State Pension: Working-class Women

Robert Flello Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ian Blackford]

It is interesting that a Government Member is actually laughing about this, because that defines what the problem is. There are women who are really struggling, and the Government laugh. You should apologise and you should accept responsibility for this and stop demeaning the women—

[Robert Flello (in the Chair)]

Order. The word “you” refers to the occupant of the Chair.

[Ian Blackford]

I apologise, Mr Flello, but you can understand the anger that the women feel. A Member of Parliament on the Government Benches laughing when we are discussing this important issue is beneath contempt, and the Member should actually stand and apologise to the women who have been affected by this, rather than sitting there smugly as he is.

As I mentioned, it is no surprise that women were unaware of the changes because when the DWP commissioned research in 2004 it highlighted that only 2% of respondents mentioned that they had been notified of changes to the state pension age via a leaflet. Perhaps the hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) wants to rise and try to defend that—quite frankly, it is indefensible. It is an insult that the Government at the time thought that changes affecting a woman’s retirement age could be dealt with by a leaflet. That is an abrogation of responsibility and each and every Member who refuses to do something is culpable.

We should all receive an annual statement from the DWP on our expected entitlement, just as we do from private pension providers. Why has that not been happening? Do the Government not know where we all live? [Laughter.] It is a fair question. Why were the women not written to? Why have we not had an answer to that question? Why did it take all the years that it did? The case is not defensible—it is shameful—and the way the Government still refuse to accept responsibility is shameful.

The failure to communicate was highlighted by a DWP publication in 2004 called “Public awareness of State Pension age equalisation”, which found that only 43% of all women affected by the increase in state pensionable age were aware of the impact on them. If the Government accept that women were not informed in a timely manner and therefore did not have time to react, why do the Government not accept their responsibilities?

We also know—you couldn’t make this up—that the Government sent out 17.8 million letters to men and women between May 2003 and November 2006 on automatic state pension forecasts but, wait for it, they did not contain any information about the state pension age. That is quite remarkable. Letters were written, but they were just the wrong letters—they did not have the important information. They said, “To find out more about the state pension age for women, please see ‘Pensions for women: your guide’. See page 10 for details on how you can get a copy of this guide.” That is no way to convey information. The Government should have communicated accurate, clear and transparent information. That was another massive failure to communicate.

At some point, rather than hand wringing, the Government have to take responsibility, because 2.6 million WASPI women have been let down. I am going to wind up because I realise that time is pressing. Research in 2011 by the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing found that by 2008 only 43% of women affected by the change were aware of it. Just think about this: over half of women who were expecting a pension at age 60 were going to be denied that. I cannot imagine the shock when they realised that they were not going to get what they thought was rightfully theirs. It is not the women who are at fault; they have paid in, expecting a pension. It is the Government who have let them down and it is the Government who have a moral and ethical responsibility to do something about it.

[Ian Blackford]

I will happily give way.

[Robert Flello (in the Chair)]

Order. May I gently suggest to hon. Members that, while I appreciate that there has been other business in the Chamber, we are on the wind-ups and Members really ought to be here for the debate rather than coming for the wind-ups? I will allow my hon. Friend a very brief intervention on this one occasion, because I am sure he has been in the Chamber previously up until now, but I remind Members that they really need to be in for the entirety of the debate.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

I will be very brief. I apologise, Mr Flello; I was actually over in the Chamber because there were some important debates there as well and I cannot be in two places at once even if I would like to be. This is a timely debate because next month we will have the Budget. If the Chancellor can find billions for high-speed rail and other issues, surely he can find a couple of billion to give these women a decent life.

[Ian Blackford]

That is a very good point. We can find the money for high-speed rail. We can find, at the drop of a hat, £170 billion or more for Trident renewal. We are even due to debate the renewal of this place. If I were given a choice, I would want to make sure that the WASPI women were compensated and not that £7 billion was spent on reforming this place. That can wait, but the WASPI women need their money and they need it today.

The DWP told the Select Committee on Work and Pensions last year:

“Until 2009, direct communication with people affected by increases in state pension age was very limited.”

The Government must reflect on that and on the fact that women have not been properly informed. The Pensions Minister, in a parliamentary answer to me on 23 November last year, stated:

“The Government has committed not to change the legislation relating to State Pension age for those people who are within 10 years of reaching it. This provides these individuals with the certainty they need to plan for the future. We recognise the importance of ensuring people are aware of any changes to their State Pension age”.

We have put an option to the Government that is affordable and is about doing the right thing. The Government should agree with us. Frankly, I do not want to see any of us back here again. It really is about time that when the Minister rises today, she recognises the wrong that has been done. For the love of God, do something—do the right thing.

[Robert Flello (in the Chair)]

Order. May I remind the Front-Bench speakers that in 90-minute debates it is customary to make 10-minute speeches? I am being more generous because we are not so pushed for time, but 10 minutes is expected and not what we just had. Thank you.

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[Ian Blackford]

On a point of order, Mr Flello. I suggest, with regret, that we have not actually discussed the motion in front of us today. Unless the Minister does that in the short time that she has available, when we come to the appropriate point in the debate I will have no option but to move that we have not considered this matter.

