. They are misguided, and we should therefore not support them.

[Alison McGovern]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for calling to speak in this important debate. I shall be as quick as I can.

Let me begin by pointing out to the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) that we already measure educational attainment, and we already measure worklessness. It is not a question of what we should repeat; it is a question of what matters. I shall not go into detail about the hon. Gentleman’s comments about “spurious measures”. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) will do that shortly, so I shall leave it to her.

I want to return the debate to the basics. What are we debating today? What do we mean by transparency in regard to child poverty? That is a very simple question about what we in the House believe poverty to be. Should it be defined as a measure of income, or as a measure of educational attainment or worklessness? We already apply those measures to other statistical estimates of what is going on in our country, but what does the law say about what poverty is?

I asked myself this question: does the amount of money that people have make them poor? Well, it seems obvious to me that it does. A parent—a lone parent, for instance—might not be well paid and might be unable to work many hours. That parent would not suffer from worklessness, but he or she would still be poor. A child might achieve great things at school, securing all the certificates and qualifications, and still suffer the effects of not having enough money at home. Plenty of children go to school, work hard and do well, despite seeing their parents suffer from the stress of trying to pay the mortgage or the rent, or not having enough money to put in the electricity meter so that they can wash their school uniforms. That happens to plenty of children. This is not about educational attainment or worklessness; it is about the fact that the cause of poverty is not having enough money.

Why does that matter? It matters because, in the coming years, the Tories are going to make people poor, and, specifically, they are going to make children poor. We know that, because the Institute for Fiscal Studies has told us. Families will be worse off, despite the so-called living wage—many of them will be in work—and their children will be affected, whatever the qualities of their teachers at school, which may be legion. We have some fantastic schools in this country, which help children to achieve despite poverty at home.

The next question is straightforward: what should we do about the situation? The Government have made it clear that they do not think money makes a difference to life chances. I have made it clear that I think it does, but why would anyone listen to me? I am a Labour politician. However, there is independent evidence. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) mentioned some of it in her fantastic speech, but I can add the information that Kitty Stewart and Kerris Cooper, of the London School of Economics, reviewed 34 studies of whether family incomes affected children’s outcomes throughout the OECD, and found that family income mattered. What is the point of having some of the world’s finest researchers if we do not listen to them? We know from an FOI request that of the 250 replies on the issue to Government consultations, only two agreed with their desire to forget about reporting on the income target. The vast majority of people agreed that money matters.

Universal Credit Work Allowance

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

I agree wholeheartedly. In fact I believe that in my hon. Friend’s constituency 12,000 people will by 2020 be subject to far lower incomes as a result of the cuts to UC. That is 12,000 people—less the northern powerhouse than a northern workhouse.

Let me be clear about what we are talking about, because this is complicated; UC is a bit of a black box and I think many people out in the country—and many on the Tory Benches—do not quite yet appreciate what is going on and have believed the smoke and mirrors from this Government. The changes that were snuck out—mentioned in passing in last summer’s Budget and then leaked out piecemeal in a statutory instrument subject to negative resolution that we had to pray against in order to get it even debated in this House—will halve the value of the work allowance under UC, which is the piece of UC that is essential to making work pay.

Let me illustrate exactly the nature of those changes to the work allowance by giving a few examples. For a single mother with one or more children, the work allowance will be halved from April of this year from £8,808 to £4,764, a reduction of £4,044. In cash terms, that working mother will lose £2,628 next year. That is the nature of the loss to a single mother. For a joint couple living and working together, one or both with limited capacity to work as they are disabled, their budget —the work allowance—will be cut from £7,700 to £4,700, a loss of £3,000 in their income. A single individual in receipt of UC will lose everything—a £1,332 reduction; a net loss to their income of £865.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I am so glad my hon. Friend has mentioned single parents and how they are going to be hit. The last Labour Government did us all proud with the new deal for lone parents. Does my hon. Friend agree that the fate that now befalls single parents in this country is an absolute reversal of what past Governments did to help them work?

[Owen Smith]

Let me be very clear: under the Tory Governments in the 1980s I remember the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) being dragged through the newspapers in this country for damaging the reputation of working mothers almost irreparably after comments he made about the St Mellons estate in Cardiff, and the Tories are back on the same track. In their sights are single mothers. They are the biggest single group of losers from all these changes to tax credits and UC, and it is an absolute disgrace that the Tories are undoing all the good work the last Labour Government did.

