Supporting Disabled People to Work

Mike Penning Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I will have to write to the right hon. Lady to give her the exact figures, but the principle we have to look at is giving individuals who are more than two years away from the jobs market, real and intense support to help them get there. At the moment, the best route is through the specialist employment support. Last year, we had 1,520 starts, of which 600 people were able to get at least a placement for 13 weeks, leading to permanent jobs. We need to continue to do everything we can on personalised support and linking up with local employment opportunities.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

As a former disabilities Minister—I had other roles within the Department as well; it was not just disabilities, but that was the lead issue—I say to those on the Front Bench, and I hope the Prime Minister is listening, that we should have a Minister for this role as soon as possible. I do not understand why that has not taken place.

Disability Confident is a great success. As parliamentarians, we can push it forward in our own constituencies, as we have in my constituency of Hemel Hempstead, so that people have the confidence to get into work and employers can employ the right people.

[Justin Tomlinson]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. We can help to raise the awareness of Disability Confident. We can do our own Disability Confident events, and we can write to employers to encourage them to sign up and to work with local organisations that support disabled people to find job opportunities. It should be a real priority for all of us.

Social Security

Mike Penning Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

I welcome the draft Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2019 and the draft Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2019. I understand that both schemes, which will ensure fair and timely payments to those with asbestos-related diseases, fall outside the general benefits uprating process and that, as such, no review mechanism is formally built into legislation to uprate the payments each year.

The Government’s 2.4% increase in the payments is very welcome and rightly demonstrates an ongoing commitment to supporting those suffering from asbestos-related diseases, many of whom contracted the disease through no fault of their own, and their families. For reasons that will become apparent, I wonder whether a future statutory instrument will include a table of occupations or professions—the regulations include a helpful breakdown of the ages of those with mesothelioma at first diagnosis—as that would help to identify those at risk and could perhaps be cross-referenced with other areas of support for those suffering from mesothelioma, where necessary.

Five years and one month ago, our former colleague from Wythenshawe and Sale East, Paul Goggins, tragically and suddenly passed away. Paul and I had tabled several cross-party amendments to the Bill that became the Mesothelioma Act 2014, and colleagues on both sides of the House will agree that his expertise and compassion have been and continue to be a great loss. He was the driving force behind much of the work on mesothelioma, and the ongoing success of the scheme is testament to his commitment to the issue and a fitting legacy for him as a parliamentarian.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

I was the Minister responsible for taking the Mesothelioma Act through Parliament and, despite the restrictions I was under, Paul was an enormously useful knowledge base. At times I went back to my civil servants and said, “No, I have facts from people who were involved in this.” That was very useful, and the House should recognise the work of Paul Goggins.

[Tracey Crouch]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s intervention. I still have the Christmas card that Paul gave to me just before we rose for Christmas in 2013, in which he started, “Dear fellow meso warrior”. He was passionate about this, and it was a real privilege to have tabled amendments in his name—obviously, he was unable to be here to push them through.

We were successful during the passage of the Mesothelioma Act—with the support of colleagues on both sides of the House and in the other place, led by Lord Alton of Liverpool—in aligning payments with the 100% average civil damages. I am therefore sure that, like me, Paul would have welcomed the Minister’s written ministerial statement of 23 January on the diffuse mesothelioma payment scheme which confirmed, thanks to the excellent work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), that the levy to be charged for 2018-19, payable by the insurance industry to fund the scheme, will be just short of £40 million.

Since the launch of the scheme in 2014, £130 million has been paid in compensation to almost 1,000 sufferers—that is £130 million that was not previously available to those suffering from mesothelioma who are not covered by the alternative schemes and unable to trace their employer’s liability insurance. I am grateful for the efforts of everyone in the House, including the late Paul Goggins and my right hon. Friend, who was the Minister at the time, in helping to provide such compensation for those who would not have had it previously.

Having worked with long-suffering officials at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport for three and a half years as a Minister, I will take a second to praise the oversight committee’s annual report on the scheme. The report is well set out and tells us everything we need to know in a clear and transparent way, so I thank the officials who worked hard on it.

