Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill

Debate between Anne McLaughlin and Hannah Bardell

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Anne McLaughlin]

Who wants to come in?

[Hannah Bardell]

I thank my hon. Friend for deeming me worthy to be given way to. On contrasting lifestyles, does she share my disappointment and alarm about the fact that we can have legislation that targets some of the poorest people in society, but we cannot find the legislative means to tackle people such as Philip Green who have stolen workers’ pensions but who are happy to keep their own yachts and who are taking away from people at the bottom of our society?

[Anne McLaughlin]

Absolutely. Without wanting to put words in my hon. Friend’s mouth, I wonder whether she is suggesting that there is a bit of political ideology behind all this.

The Bill does the best that we can do, working within the system. The Government cannot really argue with what is proposed, because they claim that they do it anyway. They claim that they already take people’s circumstances into account. If that is the case, they should just agree to the Bill. The hon. Member for Bournemouth West said that he would not support the Bill because my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South had said that she was opposed to sanctions, full stop. I want to know how supporting the Bill is going to end the sanctions regime. It is not; it is going to make the regime a little bit more humane, but there is, sadly, nothing in the Bill that will end the sanctions regime.

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[Anne McLaughlin]

Absolutely. As I said at the start, I feel as though I am banging my head off a brick wall. In fact, I think that that might be a better use of my time.

If we are already doing this, the requirement in the Bill for someone’s caring responsibilities to be taken into account when considering a sanction happens already, does it? Tell that to my constituent Claire, a single parent who was summoned to an interview with the jobcentre on a day the following week at 3 pm, the exact time that her six-year-old gets out of school. She asked whether the meeting could be changed to 3.30. No. Could it be changed to earlier in the day? No. Could it be changed to another day? No, it had to be on that day at 3 o’clock, the time that she needed to pick up her child from school. She said, “Should I leave my child there, or should I take my child out early?” She was told, “We don’t care, as long as you get here, and if you do not get here at 3 o’clock on that day, we are sanctioning you.” Were her caring responsibilities taken into account? No. I do not want to hear that that was an incorrect decision or an isolated case. I am sick of hearing that. It was not an isolated case, because we hear about this all the time. I could talk about it until midnight and I would not get through, such is the number of times I have heard about it.

[Hannah Bardell]

I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous in giving way. When it comes to the system not working, does she agree that we have heard about very many cases and it is quite clear that Conservative Members are not listening? A constituent of mine, who had Parkinson’s and who fell twice coming to my office, had been sanctioned—against the DWP’s own recommendations that people with degenerative diseases should be treated through a paper process and not be subjected to interviews. Twice I wrote to the DWP, but only when I brought his case to this Chamber was it properly dealt with. That is not how the system should work, and the Bill would address that.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Absolutely. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South on proposing this Bill, and I thank her on behalf of many of my constituents. If the Bill is successful, it will provide some protection. If not, it will at least have raised the issue again, and people out there will know that somebody in here cares about what happens to them.

I will start—I say “start,” but I have been going on for quite a while—by offering the treat that the hon. Member for Bournemouth West is looking for by arguing against the entire sanctions regime. I challenge him to respond to my arguments. I saw Government Members being given a sheet of paper with a list of suggested interventions, but I have experience, and lots of it, on my side, so challenge away.

I will argue on three levels. First, there is the financial argument. I will use only factual arguments, and the sanctions regime costs us more to run than it saves—that is before we look at the long-term hidden costs. Secondly, there are the academic arguments. Conditionality in the welfare system does not work. It is not me making that argument; it is academics. I will share their findings, and let us see whether Government Members have actual evidence to the contrary—not opinions, but evidence. Thirdly, I will make the moral argument, and here Government Members can make a counter-argument because we all have a different moral compass—morality can be subjective, a matter of opinion. My opinion, for what it is worth, is that anybody who thinks it is right that we sanction the benefits of people who are already in poverty needs their compass reprogrammed pronto.

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[Anne McLaughlin]

That is absolutely correct, and what does that say about the democracy of this place?

The fact is that most of the respondents in the research were already keen to find work—most people are—and even the practitioners who are imposing the sanctions regime are sceptical about its benefits. As we have already heard, DWP staff are under incredible pressure. When I spoke about the aspirations they have to reach, the hon. Member for Bournemouth West challenged me to provide the name of the whistleblower who told me all about this, and then just hope that they stay in employment. I will not do that, but I will point him to an article on a journalist’s website called “Common Space”, in which Fraser Stewart talks about how he gave up his job and became unemployed because he could not bear to keep up with the targets or aspirations that were set for him. The hon. Gentleman can have a look at that, although I am surprised he does not know about it already.

I was glad to read the research to back up what I have always known, which is that conditionality does not work. I do not think people have to be that bright to see why it does not work to have somebody standing over them telling them, “You must do it”. I wonder how many of the Conservative Members who have spoken today require a stick to be wielded over them for them to go out to find work. [Interruption.] They have the Whips—that is a very good point—but how many of them went out into the world of work and said, “I’m not going to bother doing this”. What makes them so special, because they will all say, “No, no, I always wanted to work”? I was always keen to work, but so are most people. Most people have aspirations.

