Amendment of the Law

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), who spoke with characteristic passion on behalf of his constituents in Foyle and more broadly in Northern Ireland.

In his speech last week, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that

“the north grew faster than the south”.—[Official Report, 18 March 2015; Vol. 594, c. 767.]

However, when we scratch beneath the surface, the Chancellor’s headline figures do not match the reality on the ground. In the region where my constituency is situated, the north-west, it is true to say that in a single year, 2012-13, the north-west was the fastest growing region in the country, and that is welcome, but if we look at the first three years of this Government, 2010 to 2013, the overall figures for the north-west show that we have grown more slowly than any region other than Northern Ireland. So yes, there is welcome news in that one year, but taking the three years as a whole, the picture is not quite the one that the Chancellor set out.

I welcome the fact that unemployment is down. In my constituency in Liverpool, the memories of jobless economic recoveries of the past are very real, especially the impact of the Thatcherite policies of the 1980s. Unemployment can leave a scar on communities that may last for generations. As we all know, the evidence shows that once people are out of work, it can be very hard for them to get back into it. In my constituency many people are managing to find work. Over the past year the claimant count is down by 28%. Work is a good thing, but the quality of jobs is surely critical as well. Once again, the story is more complicated than that set out by the Chancellor last week or the Secretary of State earlier this afternoon.

Too many of the jobs in Liverpool are insecure, low paid jobs. The growth in agency work lies behind a large part of the fall in unemployment in my constituency. Recently, I met two local people, one of them a constituent, who worked at a factory in Liverpool. They had worked there for several years. However, they are paid and technically employed not by the company that runs the factory, but by one of the biggest agencies and suppliers of contract labour. They do the same work as regular staff, but are paid £2 an hour less, and the supply of hours is sporadic and uncertain. Their holiday and sick pay entitlements are far worse, and scandalously, one of them told me that when he suffered an injury at work, the medical centre at the factory turned him away because technically he was not an employee. Surely such working arrangements are unfair and wrong.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

However bad those contracts are, does my hon. Friend accept that the explosion of zero-hours contracts, which are even worse than agency contracts, has occurred under this Government because of the tightening of some regulations to try to stop the abuse of agency worker regulations?

[Stephen Twigg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right to make that point as we seek to understand the reasons for that and find solutions. I will come to that next.

I pay tribute to the employment, enterprise and skills select committee of Liverpool city council and its chair, Councillor Barry Kushner, for undertaking painstaking research that shows the extent of this problem. Their work has revealed that there are currently about 6,500 vacancies in Liverpool, over half of which are agency jobs. The council has identified the Swedish derogation as a major cause of the increase in exploitation. This derogation allows for agencies to employ staff directly and the eventual engager—the employer—to treat workers less fairly than their directly employed workers. Without the derogation, the system would still allow for the use of agency workers, which can still be of real use in various sectors, but the engager would be obliged to give the agency workers the same rates of pay as their permanent staff after a 12-week period in employment. The two local people I met who have been working for years at the same factory, but are paid less than the colleagues they are working alongside, feel like second-class citizens. Reforming this area would make a real difference for them. That is why I am delighted that my hon. Friend the shadow Business Secretary has promised that a Labour Government would end the Swedish derogation for agency regulations—a change that cannot come soon enough.

Other long-term changes need to be made. To tackle the structural problems of a low-pay, low-skilled job market, we need to ensure that entrants to that market have the appropriate skills. As a country, we have failed for far too long in this respect. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has talked about the “forgotten 50%”—the young people who do not get the opportunity to go to university. It is welcome that fewer young people are unemployed, but our youth unemployment rates are still significantly higher than those of countries such as Germany, Austria and Norway that have invested in high-quality technical, vocational and practical education that breaks down the barriers between different sorts of learning.

We need to strengthen devolution within England. That is why the Andrew Adonis review recommended an English devolution Act, a central plank of which would be to devolve powers and funding for skills, and commission 19-plus further education provision based on local decision making. On top of this, city and county authorities should have the power to commission the Work programme in order to get the long-term unemployed back to work. I pay tribute to Liverpool’s mayor, Joe Anderson, and to Liverpool city council for the extraordinary work they have done to promote apprenticeship and work opportunities for people of all ages, but particularly young people.

