Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I say to my hon. and highly informed Friend that it is important for us to understand what this is all about. Colleagues on either side of the House should attend centres where universal credit has been rolled out. They will hear from the advisers that we are beginning to see a real change in culture among those who are claiming benefit and those who are delivering it. All the centres that I have visited believe that this is improving the situation for claimants, and it makes life a lot easier and a lot more efficient for advisers in jobcentres.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Would that the Secretary of State were as informative as the Speaker. The answer to the question on the Order Paper—in other words, how many people are on universal credit—is 3,200. Bearing in mind that so far universal credit has cost £612 million, that is £191,250 per person, which does not compare very well with the £6,500 per person that was mentioned for the future jobs fund. It seems that the Prime Minister was right when it comes to Government pet projects: money is no object. When will the Secretary of State allow the Opposition direct access to his officials so that we can sort out his mess?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I rather hope that at some point the hon. Gentleman had a maths O-level, because his maths is so pathetic as to make it risible. He has all the numbers and all the amounts that are relevant to the development of all the equipment that will roll out the complete universal credit. [Interruption.] I am going to answer this question. In truth, the operational running costs of the pathfinder, which is what we are running at the moment, are some £6 million, which equates to £200 per claim. By the way, he needs a little correction. In case he had not noticed, we have already invited him and all his colleagues to come and visit us. I think they are down to visit us this week, so he needs to check his diary, or maybe his colleagues did not want him to come with them. I do not know.

Welfare Reform

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

I am very grateful for being allowed to speak in the debate. I am also pleased to speak after my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who is an innovative and creative thinker on these subjects. I want to say a few words on welfare reform, which is probably the single most important thing that the coalition Government are embarking upon, because the principal reason why the coalition came into being was to reduce the deficit. Everyone here knows that welfare spending, including pensions, is 28% of the entire budget. Surely it makes sense, if we are to reduce the deficit, to look at the biggest part of expenditure.

My hon. Friend is right when he says that there was a huge problem under the previous Government with welfare spending. Between 1997 and 2010, it rose by more than 60% in real terms. Even if pensions are excluded, the welfare bill went up by 55% in real terms. It is right for everyone in the House to realise that that is a real problem. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing the matter up in such a timely fashion and for allowing others to contribute to this important debate. I do not have much time to speak, but I want to say that it is disappointing that so few Labour Members are present, given that they have said nothing constructive about welfare reform over the past four years. They have opposed all the coalition Government’s messages. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) looks at me quizzically, but it is true.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The convention for half-hour debates is that only two people—the Member who secured the debate and the Minister—speak. It is perfectly customary for there not to be anybody else, including the shadow Minister, present.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s contribution, but it is extraordinary to say that Members cannot contribute to debates simply because of convention. This is an important matter and I wanted to put something on the record. That is all I have to say.

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Jim Sheridan (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Bryant, you also did not register to speak. Do you have the permission of the promoter and the Minister to speak?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am grateful, Mr Sheridan. I also thank the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) for securing this debate. If it had been an hour-and-a-half debate, it would have been more conventional to have several people speaking. I say to the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) that it is not only a convention, but a rule of the House that only two people are allowed to speak in these half-hour debates. We are therefore engaging in a rather unusual practice this afternoon, which is why things are slightly confusing. The hon. Member for Dover gave a rather short speech—the debate’s promoter normally takes 15 minutes—and he devoted quite a lot of it to saying nasty things about the Labour party. I understand why he wants to do that, but I want to correct some impressions.

The Labour party has been engaged in a process of welfare reform and was when in government. One of the key things that we wanted to achieve was ensuring that work pays. In my constituency, which has historically high levels of people on one form or other of sickness benefit, people have been trapped in a style of poverty that ends up being inherited from one generation to the next. Opposition Members are desperately keen to ensure that we have a system under which work always pays. That is why we supported the introduction of the national minimum wage, which we see as part of welfare reform, and why we introduced tax credits as another means of making it possible for people to get into work.

I do not accept the argument of the hon. Member for Spelthorne that Labour has never been in favour of welfare reform. Indeed, key elements of what the Government are doing now are right. The move towards universal credit is right. The Government have been too ambitious in the time scale that they have set themselves, and it would help the Government’s cause were they a bit more honest about the fact that the scheme is neither on time nor on budget and that a great amount of money has been wasted. Ministers have not yet made key decisions, such as when somebody goes on to universal credit, whether their children will be entitled to free school meals. At the moment, there is a difference between those on in-work benefits and those on out-of-work benefits. The latter’s children get free school meals, but the former’s do not. Universal credit does not recognise the difference between the two, which is a key policy issue that will have to be determined.

[Charlie Elphicke]

The Labour party initially voted against universal credit. Labour should be more supportive of the Government during a big, important reform, rather than too often appearing to throw rocks from the sidelines.

