Blind and Partially Sighted People: Employment Support
Stephen Timms Excerpts(6 days, 9 hours ago)
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The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I too congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) on securing this important and illuminating debate, and on the way she introduced it. She has a very deep commitment to this issue, as I know from her long-term work on the all-party parliamentary group. I commend her for that, and I also commend RNIB and the Thomas Pocklington Trust, which support that group by providing the secretariat.
It was welcome to hear hon. Members share their personal experiences. The hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) was absolutely right to remind us of the continuing problem of discrimination in work. It has not gone away and still needs to be addressed. It was great to hear about Julie’s experience of skiing—my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) made his point very powerfully. I visited the Paralympics in Paris for a couple for a couple of days in the summer, and it was inspiring to see the accomplishments of people who are disabled and how much potential they have to contribute. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to do more to realise that potential in our economy and our society.
We all know about RNIB, and I am also familiar with the work of the Thomas Pocklington Trust thanks to my former constituent Helen Mitchell, who is one of its trustees. She arranged for me to pay a very useful and informative visit to its headquarters last year. I pay tribute to it for its work.
As the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) said, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions set out, in a speech in Barnsley in July, our plans to reform the Department for Work and Pensions: rather than being the Department for welfare, it will be the Department for work. Our ambition is an 80% rate of employment, which would be the highest we have ever achieved in the UK. The hon. Member for East Wiltshire is absolutely right to remind us that the current rate of economic activity is still less than it was before the pandemic, so we still have a good deal of ground to make up.
To achieve that ambition, we have to do much better at supporting disabled people, including blind and partially sighted people, into work. We will not achieve our ambition without that. We want people with visual impairments, who, as we have been reminded, have great skills and talents to offer, to have equal chances to enter and thrive in the labour market. We cannot continue with the 40% visual impairment employment gap, which my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea mentioned, and is spelled out in the APPG report. We will collaborate with visually impaired people and organisations advocating for them to work out how we can meet their needs and support them better.
We do not want people with visual impairments to have to give up work, as is too often the case. The hon. Member for Torbay helpfully told us about the experiences of people he was at college with in the 1980s. We want people to be able to stay in work and not have to give it up. If they lose their job, they should be able to get back into work. Having gone into work, they should be able to progress and do well.
As announced in the King’s Speech in July, in the Equality (Race and Disability) Bill we will fulfil our manifesto commitment to tackle the disability pay gap, which my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea highlighted and which other Members also referred to. Additionally, our “Get Britain Working” White Paper, which will indeed be published soon, will announce crucial reforms to employment support. We will change the way that we measure success. For example, we will focus not simply on getting people into a job, but on ensuring that they can stay in work and can progress to higher earnings in the future. We want to support people in the longer term.
We will also overhaul jobcentres. My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme made an interesting point about the importance of assistive technology in jobcentres. We will introduce a new youth guarantee, so that in future nobody will be left on the scrapheap when they are young.
My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea was absolutely right to point out that to achieve all that, we need healthy and inclusive workplaces. There are many employers who excel at creating inclusive workplaces in relation to health and disability, and it was very good to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme about his wife’s positive experiences with her employers. However, the APPG’s report points out that many other employers recognise the value of providing an inclusive workplace and would like to provide one, but they need support to do so; at the moment, they do not feel in a position to do so.
Consequently, we are considering what more we can do to help, because preventing people from leaving the workforce and enabling more people to return to work after absences is a good thing. It is definitely good for the individuals concerned; it is good for their mental health and their sense of fulfilment, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes and Mid Fife (Richard Baker), and the hon. Members for Torbay and for East Wiltshire, reminded us. However, it is also good for businesses and wider society.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes and Mid Fife referred to the work of Lord Shinkwin for the Institute for Directors. I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of that work and I look forward to meeting Lord Shinkwin and discussing some of these issues with him in the near future.
The Disability Confident scheme, which has been referred to in the debate, is a very important resource that we already have. It featured in Lord Shinkwin’s report, my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes and Mid Fife mentioned it, and the hon. Member for Torbay dedicated a good part of his speech to it. That scheme provides a strong platform, with more than 19,000 employers participating in it. It promotes good, inclusive employment and recruitment practices. It supports employers to deliver them and to become able to attract, recruit, retain and develop disabled people.
