Greater Manchester Spatial Framework

Debate between George Howarth and Barbara Keeley

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Barbara Keeley]

Is my hon. Friend concerned, as I am, about the impact that these houses could have on the gridlock on our roads? The recently completed north-west quadrant study, which the Minister can perhaps study, shows that the motorway and road network near my constituency has 15 of the 100 worst-performing motorway sections in the country for journeys completed on time. Our journey times are four and a half times longer than the mile a minute they are supposed to be, we have one of the poorest safety records in the country on our local roads and motorways, and almost all the motorways near my constituency are in the top 20% worst performing, in terms of casualties. The real killer, if I can put it that way, is air pollution and air quality problems, which are dreadful in Salford—much worse than the national average.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) continues, I have been very tolerant of lengthy interventions. Some Members have had the equivalent of a speech in interventions during this debate. Interventions need to be a bit more focused.

National Living Wage

Debate between George Howarth and Barbara Keeley

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for her work in preparation for the debate, and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) for the way in which she opened it.

I want to focus on the impact that the Government’s so-called national living wage is having, and could have, on the care sector, following the theme raised by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry). The care sector is under increasing financial pressure, and many organisations have warned that the Government’s failure to provide additional funding for the national living wage could result in a number of care providers becoming financially unviable. It will also have an impact on the pay and working conditions of care staff.

The Local Government Association has estimated that introducing the Government’s national living wage will cost home care and residential care providers at least £330 million this year. A number of Members have mentioned the social care precept. In my local area of Salford, the precept can raise only £1.6 million, but the cost of the national living wage increase to the care sector is £2.7 million. It has clearly been left to taxpayers to pay for, with a mechanism that is not even sufficient.

Care England says that the Government’s national living wage announcement

“places additional, unfunded pressures on the care sector that it cannot cope with. Care providers have already had to fund the National Minimum Wage increase of October 2015, plus standard Cost of Living increase in contracts from local authorities, and increases in Care Quality Commission regulatory fees…The aggregate impact of all of these increases is substantial: providers estimate that this will cost them a 5% rise in the wage bill in the first year, and 7% each year thereafter.”

I have already been told that, like other businesses, some care providers have altered their employment contracts and conditions as a way of coping with those changes, meaning that additional costs from the national living wage are being paid for by careworkers themselves. As we have heard, many careworkers are already underpaid. The National Audit Office has reported that up to 22,000 home care workers in England are illegally paid below the national minimum wage, and I believe the actual figure is much higher.

In HMRC investigations of care providers between 2011 and 2015, more than four out of 10 were found not to be complying with the national minimum wage. The Resolution Foundation has calculated that careworkers are collectively cheated of £130 million a year due to pay levels below the minimum wage. That is done through a variety of mechanisms, such as careworkers not being paid adequately for travel time, despite statutory guidance. As one careworker has said:

“In order to earn a full time wage, the carers in our company usually start work at 7 am and work until 9 pm five/six days a week, with gaps throughout the day where we wait in the car until due at the next client.”

Some careworkers are paid as little as £3.50 per hour when lack of pay for travel and waiting time is considered.

[Mr George Howarth]

In response to a point that I raised earlier, the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said that he thought the biggest cause of more people going to food banks would be if people lost their jobs. As I know he is aware, the facts show that the majority of people who use food banks are those in low-paid and insecure employment.

[Barbara Keeley]

Very much so. We are talking about people who are paid £3.50 an hour, and their hours are being cut. Careworkers on zero-hours contracts complain about not getting the hours they want and are finding it hard to make ends meet, so my right hon. Friend is quite right. In a recent Channel 4 “Dispatches” programme, an undercover reporter employed as a careworker confirmed the point about staff being paid way under the minimum wage. He was being paid just £3.89 an hour, working in a London borough.

Rather than improving pay, the introduction of what the Government call the national living wage is having an adverse effect on the working conditions of some careworkers. I have heard reports of one domiciliary care provider in the north-west raising the wages of care staff to £7.75—fair enough—but balancing the increase by introducing other changes that have a negative impact on employees. Sick pay, which was previously two weeks on full pay and two weeks on half pay, has ended. The hours during which careworkers must be available for work now run from 7 am to 11 pm. Mileage claims no longer include the first 10 miles of each day’s journeys—and staff are already paid only 20p a mile, which is well below HMRC’s recommended rate of 45p a mile. Workers at that care provider believe they are effectively paying for their own pay rise.

I have heard of a care provider in the east midlands cutting staff allowances and charging more for services in order to implement the national living wage. I am sure we will see much more of that up and down the country. As a result of the mileage allowance being cut by 15p to 20p a mile and the first and last seven miles of travel each day being excluded, 35% of the workforce at that care provider will lose out. Some workers have reported that they will lose up to £1,000 a year. That is shameful. It is just like the B&Q workers my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North talked about.