[Chris Bryant]

We are keen to try to help the Government make universal credit work, but it is difficult so to do if the Secretary of State is mouthing inanities and presenting such an optimistic version of events that some might construe it not to be entirely true, which is what the Labour party believe has happened. It is a convention that people receive absolution only after confessing, and the Government need to own up to a few more of the problems that they are experiencing with universal credit. We would then be more than happy to help them.

Another classic example is the bedroom tax. People have different views about whether it is right and proper, but my argument is that while it might be a legitimate thing if we knew that everyone had smaller properties to move to, in truth, when those smaller properties are not available, it is a fairly cruel and vindictive assault on some of the most vulnerable people in society, including hundreds of thousands of disabled people. Even more bizarrely, the Government managed to mess that up by not spotting the loophole in their legislation. On the same day, three different Ministers said different things: one said that only 3,000 to 5,000 would be affected; another said in the House of Lords that the number would be insignificant; and a third Minister said that she had no idea how many people would be affected. Through freedom of information requests, which the Government should have submitted, we already know that, from the third of local authorities who have replied, 16,000 households are affected. In other words, it is likely that some 48,000 to 50,000 people are affected.

The Labour party is engaged in a process of welfare reform. We always have been. We want to make welfare work, so that it both supports those who desperately need it at key times in their lives and gives people an opportunity to stand on their own two feet. In your constituency, Mr Sheridan, and in mine, the vast majority of people are not looking for handouts; they are looking to stand on their own feet, to put food on the table for their family and to provide a better future for their children.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) on securing this wide-ranging debate, which has actually been quite refreshing, because we so often get caught up in the minutiae of a clause, amendment or fine detail and it is good to get back to first principles and the context of what the Government have done over the past four years. I also enjoyed his blue-skies thinking about workplace and maternity benefits and so on. I will try to address both those issues, while providing some reflections on his idea for workplace benefits.

The context that my hon. Friend described was one where, for every £3 that the Government received, they were spending £4. There is nothing progressive or fair about saying that we will pay for a higher standard of living for ourselves now and expect our children to meet the bill. The biggest task that we faced—as my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) said, this was one of the reasons for forming the coalition— was to provide the country with a stable Government at a time of economic crisis and to try to get the nation’s finances on an even keel, which has required a series of difficult decisions, particularly because social security spending is the biggest area of Government spending, every one of which was opposed by Labour, but only one of which it now says that it will reverse. There is a distinct lack of consistency.

I am pretty sure that the record will show—the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) will correct me if I am wrong—that Labour voted against the Welfare Reform Act 2013 on Second Reading. He may not recall, but I am pretty sure that Labour did—it may have voted against it on Third Reading, which is even worse. The 2013 Act introduced universal credit, so it is a bit rich to say that Labour supports universal credit when it voted against the legislation that introduced it. That shows no credibility.

The hon. Gentleman may say that Labour has been engaged in welfare reform for the past four years, but it has only said what it is against. It is against our getting the books balanced by the measures that we have taken, but the positive agenda has largely been avoided. On the odd occasion that we get a positive suggestion, it often involves spending more money, not less. A humane welfare system during a time of austerity is a challenging task. One would have hoped that the party that paints itself as progressive would have engaged constructively over the past four years in how to design such a system, but we have essentially heard nothing on that front.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dover is right that the driver of the reforms that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the ministerial team have brought forward has absolutely been fiscal rectitude, but it has also been about more than that. My right hon. Friend has said—I do not think that I am revealing any secrets here—that he did not come into his present role simply to cut, but rather to reform. During difficult times, we are reforming and bringing together a fractured system. Why should people have to go to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for tax credits, to the local council for housing benefit and to the Department for Work and Pensions for income support? Why should there not be a single system? One of the fatal flaws of tax credits, which the hon. Member for Rhondda praised, is that, because the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)—the previous Chancellor and then Prime Minister—wanted to pretend that it was not welfare, it was claimed that they were negative tax. They were nothing of the sort. They were social security benefits, but paid over the course of a year. People’s needs, however, arise on a weekly or monthly basis. They cannot wait for end-year reconciliation and a following-year clawback.

The beauty of universal credit is that it is real time. It meets people’s needs when they happen, rather than saying at the end of the year, “Oh, guess what? We underpaid you,” or, more often, “Guess what? We overpaid you three years ago by several thousand quid. Please may we have it back?” That shambles will be over as we introduce universal credit.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the Minister give way?

[Steve Webb]

I will not, because it is the debate of my hon. Friend the Member for Dover. I want to respond to some of his specific ideas on workplace benefits. I agree with his goals. I absolutely agree that we need a system that is fair for women; that we need to think hard about anything in the system that makes an employer less likely to employ a woman of childbearing age; and that we clearly want the system to work for self-employed women. He has made some important points.

