Disability Benefits and Social Care
Robert Flello Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Trentham Lakes Remploy factory in my constituency, which serves the very deprived area of north Staffordshire, is doing fantastic work for companies such as JCB, and is also working for the DWP in fulfilling contracts. Some of its workers have tried working in the outside environment during better times, but they have returned because they need not a separated environment, but a supported environment. Will my right hon. Friend pay tribute to the hard work that is done by people in places such as Trentham Lakes?
Welfare Reform Bill
Robert Flello Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. In my constituency, as in that of the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), rents might be £500 a month. That is not the sort of rent that we see in London, but one thing the areas have in common is landlords who are quite happy to take the money as often as they can, but who are not so happy to look after the property that the tenants have to live in. There are a number of rogue landlords. Is that not where the fire of Government Back Benchers should be turned—on those landlords?
Mr Byrne
Absolutely right, and I shall say a few words later about the dramatic escalation in the housing benefit bill that the Department for Work and Pensions foresees. Somehow, that has not featured in this afternoon’s debate, but we will come on to those facts and figures shortly.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
May I just make it clear that I oppose a benefit cap in principle? This policy has been borne out of prejudice and political expediency, rather than reason. In every recession there are scapegoats, and it is usually the poor, who become a political football for political game-playing and advantage. I am not morally willing to involve myself in that debasing political game.
We all have to bring our own experiences of our constituents to this debate, which has exposed differences in their lifestyles, and at times it has been apparent that we do live in different worlds. I do not begrudge Members and their constituents who are in good, well-paid employment, a secure home that they can afford and a decent environment, but that is not the experience of many of my constituents, or of many constituents throughout the country.
I have lived in my constituency for about 35 years, and I live in statistically the most deprived ward in the borough. The vast majority of people whom I see around me desperately want to do what is needed to ensure that their families have a good quality of life. They pay back into the community in many ways, they work long hours often in insecure employment and their pay, in many instances, is low and often below the London living wage.
The risk is unemployment, which over recent years in my constituency has increased by 52%, and over the past year by 7%, so there will be times when many of my constituents will not be able to find work. They struggle, above all else, just to provide a decent roof over their family’s heads, and that is because we face the worst housing crisis since the second world war. Housing supply has not kept up with housing demand, council houses that were sold off in the 1980s and ’90s have not been replaced by successive Governments, and there has been an expansion in buy-to-let, higher-rent-charging landlords, who provide many of my constituents with squalid housing conditions and overcrowding—Rachmanite landlords, who are building up lucrative property empires.
Robert Flello
Does my hon. Friend agree that, if a tenant complains, those landlords kick them out?
John McDonnell
Some Members will have seen recent television programmes that relate to my constituents and to Rachmanite landlords. It has not happened overnight; I blame what has happened over the past 30 years. So what is the logic of the cap for my constituents. Is it an incentive to secure work? The vast majority need no incentive; they are desperate for work. Yes, there is a small minority who will always refuse to seek work, but there are already sanctions for that, introduced by this and the last Government. I already have constituents turning up at my surgery who have been automatically suspended from benefits for three months for the slightest infringement, and they include many who suffer mental health problems or who simply cannot work through the system themselves.
Living Standards
Robert Flello Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms) almost had me agreeing with some of his speech, certainly in its early moments, but I am afraid that he blew it at the end when he talked about the Chancellor being sensible and then praised the Liberal Democrats—neither of the main parties in this House should stoop to such a level.
We have heard the phrase, “We’re all in this together”, many times over the past 18 months. I wonder how the 11,600 families in my constituency who will see their tax credits cut by an average of £680 per annum—on top of the three-year child benefit freeze and all the other cuts that they have seen—will feel about our all being in this together. I think they will be sitting there thinking that we are certainly not all in it together. Around the country, 100,000 more children will be in poverty as a result of this Government’s plans, proposals and policies. Will they think that we are all in it together? I somehow do not think they will. The number of young people in my constituency who are aged between 18 and 24 and have been claiming jobseeker’s allowance for six months or more has increased by 154%. That is a huge increase in the number of young people who find themselves in the position of not having any work. They will not think that we are all in this together, and rightly so, because we are not.
