State Pension Changes: Women

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on his introduction to this important debate. I also declare an interest: my wife is one of the 3.8 million who were affected by the changes to the state pension age—although she can count herself as one of the lucky ones. Unlike hundreds of thousands of other women of her generation, this scandal did not condemn her to destitution in her retirement or undo the long-made plans she had spent her life working towards.

For others, of course, the situation is very different. One of my constituents, whose story has been recorded by the WASPI campaign, described her feelings as

“being robbed of the way of life that I thought I would have”,

after being informed that she would have to wait until the age of 66 to receive the state pension. This constituent, who was also affected by the collapse of Equitable Life, found herself unable to secure employment in a jobs market defined by systematic discrimination against older women, and thus became reliant on her husband’s earnings to survive.

There is a grim irony here. Women born in the 1950s were at the forefront of the fight for equal pay and rights in the workplace. A considerable number would have been the first women in their families to have their own job. For many, that independent income would have given them the opportunity for the first time to leave abusive or exploitative relationships. Yet later in life, many of these women, to whom all of us workers owe so much, have found themselves once again reliant on their spouses just to get by.

We cannot overstate the sense of betrayal felt by those who have been affected: a generation of women who upon leaving school were promised, as I was, that the state would be there to provide a level of safety and security later in life. Instead, they find themselves struggling to survive during the worst cost of living crisis in living memory.

Last year, the WASPI campaign found that 70% of its members had been forced to reduce their weekly spending, with more than half struggling to pay essential bills and one in four struggling to afford food. Women who have worked all their lives have been left impoverished. A covenant has been broken.

That the WASPI women have been subject to grave injustice is beyond question. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s report is absolutely clear that there was maladministration in how the DWP communicated information about the state pension age changes and the Department failed to act upon its own research, which showed that women born in the 1950s were not aware of those changes, but more than three years on the DWP has yet to come clean and publicly accept these findings.

In that time, tens of thousands of affected women have lost their lives, with one WASPI woman dying every 13 minutes. The Government’s approach seems to have been to hope that the WASPI women would simply go away—but anyone who has met the WASPI campaigners, as I have during some of their many lobbies of Parliament, will know that that that is not going to happen.

In a few short weeks, the ombudsman is expected to publish the next stage of their report, detailing its findings concerning the impact of maladministration in relation to the WASPI women and its recommendations on compensation. The Minister will no doubt urge patience, but the question that many WASPI women are asking is this: how much longer must they wait to receive some form of financial restitution, and will they even still be here by the time it arrives?

Universal Credit Deductions

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Maria. I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) on securing a debate of such enormous importance to our constituents. It is good to see the Minister in his place. I hope that in his remarks he will do away with the prevarication and tired excuses that we so often hear from the Dispatch Box on this subject, and that he will have the courage to confront head-on the disastrous consequences of this Government’s cruel and pernicious benefits regime for millions of people across this country.

The design and roll-out of the universal credit system have proven to be a catastrophe for the worst-off in our society. In my constituency of Birkenhead, nearly 14,000 people are in receipt of universal credit. With the exception of housing, there is no issue that constituents come to me about as frequently as the inadequacy of universal credit payments during the cost of living crisis, the questionable and often downright wrong reasons for which deductions are made, and how the five-week wait is forcing many people even deeper into debt.

Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that this is a nationwide crisis. The basic level of universal credit now stands at its lowest level as a proportion of average earnings, and 90% of low-income households on universal credit are going without essentials. When we talk about people who have deductions made from their payments, it is important to acknowledge that most claimants struggle to survive even when they receive their payments in full.

We should also remember that a significant proportion —around 40%—of the people we are talking about are already in work. Although Ministers talk about deductions being a necessary incentive to ensure that claimants fulfil their obligations under the scheme, the vast majority of deductions are in fact debt repayments, either to the DWP or to third parties.

Universal credit deductions are now one of the leading causes of destitution in this country, and the most vulnerable are paying the price. Families with children, and families in which somebody is unable to work because of illness or disability, are significantly more likely to have deductions to their universal credit payments, and 2.2 million children are growing up in households in which deductions are routinely made from universal credit payments. Although it has been reported that the average reduction amounts to 15%, nearly half of all households with a deduction have over 20% of their basic allowance deducted.

Yesterday, I met Victoria Benson, chief executive of the charity Gingerbread, which provides invaluable support to single parents, to discuss the impact of the two-child limit and universal credit deductions on single-parent families. She explained that single parents are disproportionately over-represented among universal credit claimants. Some 70% of single-parent households are in receipt of universal credit, and that figure is likely to rise to 90% by the summer of next year as a result of the managed migration from legacy benefits.