As the system currently works, however, 93% of the cost of statutory maternity pay is refunded to employers. In fact, more than 100% is refunded to small firms. Small firms that take on a woman who becomes pregnant and goes on maternity leave will get back all the maternity pay that they pay out, plus what is essentially a handling charge—another 3% on top. Even a large employer gets 92% or thereabouts of reimbursement.

If an employer is reluctant to take on a woman who might have a child, therefore, the pure finances should not make a huge difference. Clearly, there is a bureaucracy issue with the reclaiming and so on, and we are happy to look at whether that can be streamlined, but the basic principle is that the employers get the lion’s share of the money back. The thing that might put them off, as my hon. Friend said in his speech, is the thought, “Well, I employ this person. They might not be there in some months’ time. I might have to provide maternity cover, retraining and so on,” but however we reimburse maternity pay, that will still be a feature of the system.

I am not therefore sure that having a collectivised—I hesitate to use the word, but my hon. Friend knows what I mean—system of insurance is any different substantively for the employer. Either way, employers are getting reimbursed—the costs are being met and are not in essence falling on the employer.

My hon. Friend’s proposal is interesting and I am grateful to him for suggesting it, but one of my worries arises from something that I have learnt as a Minister. Whenever we set up a new scheme, we have new infrastructure, bureaucracy and sets of rules. If we had the levy—the at-work scheme that he described—we would have to define the new tax base, have a new levy collection mechanism, work out who was in and who was out, have appeals and all that kind of stuff. There is always a dead weight to such things. Simply setting up new infrastructure costs money. I would have to be convinced that we were getting something back for it.

In essence, my hon. Friend is proposing that, instead of the general taxpayer paying into the pot and employers handing out statutory maternity pay, which is reimbursed by the Government from the general taxpayer—the current system—we have a new levy on employers, although he recognises that he does not want a new jobs tax, so that it is offset by a reduction in something else that employers pay and the tax in that world is neutral overall. However, he then says that he wants the rate not to be some £130 a week, but to be £200 and something a week.

My hon. Friend was commendably brief, so I apologise if I misunderstood, but I was not clear where that extra money would come from. If we pay women on maternity leave double, someone must pay for it. If he does not want that to be an extra burden on firms, paying for it will simply be a tax increase. That might be the right thing to do—increasing taxes to pay for it—but it is an increase.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I share my right hon. Friend’s concern about the protection of human rights for LGBT people in Russia. I have raised the issue personally both with Ministers and with non-governmental organisations, as have my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. Over the coming months, Stonewall will be developing a programme of activities which it will seek to deliver to human rights defenders in Russia, to help them to support LGBT people in the country. Stonewall’s work is being made possible by support from our coalition Government.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Charming as the Secretary of State and the sports Minister are—[Interruption.] I did not mean to be patronising; I meant to be rude, actually. Charming as they are, would it not make far more sense to take a leaf out of President Obama’s book, and to include John Amaechi, Nicola Adams, Tom Daley, Gareth Thomas and Clare Balding in the delegation, in order to make the point that those who know what it is to enjoy the freedom to live your life as you want in this country have something to offer the rest of the world in Russia?

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Gentleman will know that it is very important that Team GB see that the British Government are behind them every step of the way. I make no apology for the fact that the Minister for sport and I are going to the winter Olympics. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will join me in saying that the team have our very best wishes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. There are many dimensions to this, because it is not just about a housing benefit bill that doubled under Labour’s watch; it is also about the lack of houses that were built, fairness in the system, getting housing right and building right for the future.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

This might be all right if there were smaller properties for people to go to, but there are not. It might be all right if £14.50 was a tiny sum, which it may be to the hon. Lady or to any of us in the Chamber, but it is not to the carers who do an invaluable job, not only on behalf of the person they care for, but for the whole of society. So how can it possibly be right that 60,000 carers are paying, on average, as the Minister has just admitted, an extra £14.50 a week? Are this Government dim-witted, short-sighted or just plain cruel?

[Esther McVey]

I am afraid none of those are true. I see that the hon. Gentleman gathered much information together, but let us see what happens; as I said, we have got to get this right. We have to get the housing right. We have got to have more smaller buildings. He wrote to me as he did not understand about conversions and I had to lay it out clearly in the letter; the National Housing Federation agreed with me. Despite not knowing the facts, he did produce a press release for the papers. We are getting conversions right, sorting out the problem and helping as many people as possible.

Welfare Reforms and Poverty

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention and I appreciated his speech, too. We ought to try to ensure that we have sources of lending in which people understand the industries in which people are working. That is where the building society movement came from—originally, it was about building homes. If we could get some mutuality back into the agency area, people would be able to decide who could be lent money and who should be deferred.