One amendment that Paul and I were sadly unsuccessful in adding to the legislation would have introduced an additional levy on the insurance industry to fund research into mesothelioma. It remains the case, as it has for decades, that mesothelioma is poorly understood and underfunded. We know it has a long latency period and is an incredibly aggressive form of lung cancer, and we also anticipate a future spike in diagnoses, with Medway a particular hotspot for the disease given its rich shipbuilding and industrial heritage. I am pleased that Medway clinical commissioning group is working with the local hospital to review its respiratory pathways, including the care of lung cancer patients, and the CCG is keen to be in the next round of lung health checks because of the higher incidence of mesothelioma in the area.

As the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) said, we urgently need better to understand the disease. We need to work towards a meaningful treatment, and perhaps even a cure. Although I accept that this does not fall wholly within the remit of the Department for Work and Pensions, it is notable that the annual review shows that the levy scheme had a £3.45 million surplus last year. Following agreement with the insurance industry, the surplus was divided equally into the levy for the next three years. It might have been better to put that money into research, as while £3 million is small change in the insurance world, it is a lottery win for research. Again, that might be worth considering for next year. I would be grateful if, on the back of this debate, the Minister would write to me to elaborate on what work her Department is undertaking to engage the Department of Health and Social Care in better understanding the disease and improving outcomes for sufferers.

Asbestos in schools is an important topic. Although, again, this does not fall wholly within the remit of the DWP, it does have important implications for the various schemes the DWP administers for sufferers. In a 2015 Adjournment debate on asbestos in schools, I mentioned that the issue needed a cross-departmental effort led by the Department for Education through the Priority School Building programme. I would be grateful if the Minister could update us on any discussions she has had with DFE colleagues on the potential impact of asbestos in schools. For example, is any data shared on the profession of applicants to the asbestos-related schemes whose benefits are administered by her Department?

There is a huge amount to commend in the Government’s ongoing commitment to supporting those who suffer from mesothelioma and asbestos-related diseases. I miss my meso partner in crime, Paul Goggins, enormously. Although he would agree that the progress should be celebrated, he would continue to say that there is always much more that can be done further to improve the outcomes for sufferers of this terrible disease.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

I rise in support of both these statutory instruments, which are sensibly being taken together, not least because we can now talk about the need to compensate people because of two basic products: coal and coal dust; and asbestos. This country got its wealth from coal, as men went down the mines to bring the coal out. For centuries, the wealth it provided put this country where it was. Asbestos was the great invention post-war, the insulating product that saved many lives, not least in fire prevention and insulation. Subsequently, however, it has destroyed millions of lives in this country today.

I am supporting the Minister today. I sat on the Bench where she is, taking these original measures through. I will make some more arguments in a moment, but at that time I made exactly the argument that the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) just made: why is this increase not automatically put through? I do not think there is an answer to that; I think this is just about bureaucracy and red tape. When the Bill was introduced all those years ago it was not perfect, as Bills often are not. There was so much happiness that that compensation Bill was brought through by the Labour party that things were missed or, as was my experience when I brought through the Bill that became the Mesothelioma Act 2014, people said, “It is too difficult. We don’t have the information at the moment. It can’t quite be done in that way.” I will touch on that in a moment. Such a measure would need primary legislation, but it could be tagged on to the many, many social security Bills that this House sees regularly—if we get the long title right, that can be done.

I know that the Minister will be listening, not only to me, but to Members from across the House, as, rightly, that is how she is as a Minister. So, first, I ask her to say to her officials, “This should be the last time that this is done this way.” This House can find time, if it really wants to, to right a wrong. There is no way in the world this House will say no to the uprating, so let us be pragmatic and sensible about it. I know that the officials in the Box will be sitting there thinking, “That Penning is going on again, just like he did when he was a Minister”, but what I am saying is right.

