Inequality and Social Mobility

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). So bad is this Government’s failure on social mobility that in December 2017 the Social Mobility Commission walked out in protest, warning that “nothing” was being done to deal with inequalities and social division. That happened within a year of the new Prime Minister delivering a mission statement to the nation, promising to make Britain a country that works not for the privileged few, but for every one of us, and to tackle

“the burning injustice that, if you’re born poor, you will die on average 9 years earlier than others.”

Of all the Government’s failures—on Brexit, schools, public services, and children’s and adult social care—this is the most shameful, because not only have they utterly failed to improve the lives of the less fortunate but they have made those lives much more difficult.

Homelessness, food bank usage and in-work poverty have soared, and the Government’s own data shows that the number of children in absolute poverty has risen to nearly 4 million. What could be more telling of a policy failure than the fact that a quarter of children are growing up in poverty? The privileged have become wealthier, while people from disadvantaged backgrounds have had their opportunities to get on and move up cut off. That is the Conservative way. Big businesses and the super-rich get tax cuts, while children grow up in poverty and schools struggle to pay for basic resources, struggling even to stay open for a full working week.

A hungry child cannot learn, which is why poorer children are falling behind their peers by the age of five. Teenagers who cannot afford university tuition fees and increased debt have their life chances cut off at 18, with children from better-off backgrounds almost twice as likely to go to university than those from low-income families. The out-of-control housing market prevents children from leading independent lives or from moving to bigger cities where job prospects are better. “Know your place and stay in it”—that is the result of Tory austerity.

It is a shameful record, and it is set to get worse under this shambolic Government. The front runner to be the next Prime Minister has already found £10 billion to fund a tax cut benefiting only the richest 12% of taxpayers. The Foreign Secretary wants to cut corporation tax even further than the Government already have to 12.5%, making the UK’s tax rate by far the lowest in the G20 and turning the country into a tax haven for rich people. Whoever is appointed to become our next Prime Minister, there will be more of the same for the majority—“Know your place and pay for the mistakes of the wealthy and powerful.” Rather than helping a few people up the social mobility ladder, we need to construct a framework of social justice, so that everyone can climb, not just a few.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

If the hon. Lady would kindly listen, what I am saying is that the long-agreed change for mixed-age couples was voted on and agreed by Parliament in 2012. We should also be clear that mixed-age couples already claiming pension-age, income-related benefits at the point of change will not be affected, so long as they remain entitled.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

4. What steps her Department is taking to ensure that the monthly assessment period for universal credit takes into account a claimant’s fluctuating income.

[The Minister for Employment (Alok Sharma)]

Monthly reporting allows universal credit to be adjusted on a monthly basis, which ensures that if a claimant’s income falls, they will not have to wait several months for a rise in their UC award.

[Mohammad Yasin]

My constituent who works for the NHS is paid a day outside her assessment period, meaning that she has to borrow money to pay the bills when she loses the benefits she is entitled to. Why, despite the High Court’s ruling, are this Government still making the lives of single working parents as difficult as possible?

[Alok Sharma]

As I have said, we will respond to the judicial review in due course. The hon. Gentleman will also be aware that, where the employer pays a claimant on a fixed date every month but that changes because of a weekend or a bank holiday, we tell the employer that they should still report the actual pay date to the real-time information system, so that the UC claim is unaffected. Guidance is available from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Tomlinson]

My hon. Friend has been campaigning hard on this issue, which is important to his constituents, and, following the fantastic private Member’s Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams), we have committed to carrying out a full review, working with the Met Office, so that we can get more detailed assessments of where cold weather payments are needed, using technology such as satellites, technology on ships, buoys, and so on.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

T7. Will the Government commit to footing the bill for free TV licences for over-75s if the BBC decides it cannot afford to continue funding them?

[Amber Rudd]

I certainly hope that that does not come forward, but I think this is the responsibility of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, so I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will want to put that question to its Secretary of State.

State Pension: Women born in the 1950s

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) for securing this very important debate. It is important for all parliamentarians who believe in equality to continue the fight to put right a wrong for women who were born in the 1950s. It is clear that the Government have given up on them.

