Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Guy Opperman]

My hon. Friend is right to make that point. The provider will be required to ask members and other beneficiaries looking to access or transfer their pension benefits if they have received either pensions guidance or independent financial advice. If the member indicates that they have not received guidance or advice, the provider will have to recommend that they seek it. The provider will also have to ask the member whether they want to wait while they access guidance or advice, or, crucially, to confirm that they want to proceed without receiving it.

That will do two things from a behavioural nudge perspective—I suspect we will talk about behavioural nudges at great length. First, asking the scheme member if they would like to wait before accessing their pensions benefits so that they can receive guidance will give a clear steer that receiving guidance is the default option. Secondly, asking people to confirm that they want to access their pension without first receiving guidance ensures that the scheme member has to take an active decision to opt out. We believe that that strikes the right balance. It ensures that people are encouraged to take guidance without removing the element of personal choice. It also does not inconvenience those who have already accessed appropriate guidance or independent financial advice.

I could give a number of different quotes, but I will cite Tom Selby, the senior analyst at AJ Bell, who described the original auto guidance idea as weak and said that our proposal represents an improvement. He said:

“Automatically enrolling members into guidance for each transfer or every time they took money from their own pension pot—when they have already decided what they want to do—would have caused massive delayed and huge complaints.”

It was by no means clear, previously, that

“it would have a material impact on the take-up of guidance. It therefore risked being…ineffective.”

He added:

“The new amendment is a vast improvement and, in the short term, should help increase awareness of the importance and value of advice and guidance. It also gives the Financial Conduct Authority breathing room to consult on alternative nudges towards guidance that have been shown by research to be effective.”

The amendments also ensure that the occupational pension schemes that provide flexible benefit are covered—they are not covered by the Work and Pensions Committee’s suggestion—including those in Northern Ireland. Our proposals seek to ensure consistency of approach between personal and stakeholder pension schemes, which are regulated by the FCA, and occupational pension schemes.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I have a point of clarity. Surely a move from recommended guidance to default guidance would result in a higher up-take of independent advice and guidance.

[Guy Opperman]

We are into behavioural economics and nudge theory. In broad terms, imposing greater barriers to force people to do things should in principle get a greater take-up. However, there is a fine line. If we place too many hurdles in the way of the individual, they will not move anything even if it is in their interest, and they simply will not engage with the process. While one may agree or disagree with the concept of pension freedoms and having the ability to choose whether to consolidate pots or access them to do with them whatever one wishes, that freedom is available. One therefore has to be careful because, if there are too many barriers in the way, people simply will not engage with that policy.

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[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, and to participate in this stage of the process. I feel a bit like poacher turned gamekeeper, given that I was a member of the Work and Pensions Committee a few years ago when many of these matters were discussed. I remember having long discussions with my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet and the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South. It is still a matter of great sadness that I have not been to Paisley.

Amendments 34 and 35 would require the Government to implement a breathing space scheme within six months of the Bill’s receiving Royal Assent. It is legitimate to press that point, because everybody on this Committee—this was striking on Second Reading—is concerned and feels a sense of urgency. Before I became a Minister, I spent time working with Members of other parties on the all-party group on hunger and food poverty. I visited South Shields and saw at first hand, in a community that is very different from mine in Salisbury, the distress that debt can cause. Now that I am a Minister and in a position to do something, I am extremely focused on ensuring that this happens.

Members of all parties agree that creating a breathing space scheme will have significant benefits for thousands of the most vulnerable families. However, it will need to be designed properly and implemented in partnership with the debt advice sector and creditors. Creating a scheme will ensure that vulnerable consumers have time to assess their financial situation and begin to deal with their debts. The Government are committed to establishing a scheme as quickly and effectively as possible, including through the passage of the Bill. I am pleased that clauses 7 and 8 provide for the scheme’s introduction, but it is worth acknowledging how complex some of these situations are and how complex the scheme may need to be. It includes both a breathing space and a statutory debt management plan. It involves significant co-operation among creditors, debt advisers and those accessing a breathing space, who in many cases could be leading chaotic lives.

