Oral Answers to Questions
Rosie Cooper Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Esther McVey
My hon. Friend raises yet another good point. Under Labour, the number of people living in households where nobody had ever worked doubled. We therefore needed not only to do a lot of work to bring us back to the regular standards of what we had before Labour came into office, but to build on that to get more people into work. That is exactly right. We have helped hundreds of thousands of those people who were left unemployed for a long time.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
10. Whether universal credit will be available to migrants from the European Economic Area when it is fully rolled out.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
16. What recent steps he has taken to stop welfare tourism.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
Citizens of the European economic area who choose to come here without a job to start will not be able to access universal credit. We have introduced several restrictions to benefits to ensure that our welfare system focuses support on those who are contributing to the economy. These include strengthening the habitual residency test, banning access to housing benefit for new EEA jobseekers, and introducing a three-month residency requirement for income-based jobseeker’s allowance.
Rosie Cooper
The Secretary of State originally predicted that 1 million people would be on universal credit by April last year. The latest figure is 26,000. I understand that last October he predicted a figure of 100,000 by May—does he still believe that?
Mr Duncan Smith
The universal credit programme is working well. It is now completing its roll-out to all the areas in the north-west, to all singles, couples and families. In the next month, it will start rolling out across the country, and that will bring universal credit to more jobcentres. By the time that process is completed, one in three jobcentres will be running universal credit. The key thing is to make sure that we get this vital reform, which helps people to get back into work faster, that we land it correctly and safely, and that we learn the lessons of the past when things like tax credits, brought in under the previous Government, were absolute disasters wasting billions of pounds in lost money and fraud.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rosie Cooper Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
1. What steps he is taking to improve the administration of the work capability assessment.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)
I am committed to continually improving the administration of the work capability assessment. I am pleased to say that since the announcement in the House during our last Question Time, the backlog has fallen from 766,000 to 712,000.
Rosie Cooper
On 10 June, the Minister admitted to the Select Committee that 712,000 work capability assessments were outstanding. That number includes 234 recipients of incapacity benefit who are to be assessed for employment and support allowance, and 84,000 incapacity benefit recipients who have not yet been migrated. My constituents would like to know who is at fault, Atos or the Minister.
Mike Penning
When the coalition Government came to office, the WCA backlog did not suddenly happen; the problem already existed. However, we take responsibility for what we are doing. [Interruption.] There is no point in Labour Members’ shouting us down. They have short memories, but their backlog existed. If they do not wish to admit that, perhaps we can see the documents, which will enable us to know the facts. We have carried out 1 million incapacity benefit assessments, and 700,000 people are currently being helped into work or are looking for work.
Housing Benefit
Rosie Cooper Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) and the shadow team for giving hon. Members the opportunity to highlight what a farcical, ill-thought-through and shambolically implemented piece of legislation the bedroom tax has turned out to be. The identification of the technical error, to use the polite phrase, is another example of the fundamental failings of the legislation and of why the policy has been an abject failure from the beginning.
A year ago, I spoke in a Westminster Hall debate on this issue. In the past year, we have found out that the reforms do not encourage mobility in the social rented sector, that they have not strengthened work incentives and that we are not making better use of social housing. In February 2012, the impact assessment exposed the real motivation for the Government’s actions, stating that
“savings in Housing Benefit expenditure will only be realised in full if social tenants do not seek to move from the homes they are under-occupying”.
Fundamentally, the legislation has always been about the rhetoric of being tough on welfare spending. The Government want it to appear as though they are getting welfare spending under control. Sadly, it is just empty rhetoric.
In West Lancashire, only 33 working-age households have transferred to smaller properties and just three tenants have downsized through mutual exchanges, yet more than 1,000 tenants have the under-occupation indicator. Of those, 625 are in arrears, even though 401 of them were in credit or had a nil balance at the beginning of the financial year. In 81 cases, there has been a notice seeking possession against those who had been in credit or had a nil balance on their rents. Those figures are just for the first six months. That shows the speed with which families have been forced into financial turmoil and uncertainty by the bedroom tax.
West Lancashire borough council has identified 150 council tenants who have been affected by the technical error. That is 150 families who have been pushed to the financial edge unfairly and unnecessarily. We know that that is the case because, in trying to resolve the mess, the council has stated that the situation is complicated by those who have claimed discretionary housing payments. In avoiding duplication, the council will have to recover the payments and reconcile them against the tenants’ overpayments. That is what I call a bureaucratic mess, and a very costly one.
Philip Davies
Will the hon. Lady explain why she thinks that a single person on housing benefit, who perhaps does not go to work, should be able to live freely in a three-bedroom property, when a couple who are hard at work and cannot afford such a large property have to pay for that property for them? How can she say that it is fair that people who are working hard and who cannot afford such a large property are paying the costs of single people who do not work at all?
