Cost of Living: Pensioners

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

There are 2 million older people living in poverty—that is one in six—and another million are sitting just above the poverty line silently struggling to make ends meet. Together, a quarter of older people are in or at risk of being in poverty. In recent years, the phrase “heating or eating” has become shorthand for the cost of living crisis. It rhymes, and it is easy to say, but it is the reality facing too many of our pensioners. Age UK research found that 4.2 million people cut back on food or groceries last year, while a survey by this House’s Petitions Committee of those engaging in petitions on pension levels found that three quarters were worried about affording food.

Health statistics always worsen in the cold winter months, with mortality rising in all parts of the UK last year compared with previously. As we face an even colder winter —in my constituency we often reach minus temperatures overnight—there are real consequences when older people cannot afford to properly heat their homes. The reality is that heating or eating is not a catchphrase, but a decision about survival. It is our duty as policy makers in this place to ask why that is a reality for so many of our older people and to find solutions.

I welcomed the Government’s eventual decision to keep the triple lock this year, but the lack of clarity and uncertainty about that decision appeared to be electorally motivated, and I argue it caused a great deal of anxiety for many older constituents.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is talking about the triple lock on pensions. I have heard it said in this House in recent months that the triple lock on pensions was a Conservative proposal, so I went to the Library to find out whether that was true. The 2010 Conservative manifesto talks about

“restoring the link between the basic state pension and average earnings”,

while the 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto states:

“We will uprate the state pension annually by whichever is the higher of growth in earnings, growth in prices or 2.5 per cent.”

Does she agree with me that the triple lock was a Lib Dem proposal?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I regularly meet Steve Webb, the former Lib Dem Pensions Minister from the coalition, and I know how hard he worked when in government on this policy, so I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and thank him for his intervention.

The triple lock is of no use to anyone if the Government cannot get their systems working to pay people what they are due. Repeatedly last year we learned of pensioners nearing or reaching pension age trying to top up their national insurance records and seeing their money disappear without a trace. It would appear again some weeks later, but often only after chasing by an MP, an adviser or due to media coverage. That was not just in one or two cases; what became apparent were systemic problems of jammed helplines and hundreds upon hundreds of people losing track of their savings as they paid them over to the Government. Will the Minister tell us what he is doing to resource properly the Future Pension Centre?

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making a strong point and an excellent speech. On savings and topping up national insurance, we hear that about two thirds of those over 64 are dipping into their savings just to keep going. They are cutting down on food, and eating less healthily. Apart from the cruelty shown to pensioners by forcing them into that position, are the Government not short-sighted in not seeing the implications of treating our pensioners so badly for the NHS, the welfare system and social care?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I think it is reflected across a number of policy areas that we should look in all our services at sufficiency of income, allowing people to live with dignity and respect and knowing that they can cover the essentials, and for pensioners as well as for other age groups.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Further to that point, will the hon. Lady give way?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I give way to the hon. Member—it is not an Adjournment debate without him.

[Jim Shannon]

I congratulate the hon. Lady, who always brings to the House and Westminster Hall bread-and-butter issues that I support. I am glad to come along and give my support to her tonight. The price of electricity in Northern Ireland is rising by 20%, but pensions are rising by only 8.5%. With similar increases in the cost of meat and veg, it is clear that those comfortable on their pension in 2020 will be substantially less comfortable now. Does she not agree that an investigation into energy prices must take place as people feel that they are being gouged every time they put on their light or gas and feel the pain of prioritising one necessity over another?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I am grateful to the hon. Member. I agree that many people feel they are being held hostage by the vagaries of energy prices and systems. Although the cap and other measures have gone some way to helping with that, there is no doubt that it is a huge challenge. It also demonstrates why the triple lock remains required.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

While we are on energy prices, I am acutely aware that, as we speak, pensioners in my constituency are having to brave serious snow conditions and, because we have the highest level of fuel poverty anywhere in the country, they will feel literally and metaphorically out in the cold. Does my hon. Friend agree that Ofgem has a role to play in the creation of a social tariff, or even a geographically-based tariff?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

One challenge in my right hon. Friend’s constituency is the number of his constituents who are off grid. We know that there is a lack of regulation in the sector off grid. One other challenge for the Government in responding to energy price fluctuations was getting a lot of money out to many people easily, and administrative issues materialised for those off grid. Many of them have still not seen the money to which they are entitled. We need to look at better regulation of our energy system.

I was talking about the Future Pension Centre and the challenges experienced by many constituents across the UK in topping up their pensions. I tabled a presentation Bill on the issue to extend the deadline and was glad that the Government took that up. In responding, will the Minister tell us what discussions he is having with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs about making its systems align and function properly? If those systems were working as they should, many constituents would not have a gap to fill in the first instance. Will he consider implementing a proper receipting system so that older people have proof of payment as they do with any other transaction?

We know that errors by the Department for Work and Pensions are all too commonplace; we need only to look at the experience of the WASPI women—the Women Against State Pension Inequality—to see that. Those women, through no fault of their own, lost their ability to plan for their retirements. They lost their financial autonomy. Many of them continue to live in poverty, while others have sadly died without seeing any compensation.

I know that we are all awaiting the final report of the ombudsman setting out its recommendations for compensation for the WASPI women, but in the meantime will the Minister agree to meet me to discuss the next steps? He and I worked successfully together on the all-party parliamentary group on ending the need for food banks before he took on his current role, and I hope that we can do so again.

I return to pension income and want to raise pension credit with the Minister. This top-up benefit is the simplest tool at the Government’s disposal to lift pensioners out of poverty. It feels like every year we have a new attempt at increasing uptake with a fancy leaflet or other information campaign. I am sure we all go to the drop-ins, have our pictures taken and share them with our constituents, but pension credit take-up remains stuck at 63%, which suggests that the campaigns simply are not working. Pensioners either do not know about the benefit or do not realise they are eligible, or some struggle with the stigma of being seen to claim it.

I have been in this role for more than three years, and I have spent a lot of time having conversations about how to improve uptake. Clearly, an annual leaflet is not doing the trick. We need a long-term strategy on pension credit uptake with two key focuses: how we share data to identify people eligible for pension benefit, and how we target them efficiently and effectively so that they actually claim it and do not feel stigmatised?

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady makes a critical point. When I talk to pensioners in my constituency, I always ask what benefits they are on. I always mention carer’s allowance if they do not receive disability living allowance, and I always mention pension credit. In many cases, they are not on it. How do we make a better system? I suggest, with great respect, that maybe the Department needs to physically go to those people and introduce it to them. Many people are proud, independent and do not want to take it up because they think they should not, but they should. They worked hard all their days and paid their tax and national insurance, and it is time for payback.

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[Wendy Chamberlain]

Stigma is definitely a part of it, but some think they do not qualify as they have a sufficiency of income that would result in their being rejected. I always say to them that even if it is only 50p, it is worth doing because of the passporting benefits. We have seen this challenge around child benefit. Having not seen an increase in the thresholds, we are in a ludicrous situation where if a single earner earns over £60,000, the household is not entitled to it. The challenge is that if the non-earning parent does not apply, they do not get their national insurance contributions for their pension. Why would people apply for something that they do not think they are entitled to? We must do more to make it easier for people to get what they are entitled to. They do not want to end up 20 years down the line finding out that they do not have full pension contributions, because we know that topping it up is quite challenging, as I have talked about.

