Oral Answers to Questions
Christine Jardine Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mims Davies
I will happily write to the hon. Gentleman with the correct numbers on this. Some 162,600 lives have been transformed at the most challenging time, with well over 200,000 vacancies created by employers who would never have looked at this way of recruiting and bringing young people into the labour market before. It is clear that many employers thought they were doing a favour by getting a young person in for six months. The scheme has transformed recruitment, young lives and opportunities, and employers have found that they are the ones who have had that favour done for them.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chloe Smith)
We will spend more than £64 billion this year on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions. Claimants will also get one-off support worth up to £1,200 this year, including the new £650 cost of living payment for people on means-tested benefits and £150 for people on disability benefits, to help with additional costs.
Christine Jardine
The cost of living crisis is disproportionately affecting disabled people. More than half of those living in poverty in this country are either disabled themselves, or in a household where there is a disabled person. My constituents in that situation regularly come to me and say that the help they are receiving from the Government is not enough, even with that welcome increase. Will the Government consider specifically targeted further help to help alleviate the pressures they face?
Chloe Smith
I share the hon. Lady’s passion for this issue and her concern on behalf of her constituents. That is exactly why the Government have already acted: we have provided generous support in seeking to level up opportunity and improve the everyday experience for people with disabilities. What we have just been discussing comes on top of the package already announced, worth more than £22 billion, from the spring statement. We are clear that delivering this important additional support is an absolute priority; the DWP disability cost of living payments will accordingly be made by September, and other payments sooner than that, because we recognise the need here. However, I would take a step back and look at the overall approach, noting for example the agreement from the Resolution Foundation that this approach is the right one.
Cost of Living Increases: Pensioners
Christine Jardine Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jonathan Ashworth
My hon. Friend—I will call him a friend as a fellow Leicester City fan—speaks, as usual, with passion and eloquence on behalf of his constituents. The poverty we are now facing is so desperate and severe, and the destitution so acute, and it is felt across the whole of the United Kingdom. I hope Ministers respond to the representations we are making tonight, and I hope the Chancellor responds to them on Wednesday.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The right hon. Gentleman is making a very good case and illustrating the scale of the problem we face. Does he agree that since we now know that 40% of pensioners in this country will be forced into poverty for up to a year in any nine-year period, the Government should have listened to us when we said earlier in this Session that doing away with the triple lock even temporarily was a rash move, and that pensioners are now paying the price for that?
Jonathan Ashworth
The hon. Lady anticipates the meat of my speech and has put her point on the record with typical aplomb and eloquence.
Martin Lewis of Money Saving Expert has warned that he simply has no tools left to advise people on how to manage their finances; he said that people are literally going to have to “starve or freeze.” Let us look at the facts: 2 million pensioners in poverty and the number rising; 200,000 more pensioners falling into poverty in the last year; one in five people of pension age now living in poverty; and 1.4 million older people in England in fuel poverty, with tens of thousands more likely to be pushed into fuel poverty. As we also know that pensioners spend a significant proportion of their income on energy and food and the basic necessities of life, this is the moment when the Government should be helping the Maureens and Alberts in all our constituencies with extra help with the cost of living. But instead of helping those pensioners in every constituency, Ministers broke their promise on the triple lock and are forcing through deep real-terms cuts in the value of the basic state pension. When I meet and speak to pensioners across the country—older people who are struggling—there is deep despair, and indeed bewilderment, that the Government have abandoned them, having promised them so much.
In the general election campaign, the Prime Minister said:
“We will keep the triple lock, the winter fuel payment, the older person’s bus pass”
to help retirees with the cost of living. Yet just at the moment when pensioners are shivering in the cold, skipping hot meals and anxious and worried about paying the bills, rather than helping retirees with the cost of living, Ministers abandoned the triple lock, a broken promise that the former Conservative Pensions Minister, Baroness Altmann, warned would
“plunge more elderly people into poverty”.
She said:
“With rising energy costs, I fear many of the poorest will be even less able to afford to heat their homes adequately over the winter…To take away their much needed and promised protection, knowing inflation pressures are rising, seems unjustifiable”.
The former Conservative Pensions Minister was absolutely right.