[Robert Flello (in the Chair)]

I am not totally convinced that that was a point of order. Let us see how the debate continues.

[Caroline Nokes]

I hope you will forgive me, Mr Flello, if I take the opportunity to ask you for some advice. Do I have another 18 minutes or so? I certainly have several pages still to get through.

[Robert Flello (in the Chair)]

Indeed, although I would like to be able to call the mover of the motion for a minute or so at the end.

[Caroline Nokes]

Sixteen minutes, then.

In addition, independent research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that employment rates for women aged 60 and 61 have increased as a direct result of the changes in state pension age.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Blackford]

On a point of order, Mr Flello. May I ask for your guidance on whether what we are hearing from the Government is indeed in order, given the subject of this debate?

[Robert Flello (in the Chair)]

Again, I do not think that that is a point of order; it is a matter for the debate.

[Caroline Nokes]

Hon. Members raised the increase in life expectancy. It has been experienced by all over the last few years, but it differs by occupation type—the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central was certainly right to point that out. Women aged 65 who worked in higher managerial and professional occupations are expected to live more than three years longer than those in routine or manual roles; for men, that difference is greater, at four years. However, women in manual occupations have a similar life expectancy at 65 to men in professional occupations. Life expectancy also varies across regions—the hon. Lady was correct to point that out—but it would be wholly impractical to vary state pension age across the country.

The fuller working lives strategy aims to increase the retention, retraining and recruitment of older workers by bringing about a change in the perceptions and attitudes of employers and by challenging views of working in later life and retirement among individuals. As part of the strategy, the Government are taking account of the fact that people change jobs over their lifetimes. It is now extremely unusual for people to stay in one career throughout their entire working life.

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[Caroline Nokes]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has become so frustrated. He will be conscious that I could still fill another nine or 10 minutes or so. There are some very important points that I would like to make and I am sure that people will want to hear them. If he continues to chunter—[Interruption.]

[Robert Flello (in the Chair)]

Order. Continue, Minister.

[Caroline Nokes]

Thank you, Mr Flello.

As I was saying, that is why we continue to spend £90 billion a year on working-age benefits to assist those in this country who are unable to work. For those seeking work, people in receipt of working-age benefits can access a range of support from Jobcentre Plus and tailored support from the Work programme.

Specifically, the evidence is clear, and we as a Government are clear, that work is the best route out of poverty. That is why this Government’s approach has been about recognising the value and importance of work, to make work pay and to support people into work, while protecting the most vulnerable in society.

Our reforms are transforming lives. Today’s labour market statistics show that we continue to have a record number of people in work—over 2.7 million more than in 2010. The number of workless households is down by 865,000, and the percentage of households in the social sector where no one works has fallen from 49% to 38%, which is a decrease of nearly 350,000 households.

We have made a real difference for women, with more than 1 million more women in work since 2010 and the highest rate of female employment on record. The gender pay gap is also at its lowest level since records began, and there are now 1.2 million women-led small and medium-sized enterprises, which is more than ever before. We are rightly proud of our record but recognise that there is more to do.

We had to equalise state pension age to eliminate gender inequalities in social security provision—it is the right thing to do—and we had to accelerate this process due to increases in longevity, in order to protect the long-term sustainability of state pension provision in this country.

We know that whenever things change, there have to be dividing lines, and I understand that the changes are most stark for those closest to the line. That is no different in this case. We understand that and the Government listened to the concerns expressed at the time. Therefore, a concession worth more than £1 billion was introduced, despite the fiscal situation, to lessen the impact of the changes on those worst affected. The concession reduced the delay that anyone would experience in claiming their state pension and benefited almost a quarter of a million women.

However, going further than that simply cannot be justified, given that the underlying imperative must be to focus public resources on those most in need. I have listened to Opposition Members, and I have heard and understood their concerns. However, let me be clear—we are making no further concessions on this issue. As well as being unaffordable, reversing the Pensions Act 1995 would create an anomaly, whereby women would be expected to work for less time than they work now, and it would be discriminatory to men. It is not practical to implement.

John Cridland’s independent report on state pension age will consider wider factors that should—

[Chi Onwurah]

I certainly thank the Minister for finally coming to matters that are relevant to this debate and the people here. However, does she recognise the point that because the women we are discussing today started work earlier—at the age of 15, which is long before she or I started work—they are the generation who are working longer than any other generation? When she says that giving a further “concession” would mean that they ended up working for less time than other women, does she not recognise that they have worked, and are working, for longer?

[Robert Flello (in the Chair)]

Just before I call the Minister to continue, may I suggest that she perhaps speaks for only a couple more minutes?

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady also needs to reflect that these women are also living longer; we are all living longer.

As I was saying, the Cridland independent report is coming forward and will be published in March. It is part of the Government’s review of state pension age, which is due in early 2017.

[Caroline Nokes]

I will not give way again; the Chairman has made it very clear that he wants me to conclude my remarks.

A number of points have been made today about communications; in particular, the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber has been quite forceful on this subject. He made the point that there were about 14 years between the decision being made and letters starting to go out. When he refers to “this Government”, I remind him that for the bulk of that time my party was not in Government, and if he wishes to lay the blame for a lack of communication, he might do well to direct it somewhere else.