The struggles of being a single parent—raising children on one’s own, trying to make ends meet and searching, often in vain, for affordable childcare—are very real. Now, many single parents are also forced to grapple with deductions that leave them with an uncertain income each month and unable to afford the essentials for either their children or themselves. The result is parents going without food so that their children can eat, and falling even deeper into debt.

We are all entitled to a basic level of comfort and dignity. If the universal credit system is not guaranteeing that to the millions of people who rely on it as a lifeline, it is simply not fit for purpose.

Two-child Benefit Cap and Child Poverty

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the two-child benefit cap and child poverty.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I am grateful to have the opportunity to lead this debate and raise the issue of the two-child benefit cap and its impact on child poverty. I put on record my thanks to all those who have championed this campaign in the six years since the cruel cap was introduced in April 2017, including the Bishop of Durham and the child of the north all-party parliamentary group on which I sit, who have led and supported the debate in the House of Lords and brought a private Member’s Bill to the other place on this issue. I am also grateful to the End Child Poverty coalition and all the member organisations for their “All Kids Count” campaign and for providing the statistics on the widespread effect of the two-child cap on benefits that I and others will use in this debate.

The explosion of child poverty we witness today has been the No. 1 by-product of the last 13 years of Tory austerity. The current cost of living crisis is adding unbearable pressure to an already critical situation for many families who are struggling to make ends meet.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the impassioned contribution she is making. Scrapping the cruel and pernicious two-child limit would be the most cost-effective way of reducing child poverty, lifting a quarter of a million children out of poverty in an instant. The Leader of the Opposition has rightly said that the next Labour Government will be laser-focused on eradicating poverty. Does my hon. Friend agree that to that end, our party should make an explicit commitment to scrap the two-child limit in the first days of the next Labour Government and, in doing so, give hope to the 2,700 young people in my constituency who are currently caught in this two-child trap?

[Kim Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. I believe that the incoming Labour Government should make every effort to look at eradicating poverty in any way, shape or form. We are seeing a resurgence of Victorian diseases such as malnutrition, rickets and scarlet fever. Children are going to bed with empty bellies and going to school unable to concentrate or learn to their full potential. In recent years, we have heard many heartbreaking stories of children mimicking eating from empty lunch boxes or even attempting to erase their hunger by eating paper and erasers. Children are incredibly aware of the stigma of poverty, and the pressure can have lifelong psychological effects on top of the material impact on educational attainment, life chances and associated health problems.

Asbestos in Workplaces

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) on securing this important debate. It is particularly timely for those constituents of mine who were forced to take strike action in February when their employer, a local social housing provider, was accused of forcing them to handle asbestos in tenants’ homes, a job that they were not properly trained for. Thankfully, that strike was successful, but at a cost of significant disruption to the tenants and, of course, great anxiety for those workers, who feared being exposed to such a lethal substance. I raise it today as a reminder that asbestos is not a historical tragedy. We continue to live with asbestos today, and it is vital that employers in high-risk sectors are reminded of the duties they have to keep their staff safe.

I was an active trade unionist when we first began to reckon with the dangers of asbestos. Experts warned of the dangers for decades, but it was only in the 1970s, when confronted with rising rates of mesothelioma across the UK, that the construction industry was forced to acknowledge the devastation that asbestos can wreak. Even then, it was not until 1999 that we finally achieved a total prohibition on its use, more than 15 years after the first law banning some forms of asbestos had been introduced. I am not sure that it will ever be possible to calculate the number of people who were exposed to asbestos in buildings that were built or refurbished in that 15-year window alone, but we can say with some confidence that lives could doubtless have been saved if we had acted far sooner.

So we are gathered here today to confront a deadly legacy. Asbestos can be found everywhere in our lives—in the environment, our schools, our homes and our office buildings. Indeed, the Labour Research Department found that there were 451 premises in London alone with asbestos and that two thirds of NHS premises and buildings that were considered still contain asbestos today.

According to the Health and Safety Executive, asbestos remains the largest killer in the workplace and its enduring prevalence means that, tragically, there are healthy people alive today who will die from asbestos-related diseases, including mesothelioma, of which the UK has the highest number of cases in the world.

As a former regional secretary of Unite the union, I have represented thousands of workers in construction, which is the industry with the highest asbestos-related mortality rates. I have seen at first hand the terrible suffering that these vicious diseases inflict, and I know just how important it is that we deliver a strategy to rid our country of this ticking time bomb as soon as we possibly can.