Going back to pension credit, perhaps once the Minister’s Department has published the results of last summer’s trials of targeting recipients of housing benefit, he could give us an update on the outcome of the trial to see whether that might work for pension credit, and what lessons can be learned. Missing out on pension credit has serious implications beyond the credit itself. As I mentioned, it is the main passporting benefit for older people for cost of living payments. While we focus on a long-term strategy for pension credit, will the Minister consider extending entitlement to those payments to older people in receipt of housing benefit and council tax reduction, for example? I suspect that if they are eligible for those things, they are probably eligible for pension credit.

Before I move on to long-term strategies to tackle pension poverty, I want to raise one more benefit-related point. This is not strictly in his portfolio, but will the Minister commit to providing the House with an update on the future of the household support fund? I know from English colleagues that there is significant distress at the prospect of its not being renewed in March.

I dispute the claim of the Minister’s colleague, the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), in a written response to me yesterday, that pensioner poverty is falling. It is not. The claim was based on statistics before housing costs, which is distinctly disingenuous. Increasingly, pensioners face high housing costs, as more continue to rent privately into older age. Twice as many rent now than a decade ago—a trend set to continue as it is harder for young people to get on to the housing ladder.

We must tackle the poverty immediately in front of us, but we must look at long-term drivers of poverty among pensioners and stop this trend in its tracks. There are two parts to that: ensuring that people enter retirement sufficiently equipped, and ensuring that no one falls into poverty after ending their working life. Ultimately, our experience during our working life determines what happens to us when we retire. If someone has to take time out of work or only works part-time because of ill health, child rearing or caring, they will be substantially worse off in retirement. Those last two reasons are incredibly gendered, with women more likely to miss out on savings for their retirement.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

It was right earlier to highlight the benefits of the coalition Government introducing the triple lock, which this year will mean an uptick of between £650 and £1,000 for pensioners. The coalition Government also introduced mandatory pension contributions and pension pots from employers. Does hon. Lady not think that that is the sort of long-term planning that will make a difference to help this generation to be in a better place financially when they retire?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I assume the hon. Gentleman is referring to automatic enrolment; if he waits, I will mention that. I will not let it go amiss.

Returning briefly to the gender pay gap, the Government’s own research puts the gender pensions gap at 35%. I would argue that we could call it the caring gender gap, because life is arguably more complicated for retirees with caring responsibilities. I am not just thinking about older couples who increasingly rely on each other as their health starts to deteriorate, but people who move into retirement while carrying on caring for their adult children or for other family members.

Constituents have written to me to protest about the injustice of having lost out on the opportunity to build up retirement savings and now, moving into pension age, losing their carers allowance but still continuing to provide unpaid care to their loved ones while others in their cohort settle into a more comfortable retirement. I would like to see a comprehensive plan from the Government, across Departments, to tackle that unfairness. Are there ways of bringing unpaid carers into auto-enrolment through a credit scheme? Could we increase the employer contribution to auto-enrolment to help to build the savings of those in low-paid work? How can we encourage more carers back into the workplace?

I was proud to pass the Carer’s Leave Act 2023, but that is not enough. We need policies on issues such as staying-in-touch days and we need a carer’s allowance that incentivises work. I look forward to meeting a colleague of the Minister on just that. There is definitely an education piece here. Auto-enrolment was an incredible policy, but it also means that people do not really think about their pensions. The Money and Pensions Service estimates that 22 million people say they do not know enough to plan for their retirement, while Department for Work and Pensions research last year found that attitudes to pensions are

“characterised by detachment, fear and complacency”.

I think that those views would be represented in this place, too, when I think about the different things I did before I came to this place and the different pension pots I have.

I understand that planning for retirement is difficult and complicated unless you are an actuary or a financial specialist. I can hear the response of my teenage children if I try to bring it up at home or see the eyes glaze over on the doorstep, but people do care about the result of not engaging. My challenge for the Minister is to bridge that gap and change our culture so that people knowing about their pension is normal, and not scary but a standard part of people’s financial planning and education.

I am interested to hear the Minister’s ideas, but I will put to him just one that keeps coming up when I speak with experts and stakeholders. Will he consider a trial to test the impact of automatically booking savers for pensions guidance appointments when they turn 50? Let us try to make it easy, because lots of things can happen in retirement: your health can change, you could be bereaved or divorced, you could become a carer. The economy could be crashed, causing a sustained cost of living crisis. To try to understand drivers of poverty among older people, Independent Age followed the outcomes for a cohort of pensioners who entered state pension age above the poverty line. Within 10 years almost half had fallen into poverty. Something else is clearly happening that we need to understand. I have talked about a lot of different moving parts in the overall pension and poverty landscape, but what we need—what older people need—is a comprehensive plan.

I will end by asking the Minister this: will he consider a cross-Government review of what support an older person needs to stay out of poverty? Will he bring Westminster up to the standards of other nations and support a Westminster commissioner for older people and ageing? I would like to get something done and I am sure that the Minister would too. I look forward to hearing his response.

Oral Answers to Questions

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

The cost of living payments are a vital means of support during the cost of living crisis, but my constituent has lost out, through no fault of her own, because of the well-known issue whereby two of her work paydays fell within the assessment period used to assess eligibility. Will the Government review the eligibility process for the third cost of living payments to ensure that no one else misses out?

[Mel Stride]

This is a long-standing issue that crops up every few years. It is not something on which the Government intend to take specific action. We trust people to manage their finances, such that they can cope with the occasional eventuality where there is an additional year within any one calendar year.

Work Capability Assessment Consultation

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I thank my hon. Friend for that typically sensible and astute intervention. May I personally thank him for the advice and input he has given over the preceding months, particularly in this area? He is right that we should be proud of our record of assisting disabled people into work—2 million more in work since 2013. Equally, he is right about addressing the hundreds of thousands of people with these kinds of difficulties and challenges who are leaving businesses and the workforce every year. I recognise that it is essential to get help to those people as early as possible, before they progress too far along that health journey. That is why we are already consulting on occupational health, so that we can make sure that is rolled out more effectively across large and medium-sized businesses.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

In his statement, the Secretary of State mentioned that four descriptors would be reviewed, but there were no plans for any other changes. He certainly did not mention adding any descriptors. At yesterday’s Westminster Hall petition debate on disability assessment, one of the key issues discussed was remitting and relapsing conditions, particularly fatigue. Will the Secretary of State commit to looking at fatigue, and either adding it as a descriptor or telling us what he is going to do about it instead?

[Mel Stride]

Nothing in the consultation excludes bringing forward exactly the point that the hon. Lady makes. I hope she will do just that, and encourage others to do so as well.

Disability Benefits: Assessments

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Justin Tomlinson]

Absolutely. It would be valuable twofold. I talk to a lot of the assessors, and I know we are all going to highlight where there are challenges, but something like 95% of claims go through. Satisfaction is still relatively high for those claimants; as I said, we are spending £10 billion. The vast majority of assessors want to get it right first time and want to have that knowledge and support, so if we can allow some assessors to specialise, they can develop their training with charities and health organisations with specific knowledge of the area. That will increase the chance of getting the decision right the first time.

Not everybody presents with one single health condition, so it may be that people would have a hybrid assessment in two parts. There would be a general assessment, which in many cases would pick up things on the mental health side that people did not realise were having an impact on their day-to-day life; there would also be a specific assessment of the primary health condition. As the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) so clearly articulates, where people have fluctuating health conditions we really need the knowledge to ensure that we are looking not just at one particular day but, as the guidance says, at the typical impact over a one-year period.

