Autism Employment Review

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the National Autistic Society. That is an honour I share with my friend—the noble Baroness, Lady Browning—from the Opposition Benches, who is not with us this afternoon as she is in the Select Committee looking at the working of the Autism Act.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, the independently led Buckland Review reported to the previous Government with recommendations aimed primarily at employers. This Government are committed to raising awareness of neurodiversity and have launched an independent panel of academics with expertise in and experience of neurodiversity to advise us on boosting neurodiversity awareness and inclusion at work. The panel will consider the reasons why neurodivergent people have poor experiences in the workplace and a low overall employment rate, and will make its recommendations to employers and government in the summer.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, when asked in the other place about progress in implementing the Buckland Review of Autism Employment, my honourable friend Alison McGovern said that she preferred the term “neurodiversity” as it is “more inclusive”. Neurodiversity is very broad, whereas autism is a specific condition. Will my noble friend the Minister think again and perhaps reassure the House that this umbrella term will not be used when responding to the review? There is a danger that the needs of autistic people will be overlooked, and I have the permission of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, to tell the House that she shares that concern. Robert Buckland’s review is specifically about the employment of people with autism—full stop.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that question and commend him for his work in this area. The Buckland Review reported to the previous Government, who did not formally respond, but most of the review’s recommendations were to employers. Several recommendations relating to government are being progressed, including working with employers to reform Disability Confident.

I think my honourable friend the Minister for Employment was signalling that this Government have broadened their focus to address employment barriers for all neurodivergent people, specifically including those with autism, while recognising that many people have more than one condition. Our academic panel is reviewing the evidence, recommendations and insights from the Buckland Review, so that they do not get lost. I understand the fear that my noble friend is expressing, but it might reassure him to know that the panel specifically includes expertise on autism. Although this Government will not respond specifically to the previous Government’s report, the Minister for Employment, Alison McGovern, alongside the Minister for Social Security and Disability, met Sir Robert Buckland to discuss his work. Professor Amanda Kirby, chair of the academic panel, recently met Sir Robert to discuss its scope and plans, and he was supportive of the way that the panel would build on the work he initiated. I hope that reassures my noble friend.

[Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)]

My Lords, first, I have an autistic grandson. He is at a very difficult period of life. I know from old that the Minister has a deep feeling for and understanding of the problems of it. The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and I have worked together for many years and there are two things I want to make quite clear. First, autism is not a “neurodisease”, autism is autism. Secondly, from my own experience, autistic people have the most brilliant minds when they have the opportunity to be cared for correctly. Will the Minister, as usual, throw everything behind what is needed to help autistic youngsters?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. His grandson has a good champion in him, and I hope he can understand that. The noble Lord makes a really important point. The employment rate for people with autism was 31%. If you compare that with disabled people across the board at 55%, it is not good. That shows the extent of the problem. We recognise that this is extremely serious. Nothing in the way this Government are going about this is trying in any way to minimise the challenges faced by people with autism.

I take the noble Lord’s point: autism is not a disease, but it is a different way of learning and looking. That is true of many neurodivergent conditions, and there are things that can be learned. We have pulled together a panel with different kinds of expertise, not to create some generalised view on what it feels like to not think in the way that some other people think but to enable us to look at all the evidence and work with employers to try to make a better place for everybody to go out there and work. I hope the noble Lord will be reassured by that.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister give us a further assurance that when the Government use the term “neurodivergence”, it is a broad spectrum, and you cannot help somebody with neurodivergence? You might be able to help somebody with dyslexia, autism or dyscalculia, for instance. I remind the House of my interests. There have to be specific help pathways for those conditions. If we start trying to be too general, we will end up helping no one.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for highlighting some of the conditions. It may reassure him to know that the academic panel we have pulled together is looking at a number of specific neurodivergent conditions. Those include ADHD, autism spectrum condition—with the acknowledgments made—dyslexia and dyscalculia. They also include DCD—developmental co-ordination disorder, also known as dyspraxia—and developmental language disorder, among other conditions. The noble Lord is absolutely right. The job of the panel is to review what is known and then to look at what can help. There will be some things, some steps employers could take, which may be of benefit to people with more than one condition, but there are some that will be quite specific, and we need to understand the evidence before we can make good recommendations.

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lord Touhig in his entire assessment of how different it is for autism and neurodivergent issues. I declare that I have an autistic son who is 44 years old. I just came back from a meeting chaired by Samantha Niblett MP on this specific subject of underemployment and employment of people with autism. I agree with the Minister that the gap is unacceptable, but what are the Government doing to ensure that job coaches, in particular those of the DWP, are attuned to their needs and directing them properly?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a really good point. There are a number of different forms of support available to people with a range of disabilities or other conditions, if they come forward. Our job coaches have extensive training in a wide range of conditions to work with people who come in who need help, but there are also all kinds of schemes available. We can refer people to different kinds of help, to programmes where they can get voluntary support and work with whatever their particular needs are. We are trying to make our service out there increasingly tailored. There is not a generic range of barriers to employment. People often need quite specific understanding of what is getting in their way and help to overcome it. I hope that, in time, if the noble Baroness’s son ever comes to a jobcentre, he will find the help he needs, if, indeed, he needs it.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I declare I have a great-nephew, Ollie, who is autistic and in a special school, and we love him to bits. Every grandparent, every parent, every great-aunt, worries about how their relative is going to get a job. I recently visited Project SEARCH run by the DFN Foundation, and I can tell the House that it has a 70% success rate of getting autistic young people into work, and 60% of them are in a full-time job. Are His Majesty’s Government going to set ambitious targets such as that, so that we get as many people into work as possible and they can lead productive lives? If the Minister would like a day out of the office, I will take her to Project SEARCH myself to see it in action.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

Well, that is an offer I cannot refuse. When I used to work with families with children, there was a saying that every child deserves to have at least one adult unreasonably committed to their flourishing. In this House, I think those adults are particularly ever-present, and I can imagine that Ollie is not only being loved to bits but supported.

I completely agree with the noble Baroness. One of the challenges for us in supporting people who have disability barriers to work is that we have to have confidence that people can be supported and helped to get work, because if we do not believe they can, why should anyone else? If we do not believe it is possible, why should employers take a chance on people and why should individuals have confidence in themselves? We have seen great results with supported employment. Start where somebody is, look at the barriers, think about what they might be able to do and support them into it. Some people will be happy with supported employment. Either someone is at risk of falling out of a job or we can get them into it and, once they are in, can we help them to stay there? I would be delighted to go with the noble Baroness to visit that project but let us talk about this some more.

[Lord Spellar (Lab)]

My Lords, I recognise the danger that has been pointed out. If you move from the specific to the general, you often lose focus. But do we not have a broader problem? Millions of our fellow citizens are unemployed or underemployed. Meanwhile, we have a load of artificial barriers in not just the private sector but local and national government departments, about people’s conditions, previous criminal records, often from decades past, irrelevant qualifications and boxes being ticked—with employers therefore not looking at people’s potential. Is that not the broader issue and one that the Government need to take on, for individuals and the wider economy and wider society?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, those are excellent points. We want to help individuals see their own potential and help employers see the potential in everyone who comes in. I am answering questions today, but I am also the Minister in the DWP who is responsible for working with ex-prisoners, ex-offenders and people who have experience of homelessness. Similar patterns happen across the piece. Some of our programmes addressing people’s challenges if they have disabilities or health conditions are also available to people with other barriers, such as having been an offender or having been homeless. The first step is to help people overcome those. We do a lot of work in this space already. I have visited some fantastic programmes which have great success rates. We are committed to doing this. Let us all have confidence. People can achieve anything if someone gets behind them.

Pension Protection Fund and Occupational Pension Schemes (Levy Ceiling) Order 2025

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Grand Committee

Finally, a tidal wave of growing defined contribution liabilities balances is just over the horizon, because people are not only living longer but facing extended periods of ill health. As a result, communication and financial planning will become more critical than ever. We hope that the pensions Bill will effectively address the changing dynamics of the pensions landscape and ensure that it evolves to meet these challenges. I look forward to the Minister’s responses.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton for introducing this debate and all noble Lords who have contributed. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, for trying to call us back—however unsuccessfully—to debating the order on the Order Paper. The serious side of that, I am afraid, is that rarely will a Minister have been able to so profoundly disappoint so many people, on almost all fronts, in one single—I hope relatively brief—speech.

My noble friend has every right to want a general debate on this otherwise rather harmless order, but the timing of this debate means that I am not in a position to answer most of the questions that noble Lords asked. I suspect that they will not be surprised by that, even if they are disappointed. The reality, as I will explain, is that we are poised on a number of fronts to make both decisions and announcements in a timespan ranging from the near future to the coming months, so noble Lords will not have to hold their breath too long—but I fear they must do so just a little longer.

Just for the sake of order, I call your Lordships back briefly to what we are debating today. The levy ceiling order 2025 sets out the maximum amount that the Pension Protection Fund can collect from eligible schemes through its annual levy. It is worth briefly pausing to note that we are in the 20th anniversary year of the PPF. I know that some noble Lords were celebrating this not so long ago, when there was much talk of the comment made by Andrew Smith, the Secretary of State who oversaw its creation. He famously asked

“why, if people expect their holiday provider or motor insurer to be covered if the firm goes bust, there is no cover for something as important as an occupational pension”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/6/03; col. 683.]

Looking back now, it is hard to believe that we did not have something like this then, but we do now and some of the people in this Room were behind us getting to this point. I commend that.

Before the PPF was established, if a DB scheme failed, of course, its members were at significant risk of losing their pensions and facing an uncertain retirement. I think that, from the comments today, we can all agree that, over the years, the PPF has built up a strong reputation, is respected by stakeholders and enjoys high levels of customer satisfaction. As we have heard in part, the PPF is primarily funded by a levy paid by eligible pension schemes over the years, but also by recoveries from insolvent employers, assets from failed pension schemes and returns on its investments. My noble friend Lady Drake made an important point about the shifting balance of both the source of those finances and how we look at that going forward.