Benefit Claimants (North-east)

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) on securing the debate, and I applaud the graphic, detailed way in which she outlined the problem faced by all Members of Parliament in the north-east. Sadly, the cases she outlined are not unusual. They are common—even the case where the gentleman died. There has been more than one such example in recent times in the north-east, and that is completely unacceptable.

I will start by talking about the staff at Jobcentre Plus and the DWP in general. They work hard and are put under enormous pressure. Staffing levels have diminished dramatically since 2010. We hear anecdotally about the pressures of informal targets on sanctions—we all know they are in place—from people who are too frightened to say something, so they tell us off the record. I sympathise enormously with them about the job they are being asked to do every day.

The other thing I want to discuss before I go on to the example I will talk about is the north-east’s economy. I have lived in the north-east my entire life. I live two miles from where I was born, which is very common in the north-east. We are a close-knit, supportive community, and that is replicated throughout the north-east, not just the part I am from. We have had high unemployment throughout my lifetime—obviously, there have been peaks and troughs, but it has been consistent. Although more jobs are available at the minute, their quality has to be questioned: a lot involve zero-hours or temporary contracts, so they give no stability.

We have a lot of people who, through no fault of their own, rely on benefits. We are also a low-wage economy. Furthermore, most people’s families do not have massive wealth, so if people fall on hard times, their families do not have the wealth to support them informally. If somebody’s benefits are sanctioned, they really do have no money. They cannot go to their families to ask for a little help, because their families simply do not have the money. It is not that they do not want to help—they simply do not have the finances to.

The other thing to say about the background of people in the north-east is that we are a hard-working area. Life is pretty tough for many people, but people have an ethos of working hard, paying their way and doing a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. That is the mindset of people in the north-east, and I take great offence when I read or hear about people criticising the area and talking as if people there were just scroungers, because that simply is not the case. I have no truck with people who really try to fiddle the system, and I would be the first to remove their benefits and sanction them, but they are not the norm, and they are not the people we are talking about.

People who need to claim benefits should be treated with dignity and respect, not only by those they deal with at the DWP and Jobcentre Plus, but by the rest of society. They should not be made to feel that they are worth any less than the person next to them because, for whatever reason, they have to live on benefits. However, the treatment people receive often falls short; in some cases, it is absolutely appalling and unacceptable.

I want to give an example of a case study I have had. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, I get a staggering number of cases every week. A few months ago, I had a constituent who was unable to attend an appointment at Jobcentre Plus because he had suffered an asthma attack and was in A and E. He telephoned his adviser to tell them, although, to be fair, it would have been perfectly reasonable if he had not managed to do that. However, he did, and he spoke to the receptionist about the Jobcentre Plus appointment that had been scheduled for that day, which he would clearly be unable to get to. He explained his reasons and, on returning from hospital, he sent a letter.

A few weeks later, he received a letter saying that he had failed to comply with the scheme’s requirements and that his jobseeker’s allowance would be sanctioned for one month. Extraordinarily, the letter went on to say that an asthma attack was not a sufficiently good reason for missing an appointment. I am an asthmatic myself, and I know how crucial it is for people to get to hospital pretty darn quick if they have an attack that is out of control. The difference between not getting treated correctly in a timely fashion and surviving is paper-thin, and we read every year about the tragic cases of people who have not got to hospital quickly enough. However, if people get to hospital in time, they can be treated and brought back to health quite easily. The time element is crucial, which is why I said that, although my constituent took the time to ring, it would have been acceptable if he had not.

Miraculously, when my constituent came to me and I got involved, the decision was overturned. The most annoying thing is not that it was overturned—that was absolutely the right thing to do—but that it was made in the first place and that my constituent ever had to come to me. That is the problem, and that is what needs sorting out.

If people are ill, or have other genuine reasons for not being able to get somewhere at a certain time, they need to be treated fairly. They need to be treated like anybody else in any other system, and to be believed. In this case, my constituent had discharge letters from hospital; there was no question but that he had been at hospital, but that was not seen as a reason not to attend an appointment. That is just one case, but it graphically explains the problem.

I do not want to go over other cases, because we all have them. The people we are talking about are vulnerable. Many have not always been on benefits, and the unemployment that has arisen in the last few years is new to them. They are not part of a culture of benefit claiming. Treating them in this absolutely inhumane way is wrong and unacceptable—there is no other way of saying it—and it reflects badly on the DWP, the Government and, in broader terms, us as a society. We should be proud of the fact that we have a safety net for people who fall on hard times.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Let me take the debate slightly further north. I was recently astonished to read reports that the DWP was issuing stories and details about people they alleged were scroungers to the media to feed this attitude that my hon. Friend describes. This is therefore coming from the top, not just from a local office level.