During covid, we had a significantly reduced workforce. All our health assessors have a medical background and then have extensive training, and they were the first port of call for secondments to the NHS to provide the covid jab, so we had an incredibly depleted workforce. That really focused our mind on the volume of assessments. At Work and Pensions oral questions earlier today, I raised a point about whether lessons have been learned on extending the severe conditions criteria. When we looked at it, we estimated that about 250,000 to 300,000 assessments, with a change, could be lifted out of the system every single year. That would speed up the process for those who remain and would obviously be beneficial for those 250,000 to 300,000 people.

At the moment, PIP does not look at individual conditions—it is about the menu of health conditions that have an impact on someone’s daily life—but I think that, in some cases, we can do so. We have shown that with the changes to the special rules for the terminally ill, which will look at health conditions. I will give one example, but no doubt there are many organisations that would lobby for a change in respect of particular health conditions.

Motor neurone disease is a horribly degenerative disease, and there is a pretty clear trajectory once someone has been diagnosed, so I have never understood why on earth we assess people who have it. From the moment they have been diagnosed, we should be able to say, “We expect their condition to go like this,” and then provide an automatic level of support. They would start at the lower level immediately after diagnosis and, as their condition, sadly, deteriorated, they would automatically move on to the highest level. If, sadly, their condition deteriorated more quickly, they would be able to contact the PIP assessors, speak to the MND specialist team, have a light-touch conversation—a GP’s note would probably be sufficient—and be automatically upgraded.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I am grateful that the hon. Member has brought up MND. Does he agree that one thing that the current system must do is prevent delays? Not only do people with the condition sometimes deteriorate more quickly, but the adaptations that local authorities are making, and so on, mean that we are making the process much more difficult on every front for people with MND.

[Justin Tomlinson]

Absolutely, and that was one of the drivers behind our changes to the special rules on terminal illness. From the point of diagnosis, PIP is a gateway benefit that will unlock extra help from local authorities, so it will certainly speed up that process.

Before the Minister panics and thinks that he would need an office akin to Fort Knox because every single health group would lobby him and say, “These rules should apply to our particular health challenge,” let me say that the way around that is to look at the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council, which already operates within the DWP. In effect, that is a separate, independent body of medical and scientific experts with far greater brains than mine. They are the ones who decide which health conditions qualify for industrial injuries benefits. We could apply the same principle and, as medical care and scientific knowledge evolved, they could update the guidance. That could potentially lift 250,000 to 300,000 people out of the process and help some of the most important people. Since the changes on terminal illness came into force, we have seen all pluses and little else. I hope that the Minister’s commitment to trying to pilot initiatives in this area will continue, ahead of the White Paper.

Many colleagues have mentioned the appeals process. There are different ways of looking at the statistics but, by and large, for the vast majority of people who are successful in the appeals process, either at the mandatory reconsideration stage or at the end, that is because of additional evidence that is presented. We have to look at why that additional evidence is being presented so late in the day. There are many things that could be done. The Department could be more proactive in chasing up sources that have supportive evidence. Getting evidence from a GP is a bit of a postcode lottery. Some GPs will reply to a claimant immediately and give chapter and verse; some are much slower. Some will seek to charge. Some do not necessarily have the right information.

Where someone has already gone through a work capability assessment, which is very similar—I know there is potentially a review of whether we should have two separate assessments, but this is the case as it stands today—there will already be a lot of information on a similar system, and we should at least ask the claimant whether they would like us to look at that information. Remember that it is the claimant’s information and we should not do that automatically, but we should ask to bring that information over.

We should be proactive in encouraging claimants to bring a trusted colleague with them to the assessments. That is within the rules, but how assessors allow it is very inconsistent. Some assessors will encourage the colleague to speak. Some will tell them, “No, you’re not being assessed; you are just there to provide moral support.” We need consistent guidelines. In my opinion, they should be allowed to speak. I have sat in on a lot of assessments; a lot of people are understandably overwhelmed, and arguably do not do themselves justice in what they say. Sometimes, when a person has had a condition for so long, they just take it as the norm that, for example, they no longer sleep at night. Their partner who is woken up by their not sleeping at night would probably be better at articulating that. We should be doing that.

We also started testing phoning claimants at the mandatory reconsideration stage and asking them to tell us, in their own words, why they disagreed with the decision. One speaker mentioned earlier that the mandatory reconsideration success rate is only about 11%. My understanding is that when we piloted proactively speaking to the claimant, that figure went up to about 40%; when I talked to assessors doing that at the time, they felt they could go even further. We would invariably find that a claimant’s GP had told them something but they had not provided us with the information, or had not been able to get it, and we could chase the GP on their behalf and get that information.

We also allowed people to be lifted out of the system. In the past, people had in effect to take their chances. They had to wait for the MR, and once they triggered the independent appeal the Department could not come back and say, “Now you have provided us with this evidence, we agree with you and wish to do that,” because they were stuck waiting for the judge, which can be up to a 12-month wait. We changed the rules so we could lift people out, but if people still did not agree with us they had the right to stay in the process. All those measures that can help lift people out of the process would be very welcome.

I also want to highlight the need for us to start signposting support and help. PIP is geared up to identify people’s challenges and then to identify society’s financial contribution towards the impact on their daily lives, but we stop there; we do not signpost people on PIP to additional support that may exist in their communities. I visited many wonderful and innovative mental health pilots across the country—we will all have done loads of visits in the summer recess, seen something and thought, “Gosh!”—but time and again people said to me, “Our problem is that we can’t find enough people to come and test these things out.” Yet the PIP database has the list of all the people who have been identified as having a mental health issue. I am not saying that they should have to do it, but at the very least we should be writing and saying, “Right, you’re in this particular postcode. These are the local charities and organisations, this is the local authority, and these are the local health pilots to do with your primary condition, or menu of conditions, that may be of interest to you.” I think that would be hugely beneficial to many of the people who go through the system.

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[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) who opened the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. Elements of his speech felt like groundhog day, because the first Westminster Hall debate that I led, in 2017, was on the issue of work capability assessments. It is worrying that six years on we are still here debating the very same issues. All Members, regardless of party, know that those issues cause undue stress and misery to people across our four nations.

The British Government’s approach to disability benefit assessments is not just ineffective—the theme that has been developed today—but inhumane. Under the current regime, the application process removes the reality of people’s lived experience as the very foundation on which the system has been defined. It favours evidence provided by the assessor rather than the claimant. The system also operates on the presumption of scepticism. It is not a system that empowers its users. Instead it perpetuates a cycle of despair and frustration. That “one size fits all” approach to disability assessment is in my view not only short-sighted, but it completely disregards the reality of living with a disability or a chronic illness. Charities such as Scope have raised concerns about the process time and again, but their calls appear to be continually ignored—at huge expense to those living with a disability.

The impact of disability assessments has, unfortunately, featured significantly in my caseload since I became MP for Glasgow East in 2017. I will be honest: I am no stranger to hearing about dehumanising experiences that my constituents have endured as a result of this system. I sit week in, week out at surgeries across the east end of Glasgow in places like Baillieston, Parkhead and Easterhouse, hearing the same harrowing and sometimes traumatic experiences that people have had to endure at the hands of the disability benefits assessment process.