We have continued this country’s long record of raising the living standards of pensioners, through our commitment to the triple lock and our reforms of the state pension, and we are revolutionising the world of private pensions through auto-enrolment, which is for everyone. However, we want continue our work aimed at providing older workers with greater choice and greater security in retirement, which is at the heart of our fuller working lives strategy. The results speak for themselves. We not only continue to increase the employment prospects for women above the age of 60 drastically, but the new state pension provides people with greater freedom and greater choice, and dignity in retirement.

[Robert Flello (in the Chair)]

I call Chi Onwurah to wind up the debate.

Autumn Statement Distributional Analysis, Universal Credit and ESA

Robert Flello Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I fully agree with my hon. Friend. There is a week in which we can overturn at least an element of that brutality. This week, we need to seize upon the chance as best we can, across parties, to deliver change.

From our privileged position in this House, I firmly believe that before we consider cuts to basic support for low earners and disabled people, we have a moral duty, as my hon. Friend said, to fully appreciate the plight of many of our fellow citizens and the impact that any changes that are forced upon them could have. There are some basic facts that we need to face up to—basic facts that depict the harsh reality of the lives of so many members of our community. Nearly 4 million of our children are living in poverty. The scandal is that two thirds of them live in families where someone is working. Thanks to low wages, zero-hours contracts and forced or bogus self-employment, which has been exposed today, the promise that work will lift people out of poverty is a broken one for many.

If a basic responsibility of the Government is to ensure that their population is adequately fed and housed, they are failing. A million emergency food parcels were given out by food banks last year to families who did not have sufficient income to feed themselves. The latest reports confirm that the numbers are rising. This year, 200,000 children in our country will be dependent on a food bank to get a decent meal at Christmas. One survey reported that more than 20% of parents had regularly not eaten so that their children could eat. Others report the frequent choice between eating and heating. This is 2016.

On the duty of the Government to ensure that people are adequately housed, they are failing again. Rough sleeping has doubled in recent years. The equivalent of 100 households a day are evicted from rented homes—a near-record 40,000 in the year to date. Some 1.2 million households are stuck on council housing waiting lists. In my constituency tonight, there will be families sleeping in beds in sheds that have been rented to them.

As for the Government’s responsibility for disabled people, as the UN report concisely summed it up, the Government have—and I quote—systematically or gravely violated the rights of disabled people. Independent research suggested that Government efforts to push people off claiming disability benefits have been associated with more than 500 people committing suicide in three years.

Three years ago, I led a debate following the presentation of the War on Welfare petition, which highlighted the call for an overall impact assessment of the Government’s policies on disabled people. I cited the immense human suffering caused by the brutal implementation of the work capability assessment and the latest round of cuts to benefits and care services. I cited examples of people who had tragically taken their own lives in despair following the WCA and the penalisation through sanctions. We now know that those suicides were not isolated examples, but that there have been hundreds.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

Of course, there is a double whammy, because people who are suffering and being punished in that way are not likely to get access to good mental health services or NHS services, because those are being cut and wound down across the country as well.

[John McDonnell]

I have listened carefully to the Prime Minister’s responses to a number of questions about cuts to mental health services at Prime Minister’s Question Time. I hope that her commitment to social justice will result in the reversing of some of those cuts, particularly to mental health walk-in services, which were raised at the Prime Minister’s questions session before last.

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[The Minister for Employment (Damian Hinds)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:

“notes the role of universal credit in ensuring that work pays; welcomes the £60 million package of additional employment support announced in the Summer Budget 2016 available to new claimants with limited capability for work from April 2017 and set out in the recent Work and Health Green Paper; further welcomes the proposals for employment support for disabled people and those with health conditions set out in that green paper; and notes the comments by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Treasury Committee on 19 October 2016 on his intention to publish distributional analysis at the forthcoming Autumn Statement.”

Since 2010, we have been working to get the country’s finances in order while continuing to provide proper financial and practical support to those who need it. We will have to wait until next week to hear the Chancellor’s plans, but we can note today the significant progress on which the autumn statement will build. In 2010, we faced an economy that was barely growing, investment that was low, unemployment that was high, and a deficit at a level not seen since the second world war. In 2009-10, the then Labour Government were borrowing an annually recurring amount of nearly £6,000 for every household in the country—an unsustainable situation.

Since then, Conservative-led Governments have taken the tough decisions needed to reduce the deficit, and it is working. Over the past six years, we have cut the deficit by almost two thirds from its 2009-10 post-war peak of 10.1% of GDP to 4% last year.

[Robert Flello]

It is funny, because I remember being in the House and being told that the deficit was going to be cut—wiped out, gone—by 2015, and Labour’s plan to halve it by 2015 being dismissed as nonsense. Does the Minister have the same recollection?

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Gentleman, who is a man of great memory, will also remember the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman shouting “Too far, too fast” over and over. We embarked on a determined programme to get our nation’s finances back in order, which the Opposition opposed at every turn. They voted against essentially all the substantial measures to get us there.