To ensure that the PPF remains affordable, and to reassure levy payers, originally three constraints were placed on how the board sets the levy for each financial year: that it cannot be increased by more than 25% of the previous year’s levy; that the levy ceiling will set the maximum levy that the board can collect; and that at least 80% of the levy must be risk-based. The levy ceiling is uprated annually in line with earnings, the point of which is to ensure that it broadly aligns with the PPF’s potential liabilities. This financial year, the ceiling has been increased to approximately £1.4 billion, while the levy estimate is just £45 million. Of course, that increasing gap between the ceiling and the estimate reflects the fund’s strong financial position. As the PPF matures, it is reducing its dependence on the levy for funding and becoming more reliant on returns from its investments. That marks a significant step in the PPF’s journey towards long-term sustainability and financial resilience, ensuring that it can protect its members into the future. My noble friend Lord Davies made a point about how far that responsibility stretches—there will be members who will need support from the fund for many years to come.

I turn to points raised by noble Lords, in no particular order. The noble Viscount, Lord Younger, asked several important broad questions about the Government’s pensions strategy. To answer the last question first, he asked how the Government will ensure that authorities in the Local Government Pension Scheme have the right fiduciary expertise to invest in local infrastructure. The answer is that we will require LGPS administering authorities to work with strategic authorities to identify local investment opportunities suitable for pension funds. All 86 authorities will be required to delegate the management of their investments to pools regulated by the FCA, and that approach will create large pools of professionally managed capital, aligning with international best practice. These pools will be responsible for conducting due diligence on local investment proposals and deciding whether to invest. That ensures that investment decisions are taken by those with the appropriate professional expertise, and it will free up local pension committees to focus on developing their investment strategies.

The noble Viscount also asked how the PPF and DWP will work together to respond effectively to emerging challenges and opportunities—a point also raised by my noble friend Lord Davies. Here, both noble Lords were right to refer to the 2022 departmental review of the PPF led by Lesley Titcomb. Its recommendations have really helped to shape the way the PPF and the department have worked together to ensure that scheme members are protected into the future.

The noble Viscount asked the $64,000 question about recommendation 18 relating to the pension protection levy, a point raised, I think, by everybody—tutti. We announced back in January that we will give the PPF board greater flexibility to adjust the levy by removing the restriction that the levy cannot be increased beyond 25% on the previous year. That will enable the board not to collect a levy when it is not needed, thereby reducing costs for levy payers and potentially freeing up millions of pounds for investment. I hope that this will be broadly welcomed in the streets, if not just in Grand Committee.

This will require legislation. I am sorry to say to the noble Viscount and, indeed, the Committee that I am not in a position yet to confirm the legislative vehicle through which it will be delivered, but I assure him that we will legislate when parliamentary time allows. We will continue to work with the PPF to consider the reserve and ensure the fund’s resilience. That sounds like a terrible bit of government “I’m not going to tell you”, but the reality is that, as anyone who has been a Minister knows—that is at least two noble Lords in the Committee—there are clear protocols about the point at which Ministers are able to indicate whether parliamentary time has been approved, and there are things we have go through before we are in a position to do that. But, as soon as it is possible to inform Members, I will be very glad to do so.

More broadly, we continue to monitor the DB pension scheme landscape as it evolves. The noble Viscount asked whether we disagreed with any of the recommendations from the review, and the answer is that we do not. Some of them will be reflected in the upcoming pensions Bill, but many of them do not require legislation through the pensions Bill or anything else. Some have been overtaken by events and the department is working on some of them with the PPF to explore either them or related options.

Noble Lords, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, referred to the reality that the universe of DB schemes is maturing and will become smaller over the next decade as well-funded schemes secure their legacy liabilities in the commercial market or choose to run on. She mentioned some of the implications of that. I assure her that DWP is working with the Treasury to better understand the implication of emerging market trends. Alongside the PPF, we continue to review whether further structural changes are needed to ensure that the pension protection levy remains aligned with the various schemes that the PPF protects.

PIP Changes: Impact on Carer’s Allowance

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that all noble Lords will agree that carers provide vital services and support to those who desperately need them. The speculation, leaks and briefings have spread fear, anxiety and distress among the most vulnerable about cuts to benefits, particularly for carers. How will His Majesty’s Government ensure that clear, effective and timely communication gets to those who will lose benefits and those who will not? What help and assistance will be provided to those who have had the cruellest of times as a result of this rushed decision?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, the one thing we can definitely agree on is that we support carers. We are grateful for the work they do. Society has reason to be grateful for the work they do. This Government have supported them. We have shown that by, for example, boosting the carer’s allowance earnings threshold by £45 a week to the highest level it has ever been since the benefit was created in the 1970s, benefiting more than 60,000 carers by 2029-30. The Government are making necessary changes to stem the rising costs and reform the focus of our sickness and disability benefits system. Those changes will affect some people on carer’s allowance.

The noble Baroness need not worry about reading leaks. All the details are set out in the Green Paper, which I commend to her as a good read for this evening, perhaps before she goes to bed. We are deliberately setting out to consult on how we can support those affected by any of the measures in it. I assure her that nothing will happen overnight. No one is going to lose their benefits overnight. Even when the new changes come in, nobody will lose their benefits until there has been a full and individual assessment of their personal circumstances.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister will agree that our society, with an ageing population and keeping people with profound disabilities alive, is increasingly dependent on carers. Can the Minister assure the House that nothing will be done that will undermine the value we attach to carers’ responsibilities and make them feel that our society does not value them as a whole?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that excellent question. I reiterate our absolute appreciation of the work that is done by both paid and unpaid carers. We are very conscious of the fact that, as a country, we have not been able to sort out the problems in our social care system. Adult social care has put extra pressure on to unpaid carers, which is one of the reasons—a clear reason—why we have asked the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, to produce a report by next year on the medium-term challenges, so that we can try to get a long-term fix by 2028. In the short term, I hope that carers will be reassured by the investment the Government are making to, for example, allow them, for the first time ever, if they are working alongside caring, which many are, to earn the equivalent of 16 hours at the national minimum wage before losing any of their benefit.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, forgive me if some of the statements and replies are confusing to me. Something is said in one place and something is said in another. Can the Minister tell us why, in the debate that followed her Spring Statement last week, the Chancellor said that the Government were providing “additional support for carers”, when they are actually reducing carers’ benefits spending by £500 million by 2029-30? The statements and replies are confusing.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, there is confusion, but I do not think it is the Chancellor who created it. I have heard a suggestion that carers’ benefits are being cut. Let me be clear: carers’ benefits are not being cut. Carer’s allowance will rise to £83.30 from next week, or the end of this week, and the Government have boosted the earnings threshold in carer’s allowance by the highest ever amount.

Secondly, reforms are being made to disability and sickness benefits. One of the consequences of those is to change some of the people who currently are entitled to the personal independence payment. Because carer’s allowance is paid to people who care for someone on personal independence payment, there will be some people currently getting carer’s allowance for whom there may not be an entitlement in future.

We spelled out clearly in the Green Paper that we would look at how we could support those who are losing entitlement in general as well as, specifically, carers who are losing entitlement. I want people to be clear: we are not cutting the value of the benefit; we are not changing the fact that they can earn more—but there will be some people who are getting carer’s allowance now, and who might have got it in the future, who will not get it. However, given the rate at which the PIP case load is growing, with all the changes that we are making we are stemming the rate at which spending on sickness and disability benefits goes up, not cutting it.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, at the very end of the Green Paper, in an annexe, is, I believe, the one and only reference to the impact of the personal independence payment cuts on unpaid carers. It says:

“The government will consider the impacts on benefits for unpaid carers as part of its wider consideration of responses to the consultation as it develops its detailed proposals for change”.


As the impact on carers is not included in the list of questions for consultation, can my noble friend the Minister explain exactly how the Government propose to consult on it? Are we talking about anything more than possible transitional protection?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot tell my noble friend at this stage what it will be, both because we are listening to the wider views and because we are going to take our time to work this through. To be clear, we specifically said in the Green Paper that we would look at the impact on carers and look at ways in which we could support carers who might find themselves losing entitlement to carer’s allowance.

To give a sense of timescale, assuming that Parliament approves the primary legislation that will bring about these changes to disability and sickness benefits, the changes to PIP that will affect carer’s allowance will not come in until November 2026. Only after that will somebody who is getting PIP at the moment see their entitlement change. It will be only as and when they are called to a review and their own circumstances are reviewed that their entitlement changes, which could in turn affect carer’s allowance. So I am confident that we have plenty of time available to us to work through the way in which we can support those who will lose out as a result of these changes.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister explain how the Government will approach what is an increasing number of households, particularly as people get older, where you have two people in a household, both with some level of incapacity and one in receipt of PIP, who may lose it? How will the Government assess the carer who has health issues and get a balance that recognises that, for those two people living together, there is a level of support between the two? Remove the finance from one of them and you affect two people.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is right. There are cases—unusual cases—where both members of a couple are entitled to sickness or disability benefits, and even cases where both are getting carer’s allowance to care for each other. I do not know how many such cases there are. For that to work, each party would have to be sufficiently sick or disabled to be entitled to PIP, and would have to lose it, and each would also have to be able to provide at least 35 hours’ unpaid caring work a week. It is not that such circumstances are not there, but the interaction of different parts of our benefit system is complex, which is why we want to take our time to work through the impacts on various circumstances.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Will the Minister explain the interrelationship between the DWP and the Department of Health and Social Care? Many unpaid carers are unable to work because of the many hours of care they provide. If they lose their carer’s allowance they will have to return to work, which will mean that the disabled people they care for have to have care provided by the state. Does the Minister have any figures to hand?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

Some people get carer’s allowance—I know the noble Baroness understands this, but this is for the benefit of the House—while others will have a carer’s element in universal credit, and that automatically means they are not expected to be available to work. However, I assure her that work coaches can adjust conditionality in individual cases, taking account of the caring responsibilities, even if the carer’s element is not paid. Again, we will look at this as part of our consideration of the impacts.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for what she has said. I would expect nothing less from our Government than support for unpaid and paid carers. Exactly what arrangements are being made for consultation with unpaid carers? They are an inchoate and ununionised bunch, although there are many admirable charities. In a related question, what are the latest figures for the assessment of carers who are still falling into the trap of unwittingly working too many hours and therefore are still being penalised by DWP? We were told that the Government were acting on that.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, those are two important questions. I know we are working up the consultation process at the moment. That process will not start until we publish all the versions of the Green Paper in early April, including the accessible versions, but we are holding public events in person and virtually, as well as being open to written responses. I will make sure that we are open specifically to comments from unpaid carers.