In most cases, and worryingly, people’s mental and physical health are only worsened by the assessment process. That leads to many further problems for the NHS through health problems, whether physical or mental, so it is counter-productive. My hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) referred to the finding by Scope: from January to March this year, 68% of PIP appeal outcomes were changed in favour of the claimant. If such a proportion of wrong outcomes were found in any other Department, Ministers would ask serious questions. I respect the Minister, who I know takes a strong interest in this issue, but I ask him to look again at the figure of nearly 70% of appeal outcomes being overturned. That suggests that the system is fundamentally flawed.

As people continue to face the disability price tag, disabled people are also having to juggle the restricted funds available to them along with soaring food and energy prices. According to the Trussell Trust’s analysis, three quarters of people referred to its food banks reported that they or a member of their household were disabled. As disabled people are hit disproportionately by the cost of living crisis, to the tune of some £945 a month extra, it is vital that all financial support to which they are entitled is awarded. However, under the current system, that is not always the case; in many cases, it feels as if people are actively held back from the support they so desperately need.

The hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) highlighted the recommendations in the Work and Pensions Committee report about the use of informal observations—a point also made by the MS Society in its briefing for the debate. Far too often, PIP assessors make inaccurate decisions based on those informal observations. Watching how someone looks or behaves during their assessment or observing someone walking from their car to the assessment centre are now used as tests of mobility. That is completely wrong and such things should not be taken into account. The Work and Pensions Committee, on which I am privileged to serve with the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), has heard that, more often than not, those informal observations are given greater weight than medical evidence.

As others have outlined, when it comes to people with conditions such as multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s, which fluctuate day to day and have many hidden symptoms, it is completely arbitrary for informal observations to be used to inform the assessor’s decision. The assessor’s limited understanding of complex fluctuating conditions such as MS, combined with the use of informal observations as a way of gathering evidence, results in greater emphasis being placed on the evidence provided by the assessor, rather than the lived experience of the disabled claimant. It therefore strikes me that the only purpose of asking a claimant to come for an assessment is to watch them literally walk from their car to the front door of the assessment centre, which seems utterly absurd.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston made clear, when we look north of the border—this brings me to the substantive point from the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson)—we can see the difference that devolution has made to how the policy has been implemented. It seems clear, not just to SNP Members but to those who work in the disability sphere, that the Scottish Government—on a cross-party basis, in fairness—are moving away from the regressive approach and becoming more committed to a process that has been designed around the lived experience of people with a disability.

Indeed, the adult disability payment from the Scottish Government is delivering an entirely new, simplified and—I would argue—far more compassionate experience for disabled people. It is a system that has been designed with the claimant, rather than against them; that is the key point that comes back when we speak to stakeholders north of the border. Putting compassion and people at the heart of the system must be the priority for any Government, regardless of their colour, so I am proud that we have taken that approach. Indeed, I am proud that Conservative Members on the Work and Pensions Committee unanimously approved its report praising the Scottish Government’s approach.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I am a member of the Scottish Affairs Committee, which did an inquiry into welfare in Scotland, and I certainly agree that what came through strongly from stakeholders was the need for a compassionate approach. As always, however, the processes have to be properly administered. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that at the moment the reality is that waiting times for the ADP in Scotland are longer than those for PIP assessments? Does he, like me, have casework in which there have been incorrect decisions? The approach might be different, but we need to see better outcomes.

[David Linden]

Absolutely. I totally understand the hon. Lady’s point, and I am sure she will understand that a lot of the civil servants who were working on the design of the Social Security Scotland system were rightly deployed towards the covid pandemic. Ministers in the Scottish Government have acknowledged that the situation with the ADP waiting list is less than helpful. But I come back to the fundamental point on which I challenge the hon. Member for North Swindon, which is that our systems are about taking the view that the claimant is not on the make. That is the nub of the issue. With the UK Government’s system, there is a scepticism about whether the person sitting at the other end of the table is on the make or on the take, so it is about trying to find a way to catch them out. That is why there is an overturn rate of 68%, for example.

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[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for introducing the debate, the petitioners who signed the petitions and the Petitions Committee for its work.

As other Members have said, as a constituency MP I find that DWP casework, particularly regarding PIP assessments, takes up a substantial part of my caseworkers’ time and often causes extreme distress to those who come to me as their MP. It is always nice as an MP to feel good when we have had a result and managed to overturn something, but frankly we should not need to be involved in the process at all.

I thank the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, for highlighting a number of the Committee’s recent report findings. I echo the thoughts of the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden): this is a cross-party issue. There are a number of areas on which we would be likely to find agreement in order to straighten out and improve some of the systems. That would not only help some of our most vulnerable constituents but, frankly, surely save the public purse some money, given the failures and inefficiencies in our system.

It is useful to reflect on why we have a disability benefits system in the first place: because we know that those with a disability often find that their ability to work is impaired or that they are unable to work at all. Our social security system accepts that such individuals need support to compensate them for their inability to work and to meet the additional costs that their disability involves.

It is important that we remember that work capability assessments are not strictly disability benefit assessments, but they predominantly impact on disabled people when they apply for benefits and need to be considered in this debate. The Government have said that work capability assessments are unlikely to be abolished until 2026-27 at the earliest, so there are some key questions that we need answered. We need to know what will be done to improve them in the meantime—we have already heard a number of points about that. How are we avoiding over-testing? What has been done to protect claimants’ mental health? It would be great if the Government could provide clarity on the timeframe involved.

Without work capability assessments, is there a blanket requirement to look for work? It is vital that we avoid unnecessarily extending sanctions to those who are not in a position to work because of their health. All the evidence suggests that sanctions are not effective in encouraging people to work, and they also penalise people with mental health difficulties. Surely we should all want to see a scheme based on incentives.

My party wants to see a separation of the administration of benefits from employment support. Being supported to access training, education or employment ought to be separate from social security. People are not motivated to do things because there is not a sanction; they are motivated to do things because everyone wants a life that is as fulfilling as possible.

I am conscious the fact that at this point in the debate, although we still have plenty of time left, I am touching on things that have already been covered by other Members. On the application process for PIP, the forms are long, difficult and stressful, particularly for applicants with cognitive difficulties, fatigue or mental health difficulties. I firmly echo the thoughts of the right hon. Member for East Ham in relation to the time limit to complete the forms. It is certainly my experience as a constituency MP that forms sometimes take up to a week to arrive, which leaves applicants with only two weeks to apply. That is simply unrealistic.

There is an option to call the DWP and ask for an extension, but frankly it is not well known about, and having to engage again with the DWP causes unnecessary stress. Surely we could look at increasing the time given for applicants to complete the form to two months, and perhaps even longer. We also need to review the form so that we properly take account of relapsing and remitting conditions. I refer to the remarks that I made in an Adjournment debate that I secured on long covid, in which we considered how to support people with that condition.

[SIR GARY STREETER in the Chair]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Gary. On the PIP assessment process, we all have inboxes full of correspondence from unhappy constituents. I am aware that there will potentially be happy constituents out there who have not had any issues with PIP and therefore have not got in touch with us as MPs, but for those who do get in touch I suspect that the reality of their experience is that they feel the process was degrading and designed to trip them up. The Government can say all they want that that is not what is meant to happen, but it is the experience of the vast majority of people we talk to. One of the petitions we are debating suggests abolishing assessments entirely and focusing only on the medical evidence. We have heard comments from other Members as to why that might not be the best approach, but I agree that it is hard to find a system that is worse than the current one.

