Energy (oil and gas) profits levy
Debate between Chris Stephens and Drew Hendry(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Chris Stephens
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, because we should be looking at an excess profits tax across the board. It is quite right to mention the oil and gas companies, but they are not the only ones who benefited from the pandemic. We now seem to be being told by the Government that tax avoidance and evasion somehow disappeared during the pandemic. That is the only conclusion we can reach when we look at the figures in these documents.
In addition, the Government seem to be making no attempt to discuss how we tackle energy prices. People have a very real perception that the regulators are on the side of the energy companies, not the consumers. That is exactly what the people on the streets believe when they talk about energy. We should start giving the regulators more teeth and encourage them to use their powers to go after the energy companies that are making excess profits, as well as to bring prices down for consumers, because that has to happen.
Drew Hendry
My hon. Friend is making a powerful point about the absolutely crushing effect that energy costs are having on families and communities. Does he agree that off-gas grid supplies should be regulated as well? For too long they have been ignored, and people are paying substantially more to heat their homes than people on the gas grid do.
Chris Stephens
I agree, and my hon. Friend made powerful points earlier about costs, as did the hon. Member for South Antrim (Paul Girvan). Poverty is a real issue across the UK—it is not just an urban, but a rural issue—and it affects all the communities across these islands.
As much as I welcome the fact that benefits were uprated in line with inflation, it has always been regarded as a political fact that that should happen anyway, so we should not give the Government any kudos just for following what should take place. However, as the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) rightly argued, food inflation has gone up by 16%, and we are seeing a rise in the use of food banks and affordable food projects, which are the next level above food banks. Pantries and larders are opening up in many of our communities to help people move away from food banks, and I am involved in many such projects in Glasgow South West.
Chris Stephens
I will in a second, but I want to talk about poverty and the Department for Work and Pensions—I am on the Work and Pensions Committee.
The DWP is closing offices and laying off its workers. Incredibly, the Department that is responsible for employment and social security is saying to its workforce, “You are no longer required,” because it is closing offices. That position is absolutely risible, and it is made even more risible by its refusal of home working for people who are under threat of redundancy. One thing that did work during the pandemic was home working; it helped people to get into the workplace. As we heard in my exchange with the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), when we encourage home working, we encourage people into paid employment.
It seems daft that Government Departments are telling their workforce, “Come into the office, come into these workplaces, but you can’t work from home.” The Government have to show a bit more creativity if they are serious about dealing with long-term unemployment, turning around people’s lives and getting them into work. It seems completely contradictory for them to say to their workforce, “You cannae work from home.” The position they find themselves in is completely and utterly risible.
I hope that the Minister will answer this question: of the 6,000 additional employees that the state is going to employ, what will the ratio be between the DWP and HMRC? I will make an educated guess: the overwhelming majority will end up in the DWP chasing social security fraud and error, not in HMRC tackling tax avoidance and evasion.
Finally, there was nothing in the statement about public sector pay policy. So many workers have taken the view that they have no alternative other than to withdraw their labour because of the low pay offers that they get from employers, including many in the public sector. The overwhelming majority of civil servants are not covered by pay review bodies, yet we do not know the Government’s policy on public sector pay. Public sector workers spend that money in the economy and there could be an economic boost if we give public sector workers the pay rise that they deserve. I hope that we will get an answer to that, because public sector workers deserve better than to be treated as the Government are treating them.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Chris Stephens and Drew Hendry(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
Universal Credit and Terminal Illness
Debate between Chris Stephens and Drew Hendry(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Drew Hendry
I agree entirely that a change of pace is needed and that an attempt must be made to adopt towards people put in these positions a genuinely sympathetic approach and to demonstrate an empathy for what they are going through that has been sadly missing.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
My hon. Friend has described the situation on the Highland Council. Could he enlighten the House as to who is picking up the slack for universal credit? Is it local authorities, food banks and other charities?
Drew Hendry
My hon. Friend rightly answers his own question. It is indeed the local authorities, the food banks and the local charities, as well as those serving the community by supporting people in these positions. During the transfer to full service, our constituency office was swamped with universal credit issues.