I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Makerfield on Second Reading. I always have great respect for her when she speaks in the House. Today she talked about needing four months, and on Second Reading she talked about needing six months. She cited an example of somebody who may think they have all their debts lined up, and then another materialises later on. Those are the sort of complex situations that we need to come to terms with in the design of the scheme. There are significant questions about how debtors can access the scheme, which debts are included, how flexible the scheme can be, and how it ties in with existing statutory debt solutions.

[Mike Amesbury]

What does the Minister mean by “as quickly and as effectively as possible”? Would he give us a timeframe?

[John Glen]

I will come to that point and will be as explicit as I can, giving an indicative timeframe.

The scheme needs to be properly designed with consultation with experts in the debt advice and creditor sectors. That is key to ensuring that it works in practice and properly benefits the lives of the vulnerable people that we all want it to support.

The Government are clear that it will not be possible to conclude that process within six months of Royal Assent, which is what the amendment would require. However, I agree with the hon. Member for Makerfield that we must work quickly to establish the scheme, given the benefits it could bring to indebted individuals. To that extent, the Government have set out a clear timeline for the implementation of breathing space.

My officials are currently working hard to analyse responses to the Government’s call for evidence on the scheme, which closed on 16 January. Following that process, we will consult on a single policy design proposal this summer. In tandem, we will ask the new body for advice on specific aspects of the scheme that it is well placed to advise on, to ensure the scheme is rolled out smoothly and embedded in the practices of the debt advice and creditor sectors. We will seek that advice immediately after the body is established, and it will be very tightly framed to ensure that the process does not delay the scheme’s introduction.

Throughout the period, my officials will be drafting regulations to introduce the scheme and I can confirm that they will be laid as soon as possible in 2019. I feel the frustration of Members on, I suspect, both sides of the Committee. All I can say is that I will be doing everything I can and will be working very closely with the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham, to make sure that we do this as quickly as possible.

Universal Credit Project Assessment Reviews

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I will make some progress for the moment.

By means of today’s motion, the Opposition seek the disclosure of various documents to a Select Committee. There is a procedure whereby Select Committees can ask for such documents themselves under Standing Orders. When I asked the Library last night whether there was any record of the Work and Pensions Committee having asked for these documents, I was told that there was no such record. If there had been such a request, there might have been the opportunity for a discussion between the Chairman of the Committee and the Secretary of State about the basis of the request and the use to which the documents might be put—the very issues that have been raised in this debate.

Raising such matters can be achieved in various ways, including through written and oral parliamentary questions, urgent questions and debates. Again, I asked the Library whether the Opposition had availed themselves of any of those procedures with regard to this request. The only record that the Library had of any such request related to one parliamentary question tabled three years—two Parliaments—ago. In this Parliament, we have had six debates on universal credit, as well as two ministerial statements and one urgent question. On none of those occasions has the relevance of these documents been raised, and nor have they been asked for. If it were in the public interest urgently to disclose the documents, I would have expected Labour Members to have used one of those routes to request them through official channels over the course of this Parliament, but they have not done so. This is the first time the matter has been raised in this Parliament.

My question is whether it is appropriate to use an important procedure of this House to require the Government to produce documents when no prior official request has been made to obtain them through the usual procedures that are available to hold the Government to account. Is it appropriate to request important documents from the Government for the first time in a Opposition day motion when the contents of that motion were not known by the Government until yesterday?

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Of course it is right for the Opposition to raise the problems of universal credit at every opportunity. Surely the hon. and learned Lady can understand that. I know that the additional 30% of people using food banks in my constituency understand it.

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, as universal credit is an important measure. I endorse that point, which many Members have made today. Universal credit affects those who need help the most, and that is the issue that we should be debating, rather than the disclosure of documents that could have been asked for before, to which the Secretary of State has now willingly granted access. We do not need a five-hour debate. It is the issues that affect our constituents that need to be debated, not a procedural request for documentation. In the course of the Standing Order No. 24 debate on the need for more Opposition day debates, the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) stated that such debates were important as

“the key means in this House of raising issues of concern to our voters.”—[Official Report, 17 July 2017; Vol. 627, c. 616.]

