Working-age Welfare System
Lord Balfe Excerpts(3Â weeks, 6Â days ago)
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Lord Balfe
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to curtail the cost of the working-age welfare system.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)
So, no pressure then. My Lords, the Government are prioritising welfare reform, putting work and opportunity at the centre. Our system should support people to get into work and get on in work, while ensuring that those who cannot work get the support that they need. The Milburn and Timms reviews are looking across the social security system and will publish their final reports in the autumn. We will work across government to respond to their recommendations; in the meantime, we have a range of initiatives to support individuals to get into work.
Lord Balfe (Con)
I thank the Minister for her Answer. The situation that we are in today is not a Labour or a Conservative one; it is one that we have drifted into. Every day, we read in the newspapers about there not being enough money to go round. As a previous Prime Minister said, if you do not have money, you cannot spend it. Will the Government help by looking at ways in which the public sector welfare bill can be trimmed?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, the Government are absolutely looking at how we can reform our social security system. It simply is not fit for purpose and it needs work. The noble Lord will know that we are in the middle of two vital reviews: into youth unemployment, led by Alan Milburn, and into the future of personal independence payment, led by my colleague Stephen Timms. In the meantime, we are taking action across the field, investing in support for young people, rebalancing universal credit to encourage people into work, guaranteeing disabled people the right to try, overhauling job centres and building personalised work programmes. We are determined to get this right.
Sickness Benefits: In-person Interviews
Lord Balfe Excerpts(1Â year ago)
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Lord Balfe
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to reinstate in-person interviews for all applicants for sickness benefits.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)
My Lords, we already undertake a number of face-to-face health assessments for people applying for sickness benefits. However, as announced in the Pathways to Work Green Paper, we are planning to increase the number of face-to-face assessments while preserving alternative health assessment channels in order to meet the specific needs of people who require a different channel, for example, as a reasonable adjustment.
Lord Balfe (Con)
I thank the Minister for her Answer. This problem goes back a long time. I saw in the Times on 28 June that assessors in the department are apparently paid a bonus on interview numbers—the higher the number, the higher their bonus. This may or may not be reasonable but, at a time when there is a need to reduce expenditure on benefits and we know that in-person interviews tend to lead to a stricter application of the rules, would the Minister consider reintroducing in-person interviews before new benefits are awarded or existing benefits are confirmed?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, face-to-face assessments were stopped during Covid, as they clearly could not happen on public health grounds. They resumed in mid-2021, but the fact is that the levels have been left far too low. In the middle of last year, just 7% of assessments were face to face across PIP and the work capability assessment. That said, the assumption that the benefit bill will automatically come down if we change everything to face to face is not straightforward, based on the available evidence. I assure the noble Lord that, as he may know, in our Pathways to Work Green Paper, we committed to doing more face-to-face assessments while preserving alternative health assessment channels, because those who will not be able to do that will need a reasonable adjustment and another alternative. We will increase them as fast as possible and do it in the right way in order to make sure that we can recruit enough people and provide a good service. I am pleased to tell the noble Lord that that is our plan.
Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations 2024
Lord Balfe Excerpts(2Â years ago)
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Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I do not believe that this was in the 1997 manifesto of the Labour Party. It was introduced by Gordon Brown, I believe, because he had a vision that everybody should have a financial relationship with the state. I had a short time as the liaison person with Gordon Brown. I was appointed by the European Parliamentary Labour Party and our great leader then, Alan Donnelly, said, “I’m sending you to Gordon—he’s about the most difficult one, but you’ve got a thick skin”. I recall meetings where this was discussed; it was never discussed in the area of poverty, but always in the area of benefits and helping everybody. So this was introduced by Labour and is now being scrapped by Labour, which seems embarrassed by the size of its majority and is trying to make itself unpopular—and I would like to say that it is succeeding.
There have been economic problems all my life: in 1964, 1970, 1974, 1979, 1997 and 2010. Incoming Governments claim they have found big black holes—it has always been the same; but you cannot have it both ways. You cannot say, as Liz Kendall said in the House of Commons yesterday, that the Tories were spending like “no tomorrow” and at the same time say that there is a huge deficit in public services, that teachers need more, that schools and hospitals need rebuilding and that the National Health Service is in crisis. It just does not add up. You cannot have an economic crisis and a big black hole, and at the same time huge demands for more money.