I wish to touch on a trivial point that the shadow Minister made: it is not “fibres” that cause mesothelioma, but fibre; something so small it would sit on the end of my finger will, 40 years from now, almost certainly kill people if it develops. No one understands why, and I will address that in moment. The public need to understand that this could affect people working in a school, a shipyard or myriad other occupations, including my former occupation of fireman. We were completely unprotected when we were going in to pull ceilings down, and turn things over and damp things down so that they did not reignite. Often there would be asbestos there, and we knew that. But we were the lucky ones, I think, because we were protected by the Fire Brigades Union, the union I was a member and branch secretary of; I recall being thrown out of the Labour party for a few years because we were too militant at the time. For me, as a trade unionist, this issue was very important, as firemen have died from asbestos-related diseases.

We have talked about the mines. Miners, often generation after generation after generation, put their lives at risk to go down the mines. Should we have learnt from the dangers? I agree that in some cases we should have done, but in other cases we did not really know. I used to live just down the road from a coal merchants, and as lads we often used to go to earn a bit of pocket money by filling the sacks. The coal dust there was not that much different from that in a mine, although the work was not as arduous as working down a mine. Did we realise, and did they realise, that this could seriously damage our lungs in the future? Of course not. So we need to learn from the past, and we have rightly done so.

I was enormously proud to bring through this House, as the Minister, the 2014 Act, which compensates people in cases where we cannot find their insurer and their employer, and where they were the missing few. I was lobbied heavily by my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and by Paul Goggins and others to make it 100% rather than the 80% that was initially proposed, and to include third parties. Let us just think for a minute about what “third party” means. It often means the partner. It often means the wife of someone who worked in a shipyard and came home in his overalls covered in asbestos, which she then washed and hung out on the line. Is it right that we do not make sure that she has just as much, and that those families and those kids have just as much? The kids playing in the yard where those overalls were hanging could have been affected, but let us hope that has not happened. Could we, as was suggested in the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford, have written into the legislation that research should be part of the funding? I was told by my officials that we could not guarantee the money and we must not jeopardise the Bill, but that we could come back to that later. Well, here we are now, later. I stood at that Dispatch Box and said that if there was money there from the levy, that would be used for compensation. I said that on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, on the Treasury Bench, as the Minister, with full authority from the Government. That should now be happening. There was clearly enough for the 100% compensation based on the average for those who had found an employer or insurer, and we now have a golden opportunity to say that the money is there. The insurers will say, “We can’t guarantee this,” but they said that before, and it is based on a levy.

We are not even talking about taxpayers’ money; it is a fund, and we could use it to do two things. First, if possible, we could find a cure and work out exactly what is going to go on. In retrospect, that will save lives and stop people needing money from the levy fund in the first place. I am no longer confident—hindsight is a wonderful thing—about the figures that were put in front of me and that this will taper off in the way predicted. I am not convinced about that because it involves too many industries and professions that are completely different from what we thought in the first place. We were looking at shipyards and plumbing, where asbestos was used extensively as insulation, but, as the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) mentioned, there are currently teachers in schools who are not allowed to put a drawing pin into the wall for fear of moving the asbestos fibres. When it is in place, asbestos is perfectly safe; the issue is when it is moved. There are also hospitals to consider. There is one in Watford that looks after my constituency and dates back to before Victorian times. I am told that rather than build a new hospital, they are going to plough loads of money into that one to regenerate and refurbish it. We know that the asbestos in that hospital is a major problem. Why are we treating people in hospitals where we know that asbestos and dilapidation are issues? We need to protect the public as much as possible and make sure that the compensation schemes are there.

Before I finish, let me touch on the Health and Safety Executive, for which I was responsible as a Minister back in 2014, and which does a remarkable job. At the time, we looked carefully at how it was funded, and almost all its funding came from the central departmental funding stream. It is relatively different now: the Health and Safety Executive is a world leader in health and safety and brings a huge amount of money into the country’s economy, because we have freed it up to be able to do that. That does not mean that outside money should pay for everything. I am absolutely sure that the Health and Safety Executive needs to do the best possible job.