My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea was absolutely right to underline the importance of accessible recruitment processes in making sure that people are not barred from applying for jobs in the first place. In the Disability Confident scheme, there are many committed employers who are enthusiastic about making recruitment processes accessible and who are determined to do well in that regard. However, I agree with my hon. Friend and with the hon. Member for Torbay that the Disability Confident scheme can do more. I have had some encouraging recent conversations about that, for example, with the Business Disability Forum. Working with both employers and disabled people, we will examine how we can make the Disability Confident scheme more robust and how it can achieve more of its potential. I am convinced that potential is there, but we must realise more of it in future.
We also support employers with a digital information service and in increasing access to occupational health services, which the previous Government rightly recognised was important.
Jim Shannon
In my contribution, I outlined some of the things that we are doing in Northern Ireland. Obviously, that was to help the Minister with ideas that could be used here on the mainland. The Minister has outlined a number of things that are happening here. Does he intend to contact the relevant body in the Northern Ireland Assembly to ensure that we can work better together, share ideas, do things better and make life better for the people we are here for?
Sir Stephen Timms
I certainly welcome opportunities to do that. We need to learn from all the devolved Governments in the UK. There are interesting things happening in Scotland, for example, on social security, and in Northern Ireland, so I am grateful to the hon. Member for drawing my attention to a number of those. I am keen to pursue that further.
Disabled people and those with health conditions are a diverse group. The right work and health support in the right place at the right time is key. The contribution of Jobcentre Plus work coaches and disability employment advisers, who play an important role in jobcentres, is vital to this topic. I pay tribute to the dedication of those who are working on this at Jobcentre Plus. We will join up health and employment support around the individual. That will be through, for example, employment advisers in NHS talking therapies—seeing the NHS increasingly embrace the importance of supporting people into work—and individual placement and support in primary care.
My hon. Friends the Members for Battersea and for Glenrothes and Mid Fife, and the hon. Members for Torbay, for Strangford and for East Wiltshire, all spoke about Access to Work, rightly reflecting its crucial importance. The scheme provides grants for workplace adjustments beyond what is provided by the employer. Let us be clear that Access to Work does not replace an employer’s duty under the Equality Act to make reasonable adjustments, as the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) pointed out in his intervention. There are clear statutory obligations here that need to be delivered. Access to Work, however, can provide funding for support workers, specialist aids and equipment, personalised support and workplace assessments, travel to or in work, and mental health support.
The hon. Member for Torbay referred to it as one of the best kept secrets, but demand for Access to Work has been growing fast. The hon. Member for East Wiltshire rightly reported that nearly 68,000 people had Access to Work support approved in the last financial year, an increase of almost a third on the previous year. It is now growing rapidly. As he said, it supported 3,850 people who reported their primary medical condition as difficulty in seeing. That is about 8% of the people who are supported by the scheme. Customers with difficulty seeing as their primary medical condition received a bigger proportion—13% or £33 million—of the total expenditure. Access to Work is making an important contribution.
We are committed to reducing the waiting times for Access to Work. Delivery of the support has been streamlined. We have more staff processing the claims. Customers starting a job within four weeks are prioritised to ensure that they get help in time. Since April, as the hon. Member for East Wiltshire pointed out, all the core parts of the scheme are now online. However, I agree that more needs to be done. I welcome the engagement of all Members who have taken part in the debate and their continuing pressure to ensure that Access to Work delivers on its potential.
As has been highlighted, the APPG report rightly referred to the importance of technology in enabling visually impaired people to be in work. The report specifically mentioned text-to-speech software. Last week I visited Sense College Loughborough, a facility originally developed by RNIB. A visually impaired student there showed me the ZoomText application—which I was not aware of previously—using it to magnify the text he was looking at on a screen, and to manage a document over two screens. He commended its helpfulness to me.
My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme is absolutely right to point out just how big a game changer AI can be. We must realise that opportunity.