--- Later in debate ---

[Owen Smith]

The Minister says it is 250,000, but 350,000 is the latest estimate that I have seen from the Office for Budget Responsibility. Perhaps it is wrong—it could be wrong about other things in future, as well. However, there will not be transitional protection for the 5.8 million people who will eventually be on universal credit. Even for the 350,000 who are currently on it or will be on it by March, there will not really be transitional protection if they undergo anything that constitutes what the Government call a “serious change of circumstances”. In that case, the maintenance of their in-work support at tax credit levels will stop. It will interest the House, especially given the Secretary of State’s interest in marriage as an institution, that getting married will constitute a serious change of circumstances. If someone who is on tax credits and enjoying transitional protection gets married, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will take that money away from them.

There will be no protection whatever for any of the millions of new claimants by 2020. The Secretary of State has implied on several occasions that there will be transitional protections. Indeed, when he intervened on me in the debate before Christmas—he was not leading for the Government in that debate—he said explicitly:

“We are transitionally protecting those who are moving on to universal credit.”—[Official Report, 7 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 696.]

Unfortunately, the Minister for Welfare Reform, Lord Freud, had to correct him in the House of Lords, saying:

“It is not the same as transitional protection…it might be some more work or it might be upskilling”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 December 2015; Vol. 767, c. 1910.]

In truth, the £69 million fund that the Secretary of State has prayed in aid as transitional funding will in no way make up for the £3.2 billion loss over this Parliament.

The truth came out in the infamous data dump of documents snuck out in Christmas week. Responding to criticism by the Government’s own Social Security Advisory Committee, Ministers had to admit that the only way to recoup the losses would be to work an additional three to four hours a week. That is right—the House heard me correctly. The Government are now saying to a single mother who is working full time on the national minimum wage and looking after her children in the evening and who will lose £3,000 that she has to get another job working an extra three or four hours a week—approximately 200 hours a year—to make sure that she is no worse off. Tell me, Mr Speaker—I cannot see it—how that single mother who has a child at home and who is working full time will, even on the new national minimum wage, be able to work an extra three to four hours a week or 200 hours a year. Is she meant to get a job after work in a bar, in a garage or serving coffee? Is she meant to get a job in addition to the full-time job she is doing during the day and in addition to looking after her children—for example, cleaning in the mornings—to earn an extra few quid?

What on earth is the incentive for that mother to undertake that extra work? I ask that because the other massively damaging effect of the cuts is that they fundamentally undermine and destroy the very premise of universal credit—to make work pay.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous and giving way again. I remind him that when the Chancellor announced his so-called living wage, he assumed a rising personal allowance in his calculations in the Budget book that suggested that work would pay. Given the Government’s broken promises left, right and centre, why should any single parent believe what they say?

[Owen Smith]

My advice to single parents is absolutely clear: do not believe a single word that the Government say in response to today’s debate, or what they are telling the country about making work pay and about universal credit. Each and every promise is being broken.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I was surprised to hear the Secretary of State say earlier that my party never supported universal credit. If that were the case, why would we have spent the past five years harassing him about how slowly he was going with it? However, that does not stop me worrying about the fortunes of the 30,000 lone-parent families in work in Merseyside. Is the Secretary of State for real: can he confirm that not a single one of those families will be a penny worse off?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Universal credit actually improves the lot of lone parents dramatically, because the first person into work gets a huge amount more than they would have done under tax credits. Here is the key: I have already said that those who are on universal credit at the moment will be supported by their advisers through the flexible support fund, to ensure that their status does not change.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I rise to urge the House not to give the Welfare Reform and Work Bill a Second Reading.

On the day of the Budget announcement, I, like many of my colleagues on the SNP Benches and many in society, watched in horror at Conservative Members jeering and cheering as the Chancellor announced swathes of cuts that will hit the poorest and most vulnerable in our society hardest. When I was elected by the good people of Livingston to this House, I anticipated some aspects of Dickensian tradition, largely framed around the traits and traditions of Westminster, but not for one minute did I expect that we would be taken back to Dickensian times by a Government hellbent on dividing our nation in such a regressive way.

The Conservative Government have claimed that they have

“a long-term economic plan to move the nation back to where we should be. This offers that and will reward hard-working families.”

We are certainly going backwards. The rhetoric that the Conservatives use in this Chamber about hard-working families and aspiration is fast wearing thin for many of us. Apart from anything else, when we delve into the detail, what we find is deeply worrying.