Delays in getting assessments is a real issue. According to Citizens Advice, in April this year some 720,000 people were waiting either for an appointment for a new claim or for a review—that is some backlog. We must see a shift in how assessments are offered, with a choice for claimants between them being in person or on the phone. One of the benefits of the pandemic was seeing how that might be possible.

The formal part of the assessment, as Members know, involves reviewing the claimant’s functional abilities against a range of descriptors. Evidence gathered by organisations such as Scope shows overwhelmingly that the descriptors do not allow claimants to properly explain their needs and what they might have difficulty with. Let us take, for example, the question on food preparation: the ability of someone to feed themselves is not as simple as whether they can cook a meal unaided. So many aspects of that are not covered by that simple statement. Perhaps someone can prepare a meal if their pain is not too bad, but they need someone to reach for the items on the top or bottom shelves of a cupboard. Perhaps someone asks the question based on whether the claimant has had help cooking in the past day or week. The answer might be no not because they do not need help, but because they simply have not had the opportunity or support, so they have been eating food like cereal or a ready meal to compensate.

The descriptors are even more problematic for people with relapsing and remitting conditions. At the moment, a 50% rule is applied, so someone has to experience a symptom and have a resulting difficulty for half a given time period for that difficulty to count. That means that if they are in pain so severe that they cannot wash, dress or go to the shops, but only for 14 days in a month, they would not qualify for any support. The criteria also fail to take into account the impact of performing the activities being assessed. “Can you walk more than 20 metres or 50 metres?” Perhaps they can, but slowly and with difficulty, and they are then in so much pain that they cannot do anything for the rest of the day. A mere yes or no does not consider the better test of whether someone can do something safely, repeatedly, competently and in a timely manner.

Other Members have touched on this, but informal observations are a real concern. Particularly given the use of non-specialist assessors, it seems deliberately careless to ask someone to make a judgment on another’s abilities without any deep understanding of that person’s experience. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) for highlighting MS in that regard. In any case, the mere fact that people know they are being watched makes them feel that they are being distrusted, which speaks to the point that the hon. Member for Glasgow East made. In fact, that is why we are all here today: because the people who are meant to be supported through benefits like PIP have so little trust in the system that they want it to be completely overhauled. That is why they signed the petition. We absolutely need to restore that trust, and the first thing the Government could do very simply is to review the use of informal assessments.

I agree with the right hon. Member for East Ham that all assessments must be recorded by default, with the option to opt out if the applicant wants. I do not understand why the Government have not accepted that recommendation from the Select Committee. All reports simply ought to be shared so that claimants can see how and why a decision has been made. That seems reasonable, particularly if we are then moving on to reassessments.

It is important to think about reassessments, and I hope the Minister will explain why it continues to be DWP policy to over-review claimants who have no chance of improving. If something gets worse for a claimant and they think they should be entitled to a higher level of support, they are entitled to start that review process themselves. There is absolutely no need to call people back year in, year out for a stressful process that uses up taxpayer money and just creates more and more backlogs. The backlog will soon be well above a million if we continue in that way.

Worse than that, all the stats for mandatory reconsiderations and appeals show that incorrect decisions at first assessment are commonplace. That means that when someone is called back for an unnecessary assessment, the chances are that they might have had their benefits wrongly stopped. We know that families with at least one disabled person are far more likely to be in poverty than those without—42% compared with 18%, according to the Social Market Foundation—so stopping those benefits, even for a short period, can have devastating effects.

The process halts any chance of someone improving and being able to enjoy a more active and fulfilling life that might include employment, with frequent reassessments linked to stress and further deterioration. That has been the experience of one of my constituents. She does not want to be named, but she wants me to share this with the Minister. She suffered a spinal cord injury in the early 2000s. She was initially assessed in 2016, then reassessed in 2017 and 2019. She has had multiple incorrect assessments. She finds dealing with the DWP incredibly traumatic. Despite being told by her doctor that her condition will never improve—something the DWP eventually accepted—she is still being told that she needs reassessments every two years. That will not fix her spine. All it does is risk her losing the little she receives while causing immense distress. Her needs might worsen over time, but she should be able to exercise her own autonomy about requesting a review rather than being stuck in an endless cycle. What are the Minister’s thoughts about what I can go back and say to my constituent to show that he understands and cares about her and others in that position?

In conclusion, it is clear that the assessments need to be reformed from top to bottom. None of us knows what will happen to us or our loved ones, and our social security system should be a safety net. Its purpose should be to reduce poverty and, where possible, increase employment. I hope the Minister will take on board the comments made by Members today.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

We now turn to our Front-Bench speeches. I call Marion Fellows.

Oral Answers to Questions

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

Like the hon. Lady, I and my ministerial colleagues take bullying in the workplace extremely seriously. There is no place for that in our country. I would be very happy for her to have a meeting with the relevant DWP Minister.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

25. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of the high income child benefit charge on the gender pension gap.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Laura Trott)]

In April, we announced plans to address this issue by introducing a retrospective national insurance credit, which will ensure that more people—especially women—have the opportunity to obtain a full state pension.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

The high income child benefit charge is potentially a scandal waiting to happen. Currently, families have to apply for a benefit they know they are not entitled to so that the stay-at-home parent—usually the mother—gets the national insurance credits that they need for her state pension. It is good to hear that the Government are doing something, but they need to reform the process further. Will they agree to at least put some comms in? I certainly had not heard of the changes in April.

[Laura Trott]

I am glad that the hon. Lady agrees with those changes. I assure her that we will be bringing them forward as soon as we can.

Department for Work and Pensions

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms). This is an opportunity for us to scrutinise the spending of the DWP as a whole, and I think it is important to reflect, as the Chair did, on the amounts of money that we are talking about. Spending on pensioner benefits equates to £134.8 billion and spending on universal credit and equivalent benefits equates to £82.8 billion, and that is before we look at disability and carer benefits, housing benefit, incapacity benefits and the one-off cost of living payments.

We are talking about a significant amount of money, but we are not just talking about it in the whole or in the round. I am sure that all of us here, as constituency MPs, know that casework associated with the DWP takes up a significant proportion of our casework teams’ time. Frankly, that is usually because of errors in the system. We know that every constituent’s circumstances are unique, but the themes are the same and the consequences for people’s day-to-day lives and living circumstances can be significant. I will highlight a survey carried out by the WASPI—Women Against State Pension Inequality—campaign that reports that nearly one in three women who have been impacted by changes to the state pension have fallen into debt in the last six months. That is people’s day-to-day lives. Given the amount of money spent on the DWP, I think we all, on a cross-party basis, would want the money that is spent to be used effectively and efficiently. I want to use my time this afternoon to highlight some of the inefficiencies in the system and seek updates from the Minister on points that I hope he will address in his concluding remarks.

On the state pension, it is important that we recognise that those who are most reliant on the state pension are those who are least able to work for longer. I want to highlight the current LEAP—legal entitlement and administrative practices—correction exercise for underpayments of the state pension, and to ask the Minister to confirm whether the Government are still on track to complete those corrections by the end of 2024. In February 2023, they had paid out only £200 million of the target of £1.5 billion.

I also want to highlight the uptake of pension credit. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has advised that there is a policy proposal on the table looking at combining the housing allowance and pension credit systems. It believes that that would increase uptake of pension credit, which I know the Pensions Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott)—has been working very hard to do. If that is the case, why is it potentially being pushed back to 2028?