I read recently—in the money section of The Daily Telegraph, no less—that
“pensioners will be worse off after the Chancellor capped the rise in the state pension…this will equate to pensioners taking a real terms cut of £7.45 a week, or £388 a year.”
That is a cut of around £30 a month. These are significant sums of money. Given that the state pension is the biggest source of income for most pensioners, and given that retired women in particular rely on the state pension and other benefits, such as pension credit, for over 60% of their retirement income, it will be retired women again who are disproportionately hit by this deep cut to the basic state pension.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christine Jardine Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dr Coffey
The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), has set out the inflation index that has been used consistently since 1987 in consideration of the inflation rate. I am very conscious that the House voted for the uprating order recently—apart from the hon. Gentleman, along with a handful of others. If his vote had been successful, benefits would not have risen at all.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)
The Government are wholly committed to alleviating levels of pensioner poverty. State pensions are at record levels, pension credit take-up is increasing, and we are taking a number of other steps to provide assistance. On the day of the launch of the spring booster, I should also stress the need for all pensioners, residents of care homes, and those like me and, I think, you, Mr Speaker, who are immunocompromised to get that booster jab. It is vital for everyone’s welfare.
Christine Jardine
According to a recent report from Independent Age, 40% of pensioners will spend one year in poverty during any nine-year period, and with the situation set to be exacerbated by spiralling inflation and the Government’s removal of the triple lock, pensioners will now be £270 worse off every year. Does the Secretary of State agree with my party that we should double, and extend eligibility for, the winter fuel allowance?
Guy Opperman
The hon. Lady will be aware that the state pension rose by 2.5% last year, in circumstances in which prices were not so rising, and that it will rise by 3.1% this April. Money is also being provided in the form of the cold weather payment, the winter fuel allowance and many other kinds of support, including the £9 billion package announced by the Chancellor and administered by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
Pensions Update
Christine Jardine Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dr Coffey
I cannot give that commitment to my right hon. Friend today, because I do not know exactly what it involves, so I will take his request away and consider it. I want to emphasise that overall we have seen a variety of increases over the past decade owing to the triple lock policy. I am confident, as I have flagged already, that we have seen a substantial increase in pensioner income as a result of that policy thus far.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
First, may I congratulate the Government on quite an afternoon? One afternoon, two statements, two broken promises—even for this Government, that is quite an achievement.
Despite all the problems that we have heard about, the triple lock was designed to protect pensioners, 2 million of whom live in poverty in this country, from the days when all they could expect was a 75p increase. Will the Secretary of State clarify two things? First, she said in her statement that the earnings link was set aside last year because of earnings falling by one percentage point. My understanding of the triple lock was that it would always mean the higher of 2.5% inflation or earnings, so would the percentage not have been 2.5% anyway? Secondly, would she be prepared to put it in writing, in legislation, that this is only for one year, so that pensioners do not feel that they have been asked to take the word of a Government whose word is not worth the paper it is written on?
Dr Coffey
The one year will be set out in the Bill, which I expect to be published tomorrow. As I have said, Steve Webb—the former Lib Dem pensions Minister, who probably knows more about pensions than any other member of the Liberal Democrat party—has been very public about the fact that this is a pragmatic approach, in effect, and it is not what this was designed for. I also point out that, when I made a similar statement last year, the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), who usually speaks on DWP matters for the Liberal Democrats, asked about what would happen next year and whether we should anticipate that something like this approach might be needed again. That was a fair question, but it was important that we took things one year at a time because we did not know the future impact.
As I have already articulated to the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), this will be for one year only. The setting aside of the earnings link is because earnings are built into the Pensions Act. If we had not changed the law last year, we would not have been allowed by law to have increased the state pension at all; it would have been frozen in cash terms. Just as last year we set aside the earnings link to allow the uprating and ensure that state pensions were not frozen, this year we are setting it aside to correct for the fact that we have a statistical anomaly.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christine Jardine Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)
We welcome the involvement of all employers of all sizes in all sectors in the kickstart scheme. We have made it even easier to bring in small employers and sole traders by developing an important kickstart gateway-plus model to accommodate their specific needs. They can apply through an approved gateway-plus organisation that can provide a suitable pay-as-you-earn scheme process for young people on placements with them. With regard to working on agriculture, I am engaged with Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Ministers on this and we are focused on supporting all sectors that need labour. There is a covid economy and growing jobs in some sectors and we are keen to support them.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD) [V]
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Justin Tomlinson)
I thank the hon. Member for this question. While there were delays to the review because of covid, we are committed to the three themes that have come out of the review: raising awareness, improving consistency and changing the six-month rule. I thank all the health and disability organisations and charities that have helped to support that review. I am committed to going further to explore extending the principle of the severe conditions criteria to remove unnecessary assessments as well as changing the six-month rule.