Rosie Cooper
Only a Government Member could begin to pose that question. The Government need to provide the means to make the change. Single people do not necessarily want to sit in a three-bedroom house. They need a property to go to. The Government need to provide the means to enable them to make that change. I will not be taught any lessons by the hon. Gentleman.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that housing benefit is an in-work benefit, not an out-of-work benefit? To talk about people sitting at home, out of work, on housing benefit is completely out of context.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I know that you are enthused by the debate, Mr Davies, but it does not help if we have a separate debate going on while a Member is speaking. It would be helpful if we could get through all the speakers. I hope to get everyone in.
Rosie Cooper
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue). I did not hear the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) say that those people were out of work.
The idea that welfare spending is coming under control is a myth. West Lancashire borough council has stated that its intention is to raise rents by 4.6% from April. That will increase housing benefit payments by £630,000 a year. We are seeing a significant and rapid increase in the council’s arrears. From being in the region of £375,000, they have shot up to nearly £500,000. How is that keeping welfare spending under control? Arrears are increasing across the sector. Social landlords have had to take on additional staff to collect rent and give budgeting advice.
Let us not forget that the Government have acknowledged that they have made a complete mess by rushing to prop up the housing benefit system using discretionary housing payments. Disabled people and people who need their own bedroom for medical reasons are going cap in hand to prove that they are poor, to get a discretionary housing payment handout. I understand that a large amount of discretionary housing payment is going unspent because the council’s means test is too stringent.
Some councils, believe it or not, are taking disability living allowance into account when determining whether someone should receive discretionary housing payment, even though the guidance from the Department for Work and Pensions states that councils should not do so because it inflates a disabled person’s income unfairly. Disability living allowance is meant to fund additional costs that are due to the claimant’s disability or health issue. It is not meant to fund the additional housing costs resulting from the spare bedroom tax.
Discretionary housing payments should be awarded for 26 weeks or 52 weeks, but some councils, including West Lancashire borough council, are offering them for only 13 weeks, which leads to more form-filling and bureaucracy.
There is no escaping the fact that welfare spending has to be addressed. However, the snapshot that I have given of West Lancashire—just one community—shows that the bedroom tax is not the way to do it. The abject failure of this policy is costing taxpayers more and more. Although Ministers are talking tough, they are, as ever, failing to deliver. In their case, talk is not cheap. The only transitional arrangement that we need to discuss is the transitioning of this legislation off the statute book.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rosie Cooper Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mike Penning
As the Minister of State for disabled people—a brand new role, with not a junior Minister but a senior Minister—it is my role, across government and including local authorities, to make sure that the system is working. Where there are problems, I will look at them. I will be working closely with all the authorities that the hon. Lady has suggested, but I do not accept her premise as to how many of them will be worse off.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
10. How many former Remploy workers are now in employment.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)
At 4 October 2013 1,326 disabled former Remploy workers are engaging with personal case workers to find jobs; 535 are in work, and 390 are on Work Choice and training, which makes a total of 925 in work or training.
Rosie Cooper
Notwithstanding that answer, more than 93% of disabled people on the Work programme are simply failing to find work. I put it to the Minister that the Government’s record on disability employment is simply a disgrace and is another example of the Government talking big and tough but failing to deliver.
Esther McVey
The hon. Lady has bounced across various subjects there, but may I just put on the record the fact that the Remploy factories had faced an uncertain future since 2008 and that her Government closed 29? We have sought to support the people involved in the best way possible, and so 925 out of the 1,325 are in work or training. We are talking about significant support and significant movement into work; the rate is higher than the one relating to regular redundancies. As I said before, the Work programme is working. It has significantly improved under my predecessor and we will continue that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rosie Cooper Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Duncan Smith
Interestingly enough, I had the right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) in to see me last year and I told them exactly how we were rolling the system out—[Interruption.] No, no. I told them that the pathfinder would continue first of all with single claimants. As for the idea that somehow things have changed—he knew about that then and the situation is exactly the same now.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
11. What steps he is taking to publicise the potential effects of planned regulation changes on claimants currently in receipt of (a) the disability living allowance higher rate and (b) Motability cars.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)
We wrote to every DLA claimant earlier this year, as well as holding stakeholder engagement events and MPs’ events. Online, there is a personal independence payment checker and a PIP toolkit. As the hon. Lady asks specifically about the highest rates of both components, I am sure that she will pleased to know that we have increased those rates under PIP from 16% to 23%, which is an increase of seven percentage points.
Rosie Cooper
It came as a great shock to my constituents that the new regulations will see the removal of the Motability lease payments after 28 days of a person’s being in hospital. Will the Minister explain why she is prepared to leave disabled people worried about going into hospital and potentially losing their Motability car, losing their deposit and having to restart the whole process when they come out? They will be worried about what it will mean for them to reapply for a new car with new adaptations that requires a new deposit. Additional administration will fall on the Department for Work and Pensions, so who will bear the cost incurred when the exclusively and specifically adapted Motability cars have to be returned—
Mr Speaker
Order. I think that the hon. Lady’s essay —perhaps even her thesis—has been completed.
Housing Benefit Entitlement
Rosie Cooper Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Bayley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) on securing the debate, which gives Members the opportunity to highlight the abject failure and inherent contradictions that lie at the heart of the Government’s housing benefit reforms. Lord Freud, in response to hon. Members’ letters, suggests that the reforms are aimed at encouraging mobility within the social rented sector, at strengthening work incentives and at making better use of social housing. My response is clear: they don’t, they won’t and they can’t.