In 2005, my constituency was blown up by the Buncefield explosions—the largest fire and explosion in this country since the second world war. The Health and Safety Executive was absolutely brilliant. We were very lucky that no one died, and that meant that the Health and Safety Executive was responsible for the inquiry. As the constituency MP, I gave the Health and Safety Executive a pretty rough time, as everybody would expect me to have done, to get answers. In many ways, the Health and Safety Executive got those answers, and it was a privilege to be the Minister responsible for it some five years later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Skinner]

Yes, I will get on the phone to Mick and let him know about today’s events. Seriously, if I can tell him that there will be an automatic yearly increase, it will be a token to him and to all those who took part in that exercise at the time. I am very pleased to be here, and very pleased to be taking—

[Sir Mike Penning]

rose—

[Mr Skinner]

Yes, I will give way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Mike Penning]

I just thought that it would be important to the House to put this on the record: I am sure that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) never thought that he would agree with me.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

He has not said that he has yet.

[Sir Mike Penning]

Well, he has actually.

This is why this House is so important. We can come together and say what is right, what is wrong and what can be done. If we come together to put a little bit of pressure on the Minister—not so much at the Dispatch Box today because she will be dragged over the coals—the Secretary of State and the Treasury, we can simply say, “This must be easier for you as a Government, and rather than bringing this forward, we can unite on this.”

[Mr Skinner]

I could not agree more. The fact is that it would be a breath of fresh air away from Brexit. That is my selling point. This is something that the Government will be remembered for. I will tell Mick Clapham on the phone that it is on its way and all the rest of it. It is an exercise away from the torment of Brexit, which even I never thought would reach this stage of argument. I have been voting for about 10 or 15 years—almost on my own—against every treaty. When I used to walk into the Lobby, I would sometimes bump into our leader, and I would say, “What are you doing here?” I used to think that I should have been on my own. However, we are not arguing about that today, because we want to concentrate on this issue.

I want to commend my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) on the Front Bench, who has put the case very well indeed. With all my experience of representing people in the pits, I know how difficult that can be. I want to ensure that we make something out of this, and that yearly increase would be marvellous.

I thank everybody who has taken part in this important mini debate. When we think about the problem of mesothelioma and asbestos, we realise just how lucky we are to escape from it. Many of us go through life never realising that we are so close to all these things. My father was the same; he worked for 50 years in the pit, and when he went for the pneumoconiosis tests, he was told that he had it but he did not qualify for the scheme because the level was less than 10%. I have found countless others who fell into the same trap. I ask the Minister to look at the question of pneumoconiosis, because although it would not make any difference to my father—he went a long time ago—the truth is that a lot of people need a helping hand in that regard. I was speaking to one today.

I thank everybody for taking part in this important debate. It means that people suffering from mesothelioma will be regarded in a different light than they were before. People will understand that they are not the forgotten few who have been left on the shelf. There are still thousands of people with pneumoconiosis, particularly in the mining areas and especially in Wales. I found out about the levels in Wales through my own experience working in the pits. It may have been because of the anthracite—I am not sure. It is pretty clear that miners in Wales mined a lot of anthracite, and pneumoconiosis levels there were sky-high compared with some other areas’ mining districts. That is something to remember.

I compliment everybody who has taken part in this debate. It is very important and it means a lot to the people who are suffering and hanging on, especially those with mesothelioma and those who have been affected by asbestos, with pleural plaques and everything else. Believe me, this condition is almost like a death sentence the moment that people get it. Pneumoconiosis is slightly different from a medical point of view.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

Of course we want to do the right thing, which is why we are here today, uprating the scheme. However, we should pause to reflect on the fact that this debate has enabled us to look at this dynamic situation; the hon. Member for Bolsover was absolutely right to describe it as such. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) said that he has doubts about some of the forecasts around the schemes. We have also heard from other Members who want us to look at research and at what more we can do. If we did not have the opportunity of this debate, how would hon. Members have been able to raise those matters? I will seriously look at the question of an automatic uprating, but today has also proved the importance of giving hope to so many constituents through such a debate.