Last month, we learned from the former Pensions Minister that, as Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) refused to engage with women born in the 1950s who were adversely affected. She was instructed not to speak to them and was told that they would go away sooner or later. When will the Government get the message that the WASPI women are not going anywhere? People seeking to put right a great injustice do not just go away. Good for them!

Last week’s report by the UN expert on extreme poverty showed that the number of pensioners living in poverty in the UK had risen by 300,000 to 16% in the four years to 2016-17, despite measures such as the triple-lock guarantee. The rapporteur said:

“The impact of the changes to pensionable age is such as to severely penalise those who happen to be on the cusp of retirement and who had well-founded expectations of entering the next phase of their lives, rather than being plunged back into a workforce for which many of them were ill-prepared and to which they could not reasonably have been expected to adjust with no notice.”

He said that the uptick in pensioner poverty was driven by single pensioners, who are significantly more likely to be women. The Government’s response to that damning evidence has been to ignore the findings and shoot the messenger.

[Dr Drew]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the least the Government could do is to make an actuarial assessment of what the true cost would be of paying compensation to people who have clearly lost out heavily?

[Mohammad Yasin]

I thank my hon. Friend for that very important point. I agree 100%.

The Government are completely ignoring that evidence. The new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said that that excellent report on extreme poverty is “highly inappropriate”, but she missed the point. What is highly inappropriate is the Government’s arrogant and dogmatic policy on pension inequality. I have received heartbreaking letters from women who have worked hard and paid their dues all their lives, and have now found themselves struggling and humiliated. There are those who are faring better, but only because they can rely on spouses to help them out. Why should they have to do that? Women who do not have their option, perhaps because their spouse is dead, have found themselves destitute at a vulnerable time in their lives. The Government’s appalling response is to tell those women, who have worked for nearly 40 years, to get on their bike and try to find a job. That is highly inappropriate.

If the Government were even remotely in touch with real life, they would know that that is not an option for most of those women. Many are unable to work or have caring responsibilities for elderly parents, spouses and grandchildren. Instead of dismissing the women born in the 1950s, who are fighting for their rights, and dismissing the UN special rapporteur’s report, the Government should make the welfare system more humane. If they do not, they will be dismissed at the next general election.

Universal Credit

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove). The Government know that stopping free school meals for the poorest children is a shameful policy. They sought to bring the measures in using statutory instruments, in the hope that any challenge would be ineffective. It is clear that the Government do not want to explain this indefensible change.

Some 3,700 children in Bedford are set to miss out on vital support if free school meals are withdrawn from families on universal credit. The Government need to understand that the poverty trap is very easy to get into, but very difficult to get out of. Every penny counts for those families, and for many working families there simply are not enough pennies to get through the month. Last summer, 47% of children who received support from food banks were between five and 11 years old.

[Heidi Allen]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mohammad Yasin]

I am sorry, but I cannot. Many other Members want to speak and it is fair to give them a chance.

During the summer holidays 4,412 more three-day emergency food supplies were given to children than in previous months, and we know that children on free school meals already underperform in schools. Why would any Government choose to make life more difficult and more challenging for those children?

[Mark Menzies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mohammad Yasin]

A number of Members want to speak. It would be unfair if I gave way, as the hon. Gentleman has spoken already.

Why would a Government who claim to want to tackle inequality, to help the disadvantaged, to tackle child obesity and to help out those who are just about managing come up with a policy that does the exact opposite? The new earnings limit is a huge step backwards. According to the Children’s Society, 1 million children in poverty who could benefit now will not. This policy also undermines one of the main reasons given for introducing universal credit in the first place—to ensure that “work always pays”. The new rules will create a situation where working families will be punished for taking on extra hours or accepting a pay rise because they would have their free school meals taken away. These are worth around £400 a year per child—a huge sum for those on a low income.

A recent report from the Food Foundation highlights the deprivation gap, which has increased by more than 50% in a decade. Children in the poorest areas of England are twice as likely to be obese as their wealthier neighbours. The Government could have tackled that problem by increasing the uptake of free school meals and ensuring that all children from low-income households receive a nutritious meal at lunchtime. Instead they are taking those meals away. The Government should have learned from their attempts to take away free school meals in the manifesto that they put to the country last year that they have no mandate to reduce school meals and it makes no sense to do so. Schools cannot teach hungry children. If the Government were serious about life chances and social mobility, they would not be taking food out of the mouths of babes.

