Oral Answers to Questions

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Actually, I do not, and by the way I think the hon. Lady’s figures are not correct. I gave her higher figures even for last December. The rationale for the policy was fairness. The previous Government left us with the situation where some on housing benefit in the private sector were not allowed to occupy houses that had extra rooms, so balancing that is fair. Getting housing benefit spending under control after it nearly doubled in cash terms under the previous Government, and helping those living in overcrowded accommodation while we build more houses, giving them a chance to move into houses where they can fit their families—that is decent and fair.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Given that, according to recent surveys by social landlords, more than half the people impacted by the bedroom tax are now in arrears, what advice would the Secretary of State give those social landlords, particularly housing associations, about the unsustainable financial position they now find themselves in?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Of course, we always keep in close contact with social landlords to ensure that they do what they are meant to do and do not overcharge. The Homes and Communities Agency’s latest figures show that arrears have fallen in the same period from last year and rent collection among housing associations is stable at around 98%, so I think that it is safe to assume that the under-occupancy penalty has had little effect on housing association arrears.

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform (Disabled People)

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

I am delighted to be called, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I am not going to shut up. The hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and I serve on the Public Accounts Committee, so she knows that neither of us are prone to shutting up when the issues are important.

I agree with the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who has just left, that a bipartisan approach has been the best way to move the agenda forward for disabled people. We have to be careful, however, not to rewrite history. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 was actually a hard-fought campaign. My right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) was one of the champions of that debate. I give credit, as I have on more than one occasion, to the Leader of the House, who, in the teeth of opposition from the Conservative party and with the support of the then Prime Minister, John Major, helped to manage this House to a position where it accepted the claims and the campaigns of disabled people, including the campaign conducted by my right hon. Friend. So we should not rewrite history, but there has previously been a bipartisan approach.

The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), was part of that when he was my shadow and accepted the basic tenets of the 2005 report published by the Prime Minister’s strategy unit on improving the lives of disabled people. That report challenged us all to examine how we accepted our responsibilities to break down the barriers preventing disabled people from fulfilling their potential in education and employment, and to encourage them to make an active contribution to their local community. Work was the cornerstone of that new agenda. But a statement of a right to work does not in itself deliver the right to work, and we need to be clear that the right to work for disabled people has been further undermined by the failure of this Government’s employment programmes to deliver the necessary support for disabled people. They can brush it off, but the Work programme is seen by many disabled people as inflexible, baffling and little more than going through the motions.

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her kind remarks. Is she aware that only a few weeks ago Citizens Advice Scotland published a compelling document detailing case study after case study on the issues she is raising? Does she agree that that is important to this debate?

[Mrs McGuire]

Let me hark back to the comments made by the hon. Member for Thurrock and say that it is not some weird conspiracy of charities, Labour politicians and disabled people that is creating the environment where people are suffering because of the ways in which the Government have carried forward their employment programme.

I congratulate our two Labour Front Benchers today, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), because they have recently put on the record how the Labour party would devolve responsibility for some of the support for disabled people, taking a new approach and ensuring that it is more locally based within the employment market. We need to ensure that the new approach of our party is not top-down; if we do not involve disabled people in the planning and development of programmes that have an impact on their lives, we will have lost our way. I am sure that we will take forward that particular model of involvement of disabled people.

The Minister made great play of the talk about cynicism. May I say that disabled people have for the past four years been the subject of the most cynical campaign in modern social political history? They have been subject to a campaign that vilified them from the beginning. It started with a premise that disability benefits were the subject of widespread fraud and that, by definition, disabled people were cheating the system. It progressed by plucking an arbitrary figure—some 600,000—out of the air and saying those people would lose their benefits. It ended with a mess, where disabled people no longer know what benefits they will get, how long it will take to get a decision and whether they can apply in the first place. The Minister is a nice person but it takes some brass neck to come to this House, acknowledge there is a problem, forget that the Government created the backlog and then try to take the credit for reducing the very backlog that their policies have made happen. I hope that he will reflect on what he said.

Let me deal briefly with Lord Freud’s comments, because they show just how much we have lost in the past four years. The fact that the Government’s Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform thought that some disabled people could work for £2 an hour was not just a “mis-speak” but was more attributable to a mindset. No amount of apology from the noble Lord could disguise the fact that not only did he “mis-speak”, but his comments challenged a vision that disabled people thought they had agreed with us: that they can work where possible and they should be treated equally in that regard. If we start to finesse the payment for work, where will this stop? A minimum wage is a minimum wage is a minimum wage; the Government cannot start to segment it.