[Sir Mike Penning]

The Minister is being very generous and the House is listening very carefully because this is such an important debate. This House is not going to turn down the uprating—never would. But we could actually have a proper debate on this subject through the Backbench Business Committee or in Government time. Actually, half the things that we have been talking about today are nothing to do with what is actually on the Order Paper, with all due respect, Mr Deputy Speaker; we have been having a more general discussion. That is probably the answer. I accept that the Minister has to take this question away, but this is a golden opportunity to say that this House accepts that the scheme should be automatically uprated. We should then have a general debate on the issues, but that should not be a reason not to uprate the schemes.

[Sarah Newton]

My right hon. Friend makes a really important point. I have already committed to taking this matter away, but this debate has been very valuable. As we have seen from the quality and range of contributions, this debate has allowed the time for Members to raise a lot of important matters. Quite rightly, we have roamed far and wide, but this was an important debate none the less.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Penning Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

If the hon. Gentleman has a particular case to raise, I am happy to discuss it, but I should say that I and my colleagues go up and down the country to jobcentres, and I am afraid that the characterisation that he described is not the one we find. We find work coaches who are really enthusiastic about delivering universal credit and supporting people on a one-to-one basis. When it comes to payments, 80% of people get their full payment on time for the first assessment period and 90% will be receiving at least part-payment, but of course we require information to be provided to us—for instance about childcare or other costs—before we can make those payments.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

I have sat here patiently through questions, and there have been lots of congratulations from across the House, particularly to the Secretary of State and the previous Secretary of State, quite rightly, but the people who should be congratulated are those in jobcentres and those who have got the jobs. In my constituency of Hemel Hempstead, which is a new town—it is 70 years old, but we are a new town—we have the lowest unemployment ever. In 2010 it was 2,460; it is now 820. Those people should be congratulated.

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my right hon. Friend for pointing out the real benefits seen over the past few years and how important it is that the system helps individuals into work. It is the people who have got the new jobs who need the congratulations, but also the work coaches, who for the first time provide a personal service to ensure that every individual is helped into work.

Employment and Support Allowance Underpayments

Mike Penning Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

We first came to the House to talk about this issue last December, and we have regularly updated the House since. I myself have already apologised. Clearly, this was a dreadful administrative error in the Department and should not have happened. The permanent secretary has also apologised to the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office for the administrative mistakes.

It is important to recognise that, when people were transferring across from IB to ESA, a very paternalistic approach was taken, meaning the claimant was not involved in the transfer at all. All the funding they were receiving from the Department was transferred across, so nobody had anything taken away from them; rather, people missed the opportunity to receive additional support by way of an additional premium. We are now making sure, by reviewing these cases, that people get everything they are entitled to, because it is important that our benefits system benefits those who are entitled to it.

The hon. Lady raises important questions about what we have learned. We have learned a great deal from this exercise. As we have regularly told the House and Select Committees—the permanent secretary was before the Work and Pensions Select Committee only yesterday answering questions—the culture and mechanisms in the Department for spotting errors have been fundamentally reviewed. As we have discussed at length—this is a matter of public record—people in the Department and stakeholders came forward and pointed out some of the problems with the migration, but the Department responded in the belief that they were a series of one-off errors.

By 2014, it was recognised that some people were not being migrated accurately, and guidance was put in place. These were administrative errors that occurred in the Department, and officials took the appropriate action to the best of their ability. In fact, it was thanks to the good housekeeping of the DWP that the scale of the error was spotted. It was during the routine work undertaken on fraud and error that it was detected. At that point, Ministers were told, and they then undertook the administrative exercises that have led to the situation today.

As the Minister responsible now, I am looking towards the next huge migration of people—from ESA to universal credit—and the Secretary of State has made it absolutely clear that we will take an extremely careful test-and-learn approach and make sure that this time we involve the claimant in the migration. That is how we will avoid the situation reoccurring.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

The Minister has rightly apologised, and I, too, apologise, because I was the responsible Minister during part of the migration. Mistakes happen in all Governments—they happened during the 13 years Labour was in government and before that when we were in government. The question is how we handle it. In a Department with a budget in excess of £250 billion a year, mistakes will be made, but will the Minister make sure, where compensation payments are required—because there will be people who have suffered—that we admit it and address it, rather than taking a partisan attitude, which I am sorry to say we have heard here today? Mistakes were made before, and mistakes have been made now. We have to address that today.