Access to Work can help provide assistive tech, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea pointed out in her intervention, suppliers such as Apple and Microsoft are increasingly bundling assistive tech with their standard products, partly because, as she said, it helps all users and makes the products easier to use for everybody. The technology is coming on in leaps and bounds. It is moving very fast, and we need to make sure that people have access to it. I am looking at what the Government can do in this area to make the technology better known, because a lot of people who have it on their devices do not know that it is there; to make assistive technology more readily available, where it is not bundled in with the standard product; and, maybe on occasion, to commission research to tackle a specific accessibility problem. We are thinking about this, and I welcome ideas and suggestions from Members about what more we can do.
My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme and others are absolutely right to point out how much more we need to do to support blind and partially sighted people into employment to enable them both to achieve their aspirations and to make their full contribution to our society and economy. That is in their interest and in all our interest. I am encouraged by what the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire, said about this. I hope that, when hon. Members read the “Get Britain Working” White Paper, as they will soon be able to do, they will agree that we are taking the right steps towards reaching that goal.
Completing the Implementation of Universal Credit
Stephen Timms Excerpts(2 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
This Government are committed to getting Britain working. Completing the implementation of universal credit will support this mission. Universal credit provides greater support and incentives to get people into work and increase the hours they work than the benefits it replaces.
Move to UC statistics published today show that, by the end of September, the Department had, since 2022, notified 943,343 households of the need to make the transition to UC. The latest published complaints data show that as of March 2024 with over 500,000 households asked to move to UC, DWP had only 35 complaints about the process, with 10 upheld. Plans have now been agreed to notify the remaining households receiving income-related employment and support allowance (ESA), building on the insight that DWP has gathered through the summer. This insight, and the learnings from scaling the move to universal credit for all legacy benefit customers, will be published by the end of 2024.
DWP is investing up to a further £15 million in Help to Claim to support employment and support allowance customers moving to universal credit. This means that free confidential and impartial support will continue to be available to help people make a new universal credit claim and manage their claim, up to receiving their first correct payment.
DWP will steadily increase the number of migration notices being sent to people receiving ESA over the next months and are aiming to issue 63,000 migration notices each month from February, sending the final notices in early December 2025 and fully moving people to universal credit and closing legacy benefits by the end of March 2026.
As DWP moves into this final phase for Move to UC, it will make the transition from delivering “Move to UC” in a programme-led approach to a “business as usual” operation. I am therefore announcing today the intention to formally close the Move to UC programme by the end of March 2025, as the work of the programme will be complete by then.
My Department will continue to work closely with stakeholders throughout this transition and under the new operating model. It will also publish all the remaining UC programme board papers in April 2025 when the programme closes. This has been a major undertaking for DWP. As the Department heads towards such a significant milestone, I would like to thank officials who have delivered this transformational reform, and I would also like to thank all MPs and external stakeholders who have shared their insight and expertise to make this process work for those we are supporting and realise this transformation fully.
[HCWS205]
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Timms Excerpts(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The application process for personal independence payment is being kept under review. An online process is being trialled and we are looking at further potential improvements.
Ian Roome
One of my constituents in receipt of PIP is sight-impaired, deaf-blind registered and cannot use a phone or fill out forms. Can the Minister tell me why PIP reassessments are being scheduled for people with incurable disabilities and terminal illnesses?
Sir Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman raises a very fair point. It is, of course, important that we keep the awards under review, because sometimes they go up as well as down and we want to ensure that the support being provided is appropriate for the claimant. We also need to ensure that the process is accessible—I agree with him about that. Help can be provided to manage the assessment process. If he would like to send me more details about his constituent, I would be glad to see what we can do to help.
Mr Speaker
Before the Minister replies, may I ask Members to look at the Chair, as third party, when they are asking or answering questions? I am being cut out. Those are not my rules but those of the House on how we should address each other, so if anybody has a problem, please have a word with the Clerks.
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend raises a very important point. Indeed, she and I worked on an excellent Select Committee report on health assessments for benefits, which provides some very important and valuable recommendations to the Department. We will continue to look at this issue. I am not familiar with the case that she refers to, but I will dig out the details. Clearly, it is vital that the process should be accessible to people with sight impairments or any other impairments. I completely agree with her.
Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The Department has adopted an iterative approach, updating the universal credit system to reflect user needs as they develop. The new Government are committed to reviewing universal credit to make sure that it is doing the job we need it to.