I felt desperately sad when I read Lord Freud’s comments. I want to say to him that rights cannot be traded. They are not given but are intrinsic to us all as members of a democratic society. Lord Freud showed by his crass “mis-speaking” that he has failed to understand that, and, as such, he should have had the integrity to resign. As he failed to do that, the Prime Minister definitely should dismiss him.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

DWP: Performance

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), but I must tell him that I think I speak for all Opposition Members when I say that I rather resent his suggestion that any criticisms of the inefficiencies of the Secretary of State’s Department are laid at the door of hard-working civil servants. Let me also tell him that when he next makes assertions about what people who work in jobcentres actually want, he might wish to prove those assertions rather than simply stating that they are in favour of more reforms and more sanctions.

The DWP touches all our lives at some point. I think that when we talk about welfare, we should bear it in mind that welfare payments—that generic term that we trot out so easily—also include our pension system. The Minister may correct me if I am wrong, but I suspect that about 54% of our welfare payments are pensioner payments. We should never forget that.

Today’s debate results from the fact that a Government Department has failed miserably to achieve its objectives, namely reform of our welfare system, a Work programme that works for people, and the reform of disability payments. I agree with what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), the Chair of the Select Committee—who, on cue, has just entered the Chamber. The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) suggested that the Conservatives were the only party that was in favour of welfare reform. Nothing could be further from the truth. What we did object to—

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

rose—

[Mrs McGuire]

Will the hon. Gentleman let me finish my sentence? I had only got as far as a comma.

The hon. Gentleman should realise that, in fact, we had a consensus on welfare reform. Indeed, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) mentioned that we had worked together in the last Parliament. We are now debating a reform programme that is not about consensus—it is not about talking to other people. It is the brainchild of the Secretary of State. He went at it with zeal, and he was not prepared to accept that there were any ways in which he ought to finesse its implementation. We cannot simply dismiss the 700,000 people who are waiting for WCA as somehow a blip or a glitch in the system. Those are individuals who, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) said very powerfully, find themselves quite literally without money on many days of the week; people who find themselves in the humiliating position, as they see it, of having to go to get food from friends, family and food banks.

We have PIP now. I think the Minister deserves just a little credit for PIP and I have said that to him before. He has stalled the implementation, however, and I hope that at the end of this debate he will tell us exactly what the waiting times are now, because they have been bandied around but I have not seen any evidence for them.

We cannot just ignore what other organisations are saying. The Public Accounts Committee says the DWP has “yet to achieve” savings and it has an “unacceptable level of service” with

“uncertainty, stress and financial costs for claimants”.

Even the DWP’s own annual report last week said:

“The volume of assessments undertaken by providers on both contracts has fallen consistently below”

the expected demand.

We have called over many months now for a cumulative impact assessment of the impact of the policies on disabled people. What we have here is a cumulative disaster area of a ministerial team, which introduced major change projects without suitable testing. The objective assessments have clearly identified that. Ministers continued to advise this House that everything was, and was going to be, hunky-dory. They have sought to camouflage all the failures of their Department. We now even have a new technical term that we did not know we had: reset. Actually, that is a term for a new project; the Secretary of State ought to admit that.

We have a Secretary of State who has stretched credibility on universal credit when he has said time after time that it is on budget and on time. I hate to disillusion the Secretary of State, but when I asked the chief executive of the Major Projects Authority whether universal credit was on budget and on time, he might have said certain words, but his body language gave a whole different interpretation of what he said, and the Secretary of State should look at that evidence in the PAC record.

This ministerial team is living in a virtual world in Caxton house. It is not the same world most of us—even the Ministers’ own Back Benchers—have said they live in, and, frankly, if the Secretary of State does not get a grip on the chaos within his Department in working with people, one has to ask, “Why is he still in his job?”

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The first and principal point is that this programme is saving over £1 million a day for hard-pressed taxpayers, many of whom, as my hon. Friend said, cannot afford a spare room themselves but were paying taxes to subsidise those who had spare rooms. The second point is that over 30,000 people who were once in overcrowded accommodation, left behind by Labour in terrible conditions, are now moving into better houses. This programme is a success. The Opposition did nothing about those people the whole time they were in government.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

In my constituency the waiting time for PIP assessments is now 26 weeks. [Interruption.] After further investigation, I discovered that that is because of a lack of suitable accommodation in which to carry out assessments. Why was a contract signed with Atos when there were no suitable premises in my constituency in which to carry out PIP assessments?