[Robert Flello]

I also remember, in the run-up to 2008, Conservative Members saying from the Opposition Benches that the Labour Government needed to spend more on hospitals, spend more on schools—spend more, spend more, spend more. Funny how they have forgotten that.

[Damian Hinds]

They have not forgotten that, and it is because we are getting our nation’s finances back in order that we can afford to increase our funding for the national health service by £10 billion, in line with what the NHS itself has deemed necessary in the five year forward view, a plan that it would never have been possible to realise had the Labour party been in government.

The Opposition claim that the poorest in our society have borne the brunt of the reductions in the deficit, but that is not the case. It is undeniable that when we face a deficit of almost £6,000 for every family in the country, we have to do some difficult things, but people throughout society have contributed to getting our finances back in order. We have never seen tackling the deficit as just an option. It is a matter of social justice, because when Governments lose control of the public finances, with all that flows from that, it is invariably those who have the least who stand to lose the most.

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[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I begin by saying some words that I never thought would leave my mouth: I really hope that Ministers listen to what the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) has just said—but where were you as Secretary of State? The right hon. Gentleman has explained very clearly how many people feel about the proposed changes. I hope that it is not too late for the Government to change their mind.

This Government seem to be developing a problem with transparency. We found out from the front page of The Times this week that there is no plan for Brexit, even though we were told that there was. My constituents found out through a leak from another local authority that their A&E department was under threat. Now we find that the Government do not intend to publish a full distributional analysis of the impact of the decisions they are about to make in the autumn statement. The decision not to publish a full analysis of that impact makes Opposition Members incredibly suspicious. The people who are going to feel the worst brunt of those decisions might well feel extremely angry.

[Robert Flello]

The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) said that, historically, whenever there was a change to benefits, people suffered until the situation was changed and improved. Does that not also explain why so many of our constituents are extremely worried about what is going to happen?

[Jenny Chapman]

That is right. People want clarity. What everyone wants is for work to pay and for people to be better off in work than out of work, but that is not what we are going to get.

The Government used to be very keen on having a full and detailed distributional analysis, and I have with me the introduction to the one they published in 2012. They said then:

“The Government has taken unprecedented steps to increase transparency and enable effective scrutiny of policy making by publishing detailed distributional analysis of the impact of its reforms on households.”

It was a very good thing that the Government, and the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), did then. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say:

“The analysis shows average impacts due to policy changes over time across the income and expenditure distributions by decile”.

I hope that, at the end of the debate, Ministers will commit themselves to publishing the information by decile, so that we can scrutinise it properly and challenge the Government on what they are about to reveal. That is not just my view. The Tory Chair of the Treasury Committee agrees, because he knows that if he is do his job effectively the information must be published and available to everyone, including the public. This matters: the distributional analysis should reveal the impact of tax, welfare and public spending changes on 10 household income brackets, but the Government want to halve the amount of detail and cover just five brackets.

I was pleased when the Conservatives chose this new Prime Minister, given the choices that they had, and I was pleased when she said that she wanted this to be

“a country that works for everyone”.

Don’t we all? But how can we know whether the Prime Minister is true to her word if she does not proceed to publish the information that we need to test the assertion by which she herself asked to be judged? Unless she does so, we cannot test that claim.

This leads us to ask ourselves what the Government are attempting to hide. What the Minister said sounded incredibly positive, and there were many measures that he said we ought to be welcoming. If that is true—if he is right and Opposition Front Benchers are wrong—he should publish the information, so that we can test him on his claims. Go on, let us see it!

I suspect that the picture is not quite as rosy as the Minister suggested. Perhaps it is the £1,500 a year to be taken from disabled people that he is trying to conceal, but it could be any number of the measures that he has in mind. The Resolution Foundation has estimated that the poorest 50% of households will be £375 worse off on average by 2020-21, while the other half will be £235 better off. We need this information to be published before every Budget and every autumn statement, so that we can compare the impact of the different measures. I want to be able to see what is going to happen next week and compare it with what happened three years ago.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Flello Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

Let me start by commending my hon. Friend and fellow Essex MP for his work in this area, particularly with his local employers, many of whom I have met and know. He is of course right to say that our commitment to create 3 million apprenticeships will give young people the vital skills to reach their full potential. We are already working with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and employers as part of our apprenticeship reforms to ensure that Britain’s young people get a quality apprenticeship that will help them to reach their full potential.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

While there are indeed some excellent apprenticeships—there is no doubt about that—sadly, all too often there are employers who use them as, in effect, a rebranded youth training scheme or youth opportunities programme-type arrangement. What will the Minister do to publish details of employers who abuse the apprenticeship system, or does the scrutiny simply not allow for that?

[Priti Patel]

We all know, and this House recognises, that apprenticeships are vital. They give young people the chance to learn the skills to reach their full potential. [Interruption.] I hear an Opposition Member chuntering away. Employers play a vital role in this scheme. I have already touched on the fact that we are working with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on our reforms and delivering 3 million apprenticeships. Employers will be at the heart of that, providing quality training and accountability in their role with apprenticeships.

