Covid-19: Work-related Cases

Debate between Baroness Stedman-Scott and Baroness Donaghy

Monday 5th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

The HSE has been really busy and proactive during the pandemic in three key areas: regulating, by targeting businesses and organisations, to prevent workplace transmission; working with other government departments, developing, assisting and promulgating policy guidance and research; and providing other workplace regulatory functions, including market surveillance to ensure a safe supply chain.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, Covid-19 infections in food factories could be more than 30 times underreported. The HSE said that the figure lacked credibility. In transport, there were 608 Covid deaths among workers and only 10 notifications during a similar period, a rate of just 1%. These are shocking figures. Second only to Romania, we have had the highest level of cuts to inspectors since 2010, and many of these industries have extremely poor sickness absence pay. This lets employers off the hook and the Government are complicit in this appalling level of underreporting. What further action will the Government take to deal with this?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I will need to look to my noble friend Lady Vere, sitting to my left, to get some information about transport and Covid reporting there; she will like me for that. Given the number of Covid clusters among food and drink manufacturing workers towards the end of 2020, the HSE organised a series of proactive high-risk sector inspections to be carried out. Inspectors carried out 531 site visits and 58 remote inspections, 62 of which resulted in written correspondence. Inspection topics included ensuring that, in the organisation of work, changing and welfare areas allowed for social distancing proportionate to the situation.

Kickstart Scheme

Debate between Baroness Stedman-Scott and Baroness Donaghy

Thursday 29th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I understand the noble Lord’s question exactly. I am advised at the moment that there are no plans to extend the scheme, but we never know what might happen in the future. I pay tribute and thanks to the noble Lord in his capacity as chairman of the CBI, which has been an outstanding supporter and helper in the establishment of Kickstart.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab) [V]]

Even given the difficulties created by the Covid pandemic, a 6% success rate is an abject failure. The Minister knows more than most the importance of work experience for a young person. Calling on 195,000 approved vacancies does not add up to actual jobs. If the target of 250,000 placements is not reached by December 2021, will the scheme be extended, or will the cash be grabbed by the Chancellor when he announces a new age of austerity?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I do understand the concern about the 16,500 placements but, as I tried to explain, during the lockdown employers have shown great commitment to involvement in Kickstart but wanted to do it when the lockdown ended. I say again to the noble Baroness that we are seeing day by day vast increases in the number of vacancies being filled, and we are confident that we are going to create hundreds of thousands of vacancies and place young people in them. On moving money around, I dare not get involved in that; I think I would be going a bit too far if I confirmed anything in that regard.

Universal Credit

Debate between Baroness Stedman-Scott and Baroness Donaghy

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on families of not maintaining the £1,000 uplift of Universal Credit.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have introduced a raft of temporary measures to support those hardest hit, including the furlough scheme, the Self-employment Income Support Scheme and the £20 UC uplift. With the uplift confirmed until the end of March 2021, my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer set out last week why it is right that we wait for more clarity on the national economic and social picture before he decides on the best way to support low- income families from 1 April. I stress to the House that discussions are very much ongoing with Her Majesty’s Treasury.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab) [V]]

If those who lost their jobs last April could not be expected to live on £73 a week, will the Minister explain why it is enough for people losing their jobs next April? There is overwhelming support for the £20 uplift for the poorest families in the country. Why are the Government changing the rules in the middle of a pandemic and a recession? How will they address children going hungry?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I understand the noble Baroness’s concern over those hardest hit by the pandemic, especially their income, but it is not right to say that we are changing course. All we are confirming at the moment, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer set out last week, is that we wait for more clarity on the national economic and social picture before making the decision on the best way to support low-income families.

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Stedman-Scott and Baroness Donaghy

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 26th February 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Stedman-Scott]

Requiring the payment of dividends to be reported is not necessarily very helpful to the regulator. It is likely to inhibit legitimate business processes without getting more resources for the scheme. We need to take a proportionate approach. We think that the priority is to ensure that a suitable recovery plan is put in place that takes account of the full range of circumstances of the employer and the scheme.

Trustees and the regulator need to look at a whole range of demands on the employer’s resources. Dividends are just one of these. Others may include maintenance of its business, and investments in its sustainable growth and debt repayments. All of these need to be considered in deciding whether a recovery plan is fair.

The Pensions Regulator scrutinises all valuations and recovery plans submitted, assesses the key risks, and assesses whether further engagement and potential enforcement action is required. Measures in the Bill will help to clarify exactly what is required for an appropriate recovery plan. Along with the regulator’s revised funding code, these measures will make it clear to trustees and employers what is expected, and will support the regulator in taking enforcement action where necessary. Provided that an appropriate recovery plan is in place, how the employer chooses to spend the remainder of its free resources is rightly a matter of business priority.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

I have listened carefully to the debate and cannot help but think that this is not sufficiently fleet of foot to prevent those such as BHS and Carillion—there is recent past history on this—which were basically giant Ponzi schemes towards the end, where they were paying dividends instead of funding the pension scheme, had deliberately obscure governance rules and left their pensioners bereft of a considerable proportion of their money. Is this system sufficiently fleet of foot? Would it take account of a company which then decided to sell itself to another person for, for the sake of argument, £1? Would it help to cover the situations covered by the amendments? It does not sound to me as though we are doing anything different from just saying, “Everybody has the right to the appropriate dividends.” How do we know that those dividends are appropriate, and how do we have power for the regulator to ensure that there are not some really bad guys out there?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott]

The noble Baroness makes some valid points. We consider that dividends are paid at a point in time. The regulator needs to form a picture of the employers’ ability to pay and, for a period in the future, needs to see the whole picture.

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Stedman-Scott and Baroness Donaghy

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting : House of Lords
Monday 24th February 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Altmann]

In that case, I seek clarification on what would happen if the employer became insolvent. There would still be the same problem that members’ pots would be needed to cover the costs of wind up, because they could not be got from the employer. If there is not a capital buffer up front and we rely on waiting to recover it from the employer, we may still end up with the same kinds of errors that we had in defined benefit schemes, where there was nobody to get the money from and the members ended up with potentially no pension.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

In the absence of knowledge in this area I have had to resort to listening to the debate. I think the consultation is important. We need to be clear what the headroom is, what the buffer is and whether the headroom is to take account of inflation, as the Minister says. Taking account of inflation has nothing to do with sustainability, emergency action or catastrophes of other kinds, so we need clarity about, first, what questions are asked in the consultation and, secondly, what responsibility is taken.

It is all very well saying that the regulator will look at this and make sure it is sustainable, but I am not sure that the history of the Pensions Regulator gives me a good night’s sleep. I apologise if I have got it wrong, but there seems to me to be a bit of confusion about what this headroom or buffer is for, who takes responsibility for it and how the Pensions Regulator will keep a look out. It is not clear to me that statutory instruments will do it. However, if the Minister is confident that they will, we need to see them.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott]

Our job is to give noble Lords comfort and to clarify matters, which we must do. I am advised that if there were to be an insolvency of an employer, that would be anticipated up front when the scheme was established and some provision would have to be made for the risk of it happening. It would of course be part of the ongoing monitoring.

With regard to the helpful suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, about the questions in the consultation, I might be getting myself into trouble—I am very good at that—but maybe we could write to noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and ask for their opinions about what questions should be included.

Apart from those matters, if there are any other points that I have missed out, or if I have not done as good a job as I should have, we will write to all noble Lords to clarify.