On the question of overpayments and carer’s allowance, my noble friend may be aware that we have started an independent review into carer’s allowance overpayments, which will conclude this summer. It is being led by Liz Sayce, who brings enormous experience as a former Disability Rights UK chief executive and now a visiting professor in practice at the LSE. The review is specifically focusing on carer’s allowance overpayments. We are trying to work through the questions of how to manage that at the moment and whether there is there any way to reform the system to stop this happening in future.

Welfare Reform

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat a Statement made earlier today in the other place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. The Statement is as follows:

“Mr Speaker, this Government are ambitious for our people and our country, and we believe that unleashing the talents of the British people is the key to our future success. But the social security system we inherited from the Conservatives is failing the very people it is supposed to help and is holding our country back.

The facts speak for themselves. One in 10 people of working age are now claiming a sickness or disability benefit. Almost 1 million young people are not in education, employment or training—that is one in eight of all our young people. Some 2.8 million are out of work due to long term sickness, and the number of people claiming personal independence payments is set to double this decade from 2 million to 4.3 million, with the growth in claims rising faster among young people and those with mental health conditions. Claims are up to four times higher in parts of the Midlands, Wales and the north where economic demand is weakest. These places were decimated in the 1980s and 1990s, written off for years by successive Tory Governments and never given the chances that they deserved.

The consequences of this failure are there for all to see. Millions of people who could work are trapped on benefits, denied the income, hope, dignity and self-respect that we know good work brings. Taxpayers are paying millions more for the cost of failure, with spending on working-age sickness and disability benefits up £20 billion since the pandemic and set to rise by a further £18 billion by the end of this Parliament to £70 billion a year. It is not like this in most other comparable countries, where spending on these benefits since the pandemic is either stable or falling, while ours continues to inexorably rise. This is the legacy of 14 years of Tory failure.

Today we say, ‘No more’. Since we were elected, we have hit the ground running to get more people into good work through our plan for change. We are investing an extra £26 billion into the NHS to drive down waiting lists and get people back to health and back to work. We are improving the quality of work and making work pay with our landmark employment rights legislation and increases in the national living wage; we are creating more good jobs in every part of the country in clean energy and through our modern industrial strategy; and we are introducing the biggest reforms to employment support in a generation, with our £240 million Get Britain Working plan. Today, our Pathways to Work Green Paper sets out decisive action to fix the broken benefits system, creating a more proactive, pro-work system for those who can work and so protecting those who cannot work, now and for the long term.

As a constituency MP for 14 years, I know that there will always be people who can never work because of the severity of their disability or illness. Under this Government, the social security system will always be there for people in genuine need. That is a principle we will never compromise on. But disabled people and people with health conditions who can work should have the same rights, choices and chances to work as everybody else. That principle of equality is vital too, because, far from what Members opposite would have you believe, many sick and disabled people want to work, with the right help and support. Unlike the Conservatives, that is what we will deliver.

Our first aim is to secure a decisive shift towards prevention and early intervention. Almost 4 million people are in work with a work-limiting health condition, and around 300,000 fall out of work every year, so we have to do far more to help people stay in work and get back to work quickly—because your chances of returning are five times higher in the first year. Our plans to give statutory sick pay to 1 million of the lowest-paid workers and more rights to flexible working will help keep more people in work.

The WorkWell programme is trialling new approaches, such as GPs referring people to employment advisers instead of signing them off as sick. Our “Keep Britain Working” review, led by former John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield, will set out what government and employers can do together to create healthier, more inclusive workplaces. So we will help more employers offer opportunities for disabled people, including through measures such as reasonable readjustments, alongside our Green Paper consultation on reforming Access to Work so it is fit for the future.

Today I can announce another step: our Green Paper will consult on a major reform of contributory benefits, merging contributions-based jobseeker’s allowance and employment support allowance into a new, time-limited unemployment insurance, paid at a higher rate, without having to prove you cannot work in order to get it. So if you have paid into the system, you will get stronger income protection while we help you get back on track.

Our second objective is to restore trust and fairness in the benefits system by fixing the broken assessment process and tackling the perverse incentives that drive people into welfare dependency. Members on this side of the House have long argued that the work capability assessment is not fit for purpose. Going through the WCA is complex, time-consuming and often stressful for claimants, especially if they also have to go through the PIP assessment. More fundamentally, it is based on a binary can/cannot work divide, when we know the truth is that many people’s physical and mental health conditions fluctuate.

The consultation on the Conservatives’ discredited WCA proposals was ruled unlawful by the courts, so today I can announce that we will not go ahead with their proposals. Instead, we will scrap the WCA in 2028.

In future, extra financial support for health conditions in universal credit will be available solely through the PIP assessment, so extra income is based on the impact of someone’s health condition or disability, not on their capacity to work—reducing the number of assessments that people have to go through and a vital step towards derisking work.

We will do more by legislating for a right to try, guaranteeing that work in and of itself will never lead to a benefit reassessment, giving people the confidence to take the plunge and try work without the fear that this will put their benefits at risk.

We will also tackle the perverse financial incentives that the party opposite created, which actively encourage people into welfare dependency. The Tories ran down the value of the universal credit standard allowance. As a result, the health top-up is now worth double the standard allowance, at more than £400 a month. In 2017, they took away extra financial help for the group of people who could prepare for work, so we are left with a binary assessment of can or cannot work and a clear financial incentive to define yourself as incapable of work—something the OBR, IFS and others say is a likely factor driving people on to incapacity benefits.

Today, we tackle this problem head on. We will legislate to rebalance the payments in universal credit from April next year, holding the value of the health top-up fixed in cash terms for existing claimants and reducing it for new claimants, with an additional premium for people with severe, lifelong conditions that mean they will never work, so to give them the financial security they deserve.

Alongside this, we will bring in a permanent, above-inflation rise to the standard allowance in universal credit, for the first time ever—a £775 annual increase, in cash terms, by 2029-30, and a decisive step to tackle the perverse incentives in the system.

We will also fix the failing system of reassessments. The Conservatives failed to switch reassessments back on after the pandemic, so they are down by more than two-thirds, with face-to-face assessments going from seven in 10 to only one in 10. We will turn these reassessments back on at scale and shift the focus back to doing more face to face, and we will ensure that they are recorded as standard to give confidence to claimants and taxpayers that they are being done properly.

I can also announce that, for people on universal credit with the most severe disabilities and health conditions that will never improve, we want to ensure that they are never reassessed, to give them the confidence and dignity they deserve. We will fundamentally overhaul the DWP’s safeguarding approach to make sure that all our processes and training are of the highest quality, so we protect and support the most vulnerable people.

Alongside these changes, we will also reform disability benefits so that they focus support on those in greatest need, and to ensure that the social security system lasts for the long term, into the future.

Social and demographic change means that more people are now living with a disability, but the increase in disability benefits is double the rate of increasing prevalence of working-age disability in the country, with claims among young people up 150%; for mental health conditions up 190%; and for learning difficulties up over 400%—according to the IFS. Every day, there are more than 1,000 new PIP awards. That is the equivalent of adding a population the size of Leicester every single year.

That is not sustainable in the long term, above all for the people who depend on this support, but the Tories had no proper plan to deal with it, just yet more ill-thought-through consultations. So today I can announce that this Government will not bring in the Tory proposals for vouchers, because disabled people should have choice and control over their lives. We will not means-test PIP, because disabled people deserve extra support, whatever their income, and I confirm that we will not freeze PIP either.

Instead, our reforms will focus support on those with the greatest needs. We will legislate for a change in PIP so that people will need to score a minimum of four points in at least one activity to qualify for the daily living element of PIP from November 2026. This will not affect the mobility component of PIP and relates only to the daily living element.

Alongside this, we will launch a review of the PIP assessment, led by my right honourable friend the Minister for Social Security and Disability, in close consultation with disabled people, the organisations that represent them and other experts, so we make sure that PIP and the assessment process are fit for purpose now and into the future. This significant reform package is expected to save over £5 billion in 2029-30, and the OBR will set out its final assessment of the costings next week.

Our third and final objective is to deliver personalised support to sick and disabled people who can work to get the jobs they need and deserve. We know from the last Labour Government and our new deal for disabled people, young people and the long-term unemployed the difference that proper employment support can make. More recent evidence from the Work Choice programme and additional work coach time shows that support can make a significant difference in the number of people getting and keeping work and improving their mental health and well-being.

This Labour Government believe that an active state can transform people’s lives. We know this because we have done it before. So today I can announce that we will invest an additional £1 billion a year in employment support, with the aim of guaranteeing high-quality, tailored and personalised support to help people on a pathway to work—the largest ever investment in opportunities to work for sick and disabled people. Alongside this, for those on the UC health top-up, we will bring in an expectation to engage and a new support conversation to talk about people’s goals and aspirations, combined with an offer of personalised health, skills and employment support.

Because being out of work or training when you are young is so damaging to your future prospects, we will go further. In addition to funding our youth guarantee through the £240 million Get Britain Working plan, we will consult on delaying access to the health top-up in universal credit until someone is aged 22, with the savings reinvested into work support and training opportunities, so that every young person is earning or learning and on a pathway to success.