Welfare Reform (Sick and Disabled People)

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

That is exactly right. There are three consequences from what is happening. First, disabled people are being forced more and more to rely and depend on care from their own family members, who are themselves, to be frank, overstretched in providing that care, especially as local authority respite care is now being cut back so dramatically. Startlingly, as we found in a previous debate, a large number of these carers are children caring for their parents. A year-long investigation by Carers UK confirmed that carers, who save this country an estimated £119 billion a year in care costs, are about to lose £1 billion in benefit cuts.

Secondly, the care needs of many disabled people are simply not being met. A recent inquiry by the all-party groups on local government and on disability found from the evidence they took that four in 10 disabled people are failing to have their basic social care needs—which my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) has mentioned—met.

Thirdly, as my hon. Friend has said, the withdrawal of social care and support services is cutting many people off from any form of social contact with the outside world. Many are driven back into their homes, while others are forced out of them, losing all their independence, and into residential care or even hospital care as a result.



Alongside cuts to social care, there are the mounting cuts in welfare benefits. Like most hon. Members, the vast majority of disabled people whom I have met are, like any other employed person, desperate to work and support their family with a regular wage. For some, the tragedy is that their disability is so severe that they will never be able to work and will have to rely on welfare benefits to ensure that they do not live in poverty, while others need positive and sensitive practical support to help them to get back into work or to work in the first place.

The system introduced during the past six years to support people in securing work or the appropriate benefits could not have been better designed to undermine disabled people’s ability to get into work or receive the appropriate benefits to assist them. The previous Government started the process of reassessing all those on incapacity benefit to see whether they could be assisted back into work, and if not, to ensure that they had the right level of financial support. They introduced the work capability assessment, and brought in Atos to implement it. That might have been well intentioned in theory, but in practice, thousands of disabled people have been caused untold suffering, humiliation, stress and, at times, absolute despair.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that the introduction of the work capability assessment under our Government was phased? Part of the distress he mentions was due to the fact that the contract was renegotiated to go for a big bang of assessments and reassessments of everyone on incapacity benefit.

[John McDonnell]

The work capability assessment was flawed from the start. It stemmed from the work of the American insurance company Unum, and the so-called biopsychosocial model of disability assessment. That was exposed as an invention by the insurance companies simply to avoid paying out for claims. My right hon. Friend is, however, absolutely right that Atos was brought in and then given a contract to churn through large numbers of assessments very rapidly—as fast as possible. The staff employed in order to achieve that often had minimal medical or professional qualifications, and their expertise or experience was often totally unrelated to the condition or disability of the people they assessed.

Assessments largely disregarded people’s previous diagnosis, prognosis or even life expectancy. The recent “Panorama” programme “Disabled or Faking It?” exposed the scandal of seriously ill patients—people diagnosed with life-threatening conditions such as heart failure or end-stage emphysema—being found fit for work. The so-called descriptors, or criteria, on which assessments are based bear no relation to the potential employment available, take little account of fluctuating conditions and are particularly unresponsive to appreciating someone’s mental health issues.

According to all the Department for Work and Pensions figures, the appeals roll in—on 40% of decisions—and most appeals are now successful. The test has been condemned by the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing. The report by the president of the appeals tribunal to the Government denounced the test as

“failing to coincide with reality”.

Even when someone wins their appeal, there can be a lengthy wait before their benefits are reinstated. In one period, 37,000 people were waiting up to a year to receive benefits after they had won their appeal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans). This is not the first time that the House has called for an assessment of the cumulative impact of welfare reforms on disabled people, but this time it is being called for by not only disability organisations and the official Opposition, but by the more than 100,000 people who signed the War on Welfare petition. Like others in this House, I encourage and congratulate the people who signed it, and who made us bring this issue to the Floor of the House.

I recognise, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), that this is probably an historic occasion: it is the first time that disabled people have framed the agenda in this House. I hope that we can respect that, regardless of our views.

I recognise some of the good work that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), is trying to do, including with employers, to fulfil potential. His heart is probably—I was going to give a caveat, but I will not: his heart is in the right place. The difficulty that we all have is not with his heart, but with his and his Government’s proposals for welfare reform.