I want to express my gratitude to charities such as Mesothelioma UK, as well as the Merseyside Asbestos Victim Support Group, for everything they have done to bring this issue to broader attention.

Any objective assessment of the progress made in the more than two decades since asbestos was banned for good, and in particular over the last 13 years of Tory Government, cannot but lead to the conclusion that that progress has been woefully inadequate. The families of those who have lost their lives to mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases are angry. They have just cause to be angry, and so do those whose loved ones will lose their lives in the future.

The Work and Pensions Committee’s recent report revealed that there is no clear strategy on how to realise the vision of an asbestos-free Britain and that there is a lack of meaningful investment and research into the removal of asbestos. It called for a pan-Government and system-wide strategy and for a legally binding 40-year commitment to the removal of asbestos from all non-domestic buildings. That is the kind of clarity and certainty that the victims of asbestos rightly deserve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

4. What estimate he has made of levels of economic inactivity in towns and cities.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)]

The Office for National Statistics regularly publishes statistics relating to estimates of local inactivity. I have been leading work across Government with a further piece on participation, and the Chancellor and I will shortly be setting out more details of our plans.

[Mick Whitley]

Some 2.5 million people are economically inactive as a result of long-term illness, and half a million have left the labour market due to ill health since 2019. Does the Secretary of State accept that tackling health inequalities and improving health outcomes in deprived communities such as Birkenhead is essential to achieving equitable economic growth? Can he inform the House what conversations he has had with colleagues across the Cabinet about the need for a holistic economic strategy that recognises that health and wealth are inextricably linked?

[Mel Stride]

It is important that we take into account the issues of poverty and regional variations to which the hon. Gentleman refers. They lie right at the heart of all the decisions we have taken. We have come forward in recent times with significant cost of living support measures. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies) will be taking through the remaining stages of the Social Security (Additional Payments) (No. 2) Bill this very afternoon to address the people to whom the hon. Gentleman refers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Perhaps we could organise a visit so that I can see this organisation for myself. I had a really rewarding visit to Bristol just before Christmas, where I saw the huge difference made by work experience opportunities organised and facilitated by charitable organisations. I would be delighted to visit.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

T8. Last week, the Prime Minister became the second holder of his office to have been found to have broken the law while serving in No. 10. He has now been issued with a fixed penalty notice, his second in 12 months. But unlike many of my constituents who have been hit with punitive benefits sanctions, the Prime Minister is unlikely to be forced to resort to payday loans and food banks in order to get by. Will the Secretary of State concede that the Government policy of sanctioning claimants for even the most minor and accidental breaches of the rules is simply too severe?

[Mel Stride]

Sanctions quite rightly play a role in the work of work coaches and jobcentres, because the provision of benefits involves a contract between the jobcentre and those receiving those benefits, who in many cases have an obligation to seek work. Where that contract is broken by the individual who is meant to be seeking work, it is only right that a sanction should be available. But it has to be applied with due care—and, indeed, that is the case.

Social Security Support for Children

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Ms Qaisar) on securing this important debate.

At this time of year it is natural for people’s minds to turn towards Christmas. I am sure that the Minister, like many of us, is looking forward to a well-earned break, the company of family and friends, and all the comforts and trappings of the season. But I must warn him that, for the more than one in five children in my constituency who live in poverty, the coming festive season holds none of the joy that he surely takes for granted. Indeed, for many of the children that I represent, 25 December threatens to be a day like any other—plagued by cold, hunger and fear.

Our multimillionaire Prime Minister has at least had the sense to look beyond the walls of his country mansion and acknowledge the crisis facing millions of ordinary people this winter. Addressing the Cabinet yesterday, he is reported to have said that we are entering

“a challenging period for the country, caused by the aftershocks of the global pandemic and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.”

But he is deluding himself if he believes that he can ignore the central role that the Conservative party has played in making this crisis. Even before the pandemic began, nearly 4 million British children were growing up in poverty, 75% of whom live in a household with at least one working parent. While the fallout of Putin’s war is hitting all of Europe’s major economies hard, none is being forced to grapple with the depth of deprivation we now see in the UK. That is a distinctly British ailment.