The Conservatives left a broken benefits system that is failing the people who depend on it and our country as a whole. The status quo is unacceptable, but it is not inevitable. We were elected on a mandate for change: to end the sticking-plaster approach and tackle the root causes of problems in this country that have been ignored for too long. We believe in the value and potential of every single person and that we all have something positive to contribute and can make a difference, whether that is in paid work, in our families or in our communities alongside our neighbours and friends. We will unleash this potential in every corner of the land, because we are as ambitious for the British people as they are for themselves. Today we take decisive action, and I commend this Statement to the House.”

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[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, these welfare reforms aim to reduce benefit spending while encouraging greater workforce participation. I thank the Minister for reading the Statement and the noble Viscount for the useful questions that he has raised. I have respect for both of them, as they know.

From these Benches, we want to see more people in work, including those with disabilities. While the need for reform is clear, the Liberal Democrats are concerned that the current proposals risk worsening the very issues that they intend to address. We all want to see a more efficient welfare system, but that cannot come at the expense of the most vulnerable in society, particularly those with disabilities or health conditions. Instead of focusing on short-term cuts, we must reform the system in a way that is fair and compassionate and ensures dignity for all.

Does the Minister agree that one of the main aims of this reform package is, as the Statement says, to save £5 billion—often at the expense of the vulnerable in society?

One key area of concern are the proposed cuts to benefits for people with disabilities, which could push many into poverty and greater dependence on social care. The chief executive of Citizens Advice has warned that these changes could have “serious long-term consequences”, and we on these Benches passionately agree. For individuals with severe disabilities or health conditions, this reform package may well create further barriers to employment rather than removing them. The Government’s proposal to freeze the health top- up in universal credit for existing claimants, while reducing it for new ones, will only add to the pressure on disabled individuals, undermining their ability to achieve independence and security. Why are new claimants considered less vulnerable than existing claimants? Of course, that is nonsense and worthy of Ebenezer Scrooge.

These Benches welcome the idea of merging contributory benefits and creating a new unemployment insurance, but the fact remains that we are still waiting for an overdue comprehensive overhaul of the Department for Work and Pensions. Until the Government get serious about fixing health and social care—systems that are intrinsically linked to people’s ability to work—the welfare system will continue to struggle. The social care review’s three-year timeline is hugely disappointing and highlights the lack of urgency in addressing these critical issues. If the Government truly want to cut benefit spending, they must first address the root causes, not just apply superficial, short-term fixes borne by those least able to object.

These Benches remain committed to supporting people with disabilities into employment. We agree whole- heartedly with the Government’s aim to provide a right to try to work without the risk of losing benefits. However, from history, I have a sneaking premonition that it will be more difficult, and slow, to get back on to the benefits ladder once you have tried to work. That is what has happened in the past.

The wider changes, including delays in the health top-up for young people and increasing reassessments, must be approached with caution. We need to ensure that any reforms we make are sustainable and focused on long-term support for those who are most in need. Does the Minister agree that a balanced approach is needed—one that addresses the root causes of welfare dependency and puts people’s dignity and well-being at the heart of its reforms?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their comments and questions. Maybe we can start by agreeing that we all have great respect for each other, which is both genuinely true and one of the joys of this House. We are able to have conversations and respect one another while disagreeing.

Having got that out of the way, I probably need to start by saying it is possible that some of what we are trying to do has been misunderstood. So let me summarise in my own words what we are trying to do here. First, we need to recognise that the UK has a near-record number of people who are economically inactive on health grounds. The numbers on incapacity and disability benefits are rising at an unsustainable rate, and that is not just down to worsening health. The figures and the evidence show that there are more people who say they have a disability or a long-term health condition affecting their daily lives, but the number going on disability and health benefits is going up twice as fast. So it is not just about health; there is something about the way our system works.

If those numbers keep going up, as more people are driven into the system, fewer people are left to sustain it. One in 10 working-age people now gets a sickness or disability benefit. Before the pandemic, we spent £30 billion a year on those benefits; the figure is now over £50 billion and by the end of the decade it will be £70 billion on working-age benefits. That is not sustainable. So I say to the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, that I absolutely know where he is coming from but, if we cannot get the system on to a sustainable footing, it will not be there for the people who need it in the next generation and the one after that. We have to get the system working.

As well as being unsustainable, the system is failing those that it serves. The current system, as my right honourable friend described in the Statement, divides people into artificial binary categories: can and cannot work. Those who are deemed able to work are put out there, given support, encouraged to get a job and paid a standard allowance. Those who cannot are paid more money, left alone and given no help—the system disengages. We know that that is not the reality for most people. We know that 200,000 people on incapacity and disability benefits say they could work right now with the right support and the right job, but the system does not encourage them to do that; it actually discourages them.

Social security provides a vital safety net for those who rely on it, but we need it to be there for the future as well. Our Green Paper sets out how we will refocus the social security system towards empowering people to find work, while protecting those who most need help by supercharging the employment support with an extra £1 billion and a focus on early intervention, and by separating the link between the capability to work and extra financial support, so that everyone can work and not risk their benefits.

The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, suggested that this was simply a cost-cutting measure. I hope I have explained to him why the measure is trying to do two things. It is trying to place the whole system on a more sustainable footing and it is trying to reform it to make sure that it can support all those who can work to be able to go out there and get a job, to develop in it and to build a life in it, while absolutely guaranteeing to support those who are never going to be able to work or who have the most severe needs.

The estimate—we will get the details when the OBR does the figures for the Spring Statement next week—is that this package will save £5 billion in 2029-30. When the figures come out, I encourage the noble Viscount to have a look at them and compare them with what his Government had in mind, and we can then have a conversation about them. However, even with these changes, we are not reducing spending on disability and sickness benefits. We are spending less to try to make the system sustainable, but the numbers will keep on going up.

The noble Lord mentioned the question of people being put into poverty. One thing to stress is that anyone who is getting benefits at the moment—if they are getting PIP or the universal credit health element at the moment—will keep those benefits unless and until they have a reassessment and their eligibility changes, so this is a system for the future.

The noble Lord asks why it is different for those coming in afresh. The answer is that we have to make the system sustainable and that is the best way to do it. However, we want to support people in transition. Of course, some people will end up losing entitlement, but we want to look into how we can best support them, including possibly with transitional support to make the adjustment to the new regime.

The noble Lord asked about the DWP. One of the things that has worried us as we came into government is the lack of trust and confidence in the system, and we are really determined to address that. It is one of the reasons that we say in the Green Paper that we are going to develop a new safeguarding system for DWP to try to rebuild trust and confidence in the system. That is why, for example, we are going to move to recording all assessments by default, so that people can be clear and have confidence in the process when that is happening.

Crucially, for those on the universal credit health system who have the most severe lifelong health conditions which have no prospect of improvement, so they are never going to work, we are going to look at providing an additional premium to protect them so that they are secure. For people in that group, with both new and existing claims, we will guarantee that they will never face a full reassessment in the future.

The noble Viscount asked about WCA. I think he is aware that not only were the previous Government’s proposals to reform WCA, I am sorry to say, poorly thought out, but their consultation was so bad it was actually ruled illegal by the courts, which made it simply impossible. We had a manifesto commitment to either reform or scrap the work capability assessment. We have come to the conclusion that it cannot be reformed; we are therefore going to scrap it. Apart from anything else, that will mean that people will not have to go through two separate assessments. We think that is the way forward.

I probably have to take on the noble Viscount’s challenge here that the Government were going to do lots of things. I fully accept that, when his party were in government, they had lots of ideas, but they did have 14 years to do them. We, at this point, are nine months in. We have already made some announcements, we have a detailed Green Paper for reform, we are engaged in consultations and we are going to change the system. I understand this is hard. I know change is hard, but the system has been tinkered with for far too long. We need reform and we are doing it now.

It was of course Beveridge himself who identified the establishment of comprehensive health and rehabilitation and maintenance of employment as necessary conditions of success in social security. We need more than tinkering. We need a system that will be sustainable and will support people into work, but will protect those with the highest needs who can never work. We can do both. I welcome the contributions from both noble Lords and look forward to carrying on the conversation. We all need this change to work.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

My Lords, I think we all applaud the desire to get people off benefits and into work, but to do that we need jobs and we need employers who are willing to take those people. I hope the noble Baroness will not mind my quoting from the impact assessment that accompanies the Employment Rights Bill in relation to day 1 unfair dismissal rights. It states that

“there is evidence that the policy could negatively impact on hiring rates. For example, employers may be slower to take on workers due to the liability and increased protections”—

and I stress this last bit—

“particularly for those that are seen as riskier hires”.

Does the noble Baroness agree that that seems to be in direct conflict with the desire to bring people into work, and does she think it is a good idea?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that question. I have real confidence in this. The noble Lord may know that in January we published the terms of reference for the Keep Britain Working review, a review headed by the former chair of John Lewis, Sir Charlie Mayfield, who is looking at ways in which we can make workplaces more receptive and more able to take on people who have health conditions and disabilities. It could include all kinds of ways in which we can support them. We want to remove the barriers to employers doing that.

We already know that this is the case: reasonable adjustments are often talked about as a way of doing it. The noble Lord may think that these difficult hires. In fact, it is estimated that, on average, employers could save between £5,000 and £11,000 for every employee they prevent from falling out of work. So having an inclusive workplace is not a “nice to have”: it is not an extra. It is a way of making sure that we protect those who are currently working. There are significant numbers of people at the moment who are working but have a condition, and hundreds of thousands of them fall out of work every year. Our system is trying to work with employers to protect those who are already in work, but we have lots of employers really engaged with us in jobcentres, in the work we are doing and in building relationships. People want to do this. We can do this.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interest in the register. When we talk about getting people back into work, perhaps the Minister could reflect on that group of people who have never been in work. I am thinking not just of school or college leavers but people who are now in their 40s and 50s and have never been in work, but actually still want to. She will not be surprised to know that I am referring particularly to the autism community. In the 32 years that I have worked in this building, the employment rate for the autism community has gone up from 17% to just 23%. These people have lived through many Conservative and Labour Governments, not forgetting a coalition Government. To get them into work will require something really different from what has been applied before. They are a discrete but important group. Given the Green Paper and the Statement that we have heard today, is the Minister going to get autistic people into work?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am really grateful to the noble Baroness for raising that question and, as she so often does, reminding us of the challenges in this area. Let me say a couple of things. To reassure those who may be worried, as I have said before, anyone currently receiving benefits will carry on getting them unless there is a reassessment and their eligibility changes. However, that is not the limit of our ambition. One of the reasons we want at least to have a supportive conversation, rather than abandon people who are simply getting those benefits, is to begin to understand what more we could do to support them.

