Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Kevin Hollinrake(3 months ago)
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Kevin Hollinrake
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise that point. Yes, the compensation scheme is there to compensate and provide redress for financial loss, but also, quite rightly, for personal loss, loss of reputation, impact on health—those kinds of matters. There are two routes open to compensation: the £75,000 fixed-sum award, which is pretty much an immediate payment, or someone can go for a full assessment of losses, which takes into account all those matters. Interim payments are also available. We have paid out £153 million in total across the schemes. I am happy to help the hon. Lady with that specific case, and we are looking to try to expedite the payment of full and fair compensation to all individuals. I am working on a daily basis to try to do that.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)
The Government are committed to tackling late payments. That is why we launched the prompt payment and cash flow review, which was published alongside the autumn statement. The review includes amending payment performance reporting requirements for large businesses, and providing the Small Business Commissioner with more powers to investigate late payments.
Debbie Abrahams
Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, but unfortunately late payments continue to blight the ability of small businesses to trade, with an average of £684 million a year being lost. Unfortunately, that is on the increase, with a 7% increase in 2023. I appreciate what the Minister said about another review— I think we had one a few years ago—but what specific actions are the Government taking to address this appalling abuse of power, which is contributing to 50,000 small businesses going under a year?
Kevin Hollinrake
The hon. Lady is right to raise this issue, and earlier I set out specific actions such as giving the Small Business Commissioner more powers, and producing league tables. We work closely with the Good Business Pays campaign, which produces league tables on this issue, and naming and shaming the people responsible is important. The Government are leading the way, and from April 2024 firms bidding for Government contracts worth more than £5 million will have to demonstrate that they pay their invoices within an average of 55 days, tightening to 45 days in April 2025 and to 30 days in the coming years.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Kevin Hollinrake
Yes, I would be very happy to meet. There are three compensation schemes and it depends on which one she falls into. If it is the group litigation order, an immediate award of £75,000 can be made; if it is an overturned conviction, the amount is £600,000. I am sure there will be one scheme that the hon. Lady’s constituent will fit into. I am very happy to meet her to help ensure she finds the right one.
Horizon: Compensation and Convictions
Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Kevin Hollinrake(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Kevin Hollinrake
My hon. Friend’s knowledge of history is greater than mine, but the essence of what he says is something we concur with. Whether by means of the route he mentions or other routes, we are keen to ensure that we make it easier to overturn convictions, ideally without the postmaster having to do anything. That is something we are looking at now but, again, we need to have conversations with the judiciary and other elements of the system to make sure that there are no unintended consequences from what we are doing—in terms of precedents, for example. However, our ambitions are exactly the same as my hon. Friend’s.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Following on from what the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) said, the chair of the independent advisory board, Professor Chris Hodges, is also suggesting that a simple piece of legislation could be introduced to the House, which would ensure pardons en masse and quickly. Will the Minister speak in particular about compensation for bereaved families where former sub-postmasters or sub-postmistresses took their own lives?
Kevin Hollinrake
I thank the hon. Lady for her question and again pay tribute to the work of the advisory board, including the chair Professor Chris Hodges, Professor Richard Moorhead, Lord Arbuthnot and the right hon. Member for North Durham. It has done fantastic work and I hope to attend its meeting on Wednesday, where we will discuss some of these issues. It is a further tragedy, of course, for the bereaved families. I have a family in my constituency in exactly that situation. The same amount of compensation should be made available to the family. I know that that is cold comfort for many people in that situation, but it is the least we can do to ensure that at least some compensation is paid to the family, who will also have been affected by this scandal.
Universal Credit Roll-out
Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Kevin Hollinrake(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
The hon. Lady said earlier that the up-front payment is, in her words, a loan. If it was not a loan, it would increase the overall quantum of benefit paid to recipients. Is that what she is proposing?
Debbie Abrahams
I will say exactly what I am proposing very shortly.
If the Government’s position is that Opposition day debate motions should have no binding effect on the actions of the Government, it fundamentally alters the relationship and balance of power between the Executive and Parliament. It would mean that apart from votes on legislation and matters of confidence, the Government could ignore the decisions and will of Parliament. This is very dangerous ground, and the situation needs to be seen in the context of the blatant power grab by the Executive that we witnessed on Second Reading of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill last month.
Debbie Abrahams
Absolutely. Surely what is happening is not right, so we must stop this.
I will now make some progress, although I will take more interventions later. People might not have kept up with the hundreds of stories that we have heard from colleagues on both sides of the House, but we must make sure that the Government’s flagship programme is amended to take account of the real hardship that people are experiencing. We have heard about that hardship not just from claimants, but from charities that deal with claimants, as well as many other organisations.
There are three key issues with universal credit: the programme’s design flaws, which have been there from the outset, as I mentioned last week; the cuts that were introduced in 2015; and various implementation failures. First, I will talk about the programme’s flaws. The six-week wait before new claimants receive any payment is particularly draconian, and it is having real impacts. Four weeks of the waiting period are to provide that universal credit can be backdated, but an additional week’s wait was added as policy, and claimants must wait a further week for their payment to arrive. That is believed to be one of the primary drivers of the rise in debt and arrears.
Kevin Hollinrake
The hon. Lady talks about a six-week delay before any payments are received, but she will be aware that up-front payments are made available at the initial stage, so does she accept that that is not quite the case?
Debbie Abrahams
No, I do not.
It is so important to stress that half of those in rent arrears under universal credit entered arrears after making a claim. We know that one in four is waiting more than six weeks, and one in 10 is waiting more than 10 weeks.