Pension Equality for Women

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) for his excellent work on this important and serious issue that is facing some women in this country born in the 1950s. Five and a half thousand women in Bedford borough are affected by the pension changes, which were drawn up with little or no notice, and with no time being allowed for people to make alternative plans for such a life-changing event. I was very pleased to hear last week that Bedford Borough Council voted unanimously to support those women through the WASPI campaign. Depriving people of the money they have worked for and ought to have been entitled to is one of the greatest injustices imposed on a large section of our society.

But it is not just about the injustice. Women from the brilliant Bedford WASPI group told me that they have been robbed of their money, their independence, their pride, their future and even their homes. Some of those women are here today. Many women are destitute. I know of one woman who is now living in sheltered accommodation with her mother, because it was especially women on their own without the safety net of a partner’s income who were simply unable to re-plan their lives with less than five—and sometimes less than two—years’ notice.

The women I spoke to told me they were opposed not to the pension age going up, but to the way it was handled. The first shift in pension age was bad, but the second time the goalposts were moved, under the coalition Government, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. One women told me that although she tried to carry on working, health problems got the better of her and she could not carry on. She said that decades of working and looking after an elderly parent left her with nothing more to give. Her story is a common one, which was why hearing the Government telling women in their 60s who had worked all their lives to get on their bike and find another job was yet another insult.

One woman told me she was particularly upset that WASPI women were pitted against the younger generation, and made to feel greedy, or branded as scroungers, for fighting for the money they had saved for at a time when young people could not even afford a home. But she said that her grandchildren were right behind the WASPI campaign because they knew that fighting for her rights was also fighting for their future rights. Divide and rule is not working on this issue, and the Government need to understand that young people also feel very strongly about this on behalf of their grandparents.

Another woman said that the whole experience had made her feel less of a human being and that only the support of the WASPI movement, and the knowledge that millions of women feel the same way, had helped her to cope. The Government have yet to come up with one good reason not to award a non-means-tested bridging pension until the women affected reach state pension age as well as compensation for those who have already reached state pension age.

The WASPI women are asking for less than they are due, and it is about time they were given it.

Universal Credit Roll-out

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

Universal credit was rolled out in Bedford in May, and it is causing pain and suffering to many of my constituents who find themselves much worse off after being transferred on to the new system. We were told that under universal credit people would never be worse off in work, but in reality the opposite is true. The fastest growing category of people in poverty are those in work, and many people on UC are worse off.

Work does not pay under this Government. Work does not pay for my recently bereaved constituent who has lost her bereavement benefit and now has to look after her two children as a working mother with £300 less a month. Work does not pay for my constituent who is now £250 worse off after transferring to UC. Work does not pay according to local charities, which tell me that on a daily basis they are meeting people who are facing debt crises of one sort or another. This experience is forcing people—often working families—into desperation, real poverty and shame, but it is this Government who should be ashamed, for introducing this cruel, shambolic and failed reform.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Monday 9th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

5. What progress he is making on the roll-out of universal credit.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

9. What progress he is making on the roll-out of universal credit.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr David Gauke)]

The roll-out of universal credit is proceeding to plan, gradually and sensibly. People are moving into work faster and staying in work for longer. The most recent phase of expansion will only take the proportion of the forecast claimant population receiving universal credit from 8% currently to 10% by the end of January.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mohammad Yasin]

A recently bereaved constituent of mine, a working single parent, has seen her income reduced by £300 a month since transferring to universal credit. For her, work does not pay. Will the Secretary of State urgently review the link between agreement to support payments and universal credit, and will he stop the roll-out until he has done so?

[Mr Gauke]

The hon. Gentleman says that work does not pay. Let us be clear: universal credit always means that it is worth working an extra hour and worth taking a pay rise. It is always worth working more under universal credit, which was not the case with the legacy benefits. That is why the evidence is suggesting that people do work more and do work more hours than they do under the legacy systems.