There are some people who will find it very difficult to get into work but maybe they could, with the right support, begin to do some voluntary work. Perhaps they could begin to reach out and get some fresh kinds of support or connect with the local community. The biggest challenge for us, as in the noble Baroness’s words to us today, is how we challenge employers to take this on. We are planning, as part of the consultation on the Green Paper, to not only invite people—I expect very many responses—but to hold events for the public and round tables, to hold discussions both in person and elsewhere. I would be really grateful if she would be willing to talk to us about addressing this as part of that consultation.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, parts of this package are very welcome; for example, the right to try paid work, the strengthening of contributory benefit for unemployed people, the increase in the UC standard rate—albeit very modest—and the commitment to consult disabled people on at least some of the changes. But overhanging them is the £5 billion cut from a social security system which, according to CPAG, suffered £50 billion a year in cuts thanks to the Tories. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation warns that this is the biggest cut in disability benefits since 2010, yet disabled people are at disproportionate risk of poverty.

What assessment have the Government made of the future impact of the cuts on poverty, not mentioned in the Statement, and reliance on food banks, which is of great concern to Trussell? What will happen to entitlement to carer’s allowance, for which PIP is one of the most common qualifying benefits? When the Green Paper says that it represents a “start”—a welcome start—of the rebalancing of UC payment levels and of addressing “the basic adequacy” of UC, can we look forward to a proper review of its inadequacy?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend raises some interesting points and I am grateful for the welcome she has given to some elements of our reforms. On the question of adequacy, it may be—in her words—modest but this is actually a significant above-inflation cash increase in the standard allowance of universal credit. It means that by the end of this Parliament, people will be £14 a week, or £775 a year, better off. That might be modest proportionally; it is significant and will make a difference to people’s lives. But the real way that we will make a difference to people’s lives, in so many cases, is by helping them to move into work.

There is only so much that the benefit system can do. There are those who cannot work and have severe needs, and the benefit system must always be there to support them. But for those who can, there is so much more out there that we could be doing and we simply have not been doing it. That is really one of my hopes. We will deal with poverty in other ways. Just so my noble friend knows, the impact and equality assessments will be published next week alongside the Spring Statement. In the long run, this is not about simply tinkering around the sides of a system. We are not just doing blanket cuts. We are doing two things: trying to put this system on a sustainable basis, so it will still be there for the future, but, much more than that, trying to reform it so that people genuinely can get into work who previously have been given no help and been abandoned. That way, we can really make a difference to people’s lives.

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s focus on and increased investment in supporting people back into good work, and the proposed safeguards through the right to try guarantee. However, I am intrinsically wary of attempts to address the drivers of ill health through the social security system, rather than tackling root causes. We do not know yet the content of the NHS plan. Supporting people who are currently claiming incapacity benefits into work will put considerable pressure on an already stressed health system. What steps is the Minister’s department taking to work with the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that the right support is available for people with physical and mental health needs?

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[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London for that important question. I mentioned earlier that the prevalence of disability has increased. I have to correct that: the rate of prevalence has increased. Again, the rate of the increase of disability benefits has gone up by twice as much. If I have got that wrong, they will correct me again and I will read it out next time I get up.

On the question of health, crucially, we have invested almost £26 billion extra in the NHS, but change will take time. We intend to implement our reforms to PIP in November 2026, subject to parliamentary approval. To reassure the right reverend Prelate and anyone listening, everyone claiming PIP will continue to receive it until they are reassessed and their eligibility changes. We will always seek to protect the most severely disabled.

In the meantime, we are looking to do a couple of different things. We are trying to get early intervention to stop people falling out of work, and we are about to launch our health accelerators, which will support efforts to tackle economic inactivity through getting the NHS to shift to prevention. We are trialling in some of our pilot areas how exactly we can bring together the NHS and employment support to address that.

The right reverend Prelate raises an important point. One of the challenges for us is that there are things that will need the NHS to be sorted out. There are other areas where a range of different types of support could enable people, even now, to get into work. We are determined to do both.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in the register. There is much in this Statement to be welcomed, apart from the bit that says it is all the Conservatives’ fault. I particularly welcome the emphasis on getting disabled people back into work. At Cerebral Palsy Scotland, where I work, we are dealing with a devolved social security system. Adult disability payment, ADP, is replacing PIP and DLA in Scotland. It is similar, but it has a different application and renewal process. We are finding that there are people caught between DWP and Social Security Scotland. Apparently, there are about 80,000 people in Scotland still on PIP. Can the Minister assure me that, in the process of all these reviews and all this change, those on the devolved benefits systems will not get left behind or be negatively affected?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness and commend her for her work with Cerebral Palsy Scotland. She raises a really important point. To be clear, the proposals in the Green Paper would apply directly only to UK Government areas of responsibility. We are working through the areas of interaction between reserved and devolved benefits, with the Scottish Government in particular. The noble Baroness described one area, and there are others. As she mentioned, the Scottish Government’s adult disability payment replaced PIP. Therefore, the proposals on PIP will apply only to those areas we control. I encourage her to speak to the Scottish Government. In the end, it will be for the Scottish Government to work out how they will make their system sustainable. From our side, we can make sure that, as far as possible, the systems align. It is an important point and one we are very aware of. We will certainly make sure we address it specifically in our discussions with the devolved Administrations.

[Baroness Primarolo (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to ask the Minister a question on the right to try, which I am sure we would all agree is a principle that is crucially important. How can we make sure that people can take the risk to try paid employment, without the fear that is currently in the system that their benefits will be put at risk?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for the question. Of course, she has a great deal of experience in this area; she knows only too well how the system works and how it has worked in the past.

This is one of the real problems with the current system. When people have been put through that binary judgment that they either can or cannot work, if they get into the “can’t work” category, the risks are so great that, if they try to work and fail, we will then come and say, “Ha, so you can work after all”, and then it will be taken away.

We are going to do a couple of things. First, there is a linking rule already there, which we will make sure that everybody is aware of, so that if you try a job and come back on to benefits within six months, you will be able to go back to your old benefits. That touches on a point raised by the noble Viscount as well. But we are going to go further: we are going to legislate to make it very clear that work in and of its own right will never be a reason for triggering a reassessment. It is really important that people know that. In the long run, we will break the connection between can and cannot work and support, because in the long run it is the PIP assessment and your abilities and needs that will determine how much support you get, not whether you can or cannot work. I hope that reassures my noble friend that we are determined to tackle this.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am speaking from the Back Benches today because I am very concerned about the sustainability of the benefits system, with an ageing population and the ranks of the inactive and people on disability benefits, as the Minister described. I am sure that it is right to focus on getting people back into work—and I am absolutely delighted that Charlie Mayfield is helping the Government. He comes from retail, as I do, and retail is detail. That sort of person is very helpful in trying to make things work.

I have a couple of questions. First, I have done some work on fraud in the past, including trying to use AI to reduce the cost of fraud. I was very concerned to hear that only one in 10 assessments is face to face. What does the Minister feel the opportunity is in tackling fraud?

Secondly, on timing, the Minister mentioned that there would be a change in PIP in November 2026 and in the work capacity assessment in 2028. Given the scale of the problem, can she give me any reassurance about timing and getting on with those changes?

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[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

Those are two great questions, and I thank the noble Baroness for them—and also for the phrase “retail is detail”, which I shall now deploy as though it were my own whenever the opportunity presents itself.

I am sorry for not picking up the question of fraud, because the noble Viscount asked about that as well. We have a fraud Bill coming to this House, which is making its way through the other place at the moment, so we are absolutely determined to crack down on fraud and will use a whole range of means for doing that. We will have an opportunity to discuss that in detail when the Bill arrives here.

We are thrilled that Charlie Mayfield is leading this review for us. We know that if we cannot get the relationship with employers right and create a system that works for employers and employees, we will not be able to get the jobs we need, especially for people who find it difficult.

To reassure the noble Baroness, if she looks at annexe A of the Green Paper, there is a table on Green Paper measures that gives timings on everything coming in. However, the real reassurance is that we have already started. For example, the changes to universal credit, assuming they get parliamentary approval, will start to come in from next April. But the work has already begun on supporting people into work. The Secretary of State has already announced an extra 1,000 work coaches to work with people who are sick or disabled to help them get into work. We know from past evidence that sometimes somebody simply spending a bit of time with somebody and encouraging them in can make all the difference straightaway. So we are starting on that already—we are not waiting for it to happen. We are already piloting around the country, as I said to the right reverend Prelate, trailblazers for young people and for the wider population on how we work with local councils. Sometimes, whether someone can get into work is not just about what we do; whether someone can get a job in Manchester might be about what the childcare is like, how the buses run between where the jobs are and where the homes are, and what the local labour market is like. We are working with metropolitan authorities and engaging locally to try to turn the system around and get everybody pointing in the same direction.

Finally, I really share the noble Baroness’s concern about the sustainability of the system, but I want to make sure that we are doing it to keep the system there for the future—because I believe passionately that we need a safety net there for those who struggle and who cannot work. We have to make sure that it works, and we are committed to making sure that everybody who has the most severe needs or will never be able to work will always get the support they need under this Government.

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, mentioned carer’s allowance. The Minister will know that many carers have disabilities and long-term conditions themselves, and caring itself is a risk factor for having to give up work. In their consultation on the Green Paper, therefore, will the Government commit to doing more for unpaid carers, particularly around enabling them to remain part of the workforce where they want to do so? So many of them do, as the noble Baroness knows.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for raising that question and I apologise to my noble friend Lady Lister for having forgotten to deal with it in my response to her. I commend my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley for all that she does in this space. First, she knows more than anyone that we are investing in carers: we have just significantly raised the amount of money that somebody can earn before they will lose their carer’s allowance. We have also launched an independent review of carer’s allowance to make sure that the system works. The eligibility change will benefit 60,000 carers-plus by 2029-30.