[Hannah Bardell]

I promise my hon. Friend that I am intervening on her for one last time. Is she aware of this year’s “Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, support and behaviour change” project report? It states that

“the impacts of benefit sanctions are universally reported by welfare service users as profoundly negative.”

It also found that sanctions have pushed some people into committing survival crime. Is not the fact that people in our society are pushed into committing crimes just so that they can survive a shame and a stain on our society?

[Anne McLaughlin]

That is an absolute shame on our society, and it costs more money, because when people commit crimes, we have to detect them and punish criminals.

I want to talk about a friend—[Interruption.] Wheesht! If an hon. Member wants to intervene, they can do so.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Anne McLaughlin and Hannah Bardell

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Hannah Bardell]

I could not agree more.

As I was saying, there was limited support for single parents, and although my mother held a good job in academia, finances were always close to the edge. I recall Lady Thatcher famously saying not long after she left office:

“It is far better to put these children in the hands of a very good religious organisation, and the mother as well, so that they will be brought up with family values.”

She told the audience in the Commonwealth convention centre in Louisville, that the spread of illegitimacy

“devalues our values and our community”.

She said that Governments had made things worse by providing social security benefits for single mothers, and it feels to me as if this Bill and the Conservative proposals are taking us back in time. We have come a long way since the dark days of the Thatcher Government: please do not let us return. All Opposition Members should be uniting against these pernicious Tory cuts—perhaps even a few progressive Government Members will join us to say no to a Second Reading.

Let me turn to the two-child policy. This part of the Bill makes changes to universal credit and tax credits, including a two-child limit for new claims and births after 2017. The Budget documents say that there will be protections in cases of rape and exceptional circumstances such as multiple births, but there are no details in the Bill. The limit will reduce the value of tax credits for future claimants with three or more children. There are currently 50,000 households in Scotland with three or more children receiving tax credits. Many of them are in Livingston and I have heard already from a number of constituents who are deeply worried about the impact that this measure will have on their finances.

To suggest for a moment that a woman who has been raped will have to justify herself to a member of the DWP is as sickening as it is unworkable. I have to hope that this grave error in policy making is a matter that the Conservatives will rethink and completely remove from the Bill. Either it is a deeply insensitive afterthought, or it is a proposal that shows utter disregard for a woman’s privacy and basic human rights.

How on earth can that policy work? What criteria will be applied to women justifying whether or not they have been raped? Will the criteria require a conviction—numbers of which, as we all know, are notoriously low—and what if a woman’s first or second child was the result of a rape? Will she be asked retrospectively to justify herself if she goes on to have a third child? What kind of training will staff have in dealing with women who have been raped? I simply do not want to believe that anyone in this House would want a woman to be subjected to this kind of regime. Asking a woman to relive such an abhorrent crime, simply to get enough money to keep a family going, is surely one of the most ill-conceived policies any Government have ever proposed. We deplore this policy and ask the Government to rethink it as a matter of urgency. As Sandra Horley, the chief executive of domestic violence charity Refuge, said:

“Women experiencing domestic violence are often completely controlled by their partner, including their access to birth control. Some women are also raped and sexually assaulted on a regular basis. Will this tax credit exemption mean vulnerable women who have been raped are forced to re-live their ordeal to prove they deserve support?”

We need detail and a rethink on this policy urgently. Similarly, for people who have had multiple births, the details and parameters of this policy are not clear. Much more clarification is required.

I will turn now to other aspects of the Bill, including the abolition of the employment and support allowance work-related activity component. Under the Bill, employment and support allowance for claimants in the work-related activity group will see their payments reduced to jobseeker’s allowance rates for new claims from April 2017. People affected are therefore set to lose up to £1,500 a year under current rules.

My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) described eloquently the pernicious nature of the changes to housing benefit for young people when she highlighted the fact she was now the only 20-year-old in the country the Chancellor would be helping with her housing bill. We now know that, from April 2017, those out of work aged 18 to 21 making new claims to universal credit will no longer be entitled to the housing element.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Listening to my hon. Friend talk about women having to prove they have been raped and about 18 to 21-year-olds having to move back in with their parents when housing benefit is removed reminds me of when I was a welfare rights officer in the late ’80s and the Tory Government decided that 16 and 17-year-olds were no longer entitled to any benefits unless they had exceptional reasons. I had to advise a frightened 17-year-old girl sitting in front of me that, yes, if she wanted to stay in her own not very nice house, which was at least safe, she would have to tell a stranger that her dad regularly raped her. What does my hon. Friend think of progress under Tory Governments?

[Hannah Bardell]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. It is very clear from her experiences that these cuts are pernicious and unfounded, and we must, must oppose them.

The Scottish Government are protecting people from Westminster cuts. To be properly supported to live a full and meaningful life, be that in employment or otherwise, we have to look at a different way of doing things. In Scotland, the Scottish National party Government are providing £104 million in 2015-16 to protect as many people as possible from the damaging impact of the welfare reforms imposed so far by Westminster. That includes £35 million to mitigate the bedroom tax and the council tax reduction scheme, which has protected 500,000 Scots.