I will highlight, through constituents’ cases, how the policy is nothing more than a crude and naked attempt to place an ever greater burden on some of the most vulnerable people in our communities by slashing budgets. I get the sense that, as an abstract idea, reducing the welfare bill by cutting housing benefit to all the supposed scroungers living in houses far bigger than they need is a policy that will press all the Government’s public relations buttons. The problem is that we are not talking about abstractions; we are talking about families, people’s homes and perhaps forcing people to choose between food, heating and paying the rent.
I have 103 families affected, and I wish to race through three examples. One such constituent is accepted by the council as unintentionally homeless. She has a five-year-old child, is pregnant and is in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance. She could be a perfect example of the type of person whom the Government are seeking to characterise, stigmatise and castigate. Yet, when the local authority comes back to her, it is with an offer of a four-bedroom property, so her housing benefit will be reduced by 25%. That constituent and her young family will go from being homeless to facing extra financial burdens. In the long term, that means increasing her debt, so she faces possible eviction by the very people who gave her the house, because she cannot pay the 25% contribution required as a result of being given a property that was too big in the first place.
West Lancashire borough council, as the housing body, is, by its allocation policy, complicit in the inappropriate letting of properties. That allocation policy perpetuates the exact problem that the Government claim that they intend to solve by reforming housing benefit. If I were being kind, I could suggest that the case highlights the fact that social landlords and councils do not have the range of housing stock to meet the challenges that the Government are setting. People are making short-term decisions to put a roof over their heads and neglecting the long-term consequences of under-occupancy. Why is my constituent left to face the consequences of a decision that will be forced on her?
My second example is that of a disabled man living in a two-bedroom property—it was a three-bedroom property, but it was adapted. His daughter is in the armed forces, so he technically has two bedrooms empty. If he moves to a smaller flat—there are none available, by the way—the council will have to pay for adaptations to be made to the new flat, while removing the adaptations from the original flat to make it available for re-letting.
Another case involves a constituent who is separated. He has his children to stay on alternate weekends and midweek. The Government say they defend families and put them at the core of what they do, but this policy does not show that at all. The February 2012 impact assessment says:
“savings in Housing Benefit expenditure will only be realised in full if social tenants do not seek to move from the homes they are under-occupying”.
Rather than wanting people to move, the Government would prefer them, ideally, to stay where they are and pay the increased costs, even if they do not have the money.
This policy is absolutely unfair, and that has been shown by the contributions made so far. The Government are abjectly failing to offer people the range of accommodation or the jobs that would enable them to alter their situations. I do not call it fair when the Government place greater burdens on the most vulnerable.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rosie Cooper Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Grayling
We need two things to solve the problem of youth unemployment. We need a strategy for growth, which was at the heart of the Budget put forward by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer a few weeks ago. We will continue to seek measures that will encourage business to grow, develop and create jobs in this country. Alongside that, we will continue to pursue measures, through work experience, the Work programme and other arrangements to support young people to make sure that they are as well equipped as possible to take advantage of those vacancies wherever in the United Kingdom they arise and wherever in the United Kingdom they live.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
Last week, we launched the Work programme—the biggest single such programme that the UK has ever had. It contrasts with the number of confusing and sometimes prescriptive provisions offered previously. We are adopting a personalised and flexible approach, which the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) spoke about earlier. It will involve paying providers by results, which we have explained, and will give them the freedom to innovate. The Work programme will deliver, we believe, effective and cost-effective support to help claimants into sustainable employment.
Rosie Cooper
Rising fuel costs, 20% VAT, high inflation and cuts to the winter fuel allowance and local government budgets will all hit vital front-line services used by pensioners. I should be grateful if the Minister would explain to the pensioners of West Lancashire why the Government need a new material deprivation indicator to tell them what they already know—that the policies of this Conservative-led Government are hitting them over and over again?
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
The hon. Lady is right that we did not reverse Labour’s planned cut in the winter fuel payment. What we did is reverse Labour’s planned cut to the cold weather payment, which pays £25 a week every time the temperature falls below zero—and we ended up paying more than £400 million to cold, vulnerable pensioners, which is money that the Labour party would not have spent.
Housing Benefit
Rosie Cooper Excerpts(14 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Bob Blackman
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. The housing associations throughout this country seek changes of tenure, changes of regime and an encouragement to develop the housing that this country desperately needs in every local authority area. I trust that that is what will happen. The coalition Government have set out their stall: we will build 150,000 new homes during the life of this Government. We agree that that is not enough, and we would like to see more. What we want to see is young people getting a foot on the housing ladder, moving out of rented accommodation and purchasing their own property. What has to change is that the applicable lending regimes of the banks, building societies and suchlike must enable people to get on the property ladder.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman comment on my local authority, West Lancashire borough council? It wanted to build a new civic centre, and in so doing said that it would build affordable houses and in the process knock down four good homes. While he is speaking about that—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I call Bob Blackman, who has four seconds left.