Careers Advice (14 to 19-Year-Olds)

Debate between Jim Shannon and Hywel Williams

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

rose—

[Hywel Williams (in the Chair)]

Order. We have two further speakers wishing to catch my eye, and we have seven minutes, so please do the maths yourselves.

Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency

Debate between Jim Shannon and Hywel Williams

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Fuel poverty varies a great deal around the UK. The rate in Northern Ireland is 44%, which is explicable by the lack of gas up the pipe—more people are off-grid. The rate in Scotland is 28%, in Wales 26% and in England 16%. The Bevan Foundation estimates that fuel poverty in Wales is high, with 332,000 households in fuel poverty. Figures are also available for the regions of England. Fuel poverty hits rural England very hard indeed, but it is interesting that the rate in the south of England is 11.5%.

Wales is disproportionately hit by higher fuel bills. Incomes in Wales are lower and the percentage of people’s incomes devoted to energy is higher, and that, of course, leads to fuel poverty. We are also hit hard by Government policy on benefits. If benefits are to go up by only 1%, including, I might add, benefits for hard-working families, fuel inflation will, clearly, be much higher. That is not unique to Wales, but it is hitting us particularly hard, given the level of wages in Wales and the number of people who are dependent on in-work benefits.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Some 86,000 pensioners in the United Kingdom fail to claim all of their pension credits, 12,000 fail to claim their full housing benefit and 24,000 died in the last calendar year owing to cold-related illnesses. Is it not time that the Minister, along with the Department for Work and Pensions, make every effort to ensure that all those moneys that are not claimed are claimed by those vulnerable people who need it most?

[Hywel Williams]

That is a very good point. I hope that the Government’s pension policy will address some of that under-claiming. I will refer later to a particular aspect of this question—namely winter payments—which the hon. Gentleman will certainly be interested in.

There is less availability of mains gas in Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and rural England. That leads to rural areas being dependent on off-grid fuel, which is a point that I made to the Secretary of State earlier. People have to adopt and then pay for alternatives that are, of themselves, much more expensive and, of course, they have to pay up front. I came across a case last week of a pensioner who had been saving hard all year, essentially to put £600-worth of fuel into a tank in her garden. It was quite a strain.

Delivery in winter, particularly of gas, can be difficult, as we found in north-west Wales two years ago, when some households with pensioners could not heat their houses because the lorry could not get up to the house and they could not afford to put money up front earlier in the year. It is all very well to talk about switching and getting the best deal but, as I said earlier, pensioners would be much better off if they could spend the money given to them by the Government earlier in the year, when coal and gas are cheaper. They would get more bangs for the buck—I am sorry for that particular remark, but they would get more for their money.

There is limited potential for switching because of the cost. People cannot change the equipment easily if they are off-grid. For example, converting a solid fuel stove to gas costs a great deal of money. Switching suppliers is less common among those with off-grid fuel than for those with electricity or mains gas. The Office of Fair Trading figures for 2011 show that 3.7% of people with such solid, liquid and gas fuels switched supplier. People who depend on cylinder gas, although I concede that they are very few, are in an even more difficult situation.

I was glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Mr Weir) introduced a private Member’s Bill to allow winter fuel payments to be made earlier in the year, but it was blocked. I hope that the Government will look at that idea sympathetically.

Wales is in the bizarre situation of being rich in mineral and renewable sources of energy, but having one of the highest levels of fuel poverty in the UK. We are energy rich and fuel poor. According to the Welsh Government, we have the potential to produce double the amount of electricity that we need. According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change here in London, Wales is a net exporter of electricity, and yet energy prices in Wales are among the highest.

We in Plaid Cymru have called for planning decisions on energy to be devolved. It is our belief that that would improve the situation markedly. Last year, my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) presented a simple and reasonable Bill to devolve energy planning policy to the Welsh Government.

Disability Living Allowance

Debate between Jim Shannon and Hywel Williams

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Some Members present will be aware that the level of those with a disability in Northern Ireland is greater than it has ever been compared with other parts of the United Kingdom. Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern, as an elected representative, that, under the proposal to reduce 20% of DLA claimants, which will save £2.1 billion, it will be those people who need DLA who will lose out?

