Personal Independence Payment: Regulations

Debate between Lord Evans of Rainow and Kate Green

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

It was a privilege to serve on the Work and Pensions Committee with the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) in the last Parliament.

I wish to focus my speech on two particular areas. First, it is not the case that the Government are using the change as a cost-cutting exercise. Secondly, I will address some of the comments made by Opposition Members on mental health and physical conditions in relation to PIP.

We spend £50 billion every year on benefits—up by £7 billion since 2010—to support people with disabilities and health conditions, so, rather than being subjected to austerity cuts, these benefits have seen an increase in Government spending. That figure is 6% of all Government spending, or 2.5% of GDP. It is significantly more than countries such as France and Germany spend, and higher than the OECD average. It is more than we spend on the defence of the realm.

As I have said, this change is not, as some Members have suggested, a cost-cutting exercise. The Government have made it abundantly clear that they will seek no further savings through welfare in this Parliament. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work to reassure the House that she will continue to defend the disability budget.

The changes restore the original aim of the policy by clarifying the assessment criteria to make sure that support is targeted on those who need it the most. Nobody will receive less money than they have previously been awarded. This is not about making savings. PIP was widely consulted and voted on and debated in this House during the coalition Government.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

rose—

[Graham Evans]

I am sorry, but I really want to make some progress so that other Members can have their say.

More than two thirds of PIP recipients with a mental health condition receive the enhanced daily living component, compared with just 22% who used to receive the higher rate under the disability living allowance. This Government are investing more in mental health support than any other before them. The figure stands at £11.4 billion this year.

Parity between mental and physical conditions is a core principle at the heart of PIP’s design. Awards are dependent on the claimant’s overall level of need, regardless of whether the condition is mental or physical.

As well as increasing spending on disabilities, this Government are challenging attitudes towards disability through initiatives such as Disability Confident. Last year, I, along with many Members of this House, held my first Disability Confident fair, bringing together 20 local businesses and support agencies to hear at first hand the benefits of employing people with disabilities.

Finance (No. 4) Bill

Debate between Lord Evans of Rainow and Kate Green

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Graham Evans]

Absolutely; I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that contribution. At the end of the day, the Budget tells the world that this country is open for business because private sector investment and wealth creation through businesses such as those that my hon. Friend mentioned are critical to the success of the whole nation, not just young people and hard-working families, but pensioners.

Thanks to measures such as the clamp-down on tax loopholes, the very rich will pay more. There is an ideological divide: the Labour party wants the rich to pay symbolically higher rates of tax; the Budget ensures that the rich actually pay more tax. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the independent Office for Budget Responsibility agree that the 50% rate raises next to nothing. Indeed, having a higher income tax rate than communist China indirectly reduces tax revenues as it fundamentally undermines the competitiveness of the UK economy, discouraging inward investment and risking a brain drain of our brightest talent.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman’s comparison with communist China is completely spurious when we look at what remains of a western capitalist economy, but does he accept that it is widely agreed, including by the OBR, that the calculations on the amount raised by the reduction of the 50p rate to 45p are highly speculative?

[Graham Evans]

The hon. Lady makes a valuable point. I have huge respect for her and for everything she has done on child poverty, but if the 50% tax rate was so important to right hon. and hon. Members of the Opposition, why did the Labour Government introduce it only a month before a general election? Why did they not introduce it in 1997, 1998, 1999 or any of those 13 years? They left it until their last month.

Disadvantaged Children

Debate between Lord Evans of Rainow and Kate Green

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I join right hon. and hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing this important and welcome debate. I also join colleagues in welcoming the reports of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), which was published yesterday. I could not agree more with them, nor with hon. Members’ remarks this afternoon, on the crucial importance of the early years. It is good to see this subject receiving so much attention, not only in those reports, but in other reports that have been published in recent weeks. This week, the charity Family Action published “Born Broke”, and just before Christmas, we had the important UNICEF report “The children left behind”.

I warmly welcome and strongly endorse many of the suggestions in the reports of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North. It is absolutely right that we need to be proactive in addressing the needs of disadvantaged children, and that we should intervene early. It is absolutely right that what happens in the home affects what happens at school. It is right that we should secure access to quality services and programmes for children and families, and I welcome what my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead has said about the importance of putting children’s centres at the heart of the support that we offer disadvantaged children and their families. I welcome the proposal for local child poverty commissions. It is right and sensible that we track a range of outcome indicators so that we can ensure that children improve their life chances across the spectrum of outcomes.

The early years are crucial, but investing in them will not be enough on its own. We need to sustain the investment right through the child’s life, otherwise the good effects of the additional investment in the early years will fade. I am concerned that we must keep our attention on addressing income poverty and inequality. There is so much evidence that adequate family incomes are crucial to children’s outcomes. The UNICEF report that I mentioned highlights that the UK suffers from relatively poor outcomes across a range of indicators compared with other countries. That relates to our position at the lower end of the inequality spectrum. Our children are raised in a much more unequal country than those with more successful child outcomes.

Money is important, as right hon. and hon. Members have said, and it is actually quite easy to understand why—it is about what money can buy. Parents who cannot afford the rent on decent housing will find it difficult to provide a quiet space for children to do homework. It may also mean that they are forced into overcrowded and unsuitable accommodation, where children cannot grow up safe and healthy. The lack of an adequate income to afford a decent diet will harm children’s health and well-being and limit their ability to learn. Poorer families lack the means to ensure that their children can participate fully in their schooling and education. They may not be able to participate in extra-curricular activities or secure the equipment, books and computers that would help to improve their learning.

Parents who are forced to take a series of inadequately paid and unstable short-term jobs will find it difficult to secure adequate income from employment. If we are interested in improving children’s outcomes, we have to improve family income, too. Money is not separate from what enables children to do well; it is integral to their success. A continuing policy of income redistribution must therefore be at the heart of our strategy for improving children’s outcomes.

I wish to say a little about the provision of services for parents and children who face particular disadvantages and have a high level of need. As Family Action has stated in the report to which I referred earlier, the best solution for most children is to keep them with their families and support those families to do their best in bringing up their kids. Poor parenting and poverty are not necessarily linked. In the vast majority of cases, poor parents are as desperate as any others to do the very best for their children and to provide them with a loving family background and a stable home life.

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Lady, and I should like to share an experience with her. When I was about to be a father for the first time, I went to parental classes on childbirth and on how I could help my wife in the first few weeks afterwards, and things that I could do physically to help. Perhaps it was a missed opportunity that there was no explanation for new fathers and mothers of what they could do to bring up their child well and do the most positive things possible for them. The classes were about the health and well-being of the child in the early weeks and months, not about how to be a good parent. Perhaps we should introduce lessons involving such matters for new fathers and mothers.