I am sure that my voters care about universal credit, and I am sure that they care about getting people into work, but I am not sure they would welcome a day-long debate about a request for documents that could have been made, and granted, through the ordinary procedures of this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement on making available the reports requested by the Labour party. I am pleased to speak in this debate and to challenge the belief among some Opposition Members that helping people into work and away from relying on state welfare is just too difficult and too complicated. I accept that our work as MPs is not easy. We all do our best for our constituents, and I accept that most often they come to us in the last resort and expect our help. But the privilege of being elected as an MP is to take on and tackle sensitive subjects and to unravel bad policies which hold people back, regardless of how complicated they seem.

I do not need to reference emails and surgery cases to know that the only way to help people out of poverty is through work. I grew up in social housing, where families had not worked for two or three generations, with households in which children had never seen their parents go out to work, and where they were told—where I was told—time and again to “lower your expectations and stay in line for welfare.” Aspirations to work were met with cliff-edge drop-offs and the loss of benefits. Why would someone take a risk to secure a job that may or may not work out when that is weighed up against losing benefits and the drama it takes to get back on to welfare to make sure they have a home? For too many people, the risk is too great. That is why universal credit works. It tapers as a person secures more work and does what welfare is meant to do: it provides a hand up and a safety net.

[Mike Amesbury]

The Labour party is what it says on the tin: we are the party of work. Many of those in receipt of universal credit, and tax credits before that, are actually in work, with many of them on low pay.

[Ms Ghani]

I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. There are now more people with better opportunities—whether children going to better schools, more working-class kids going to university or people on lower incomes taking more of that income home to support their families. I grew up in a Labour stronghold where I was told repeatedly to know my place, which was to remain on welfare like everybody else in my community. That is why the Conservative party introduced universal credit, and why it is so important that we ensure that it is successfully delivered. Universal credit is founded on the belief that work should always pay, and it encourages people to find work and not stay trapped in the vicious cycle of the benefits system.

The request for the publication of the reports in the motion has been granted. I am, though, a little perplexed about why we need to see reports on assessments from back in 2012 when we have facts and figures that we can rely on today. I hope that the Minister can shed some light on that. Here is what is already in the public domain. Critics should welcome the fact that each person on universal credit is treated as an individual and provided with tailored support, working around their personal needs. For the first time, people have a named work coach. This is the first time that their personal requirements and unique needs are being assessed. It is the first time that their childcare, housing or work support is being assessed. More importantly, this will be the first time that many people from my community have had real support that tackles their needs and supports their aspirations to improve their and their families’ lives. They are no longer just a number to be told to get to the back of the queue.

Let us not forget that the previous welfare system created cliff edges, discouraged people from working for more than 16 hours a week and, most damning of all, trapped 1.5 million on out-of-work benefits for nearly a decade. I challenge anyone who would disagree that those people had been failed by the system.

State Pension Age: Women

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. As time is short, I will focus on a few key issues. I cannot support the motion for a few crucial reasons, the first of which is that the SNP has not clarified its own domestic position adequately to the House. We have heard that there have been many debates on the issue, and the Minister has clarified that there are powers available in the Scotland Act 2016, passed by this House, so I ask SNP Members to consider why the SNP has not addressed this itself in Scotland. Is it simply because it faces declining popularity in Scotland, as reflected in our having more Scottish Conservative MPs?

We all have met WASPI women in our constituencies, and I have spoken to women who have been affected. I am very much aware that these women have been working hard since they were 14 or 15 and have often borne the brunt of caring responsibilities. They have brought up families, and they definitely feel a sense of injustice.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Surely this is about justice, about doing the right thing for WASPI women and about Conservatives joining Opposition Members on the issue. The 31 Conservatives who claim to be supporting the WASPI women—and rightfully so—should join us in the Lobby. Let us have some justice and some proper transitional arrangements.