Telephone Calls to the DWP
Debate between Chris Stephens and Drew Hendry(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to see you in your place, Mr Speaker. Congratulations to you on your re-election, Sir.
I would first like to thank the voters of Glasgow South West for sending me back to Parliament. They have re-elected a left-wing anti-austerity Member of Parliament, which is what I pledged to be during the election campaign.
There are many divisions in the House of Commons—literal Divisions when we troop through the voting Lobbies, party divisions both between and within, and differences in age, gender, ethnicity and education. However, I am now coming to the view that one of the biggest differences is between those of us who view social security as a right that should be administered with the utmost care for human dignity and those who view it as a privilege that can and should be denied or strictly limited.
I believe that there are two types of MP—those who view “I, Daniel Blake” and see the reality of their casework reflected in the film, and those who refuse to believe that the social security system is rigged and is actively pushing working people into poverty and punishing the most vulnerable in society. I am not suggesting that the only way an MP can gain insight into the failings of the social security service is by dealing with hundreds of Department for Work and Pensions cases, but surely anyone with an ounce of empathy would know that the system is deeply flawed, even if they have had only a handful of distressed people at their surgeries.
In the opening scene of “I, Daniel Blake”, the character is on the phone for more than an hour. I am sure I am not the only Member of Parliament who has had constituents telling them about similar cases. Here are just some of mine: a jobseeker’s allowance claimant who has told me of a phone call that cost £9; an employment and support allowance claimant who has told me of a phone call that cost them £16; and a constituent pursuing a disability living allowance claim on behalf of his daughter who has told me of a phone call that cost him £18. I ask the Minister and the House, is it right that a JSA claimant receiving £73.10 a week needs to make a phone call costing £9 to receive their entitlement? Is it right that an ESA claimant receiving £73.10 a week needs to make a phone call costing £16 to receive their entitlement? Is it right that a DLA claimant receiving a weekly entitlement of £76.90 has to make a phone call costing £18?
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
My hon. Friend is talking about the injustice of the amount of money that people have to pay. Does he agree that many people have no money because of broken promises on their payments, which is driving them to food banks as their last resort?
Chris Stephens
I do agree. In fact, I would say that food banks have probably been the only growth industry in the United Kingdom in the past seven years, as many Members of Parliament can see.
I believe the answer to the questions that I have just asked the Minister is no. The reason I continue to campaign on this telephone tax is that it adds insult to injury. It is just one more financial kick in the teeth when people are paying for access to information and support. When every penny counts, call charges hit hard, and the lack of clarity as to which lines are free and which ones come with a cost does not help. The Government’s own website states that some telephone calls can cost 55p a minute. Can the Minister confirm whether the gov.uk website provides accurate information on charges for calls to the DWP?
Call charges do not just eat into people’s benefits; I suggest that they actively deter people from calling because they fear incurring charges either from the lines themselves or from a mobile phone provider. As I look deeper into the issue and ask more questions, more disturbing information comes to light. There are serious flaws in the digital-by-design model. Exclusion is built into the system. A written question I tabled just before Dissolution revealed that, in the whole of the Glasgow South West constituency, there are only 16 PCs for thousands of claimants. I am sure the Minister will be happy to know that a few follow-up questions are on the way to him, but today he could answer these: what are the Government going to do to increase computer literacy and access in DWP offices; and does the Department for Work and Pensions agree that those who have received a financial penalty—a sanction—or who have been paid late should have to pay for a telephone call to the DWP to chase up their entitlement? I am calling for free phone calls to access every aspect of the Department for Work and Pensions, but especially for those who have been sanctioned or hit by late payments. Someone paid late should not have to access a chargeable phone line to chase up money they are owed by the state.
Incredibly, there are no telephone lines at all for universal credit claims or inquiries—it is a completely digital service. What about those with no digital access, or who are not computer-literate or even literate? I accept that that is a whole other issue, but we need to recognise that basic literacy skills are not universal, and nor is English everyone’s first language. Will the Government consider a special telephone line for universal credit claimants?