Social Security
Christine Jardine Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD) [V]
This is quite a difficult and personal debate for me today. I was brought up in that world capital of asbestos-related diseases that the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) so eloquently described. Indeed, my mum’s name is one of the many—too many—on a memorial in Clydebank to those who have died of asbestos-related lung disease. She did not qualify for compensation under the scheme because, as well as the length of time the disease takes to emerge making it difficult to pursue a legal claim successfully, the many and diverse conditions triggered by asbestos can also create problems with linking it directly to the workplace. There is still much work to be done in that regard. It was years after the asbestos factory closed, and more than 30 years from the time when my mum had worked in the shipyard office, that she was diagnosed when her symptoms emerged. The conditions brought on by breathing in that dangerous substance are no respecters of time, and the toll and the impact that they have, both emotionally and physically, on the victims and their families is huge.
Like previous speakers, I would like to mention the work done over many years by Clydeside Action on Asbestos and others. I remember my mum remarking on the irony—she thought it was actually quite a nice irony—that so many people who had worked together in the 1960s whom she had known in the John Brown shipyard and not seen for years were brought together in mutual support in a campaign to help one another. But for many of us—many of their dependants—that was tinged with a huge sadness, because these were people we had known as our parents, aunts, uncles and friends of the family, who had been young and vibrant, with lives ahead of them, but who now had been brought so devastatingly low by asbestos-related conditions.
We have heard about the legislation in 1979 and the first decade of this century, which has gone a long way to helping those victims of asbestos-related diseases, but we still have so much more to do in ensuring better workspaces and ensuring better compensation for those affected by these and so many other workplace-related injuries and illness. So I have no hesitation in supporting this motion.
Supporting Disadvantaged Families
Christine Jardine Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dr Coffey
I thank my hon. Friend for her remarks, and she is right to recognise that this support package is much more comprehensive in reaching disadvantaged children. I particularly welcome her support for the national roll-out of the holiday activities programme. Not only will there be guidance, but I genuinely hope that we can do something innovative regarding how we share best practice between the most successful schemes. We must encourage charities, in a covid-secure way, to find out what is happening in different parts of the country, so that they will be well prepared when these programmes start at Easter.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
While I welcome this latest U-turn from the Government on supporting children, I ask them to consider the fact that there are still millions of people in this country, like the constituent I spoke to on Wednesday who was at her wits’ end, who have had no help, no support, no finance from the Government at all since March. Will the Government reconsider? Will they consider universal basic income? Will they extend the help we have at the moment to the excluded?
Universal Basic Income
Christine Jardine Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) for such an impressive and informative speech about what UBI could bring to this country.
I say to the Minister that I stand here making this speech today as a convert to UBI. Two years ago, as the DWP spokesperson at our party conference, I was not in favour of UBI: I did not think that we should dismantle what we have at the moment and considered that we had enough problems with universal credit without going back to scratch. However, that was before I had heard the word “coronavirus” and seen the impact it was going to have on this country. That was before we arrived at a situation where 4.5 million people in the UK were living in poverty.
Coronavirus has changed everything. It has changed everything in much the same way—this metaphor has been used a lot—as the second world war changed everything for this society. When Beveridge put together his report in 1942, a lot of people said that it simply could not work, that it was not sensible and that the country could not afford it. What on earth was he thinking about? And yet, immediately post-war, the Labour Government set about putting that Beveridge report into action. What I say today is that what this country needs now is that kind of vision, and that kind of willingness to take on a challenge and to change society for the better for the next generation. It is not an opportunity that we asked for; it has come in the form of a challenge—probably the biggest challenge that any of us will face in our lifetimes. But we also have to see it as an opportunity to make progress.