My noble friend makes the excellent point that the overlap between caring and disability is sometimes more intertwined than we realise. Again, I reassure her that if somebody is on PIP, neither the carer nor the person being cared for will lose that money unless and until there is a reassessment and their eligibility is found to have changed. More than that, we made a specific commitment in the Green Paper to look carefully when considering the consultation responses at how we can support any unpaid carers who find they are affected by the changes that we are proposing. In light of that, I strongly encourage anyone such as her or people she may know to respond to the consultation, to engage with us and to make sure that we understand any unforeseen consequences and can think about how we deal with them.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

The noble Baroness has announced a wide range of reforms. Can she say which require primary legislation and which can be done by secondary legislation? Can she outline the implications for those who work in her department of the reforms she has just touched on?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

With parliamentary approval, we will use primary legislation to address the changes in universal credit and PIP eligibility. Assuming that we have parliamentary approval and that time is found for Bills by whoever makes these decisions, we will bring forward legislation on those. Some of the other aspects of the reforms that we are consulting on in the Green Paper, if taken forward, will also need primary legislation, but of course they are the subject of consultation, so, as the noble Lord will understand, I would not commit to doing them at this stage; it depends on the result of the consultation. Some of those will need consultation, and primary legislation for them, with parliamentary approval, would have to be done in a subsequent Session.

On the impact on people in my department, we have looked carefully and have been working with colleagues across the department to make sure that the changes that we want to make are deliverable—that has been very much at the forefront. Somebody asked me recently what the biggest difference is between being in opposition and being in government. It is that, when you are in opposition, your primary concern is policy; when you are in government, one of your concerns is how you can actually deliver things. We are very conscious that we have to make sure not only that the system has the right elements to it but that it is deliverable, and we are determined to do that.

House adjourned at 9.12 pm.

Universal Credit (Standard Allowance Entitlement of Care Leavers) Bill [HL]

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 14th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, once again I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester for bringing this Bill before your Lordships’ House. As we said at Second Reading, we support the sentiments behind the Bill, which has raised awareness of care leavers and the struggles they face. We all know how vulnerable young people who leave care can be and the challenges of transitioning into adulthood without the support that many others receive.

As noble Lords will be aware, care leavers who are over the age of 18 are entitled to claim universal credit on the same basis as over 25 year-olds, but at a lower rate. Standardising the allowance payable is a noble cause that I know, and we have heard, the right reverend Prelate cares very deeply about, and he is to be commended for his tenacity and dedication to the cause. But finally, to restate our position on the Bill, we believe that a number of alternative provisions already exist, such as the setting up home allowance. Extending the monetary support to care leavers, as this Bill suggests, has fiscal implications, as has been highlighted. It will be up to His Majesty’s Government to decide whether the provisions of the Bill are financially workable.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to my friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, and I commend him for his work on this Bill and for giving the whole House an opportunity to understand more about the experiences of care leavers and those in the care system now. I add my thanks to charities such as Barnardo’s and Become. I had the opportunity to speak with care-experienced young people at events there and I learned a lot from that, as I did from discussions with the right reverend Prelate at earlier stages of the Bill.

The right reverend Prelate is quite right that adverse childhood experiences are at the heart of this. We recognise that many care leavers, because of the experiences they have had, are more likely to be out of education, employment or training, and more likely to experience financial difficulty, health problems or homelessness. Although, as the right reverend Prelate rightly predicted, I am not in a position to support his Bill today, I want to say that the Government are determined to make sure that we offer the right support to care leavers. We already offer a range of safeguards and specialist services to support them. Care leavers under 25 can claim the local housing allowance rate of housing benefit; they can get specialist support with transitioning into adult claims; they can get extra help in returning to education if they have missed out on that; and they can get all kinds of support to help them develop and get into jobs. However, there is much more to do and the right reverend Prelate is right to challenge us.

The Government are taking steps to improve support for care leavers and young people more widely. When the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill comes forward, we will be looking to see how we can support care leavers to find accommodation and access local services. Through our youth guarantee, we will help all 18 to 21 year-olds get access to quality training or apprenticeships or find work. But that is all for another day. Again, I thank the right reverend Prelate and those who have brought these issues before the House, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed and I look forward to continuing to work on these issues as time goes on.

Bill passed and sent to the Commons.

National Insurance Pension Underpayments

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce the number of underpayments of National Insurance pension where entitlement to that pension is based on a spouse’s National Insurance record, and the underpayment is caused by “official error” by the Department for Work and Pensions.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, everyone should receive the state pension payments to which they are entitled. This Government understand the importance of putting right any errors. DWP became aware of issues with historic state pension underpayments in 2020 and took immediate action to investigate and correct the problem. A legal entitlements and administrative practices exercise—LEAP—began in January 2021, and DWP completed the vast majority of cases by December 2024 as planned. The exercise has now closed.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for her Answer and welcome the good news. The problem is that this is only one aspect of the sheer complexity of state pension entitlement for spouses’ pensions. Because of the history, that largely affects women. Does my noble friend agree that the department should perhaps be doing more to inform people so they can find their way through the maze of entitlement?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My noble friend raises a really important point. There is a lot of complexity, particularly in the old basic state pension. With the new state pension, your entitlement depends on your own national insurance contributions in the majority of cases, so in future it gets a lot more straightforward. Most people claim their new state pension online, so getting it is mostly automated. However, under the old state pension, if you did not have enough pension in your own right, you could inherit it from a civil partner or a spouse, or a divorced partner or a late spouse. That has led to all kinds of complexities. We are making sure that before someone reaches state pension age, the Pension Service writes to them to tell them what they have to do to claim their state pension. As part of that process, they have to give us the details that enable us to work out if they are still carrying forward any entitlements from partners’ contributions as well as their own.

So, we are really committed to making sure there is clear, accurate, accessible information out there about the state pension. There is lots of it online, on GOV.UK. There is even a tool called “Your partner’s National Insurance record and your State Pension”, which, while not imaginative, is a pretty clear description of what it does. If anyone would rather not go online, they can ring the Pension Service, which will talk them through it. We are really determined to help people get this right.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, will the Minister give an assurance that beneficiaries who have been denied the benefit to which they are entitled will be paid in full, however far back it goes?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, some of the cases in the LEAP exercise go back to 2006, so this is already going back a very long way, but I can reassure the noble Lord that that the exercise went back through the book. This is really complicated, as I am sure he understands, but, in summary, the exercise specifically addressed women who reached the state pension age ahead of their husbands. That was not uncommon because, in those days, the retirement age for women was 60 and for men it was 65, so the woman got to the state pension age first. If she did not have enough pension in her own right and her husband reached the state pension age, she could then have inherited more state pension from his contributions. After 2008, that should have been done automatically by the DWP. Earlier, people had to claim, but where the DWP failed to do that automatically, the department has gone back through the entire book and made payments to all those people. That is what the system has been doing.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, there seems to be errors and more errors—a tower of errors without end. State pension underpayments have also arisen where there are errors in NI records, because of missing home responsibilities protection. The Minister mentioned pensions for women. Can she tell us how much the department has so far paid in arrears to those affected mothers? When does she expect this correction exercise to be completed?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

That was slightly different: it was about an error in people’s national insurance records. The DWP itself discovered during a fraud and error exercise that there were some historic errors in recording where people should have had home responsibilities protection in their national insurance record, which in turn would have affected their pension record. The Government have now contacted all the people they have identified as potentially missing HRP and invited them to make a claim for those missing periods. HMRC issued over 370,018 letters to potentially affected customers, and there have been approximately 493,813 hits on the GOV.UK HRP online checker. So far, the DWP has received 19,491 cases from HMRC and processed 11,694 of them, paying arrears of £42 million. I hope that answers the noble Lord’s question.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, recent statistics from the DWP demonstrate that 13 million people are receiving state pension payments. Saving adequately for retirement remains a challenge for many, particularly, as has been said, for single women and for those with gaps in employment, such as women taking time out to raise children and people suffering ill health. That is why the previous Government lowered the threshold for auto-enrolment to 18, with an opt-out, to enable retirement savings to commence earlier. As the Minister knows, the deadline of 5 April is fast approaching, before which people under the age of 73 can apply to buy back some of those lost years of contribution going back to 2006, and those benefits could make a huge difference to people’s lives. What is the level of uptake for this? Thinking about the warm words that the Minister gave about publicising DWP products, as it were, what more can she do to publicise this and make sure that the deadline is met?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the noble Viscount; there have been good questions today. With the transition from the old state pension to the new state pension, it became more important that people had their own national contribution records in full, because that is what their pension will depend on in future. The previous Government set a deadline—originally April 2023, if memory serves me—by which people had to decide whether to apply to buy back missing years. That deadline was extended to April 2025, so it is coming up on 5 April. I can assure the noble Viscount that there is a surge of people wanting to buy years back; in fact, HMRC and the DWP are working together to ensure that everybody who wants to pay money to fill those gaps in their record can do so. Not only is there the online tool I mentioned earlier; customers can identify gaps and make payments automatically without even contacting the DWP or HMRC, or they can phone us. We have increased resources to about 480 people working across the Revenue and the DWP to manage the high volume of calls coming in.