Mike Martin
One of my constituents spent six hours fully awake during an operation that went wrong, as doctors battled to save her life. Obviously, this affected her mental health, and she was deemed unfit for work by her GP and by a clinical psychologist. She then went through a half-hour telephone assessment for her universal credit health check, which deemed her fit to work, so she does not get universal credit and it was not backdated to the operation. Does the Minister think that that sounds right? If not, will he review the case?
Sir Stephen Timms
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing my attention to that. What he has described sounds very odd indeed, and I will be happy to look at the details if he will let me see them. We are absolutely committed to making sure that universal credit does the job that we need it to, including for people in the situation that his constituent has found herself in.
Graeme Downie (Dunfermline and Dollar) (Lab)
Last week, I was made aware of a constituent who is a carer for his wife, who experienced a stroke in 2016. The constituent is a veteran who lives with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and was awarded carer’s allowance in 2017. Late last year, the DWP began demanding the return of more than £51,000 in alleged universal credit overpayments, and this April, under the previous Government, the DWP began taking it from his state pension without warning. Will the Minister meet me to discuss this case in more detail so that I can help my constituent?
Sir Stephen Timms
As my hon. Friend will know, there have been some very troubling cases of carer’s allowance overpayment. I am not sure whether carer’s allowance is part of the overpayment he describes, but I will be very happy to meet him to discuss what has gone wrong in this case.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The last Labour Government dramatically reduced child poverty, and we want to repeat their success. The child poverty taskforce is exploring how to harness all available levers, including social security reform, and it will publish its strategy next spring.
Munira Wilson
The Prime Minister has said that he wants to break down the barriers to opportunity and tackle child poverty. He has also said that
“insecurity is the enemy of opportunity.”
Given that by the time the child poverty taskforce reports next spring, a further 16,000 children will have been dragged into poverty, and given the devastating impact that poverty can have on a child’s education, their health and their vulnerability to the criminal justice system, why will the Minister not do the right thing and scrap the two-child benefit cap to lift 300,000 children out of poverty immediately?
Sir Stephen Timms
The strategy will be very clear about how we will tackle the scourge of child poverty, and the hon. Lady is absolutely right to highlight the importance of doing that. Labour voted against the two-child limit, but we will not promise change until we know how we are going to pay for it. That will be addressed in the work of the taskforce, with the results published in the spring.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If a person is paid four-weekly, they receive 13 payments a year, so in one of the 12 monthly assessment periods each year, they are paid twice. That means that they probably get no universal credit that month, which completely messes up budgeting. I would be delighted to meet USDAW, and perhaps my hon. Friend, to discuss what we can do through our review of universal credit.
Paul Davies (Colne Valley) (Lab)
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight that research from Carers UK. The Budget increased the earnings threshold, so people will be able to earn £10,000 a year from work and still claim carer’s allowance, and an extra 60,000 carers will become entitled to the allowance. It is a very big step forward.
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
Sir Stephen Timms
As I mentioned earlier, we are committed to reviewing universal credit. The way it works means that in each assessment period—each month—there is a new calculation based on the income that the person has received, as reported by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. However, I would be very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to talk about how the system needs to be improved further.
Torsten Bell (Swansea West) (Lab)
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The threshold will increase on 7 April next year, and all current claimants will receive an annual uprating letter in the spring that will set out the new limit. As I mentioned a moment ago, 60,000 new unpaid carers will also become eligible for the allowance at that point.
Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Ind)
Given the new Government’s collective condemnation of the two-child limit over the eight years since it was introduced, which includes condemnation from many Government Members on Select Committees, will they at the very least commit to scrapping its heinous, sexist and frankly disgusting rape clause element?
Dan Aldridge (Weston-super-Mare) (Lab)
Sir Stephen Timms
I congratulate my hon. Friend on being the Labour Member for Weston-super-Mare. I have met Liz Sayce, who will carry out the review, and she is raring to go. The terms of reference and timelines have not yet been set, but they will be in the next few weeks. As soon as they are, the details will be placed in the Library.
