Department for Education

Debate between Christine Jardine and Alex Chalk

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine]

Yes, it was our policy, and if it had been delivered with the amount of money that was originally intended, it might have worked. However, in 2015 the then Chancellor took £3 billion out of the budget, leaving the policy crippled.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Christine Jardine]

I will continue, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind.

The constituent I mentioned was told that she did not need her mobility car, because if she could drive, she could walk. However, the car was specially adapted for her disability—a disability she was born with and for which she wears callipers. She cannot walk any distance. It was nonsense.

If the Department wants to save money, it should get more of these assessments right the first time, and bring assessments in-house to help it to do that. In 2015-16 the Ministry of Justice spent £103 million organising ESA and PIP appeal hearings, not including the costs to the DWP of defending them, yet two thirds of those hearings went in favour of the claimant. Meanwhile, the Government spent £370 million a year on contracts to Atos, Capita and MAXIMUS to conduct those assessments. That money could be much better spent. Surely it would be cheaper and fairer for the DWP to invest properly in trained professionals to carry out these tests.

Perhaps the most important thing the Government could do—as we have heard, this is the starkest omission from their estimates—is to end the benefits freeze. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, that is the biggest policy driver behind the expected rise in poverty by the end of this Parliament. It estimates that ending the freeze a year early would cost £1.4 billion, reducing the number of people in poverty by 200, 000. It is absurd that the Government have been unwilling to accept that, given that they had the money to spend but instead put it to use by giving a tax cut to higher-rate taxpayers. Surely it is morally wrong to attempt to balance the books on the backs of the most vulnerable. The Government should use the spring statement to scrap the final year of the benefits freeze, and finally make the DWP work for the people it is intended to work for.

Government Policy on the Proceedings of the House

Debate between Christine Jardine and Alex Chalk

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) for his contribution, but I promise to confine my remarks to affairs of this House. I apologise to colleagues who, like me, perhaps thought that they had nodded off and woken up somewhere else. It is almost exactly four months since we were all elected to this place—many of us for the first time—on a pledge to serve our constituents and the country, but I find myself increasingly dismayed by the attitude and flagrant disrespect for the values of the democratic process that are displayed by those on the Government Benches. First we were presented with the Henry VIII power grab in the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, and now it seems that the Government intend simply to allow Opposition days to happen and then ignore them, paying no respect to the views of the House, elected Members or, by extension, the electorate who sent us here to oppose and scrutinise. It is not good enough, Mr Speaker, and if we continue along those lines, we will not be serving democracy.

At the moment, politicians spend a lot of time debating and lamenting public apathy, searching for ways to engage the younger generation, and asking why they find so little in the work we do to spark their enthusiasm for public service. Perhaps we had our answer, or at least part of it, during the Opposition day on 13 September, with its debates on NHS pay and tuition fees—hardly unimportant issues. If any young person was visiting the House on that day or watching the TV coverage, what did they witness? Petty political game playing—not dissimilar, I have to say, from what we have seen from those on the Government Benches today.

[Alex Chalk]

In my experience in this House, Opposition day motions are all too often used as an opportunity to lay party political traps that end up misleading my constituents. Does the hon. Lady agree that, in those circumstances, the Government should take the discretion not to indulge in parliamentary game playing?

[Christine Jardine]

I would agree with the hon. Gentleman were it not for the fact that what he was doing was party political game playing rather than listening to the Opposition. Surely the point of an Opposition day debate is that the Government listen to a view other than their own. That is the view of the electorate—they think that we are here to serve them, rather than to play games. If they had tuned in on the 13th, they would have seen a Government simply paying lip service to the question with no intention of taking anything on board or of allowing any credence to be given to the debate, lest it should challenge their established view.