Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lucy Frazer and Chris Law

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

A failure to agree on arrangements in international family law risks leaving a serious gap in the legal framework for proceedings involving children with family connections to the UK. Can the Secretary of State confirm what contingency planning is being undertaken to deal with that risk?

[Lucy Frazer]

It is really important that as we leave the EU we try to get arrangements similar to those that we have in relation to our cross-border workings through our court system. Family law is one of the important matters that we need to look at. I was very encouraged to see in the EU’s recent guidance that reciprocal arrangements in relation to family are one area that they are particularly interested in.

Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill

Debate between Lucy Frazer and Chris Law

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) on securing the debate, on the tone that she adopted and on the powerful way in which she spoke.

In my speech, I will identify three things: the general principle that working is important—the value of work—the existing sanctions regime and the importance of limiting sanctions wherever possible. Before I do so, I would like to make a general point. I think that the hon. Lady accepted that the system worked in some places, that there are hardship payments and that there is guidance. Implicit in her speech and in the Bill was the recognition that she seeks to change the implementation of the system, not the system itself, but I am not clear that legislation is necessarily the right way to do that.

First, I want to identify the principle of work. We need to encourage, empower and inform everybody about the opportunities of work, because work has a number of benefits. It gives people self-fulfilment and financial responsibility for themselves, and it enables them to be a role model for their children. Work also helps the country as a whole. If we have high employment and high productivity, we remain competitive as a nation and we ensure that those who might suffer, physically or mentally, from being out of work can help themselves. It is our job, as a Government, to ensure that those opportunities remain available and that people have the skills and the confidence to go to work.

Secondly, I said that I would identify the sanctions regime. The idea that people should go to work—that it pays to work, that people should get off benefits to go into work and that we should encourage them to do so—is neither new nor controversial. Likewise, the benefit system and the sanctions system are not new. The sanctions system has been around for four decades, and there is some evidence that sanctioning works; 70% of claimants say that they are more likely to follow the rules if they know that they are at risk of having their benefits stopped if they do not.

According to the National Audit Office report, international evidence suggests that sanctioning increases the number of people who go from benefits into employment. We have sanctions because we have conditions, and conditions are useful. Through the conditions system, people can get the training and the skills that they need, and conditions force people to get the skills that they need. As has been said during the debate, the evidence suggests that 90% of people do not have any sanctions at all.

[Chris Law]

To go back to the evidence from the National Audit Office, we must be reading two different reports. I have also looked at the report, and according to the official analysis of the benefit sanction system, there is absolutely no evidence that the sanctions regime imposed by the DWP has a positive effect on job outcomes. I would just like to get that on the record, because it is in complete contradiction to what the hon. Lady has just said.