It is with sadness that I note that we are yet again asking for a cumulative impact assessment that the Government should have undertaken when they introduced their welfare reform package. Since then, there has been a pretty crude campaign of vilification of those in receipt of disability benefits. The Government have attempted to conflate the tiny proportion of claimants who defraud the system, with whom none of us in this House have any truck, with others. The hon. Member for Weaver Vale fell into that trap when he talked about fraud and error. Those are two completely different things. The Government have conflated those attempting to defraud the system with those legitimately in receipt of a range of benefits. As we all know in this House, that has resulted in an increase in disability hate crime.

I also feel sadness because the Prime Minister made the following commitment in 2010:

“people who are sick, who are vulnerable, the elderly—I want you to know that we will always look after you”.

He even assured us that cuts would be made in a fair way, and that we would ask

“those on higher incomes to shoulder more of the burden than those on lower incomes.”

Yet the reality is that disabled people lose nine times more than most others, according to the Centre for Welfare Reform, and those disabled people with greater needs sometimes lose up to 19 times more than other people.

Opposition Members are not against welfare reform; indeed, as many have pointed out today, we started it when in government. In opposition, we have offered on more than one occasion to work with the Government in a consensual way to try to find a way forward. I know from conversations with disabled people that they are not against welfare reform, but they are against what has happened over the past three years, because the welfare package fails on various counts.

The Prime Minister’s comments about looking after the most vulnerable run counter to the fact that the Government’s welfare package disproportionately affects disabled people, who are hit simultaneously by various changes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) pointed out. There is the employment and support allowance, universal credit, the bedroom tax, the benefit cap, the change from the disability living allowance to the personal independence payment, and the changes in social care provision that others have pointed out.

I want to turn briefly to PIP, because we were told that it would help the most severely disabled people. If that had been the outcome of the policy change, perhaps we could have understood it, but the Government started with a number and framed a policy around that number. The National Audit Office report published this morning is devastating; it shows that the Government went into a reform of benefits that affects the most disabled in our community without knowing where they were going, or how they would implement the reform. According to the report, on the first day of the claims process, the Government met their target, but when we get to the claims being passed to the assessment provider, that information is not recorded. The expectation is that assessments will be completed in 42 days, but 64 days is what is actually being delivered. Worst of all, the terminally ill—those who have a life expectancy of no more than six months—are having to wait 28 days. The Minister may tell me that that has changed, and I hope that it has, but it seems that a sixth of those people’s total lifespan will be used up while they are in the bureaucratic morass of the PIP assessment.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

My right hon. Friend has described the effects of the Welfare Reform Act 2012; is she concerned that it was cast in a way that gives the Government scope, without the need for further primary legislation, to make serious changes to terms and interpretations relating to the benefits that we are talking about, including PIP? With the changes that the Chancellor is promising in relation to annually managed expenditure, there will in future be more times when a number is fixed on, and people are squeezed off benefit to reach it.

[Mrs McGuire]

Yes. I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, and I am delighted that he has made his point.

The Minister got quite agitated just now. I hope that he will give us some facts and figures about the implementation of PIP, because there has been a wall of silence. We all know what is happening in our constituencies, but we are accused of giving anecdotal evidence; he is in a position to give us the real evidence.

Since 2010, it obviously has not mattered what was said to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions about his welfare reforms. He has become a victim of his rhetoric and is obsessed by the idea of his legacy. We used to have beneficiaries of the social security system; now many people feel that they are victims of that system. I ask the Secretary of State to put his cumulative impact assessment where his reforms are. I say to him, “Do the assessment, and prove me and 100,000 people out there totally wrong, if you have the courage.” I say categorically that if he will not or cannot do that, we are entitled to ask why he is still in his job.

Housing Benefit

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming]

I can talk about Birmingham better than I can about Oldham. In Birmingham, by mid-January roughly a quarter of people in council properties had ceased paying extra rent for a spare room due to changed circumstances—they might have found family members to join them or have downsized. Some 521 households wanted to transfer, but sadly, 380 had arrears, and for some reason the council was blocking them from transferring. I think that that is appalling. Let us suppose somebody is happy to downsize to a flat such as the one I mentioned a moment ago. There may be a four-person family in a one-bedroom flat, and 380 people who want to downsize because of having to pay for the spare room, but the council is blocking that because of arrears. I am told that it is sorting that out, but I still see loads of people in overcrowded situations. I am sure that the situation is similar in Oldham, although I obviously do not have the same figures. I do, however, have figures for discretionary housing payments.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Following the advice of the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), I have checked HomeSwapper in the Birmingham area. I have got to page 20 and I found only five one-bedroom houses. Where are the places for people to downsize to in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency?