[Hywel Williams]

I suppose that that is the overarching concern behind all this. Eventually, some money might disappear, and the question is who will pay it. That is unclear at the moment. Many years ago, I used to repeat endlessly to some of my more starry-eyed social work students that, “It is not as simple as that,” which is a general rule for politics.

I was a young social worker in the late ’70s. I have promised the Minister that I would not use a lot of Welsh, but, inevitably, I would like to make one little point. I used to take some of my clients out on social occasions to try to improve the quality of their lives, and the only practical way to do that at that time was by minibus. It was a big, yellow minibus, which said on the side, “Cymdeithas Plant Araf eu Meddwl,” which translates as the society for mentally handicapped children. Needless to say, the people with whom I worked were neither children nor mentally handicapped, which was a loaded term even then but, for the non-Welsh-speakers present, “araf eu meddwl” is even more loaded—it literally means “slow of mind,” so I was taking people out in a big, yellow bus that said that they were slow of mind. I would say, therefore, that social security and social and health provision have developed over the past 30 to 40 years towards a more normalised provision, based on autonomy and choice.

If we depend on institutions to solve people’s problems of mobility, we will soon get institutional answers, which is something we should avoid.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hywel Williams]

We can take a look at DLA, but that is the budget that I would cut almost last, because of its targeted nature and its efficiency and because of the needs of those who receive it and a host of other reasons. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s general thrust—everything should be open to review and reform—but I would start elsewhere before addressing the provision under discussion.

[Jim Shannon]

Surely, the real concern for many people is that 20% will become a target that must be achieved. If so, the target, rather than the people affected, will become the be-all and end-all of the achievement. Surely, the Government must say, “Let’s make improvements, but not set a target.”

[Hywel Williams]

The problem with targets, of course, is that they must be fulfilled, perhaps at the cost of the needs of individual claimants. I would start by looking through the other end of the telescope to see what the system of assessment and so on generates, rather than—I do not think that this is what the Government are actually doing—by imposing a rough, across-the-board 20% cut.

I must press on, because other hon. Members are anxious to contribute to the debate. My further concerns centre on the proposed assessment system. The current system assesses via a variety of sources of information—the claimant, a carer, a support worker, a GP, a specialist, a physiotherapist and so on—and I worry that, by slimming down that evidence to one assessment based on specified activities, the impact of disability on the individual may be missed. We have experience of using medical assessments in employment and support allowance applications. Like many other hon. Members, a large amount of casework in my constituency has been generated by the operation of that system.

As I said, I have received a number of briefings. An interesting and striking one came from the National Autistic Society, which suggested that those carrying out assessments will possibly fail to recognise the needs of people with conditions such as autism. I am concerned that reassessments should be fair and accurate, especially in relation to the suitability of people who have fluctuating conditions or mental health conditions. We must accept that mental health conditions are particularly difficult to assess.

Another concern relates to the proposal on delay, because increasing the waiting time to six months may cause hardship, although people with terminal illnesses will continue to have no waiting period.

Automatic payment is also a concern. I shall not go into that now, other than to say that the current system allows automatic payment in certain self-evident and extreme conditions—for example, double amputations. I am worried that automatic reassessment of those cases might lead to a waste of public money. If we remove those automatic entitlements, it may increase the cost of assessment and lead to the same outcome as we had under the original system—such people might still receive the higher rate.

On aids and appliances, it has been pointed out to me that if too much notice is taken of their use—particularly in unfamiliar situations—and that leads to a loss of money, it might be a disincentive to people using them. Will that be a disincentive?

As I said earlier, I am very happy that attention should be paid to the needs of disabled people. I am happy to consider the benefits system for disabled people at any time, but I worry that the proposals will not be much help. I am glad that the provision in respect of people in residential care has been delayed until 2013, and I look forward to contributing to the debate between now and then.

In summary, I fear that the changes might limit lives and increase disability poverty and demand for mental health services. Consequently, they might increase the demand for primary care services and lead to a loss of employment. Those fears might all be laid to rest by the Minister’s response and as the debate progresses over the next months and days—I accept that entirely—but it is important to put such concerns on the record.