The last point in my mind concerns how we can go on preparing people for the jobs and occupations of the future. Many people’s futures will be as entrepreneurs, as they set up their own businesses; others will be in employment. I remember with pleasure Peter Thurnham, one of our former colleagues. When he was made redundant, he used his redundancy money to buy two machine tools, set up an engineering business and eventually employed 150 to 200 people. People sometimes say to me, “MPs shouldn’t have outside interests.” I would far prefer to have in Parliament people such as Peter Thurnham, who can tell us how business and employment work and how to get more people off welfare and into the kind of jobs that make them pretty independent for most of their life.

Many of us will require some support at some stage in our life; relatively few of us need support all the way through our lives. Before this Government came to office, we were getting to a stage at which too many families were in dependency from generation to generation; Keith Joseph told us quite a lot about that. Statistics show that only 10% of people who were in the bottom decile—the bottom 10%—10 years ago are in the bottom 10% this year. There is a great deal more movement among those who are poor or very poor than most people understand.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

indicated dissent.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The hon. Gentleman shakes his head; when he speaks, perhaps he can give his statistics. We need a commission, with statistics that we can all rely on from the Office for National Statistics, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Office for Budget Responsibility.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) and the Government Members who signed the motion, not least because they have given us an opportunity to hear some of the most insightful and moving speeches that I have heard for a long time in the House. It is a shame that nearly all of them had to be made by Opposition Members because so few Government Members turned up to speak, but I am sure that Government Members had other interesting things to do. I should add that I thought that the speech of the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) was insightful as well. It had barely a partisan bone in it, and I commend the hon. Gentleman for the views that he espoused tonight.

Let me begin by listing some facts on which I hope we can all agree. We all believe that the best route out of poverty is work, that those who can work should work, that those who need help to work should receive that help, that a civilised nation cares for the vulnerable, that at times we may all need the support of the state to get back on our feet, that a strong national health service, free at the point of delivery, is a key part of getting people back into work, and that education cannot stop at 16 or at 18 or, for that matter, at 21 if people are to acquire the skills that they need in order to prosper in a fiercely competitive world.

As Labour colleagues have been referring to what we will do when we form the Government in 2015, the Minister has, on several occasions, been heard chuntering, “Oh yes, the shadow Secretary of State says you’re going to be tougher on welfare.” We are, because we know that the best way to be tough on the welfare budget is to get people into work. We are absolutely determined that we will not do what this Government did immediately on coming into power in 2010, which was, without a shred of evidence, to abolish the future jobs fund that was giving young people an opportunity. We will do exactly the opposite. We will bring in a jobs guarantee for every under 24-year-old, because we have seen what is happening in Wales where a new scheme has been brought in to replace what this Government have been doing and that has put 7,748 young people into work. Some 80% of those jobs are in the private sector and 96% of those who have gone into those jobs have then gone into full-time employment. That is being tough on the welfare budget—not being tough on the recipients of welfare, but being tough on the welfare budget—and that is exactly what we intend to do.

We all know that there are areas of the country that have suffered deprivation for decades. Those are the places—in particular, the mining, shipbuilding and iron and steel cities and towns of this country—where one industry flourished, dominated and then died. That is what many of the speeches this afternoon have been about. However, the indices of deprivation come not single spies, but in battalions. All too often, with poverty comes poor housing, poor educational attainment and poor diet, as well as high levels of long-term unemployment, disability, mental health problems, obesity, malnutrition, teenage pregnancy, ischaemic heart disease, type 1 and type 2 diabetes and also, therefore, blindness. The poor die younger and are more likely to die of their first coronary or their first stroke. They are more likely to be the victims of crime, especially violent crime. Each of those problems exacerbates the other, so we have a vicious circle of poverty with children trapped by their parents’ opportunities or lack of ambitions. In short, all too often poverty is hereditary in Britain—as hereditary as the monarchy or, for that matter, a place at Eton.

The image that those on the right would have us all subscribe to of those living in poverty is far from the truth. Often the poor work the hardest, at the least hospitable hours, with poor protection and for paltry pay. Frequently, as many Members have said, they take several jobs to be able to pay to put food on the table. They travel for hours to work because they cannot afford properties in expensive places where there are more jobs. They take pride in the ability to stand on their own two feet, so they often refuse to claim all they are entitled to or to accept charity. We should applaud them, not denigrate them.

When the Secretary of State came to Merthyr Tydfil and told everybody that the answer to their problems if they were out of work was to get on a bus down to Cardiff, he simply did not know the facts. First, there are not buses that will get people to Cardiff in time for most jobs on low pay that start very early in the morning. Secondly, if they are going to be doing shift work, they cannot possibly rely on buses to get them to work. Thirdly, there are eight people applying for every job that is available in Cardiff so the situation is not much better than in Merthyr Tydfil. Most importantly, if people are spending half of their daily wage every day on getting on the bus to work and getting back home, the likelihood is that they are not going to be able to make work pay. That is what we need to change: we need to make work pay.