A quarter of a century ago, a Labour Government set out on a moral crusade to end poverty. They recognised that spending formative years in poverty is the single most important determinant of life chances in everything from educational outcomes to life expectancy. That is why, when Labour was in power, we lifted 1 million children out of poverty, which is an historic achievement. However, today we bear witness to scenes of destitution and misery that we thought were a thing of the past. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has recently said that he is now seeing more children going hungry than at any time in his 40 years in public life.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Many of the support measures announced in last week’s Budget were temporary, but long-term support is required if we are going to provide all children with the best start in life. Does the hon. Member agree that the Government need to review this urgently?

[Mick Whitley]

The hon. Member makes a good point. We hope that the Government will take cognisance of what we are saying today.

What the former Prime Minister has said is a stark indictment of 12 years of Tory failures. When the Minister launches his inevitable feeble defence of the Government’s record in a few moments’ time, he will undoubtedly point to the measures contained in last week’s Budget. It is true that after weeks of equivocation, the Chancellor has at last bowed to pressure and agreed to an uplift in the benefit cap and benefit payments, but for the thousands of young people in my constituency for whom poverty has become a fact of life, it is nowhere near enough. After 12 years of real-terms cuts to benefits and punitive sanctions, the idea that they should be in any way grateful to the Chancellor for the limited action he has taken is an insult.

The Child Poverty Action Group has estimated that while benefits will be 14% higher in the next fiscal year, prices will be 21% higher for the poorest families in towns such as mine, and although a lifting of the benefit cap is long overdue it fails to even begin to undo the damage that has been wrought as a result of it being frozen in 2016. In fact, in communities such as Birkenhead, it would need to increase by a further £942 a month just to erase what has been lost since 2013, but still the Chancellor has the temerity to patronise hard-working families by saying that the best way out of poverty is through work. I want the Minister to know that most of the struggling families that I meet work harder and longer hours than either of us; the reason they are claiming benefits at all is the scourge of poverty pay.

Last week, the Chancellor spoke of the need to treat the vulnerable with compassion, but a truly compassionate Government would recognise that the benefit cap, the two-child limit and the pernicious sanctions are just not working. They are trapping millions of our most vulnerable citizens—our young people—in poverty. Things cannot go on like this. For 12 long years, this Government have pursued a policy of slashing benefits, squeezing families, and inflicting punitive sanctions that drive people past the point of desperation. The result is that the hard-won progress we made in tackling child poverty between 1997 and 2010 has been almost entirely undone. That is a public policy failure almost without precedent. An entire generation of young people who have known only poverty and misery under a Tory Government is about to come of age; we cannot allow more to follow.

Carer’s Allowance

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. I am immensely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) for securing this important debate. Across the country, millions of people make enormous sacrifices to care for the people they love. Looking after somebody in need of full-time care too often means giving up on work, friendships and so many of the ordinary opportunities that the rest of us take for granted.

Our country could not have survived the pandemic without the determination and resilience of unpaid carers. While doctors and nurses battled to save lives and as the virus engulfed care homes, which this Government unforgivably failed to make safe, millions of ordinary people stepped up to assume additional caring responsibilities and to paper over the cracks that have been inflicted on health and social care by successive Tory Governments.

In 2020, the campaign group Carers UK estimated that unpaid carers collectively save the nation £530 million in caring costs every single day of the pandemic. We owe them all a debt of gratitude. Nobody should be forced to resort to credit card debt or payday loans to cover the cost of care, but that is the terrible reality facing so many unpaid carers today. Unpaid carers have found themselves cruelly exposed to the catastrophic impact of soaring food and energy costs, with heating their homes and powering essential medical equipment becoming a daily struggle.

Last year, more than a third of carers reported having to cut back on luxuries, with more than one in 10 taking out additional debt just to make ends meet. Even before the energy cost rise again this week, many unpaid carers found themselves in the position of nothing left to cut. I was recently contacted by a constituent in a state of utter desperation. Having dedicated her entire professional life to caring for strangers in the NHS, she was forced to leave work to care full time for her husband. Now she tells me that, after paying bills, she is left with just under £40 to get by, and does not know how she will keep up with mortgage repayments.

Last week’s spring statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer was an opportunity to take meaningful steps to help unpaid carers survive the most dramatic cost of living crisis in recent memory; but instead of increasing the carer’s allowance and other benefits in line with inflation and heeding Labour’s call for ambitious action to cut energy bills, he put his own political ambition before the needs of millions of people and brandished his Thatcherite credentials to win over disaffected Tory Back Benchers, with a commitment to shaving a penny off income tax in two years’ time. How does the Minister think that will help unpaid carers in my constituency who are barely getting by here and now?