Home responsibilities protection errors were discovered last year and mentioned in the DWP’s annual report. When people had accrued HRP under the old state pension, there were errors in converting it to national insurance credits in the move to the new system, and that left people with incomplete records and underpayments. When I say people, it is generally women. We are still waiting for the report to set out the scale of the problem now and how the DWP plans to fix it. I would be grateful if the Minister mentioned when that correction exercise will start. I urge that it starts in parallel with the current correction exercise rather than being delayed until after the current exercise is finished. Again, a lot of these issues tend to be for women. It feels to me that the way systems are set up sometimes means that they do not recognise the situation of women who have been in the workplace, the decisions they make for family and other reasons, and their caring responsibilities.

I want to mention the missing national insurance credits for people who received universal credit. The Minister confirmed to me in a letter in March that the automatic system for updating the records did not work because the format of the UC data sent to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs did not work with its systems, so that was suspended. This has meant that NI records are being manually updated, with errors being made as a result. I think this ties in with the Chair of the Select Committee’s comments about IT and the problems that legacy systems sometimes have. We all remember that the £20 uplift in universal credit was never seen by those on legacy benefits, and the initial reason given for that was that the IT systems could not cope, and that was never addressed. Does the Minister think that all those corrections to NI records will be made by the end of 2023-24, and may we have an update on the number of pensioners who are still missing out on their full entitlement?

If we want work to work, and to work effectively, we must acknowledge that we need to do more on pensions. For me, a startling statistic is the fact that most people are not in work a year before their pension age. For a variety of reasons people are not working, and they are therefore waiting for their state pension. Recent DWP reporting puts the gender pension gap for private pensions at a staggering 35%. Do the Government have an estimate of the gender pay gap if they include people who have no private pension entitlement at all? I suspect that if they have not been included, the gap will be somewhat larger. Will the Government make it a departmental statutory objective to close the gender pension gap?

That brings us back to women, because that changing portfolio of careers that women potentially experience will increasingly be the case for many people. I think about my own background before I came to this place. Increasingly, people do not stay in one organisation for 30-plus years and then draw down their pension from that organisation; they instead do a variety of different jobs in different places. As a result, the pension dashboard that was introduced by the Pension Schemes Act 2021 becomes even more critical so that people can keep track. Again, I would be grateful for an update from the Minister on that roll-out.

Let me return to benefits and the insufficiency of income. A number of us were present at the statement on the disability cost of living payment, and there was a general acknowledgement, certainly on this side of the House, that insufficiency of income is at the root of that. DWP data shows that in 2021 one in six people were in relative poverty, and one in five after accounting for housing costs, while 13% were in absolute poverty and 17% after housing costs. The Resolution Foundation estimates that that figure will rise in 2023-24 to 18.4% after housing costs.

Keeping people in poverty has negative outcomes. When people are financially insecure, they are more likely to have health or mental health problems, and more likely to struggle to get into work—it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I echo the comments of the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee on the uprating of benefits. The previous uprating, which was welcomed, was simply to keep up with inflation. If the problem is insufficiency of income, not committing to do that going forward just makes the problem worse.

I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on ending the need for food banks, and our “Cash or food?” inquiry deals specifically with how we better support people and ensure a decrease in the use of food banks. In my constituency—indeed, this is something the Scottish Affairs Committee is looking at—the rural poverty premium is real. The Chair of the Committee mentioned transport costs, and going from East Neuk in my constituency to the jobcentre in Levan costs £9 on the bus. When talking about the small amounts of money that constitute universal credit, we can quickly see where that money goes, and that is before someone potentially has to go shopping in premium local shops as opposed to Aldi and Lidl. Money goes very quickly.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady made a good point about benefits and the key role that they play in creating a wealthy society. She may or may not know that there is an interesting TED talk called “Where in the world is it easiest to get rich?” The answer is: in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, where they have identified that one of the key aspects of creating a wealthy society is a good benefits system that enables workers to go around with some security, and society and children to have security as well. If we want to have millionaires and billionaires, we need a very good benefits system.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. Absolutely; I think we all look to the Scandinavian countries to see how they promote quality of life and support individuals, and we must think about how we can better support that. Indeed, the public generally tend to support that. They are comfortable potentially paying more in tax to have better services, and that debate must continue to be had.

I am pleased that my carer’s leave private Member’s Bill is now the Carer’s Leave Act 2023, and it will for the first time give employment rights to unpaid carers. One of the huge challenges when I was engaging with unpaid carers in my constituency—I have said this in the Chamber before—was the number of people who had left work because of their caring responsibilities, and therefore they would not benefit from provisions in the Act. Sadly, it is a fact that too many unpaid carers and the people they care for are living in poverty.

Carers UK estimates that unpaid carers are providing care worth £162 billion a year, and when we contrast that with the costs of the Department through the estimates debate, we can see the comparators. Without unpaid carers, our economy would be severely strained. Some 45% of unpaid carers are estimated to be unable to afford their monthly expenses, and two thirds of those who receive carer’s allowance or the universal credit carer element say that they cannot meet their monthly expenses. The level of carer’s allowance needs to be increased urgently—I have called for that before, and I will continue to do so.

We must also think about how we taper carer’s allowance. Caring never stops, and we should not have people falling off a cliff edge in relation to hours worked. Frankly, that is a disincentive for people going into work, because if they have the choice between working or caring for their loved one, they will choose their loved one every time. For young carers, I am not just concerned about their education; I am also concerned that we will never get them into the workplace if we do not provide them with the support to get there.

I am conscious that some unpaid carers decide to step out of the workplace for some time and then their caring responsibilities end, potentially through the loss of a loved one. What are we doing to support unpaid carers, who might have been out of the workplace for some time, to get back into work? There are similarities with issues such as parental leave and other decisions, and we should be looking at that body of people, who frankly are some of the best multitaskers I know, given their skillsets, and how we can help them into work.

Finally—this is an issue that other Members will be hugely aware of—child benefit thresholds are becoming an increasing problem, particularly given some of our frozen levels of income tax. It is a ticking timebomb. Families do not apply for child benefit if they know that they will not be entitled to it, but because those levels have never changed, that is increasingly an issue for stay-at-home parents—again, those are usually women; there’s a theme—who then miss out on accruing national insurance credits for the state pension. They do not realise that if they do not apply for child benefit payment, even to be told that they do not apply, they cannot pick up the national insurance credits, and that can be a real issue. Will the Minister consider reviewing the scheme for accruing credits for stay-at-home parents, or at the very least doing an awareness-raising campaign, as has been done for pension credits and other things? This is a good opportunity, whether a Member has an interest via the Committee, or otherwise, but as a constituency MP I want, and my casework team want, the DWP to be working as effectively as possible, so that those who need help get it, and those who can get into work are supported to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Linden]

The Parliamentary Private Secretary is shaking his head at that, but probably because he is so embarrassed.

The five-week wait for a first payment is needlessly pushing people into hardship. The issue could easily be fixed by implementing the Scottish National party’s proposal to turn advance payment loans into non-repayable grants after the claimant has been deemed eligible. The Trussell Trust, which I referenced earlier, has consistently shown that the five-week wait for universal credit is a key driver in the need for food banks, both during those five weeks and after the payments have started.

I want to draw attention to the young parent penalty in UC, which Ministers must end. It denies single parents under the age of 25 the same level of social security as those above that age, and it pushes those affected into real poverty. Let us not forget that when under-25s go into Aldi, Lidl, Morrisons or whatever supermarket, they do not get a discount on their shopping because they are under 25. I find that Ministers have an obsession with that.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

The hon. Gentleman has campaigned on this issue, as have I. Does he agree that the response I received from the previous Secretary of State on this point—that under-25s were treated differently because they tended to still be at home with their parents—is a pretty spurious argument and excuse from the Department?