There have been massive changes in welfare in this country since 2010, especially since the Government changes to welfare came in last summer. Food prices have risen far more on average than those of other goods, and that has hit many poor families. According to Which? over the last six years food prices have risen over and above general inflation by 12.6% and nearly half of consumers now say they are spending a larger proportion of their available income on food than just 12 months ago. Six in 10—60%—are worried about how they will manage their future spending on groceries if prices continue to rise, and it looks as though they will. It must surely be shaming for this country that, between April and September, more than 350,000 people—150,000 of whom were children—received at least three days of emergency food from Trussell Trust food banks. That represents a threefold increase on the same period last year and a dramatic rise from 2009-10, when just 41,000 people received food aid. Contrary to what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) said, the Trussell Trust has stated that

“rising living costs and stagnant wages are forcing more people to live on a financial knife edge where any change in circumstance can plunge them into poverty.”

That is precisely what the Government’s welfare changes have done.

In March last year, Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs commissioned research into food banks and promised to publish the results last summer. The Government have had the results of the review since last June and, bizarrely, have now been reviewing them for far longer than it took to write them. I do not know whether they need educational assistance to read the report and present it to the public, but it is about time we all saw the findings that they have had in their pocket since last June.

The Trussell Trust has reported rising food bank use due to the bedroom tax, and states that 35% of its clients were referred due to delays in receiving benefits. There is no way out of this; the Government cannot avoid responsibility. Yes, charities are picking up the difference, but that is not the kind of society we should be living in. On top of that, the National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations, said that a survey of 51 of its biggest members found that more than half their residents affected by the bedroom tax—32,432 people—were unable to pay their rent between April and June last year. Contrary to all the rumours put out by The Sun, the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph, the survey shows that a quarter of those affected by the tax had fallen behind with their rent for the first time in their lives. That is not their fault; it is the Government’s fault.

One report, the Real Life Reform report, interviewed 74 households in the north of England last July, three months after the changes came in, then again three months later. In September, it found that over a quarter of the people in the survey reported having less than £10 a week to live on once rent, food and bills were accounted for. The report also found that 37% said they had no spare cash at all, and that families were spending an average of just £23 per person a week—or £3.30 a day—on food. Those were people in work, and for those with school-age children, £1.80 of that daily allowance was going towards a school dinner. Households were spending an average of £26 a week on gas and electricity, which equated to 10% of gross income. That was in July, not during the winter months when the costs would be much higher.

Three months later, that same survey found that the number of households spending less than £20 a week on food had increased from a quarter to a third, that the number of people having no money left each week had risen to 51%—more than half—and that the average spend on food per person per day had gone down from £3 to £2.10. It also found that households were spending 16% more on gas and electricity, taking them into fuel poverty. In addition, 33% of respondents now had council tax debt as well.

The loan sharks are flourishing, the number of those in fuel poverty is rising and the number of homeless people is rising. The number of those relying on charity to feed their children is also rising, and the number of those wanting to work more hours is at a record high. And for the first time ever, the number of those in work and in poverty is higher than the number out of work. The number of those in debt, in arrears and in despair about their finances is rising. Even Sir John Major knows that more and more people this winter have been choosing between heating and eating. It feels as though a worldwide economic crunch, manufactured in the boardrooms of Wall Street, on the executive floors of international banks and on the trading floors of the City of London, has been visited on the most vulnerable in our society. Those who struggle to buy shoes for their children have paid the price of austerity, not the well-heeled. We should be ashamed; the Government should certainly be ashamed. This is why we need a commission of inquiry.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Penning]

Whether or not it is a fair representation is a matter for Channel 4. Like the rest of the country, I sat and watched the programme. I have not said anything about it, because I do not know the facts. I will go and see what is happening on the ground rather than speaking in generalisations. Channel 4 is not in any way a mouthpiece for this Government. It has been hugely critical of what we have been doing.

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Mike Penning]

I will not give way, because I want to make some progress. I did not intervene on the hon. Gentleman, so he will have to understand.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley made an important point about people who have moved from employment and support allowance to jobseeker’s allowance. It is enormously important that they know what benefits they are entitled to. As I said to the Work and Pensions Committee the other week, I will look carefully at the decision letter they get when they are told that their ESA has been stopped and what they are able to claim. That is a simple way to ensure that they understand the benefits they are entitled to and that families are not short of money.

