Passport Applications

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The Home Affairs Committee work in taking evidence has been important, because my right hon. Friend is exactly right that we need a time scale. We need to know how long this piece of string is. Is it a short piece of string or a long one? Are we talking about a few weeks or a few months, or about this time next year? People who have holidays in September or business trips in October need to know how far in advance they should plan and whether they should be worried. Ministers are not giving us answers on how long it will take.

The Home Secretary has said that there will be 650 extra staff on the telephone helpline, which means more extra staff for the helpline than for clearing passports. How much does she think that will help? Currently, most people’s experience of the helpline is that people take messages and promise that someone else will call back. The person who is supposed to call back does not do so, and the people on the helpline do not know the answers.

That system is doing people’s heads in. We heard from Ria Runsewe and her family in Bromley. On 5 May, they applied for a passport for their 10-week-old son, and then heard nothing. She said:

“I called the helpline to check its progress…I was told someone would call me back within 48 hours, but I missed the call while I was changing my son’s nappy. Ten minutes later, I called back—only to be told that I had gone to the bottom of the queue and would have to wait another 48 hours.”

She eventually got through to someone and asked to upgrade to the premium service, and spent two more weeks chasing before someone else called her back to take payment and promise that the passport would be there the following day.

Another family gave us this account of their conversation on the helpline. Passport Office: “We can’t guarantee when your passport will be sent or when you will receive it.” Me: “What can I do?” Him: “You can’t do anything?” Me: “Can’t I pay to upgrade?” Him: “We can’t talk about that. You have to ring another number.” Me: “But that is your number.” Him: “We can’t talk about it until you mention it.” Me: “Okay. I’m mentioning it, and, in fact, I can categorically say I want it.” Him: “We can’t guarantee that they will do anything and they may not respond to you, but you can apply again for an urgent upgrade after that, and you may be lucky that time.” That is not even Kafkaesque; it is Monty Python. We do not need a system that simply has more staff to take messages. We need staff in place to clear passports and ensure that constituents throughout the country are told what is going on.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I have just had an e-mail from Michelle Morris, a member of my staff who has been waiting for three days to hear back from the helpline about her case. She has had a phone call in which she was told that the case is too complicated. She was due to leave today from Gatwick with her son. The travel agents have rescheduled the flight for Friday. The question is whether the helpline will ring back to tell us that the passport will be sorted out by then.

[Yvette Cooper]

I hope my hon. Friend’s member of staff gets answers. In too many cases, people simply do not get a reply or a response.

Capital Gains Tax (Rates)

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Yvette Cooper

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right to raise concerns, particularly as many people who receive housing benefit are in work. They work hard, are in low-paid jobs and cannot afford to pay their rent without the extra help that housing benefit brings. So, the Government’s measures will hit people who work hard to support their families and make ends meet. They will find the rug withdrawn from under them.

I am particularly concerned about the combined proposals for lone-parent families, and I ask the Secretary of State to look at them, because he says that lone parents with five and six-year-olds will move on to jobseeker’s allowance and have to look for work. However, his own documents, which were provided at the same time as the Budget, assume that only 10% of those lone parents will leave benefits because of the risk they might be less work ready or need more time to find a suitable job that fits with their caring responsibilities.

Many lone parents need additional support to find work that fits school hours, but as a consequence of these proposals about 90% of them will still be on jobseeker’s allowance one year later, at which point they will suddenly be hit by the right hon. Gentleman’s 10% cut in housing benefit. Lone parents with young children might work really hard to find a job that fits school hours, but suddenly an average of £500 a year will be taken from their incomes because they cannot find work and because, as a result, he wants to cut their housing benefit. That is deeply unfair on families who might work really hard to try to make ends meet. What does he expect people to do? Hundreds of thousands of people will struggle to pay their rent, and parents will have to move house, shift their kids out of school, move long distances and break up communities in order to try to find an affordable home.

[Emily Thornberry]

Given that the Secretary of State seems to think that we are exaggerating the position, does my right hon. Friend agree that it might be a good idea if he spent a morning with me visiting some of the Islington families who will be profoundly affected by those changes to housing benefit?

[Yvette Cooper]

That is a very generous invitation, which I shall pass on to the right hon. Gentleman.

Where are the figures for the analysis of the impact of those proposals on homelessness? Where are the figures for their impact on families who will not be able to pay their rent? Does the right hon. Gentleman have any idea how expensive it is to keep a family in temporary accommodation? That is the problem. That proposal is just like the proposal on unemployment. If the Government do not provide the support up front, it will cost them more later on in terms of dealing with homelessness.

As for supporting families, not even in the worst of the Thatcher years did the Government ever introduce a Budget that hit children so hard. Of the £8 billion that this Budget raises from direct tax and benefit changes, however, £3 billion directly hits children: cutting the child trust fund and the value of child benefit, and overall cuts in child tax credit. That is even before we add the cuts that families face in housing benefit, free school meals, free swimming, the future jobs fund and university places. This is a savage Budget for children. The Government claim that it will be all right because there is not a measured increase in child poverty as a result of this Budget. Of course there is not, because the Treasury model will not measure the impact of changes to VAT or housing benefit, and it will not look ahead any further than 2012-13, before many of the cuts bite.

Look at the people the Secretary of State is hitting hardest—the very youngest children of all. Gone is the baby tax credit, so some mums will now find they cannot afford to stay at home for as long as they want with their little babies. Gone is our plan for a toddler tax credit, gone is the pregnancy grant, and cut is the Sure Start maternity allowance. Has he no idea at all that supporting a family and getting the children out of poverty when the babies are born can save money from the public purse for years to come? Instead, he wants to cut support from the babes in their mothers’ arms. At least Margaret Thatcher had the grace to wait until the children were weaned before snatching their support.