Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

9. What the cost to the public purse of implementation of universal credit has been to date; and how many people have been enrolled on universal credit.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

18. What progress he has made in rolling out universal credit; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

Universal credit is rolling out as planned: on track and on time. I can announce today that it will be in every jobcentre by April next year. Estimates of the total cost of implementation have fallen from £2.4 billion to £1.7 billion, with £0.6 billion having been spent to date. Over a quarter of a million people have now made claims to universal credit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

With respect, I meant the Labour Member sitting just below him. The number of people getting back into work directly as a result of universal credit has had a net benefit to the Exchequer of £3 billion-plus. I call that a real benefit in real terms.

[Nigel Mills]

I welcome the fact that universal credit reached my constituency about five weeks ago, but for the benefit of constituents concerned about what will happen when they move from tax credits to universal credit, will the Secretary of State confirm when that move will now take place?

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vara]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman when he says that we are not taking our responsibility seriously. He will be aware that Pension Wise offers free impartial guidance that can be given by telephone, online or in face-to-face meetings, and that the Money Advice Service provides a free directory with more than 2,250 firms registered on it. That equates to more than 6,000 individuals who can give advice. In Scotland, there are 162 firms that can give such advice to people, so there are plenty of people out there, but if the hon. Gentleman knows of individual cases, I would be happy to hear from him.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that certain savers who have old, with-profits policies are being forced to pay for financial advice and to get a sign-off, sometimes on an insistent client basis? It can often cost them a lot of money to access their money under the new freedoms. Would the Minister be prepared to look at this matter again, in order to strike the right balance between providing the right advice and not pricing people out of the market?

[Mr Vara]

My Department is keen to ensure that the consumer does not miss out, and we are working closely with the Financial Conduct Authority to ensure that the rules and regulations are fit and proper. If my hon. Friend would like to bring any particular cases to my attention, I would be happy to look at them.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in support of this very important Bill, which is one of the measures we need to move us to the high pay, low tax, low welfare economy that the Secretary of State wants.

I will start with the measures relating to work. From having served on the Work and Pensions Committee, I know that getting people into work is the area of the Department that gets the least scrutiny. The reporting obligations on full employment and apprenticeships are a really important step forward. We all want the 3 million apprenticeships to be created by the end of the Parliament.

I hope that the power the Government are taking to report on the number of apprenticeships will cover the details on the quality of those apprenticeships. I would like the annual report to include the number of higher apprenticeships, because we want apprenticeships that give people real skills and real future careers, not just to be tick-box training schemes that add little value. As we occasionally see in our constituencies, some employees get sold such schemes, and we ought to look at whether they provide any real advantages. The reports will be extremely useful.

Another important thing to strengthen work is to have a welfare system that encourages rather than disincentivises it. Our measures to increase the minimum wage, which will start later this year, and to increase the amount of childcare, as well as the welfare reforms, are the right package to ensure that all people and all families are very clear that work will always pay and, at least in the medium and longer term, is the best way of securing a better financial situation.

Whoever won the election, we knew from the campaign that the welfare reform measures would be the most contentious issue at the start of this Parliament. We all knew that we had to find several billions.

[Catherine West]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Mills]

I will give way.

[Catherine West]

He is not my hon. Friend. [Laughter.] I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker.

How many children in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency will be affected by the cuts in the Bill?

[Nigel Mills]

I do not have that number to give the hon. Lady. However, her party is also committed to making large welfare savings. It is very easy to support the theory, but if Labour Members oppose all the large measures that are taken in practice, they are not going anywhere. They have to answer this question. If they are committed to large savings, but they do not support all these measures, which measures would they like to see? That is the challenge. We have to find savings to close the deficit. We have a clear mandate for welfare savings to form a large part of those savings.

The Government have produced measures that are a little less severe and fast than many of us feared they would be. The Labour party thought that they would be a lot more severe only a few weeks ago, when we were told that families would be £1,400 worse off overnight unless the minimum wage went up by 25%. What we are seeing is wages going up by more than 25% and some of the cuts being deferred over several years. The Government have attempted to make the cuts as fair as possible.

[Barbara Keeley]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. He made a point about making work pay. I raised a point with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) about carers and the benefit cap. Some 5,000 carers will be affected by the benefit cap. The hon. Gentleman is talking about making work pay, but many carers cannot work. Does he agree that carers should therefore be exempt from the changes?

[Nigel Mills]

We need to give carers every possible support. They perform an important and difficult role. Having done a bit of caring in my time, I know how hard and stressful it can be. We can look at that, but I cannot stand here tonight and say I would vote for it.

The reduction in the benefits cap is a hugely popular policy. Everybody I spoke to in my constituency said that the benefits cap was a great idea, but £26,000 a year was far too high. It was higher than the average wage in my constituency, so people did not think that it would affect a lot of people. In fact, the number of people who were affected by it in my seat was extremely small.