[David Linden]

That is right. It was not unusual for the previous Secretary of State to say things which, after some scrutiny, might not make sense. The hon. Lady is right. For Ministers to hide behind the housing crisis—caused by this Tory Government—as some kind of justification for ensuring that people under 25 get less support does not stand up to scrutiny. That point was hammered home to me on Friday, when I was in Drumchapel visiting the Christians Against Poverty debt centre, to meet staff and volunteers there, to whom I pay enormous tribute for their sterling work.

According to One Parent Families Scotland, as a result of the young parent penalty, young couple parents are around £100 worse off per month than single parents, and around £65 worse off a month than over-25s. That research found that 55% of children with a mum under 25 are in relative poverty, and 49% are in absolute poverty. Let us never forget that those statistics are the result of the structural inequality put in place by intransigent Ministers. Although I certainly welcome the change whereby people on UC will now be able to claim childcare support upfront, I am afraid that does not change the fundamental issue that the amount of UC that people receive is simply not enough. Families will still be required to make up the 15% shortfall in their overall childcare costs under UC rules.

An issue that continues to come up in evidence at the Select Committee is that far too many households face destitution because of DWP rules that push them into debt through sanctions and reductions—a point made eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens). Aberlour Children’s Charity produced a report that states that half of families with children in Scotland who receive universal credit are having their incomes reduced by the DWP to cover debts to public bodies. I hope the Select Committee will be able to drill into that a bit more. It is increasingly a problem, and I am sure I am not the only MP who sees people raising it regularly at advice surgeries.

It is well established and on record that the SNP completely opposes the widespread use of sanctions, as there is clear evidence that they do not work. Indeed, evidence from the Department’s report admits that sanctions have a minimal effect on moving people into work. Instead, people who are sanctioned end up earning less than those who have not been sanctioned, or simply become economically inactive.

Cost of Living Support

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

I repeat what I said in response to the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee. We are determined to try to get to grips with the longer-term pressures that people face. The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) mentioned the “Disability Price Tag” report by Scope. One of those pressure is energy costs, and one thing that colleagues in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero are currently looking at is the wholescale market reform of our energy market. As part of that, they are considering the issue of social tariffs and support, to see how we best support those costs in the longer term. The best way to tackle those issues in the round and get those pressures down, is by addressing the inflationary challenge that we are currently experiencing. That is what the Government are focused on at the moment, and that is the right approach. On the wider matter in response to the question from the Chair of the Committee, we will take that away and it will be considered in the usual way as part of the annual process.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

Scope’s “Disability Price Tag” report has already been mentioned, but the £975 a month means that the extra payment of £150 does not cover even a week of additional costs, and it points to the lack of sufficiency for social security that the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee referred to. My private Member’s Bill recently became the Carer’s Leave Act 2023, and when I met constituents they had either had to give up work because of their caring responsibilities, or they had lost carer’s allowance because of the hours they were working. The Minister talks about a transformation of the system. Does he agree that carer’s allowance is ripe for reform?

[Tom Pursglove]

The hon. Lady and I have previously had exchanges on carer’s allowance, and the approach we take is to consider that when we have our deliberations on annual uprating. We will make modification to that when it is affordable and appropriate, but I hear her representation. I also congratulate her on the Carer’s Leave Act 2023, which introduces an important change. I know that a lot of effort went into that behind the scenes, and I congratulate her on it.

People with Disabilities: Cost of Living

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I shall keep my remarks short. I am grateful to take part in the debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) on securing it.

At a basic level, it is more expensive to be disabled in this country, in the same way that it is more expensive to be poor. On every measure, disabled people and households have higher routine living costs than non-disabled households. In her opening remarks, the hon. Member referred to analysis from Scope’s disability price tag, published only last month, which stated that disabled households need on average an extra £975 to achieve the same standard of living as non-disabled households. Accounting for current inflation, that is over £1,100.

The reasons for that extra need are simple. Disabled households need to divert funds to pay for specialist products and services. They need to think about disability-related products that are often essential and costly, and they have increased energy costs as a result, both for heating and for electricity in relation to nutrition needs, as the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw mentioned. A greater percentage of a disabled person’s disposable income is spent on food and energy, so the cost of living crisis has a disproportionate impact on them even before we think about things like the higher insurance premiums that disabled people face. The reality is that there has been a lack of financial support, and issues with PIP assessments mean that many are not accessing the payments to which they should be entitled.

I have particular concerns about the assessment of fluctuating conditions such as MS, ME and long covid. As has been highlighted, the expertise is simply not there for those kinds of complex conditions. On one day—and that day might happen to be the assessment day—a person may experience a better period of health than the rest of the time. I want further work on the health and disability White Paper to consider those things.

We are discussing Scotland quite a bit, but as a Scottish MP I cannot help doing so. I am conscious that MPs may sometimes have a bit of confirmation bias because people come to us from a casework perspective after trying every other source of help, so they are often desperate and some of the cases are quite complex. The Scottish Affairs Committee, of which I am a member, conducted an inquiry on welfare in Scotland 18 months to two years ago. I heard from stakeholders in Scotland that there was a more compassionate approach towards setting up the social security system in Scotland.

I will also say, however, that I am seeing casework on delays in adult disability payment processing in Scotland, so I hope that we will not end up in a similar position to elsewhere in the UK. I am concerned that the lack of a dedicated social security Minister in the new First Minister’s Scottish Government means a potential dilution of focus; I hope that that is not the case. The reality is that means-tested benefits are set too low, and the £150 cost of living support payment for disabled households, which was welcome given everything that I have outlined about the additional costs, was not enough.

In my remaining remarks, I will focus on carers. Hon. Members may not be aware that my private Member’s Bill, the Carer’s Leave Bill, has been progressing through Parliament; I am pleased to say that it should have its Third Reading in the House of Lords on Friday and I am hopeful that it will receive Royal Assent shortly thereafter. The Bill intends to offer people who are working as unpaid carers but are in employment the right to request time off from their employer. That is because the vast majority of disabled people will have support from an unpaid friend or family member, which could be to meet physical caring needs or to do the admin and emotional support around caring.

Carers provide unpaid work worth £530 million a year. However, 44% of working-age adults providing unpaid care for more than 35 hours a week are living in poverty. Frankly, that means that the people they are caring for are also living in poverty. When I was engaging with constituents about my Carer’s Leave Bill, it was very difficult to find constituents who would actually benefit from the Bill. The reality was that their caring responsibilities meant that they had eventually had to give up work because they just could not combine them both. Although I am hopeful that my Bill will help people—indeed, Carers UK estimates that it will help 2.4 million carers—there is clearly much more to do.

I want to take the opportunity to mention the very sad death of Kirstie Howell, the chief executive of Fife Young Carers. She did a great deal of work, and so does the charity, across Fife, including North East Fife. I send my condolences to the organisation and to her family.

If we do not provide the right support for young carers who are caring for disabled family members, they will not get into work in the first place and their household will continue to live in poverty. One way for the Government to help would be by raising the earning limit on the carer’s allowance. The reality is that caring never stops, so if we allowed those who are caring to work more before losing the carer’s allowance, it would potentially help disabled people and their families to deal with the cost of living crisis that we are facing. The Government have done a number of things during the cost of living crisis, but we feel that they have not done enough.