[John Hemming]

I got another one today. They may not be on that website, but they do exist—[Interruption.] They do exist; I have them in my casework files. I have three people living in a council bedsit, and quite a few cases of four people living in a one-bedroom flat. I have written about those cases to the council. I accept that they may not be on a website—I do not deny that—but they do exist. People really do have problems. They have shown me photographs of how they live in overcrowded situations.

Universal Credit

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr Robertson, your voice is substantially louder than that of your hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies). I do not wish to be unkind, but it is not always quite as mellifluous.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

On 11 September 2012, the Secretary of State said:

“For what it is worth, I take absolute, direct and close interest in every single part of the IT development.”—[Official Report, 11 September 2012; Vol. 550, c. 154.]

He said he held meetings and briefings, and worked on it at weekends from his box. He also said,

“we are testing stuff”—

I think that is a technical term—

“pretty much the whole time.”—[Official Report, 11 September 2012; Vol. 550, c. 157.]

Given that 15 months ago he was taking such a personal interest in that, why is he still in his job and facing this shambles today?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Because back in 2011-12, as a result of that work, I decided there were problems in the way the system was being developed, so I intervened and brought in a group of people from outside to look at it. They agreed with me and we have since reset the programme. The truth is that Labour never did any of that when in government, and the right hon. Lady needs to ask herself, why not?

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

How long does the Minister anticipate that post offices will have to wait before they are in a position to take applications for universal credit?

[Steve Webb]

Just to be clear, people can receive universal credit into an account accessible at a post office already. Universal credit obviously has an online application process, so if there is access to the internet at local post offices, that can be done already.

Housing Benefit

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alasdair McDonnell (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

I rise to support the motion, but before I do so, I would like to express my deep appreciation to all hon. Members who have expressed their condolences on the death of Eddie McGrady; their sympathy is deeply appreciated, and I thank them for it.

The bedroom tax is a pernicious and cruel tax that is causing untold hardship to the most vulnerable in our society. This crude and ill-thought-out levy is perhaps the least palatable part of the Government’s welfare reform programme. Only parties so detached from the lives and struggles of ordinary people could be so heartless as to inflict this tax, which is causing so much hurt to people whose only crime seems to be that they cannot afford to buy their own home. The fact that the Government—or, more correctly perhaps, the Deputy Prime Minister—have been dragged kicking and screaming into undertaking independent research into the impact of it all tells its own story; in his heart, he must know that this tax is wrong.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

While recognising that the Deputy Prime Minister has been dragged kicking and screaming into this, does the hon. Gentleman find it regrettable that the review of the bedroom tax will not come through until 2015?

[Dr McDonnell]

Yes, I do, and I am deeply concerned about that. However, we do not need any more research to tell us that this tax is wrong and that it will inflict an inordinate degree of hardship that shames us all, and the Government in particular. Those who are suffering from the impact of this tax—they are some of the very weakest in our society—do not want research on how it will affect them; they want these cruel deductions in housing benefit stopped, and stopped now.

I represent a constituency in Northern Ireland where the bedroom tax has not yet been introduced, and my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Assembly and I are fighting tooth and nail to prevent it from happening. That is because more than 32,500 households in Northern Ireland are bracing themselves for the pain and suffering this tax would cause. They look at what is happening on this side of the Irish sea and they are deeply fearful. A couple of aspects of this bedroom tax make it an even crazier proposition for us in Northern Ireland: we quite simply do not have the required housing stock for people to downsize, and the stock we do have is, sadly, segregated.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

Having sat through 90 minutes of a Westminster Hall debate last week ostensibly on housing supply, where housing supply was barely mentioned, I am not surprised that housing benefit has barely been mentioned in today’s debate. We have had the same old stories as we heard last week and in previous weeks trotted out yet again. The Labour party is still fiscally incoherent and still policy incoherent.

Thirteen years of Labour created the problem. For 13 years, the Labour Government did nothing about it. They created the perfect storm of insufficient house building, record overcrowding and housing benefit out of control. This is a Labour problem and even a Labour solution, as we heard earlier today.

[Mrs McGuire]

Is it the Government’s case, then, that they inherited a bad situation and have set about making it worse?