We have heard plenty of warm words from Ministers at the Dispatch Box about the invaluable contribution that carers make. We have seen countless photo opportunities of Ministers meeting carers in their constituencies, or standing on the doorstep to applaud them during the darkest days of the pandemic, but that will not put food on the table or coins in the meter. It will not provide the slightest reassurance to unpaid carers in my constituency, who are genuinely petrified about whether they will survive the punishing months ahead.

The virtue signalling must stop; what we need is action. That means dramatically increasing the pitiful rate of carer’s allowance, so that millions of households are not drowned by soaring prices; dramatic action to cut energy bills for the worst off and most in need; and, following the example of the pioneering Labour Government in Wales, introducing a one-off payment for unpaid carers to help see them through this Tory cost of living crisis.

Cost of Living

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins. I thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) for securing this important debate. She made an excellent contribution, setting the scene. I also refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I will talk first about just one of my thousands of constituents who are suffering so terribly as a result of the Tory cost-of-living crisis. In 1944, he fought to defeat fascism on the beaches of Normandy. At the end of the war, he returned home to the promise of a land fit for heroes. But now, in his late 90s and living alone, he is terrified by the prospect that one day very soon his modest pension will not stretch to cover the costs of soaring energy bills and food prices. He is not alone: all across the country, millions of people are living in freezing houses, too afraid to turn the heating on, while others are going hungry so that their kids get a half decent meal.

Meanwhile, with energy prices set to soar by a further 45% by spring, and households bracing themselves for a national insurance tax bombshell, this Government seem far more concerned with their own internal turmoil than with finally getting to grips with this crisis. I put one very simple question to the Minister today: how on earth can he justify letting a man who risked his life to defend our freedoms worry about the cost of turning his heating on in the middle of winter?

Last autumn, I warned Ministers that the impact of rising energy costs and the cut to universal credit risked plunging thousands of people on the Wirral into poverty. At the time, Ministers lazily dismissed my concerns out of hand, and the Prime Minister himself called fears about inflation “unfounded”. My God! Even now, when confronted with the reality of the situation, this Government refuse to act.

My party has set out a credible plan to address the scourge of rising energy costs. I urge Ministers to finally put the interests of our country above those of the Conservative party, and to set about removing VAT from domestic energy bills and implementing a windfall tax on North sea gas and oil to support those most in need. But we must go further still. We must bring the energy sector back into public hands, so we can begin to slash bills for UK consumers and build a greener energy sector that is less dependent on foreign energy supplies. We must also acknowledge that energy is only one part of a much wider problem. For more than a decade, UK workers have seen their wages stagnate as prices have soared. Even our healthcare heroes, who have done so much to save lives and stop the spread of the terrible virus over the last two years, have not been spared, with last year’s measly 3% pay rise amounting to a pay cut in real terms.

The Government must act now. That means abandoning their plan for a national insurance hike, which threatens to hit low-income workers and small businesses hardest of all, and committing themselves to a £15 minimum wage, as called for by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald).

--- Later in debate ---

[David Rutley]

I know where the hon. Lady is coming from. The issue is that younger people typically and often do not face the same cost challenges as other older people, because they are able to share accommodation costs with others. I do not regard it as discrimination, but I acknowledge the different costs that people face.

Further support for working parents has been put in place, doubling free childcare for working parents to 30 hours and increasing the value of healthy start vouchers by over a third, to boost the long-term health of young children. We are investing over £200 million a year from this year to continue the holiday activities and food programme, which provides enriching activities and healthy meals to children in all English local authorities.

I have noted discussion, not just today but yesterday, on concerns about the cost of living. We recognise that those exist, particularly in the case of energy costs. However, let me remind hon. Members of the measures we have in place to combat the adverse effects of the increase in worldwide oil and gas prices, which is a reaction to demand surging after the pandemic and the effect that has had on the global economy and our own economy. The energy price cap will remain in place at least until the end of 2022, to protect millions of customers and ensure they pay a fair price for their energy. Despite the rising costs for said energy, Ofgem has confirmed that the cap will stay at the current level this winter.

Secondly, winter fuel payments will be made to over 11 million pensioners this winter, ensuring that older people have the security and dignity they deserve. Households with someone of state pension age will receive £200, and households with someone over 80 will receive £300. Thirdly, cold weather payments help vulnerable people in receipt of certain income-related benefits to meet the additional costs of heating during periods of unseasonably severe cold weather. That includes older people receiving pension credit and those receiving an income-based benefit with a disability component or where the household includes a child under five. In 2020-21, just over 4 million payments were made, at a cost of just over £100 million.