[Julie Elliott]

That is not something I have read of, but it would not surprise me, quite honestly.

This week, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions held its first oral evidence session on benefit sanctions beyond the Oakley review. The review was highly critical of what was going on, and I look forward to seeing what comes of that. The Minister needs to accept our comments as constituency MPs who have witnessed the same problem at different jobcentres and offices. It is not one office that is to blame; this is about a culture. I hope that she will listen and act on our comments, because we are genuine people, and I am sure that the way we have described the system working is not what she would intend. I am interested to hear her comments on the situation as it actually is.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yes, they are, because they are set against means-tested benefits. I wish the hon. Gentleman would get his facts right and learn something about the benefits system. We have a system that will enable us to deliver the free school meals to those who are eligible for them, and not to those who are not eligible for them. The reality is that the mess that the Opposition left us is being cleared up and they cannot bear it. They do not even know whether they support universal credit. They flip-flop more on every policy than any other Opposition ever have.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

8. What estimate he has made of the number of people below the threshold for auto-enrolment in a workplace pension.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

We estimate that around 2.7 million individuals, aged 22 to pension age, who have earnings below the earnings threshold for auto-enrolment are not saving in a qualifying workplace pension in the private sector. About 1.6 million of those individuals are earning between £5,772 and £10,000 and have the right to opt in. Employers must tell workers about this right.

[Julie Elliott]

I thank the Minister for that answer, but does he agree that it would be right to extend pension auto-enrolment to all low-paid workers who are missing out at the moment?

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, but let me explain why I disagree with her. She would enrol people at, for example, £6,000 a year—that is the policy of the Labour Front-Bench team. At current contribution levels, someone earning £6,000 a year would be putting 8.8p a week into a pension. If they did that for 35 years, they would end up with a pension of £1.93 a week. That does not seem a sensible policy to me.

Quality Workplace Pensions

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Stakeholder pensions were the previous Government’s one attempt to limit charges. He will recall that they initially introduced a 1% cap—again, we have seen the colour of their money—before going back on that and allowing 1.5% for 10 years. I have always wanted to say that we will take no lectures from the Labour party, and he has now given me the chance. On defined ambition schemes, we will be taking that agenda forward, and I hope to have more to say about that when we publish our response to the consultation document. With regard to large-scale pension schemes, the command paper we are publishing today included a section on scale that I think he will find interesting. We think that the pot-follow-member model is the best way of ensuring that people build significant pension pots with the person they are currently saving with.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

Why is the Minister waiting a year to introduce the full cap and a further year to ban people taking money from pension schemes to pay for sales commission? Why is he not acting much sooner?

[Steve Webb]

There is a perfectly straightforward answer to the hon. Lady’s question. When we asked firms to enrol their staff automatically, we asked them to plan 12 months ahead, because it takes a long time to set up a pension scheme, to choose a pension scheme and to communicate with scheme members. A firm sitting down today to plan for April 2015 knows the rules of the game today so that it can choose its scheme in an informed way. She asked why we have allowed a further year for commission and active member discounts. Clearly, if either of those takes a scheme above 0.75%, which many do, they will have to comply immediately in April 2015, but many of those are based on complicated contractual arrangements in pension schemes. We have to strike a balance between unpicking all those and focusing the pensions industry on delivering automatic enrolment, which is a key priority for the next 12 months.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

My hon. Friend is right to say that we have got a record number of people into work across the board. What is most interesting as I travel up and down the country is to see how local Jobcentres Plus are working with local businesses to support their local work forces. In particular, the learning shop at Bluewater is doing tremendous work. My hon. Friend is right. We have done a lot; we have more to do.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

T3. A constituent of mine recently had his benefits wrongly withdrawn. He has severe learning difficulties and cannot use the internet independently, and therefore has great difficulty in applying for jobs online. Does the Secretary of State agree that targeted support would be more successful in getting my constituent and others back into work than damaging, wrongly imposed benefit sanctions?