Let us look at exactly what the Government plan to do for our so-called hard-working families. The Conservatives will rename the Child Poverty Act 2010 the life chances Act. I spent a number of years in the marketing industry and recognise that this is rebranding on a grand scale. Perhaps the Chancellor is in the wrong job. I have taken the advice of the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and looked at the impact assessment that came out very recently. Paragraph 33 says of the life chances Act:

“The proposed changes enhance the life chances of children as they ensure that households make choices based on their circumstances rather than on taxpayer subsidies. This will increase financial resilience and support improved life chances for children in the longer term.”

Let me explain why SNP Members do not believe that to be the case.

The Scottish Trades Union Congress says that the “so-called” living wage is

“simply a cheap gimmick aimed at undermining…a meaningful living wage”

and that

“continuation of the public sector pay gap is…a kick in the teeth for hard-working public sector workers.”

The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations said that the Budget was an attack on the poorest and most vulnerable communities by an “economically illiterate” Chancellor who has admitted that this is not about tackling the deficit, as he said that it was part of his push for a low tax, low welfare society. In SCVO’s view, he was

“demonstrating a cruel disregard for the impact this will have on hundreds of thousands of people’s lives.”

Barnardo’s has stated that renaming the Child Poverty Act 2010 the “life chances Act” sends the message that eliminating child poverty is no longer an aim of this Government. It is clear that the Bill will push more children, families and vulnerable people across Scotland and the UK deeper into poverty. Rebranding child poverty plans as “life chances measures”, and completely removing any legal obligation to meet those targets, only proves how badly this Government are failing our society on welfare. As indicated by the House of Commons Library, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s “State of the Nation” report from October 2014 stated:

“Modelling for the Commission illustrates the scale of the challenge. It projects that—based on current OBR forecasts for employment and wage growth—relative poverty (before housing costs) will rise to 21 per cent by 2020, 11 percentage points above target, and absolute poverty will rise to 24 per cent, even further behind the target of five per cent. This is likely to be an optimistic view as it ignores the impact of the further cuts to welfare benefit entitlements that are pencilled into current plans for deficit reduction in the next Parliament.”

Those plans are no longer pencilled in; they are in black and white for all of us to see. It is crystal clear to me that the Conservatives cannot meet their targets or fulfil their promises to folk across the UK, so instead they will just rebrand and repackage swathes of cuts to make it sound as if we are getting a better deal. It simply will not wash.

Another genius rebranding exercise by the Tories has been the introduction of the so called “living wage”—which, in reality, is a small increase in the minimum wage, up to £7.20 and to £9 by 2020—and the Chancellor has blatantly stolen the terminology used by the Living Wage Foundation that has set the living wage rate at £7.85 outside London and £9.15 in London. Rhys Moore, director of the Living Wage Foundation said:

“Is this really a living wage?...The Living Wage is calculated according to the cost of living whereas the Low Pay Commission calculates a rate according to what the market can bear. Without a change of remit for the Low Pay Commission this is effectively a higher National Minimum Wage and not a Living Wage.”

He went on to say that, to add insult to injury, the current calculation is based on workers receiving tax credits, which are also being cut.

Let us move on to tax credits and universal credit. The four-year freeze starts in 2016 and will affect around 577,000 families in receipt of child benefit in Scotland, and an overlapping 468,000 in receipt of housing benefit. More than a third of a million households in receipt of tax credits will also lose out. The Conservatives claim to be the workers’ party, but that claim could not be further from the truth as they lower the total amount that a household can receive in benefits to £20,000 outside London, and £23,000 in Greater London. In the words of charity Barnardo’s:

“This will significantly reduce the income of some very poor families.”

Worse still, in the Trade Union Bill—yet to be debated by this House—the Government plan to introduce standards for unions when voting for a strike that not even we as politicians are required to meet.

Let us consider the proposals for lone parents and other “responsible carers” in receipt of universal credit. We know that they are not currently subject to “work preparation” requirements until their youngest child reaches the age of three, and they do not have to be available for and look for work until that youngest child reaches five. The Bill reduces the age thresholds for work preparation to two, and for full work-related requirements to three. Let me be clear: the SNP is abjectly opposed to the capping of benefits such as carer’s allowance, child benefit, child tax credits, severe disablement allowance, and widow’s pension. The people who receive those benefits are some of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, and it is abundantly clear that there is no level to which this Conservative Government will not stoop as they attack those vulnerable groups.