[Mike Freer]

No. The crux of the matter is that we inherited a bad situation and we are setting about putting it right. That is what this is about. At least the Labour housing spokesman on the London assembly had the honesty to stand up and say that the Labour party got it wrong and that it should apologise, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) mentioned. He also pointed out that every Conservative Government have built more social housing than any Labour Government in recent history. Even in Mrs Thatcher’s last year, the then Government built more social housing than was built in all 13 years of the Labour Government, so we do not need lectures on housing supply and social housing from the Opposition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Evans]

There is an element of that in various communities. In my area, people like to live within their own communities. I accept that. The problem is not straightforward, but it is not insurmountable either. People can swap homes within local communities, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman that that is a problem. The problem is not insurmountable for good local housing trusts or local authorities. It might not happen overnight, but with a little bit of creative thinking, moves can be accommodated—people can downsize and upsize.

[Mrs McGuire]

The hon. Gentleman accepts that the situation cannot be changed overnight, but does he believe it is fair that people should be caught in the trap of having to pay the bedroom tax? He is contradicting his own argument.

[Graham Evans]

I am sorry I gave way to the right hon. Lady.

I want to make one final point. Opposition Members have had nothing to say about someone earning £140,000 a year who uses social housing, not least because the person in question is Bob Crow, the leader of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers.

Unless we reassess ongoing housing needs, we will be unable to support those who need it the most. The changes need to happen, and it is important that they happen now, to restore fairness to the social housing sector in line with the private sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ellwood]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. I cannot accept that a doubling of housing benefit to £21 billion is accounted for by the private sector alone. There are other aspects, such as the type of housing we are building. We were building the wrong type of houses—60% of new houses built needed to be for single occupancy, but only 30% were. That is Labour’s legacy. It raises the fundamental question of today’s debate: in these financially tough times, should those on housing benefit be allowed to stay in accommodation with more bedrooms than they really need? This Government say no and Labour says yes, even though it said no in 2008 when we had exactly the same debate on private sector housing, proving that a little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.

[Mrs McGuire]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Ellwood]

Very briefly; we are eating into other Members’ time.

[Mrs McGuire]

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was in the Chamber for the earlier clarification, given by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), that the local housing allowance was not retrospective. This tax is retrospective and it penalises people for not changing their circumstances.

[Mr Ellwood]

I welcome the hon. Lady to the debate. It is clear that Labour still has not learned from its mistakes. In the last eight years of government, Labour lived beyond its means. In 2002-03, it spent £26 billion beyond its means. Four years later that rose to £33 billion. In its final year of office, the deficit rose to £156 billion. That always accumulates, which means that by 2010 when Labour departed office we had a debt of more than three quarters of a trillion pounds. Where are these benefits that Opposition Members endorse? Where will that money come from? To date, Labour has refused to support a single reform to the benefit system put forward by the Government. Aside from failing to recognise, first, the need for reform of our complex system, and secondly, the consequences to society in promoting a something-for-nothing culture, Labour has voted against £83 billion-worth of welfare savings introduced by the Government, proving that it has yet to learn the lessons of the past.

Labour owes the taxpayer an explanation as to how it would afford to keep its complex, costly and broken benefit system in place. The challenge is simple. Thanks to the housing shortage, created under Labour, some 400,000 people are in overcrowded housing. Yet there are almost 1 million spare rooms throughout the UK paid for by the taxpayer at a cost of around £0.5 billion a year. This policy better matches our housing stock, but also protects the most vulnerable, such as pensioners, those in foster care, disabled children and those requiring overnight care. They are all exempt, as indeed are those who have served in the armed forces.

Those affected by the policy, as others have made clear, who are living in larger than necessary housing have four choices. First, they can participate in a house swap scheme, which has not really been embraced by all councils. Secondly, they can pay the reduction in housing benefit, which equates to about £14 a week for a room. Thirdly, they can sub-let that room. Finally, they could apply for the hardship scheme, and a couple examples have been given of that. I am pleased to hear the announcement today that if councils run out of that hardship funding, they can apply for more. That is a message that needs to be sent from both sides of the House, to ensure that councils do not run out of this important support.

The policy already exists in the private sector, introduced, as I say, by Labour in 2008. I welcome this policy and the debate, which I hope will help Labour Members to recognise how inaccurate and misleading some of their comments have been. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) is in her place. I have a lot of respect for her, but she spoke eloquently about a council home being a home for life. I cannot agree with that analysis. A council home should be there as a method of support for those trying to get on in life and for those in a difficult period of their life. It should not just be given to somebody as a gift, early on in their lives, never to move away from. That is the distinct difference between the two sides of the House, on which we will have to agree to disagree.

I welcome the policy and the debate, and I look forward to the Minister clarifying some of the many points that have been made by Members on both sides of the Chamber.