The introduction of what the Government call the national living wage was supposed to improve employees’ living standards, but it appears that some careworkers are receiving little or no benefit from the changes and that some might even be worse off. If careworkers continue to suffer because of unpaid travel time, care visits that are too short and unfair working conditions, it will have a detrimental effect on their work and the wellbeing of the people they care for. In fact, the Social Care Institute for Excellence has warned that stress and low morale resulting from how care staff are treated can have a direct impact on care service quality.

I believe that care work is a demanding job and requires skilled workers who are compassionate and have the time to provide good-quality care. It is completely unacceptable that a job that has historically been undervalued is being so exploited today and that careworkers are not being paid the basic wage for the job they do. Given the examples I have quoted, will the Minister tell us what the Government will do to ensure that careworkers are not worse off as a result of the national living wage?

Women and Low Pay

Debate between George Howarth and Barbara Keeley

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Barbara Keeley]

The Minister said that the Opposition have not welcomed the changes to the national minimum wage, so I would like to say something about it. Before the spending review next week, there is a real fear that the £1.7 billion cost could bring down the care sector. If the Minister still has a chance to lobby the Chancellor before next week, he might like to make that point to him. There are real fears about that. In fact, when I asked the Community and Social Care Minister about it yesterday in Health questions, he actually asked me where the funding was coming from. In response to the Minister, the reason people have concerns is because of things like that.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Lady is making a very tenuous link. I hope that Ruth Cadbury will not be led down that particular primrose path.

Housing Benefit

Debate between George Howarth and Barbara Keeley

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Howarth]

Absolutely, I applaud what is happening in Northern Ireland.

Since the introduction of the bedroom tax, rent arrears in Merseyside have increased by £2.2 million—not to £2.2 million, but by £2.2 million—representing a loss of income that could have built 125 houses in the region, creating jobs and bringing all the other consequences. Some 60% of those in the Liverpool city region in arrears because of the bedroom tax are in arrears for the first time. It is not a habit of theirs, but a direct consequence of the bedroom tax.

[Barbara Keeley]

We have some frightening statistics in Salford, too, but those are very large numbers, particularly the loss of spending power. Do those figures cover the Minister’s constituency and will she be explaining to people in the region how these things came about?

[Mr Howarth]

They do indeed. I hope the Minister will respond to these statistics, because her own constituents will be interested to hear.

We have experienced a 30% increase in void—empty—properties, including a 130% increase in three-bedroom houses. This is not, therefore, just a matter of releasing unused bedroom space for those on the waiting list; there is no demand for three-bedroom properties, which is why they become void properties. Staggeringly, the result has been a loss of rent to local landlords of £616,622 per month, compared with £397,000 in the same period last year. Those are the direct consequences, in one city region, of the bedroom tax.

Where are our people supposed to go? In my city region, we have an excess of three-bedroom properties and a shortage of two and one-bedroom properties. We can debate all day who is responsible for that, but it is a fact, so where are people to go? There is a shortage of social housing for them to scale down to. Interestingly, York university’s centre for housing policy report, which has been referred to frequently in this debate, concludes that 41.5% of people losing money because of the bedroom tax and having to move will enter the private rented sector. That is the conclusion of an unbiased, peer-reviewed report.

Now, here is the rub. This measure is supposed to be saving some money. The average rent for a three-bedroom housing association property in Knowsley is £74 a week, compared with £132 for a three-bedroom house in the private rented sector. If someone were to scale down from the three-bedroom housing association property to a two-bedroom house in the private sector, they would be paying £115 a week, compared with the £74 they were paying before.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) said earlier, this policy is morally bankrupt. It is also incompetent. It presumes that people can just move around at will, and that a property that is right for their circumstances exists somewhere in their area. That is not the case. There is growing evidence that, rather than saving money, this policy is costing more.

High Cost Credit Bill

Debate between George Howarth and Barbara Keeley

Friday 12th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley]

I went on a 10 km run to help my CAB; it was under threat, but we managed to preserve this essential service in my locality. Salford city council offered it accommodation, and it now runs an excellent service from a local council building. That has really helped.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I would like to pay tribute to the CABs and other advice bureaux in Knowsley, which are the last defence for many people seeking advice on what to do when they get into debt as a result of payday loans. It is also important to highlight the significant contribution of credit unions. In Knowsley, they provide not only a lending and deposit service, but a link to banks and credit from the Co-op so that people can buy white goods, for example.

[Barbara Keeley]

That is an excellent example. We heard earlier about a project run with the backing of Unite—that seemed to cause some amusement among Government Members—in Salford to get a credit union off the ground. We have credit unions serving parts, but not the whole of Salford, which has some very deprived wards, where the whole gamut of loan sharks have been plying their trade. I am concerned that we protect people from the bailiffs and the financial truncheons—I think that is what someone called them earlier—and help them join together in co-operatives.

[Mr Howarth]

This point has been made repeatedly, but it bears repeating: with multiple loans, roll-overs and all of that, people are eventually driven into the hands of loan sharks, with all the woeful consequences that can have.