Women’s State Pension Age
Debate between Mel Stride and Stuart C McDonald(1 month ago)
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Mel Stride
What I am not really clear about is why the hon. Gentleman is urging me and the Government to draw a premature conclusion on the basis of— [Interruption.] No, it would be premature. As he points out, the report arrived on Thursday. It is now Monday, very early evening. It is complicated, so it is absolutely right and proper that we look at it very carefully and in great detail. It is only right and proper that we do that for the people who are concerned with this matter. That is precisely what we will do. We will act without undue delay. We will make sure that we engage with this House in an appropriate fashion, as we did with the ombudsman himself.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
The expression “Justice delayed is justice denied” has never seemed more appropriate, with so many thousands of WASPI women waiting for justice to be delivered and dying in the process. It is not just the five years waiting for the ombudsman’s report, but the years before that jumping through the hoops of the DWP complaints process and the independent case examiner. As well as delivering swift compensation, will the Secretary of State’s Government look at fixing the system that has delayed, for the best part of a decade, the delivery of justice for WASPI women?
Mel Stride
We will look closely at the report and we will, no doubt, draw many conclusions as a result of that process of careful examination of the findings and the points made within the report. My commitment to the House is that we will do that without undue delay and that we will also engage appropriately with Parliament as part of that approach.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mel Stride and Stuart C McDonald(1 month, 1 week ago)
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The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
We are reducing child poverty through the use of a large number of measures, not least ensuring that work pays, hence our increase in the national living wage in April and the reduction in the national insurance tax that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced recently.
Stuart C. McDonald
A total of 100,000 children will be kept clear of poverty this year thanks to the Scottish Government’s policies—primarily the Scottish child payment. Surely the Secretary of State must now look to rolling out some of our policies in other parts of the UK and, at the very least, ditch the two-child limit, which deliberately forces children into poverty.
Mel Stride
The limit to which the hon. Gentleman refers is there for a very good reason, which is that people in those circumstances should face the same basic decisions as those not on benefits. That is an important matter of fairness across those who receive benefits as well as the many who are paying tax. As for the number of children in poverty, that has fallen by 400,000 since 2010.
Business of the House
Debate between Mel Stride and Stuart C McDonald(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Mel Stride
I associate myself entirely with the hon. Gentleman’s comments about the D-day landings, and I recognise the enormous damage and destruction that was caused to Coventry by the bombing in the second world war. May I congratulate him on securing an Adjournment debate on his local hospital next Thursday? I look forward either to being present at that debate or to reading Hansard after it.
The school breakfasts programme might be a good subject for an Adjournment debate, so that the hon. Gentleman can have a discussion with a Minister across the Dispatch Box.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
Sacred Heart and St Lucy’s in Cumbernauld are among the churches up and down the country that have close and long-standing links with priests, ministers and other religious leaders from overseas—people who come to lead and support worship while regular pastors are on vacation. May we have an urgent debate on the changes to the immigration rules that are set to destroy those links and make that recruitment impossible?
Mel Stride
The best forum for furthering the hon. Gentleman’s point would be Home Office questions on Monday.
HMRC Closures
Debate between Mel Stride and Stuart C McDonald(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman is right: much of the debate has focused on the matters to which he refers. I am not seeking to avoid those other elements of the debate at all and was coming on to them, but I shall deal with them now, as he has raised them. HMRC has had eight very sensible criteria by which to judge where to locate the new hubs. He will know that we are looking at sustainable large sites, with the capacity to hold all HMRC’s requirements for the region in a single building. The talent pipeline, which has been mentioned, is extremely important.
Stuart C. McDonald
Everyone in the Chamber is in favour of much of the approach to digitalisation of the tax process, but does not that process itself undermine the case for saying that everyone has to be in one location? The fact that everything is being done digitally means that folk can stay in the offices that they are in currently and we can get on with it.
Mel Stride
I do not accept that point. We could take it to its logical conclusion and assume that everyone could work from home, and we could then have a very disparate workforce. There may be some attractions to that, but there is huge value in bringing people together in a single building, where there is a critical mass of individuals: collaborative working and the sharing of experience and ideas can take place, meetings can be held, and the technology is all in one place. I would have thought the hon. Gentleman would recognise that. Let us face it: if we went back to 2005, we might be debating whether we should shrink the number of offices from 600, which is what it was at that point. There will always be arguments about whether we should do things and the local impacts and so on, but this overarching direction of travel, it seems to me, has to be right.