[Sarah Newton]

I appreciate what my right hon. Friend says. As I have made clear from the start, and as is completely supported by the Secretary of State, my focus is to fix the problem as soon as possible. We have put in considerable additional resource to make sure people get back payments as soon as possible. As far as possible, we are reaching out and getting the money to those who will most benefit from it.

I also want to reassure the House that the families of people who would have benefited from this additional payment and who tragically have died are being contacted. We are trying to find their families so that they can have that money.

Then there is the whole issue of whether people have missed out on passported benefits; I think that is the point that my right hon. Friend was raising. Each passported benefit is the responsibility of the Government Department concerned, and it would be very impractical for us to find out whether people accessed particular schemes. For example, the Department of Health, as we all know, has a low-income prescription scheme that some people might have accessed and some might not have done. We are going through the process of, wherever possible, making sure that people get the money that they should have as soon as possible. We have ongoing discussions with the other Departments that have passported benefits to make sure that people on low incomes get those benefits.

Universal Credit

Mike Penning Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I do not want to waste the hon. Gentleman too early, so let us save him up for a later point in our proceedings. I am going to hear a point of order from a knight.

[Sir Mike Penning]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am leaping to my feet on behalf of colleagues from around the House and their constituents. There is a fine balance between the security of this place—making sure that the staff and everybody who visits this place are safe—and making it as open as possible for visitors so that the public can see this place. With that in mind, the security particularly at the Cromwell Road visitors entrance has been brought to my attention by my constituents and, on investigation, by others. Last night, a constituent of mine waited in the rain for an hour and a half to get into this place for a two-hour event on the Terrace for which they had been charged an awful lot of money, and they only had half an hour at the event. On investigation by myself, I can say this has been happening a lot. It is not just about one night; it is happening a lot.

Mr Speaker, I know that you will say to me, “Investigate with the Serjeant at Arms.” I have done that—I spoke to him at the side of his chair—and I know this needs to be investigated, and he cannot give me an answer now. However, we want this place to be open to the public, and we do not want people to feel that they are being ripped off if they are paying for rooms, which are now very expensive. I seek your advice about how I can raise this issue and have it investigated.

[Mr Speaker]

The right hon. Gentleman has raised the issue, and I can understand and empathise with the enormous frustration, not to say irritation, that he and doubtless his constituent feels. His constituent probably feels genuinely let down in this situation, and I will speak to the Parliamentary Security Director about it. As the right hon. Gentleman says, there is a balance, and he speaks with a very considerable personal knowledge and experience of security matters, both from his past career and from his time serving as a Minister. I will discuss it with the Parliamentary Security Director, and I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman as quickly as I can.

On the big picture issue, nobody should have to wait an hour and a half to get into this place, and if that has happened an apology is due, and it should not continue to happen. As colleagues will know, I do not have operational control in this place. I do my best to promote good policy, but I do not have operational control. If this happens, it should not do so: it is not an acceptable state of affairs. I will try to get a satisfactory response for the right hon. Gentleman. I will come back to him when I have further and better particulars, and that will be soon.

Widowed Parent’s Allowance

Mike Penning Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. The Court ruling specifically applied to Northern Ireland, but I understand the point he has made and I would be happy to meet him to discuss wider implications across the UK. On the other points he raised, those are the very things we are considering, and I will update the House once we have the chance to assess them fully.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

I am no fan of the European courts and I am extremely pro-marriage, but we have to live in the modern world that we live in now, and when the Government consider how to respond to this Court ruling, will they look at something called fairness and natural justice? Many people who will have been able to go to work because their partner stayed at home with the children will have then lost their loved one when they were not married. We need to show compassion, while understanding the benefits system.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that and he raises a fair point. As with any of the benefits we provide for those in need, this is always underpinned by the principle of fairness.