Why UBI? The reason I became a convert, frankly, has been the number of phone calls and the number of people who have come to me since March this year—every day, every phone call, every person who thought they were financially secure, every person who spent decades building up a company, every person who was self-employed but now finds that they are without the support they need for the future: all that has convinced me that the only way to tackle the issue fully and to make sure that everyone gets the support they need is through a universal basic income.
UBI would help the people on whom we rely but we often miss: the carers, the people who are low paid. As the hon. Member for Inverclyde said, there should be no stigma or penalty to taking another job, but at the moment there is. I am thinking of people who have worked long hours to get our food to the supermarket shelves who are not on a huge salary and who could do with some help.
My basic plea to the Minister is this: look at whether we can have a trial, to see whether UBI can work and whether we can have the courage that the Government had immediately after the war. That generation looked to Beveridge and thought, “Here is another way. Here is a way of improving society. Here is a way of making a change, a legacy for future generations.”
We have all gone out on a Thursday night and applauded the NHS, which was part of that bigger vision. We have all, at some point in our lives, looked to the welfare state and thought, “Will it be there to help me?” In this, we have seen that it is not. It was a wonderful vision for the 20th century, but we need something new for the 21st century. We need something that makes sure that nobody falls through the cracks as we have seen in this crisis: the 3 million people who have had no support and who, regardless of the Government schemes we hear about, still have no support, no financial safety net, no way out of this from the Government. UBI could provide that.
At the moment, I would not give the Minister a blueprint and say, “This is the one you must follow” because that would be a mistake. We have to look at how we can do it, how it can be affordable and how we make sure that support gets to the people who need it: as I said, the carers, the stay-at-home parents, the people on a low income. They need our support now more than ever.
Two years ago, perhaps, I did not see it, but now I firmly believe that universal basic income is an idea whose time has come. This time needs something special—it needs us to have the courage that a previous generation had to do something radical and progressive. When people look back at this time 20 to 30 years from now, they could have this as something we tried to do and hopefully succeeded in doing for the future.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christine Jardine Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Christine Jardine
Further to the points already raised by other hon. Members, there are 6,500 women in Edinburgh West who were born in the 1950s and who have been affected by last week’s Court judgment. Can the Secretary of State assure me that, in the meeting that she has agreed to with the chairs of the APPG, there will be a meaningful attempt to address the poverty that these women face and not just sweep it under the carpet like an inconvenient problem?
Dr Coffey
I refer the hon. Lady to the judgment that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), has already raised. She might also wish to speak to her party leader, because she joined me in the Division Lobby when we made the changes that we did in the Pensions Act 2011. [Interruption.] Or rather, at least that the coalition Government did. I wish to make sure that we have a sensible conversation going forward, but the judgment stands. It is open for the ladies to appeal, but I can assure the House that we have made every effort, as did the Labour Government before us, to ensure that people knew about these changes.
Personal Independence Payments: Supreme Court Ruling
Christine Jardine Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Justin Tomlinson
We must consider the detail of the judgment and how it needs to be implemented before we can estimate how many people will be affected, but we will look back at cases. We are committed to engaging with stakeholders and disabled people, utilising their expertise, to ensure that the people who should receive support get it fully, fairly and as quickly as possible.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Liberal Democrats welcome the Supreme Court judgment, and I welcome much of what the Minister has said today about making things easier and more appropriate. However, does he accept that, as has already been mentioned, mental health assessments bring with them a particularly difficult set of circumstances? People’s conditions may fluctuate, and assessments affect individuals in different ways, so will he consider, yet again, bringing assessments back in-house and having specialists who deal specifically with mental health cases to ensure that individuals get not only a mental health champion, but an appropriate champion with knowledge of their particular condition?
Justin Tomlinson
I understand the thrust of the hon. Lady’s point, and I know that she works hard in this area. As I have said, our collective understanding is getting better, and we are working with stakeholders—people with real frontline experience—to help shape our training. All the assessors—trained health professionals—have people behind them who are experts in all conditions, not just mental health. Remember, many claimants have a menu of health conditions to be navigated. Where an assessor feels that they need additional support, they will get it from those experts before the assessment and while writing the report afterwards.