Housing Benefit (Abolition of Social Sector Size Criteria)

Robert Flello Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Eighteen months ago, on a brilliant spring morning, a Meriden grandmother, Stephanie Bottrill, got up, sat down at her kitchen table, wrote notes to her son, her daughter, the grandson she adored and her friends and neighbours, fed the cat, put the keys through a neighbour’s door and then walked three miles through the early dawn light to the M6, where she threw herself under a lorry and committed suicide. The last straw for Stephanie Bottrill was having to pay the bedroom tax.

What kind of Government causes such pain to decent men and women? Once in a generation there is a tax so bad that the next generation looks back and asks, “Why did they do it?” Such was the poll tax, and now we have the bedroom tax. To add insult to injury, on the very day the bedroom tax was introduced the Government gave millionaires a £100,000 tax cut. In Birmingham, more than 10,000 households have been hit hard, 1,529 in my constituency, with an average loss of £16.42 to the most vulnerable and with some losing as much as £1,400 a year. A quarter of them are disabled. Who benefits? The Chancellor, because as far as he is concerned we have seen a weekly reduction in housing benefit of £179,000, with him netting £9 million a year while 10,000 people lose out.

Let me give some brief examples from my constituency. Terry lives in a two-bedroom house with his wife, and he has to have a separate room because she needs specialist breathing apparatus at all times. They have had to pay the bedroom tax because they are in a two-bedroom home. Brian lives in a two-bedroom property and was desperate to move to a one-bedroom property to avoid paying the bedroom tax. He tried time and time again, but he could not do it because there were only 43 available in the whole of Birmingham for in excess of 10,000 households.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

On that point, in Stoke-on-Trent, there is nowhere for the 2,700 families affected by the bedroom tax to go. There are no other properties for them to take.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. They are trapped, having to pay the bedroom tax whether they like it or not.

A third constituent, Nicky, lives with her husband in a two-bedroom property. Her husband is a paraplegic and they are unable to share a bedroom, which is why they are in a two-bedroom house. They, too, have to pay the bedroom tax.

The Opposition are all in favour of reducing the housing benefits bill, but housing benefit is being pushed up by low wages and high rent. I met a young mother in the food bank in the Baptist church at the end of Erdington High street. She is in work, doing two jobs, but she is on poverty pay and is having to claim housing benefit as a consequence.

There are also not enough homes in our country. In government, we built 2 million homes and 500,000 affordable homes, but under this Government we have the lowest level of house building since the 1920s. Tens of thousands of people all over the country are trapped in homes in which they have often lived for decades, having to pay a retrospective tax and struggling as a consequence.

In conclusion, Government Members, particularly those on the Front Bench, just do not get it. They just do not understand the pain that has been felt as a consequence of their actions. The Secretary of State has often affected a damascene conversion on the road to a Glasgow housing estate, yet now he is presiding over pain on a grand scale to tens of thousands of decent men and women in this country. He has sat there throughout this debate with a Cheshire cat smirk on his face, oblivious to the consequences of his actions. This is a cruel, callous tax and one of our first acts as a Labour Government will be to confine it to where it richly deserves to be: the dustbin of history.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Flello Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I thank the hon. Lady for welcoming me to my post. I agree with her. She is absolutely right—I have said that we want to drive down the length of time that people are waiting. My priority is, first, to ensure that Atos performs against its commitments to the end of its contract in February, that we get a new contract awarded to a new provider, and that the new provider picks up the reins smoothly from Atos and continues to drive down the backlog, so that our constituents wait as little time as possible. Those are the things I shall be focused on between now and the election.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

7. What progress he has made on the introduction of face-to-face pensions advice.

[The Minister for Pensions (Steve Webb)]

Our summer response to the consultation “Freedom and choice in pensions” outlined the policy and legislative details underpinning the implementation of the guidance guarantee. We will bring forward amendments to the Pensions Schemes Bill to introduce the guidance guarantee, and the Treasury implementation team continues its extensive service design work. We will publish an update note on the project in the autumn.

[Robert Flello]

Despite the announcements made in the summer, I understand that the pensions industry continues to express considerable concern about funding the guarantee levy, whether the service will be ready in time and how the scheme will operate. I understand that there is also widespread concern among consumers about how the scheme will operate and whether it will be ready in time. Given that this is perhaps the most important decision that people will face in their lives—it is certainly one of the most important decisions—and that there is concern that people will receive guidance and think it is advice, or that the guidance will not be comprehensive enough, what will the Minister do to ensure that the proposal works properly and quickly?

[Steve Webb]

We are actively engaged in making those preparations, but we entirely accept that the time scale is tight. I contrast our proposals with the current situation, in which hundreds of thousands of people reach an age at which they choose whether or not to buy an annuity and get no guidance, advice or help whatever. This will be free. The guidance will be independent and will be face to face if people want that. It will be a vast improvement on what currently happens.

Food Banks

Robert Flello Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Reed]

My hon. Friend makes a telling point.