The hon. Gentleman was the only Member to raise the issue of the minimum wage. The debate about what it will be raised to is taking place now. We will wait to hear what the independent review says. It is an important debate for people who are in work but require help from other benefits.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West gave a wide-ranging speech. I will have to write to him about when the credit unions will be able to charge monthly interest. I have been a member for more than 12 years, and believe that the credit unions make a very important contribution to our communities. In particular, they stop that man with a threatening look from knocking at the door on a Friday night, just after pay day. All of us who have grown up on such estates have had that frightening experience. In many ways, the credit union can really help with that problem.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran talked about discretionary payments and the fact that people have to apply again and again. There is nothing in the rules that says it should be for three months or for any other time scale. It is plainly obvious in many cases that an individual will be able to receive the payment for the long term and that the local authority should be able to rule on that. As we said at Question Time today, most local authorities are not using all their discretionary payments, and those that have can apply for extra payments under the scheme. We are looking forward to seeing how we can take that forward to ensure that we can give those assurances to local authorities. It is important that when Members go back to their constituencies they speak to their local authorities about what they should be doing, because there is no rule on the matter. My own local authority is using the three-month rule and there is no need for that in many cases. Local authorities should look at individuals rather than the numbers.

The hon. Member for Rochdale made an important speech and a good contribution to the debate, not least because he accepted from the outset that welfare reform is imperative. I was slightly concerned during his speech by the idea that if we are not careful, we might start thinking that all welfare reform will have a massive effect. In many ways, welfare reform can have a beneficial effect on people, particularly those who have been out of work for a considerable time and, thinking of my portfolio, those who have disabilities or long-term illnesses and have not been able to get back into work. For instance, the Access to Work programme is often the key to getting those people back in to work. It is important that we understand how the different schemes work and that hon. Members ensure that there is understanding in their constituencies.

The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth talked about bogus appointments. I would love to know about that and how it happened, so perhaps we can meet after the debate. It is obviously fundamentally wrong for bogus appointments to be made and for people to then be sanctioned. It would be much appreciated if she or any other hon. Member could help us with such issues.

Mr Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] I am sorry, Mr Speaker. I apologise. I think you have known me long enough to accept that that was a genuine mistake.

The whole debate has been sensible, apart from the contribution of the shadow Minister, who is chuntering away again, ruining the quality of the debate as usual. It is important that the Backbench Business Committee can introduce such a debate. If the Opposition Front Benchers had wanted it so much, they could have introduced it in their own time. We should let the House decide this evening.

Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I am coming to the end of my comments.

We have no doubt that the principle of the Bill—[Interruption.] It is no good Opposition Front Benchers chuntering; they will have their opportunity to speak in a minute. Let us just get on. If the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) wants to speak, as lots of Members do, she will be welcome to do so. That is why I am not giving way every five seconds.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Minister is expecting to speak for a second time in this debate, but he is not prepared to give way during his speech now. Can you confirm that it is a matter of discretion for the whole House as to whether somebody is allowed to speak for a second time in a debate?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

If a Minister seeks to speak for a second time, it is with the leave of the House. As the hon. Gentleman knows, whether any Members, including Ministers, decide to give way to an intervention is entirely a matter for them and not for the Chair.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It was a great delight to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) provide that final rousing contribution, because even though he was not here for any of the debate, he managed to catch its whole flavour and repeat everything that has been said. I think that everyone agreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) when she congratulated the Government on bringing forward the legislation. We warmly congratulate the Secretary of State and the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), on bringing forward the Bill. In all honesty, we hope that they will help us improve it, because we certainly intend to help them.

I thought that the Minister got off to a slightly bad start by not taking interventions. He ended up intervening on twice as many Members as he took interventions from in his speech. He intends to speak a second time, which is purely in the gift of the House and not just because he says so, but it might have been easier if he had taken more interventions. I sympathise that the first piece of legislation that he has to take through the House in his new role has a name that is quite difficult to pronounce. The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) came up with a good suggestion, which was that rather than bothering to say mesothelioma all the time, we should just call it meso.

[Mike Penning]

Is that not a soup?

[Chris Bryant]

I think that is spelt with an “i”, not an “e”.

As many Members have pointed out, cancer of the mesothelium is a particularly cruel disease. First, it affects some of the worst paid in society and some of those who do the hardest physical labour, who are not rewarded particularly well at all. That is why we have heard from so many hon. Members this afternoon about how the parts of the country and the communities most affected are those that have had some of the toughest industries, whether shipbuilding, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) pointed out, or down on the Medway, as the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford pointed out, or in Totnes, as the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston)—she is unable to be here at the moment, for understandable reasons—pointed out. Sometimes a whole family can be affected, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) explained. We heard a particularly sad story from the hon. Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce), who told us about his brother, who recently died as a result of mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma is also cruel because of the long tail, which many Members referred to, which means that it is often almost impossible to track down the details of the company from which a victim might need to claim compensation, because it is such a long time since the asbestos was introduced into the body.

Mesothelioma is also cruel because the insurance industry, as many Members have pointed out, has behaved cruelly through its extreme reluctance to provide compensation. Sometimes it is the negligence of the industry in keeping proper records across the years that has made it all the more difficult for people to get redress. Finally, it is cruel because once a person has contracted the illness, as many Members have explained, the length of time before death is so short. Who in this House would want somebody to have to spend their last dying months trying vigorously to chase down lawyers and insurance companies?

