Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I want to bring the Secretary of State back to the cap. Lowering the cap is one thing, and it is something that we could probably agree on, but having different levels of the cap across the United Kingdom breaks parity and sets an unwanted precedent for other benefits, and we strongly disagree with that. Will he reconsider and have the cap at the same level across the whole United Kingdom?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The problem with the cap when we set it previously was that it disproportionately affected London without having a great effect on the rest of the country. This process means that of the 92,000 extra people who are likely to be affected, 16,000 will be in London and 77,000 will be outside London, which I think resets the balance. By the way, many people tell me that the cap is set far too high.

[Ian Paisley]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman, so I will make some progress. He is more than welcome to try to intervene later, but I want to move on to the next aspect of the Bill. I stand by the fact that the cap will now be more likely to be equal. It will not be absolutely equal because there are variable incomes, as he knows.

Welfare Reform (People with Disabilities)

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Lady agree with me that there are about 5,000 people with motor neurone disease, which is a rapidly progressive and fatal illness, and that not all of them can obtain a DS1500? That pushes things to the point where people think that they can or should work, when they are not physically capable of doing so. The Government must deal with that rapidly to ensure that all 5,000 people in the UK with MND are taken care of.

[Debbie Abrahams]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The work capability assessment’s insensitivity to mental health conditions, progressive conditions and fluctuating conditions makes it unfit for purpose at the moment, and there is a lot of evidence to support that.

Post Office Card Account

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There has been a sea change. Of course, nobody notices something that does not happen. For the past four years, we have not seen these mass organised closures. It was not just attrition, but at least two rounds of organised post office closures. This Government, despite difficult financial situations, have made it a priority to address that. Not only have we have invested in upgrading the network, but the post office local model means that people will be able access their cash on a Sunday morning if the shop is open, and that will be good for business. This is a seven-year contract, so it covers a very long period. The intention is to give the post office network breathing space to develop new products for the longer term.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

This statement is very welcome. Will the Minister tell us how it will apply to the network in Northern Ireland and assure us that it will be proportionate across the whole of the United Kingdom?

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The social security administration system in Northern Ireland is a significant user of the Post Office card account, and we anticipate mirroring provision in Northern Ireland as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

Those people on zero-hours contracts comprise 2% of all workers, and I remind the hon. Gentleman that the UK Statistics Authority called the Opposition to account for inflating the number of people on zero-hours contracts. What I can tell him is that the vast majority of jobs are full-time and permanent. That is what we should be celebrating now, with nearly 2 million more people in work since the general election.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the Minister look at the case of my constituent Albert Dowie, whose small service pension is preventing him from doing part-time work, because to do so would deny him income support and reduce his housing benefit?

[Esther McVey]

I will indeed meet the hon. Gentleman to talk about that case. However, that is why the Secretary of State is leading the way in bringing in universal credit so that we do not have all those discrepancies in the system, with points and differentials and things that are preventing people who want to return to work from doing so. The Government should be supporting them, and that is what we are doing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

I certainly will—if you are an employer and have a job, please get down to the Selby jobs fair. That is absolutely right. That is what we are doing: we are getting the country back on its feet and helping young people as best we can—hence, we have more young people in work than since records began. I congratulate my hon. Friend on all the work he does on the ground.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Is the Secretary of State aware of the impending crisis to the stability of institutions in Northern Ireland as a result of the failure to implement significant reforms to the welfare system there? If he is aware of those threats, what message has he for Sinn Fein, which has failed to introduce those changes and appears to be more interested in the need of residents in Monaghan than those in Northern Ireland?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Sinn Fein needs to face up to its responsibilities and cannot have it all ways. If it gets the welfare Bill through, it will benefit from the support that it will get, but it cannot sit in limbo land. I support what the hon. Gentleman has just said—it is time for Sinn Fein to get on and do what an elected Government need to do.

DWP: Performance

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I apologise to the House for having been in a Statutory Instrument Committee—in fact, on DWP issues—listening to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) padding out his speech while saying very little. That is essentially where we are: we are not quite sure what the Labour party’s alternative is to what we are doing. However, Labour has a motion. In it, Labour complains that

“projected spending on Employment and Support Allowance has risen by £800 million”.

That tells us that Labour would prefer that perhaps another 160,000 people who currently get ESA not get it.

I am concerned about some areas. I have taken over as chair of the Lib Dems Back Bench parliamentary policy committee, and one issue I have expressed concern about is sanctions. There is no question but that people are sanctioned who should not be sanctioned. I thought that we should find out about more such cases, so I asked my local jobcentre to put on the wall a letter saying, “I am worried about people being wrongfully sanctioned. Can you please contact me if you have been wrongfully sanctioned?” The jobcentre said no—that it would not put a letter on the wall—which caused me concern, so I have written to Ministers to ask them to consider that issue. I take the view that jobcentres should make people aware of alternative advice services, be they the local Member of Parliament or the CAB.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Hemming]

I am sorry, but I will not take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman because it will knock somebody else out.

The Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), was quite right to say that welfare reform is a very complex area. However, there is no question about it: we have to make it so that people are better off in work than out of work. I was very pleased when I heard universal credit proposed, because I have supported its principle for a long time. I thought that it might be a bit too radical for the Government, but we are in fact managing to make progress down that route, even though there are difficulties in our way.

Things such as the welfare cap are right, because it sends this message: “You should be in work.” The local Labour party in my constituency of Birmingham, Yardley opposed all the Government’s welfare changes during the local elections, but it got 27%, while we got 46%. My local constituents in Birmingham, Yardley agree with the welfare cap. Many of them do not earn that much money, and they think the cap is reasonable.

We should concentrate money on low-paid workers. Universal credit, which will top up their pay, will be good. I want an increase in the minimum wage above what is proposed. I would go for a figure of about £7 an hour as a way of starting to make progress on that.

The welfare benefits system is a complex area. Now that we are one year out from a general election, I really think that the Labour party has a responsibility to put forward some alternatives. We have heard noises from Opposition Members complaining about the cost of housing benefit going up, but if we freeze housing benefit payments, the people who will suffer are those on low incomes, whether in work or out of work, who have difficulty paying their rent. There has been talk of the Labour party adopting the Institute for Public Policy Research’s proposal about the transfer or localisation of housing benefit, but that would cause great difficulties, and I do not think that local authorities want it. Less than a year from a general election, with the Government doing a good job in improving the employment situation—getting young people into work and making it worth while to work—the Opposition have got to offer an alternative.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

It is a good job I have the transcript of what the hon. Lady said, which was “when we write to the Department…we only ever get replies from the correspondence unit.” When the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), who has responsibility for disabled people, rose to intervene, she said “I will give way; I haven’t had any letters from this one either.” We waved a letter that she had received, so I hope she will withdraw that remark.

Moving on to the substance of reform, we talked about the record of the two Governments on reform. Let us take the case of child maintenance. I want to read out what was said about child maintenance reform by the National Audit Office, which was quoted by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston. It said:

“So far, the reforms had cost £539 million for a scheme that had performed no better than its predecessor”.

Unfortunately, that is not our reform; that is Labour’s reform in 2006. That is what happened when Labour reformed child maintenance. The NAO said the scheme was no better than the one that went before, despite costing half a billion pounds. That is why we have to replace it with a new scheme. The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) said that no doubt this one will go wrong. Actually, we have been running it quietly since 2012, phasing it in, learning the lessons from the other party and, as a result, the scheme is being highly effective. We already have record numbers of people being paid directly under the new scheme. Alongside major reform, we are getting more maintenance paid to more children than ever before. In other words, we are reforming, but not taking our eyes off the day job.

A number of Members mentioned the performance of Atos. As several of my hon. Friends pointed out, there is a bit of collective amnesia regarding who, in 2005, gave Atos a seven-year contract with a three-year option to renew. By last autumn, Labour was saying, “Let’s get rid of Atos; let’s sack it”, but that would have cost the taxpayer millions of pounds. Instead, we have terminated Atos’s contract in a managed way. My right hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for disabled people has done that, as a result of which the taxpayer gets money and Atos begins to clear the backlog of the work that it has been doing.

As well as the changes that we are making to bring down the backlog on employment and support allowance—it has been said that it has come down significantly in the past couple of months—it is worth remembering that every one of the people in that backlog is getting benefit. It is sometimes made out that they are waiting for money, but they are currently receiving the assessment rate of ESA and incapacity benefit. Those figures relate to people who are getting benefit and are awaiting assessment.

Let me give the House some further examples of how we have been improving the service we deliver to the people who depend on our help. A year ago, the number of jobseeker’s allowance new claims dealt with in 10 days was 66%; now it is 90%. The number of ESA new claims dealt with in 10 days was 66%; now it is 80%. The number of appeals outstanding a year ago was 150,000; now it is 4,000. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, this is at a time when we are taking running costs out to make central Government more efficient.

A number of Members referred to the PIP. We are ensuring that the contractors, Atos and Capital, recruit more health care professionals to deal with the backlog. The number of appeals we are facing has fallen precipitously. It is an extraordinary fall in the number of people appealing against ESA decisions. Back in the first quarter of last year, we received 109,000 appeals against ESA decisions. In the first quarter of this year, it was 11,000. That is an 89% fall in the number of people claiming ESA who are appealing. The reason for that is that we, unlike Labour, are finding far more people eligible for benefit. Let me give the House the evidence for that claim. In late 2008, when Labour was undertaking work capability assessments, it was finding 64% of people fit for work. In the most recent quarter, we found not 64% but 27% fit for work. Far from it being this Government who are using the work capability assessment to throw sick people off benefit, it was the Labour party that used the WCA for that purpose.