To reassure not just the noble Viscount but anyone listening out there: as long as people contact the DWP ahead of the 5 April deadline, they will be able to fill gaps back to 2006. In addition, we have launched an online call-back form; people can simply register their interest and the DWP will call them back within eight weeks. Again, provided they register that interest before 6 April, they will be able to fill those gaps if they want to.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome what the Minister has said. The Answers to some Parliamentary Questions I tabled to the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, suggested that HMRC did not hold these records centrally, so I am delighted to hear that work is ongoing. May I press the Minister further on what she just said? I am delighted to hear about the increased resources, but there is an intricate calculation to be made: for some people, it will not be worthwhile paying the extra voluntary national insurance contributions if they consequently miss out on pension credit. Recognising that the timeline is fast approaching, can the Minister assure me that sufficient resources are in place to help people make that calculation?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes an excellent point; I would expect no less, since she has rather more experience in this field than I do. She is right that there will be some people, in limited circumstances, for whom this becomes a marginal issue. A significant amount of information is available online from the DWP about the different sets of criteria, but I will check on the points she made and see whether we need to do anything else to make sure that the information is out there.

UK Poverty 2025

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report UK Poverty 2025 published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on 30 January, particularly with regard to in-work poverty.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government value the insights provided by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and its recommendations will be taken into account in the ongoing work to develop a child poverty strategy. Supporting people into good work will always be the foundation of this Government’s approach to tackling poverty. Our proposals and plan to make work pay—including increases to the national living wage and the Get Britain Working White Paper—will increase the number of people in work, help them to progress, improve job security and raise living standards.

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her Answer. Some 68% of working-age adults in poverty and 50% of children in poverty live in a household with at least one wage earner; 38% of those on universal credit are in work; and half the working population of 32 million earn less than the UK median wage of £616 a week. It is plain that the problem is that wages in the United Kingdom are too low. Does the Minister agree that, in the absence of the mythical trickle-down effect, the only realistic way of increasing wages is near universal coverage of collective bargaining?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My noble friend knows more about collective bargaining than anyone in this House, I suspect, and I thank him for that question. He is absolutely right to highlight the scandal of in-work poverty. We should not be in a position where somebody goes to work full-time and cannot support their family. The Government are absolutely determined to do something about this. Our strategy is about trying to get people into good jobs and keep them there, and that they develop in them. For that to work, we have to make sure that all the parties are involved.

We are very committed: do we want an era of partnership that sees employers, unions and government working together in co-operation and through negotiation? For example, we are going to start by establishing a new fair pay agreement in the adult social care sector, consulting on how it will work, learning from economies where it has worked effectively, and then assessing to what extent those kinds of agreements could benefit other sectors and tackle labour market challenges. We all have to do this together. Work should be the way out of poverty, but it will take action to make sure that it is.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, in the press release on the report, the JRF chief executive warned that the social security system was pushing some people into deeper poverty through cruel limits and caps, and that any credible child poverty strategy must therefore include policies that rebuild the tax and social security system after a decade or so of cuts—not further cuts, but actions to ensure that social security provides genuine security and meets people’s needs. Will my noble friend relay that message to her government colleagues, especially in the Treasury?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I always make sure that the comments of all my noble friends—and, indeed, all noble Lords—are conveyed to those down the other end. I absolutely agree with my noble friend that it is incumbent on this Government to do what they can to tackle poverty. One of the things I like very much about the way that the Child Poverty Unit is developing a strategy is that it recognises that we have to do this on more than one front. It is trying to use all the levers available to it, looking at four different areas: how we increase incomes; how we drive down essential costs; how we get interventions, especially at a local level; and how we make sure that we use the whole economy and all the tools available to us across government to tackle poverty and get people into work. I will make sure that her views are heard by those making the decisions.

[The Lord Bishop of Bristol]

My Lords, JRF has been publishing its analysis of the incidence and impact of poverty for more than 100 years. I have reason to be grateful for its analytical work, but I also see the impact of poverty in my own diocese: in our food banks, which continue to need to grow and are dependent on the voluntary efforts of so many; and in our schools. Our children are going hungry because insufficient income is coming into their homes. Can the Minister elaborate on steps the Government are taking to address the issue of food provision, such as raising household incomes—particularly in the context of the current discussion on benefits—and working with agencies to ensure that emergency food provision, which has sadly become so prevalent, is still available as a last resort?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question and pay tribute to those not just in her diocese but across the country who are working so hard—volunteers and organisations, including churches—to support those who need help. The Government are committed to ending mass dependence on emergency food parcels. We recognise that there will always be times when people need emergency help, but I am interested in seeing that there is a wider range of support available.

For example, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has previously described, you can get better support for people so that they can make different choices and move on. The Minister for Employment is today attending the opening of the West Midlands Multibank to learn about the range of support that can be given; for instance, business surpluses are used to support people. In the end, however, the right reverend Prelate is correct: we need to drive up household income so that people do not need to do this. A key way to do that has to be to get people into good jobs, and to support them so that they stay in them and develop in them. We are determined to do that.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her acknowledgement of the work we do at Feeding Britain—I say this with my Food Foundation hat on. Our recent report The Broken Plate estimates that people who are among the lowest fifth in terms of income would have to spend 45% of it in order to eat a healthy diet, a figure that rises to 70% if the household has children. One thing the Government could do is to ensure that everyone can enrol on the Healthy Start scheme and receive vouchers. They are not that much, but they make a difference because they have to be spent on decent food. At the moment, this does not happen and about 800,000 people are not getting a support that is already there. Can the Minister look at co-ordinating the different systems to make this happen automatically?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that question; I will certainly look into that and see what else the Government can do. There are a number of programmes, which are not always well known. For example, the holiday activities and food programme, which the noble Baroness will know about, provides in its broadest sense healthy meals, enriching activities and free childcare places for children from low-income families. Bringing together those schemes helps their health, well-being and learning. Also, the Government are committed to developing free school meals. The noble Baroness will know that from this April, free breakfast clubs will be rolled out. We have already picked the first 750 early adopters, which means that more than 180,000 children will begin to benefit—time together in schools learning, and also eating and being ready for the next day.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, the personal independence payment is a benefit for disabled people as well as for those with long-term illnesses, including those who are in work, and it helps with extra living costs. Have the Government formally assessed the impact of any planned changes to PIP on in-work disability poverty? Can the Minister confirm whether freezing PIP will increase poverty levels among this group?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has been around the game long enough to know that no matter how she tempts me to comment on speculation out there in the papers, if I did that I would at the very least be sacked, if not actually transported. So I hope she will bear with me when I say that the Government will always be aware of and consider the impact of their actions on people across society.

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, what is the Minister’s response to findings in the report that the two-child limit is the biggest driver of rising child poverty in the UK today? Scrapping it would lift 300,000 children out of poverty and mean that 700,000 children were in less deep poverty. Does she agree that voters in the last election reasonably expected a Labour Government to end this catastrophic Conservative policy, and, if she does agree, when are they going to get rid of it?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, Labour voters in the last election did not expect this Government to inherit the mess of an economy that we did.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I did not say “£20 billion”; bear with me.

The noble Baroness raises an important point. The Child Poverty Unit is looking at the full range of tools available to it, and it will look at depth of poverty, different family types and all the different levers out there. The noble Baroness will understand that I am not in a position to make any commitments today, but we are absolutely determined to produce a child poverty strategy that will, over time, address the range of challenges in our economy and try to move us towards a sustainable alternative. We need to lift children out of the poverty into which so many were driven in recent years. We have to begin addressing this, but in a systematic and sustainable way.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, as my noble friend has just said, the JRF report makes clear not only the lamentable performance of the previous Government over 13 years in reducing child poverty, but the importance of housing costs and especially social rents in ameliorating poverty among those in work and out of work. Does the Minister agree that the Government’s noble ambition of building 1.5 million more homes is important, and can she tell the House how they are going to prioritise affordable and particularly social housing as part of that measure?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that excellent question. He has hit on something quite important. If we are going to try to tackle poverty, tackling the cost of housing in our society is fundamental to that, because the housing market is essentially broken. My noble friend mentioned that the Government are committed to delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation, but key within that is prioritising the building of new social rented homes. We also need to do more to protect the stock of existing homes, which we are going to do by reforming right to buy.

There will be a housing strategy from this Government which will set out a long-term vision for a housing market that works for communities. It will go through the new actions we are going to take, as well as what we have done. But I can reassure my noble friend for the moment that support is available in the short term from my own department to help those who are struggling with their housing costs. For example, discretionary housing payments can help with advances, shortfalls in rent and rental deposits. We are going to tackle this, short and long term.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

My Lords, that concludes Oral Questions for today. It may be for the convenience of your Lordships if I allow a slight pause before the next business—but that is not a reason for leisurely conversations going in and out of the Chamber.

Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2025

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Sherlock]

That the draft Orders and Regulations laid before the House on 9, 15 and 16 January be approved.

Considered in Grand Committee on 25 February and 3 March.

Motions agreed.

Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2025 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Sherlock]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2025.

Motion agreed.

Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2025 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Sherlock]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2025.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, I will also speak to the draft Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2025.

The schemes we are debating today provide vital support for sufferers of certain dust-related diseases, often caused by occupational exposure to asbestos and other harmful dusts. Having attended these debates in the past, I am always grateful for the opportunity to discuss these schemes and the wider support for people diagnosed with these diseases, which cause such terrible suffering. I know that many noble Lords have friends and colleagues who have died as a result of these awful conditions. Every year when we gather, it is worth taking a moment to remember those who have suffered and their families.

I will begin by providing a brief overview of these two no-fault compensation schemes and of what these regulations seek to amend. The Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979—henceforth “the 1979 Act scheme”—provides a single lump sum compensation payment to eligible individuals who suffer from one of the diseases covered by the scheme. This includes diffuse mesothelioma, pneumoconiosis and three other dust-related respiratory diseases. It was designed to compensate people who could not claim damages from former employers that had gone out of business and who had not brought any civil action against another party for damages. To be entitled to a lump sum award, claimants must have an industrial injuries disablement benefit award for a disease covered by the 1979 Act scheme, or would have had an award but for their percentage disablement.

The 2008 diffuse mesothelioma lump sum payment scheme was introduced to provide compensation to people who contracted diffuse mesothelioma but were unable to claim compensation through the 1979 Act scheme. For example, they may have been self-employed or their exposure to asbestos was not due to their work. This would include cases we have often discussed in this Committee in years gone by, such as of spouses or other family members who may have washed the overalls of those who worked with asbestos and contracted the disease themselves.