It is right to bring the cap down and to have different levels in London and the rest of the country. There are different levels of housing benefit around the country and that is one of the biggest costs that trigger the benefits cap, so it is right to have a different level in London. Twenty thousand pounds is the right level for the cap. It is a bit less than the average wage in my constituency. That will show people clearly that anyone who goes out to work will be better off than those who live solely on benefits.

I support the hard decision to have a benefit freeze for four years. When we have to find savings, perhaps one of the least bad ways of doing it is to freeze what people are already getting, rather than taking more people out of the system completely.

The point that the acting shadow Secretary of State raised about the withdrawal rates for tax credits and universal credit showed how fiendishly complicated the tax credits system is. It is difficult to work out exactly who will be hit at what level and by what amount by the new withdrawal rates and the new starting position. That reinforces the case for universal credit. Everyone will be able to see from every pay packet they get that when they work more hours in a month, they are better off than in months when they work fewer hours. We need that system to be in place, rather than the incredibly complex, slow and clunky tax credits system, which applies a year behind or a year ahead. Nobody quite understands how what they get in tax credits bears any relation to the work that they have done in the year.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Even with the changes to universal credit, the taper remains exactly where it was, so every hour in work will mean better pay. That principle still stands.

[Nigel Mills]

I was not doubting that for a second. With the tax credit changes, we need to be sure that the people who are still claiming tax credits understand that they will be better off doing more hours and earning more than they would have been otherwise. That is why universal credit needs to be rolled out. Everyone will be able to see that they are better off month by month, rather than having to work out if they might have been better off a year ago if they had worked a bit less in a complex way through online calculators. That cannot be a sensible system.

On the child tax credit limit, it has to be right that people who spend a life on welfare have to take the same decisions as people who are going out to work. It is therefore right to draw the line at two children for where the welfare system stops helping. There will still be a lot of help through child benefit and the Prime Minister confirmed that we would not seek to limit that. I think that we have got the line in the right place. It should be clear to people that from 2017, if they have more than two children, there will not be more tax credits.

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

We agree that people in work and people not in work should face the same choices, but does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the proposals on limiting access to child tax credit to the first two children will affect working families and those who are out of work?

[Nigel Mills]

Yes, but clearly the principle is that people should have to make the same choices if they are claiming benefits in work or are in work and not claiming benefits. It is not entirely clear whether the Labour party supports limiting child tax credit to the first two children. It sounds like it might support it, but that it dare not quite say so tonight.

Finally, the hardest issue in the Bill is the level of welfare for people in the work-related activity group. We have to get work capability assessments right. We have to get people in the right group, and people must believe themselves to be in the right group. I have seen constituents who have been through the assessment and have accepted the WRAG as a compromise on the basis that they will get much the same as they would get in the support group, but will have some requirements put on them. However, they thought that they should be in the support group. People who ought to be in the support group, but have chosen to be in the WRAG need support to put their situation right.

We need people to get the support that they need. Those who can never and will never work again need the right support. It is not in their interests or ours to put them in a different group. Clearly, we have to get the system right so that those who are in the group where they are meant to be able to work at some point in the future have the right incentives to take the support, undergo the training and get into work, rather than trying to stay on benefits claiming the slightly higher rate. We need to see the detail of how we can get that right and make it fair, so that we do not end up with perverse incentives.

Overall, I welcome the Bill. It is an important step forward in sorting out our deficit and making our welfare system fair for those who are claiming from it and those who are paying for it.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Child Poverty

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. Most of my colleagues are hugely involved in food banks and help them. I welcome food banks: I welcome decent people in society trying to help others who may, for various reasons, have fallen into difficulty. I do not accept that the single cause of that is welfare reform—quite the contrary. Food bank usage has been rising over a period. It was never part of the British system, but in Germany, where we can argue that their welfare payments are higher, 1.5 million people a week use food banks—much more than people do here.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to tackling the root causes of poverty, but one big issue for low-income families is their level of debt. What more can the Government do to help families in that situation?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Problem debt is a huge issue. With universal credit, through “Universal Support—delivered locally”, we are working with local authorities so that if people have a debt problem, we will continue to pay their rent but insist that, working with the council, they are put on debt programmes to help them manage their money and become independent. If they are in debt, they will not sustain themselves through work. That is the key thing to change; my hon. Friend is right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

The Secretary of State is required by law to review the automatic enrolment thresholds in each tax year and may take into account a range of prescribed factors. The review can include considering whether to lower or increase the thresholds or leave them unchanged, as was the case for the current tax year. Freezing the trigger for this tax year will result in approximately 14,000 additional women and 20,000 people overall being brought into pension savings. On the hon. Gentleman’s specific point, I am happy to write to him with further information.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

18. I welcome the Minister to his post.One way of boosting auto-enrolment further would be to ensure that people were more confident when they came to access their savings that they had the full range of choices that the law now allows. What more can the Minister do to encourage pension funds to offer that full range at an affordable and fair price?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I am encouraged by the fact that 91% of people who have already been auto-enrolled have continued to save, which is a welcome step and above initial expectations. We will continue to work with the Treasury, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Pensions Regulator to ensure that flexibilities, information and charges are all delivering for the consumer.