Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Although I have not read the report, Open Europe has stated what we are already discussing with Ministers of many of the other countries concerned. They are all pretty much in agreement that the present system does not give them enough leeway, and there is a general sense that they want people to contribute more before they receive benefits. That is very much the tenor of the discussion, so what the think-tank writes is pretty much what I think is going to happen in Europe.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his decision to ensure that my constituents who fled Sierra Leone because of Ebola were able to claim benefits and were not affected by the habitual residence test. Will he therefore reinstate the old rule whereby people who were advised by British embassies and high commissions to come back to Britain will have the habitual residence rule waived?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The moment I heard the hon. Lady’s question to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, I immediately said to the Department, “Let me have the news on this”, and I changed the policy on that specifically for Ebola. I am keeping the matter under review to look at whether it is necessary to make a wider exemption, depending on what the embassies say, and I will come back to her about that in due course. I was horrified to see what had happened to her constituents.

Universal Credit

Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Universal credit is worth doing properly because of the benefits it brings to so many people. Just in case he does not remember, although the Opposition say that they support it, they voted against it. We will take no lessons from them because of the chaos, mess and cost that they left for us in the welfare system. We are having to pick up the details of that and put them right. We are doing that every day.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State says that he has read and implemented the report of the Public Accounts Committee, which confirmed that the Department

“only reported good news and denied the problems”.

Unfortunately, we have seen no change today. A specific recommendation of the report was that the Government should urgently carry out an impairment review into the value of the IT assets that had been written down as a result of ineffectualness. As he has confirmed today that the recommendations have all been implemented, will he tell us what that value was according to his own impairment review?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The Department has carried out probably the most exhaustive impairment review. It is now being signed off by the National Audit Office. I gave the figures to the Work and Pensions Committee yesterday. The total write-off figure was £40.1 million. We should bear it in mind that Opposition Front Benchers have been running around saying that hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds will be written off. They will not be. That will be in the published accounts today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is right and his campaigns have helped us shape some of our thinking on that. It is worth noting that for the first time financial education will be on the national curriculum, which is extremely important. Through universal credit we are making available a series of financial planning devices and special bank accounts, so we hope this will drive people in the right direction. The crackdown on payday lenders who abuse their position has already started and is yielding real results.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

16. What assessment he has made of whether people who claim disability-related benefits are also more likely to receive housing benefit; and if he will make a statement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I say to my hon. Friend and to all hon. Members and hon. Friends whose areas are affected by the roll-out that we are in deep discussions with all those councils. Jobcentre Plus will be working hugely with each of them, advising, helping and supporting them—in many senses, giving them more support than is necessarily likely to be the case when the national roll-out follows the pilot programmes.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

But as the roll-out happens, some of the areas that will be most affected are not the pilot areas—the first areas—but places such as my constituency, where people are already being moved out of London housing into Slough because there is relatively cheap housing there. Will the Secretary of State undertake that during the period when, as he said, he is taking time to introduce this, he will make revisions and talk to those authorities that are not the pilot authorities and are affected, as mine will be?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am glad to see that the hon. Lady realises the point of this whole process—to learn the lessons and to understand how best to implement the pilot programmes properly. Of course we will be talking to all local authorities, particularly those that are directly affected, and all other local authorities will listen to what they say. Despite the massive protestations of collapse and doom and gloom that we heard when we announced these proposals—we should remember that all local authorities have known about them for over a year—we now see statistics showing that there has not been the mass migration that was predicted. As for access to housing, housing benefit caseloads in London have risen by 5%, not fallen.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

This is one of the most popular programmes that this Government are introducing, and the public genuinely believe that it is the right thing to do. The only group, it seems, who do not think it is the right thing to do are those sitting on the Opposition Benches.

When we recently started dipping into the issue and surveying those who were likely to be affected, it was interesting to find out that, already, well in advance of what is going to happen, about a third of people have admitted that they are out looking for work as a result of the oncoming benefit cap. Some 88% are now up to date with their rent, and 1% have reported having to move.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

20. What discussions he has had with companies that manage contracts under the Work programme on collaborating to reduce unemployment in the area in which they work; and if he will make a statement.