I will leave hon. Members with one last thought. I chair the all-party parliamentary group on ending the need for food banks. Along with the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw, we conducted our first inquiry, which looked at cash or food in different responses to food poverty. A very telling statistic for me was that the one period of time during covid when food bank use went down rather than increasing was when the £20 universal credit uplift was in place. That tells us that when people get additional support, they are spending it on food, provisions and things they need for their families. For disabled people, we need that more than ever.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Pursglove]

I will gladly take that point back and speak to ministerial colleagues in the Department about that aspect. The hon. Gentleman will recognise that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), has generally led on the legislative efforts to put this package in place, but I would be happy to raise that with her and to get him a proper, full, considered answer to that point.

Let me deal directly with one key issue that has come up in the debate: the structure of the cost of living payment and the argument that the payment is itself too low. I stress that the rationale is different for each of the cost of living payments. The Government’s view is that it is right that the highest amount goes to those on means-tested benefits, given that those on the lowest incomes are most vulnerable to rises in the cost of living. Having said that, we estimate that nearly 60% of individuals who receive an extra-costs disability benefit will receive additional support through the means-tested benefit payment. More than 85% will receive either or both of the means-tested and pensioner payments.

I assure colleagues that we are absolutely committed to ensuring that disabled people and people with health conditions receive the support that they need, which is why in 2022-23 we spent nearly £69 billion in real terms on benefits to support disabled people and those with health conditions. We will continue that throughout 2023-24 by uprating disability benefits in line with last September’s consumer prices index inflation figures. That means we expect to spend around £78 billion in 2023-24, which is 3.1% of GDP. That is a stark statistic. I recognise that Trident is a significant issue for the Scottish National party, and the figure of £3 billion was raised, but I and the UK Government would argue that there are strong reasons why we have a nuclear deterrent, which is a debate for another day.

The scale of support that we provide—to the tune of £78 billion in 2023-24—to people with disabilities and health conditions is significant. By 2027-28, total disability benefit spending is forecast to be more than £41 billion higher in real terms compared with 2010-11. Spending on extra-costs disability benefits alone will amount to £35 billion this year, all paid tax free, and in addition to any other financial or practical support that disabled individuals may receive.

The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green) asked about the adequacy of the disability cost of living payment and its evaluation. We are committed to an evaluation of the cost of living payments later this year. The disability unit is also working to build an evidence base to better understand and evidence the full impact of cost of living challenges for disabled people, across a range of sectors. It is trying to do that collaboratively and is drawing on the expertise, views and experiences out there to help us to shape that work.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

Given that the Minister is committing to take some things away for further discussions with ministerial colleagues, may I repeat my plea in relation to carer’s allowance? It would help if we let carers work and at the same time keep their carer’s allowance.

[Tom Pursglove]

I am happy and willing to keep that aspect of our policy under review to see whether there is more we can do to unlock that. That is a commitment I make to the hon. Lady; I am interested in looking at and exploring that further.

There were several references in the debate to energy costs, particularly in relation to the cost of equipment. The Government supported families across the UK last winter through the energy price guarantee, which places a limit on the price that households pay per unit of gas or electricity. Colleagues will know that that has been extended until the end of June at the £2,500 level, thereby ensuring that families will save on average around £160 per household throughout that period.

Existing support is also available through cold weather payments and the warm home discount. The property services register, which is run by energy suppliers, offers additional free services to people of pensionable age, who are registered disabled, who have a hearing or visual impairment, or who have long-term ill health. That register helps to ensure that people in vulnerable situations are able to access extra help when needed, such as when there is a power cut.

Let me talk about the situation moving forward. This is more a matter for colleagues in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero but, of course, engagement on this issue goes on across Government. On the energy market reforms in the energy security plan released in March, which were touched on, the Government intend to consult on options for a new approach this summer. We will invite and welcome the public and our stakeholders to use the consultation to provide feedback on our proposals.

To directly respond to the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), I am keen that our work does involve engagement. I will assist in facilitating that with disabled people, their organisations and their representative bodies, to make sure that their views are heard, particularly in relation to the social tariff, for which there is a significant body of support. It is right that we look at that in detail as part of the wider reform package.

There is also significant Government help for energy insulation, ensuring that people are properly supported to better protect themselves from the cold and making homes as energy efficient as possible.

I will touch quickly on prepayment meters, which have been asked about. Ofgem published a new code of practice on 18 April, which has been agreed with energy suppliers, to improve protections for customers being moved to a prepayment meter involuntarily. We argue that that is a step in the right direction, providing better protections for vulnerable households. The code of practice, however, is not the end of the process. We have always been clear that action is needed to crack down on the practice of forcing people, especially the most vulnerable, on to prepayment meters. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero will continue to work closely with Ofgem and industry to ensure that the code leads to positive changes for vulnerable customers, and will not hesitate to intervene again if necessary.

Finally, I will touch on the various contributions made on the personal independence payment. On appeals, 4% of all PIP decisions have been successful at appeal. I am not complacent, but I am pleased to say that the journey time for PIP is now down to 14 weeks. I want to stretch that and see if there is more that we can do to improve it. On assessments more generally, I want hon. Members to think about some of the opportunities that the White Paper presents. The tests and trials of the severe disability group have been touched on. Matching expert assessors is a positive thing to do to help ensure that we get more decisions right first time, and scrapping the work capability assessment also provides an opportunity to focus on quality. I have no doubt that we will have plenty of opportunities to say more about that, as well as on fluctuating conditions.

Thank you, Dr Huq, for stepping into the breach. I am confident that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will continue to show leadership on these issues. We keep the package of support that we provide under constant review, and I have no doubt that this Government will continue to be on the side of working people, disabled people, pensioners and those in our society who are vulnerable, to ensure that they get through these challenging times.

Oral Answers to Questions

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Monday 24th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Laura Trott]

I thank my hon. Friend for all that he is doing to encourage pension credit take-up in Crawley. The Government have undertaken a sustained communications campaign to raise awareness of pension credit and promote its take-up. The latest stats release at the start of the year shows a substantial rise in the number of claims.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

My constituent had a brain injury 20 years ago and was receiving personal independence payment for care and mobility support. A recent review said that there was no change to his condition, but somehow the decision has been made to stop his benefits. The Minister has already indicated that he is considering this matter, but will he meet me to discuss that particular case?

[Tom Pursglove]

I am always very happy to meet colleagues from across the House to discuss such issues, and this circumstance is no different.

State Pension Age: Review

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. What matters for sustaining a fair and just pension system is a strong economy. We are stronger together, and if we continue to work together—all the nations of the United Kingdom—we can continue to afford decent pensions for our pensioners.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

The statement has provided clarity on when somebody will receive their state pension—the age of 67—but we also need to focus on what people will receive. The Government’s response to the Future Pension Centre backlogs, and people’s absolute inability to get through for advice on whether to top up their national insurance credits before the 5 April deadline, was just to move the deadline back by four months. That remains woefully inadequate, and it is clear that that will have to be extended again. Will the Secretary of State commit to extending the deadline to April 2025, as I asked for in the first place?

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. As she acknowledges, there has been an extension to the deadline, and the reasons for that were in the very point she made about waiting times and so on. We are keeping that under review—I can say no more than that—and we are also increasing the amount of resources going into telephony to resolve the issues.