The 2008 Act scheme provides support to people with diffuse mesothelioma quickly at their time of greatest need. Regrettably, for adults diagnosed with mesothelioma in England between 2016 and 2020, one-year survival was below 50%. Timely financial support is especially important for such diseases. Although both schemes aim to provide compensation to sufferers within their lifetime, each scheme also allows for claims by dependants if the person suffering from the disease sadly dies before they are able to make a claim. This is in recognition of the suffering these diseases can bring to whole families.

These regulations will increase the value of one-off lump sum payments made under these schemes. These rates will apply to those who first become entitled to a payment from 1 April 2025. While there is no statutory requirement to increase the rates of these payments in line with prices each year, we are maintaining the position taken by previous Governments and increasing the value of the lump sum awards by 1.7%, in line with the September 2024 consumer prices index. This also means that the increase will once again be in line with the proposed increases to industrial injuries disablement benefit as part of the main social security uprating provisions for 2025-26.

Between April 2023 and March 2024—the latest financial year for which data are available—1,620 awards were made under the 1979 Act scheme and 320 awards were made under the 2008 Act scheme. Expenditure on lump sum awards made under both schemes totalled £30 million in 2023-24. It is clear that these schemes continue to provide vital support to sufferers and their families.

According to data from the Health and Safety Executive, there were 2,257 mesothelioma deaths in Great Britain in 2022. That is slightly lower than the 2021 figure and substantially lower than the average of 2,529 deaths per year over the period between 2012 and 2020. The most recent projections from the HSE suggest that annual deaths due to mesothelioma in men will reduce during the 2020s, although for women annual deaths are not expected to start to reduce until the late 2020s. This difference may reflect particularly heavy asbestos exposures in certain industries that mainly affected men, such as shipbuilding, being eliminated first, whereas exposures due to the use of asbestos in construction, which affected many men but also some women, continued after 1970.

While these trends offer us some reason to be hopeful, we must do whatever we can to prevent future asbestos exposures and reduce the risks of developing these terrible diseases. I am pleased to say that the HSE continues its vital work to enable employers to take action to prevent and reduce the most common causes of work-related ill health. Following the asbestos awareness campaigns of previous decades, the HSE continues to make a wide range of information freely available through its website. In January 2024, it also launched a duty to manage communications campaign called “Asbestos—Your Duty” to raise awareness and understanding of the legal duty to share information on asbestos with those liable to disturb it. I am sure noble Lords will join me in recognising the continued importance of the compensation offered by the 1979 Act and 2008 Act schemes.

Finally, I am required to confirm that these provisions are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights; I am happy to do so. I commend the increases in the payment rates under these two schemes to the Grand Committee and ask approval to implement them. I beg to move.

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introductory exposition of these regulations, which one can only support wholeheartedly. There could be no more caring and compassionate Minister to introduce them. The Minister has a brilliant record on detail, research and expertise—and no little enthusiasm. She has been steering and informing at the elbow of Prime Ministers with fierce commitment and considerable intellectual mastery for years, and with success. I offer my congratulations on her appointment in an important department. I also thank the department—in particular, Mr John Latham and his committed, diligent team—for its helpful Explanatory Memorandum.

I rise to speak because one believes in the principle of the Executive always being held to account and questioned; that is a good, long-standing principle of Parliament. These regulations are of great importance to the post-industrial regions of Britain. Their industries disappeared and shrank rapidly but, distressingly, the human consequences remain. One would have liked these regulations to have been taken in your Lordships’ Chamber, given their importance to communities that have served Britain so well in those recent times. It is good to know that the Government have delivered a 32% pay rise to 112,000 former miners; that is something like an average of £29 per week.

Although the Minister always gives information, what is her judgment as to how well the war on asbestos is progressing? Is there any estimate available to the department of the number of deaths caused by asbestos and its associated diseases in the various industries that she has touched on? Do we know how many people’s deaths have been recorded as being caused by pneumoconiosis? I ask this in relation to coal mining and quarrying specifically; it may be that that information is not available immediately but might be in written form at another time.

Lord Harold Walker—an engineer, a one-time House of Commons Minister of State and then Chairman of Ways and Means—told me that, in 1968, workers in a Hebden Bridge factory had literally played snowballs with blue asbestos, such was the ignorance at that time. In Blaenau Ffestiniog and Dinorwig in north-west Wales, there were world-famous slate quarries; sadly, the quarrymen were endangering their lives by the inhalation of slate dust. Their work was dangerous in itself, and sometimes they worked in huge, dark, underground, cavernous locations. Poorly paid, they even had to buy their own candles, so it was no surprise when the small hospital ward on site had a year-long bitter strike.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I have stood where the Minister is standing on many occasions to bring forward SIs on this subject. I have always been horrified by the impact and the effects on people’s lives, and by early deaths that have come so quickly after diagnosis.

However, quite recently, a letter dropped into my letterbox at home from a legal firm in the north of England, advising me that the lady I had employed as my first PA, 43 years ago, had contracted mesothelioma. That made it a little more personal to me. I was then asked whether I could remember the names of other people I employed at that time, whether I knew where they were and whether I could give a rundown of the buildings that we worked in, in those early days. I did my best to do that, and that put me in touch with this lady, who ended up as the deputy director of HR at the John Radcliffe Hospital—a very able person. She is now coming to terms with what will happen in her life. That has made me more committed to understanding and supporting efforts to help them.

I thank the Minister for her clear outline of the purpose of these two statutory instruments. These regulations seek to increase the value of the one-off lump sum payments made under the two compensation schemes—the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979 and the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008—by 1.7%, in line with the inflation rate. Although we acknowledge that these increases are a positive step forward, particularly for those living with life-threatening conditions due to past exposure to hazardous substances, we must consider whether these adjustments are truly sufficient in the light of the immediate and long-term needs of the affected individuals.

The compensation schemes in question provide vital support to individuals who have suffered as a result of working in hazardous environments, particularly from asbestos exposure. Under the 1979 Act, lump sum payments are made to those affected by dust-related issues, while the 2008 Act compensates individuals diagnosed with diffuse mesothelioma, including those who may not be eligible under the 1979 Act. These instruments propose to increase the sum by 1.7%. Although this increase offers some relief to those affected by asbestos-related diseases, it is important to ask whether this adjustment adequately meets the ongoing and growing needs of individuals whose lives have been irrevocably impacted by these conditions.

The previous Conservative Government consistently supported, and made increases to, these lump sum payments during their last Administration. Can the Minister commit to further increases in the payments in the future? I am sure she will.

His Majesty’s Opposition agree with these measures, but one concern that arises is the long-term sustainability of the compensation schemes. The draft regulations predict a gradual decline in long-term cost, as fatalities due to asbestos exposure stabilise. However, it is important to recognise that asbestos-related diseases continue to have a significant impact on individuals and families, and the effects of exposure can endure for generations.

I ask the Minister how the Government plan to ensure that the funds required to support these individuals will remain available as we see a decline in the number of claims over time. What steps are being taken to ensure that the national insurance and compensation systems can continue to meet the needs of those who continue to suffer from asbestos-related diseases?

Furthermore, the Government propose that the increase will apply only to claims where the individual first fulfilled the conditions of entitlement on or after 1 April 2025. This raises an important point for consideration. By setting this deadline, there is a risk that individuals currently in the middle of their claim process may miss out on the increase, potentially placing an added burden on those who are already in vulnerable situations. I ask the Minister how this decision was made, and whether there is any flexibility built into the process to accommodate those who may be affected in the interim.

The uprating of the compensation scheme is a necessary and welcome action, but we must recognise that these increases may not be sufficient to address the full extent of the challenges faced by those affected by asbestos-related diseases. I hope that the Government will ensure that the long-term sustainability of these schemes is maintained, and that they will remain attentive to the needs of those who continue to suffer as a result of past industrial practices. We on these Benches absolutely support the uplift.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions and their support for these regulations. I always find that this is one of the most moving debates we have in any year, and it gives us an opportunity to remember those who have lost their lives. My noble friend Lady Donaghy described her sister-in-law and her trade union colleague. There are also new cases: I was so sorry to hear about the employee of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott. One of the reasons why we come back here year after year is in order to honour those who have died because of things that were no fault of their own—in most cases simply going to work or caring for others whom they loved.

I loved to hear my noble friend Lord Jones, whom I thank for his inordinately kind words about me. It is a real privilege every year to hear him. I commend him for his faithfulness: he comes here every year to bear witness to what happened to the slate men, the quarrymen and the miners of his homeland of Wales, and to what they suffered. I love the fact that he reminds us every time that the only reason why these things were attacked in the workplace was that trade unions organised and defended people there, and made sure that we had proper legislation, so that people were not being sent into dangerous places and expected just to put up with it. I thank him once again for reminding us what happened at Hebden Bridge and Blaenau Ffestiniog, and so on. We must never forget that history; otherwise, we will be condemned to repeat it.

I will try to work though some of the questions that were asked. I commend my noble friend Lady Donaghy on chairing the mesothelioma oversight committee. I am not surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, has not heard of it. It is typical of my noble friend Lady Donaghy that she does incredibly important work in the background, and always points away from herself, never towards herself. This is another example, and I thank her for the work that she does. In this, as in so much else, I am grateful to her.

I will try to go through as many of the cases as I can. My noble friend Lord Jones asked how many cases of mesothelioma there are a year, and for a breakdown. We publish data on mesothelioma deaths in Great Britain, and I will send him a link so that he can see the breakdown of that. Unfortunately, mesothelioma is usually rapidly fatal following the onset of symptoms, but that means that annual deaths give a pretty clear indication of what is happening with the disease. Breakdowns are available by age, by last occupation and by geographical area—that is, where the person was living when they died. The statistics also include analysis of the relative frequency of different occupations recorded on mesothelioma death certificates, which is probably more useful as an indication of what happened in the past rather than of where we are going in the future—or, indeed, of numbers for particular occupations. It is a pattern.