The circumstances in which people have to seek assistance to feed themselves and their families are not usually simple. They often involve a combination of issues, which manifest themselves in a great deal of pain and pressure for those involved. For example, I have constituents who are cancer patients who are forced to use food banks as a result of various combinations of Government policies. I wish I could say that those were isolated cases, but they are not. I wish I could say the situation was improving, but it is not. There are no signs of things getting better.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

In the past year and a half, more than 100,000 kg of food has been distributed in the small city of Stoke-on-Trent alone. My hon. Friend talks about the people who go to food banks. Has he seen, as I have, people who are absolutely on their last legs because they are so desperate? Many people who go to food banks are also embarrassed that they need such help.

[Mr Reed]

I have indeed seen that, and it suggests that we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the numbers of people who need the services of the food banks. Compared with last year, about 600 more people in my constituency are now using food banks to ensure that they can eat. That brings the total to 1,778, including almost 700 children. That is truly shocking, and it is the policies of the parties opposite that have led to this huge growth in the number of people needing help.

It is no coincidence that the wards in my constituency with the highest rise in the number of children being fed through food banks correlate with the wards with the highest rates of child poverty. For example, 41% of the children in the ward of Sandwith are now living in child poverty, and 234 of them rely on the generosity of those who donate to food banks. In Mirehouse, a third of the children are in poverty and more than 200 of them rely on food banks. Child poverty and the use of food banks are inextricably linked, yet the Government have no credible plan to tackle either.

We have repeatedly warned the Government that the legacy of their policies would be felt most keenly by the most vulnerable in our society. The very poorest are bearing the brunt of the cost of living pressures that the Government’s various regressive policies have created, and the consequences are there for all to see. There is a hidden country that is unseen by the Government and dismissed by the Prime Minister, and it shames them both. The working poor are emerging as the Prime Minister’s legacy, as millions of people live in quiet crisis. The explosion in the number of food banks should haunt him, shame him and move him to act, but I doubt that it will.

Housing Benefit

Robert Flello Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I join my colleagues in commending my hon. Friend for securing the debate. She is listing the people affected. A constituent came to see me the other day, a father whose children stay with him at weekends. It is the only chance he gets to see them. One of the conditions is that they have a separate bedroom. He will be stopped having his children to stay as a result of these cruel measures.

[Rachel Reeves]

It is an anti-family policy as well as an anti-disabled people policy.

The average hit per household is £14 a week, or £720 a year. It might not sound much to members of the Cabinet, but it is more than the cost of a daily school meal. It is almost the entire cost of feeding a growing child for a year, or equivalent to someone losing all their child benefit for a second child.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

We have estimated £25 million to cover adapted properties. The hon. Lady might have better statistics than the Government on adapted properties, but I suspect that the default position of Labour Members is to say, “It’s not enough; it should be more.”

Let me address the issue directly to respond to the hon. Lady’s point. In 2012-13, we made available £60 million of discretionary housing payments. This year, we have trebled that amount to £180 million. That money is what we might call hard cash for hard cases—the cases to which hon. Members have referred. I say this sincerely to hon. Members: those who raise individual cases should be holding their local authorities to account. The Government have given local authorities the money to help people in need. In fact, we have gone further. Within year, we have allocated an extra £20 million for local authorities to bid for. If they have exhausted, or if they anticipate exhausting, their discretionary housing payments budgets, they can come to the Government for a top-up. So far, barely a dozen local authorities have asked for additional funding.

The hon. Member for Leeds West mentioned the strain being putting on her local authority’s discretionary housing payment. Leaving aside the fact that Leeds has an extraordinarily low rate of home swaps—in other words, is the local authority doing the right thing by its tenants?—it has not asked the Government for a share of the £20 million. If Leeds is so cash-strapped for DHPs, why has it not asked us for the money it says it needs, rather than turning away people it thinks are vulnerable?

[Robert Flello]

The Minister talks about cash-strapped authorities. Stoke-on-Trent has been the third hardest hit by cuts every year and simply cannot mop that up. He made a point about swaps. In Stoke-on-Trent, approximately 11,000 people are on the waiting list. Where are the one-bedroom flats? Where are the two-bedroom places? They do not exist in Stoke-on-Trent. Will he tell me where they are?

[Steve Webb]

The hon. Gentleman misses the point. He mistakes the issue of empty properties for properties that are currently accommodated. The social housing swap website indicates tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people in smaller properties who want to trade up, while people in larger properties want to trade down.

In response to the hon. Member for Manchester Central, I am rather startled by this figure, but it appears that last year Manchester local authority sent back to the Government £595,000 of unspent DHPs.

Disabled People

Robert Flello Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I shall come back to his point slightly later.

The Opposition believe in reform of the benefits system and of support and care for disabled people, but we also believe in one thing more—that fewer, not more, disabled people should live in poverty in this country. During our time in office, we drove down the number of disabled people living in poverty from 40% to about a quarter. That was not an accident; it was because of the most ambitious series of reforms to help disabled people that we have ever seen.

There was the appointment of the first ever Minister for Disabled People, the Disability Discrimination Act and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. There were great programmes such as Supporting People, the new deal for disabled people, new strategies for disabled children and Valuing People, and, crucially, there was the Equality Act 2010. Poverty in disabled households fell under Labour and now that progress has gone into reverse.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

There is a fundamental difference in how the reforms have been heralded in the media, too. When we were in government and we put those reforms through, we did so in a careful and considered way, whereas because of how the current reforms are being pushed through, the media are characterising people in certain ways. A constituent who is on disability benefit for severe mental health problems came to my office the other day with his head in his hands saying, “I know I’m scum. That’s what I read every day. That’s the way I feel I’m treated.”