I have already said there are issues with mobiles and price plans. I am calling for the Government to work with mobile and landline providers to improve that. A price plan can determine what someone pays in reality, but if they go over and above those limits, they incur penalty charges and costs increase. Since April, penalty charges on non- inclusive calls have increased dramatically, meaning that someone on a lengthy call to the Department for Work and Pensions will see the cost escalate.
The Government promised a review following the 2016 Social Security Advisory Committee report, which criticised the Government and asked for free phone lines to be put in place. The Government stated that that would cost £7 million, but they also made a number of recommendations, including having a call-back system. Like many a frustrated claimant, we are still waiting. When can we expect the review to be published, and will it include working with mobile and landline providers to reduce, and as far as possible eliminate, costs for DWP claimants? Is £7 million not a small amount of the overall Government budget to ensure that the most vulnerable and those in need do not pay for telephone calls that they cannot afford?
It is bad enough that official helplines hit callers with added costs, but on top of everything else, there is a thriving business in ripping off the vulnerable—the so-called call connections websites, which advertise Government services phone numbers and claim to provide a service. In essence, they are fake premium-rate connection numbers. The Government have described them in a ministerial response to me as unethical but not illegal.
What action is the Department for Work and Pensions taking to eliminate advertised call connection numbers, which are charging premium rates to the most vulnerable in society? Is it not time that we stopped those scammers? The Fair Telecoms campaign has done good work on exposing those scams, and has called for Ofcom and the Phone-paid Services Authority to take the necessary action. However, I would suggest that the Government need to take a lead and work with the authorities to stamp out that practice. Will the Minister commit to doing that and meet the relevant parties to take action?
Failure to act on the concerns raised by me and those who campaign against the telephone tax would indicate that this is not a priority for the Government, and that fairness and social justice do not feature high on their agenda. My concern is that Brexit will skew Government time and attention away from addressing these issues, but I intend to use as much parliamentary time as is available to me to keep this front and centre. Financial penalties and hardship are being inflicted on people every day because the inquiry lines and support services are not fit for purpose.
HMRC Office Closures
Debate between Chris Stephens and Drew Hendry(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
The hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas) mentioned that this announcement had been a surprise. The skilled staff of the HMRC office in Inverness were anticipating some changes, but instead they received a hammer blow. The plan to close 137 local offices and replace them with 13 regional centres by 2027 hid the news that that will happen in Inverness in 2017-18—hardly time to draw breath on the decision. HMRC employs 8,330 people in Scotland, which is 13% of all UK HMRC staff—hardly a dividend worth retaining if that is the way we are to be treated.
The Public and Commercial Services Union has said that 11,000 full-time equivalent staff posts had been cut from HMRC since 2010, and that any further cuts would be “absolutely devastating.” Its general secretary, Mark Serwotka, stated:
“Closing this many offices would pose a significant threat to the operation of HMRC, its service to the public and the working lives of staff, and the need for parliamentary scrutiny of the plans is undeniable and urgent.”
I am delighted that the SNP has initiated this debate in the House to provide just that.
In my constituency, more than 50 staff face losing their jobs. Many are women and over 50 years old, and—most importantly—all are skilled in dealing with complex tax problems for people across the UK. Not only do they save money for HMRC and the taxpayer, but they save businesses from going into administration and provide people with vital advice. I have met those workers, and I was impressed with how flexible they can be, and how they operate in a virtual team. They have been retrained many times in the past.
The Government talk about creating a more modern HMRC, but why have they not taken time to look at Inverness, the fastest growing city in Scotland? The hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) spoke about the expense of London, but there is nothing expensive about Inverness. It has great people and a great facility, yet that is being taken away. That is not the best way to deal with the issue. There is no evidence of any assessment of the impact on staff with disabilities or caring responsibilities, or of the social, economic and environmental effects of this move.
Chris Stephens
Do not the points raised by Members from across the House show that, given the lack of a basic impact assessment, the proposals should be ripped up and we should start again?