The Minister sneered a few times when the issue of bankers came up. The Government are keen, with their coalition pals, to talk about how hard they have been on the bankers with their levy. They always seem to forget that they offset the hit of the levy with the corporation tax cut and other giveaways to the bankers. The bankers are not sitting there saying “We’ve been really hard hit by this; we’re all in this together”—of course they are not. They are quite happy because on the face of it, they have had this big levy, but the reality is that that is diminished by the corporation tax changes and other benefits.
The pay of FTSE 100 directors has risen by 49% but my constituents can only dream of a 4.9% increase in income. Are we all in this together? I do not think that we are. A pattern is developing. The wealthiest, the bankers and the FTSE 100 all seem to do nicely as against the children and the poorest. The three poorest deciles are being hit three times as hard as the top decile.
Robert Flello
The Minister shakes his head, but I am afraid that the figures do not support his position.
The Opposition are wrong to say that the Government’s policies are hurting, not working, because they are not hurting but murdering our communities. They are so punitive that they are destroying our communities. We are not all in this together by any stretch of the imagination. We heard earlier about a list of areas that were among the most vulnerable to the impact of the cuts. Stoke-on-Trent was high up on that list but the Government’s policies actively take money away from places like Stoke-on-Trent to help all-in-it-together places like Kensington and Chelsea or Westminster, which obviously need the money far more than do the people of Stoke-on-Trent.
Then there is this nonsense, this con––let us get it out on the table––of the freeze on council tax. I am sorry but this 2.5% increase in council tax, which is what this nonsense would amount to––
Sheila Gilmore
Does my hon. Friend know that in Scotland we have had five years of the council tax freeze? For some of the poorest people in the community, it has in effect put up things like charges for home care because the freeze pushes the costs out elsewhere.
Robert Flello
My hon. Friend makes a sound point, to which I was just coming. Because of the large number of band A properties in Stoke-on-Trent, the tax take is relatively low. Just taking the 2.5% increase instead of the much larger imposition that would be needed to go some way to not having to make the £24 million or so of cuts this year on top of the £36 million or so last year, means that the council will probably be unable to afford not to raise the price of things like respite care or day care centres. The council could not take the 2.5% pay-off to do that but would have to raise council tax by more to get some way to avoiding that.
Day care centres are under threat. There is talk of closing such things in Fenton and in Burslem in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Joan Walley). These cuts across the board are again hitting the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society who live in Stoke-on-Trent.
I have a long list of things, but in the time I have left, I want to mention something that the Chancellor announced yesterday in respect of what on the face of it appears to be help for energy-intensive users. Stoke-on-Trent has many energy-intensive users in the ceramic industry. As Dr Laura Cohen of the British Ceramic Confederation has said, the thresholds have been set so high and the proposals have been done in such a way that they will not help ceramic producers in Stoke-on-Trent, many of whom have contacted the confederation to say that it is an empty gesture that will not assist them. That is the sort of thing that Government policies are doing. They are hammering communities such as Stoke-on-Trent and, frankly, that is outrageous.
Oral Answers to Questions
Robert Flello Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Chris Grayling
As the hon. Lady will be aware, that was one of the key questions that we put to Professor Malcolm Harrington last year. As a result of his recommendations we have introduced a number of mental and cognitive champions among the providers in the assessment network. We are also considering a range of further recommendations from mental health charities, and we have instructed our decision makers to take careful account of evidence of mental health problems when reaching their decisions.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
North Staffs Remploy in my constituency is so successful that it has had to put on an additional shift to meet demand. Indeed, if it were not for the layers of senior management drawing funds out of Remploy like some leech, it would be very profitable indeed. Will the Minister look carefully again at the Sayce report, and at what happens during the consultation, so as to ensure that my constituents who use Remploy, and who say that it is definitely fit for the 21st century, can continue working for it?
Maria Miller
The hon. Gentleman will know from reading the Government’s response to Liz Sayce’s consultation that we are looking for new ways to run Remploy. If he feels that there is a way in which we could run it better in his constituency, I ask him please to contribute to the consultation.