[Mr Byrne]

The whole House will have heard my hon. Friend’s powerful story. I am afraid that too often in the past three years we have had not the politics of national unity, but the politics of dividing lines—dividing lines after dividing lines. When has this country ever achieved great things when we have sought to divide one from another? We have only ever achieved great things in this country when we have pulled together, but I am afraid that that is not the policy of reform we see from this Government.

Today we have one third of disabled citizens in our country living in poverty. That proportion has increased every single year this coalition Government have been in power. That is a disgrace, and it is only surpassed by the Government’s attempts to make it worse.

Today I want to set out the great pressures that now confront disabled people and ask, in the words of our motion, that the Government, for the first time, put together

“a cumulative impact assessment of the changes”,

because the Secretary of State has an important duty to fulfil later this year. He has a duty before the autumn statement to set before the Chancellor of the Exchequer the combined concerted impact of the changes he is prosecuting on disabled people. These changes are big and they are well known. They affect the roof over people’s heads, the cash they receive, the care they enjoy, the help for their children and the help for their carers, and, of course, the systems that are currently failing to give disabled people the chance to lift themselves out of poverty by actually going to work.

Let me start with an issue that I know will be much in the news today: the hated bedroom tax. Two thirds of people hit by this tax are disabled. We know that council housing in this country is allocated according to need, and very often disabled people are given accommodation that is suited to their need. They may have a room that is available for a carer or for equipment, but the accommodation they were given was allocated according to need. Now disabled people face a tax on that spare room. Disabled people now face the distress of debt, being torn from their neighbours, and cut off from help very often if they are on disability living allowance. This is a cruel and unusual punishment meted out to the most vulnerable in our society, and this Government should drop it, and drop it now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hoban]

Bodies such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies have said that giving that level of detail is impossible and have stepped away from doing so. I know that the right hon. Gentleman has got into trouble on spending plans; he tried to dig himself out of a hole earlier and did not manage to do it, and there is a bit of chaff for him, but let us be very clear: this was a challenge when he was in government, and it remains a challenge.

Let me move on to employment. We all know that work brings self-esteem and dignity. It enables people, whether disabled or able-bodied, to look after themselves and their families. Nearly half of disabled people are in work. Only one in 10 working-age disabled people have never worked, and for those aged over 25 it is only one in 20. If we want to make a sustainable difference, we must do all that we can to help more disabled people who can work to get into mainstream employment and stay there. The spending review allocated £330 million to programmes and support for disabled people or those with a long-term health condition, so that they can move into and stay in work.

[Robert Flello]

I thank the Minister for giving way; he is being generous in taking interventions. Over the summer, will he get his Department to publish, as an example, the number of people who used to work in the Remploy factory in Stoke-on-Trent who have gone into work in the wider environment, and the number who are now unemployed and likely to be unemployed for the rest of their working life? That facility, to use the Minister’s exact words, provided work experience—not some segregated nonsense, but work experience that people enjoyed. I spoke to the people there time and again, and they really enjoyed working there. Will he publish those figures over the summer?

[Mr Hoban]

I shall give the hon. Gentleman some homework for the summer recess. If he goes back to Thursday’s Hansard and the statement that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), made about stage 2 for Remploy factories, he will see that it sets out in detail the work that we have done to get people back into employment, and it gives the aggregate figures. The success in getting people into work after the closure of Remploy factories has outpaced what normally happens with redundancies. What we have seen demonstrates the important support given to get people into work.

This Government remain convinced of the need to maximise the opportunities available to disabled people to enable them to realise their employment aspirations. The principal objectives of our disability employment strategy are to increase the employment rate for disabled people, and to maximise the opportunity for disabled people to realise their employment aspirations and thus achieve greater economic independence. We will publish our strategy later this year. We need to make sure that money is targeted more effectively, to ensure that support continues to be available to those who need it most, that there is a lasting impact and that interventions provide a fair deal for the taxpayer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Greatrex]

If the Minister will not see my right hon. Friend, how can he know of the level of constructive engagement that the group is offering? The judgment he made at the start of that exchange was precisely that he would refuse to see it because he did not want to engage with it. I will leave the matter to my right hon. Friend, who I am sure will wish to speak about it. That is the point I am trying to make in relation to a number of consistent examples. I hope the Minister will reflect on it today and over the summer.

The National Audit Office commented last summer on the DWP’s failure to apply the penalties or service credits within the WCA in relation to Atos Healthcare’s underperformance and failure to seek adequate financial redress. It was almost as if it just did not want to apply them, because that would indicate that there was a problem in the system.

[Robert Flello]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely important speech. I am sure that his experience will be the same as mine: when constituents come to see me, time and again they mention Atos. That is the only word I seem to hear some days because of the nightmare that that company is and the problems it causes to my constituents.