Pensions Bill [Lords]

Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 20th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

To be fair, I want to make a bit of progress, because a lot of people want to speak. If the hon. Gentleman wants to raise something else about the matter, I will give way to him later.

Pensions policy has not been updated accurately to reflect all the increases that I spoke about. I remind the House, however, that we are by no means alone in having to deal with this issue; others are making decisions about it. Ireland has already legislated for the pension age to be raised to 66 by 2014, and the Netherlands and Australia are increasing state pension age to 66 by 2020. The United States is already in that position, and Iceland and Norway are now at 67. Under existing legislation, the timetable for the increase to 66 in the UK was not due to be completed for another 15 years, yet the timetable was based on assumptions that are now out of date. The Pensions Act 2007 was based on ONS projections of average life expectancy from 2004. Those projections have subsequently increased by at least a year and a half for men and for women, so the situation is moving apace. That is why we are taking the necessary decision to look again at the timetable for increasing the state pension age. The Bill amends the current state pension age timetable to equalise men’s and women’s state pension ages at 65 in 2018 and then progressively to increase the state pension age to 66 by 2020. This new timetable will reduce pressures on public finances by about £30 billion between 2016-17 and 2025-26.

The impact of the changes on women has been debated enormously, focusing particularly on certain cohorts. All but 12% of those affected will see their state pension age increase by 18 months or less. I recognise that some 1% of those impacted will have a state pension age increase of two years, but it none the less remains the case that those reaching state pension age in 2020 will spend the same amount of time in retirement as expected when the 2007 Act timetable was being drawn up. That is an important factor. There will be no change to the amount of time that they will spend in retirement—some 24 years, on average. In fact, the women who are affected by the maximum increase will still, on average, receive their state pension for two and a half years longer than a man reaching state pension age in the same year.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Which of the facts that the Secretary of State has cited was he unaware of 12 and a half months ago, when in the coalition agreement the Government signed up to not introducing these changes before 2020?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As a coalition, we are, and continue to be, bound by the agreement. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady can shout at me in a second, but let me try to explain. There is a slight problem with that element of the coalition agreement. It was done in that way at the time, and that is fair enough, but we have since looked at it carefully and taken legal advice. The agreement talks about men’s pension age being accelerated to 66, which would breach our legal commitment to equalisation and then not to separating the ages again. There are reasons for needing to revisit that, and we have done so and made changes.

Welfare Reform

Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Iain Duncan Smith

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The reality is that the hon. Gentleman should welcome the programme that I am introducing today, because it will improve the lives of the poorest in society. I am sorry that he chooses to cavil about this. My comment on buses was simply this: people on low incomes in London and many other cities recognise that it is sometimes necessary to travel to their places of work. That is the key point. Frankly, I do not need any lectures from him, and if he and his party—[Interruption.] No, they should be prepared to accept that the recession that he refers to is the recession that they left us.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I am proud to represent a town that exists because it has work, and I am proud to have been part of a Government who, for the first time in nearly 20 years, reversed the increase in child poverty. However, I am concerned that the Secretary of State’s announcement will not achieve what I believe he intends to achieve. We know that the best way to tackle child poverty is to increase women’s income. In Slough, the average bus fare is about £3.50. His taper says that people will keep 35p in every £1 that they earn. If a woman is doing a job that she can get to while her children are at school—for four hours a day, say—she will have to work the whole time just to pay her bus fares, ending up with £4 more. Will he not take the advice of his hon. Friend the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) and do something about the cost of travel to work?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The hon. Lady has to admit that the one group that will be hugely affected in a positive way will be women going into work, because so many are engaged in caring and work and in having to balance the two. They will be paid more for the hours that they work, because they will retain more of their money. Of course there might be disputes and debates about whether we need to support people with travel costs, but it is a bit rich for the Opposition to give us lectures about travel costs after they left us without having done anything about them at all.