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but the basis of the claim in the motion is that nothing has been done, and that is simply not the case. This Government have already allocated more than £1 billion to help women. We have heard this morning from the First Secretary of State that the pension age will be equalised by next year. Although I accept that there are women who feel a sense of injustice, this motion is not the way to deal with it. Let us instead look at what the Government have done to improve the lives of older people up and down this country, including in Scotland.

The investment in the NHS has meant that we have seen people receiving better healthcare, enabling them to live fuller active lives, which means participating in the workforce for longer. I was surprised to hear that it might be an insult for a woman aged 65 to be offered an apprenticeship. I know women of 65 who find that a great opportunity—why write off women just because they are 65? The idea does not apply to all women—no one is saying it does—but research shows that when women take up such opportunities at the age of 65, they report increased satisfaction. We all know that participating in the workforce is one of the best ways to improve mental health and a whole range of other outcomes. I reject the suggestion that it is insulting. Government Members like to think about how we can create more opportunities for our people to participate and live fuller lives, at all stages of their lives. It is incumbent on Members from all parties to recognise that and support it.

We need to look into some of the statistics that Opposition Members have made claims about. Having read some briefings, I do not recognise some of the statistics on maladministration, an issue that the Minister addressed. We need to be honest about the communication programme and the fact that women have been able to plan for their retirement. The crux of my argument is that there is no suggestion that the SNP proposal is costed, and I dispute the figure put forward by its Members.

Universal Credit Roll-out

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Just three and a half months ago, I came into this place with two main aims: to make life better for the people I represent; and to stand up for the most vulnerable and those in need. I know that those aims are shared by my hon. Friends on the Labour Benches, and probably by hon. Members on other Benches, too.

Unfortunately, three and a half months into my time as an MP for Weaver Vale, what has become absolutely clear is that, when it comes to universal credit, these aims and values are not shared by the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State or the Government. Indeed, those values are wilfully ignored and, every single day that universal credit is allowed to continue in its current form, there will be considerable problems.

My issue is not with the aim of the policy itself—we can see the value in the basic principles of universal credit and what it is trying to achieve—and nor is our dispute with the staff at our local jobcentres. Yes, I have visited my local jobcentre, and some are doing everything they can to support residents in circumstances that are not of their making or of their choosing. Our argument is with this Government, who are overseeing a shambolic implementation that is causing delays, confusion, distress and debt. Our concern is for the thousands of residents and families who are faced with hardship—and, in some cases, hunger and homelessness—while this Government carry on regardless, ignoring the effects of their policy on the people of Weaver Vale and this nation.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Amesbury]

No, I will not.

The Government are ignoring the effects of the policy on people such as Lucy, who was forced to take wage slips to the local jobcentre after a catalogue of errors from Government Departments meant that her payments were miscalculated. Lucy was left in arrears for rent and council tax, with no money for food for weeks on end. Her request for an advance payment—hon. Members have mentioned advance payments—was ignored. Indeed, she was told that

“this is happening to quite a lot of people.”

Lucy said to me:

“I have a daughter, I am a single parent trying to make an honest living, and this is how I am being treated.”

No Government, especially a Government who claim to be building a country “that works for everyone”, should hear those words and refuse to take action.

State Pension Age for Women

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) on once again securing a debate on this important matter. He has already stated the reasons why the policy is so unfair: the lack of adequate notice given to the 3.5 million WASPI women and the lack of opportunity to make contingent plans for the future in the face of such injustice. More than 4,000 women are affected in Haslingden and Hyndburn.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Catherine Vernon is one of more than 4,000 constituents in Weaver Vale affected by this issue. The only garden path the WASPI campaign led me up was to election victory and the removal of the Conservative Member for Weaver Vale. Do the maths: the majority of the former MP was 806; I had 4,400 very powerful WASPI women. I want to thank them for their campaign and I hope they continue to shake this place up until they get justice.