During the debate, a number of Members said that we needed to make changes to the WCA, and that is what we have been doing as part of the Harrington review process. We have accepted about 50 recommendations. One reason why we are getting the number of people we are on to ESA and why we have a bigger proportion of people in the support group than ever before is that we have taken Labour’s failed WCA and reformed it to make it fairer. That is what a good Government does. We want to ensure that the right money goes to the right people.

[Ian Paisley]

Will the Minister take the opportunity tonight to make it abundantly clear from the Dispatch Box to all Members of this House that any concessions that the Government intend to make on welfare reform will be made as a result of arguments made in this place by Members who take their seats in this place, and that none will be made to a party that refuses to take its seats?

Jobs and Work

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for reminding us of that. Two of my Labour predecessors investigated this problem and neither of them felt there was sufficient cause to change the legislation.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

The figures show that 580 more people are employed in my constituency now than this time last year, which is positive news for the area. However, what conversations is the Secretary of State having with the devolved Administrations to ensure unemployment continues to be tackled, especially for low-wage earners?

[Vince Cable]

Although the situation is improving in Northern Ireland, there are significant unemployment black spots. I want to work with the Northern Ireland devolved authorities to make sure that we deal with them systematically. As the hon. Gentleman knows, this is a long-standing problem in Northern Ireland that goes back long before the recession.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We have made great progress in pursuing more people than have ever been pursued before. The reality is that the amount got back from those who have been defrauding the state is better than it has been, but in the answer to which my hon. Friend refers, we made it clear that we have much more to do. It is the nature of many benefits that they are open to abuse; changes such as universal credit will simplify the process and give far less opportunity to those who would defraud the system. That is the right way to deal with the issue.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

In Northern Ireland, 300,000 pensioners enjoy the winter fuel allowance. Will the Secretary of State confirm whether, if he is returned to office after the next election, that benefit will remain in place?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is this Government who have stood by that. The Prime Minister gave a pledge before the last election, and we intended to, and will, see that all the way to the election. As always, all further commitments will be made and published in the manifesto.

Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sammy Wilson]

I wanted to come on to that point, so I will jump to it now. The risk is, of course, fairly minimal in any case. First, it has already been covered and, secondly, I heard the Minister say that this cannot be passed on through additional premiums on employers’ liability insurance. No Minister can guarantee that when insurance premiums go up, some of the marginal increase is not to enable the additional costs to be recouped by the insurance industry. I do not know what kind of scrutiny of employers’ liability insurance premiums the Minister intends to introduce to ensure that the costs are not passed on, but in any case, as the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) has pointed out, the insurance companies will already have made provision for this Bill.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling case. He is absolutely right about how the insurance companies will operate in this field. They not only insure the initial risk, but sell it on. We can be assured that they are definitely covered, and I believe that the Minister should take cognisance of that in making his decision.

[Sammy Wilson]

I thank my hon. Friend.

Let me deal with the two amendments that deal with whether the compensation level is acceptable. For 28 years, I represented east Belfast—the inner part within the shadow of the shipyard—on Belfast city council, and I saw and represented, at disability living allowance tribunals and so forth, many people who had suffered as a result of exposure to asbestos in the shipyard. I have seen the suffering that they went through. I have gone into their houses and seen people who could hardly walk across a 12-foot wide living room, who could not climb the stairs and who knew that they were in for a horrible and painful death. Those are the sort of people we are talking about, and that is the outcome of the exposure to which they have been subjected. That is what we are dealing with.

I must say that I find it grossly offensive that people who qualify for 75% compensation under this scheme will have 100% of their benefits taken from them, yet that will be paid back to the insurance companies to try to “relieve the burden” on companies that already have the money to cover the costs. We should bear that in mind when we look at amendments 1 and 4, which provide for increasing the level of compensation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

I agree with my hon. Friend that the whole process is taking far too long. We are working closely with the Ministry of Justice to reform the system and ensure that appeals can be heard more quickly. We are also working with charities to see what additional support we can give to people claiming employment and support allowance, to ensure that the right information is made available as soon as possible to enable claims to be processed as quickly as possible.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

What would the Minister say to my constituent, Philip Gillespie, who served our nation in Afghanistan and lost his right leg in an explosion there? Last month, he lost his disability living allowance and was told that he would be caught up by the new military system that is soon to be put in place. I hope that he will be caught up by it, but will the Minister ensure that this never happens again, and that a soldier serving his nation is never refused a benefit to which he is entitled?

[Mr Hoban]

I am not familiar with the details of the case to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but we are working on arrangements with the Ministry of Defence and, in future, such cases will be dealt with by the Ministry rather than by the Department for Work and Pensions. However, the assessment is about functionability, not about someone’s condition. The old system, under which people were judged on their condition, resulted in many people being written off for decades because of their illness.