Instead of considering how we can properly protect and support folk who have already faced significant challenges in their life, we have a Government who cannot see past reducing a deficit, and will do so at all costs. This is an “at all costs” attack on the sick, the poor, the disabled, the elderly, and the many families who are working and trying their best to get to the end of the month without getting into debt. This Government’s cuts will affect the working poor, so that instead of being supported to better themselves, those in work will be further marginalised and have their benefits cut. Barnardo’s has noted that:

“A lone parent working full time on the minimum wage for 37 hours a week with two young children would lose £1,200 a year as a result of changes introduced from April 2016, even after accounting for the increase in the minimum wage.”

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making an important point. Does she think that all lone parents are able to work 35 hours a week?

[Hannah Bardell]

I believe we must have benefits that are suited to the situation, and the Conservative proposals will not do that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I remind my hon. Friend that we have given local authorities more than £300 million in discretionary housing payments. What they are meant to be doing right now—many of them are doing it, by the way—is finding people the accommodation that they require and supporting them through discretionary payments while they are looking for it. That is why we are saving £1 million a day and £500 million a year.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

A constituent of mine, an older, experienced woman, recently told me that when she was made redundant she got barely any help from our local jobcentre. It was therefore no surprise to me to see recent figures showing that the Work programme is getting a job for only one in eight workers over 50. Who is going to fix that—those who are running the Work programme or Ministers?

[Esther McVey]

The Work programme has proved to be very successful. Some 1.5 million people who are long-term unemployed have been on it, and more than 500,000 of those have got a job. However, if that lady was only recently made unemployed, she would not have been going on the Work programme just then. We have a flexible fund to support people, and we are doing more to help people, extending their working lives.

DWP: Performance

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

But what we have also seen in my constituency is that average wages in Yorkshire and Humber have reduced by £26 a week since the coalition came into government and employment and support allowance claims have increased by 0.9 percentage points during the same period.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

On that previous intervention, does my hon. Friend share my sense of deep frustration that even after the 1980s the Conservatives have failed to learn that the important thing is not a falling claimant count, but the unemployment rate? Although that is thankfully lower, there are loads of other reasons to think that we still have problems in our economy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend said that with such gusto that I do not think I could top it. Employment and enterprise is important to him—at age 26, he set up his own telecommunications company with the aid of a Government enterprise grant, so he knows what he is talking about—and he is helping lots of people in his constituency.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Of the young people the Minister just mentioned who have a job, how many have gone on to work on zero-hours contracts?

[Esther McVey]

As the hon. Lady will know, the number of zero-hours contracts has remained fairly stable since 2000. They are called zero hours or casual hours, and they are used by Liverpool city council and Wirral council, which are Labour run. The worst council for using them is Doncaster.

We are having a full review of zero-hours contracts, and if they are exploitative we will bring about changes. Our report is due in July—something that Labour did not do for 13 years.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend does a lot in his constituency of Tewkesbury with engineering and manufacturing companies. I know that he regards it as vital that more people are involved in manufacturing and science, and that is a view that we all share, which is why we are doing more on apprenticeships—half a million this year—and on advanced apprenticeships. We have also brought together the youth action groups, so the Minister for Civil Society can now lead the way for all Departments and the voluntary and charity sector to work together.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The Minister reels off statistics, but will she help me communicate with young people in Merseyside? What are they supposed to think when they see the figures in the Liverpool Echo today that show that more people have been sanctioned in Merseyside than have found work through her Work programme? What are young people supposed to think?

[Esther McVey]

I do a lot on Merseyside—whether it is with the Merseyside youth entrepreneurship scheme or with young kids and helping to provide them with role models. Supporting people on Merseyside has shaped my career for the past 15 years. Indeed, I grew up there during the 1980s. What we are doing should be looked at in its entirety. We cannot look at sanctions in isolation. This is about the claimant commitment, the extra traineeships since 2011—more than half a million—and the extra apprenticeships. We are doing a lot. I am focusing on youth unemployment. It is going in the right direction, but there is still plenty more work to be done.

Food Banks

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman’s description of the macro-economic picture is not as connected to the micro-economic picture as he may assume. According to volunteers at the food bank in my constituency, they have been told that the need for food banks has been caused by the move from benefits to work. People’s weekly benefits stop and their pay cheques come at the end of the month, which is too far away. I fear that the recovery will not reach all parts of the economy unless we make it do so. Can he tell us what we can do to ensure that that happens?

[Mr Syms]

One of our purposes in introducing universal credit is to make the transition from unemployment to work much easier. The scheme is complicated—we all know that—but I think that it is a worthwhile venture, because anything making employment easier must be a good thing.