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[John Hemming]

When I am down to two minutes, I will take interventions.

The Labour party in government recognised that there was a problem with pressure on housing. We cannot suddenly magic up 1 million more rooms overnight. The reason there was not a lot of pain when the local housing allowance was introduced is that it did not affect anyone who was already on housing benefit; it only affected new claims. The hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) was very good on that point. To be fair, if we applied the same approach now, or had done so back in April, so that this did not affect anyone until they got a new tenancy, nobody would really bother about it. The problem with that is that we have a deficit. [Interruption.] Labour Members seem to forget the deficit, but we need to deal with these issues. However, we have found £180 million of the £500 million savings, so for over a third of people this need have no effect. To get my support, the Government will have to deliver more on discretionary housing payments, because that is the area I am concerned about.

[Mrs McGuire]

Let me deal with the consultation document. I shall quote from Hansard:

“Yes, it was in the consultation document, but we listened to the consultation responses and recognised that it would be inappropriate to roll it into the social housing sector.”––[Official Report, Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, 2 November 2006; c. 453.]

That was the response of the Minister in the debates on the Welfare Reform Bill to which the hon. Gentleman is referring. The reason I know it was said and can confirm it is that I said it.

Disabled People

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I was mindful that we were talking about disability, but I wanted, at the beginning of my speech, to say that the Government were doing the right thing with the spare room subsidy.

When the disability living allowance was introduced in 1992, the number of recipients was one third of what it is today; the number of people has tripled in 20 years. That does not reflect the changing work environment in Great Britain.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that since 1992 the lives of disabled people have been transformed? In 1992, the expectation was that most disabled people would live in residential care as they got older, but now people are living in the community. Furthermore, the working-age increase has not been as dramatic as Ministers would like us to believe.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I accept that society has changed since 1992, but there has been a marked increase in costs. We cannot pretend, like Labour, that there is not an issue. As the shadow Secretary of State said, we need to have reform; the problem is that too many Opposition Members do not understand what that reform entails. To me, reform means directing funds to the people who are most vulnerable and who most need it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

First, I thank all the Members who have contributed to today’s Opposition day debate. I particularly thank my colleagues who have spoken. My hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) highlighted yet again some of the difficulties related to the work capability assessment and Atos, as he consistently has for many months. I pay particular tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke), a former shadow spokesperson on disability issues. He bears the scars of trying to get the first Disability Discrimination Act through the House in the teeth of many years of consistent opposition from the then Government. He stands well regarded among many disabled people for the challenges that he took up on their behalf.

I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell) and for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) and my hon. Friends the Members for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) and for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore).

I have highlighted my right hon. and hon. Friends’ contributions, and once again we have seen a certain level of inactivity and disregard among Government Members for debates on disability issues. Three Members have spoken from the Government Benches, and I will come to their comments, but those of us who have attended these debates over the past year or so will recognise that today’s poor turnout and low number of contributions from Government Members is not unusual. That is either because of inactivity, or because they just could not care, or—maybe I will be generous—because they are so embarrassed that they cannot come and defend their own Government’s policies in this Chamber or Westminster Hall.

The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), will know that this is not the first time that Members have asked for a cumulative impact assessment on how Government changes are affecting disabled people. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, who unfortunately is not in his place at the moment, secured a debate on the matter in December.

We have found out one or two interesting facts today. We now have a Minister of State, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), who refuses to meet Members of Parliament unless he has set down the conditions beforehand. Frankly, that is pretty unheard of. I have never come across a Minister who wants the terms of reference—the “positive arguments”, as he put it—before he engages in a discussion. Surely a Minister who is advocating a policy should be prepared to discuss it with Members and representatives of their constituents in private conversation. [Interruption.] No, I say to the Minister that if he wants to be seen as a good, listening Minister, he needs to change his style and start to meet Members of Parliament.

We have heard from colleagues from all over the country. The debate was prompted by—

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs McGuire]

No, the hon. Lady has not been in the Chamber all day. [Interruption.] She has been attending a Select Committee. Forgive me, but I still will not take her intervention. The hon. Lady was not here when the Minister made his comment—

[Jane Ellison]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs McGuire]

I will not be sidetracked.

We have seen the number of people who signed Pat’s petition and the WOW petition. The Government’s response to the WOW petition—that they are limited in what cumulative analysis they are able to undertake because of the complexity of the modelling required—is revealing. There are organisations with limited resources that can put together a reasonable cumulative impact assessment. The Minister of State and the Under-Secretary with responsibility for the disabled have a range of experts they can bring to the fore to put together a cumulative impact assessment. Frankly, some of the excuses we have heard today give us an indication of why they do not want to do that.