Finally, this Government are supporting 2.2 million low-income households by issuing a £140 rebate on their energy bills through the warm home discount, which is worth £354 million. From this year, proposed changes will increase the scheme by £121 million, to be worth £475 million a year, with nearly 3 million households receiving a £150 rebate. As I said at the start, we are working across Government—I reiterated this yesterday, as did my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury—to determine the appropriate response to assist vulnerable people facing rising energy costs. We recognise that people will be facing unexpected challenges with essential household costs. That is why in October we introduced a £500 million support fund to assist vulnerable households across the country this winter. The £421 million household support fund in England has enabled local authorities to provide targeted support to households in need of help with the cost of food, utilities and wider essentials; and the devolved Administrations received a total of almost £80 million through the Barnett formula, with Scotland receiving £41 million of that. I am pleased to see that they have all used the money to help households this winter.

Beyond this package of support, some people are struggling with debt pressures. The Government work closely with the Money and Pensions Service, and the wider free-to-client debt advice sector, to provide access to high-quality debt advice. The service remains the biggest funder of free debt advice in England. The DWP also uses appropriate touchpoints to ensure that those in receipt of benefits are signposted quickly and directly to expert financial help. To help those people, the debt respite scheme, also known as Breathing Space, came into effect in England and Wales on 4 May 2021. That gives someone in problem debt the right to legal protections from creditor action.

It is important to place the cost of living challenges in context. Prices are rising in countries around the world. As the global economy recovers from the pandemic, consumer demand is surging at the same time as global supply chains are being disrupted. We recognise and understand the pressures that this is exerting on people’s wallets, and their worries as they see the cost of food, energy and other essentials increase. My right hon. Friends the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—indeed, all of us in government—are listening to those concerns and watching what is happening in the markets. As has been shown during the pandemic, this Government will do what it takes to support those most in need. I can assure hon. Members that we are continuing to actively work across Government to build on the existing support, already available, and to determine the appropriate response to assist vulnerable people facing rising energy costs.

[Mick Whitley]

Could the Minister tell me how it is that 27 energy firms have gone bankrupt? There is something wrong. Could he explain to the Chamber why?

[David Rutley]

The hon. Gentleman got in quickly there; I was about to end my remarks. This is a complex challenge. We know that there has been a real surge, and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is working actively to address these challenges. As I have said here, we are not concerned only about what has happened at the customer-facing end of the supply chain and the challenges that that has given to customers. The issue is the rising prices as well, and that is what we are focusing on.

Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

Mick Whitley Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 20th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Across the country, the British people are waking up to the fact that a Tory promise is an empty promise. From tax hikes on the lowest earners to drastic reductions in our food and environmental standards, and now the triple lock on pensions, this Government have made it absolutely clear that their manifesto commitments just are not worth the paper they are written on.

This latest U-turn could hardly have come at a worse time. Having endured immense suffering during the pandemic, retired people are now being forced to grapple with the fallout of the Government’s incompetence, from rising inflation to food shortages, and now we have soaring energy prices just as we enter the coldest months of the year. Pensioners are being told they must survive on the lowest state pensions in all of Europe.

The last Labour Government proudly set themselves the goal of ending pensioner poverty in our country, and when they left office, the number of retired people in poverty was at a historic low. After more than a decade of Conservative Governments, nearly a fifth of pensioners are languishing in poverty, with women and black and minority ethnic pensioners disproportionately affected. As the nights draw in and temperatures begin to fall, many older people in my constituency of Birkenhead will be forced to choose between putting a hot meal on the table and heating their homes. As they do, they will undoubtedly be asking themselves how they can ever trust this Government again.

The Secretary of State has justified this measure as a temporary response to the extraordinary conditions created by the pandemic and said that it is impossible to accurately estimate underlying earnings growth. She must now commit to publishing the advice she has been given on this issue.

Millions of people across our country are filled with a sense of dread at the prospect of the coming winter, from overworked and underpaid healthcare workers to families struggling to get by on universal credit. Pensioners are not being and will not be spared from a cost of living crisis that is engulfing our poorest and most vulnerable communities, but that will be nothing compared with the suffering that will be inflicted on retired people in winters to come if the triple lock is not reinstated again in 2023.

As Age UK has warned, we have simply no hope of tackling pensioner poverty without an absolute commitment to the triple lock. As many of my retired constituents look fearfully to the future, I call on the Secretary of State to reaffirm her commitment to the triple lock and to guarantee to the House that this Bill will not be the first step in doing away with this vital safeguard altogether.