[Tom Greatrex]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; he makes an important point. It is partly about Atos Healthcare, which has delivered the contract appallingly, but it is also about the deficiencies in the contract, which this Government, particularly—it gives me no pleasure to say this—since the current Minister has been in place, seemingly refuse to deal with.

Dr Greg Wood is a doctor who was employed by Atos until he left its employ at the start of May this year. In the middle of May, he made a series of serious and very specific allegations about his experience as a doctor working at an Atos centre and the way in which the work capability assessment was carried out. For the record, he suggests not that we should get rid of the assessment, or even that it gets cases wrong at either end of the scale, but that people in the middle are being caught because of the flawed way in which the system is designed and implemented. He said that

“claimants are often not being assessed in an even handed way… HCPs are not free to make independent recommendations, important evidence is frequently missing or never sought in the first place, medical knowledge is twisted and points are often wrongly withheld through the use of an erroneously high standard of proof”.

He said that if Atos assessors

“show deviation from the official line the HCP is instructed to change the report”

and:

“In about a quarter of assessments important documentary evidence is missing but the assessments go ahead regardless.”

He said that training of new HCPs creates an environment where they

“expect that they will see in the course of their work score too few points to qualify for ESA. This is often the de facto starting hypothesis, with the effect that the claimant usually faces an uphill struggle before the assessment has even begun.”

He said that HCPs often “begrudgingly” score claimants and that an attitude is drilled into them

“which leans towards finding reasons not to award points”.

Those are very serious and specific allegations that I would have expected the Government to take seriously, given the warm words we frequently hear from the Minister and the Secretary of State, who has now left his place, about improving this process and constantly being vigilant about making it better for people.

I wrote to the Prime Minister on the same day asking him to investigate the allegations. He passed the correspondence to the Secretary of State, who wrote back to me on 22 June. I got back a one-page letter—I have it here—that made absolutely no reference to any of the specific allegations. It did not say that there was a problem; it was just a standard response. The Government wanted to brush it under the carpet. That attitude belies the problems that exist.

On the same day, the Secretary of State’s private office e-mailed me, by mistake, a copy of a letter to another Member of Parliament—a Government Member—raising an individual’s case to which there was a much more systematic and detailed response. That is perhaps because the initial letter came from me, or from a Labour Member. I very much hope not, because they were very serious allegations that the Government decided to ignore completely.

This is not just about the frustrations of seeking information from the Government, although I admit that I do get frustrated about that. It is not just about the waste and inefficiency in a programme that is costing £110 million a year for the Atos contract, and now up to £70 million this year in the appeals process to correct the mistakes. It is not just about an attitude, although I say again that I have found the Minister to be dismissive, evasive and sometimes partisan in our engagement on this issue. It is also about the experience of real people in every single part of this country who often have to adjust their life circumstances due to events completely beyond their control due to illness, accident or incident. It is about people who will have seen a system that is not working properly because the Government rolled out the migration from incapacity benefit without taking into account the lessons identified in the pilot projects, with the consequences that we have seen since. Most of all, it is about decency, compassion and helping people, not hounding people. The system is wrong and it needs to change.

Housing Benefit (Under-occupancy Penalty)

Robert Flello Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. The key thing is that the under-occupancy penalty will hit hundreds or thousands of people in every constituency. We will all meet constituents affected by it, many of them among the most disadvantaged members of the community. Let us make no mistake: the people on the front line of this policy are the disabled and those who care for them.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

Did the hon. Lady, like me, hear the Prime Minister say during Prime Minister’s questions that he would personally look at cases brought to his attention? Will she join me in urging all those people in this country who are faced by this to write individually to the Prime Minister?

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. Just a few minutes ago the Prime Minister said that he would look carefully at individual cases. I feel a little bit sorry for whoever keeps his correspondence in check, because the Department of Work and Pensions equality impact assessment shows that two thirds—66%—of the households affected by the bedroom tax are home to someone with a disability under the terms of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.

Specialist Disability Employment

Robert Flello Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I appreciate the Minister’s courtesy. What she says is, of course, a matter for her. I should just make it clear to the House and to those attending to our proceedings that the content of the statement is entirely a matter for the Minister. Whether she chooses to provide a list or not is her prerogative. I respect the sincerity with which she addressed the House.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

Last year, many of my constituents, in their supported environment at North Staffs Remploy, put in for voluntary redundancy because they could see the writing on the wall. They were turned down because, it was said, they were key workers. They now find that they will get just statutory redundancy, rather than the enhanced money that was available last year. Does the Minister think that that is fair and right? Perhaps she would like to come to my Remploy and talk to the workers, such as Steve and others, who will have night after night of sleepless nights because there are no jobs for them in Stoke-on-Trent. They will not be able to sleep at night—will she?

[Maria Miller]

Again, I understand the strength of feeling; the hon. Gentleman is trying to ensure that the people in his constituency are supported in the way that they need to be. I gently remind him that the estimated average redundancy of somebody in a Remploy factory will be about £19,000, which is more than double the average that would be received under the statutory scheme. It is important that people get the right level of support, so we are making £8 million available to support individuals into mainstream employment. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman asks what jobs are available. I remind him of the many hundreds of jobs that the employment services have found for disabled people in his constituency.