I hope I am wrong, but the Under-Secretary will no doubt give us two justifications: that Labour did not undertake an assessment; and that it is impossible to do it. The previous Labour Government did not do it because they did not—no previous Government have—put together such a torrent of changes that will impact on the lives of disabled people. [Interruption.] If the Minister of State is so clear that they are positive changes, why is he running away from a cumulative impact assessment? He undermined the Government case on the impossibility of doing an assessment when he answered my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden). He said that cumulative impacts are a coalition initiative. Where is the initiative? If he is parading on 4 July that it is a coalition initiative, what has happened to it between 4 July and 9 July? Where has it gone? It has disappeared into the ether like some of his words this afternoon.

What we have heard today is the torrent of change, from the bedroom tax that will not provide an extra bedroom to accommodate equipment a disabled child might need, the families of disabled children who will be £1,300 per year less well off than they were under the old system, to the changes in ESA and the abolition of DLA, with no recognition that even those who are not “the most severely disabled”—the words the Minister will always use—still have additional costs because of their disability.

The hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) said that he was angry. I was sorely disappointed by his contribution, because he attempted to paint the people who want to talk about a cumulative impact assessment as extremists. I hope he is not saying that Disability Rights UK, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Royal National Institute of Blind People, Mind, Scope, Leonard Cheshire Disability and Carers UK among others, including tens of thousands of people who signed Pat’s petition, are extremists.

[Paul Maynard]

Will the right hon. Lady answer the question her colleague could not answer earlier? Does she believe it is extreme to try to close every special school and every day care centre? Does she not regard that as extreme?

[Mrs McGuire]

With the greatest respect, the hon. Gentleman attempted to put everybody who has asked for a cumulative impact assessment into an extremist box. If he wants to debate exclusive and mainstream education, I suggest we have a debate on that. There are differing opinions, but disagreeing with him does not make someone an extremist. [Interruption.] I make an exception for the Secretary of State; there’s an extremist, on certain issues, if ever there was one! I ask him, is the Children’s Commissioner, who released a report only last month, an extremist? She said that

“families with disabled children are hit harder by the cuts under all disability definitions”.

It is not extremists saying this; it is not even just Opposition Members—a whole swathe of people are saying it.

This is not just about welfare benefits, and on that I almost agree with the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys: this is not about putting disabled people into a benefits box. I agree that the social model is the right model for disability, but we cannot have a social model if people do not know whether they can have a spare bedroom for their wheelchair or if they do not have enough food on the table because money is being taken from them. [Interruption.] I do not know if the Secretary of State is contributing to the debate or just chuntering from the Front Bench. The DWP press office did not do Ministers any credit when it said:

“There’s a lot of alarmist stories about our welfare reforms but the truth is this Government is absolutely committed to supporting disabled people”.

It might look like that from the top of Caxton house, but it does not feel like it in the real world, as some of the testimonies we have heard today verify.

This country has signed up to and ratified the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, which I was delighted my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth raised. Is the Minister truly confident that such an onslaught against disabled people is consistent with our responsibilities under the convention, particularly article 19?

I wish to make a genuine offer to the Government that does not ask for anything more than we would expect from any Government: a true and accurate assessment of what their policies mean for the people they govern. We are not asking for coalition Members to vote against any major policy—although I was delighted to hear the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) say he had strong reservations about certain aspects of the policy—and we are not even asking the Minister or her colleagues to overturn any decisions they have made; we are asking why, if Ministers and coalition Members are so confident that their policies across benefits, social care, access to legal aid and independent living are right, the Government do not do what they should have done months ago and make use of the fantastic policy and analytical capacity in the DWP and the civil service. If it does nothing else, it might help the Prime Minister, who gave a wrong answer this afternoon over the impact of the overnight exemption from the bedroom tax on the families of disabled children. It might help him to understand his own policies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

I have said that I will not be giving way to the right hon. Gentleman, because he spoke rubbish for hours. We will go to—[Interruption.] Crikey! Temper, temper!

The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) asked various questions about the work capability assessment and Atos. I really do not get how Labour Members can forget that they introduced it in 2008 or that they gave the contract to Atos until 2015.

[Mrs McGuire]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. We will have one Member stood at the Dispatch Box, not two.