Many issues were raised, but I will cover those that are particularly important and have been mentioned constantly. The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford, in an excellent speech that I could not fault—I hope one day to see her on the Labour Benches—made the very valid point that the 75% compensation that is being allowed for by the Government is not borne out by the figures to which the insurance industry has already signed up through its 3% commitment. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston said, there is a perfectly good moral case for saying that it should be 100% compensation. We will want to tease out these issues in Committee. I am grateful for the Minister’s comments about being able to provide us with numbers and statistics before we get to the first Committee date, because it feels as though there has been a bit of jiggery-pokery over these numbers in the past few weeks while the Bill was in the other place and since then.

The second key issue is the earlier start date that many of us think would be suitable. That was mentioned by the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams), who is not in his place. It seems inconceivable that any part of the insurance industry was unaware that there was going to be a scheme of this kind after the Labour Government started the consultation in February 2010, so it is only fair that we should go back to the earlier start date. Several other Members referred to this, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) and my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn), who had an interesting idea about how judges would have reacted if there were an illness that affected only judges and whether legislation would have been introduced rather more swiftly.

The third issue, which was raised by several Members, including the hon. Member for Totnes, is about self-employed people and people who manifestly fall outside the scheme as currently organised, including those who might have contracted mesothelioma by virtue of washing their partner’s clothes. We will want to return to those matters in Committee.

Fourthly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East mentioned, there is the 25% that is apparently being allocated to lawyers. When I first arrived in the House, one of the big issues facing mining constituencies such as mine was the miners’ compensation Bill. The biggest row we had was with lawyers who wanted to extract unnecessarily ludicrous fees for work that could already be paid for, and in fact was paid for, by the Government. We will want to shine some light on the precise statistics. If a significant amount of money—say £7,000, a figure that has been stated several times—ends up being taken out of people’s compensation to pay for lawyers, that would not be the justice that people are looking for.

The fifth issue, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), is who runs the scheme and who will sit on the technical committee. She also referred to the very important requirement on us to consider how to ensure that that is not just a stitch-up between Government and the big players in the industry when much smaller players need to be considered as well.

The sixth issue, which my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire mentioned, is the 100% clawback. It seems intrinsically unfair for the Government to say, “You can only receive 75% of the compensation that you would get if you were going through the civil courts in the normal way, but we will take back 100% of the money that you received in benefits.” There may be arguments to be had about that, but it is something else that we will want to look at in Committee. It was also referred to by my hon. Friends the Members for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) and for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery).

I hope the Minister will also address the question of the timetable for the Bill. The programme motion allows for the last Committee sitting to take place on 17 December. We have always wanted to help the Government get the Bill through as fast as possible, with the sole caveat that, while it is a good Bill, it could be immensely better. Of course, we want to ensure that there is adequate time not just for consideration in Committee, but for consideration on the Floor of the House on Report and Third Reading. My anxiety is that if the Committee finishes considering the Bill on 17 December, the Bill’s Third Reading will be on 19 December—the day Parliament will rise. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure us about that, but I cannot see how else he will be able to get the Bill through before Christmas.

Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) made an extremely good point, namely that we should stop talking about whether the Bill is generous, generous enough or not generous enough. The most important thing to recognise is that this is not about generosity. It is not some kind of charitable act that we are doing; we are trying to right an injustice. It is a fairly simple point. We believe that it is only really possible to right that injustice if we improve the Bill by ensuring that people get a better deal with regard to the percentage of compensation on offer, as well as by going back to an earlier date and by looking at some of the many other issues that have been raised.

I assure the Minister that we will do everything in our power to help him get the Bill through, but at the moment it has only three stars and by the end we want it to have five. That will require amendments and his co-operation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Penning]

That would be an arbitrary date too, because, as the hon. Gentleman said, mesothelioma was known about before 1965. Whatever happens, if we get bogged down in a legal argument, it will delay the Bill, and the compensation that everyone has worked towards for so many years will be massively and dramatically affected.

[Chris Bryant]

I am sorry to intervene on the Minister, but he seems to be saying that he will not countenance any amendment to the Bill—despite our having had a debate in which everyone who has spoken has said they want amendments—because such amendments would delay the Bill beyond Christmas. With his timetable, however, I cannot see how he can possibly get it out before Christmas anyway.

[Mike Penning]

That is the second time the hon. Gentleman has talked about my timetable. The Opposition insisted on three days in Committee; we said they could have less.

[Chris Bryant]

indicated dissent.

[Mike Penning]

If the hon. Gentleman talked to his own Whips, he might get some sense. That is exactly what happened.