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

It is very important that we help everybody to get back into work, no matter who it is. If benefits have been stopped incorrectly, I promise to look into that for the hon. Lady.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

My right hon. Friend is correct. It is good news that UK business is creating so many new jobs. Since the 2010 election we have seen a rise of nearly 800,000 in the number of full-time jobs and of more than 300,000 in the number of part-time jobs.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

With many people in my constituency, particularly women, doing a number of part-time jobs to make up an income, the knock-on consequence is that many of them do not pay national insurance and are therefore not building contributions to their pension. What is the Minister doing about this long-term consequence of too much part-time employment?

[Esther McVey]

The family will accrue credit if they have family responsibilities. That is a very positive step that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), has taken. We can all welcome the fact that more than a million people are now in work, and more than 210,000 more women are in work this year alone.

Housing Benefit Entitlement

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Phil Wilson]

It is obviously not fair, but the bedroom tax is hitting people whether or not they are in work. This regulation is just plain wrong. The reality is that if a married couple have lived in a three-bedroom house for many years and had two children who have grown up and left home, the two children’s bedrooms are now deemed to be spare. The house is seen as under-occupied and the couple’s housing benefit entitlement is cut accordingly.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

The biggest social landlord in my city of Sunderland, Gentoo, has informed people who will be affected by this change, and even if those people are saying, “We’re happy to move to smaller premises,” there simply are not the smaller premises to move to. Is that fair?

Remploy

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

We have significant measures in place for ex-members of the armed forces which are the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence but are supported by the DWP.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

The Minister did not come to the Chamber to inform the House of the closure of a number of Remploy factories, including the one in my constituency. The local trade union rep from GMB has not yet been invited into the factory, in breach of the accord. Does she feel that that is an appropriate way to treat Remploy workers, some of the most vulnerable workers in our society, who are in danger of losing their jobs?

[Esther McVey]

The hon. Lady is correct to say that I made a written statement to the House. I have met many Members, trade unions and ex-members of Remploy to figure out the best way forward. I had one-on-one meetings because, as the hon. Lady will appreciate, each of the factories is significantly different, with different commercial processes and outcomes. It makes far more sense to deal with this on an individual basis so that we can put the personalised support in place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, when we introduce a single state pension there will be no more contracting out, so clearly those who were in contracted-out schemes will be contracted back in. However, the annually managed expenditure costs of the scheme are being met by the reduction in means-testing and paying of savings credit to new claimants only, and by an increase in de minimis provision, so that people who have spent only a few years in the country do not build up a state pension as they would currently do. Those are the two main ways of meeting the costs, but they will also be met through the non-accrual of additional second state pensions after 2016.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

2. What assessment he has made of the effect of changes in funding for childcare support on unemployment among women.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)]

I refer the hon. Lady so the answer that I gave the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) last Thursday. In case she was not able to read Hansard, however, I can tell her that the Government fully recognise the importance of child care in helping parents—not just mothers—to move into or stay in work. Through universal credit, we will for the first time extend help with child care costs to those who work for less than 16 hours a week, which will benefit 80,000 families who formerly had no entitlement to such support.

[Julie Elliott]

Is the Minister aware that since the cut in the child care element of benefit in October 2011, 44,000 people have stopped claiming? How many of those people does she think have simply left work because it does not pay to work any more?

[Maria Miller]

I think the hon. Lady is referring to some statistics about the reason why individuals are not in work, but I do not think she can quite draw the conclusion she has drawn that those particular individuals are out of work. As she will know, the Government are absolutely committed to making sure more women are able to move into work, which is perhaps why there are some 61,000 more women in work now than when Labour left office.

Employment Support

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

We certainly want to help the Neath factory to realise what is clearly its potential. I hope that we can work with my hon. Friend as well, and that his support will ensure that the factory is the success that he feels that it can be in the future.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

Will the Minister tell us what criteria will be used to determine whether factories on the stage 2 list, such as the one in my constituency, will remain open, and against what time scale they will be judged? Will she come back to the House at the end of that time and tell us how many of them will remain open?

[Maria Miller]

The stage 2 factories are factories that we believe, on the basis of independent reports, have the opportunity and potential to be financially viable. What we need now is an opportunity to talk to people who may be interested in taking them over. We are committed to what is in recommended in Liz Sayce’s report, which is the freeing of these factories from Government control, and we need to ensure that we have the right support and plans to be able to do that.