Welfare Reform Bill
Robert Flello Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
We have had a good debate. The Bill contains one good idea and presents us with two serious problems. The good idea is the merger of out-of-work benefits with in-work benefits, such as the tax credits that we introduced, which make it much more worthwhile to be in a job. The creation of the universal credit has been widely welcomed across the Chamber in this debate, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), as well as by the Chair of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, and by the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott), my hon. Friends the Members for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) and for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), among others. It is a welcome change, and it is right that we should congratulate the Secretary of State, who has focused intently on this matter since the Conservative party sacked him as its leader. He went off and set up the Centre for Social Justice, which did the spadework, and he now brings the reform to the House.
That was the good idea, but unfortunately the bouquets end there, because the Bill is a mess. It was rumoured on good authority a few weeks ago that it would be delayed another month so that key decisions could be made—and now that we have the Bill, we can see why: fundamental points are missing. How will child care be supported? That is key to the Bill’s purpose of ensuring that people are better off in work. If the Government get this decision wrong, the Bill will fail. The Secretary of State told us that he would take further advice from relevant groups. However, the relevant groups have given him plenty of advice already; the trouble is that he has not taken it. The previous Government’s success on child care meant that the proportion of lone parents in work increased from 45% to 57%.
The decision on support for child care is crucial. The Secretary of State has told us that he wants to spread the same amount of money across many more people. People will therefore have to find not 3% of the cost of child care out of their own pocket—which is common at the moment—but perhaps 30%. That is a tenfold rise. It is therefore not surprising that lone parent organisations are reporting calls from their members saying that they will not be able to afford to carry on working.
At a time when benefits are being merged into a universal credit, the Government have, bizarrely, decided to do the opposite with council tax benefit and devolve it entirely to local councils. That appears to be the messy outcome of a dispute between the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, which unfortunately this Secretary of State has lost. Local authorities will apparently be free to design council tax benefit as they wish, except that it will have to cost 10% less than before. Again, that could completely scupper the advantages that the universal credit is supposed to deliver. Will the Department for Work and Pensions be able to step in if that happens? We simply do not know.
The Secretary of State was not able to tell us earlier who will receive free school meals in future. That is a crucial piece of information. How can we debate the new system without knowing that?
My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) made some telling points about the position of self-employed people. We have no idea how the self-employed will be handled under the new system. Employers will notify the DWP of the salary of people in pay-as-you-earn every month so that their universal credit can be calculated—that is, if the Government can get the IT to work. The Secretary of State knows that I am sceptical about his timetable for that. Self-employed people are not in PAYE, so how will their universal credit be worked out? We have no idea, and the Bill does not tell us.
Who will be entitled to free prescriptions? Who will be entitled to mortgage interest support? Which working families will be exempt from the benefit cap? How will unearned income such as child maintenance and widow’s benefit be treated? Will disability living allowance continue to be available indefinitely to children? My hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) made a powerful speech about that.
Those are enormous gaps in the Bill on crucial details, not minor matters. The whole purpose of reform, and the point that has been repeated over and over again in the debate, is that everybody wants a system that ensures that people are better off in work. Achieving that goal stands or falls by whether those questions are given the right answers, and at the moment we simply do not know.
The lack of answers is a serious problem with this unfinished Bill, but unfortunately it is not the worst problem. The things that we do not know are only the half of it: the things that we do know turn out to be even worse. Why on earth are Ministers launching an attack on saving? People who receive £80 or £100 a week in tax credits to supplement their earnings will in future receive absolutely nothing at all if they have £16,000 in the bank. They could lose perhaps £5,000 a year as a punishment for having £16,000 in savings. If they get rid of their savings, they will get their credits back. What is that about?
The Secretary of State told us earlier that child care support would be included in the universal credit. That would mean that those people, for the crime of having £16,000 in the bank, would lose all their child care support as well. Why are people on modest earnings to be punished for saving for a deposit to buy a home, or for the massively increased charges for higher education? The Secretary of State told us that 100,000 families would lose everything as a result. He said that he saw no problem with that, but he should go and talk to his colleagues in the Centre for Social Justice, who have made the point that the savings limit for out-of-work benefits is
“an unfair penalty to those who have saved”.