At the end of the day, however, some parts of the Bill can be amended without it going back to the Lords. Some parts, particularly on the percentage—[Interruption.] It is for regulations. It is not actually part of the Bill. If the hon. Gentleman reads the Bill, he will understand what is going on. He is trying to score party political points on a really serious issue, and he is wrong. We need to ensure that what can be amended, is amended, but I will not have the Bill, and therefore the compensation, delayed. With that, I hope the House will give the Bill a Second Reading and that the Opposition will vote for it this evening. It is important that we get the Bill through the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]:

Committal

(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee

(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 17 December 2013.

(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Consideration and Third Reading

(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.

(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.

(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.

Other proceedings

(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of any message from the Lords) may be programmed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As I said to the hon. Lady when I appeared in front of her Committee in July, we have been very clear that we would roll out universal credit on the plan and programme already set out. The pathfinders are on track. Those before Christmas and those after Christmas are on track—[Interruption.] Yes they are. It is not just the pathfinder centres; we already have a huge amount of change. We are putting 6,000 new computers into jobcentres to be ready for universal credit, and we are training 25,000 jobcentre staff to ensure that they are ready for its delivery. We are on track to make sure that universal credit—the bit that follows next—can use those pathfinders to deliver a universal credit programme that works, unlike so many of the programmes that the previous Government used.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Dear, dear, dear. [Interruption.] No, the report does not say that; I can tell you what it does say. It says that, precisely in the Government’s timetable, from October 2013

“All new claims for out-of-work support are treated as claims to Universal Credit.”

That has not happened, has it? The Secretary of State is not on time, he is not on budget, and it looks as if he is going to lose £140 million. The first step to recovery is owning up that you are sick. You are not on time, you are not on budget—are you?

[Mr Speaker]

I am always on time. Let us hear from the Secretary of State.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The coalition is concerned about people who have to live in overcrowded accommodation. Never do we hear one single comment from the welfare party about people living desperately in the overcrowded accommodation that they left them in.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is so out of touch he is even out of touch with his own Minister, Lloyd Freud—[Hon. Members: “Lloyd?”] Lord Freud. It was a Freudian slip.

Last week, Lord Freud admitted that there are not enough one-bedroom properties in this country. How would the Secretary of State describe a Government who tell the poorest in the land that they have to move into a one-bedroom property or pay a substantial penalty when they know that there are not enough one-bedroom properties? Is that perniciously cruel or utterly incompetent?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am not closely associated with Lloyd George, but I am always ready to read what he has to say. I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his post, but he is completely wrong. My noble Friend Lord Freud chastised housing associations and others for continuing to build houses that are not required when there is a demand for single bedroom accommodation.

[Chris Bryant]

He didn’t.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

He did. I know he said it, because I read it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend is correct, and that information is key, because decisions are overturned for many reasons. Most of the time, it is because new information comes into play at the appeal. We need to find out why decisions are overturned, not just for the claimant but for the DWP and everybody involved.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Is not the truth of the matter that in the vast majority of cases where a decision was overturned, it was because the wrong decision was made in the first place? Would it not make far more sense to make the right decision in the first place, so we did not have to waste time, money and energy on pursuing the matter all over again?

[Esther McVey]

I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman was listening to what I said. Actually, the majority of overturns are the result of new information being supplied on appeal. To ensure that we get this right first time, there will be mandatory reconsiderations, just like under universal credit and the personal independence payment. That will also be the case for employment and support allowance from the end of October. That will provide a proper administrative route, rather than a judicial one involving extra costs, extra pain and extra stress. We are getting this right, which is something the previous Government never did.

Romanians and Bulgarians (Benefits)

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As I said earlier, that is the direction of travel we are trying to head in. We are trying to change the rules, in order to make the test covering the period someone spends here and the commitment they make to the UK much tougher. We are wrestling with the habitual residence test, but it is weak in parts because it makes no requirements concerning the length of time someone commits to being in the country. That is an area we have to, and will, challenge. I want to change those rules so that the European Court recognises that someone needs to make a commitment to the country they are in before they can start drawing down.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I remind the Secretary of State that it was not just the Labour party that supported the accession of Bulgaria and Romania, but every single Member of the House at the time—there was not even a vote—so this is something for us all to engage with. I suggest that it is deeply irresponsible to keep briefing newspapers and providing lots of hints—nudge, nudge, wink, wink—but then not to come to the Chamber with concrete proposals. In the last two years, there has not been a single prosecution for breach of the national minimum wage, even though 13% of those working in care homes in this country are on less than the national minimum wage. Is it not time the Government sorted that out, so that fewer people choose to come here?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I just do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. It’s great, isn’t it? In government, they wanted to take the credit for everything, but in opposition they do not want to take the blame when things then go wrong. They negotiated the treaty, so they bear the responsibility. I have to pick up the pieces, and we are going to do that. Under universal credit, we will hugely tighten up on self-employed people, shutting the door to many of those whom he allowed to come in and claim benefits in the first place.