Obviously, I read the three Motions and listened to the very good statement of the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, but I am afraid that, on balance, because of the conventions of the House, I will be supporting the position my party is taking on that Motion. I have listened attentively to the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, who made a very good contribution, but there is one point with which I disagree: point two, the decision to prioritise above-inflation pay rises for unionised public sector professionals.
The pay award bodies came in with awards, which the Government accepted. Is it now the position of His Majesty’s Opposition that the pay awards given by the boards that we set up would have been rejected by us? It does not add up. Quite frankly, public sector workers and trade unionists have had just about as much as they can take. All the time, everything is blamed on them, but these are the people who man the hospitals, schools and all the parts of the state we rely on, and they deserve decent pay and conditions. Although I am on the Benches that do not normally say that, I have been saying it for years and I will say it now.
I also remind the House that the British Medical Association may be a union, but it is not affiliated to the TUC and nor is the Royal College of Nursing. There is a widespread demand in society for fairness, and these pay awards were part of it. The Government did not prioritise the pay awards over the pensioners; those were two quite separate decisions. The pay awards were in line with the procedures set up and continued by our Government. The decision on pensioners was a grubby little decision, taken God knows why, which does not save much.
It is quite right that we should have made it a taxable benefit from the beginning. I was only ever asked once by a Chancellor of the Exchequer—he is now my noble friend Lord Hammond—what I would put in the Budget if I were Chancellor. I said that I would tax the winter fuel allowance and abolish the £10 Christmas bonus and the 25 pence for 80 year-olds, which I have had paid to me recently and does not even buy a packet of sweets these days. I would have consolidated this money into a better pension for all the other people. There was no basic reason why people like most Members of this House should get an untaxed winter fuel allowance. That would have been my solution, and I wish the Government had chosen it.
Having made this speech, I will support the Motion that our party has put down. If it comes to it, I will also support the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. I regret that I cannot support the Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, for the reasons I have outlined. That is not because I do not support what she says, but as an Opposition, we need to have respect for the traditions of the House and the way we conduct our business.
Baroness O'Loan (CB)
My Lords, I grew up in Barnsley in Yorkshire, which is a Labour stronghold, and I find it inconceivable, even as I look at this instrument, that the Labour Government are taking away the winter fuel payment from 880,000-plus very poor people, who will go very cold and hungry this winter as a consequence.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, for her clear explanation of the access available to the shadow Chancellor prior to the election. What she told us was important; I did not know it.
There are disabled pensioners who may not be in receipt of pension credit but who, as a consequence of this, will have grave difficulty keeping their houses as warm as they need to keep them. They cannot go and sit in the malls, shops and cafes, as so many other pensioners do, to keep warm. We should bear them in mind, and we should not be doing this.
Noble Lords have already indicated ways in which a similar saving could be achieved, through taxation processes or windfall taxes, et cetera. Noble Lords should reflect on whether they could keep themselves warm on ÂŁ218 a week, and eat. The Labour Government should think again about what they are doing.
Finally, the conventions of this House are simply that: conventions. There are particular and extreme circumstances in which we should disregard our conventions for the benefit of those who have no voice. Pensioners will lose a benefit they so desperately need, and this is the one thing people have repeatedly stopped me on the street about since the Labour Government made this announcement. This is an occasion on which we should ignore convention and vote with these Motions.
European Social Charter
Lord Balfe Excerpts(2Â years ago)
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Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, if the noble Viscount is talking about the additional protocol, I should say that the UK is one of a majority of about two-thirds of states which are party to the European Social Charter that have not adopted the additional protocol. I expect he will know that, having done my job until about 20 minutes ago. It is not because we have any objection to engaging with social partners, but because we regard the current system, in which reports are made by national Governments indicating their compliance with the provisions of the charter, to be adequate.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, will the Minister commit the Government to work towards ratifying? It really is time to get this ratified. We must recognise that a prosperous society is based on working between trade unions and employers.