Instead of easing that limit, as the CSJ proposed, the Bill extends it to people in work.
The Secretary of State is wrong to say that the welfare system is only for the most vulnerable. My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) made a telling point about that. It is there for everybody when they need it; that is why we have national insurance. My right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks) was right to emphasise that responsibility should be expected from the rich as well as the poor.
Contributory employment and support allowance is to be time-limited to a year. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) made a telling intervention about that, and my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) also spoke about it. The data suggest that probably less than 20% of those in the work-related activity group returned to work within a year. There is no way that someone on oral chemotherapy or with a serious mental health problem can be expected to return to work in a year, so that is clearly wrong.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend accept that there is already a problem with contribution-based ESA, because people are not passported through to other benefits as somebody on income-related ESA might be? There are already difficulties for people in the circumstances that he describes.
Stephen Timms
There certainly are problems. The Government have made much of marginal deduction rates and the impact on work incentives, but it turns out from the small print of the Bill that the changes will increase the marginal deduction rates of many more people than will have them decreased. Again, the Secretary of State’s own think-tank has pointed out the problem with the high taper rate that the Government have chosen.
My hon. Friends the Members for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) and for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) pointed out that in the tax credits system, benefit in respect of children can be paid to their mother. Sometimes, if all the money went to the father, the children would never see it. The Bill completely ignores that issue.
A lot has been said about disability living allowance, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) spelled out powerfully the dangers of what is being done. It is being scrapped and replaced with the personal independence payment—whatever that might eventually turn out to be. A lot of disabled people are frightened, and the Bill to abolish DLA was published before the consultation even finished. We should reform DLA not abolish it, and it is wrong for the Bill to proceed in that way.
As I said earlier, the Bill presents us with one good idea—the universal credit—and two very big problems. The first is all the things that the Bill does not tell us—the large gaps of great significance that have been left in it—and the second is all the things that it does tell us. It needs radical improvement before it reaches the statute book, so I commend the amendment to the House.
Housing Benefit
Robert Flello Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that, whilst housing benefit is in need of reform, the Government’s proposals will mean significant losses for hundreds of thousands of working families and pensioners and risk spending an additional £120 million on the cost of providing temporary accommodation; and calls on the Government to bring forward revised proposals for the reform of housing benefit which do not penalise those who have been unable to secure employment within 12 months, and which ensure that any proposals are implemented on a revised timetable which allows councils, tenants and landlords to adjust, allows the impact on rents to be observed and understood, and avoids additional spending on temporary accommodation.
It is common ground across the House that the deficit needs to be cut and that, as the motion states, housing benefit needs to be reformed. The shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), will speak later and I am sure she will reflect the views of many in this House in recognising that the issue of housing benefit cannot, and should not, be detached from broader issues of housing provision. However, it is important to start the debate by setting out some of the facts that explain the real and rising concerns that have been expressed from both sides of the House about the impact of the Government’s proposed housing benefit changes. I will address first the reach of the changes, then the reason for them, and finally their potential impact.
If we were to believe everything we read in the newspapers, we would have thought in recent weeks that housing benefit reform is solely a London issue and that it matters only to people who have large houses and should be, but are not, working. Broadcasts and newspapers have suggested that the key issues are workshy families in Mayfair mansions, so let us start with some truths, however inconvenient they are for the Opposition Front Bench. Some 4.7 million people in the United Kingdom currently receive housing benefit, 2 million of whom are pensioners on pension credit guarantee of just about £132 a week, while 500,000 are people on jobseeker’s allowance and 700,000 are people in work in low-paying jobs. From just one measure of the Government’s proposed changes alone—the cut in local housing allowance from the 50th to the 30th percentile—700,000 of these, many of the poorest people in our country in and out of work, stand to lose on average £9 per week.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
I am looking forward to hearing the rest of what I know will be a very passionate and important speech. Does my right hon. Friend agree that many people—not only in my constituency, but throughout the country—who have disabilities or who are carers for people with disabilities are terrified that these proposals might affect them?