Suella Braverman (Fareham and Waterlooville) (Con)
Kevin is a pensioner in Waterlooville who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and struggles to breathe in the cold. His personal budget puts him, on average, about £55 above the poverty line, but he is one of many thousands of people who will be hit by the Government’s cruel cut to the winter fuel allowance. Political point scoring aside, what practical advice does the Minister have for Kevin to get him through the harsh winter ahead?
Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)
Citizens Advice tells me that the DWP continues to start action on alleged overpayments more than six years after the event. That is longer than bank records are kept to prove otherwise. Does the Secretary of State think that that is fair and right?
Sir Stephen Timms
I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is asking specifically about carer’s allowance or about other benefits, but if benefits have been overpaid, the Department has an obligation to recover the money. What is important is that overpayments are identified sooner and that people are notified when there is a problem, so that we do not get the very large sums that have accrued in overpayments in the past.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Timms Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
We are committed to supporting vulnerable customers into work. At jobcentres, for example, we can identify the support needed and signpost people to courses or organisations to help them overcome barriers. We will be saying more about our proposals in the forthcoming employment White Paper.
Dame Meg Hillier
In my local jobcentre on Mare Street in my constituency, there is an extremely good team of DWP staff who work closely with vulnerable constituents to help them overcome the hurdles to getting benefits and getting into work. However, for people with fluctuating conditions, and particularly mental health conditions, there are many barriers both for them and for prospective employers. I wonder whether the Minister could give us a taster of what might be in the White Paper in terms of support for employers in particular to encourage them to take on people with such challenges.
Sir Stephen Timms
I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s positive report of the work in her local jobcentre. She highlights a major challenge behind a significant proportion of increased inactivity over the past few years. We will set out our response in the “Getting Britain Working” White Paper, but we are already providing tailored support in partnership with NHS talking therapies and individual placement and support in primary care. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that there is a good deal more to be done.
Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
Conservative-run East Sussex county council is threatening to close the Steps to Work programme, as well as Linden Court in Eastbourne, which supports people with learning disabilities to work towards employment. Will the Minister urge the county council to halt its plans and to consider alternatives such as selling off council buildings to raise the funds needed to provide these essential services for people with learning disabilities?
Sir Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman draws my attention to a concerning development. My view is that we need more support for people with learning disabilities to get into work, not less. If he sends me the details of the concerns he has raised, I will be happy to look into them further.
Mims Davies (East Grinstead and Uckfield) (Con)
The well-received and groundbreaking Buckland review of autism employment focused on the action needed to help to tackle the lack of opportunities and outdated recruitment practices that do not meet the employment needs of autistic people. How is the Minister—I welcome him to his place—going to use this review, which I seem to remember him welcoming, to tackle the lack of understanding and ongoing stereotypes to help to make real change via Access to Work and other DWP interventions?
Sir Stephen Timms
I thank the hon. Lady for her welcome. I am looking forward to a meeting with Sir Robert later on this month, and we will be talking exactly about that matter.
Mims Davies
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that answer. The disability action plan mid-year update is now somewhat overdue. Can the Minister confirm to the House when there will be a much-needed update? In helping vulnerable people to thrive in all walks of life, whether in employment or in respect of equality of opportunity, will the Minister’s Government commit, like the previous Conservative Government did, to working towards hosting the 2031 Special Olympics?
Sir Stephen Timms
We will be saying more and we will provide an update in the forthcoming “Getting Britain Working” White Paper. If the hon. Lady would like to drop me a line about the Special Olympics, I would be happy to look into that as well.
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
Provider guidance, which is published on gov.uk, makes clear that contractors on all our employment programmes must reimburse customers’ reasonable travel costs.
Josh Newbury
I thank the Minister for that response. My constituent Connor is in a predicament: he is out of pocket for taxi fares to weekly or even twice weekly sessions with a Jobcentre Plus private contractor. Connor told me that the sessions last barely 15 minutes and are not helping him to reach his goal of becoming a mechanical engineering apprentice. Will the Minister review the value of Jobcentre Plus private contracts to both jobseekers and taxpayers?
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Performance is reviewed regularly and there are customer satisfaction surveys, but unlike the previous Government, this Government want to publish performance data so that everybody can see what is going on.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister very much for his response. I think everyone wishes for claimants to be able to get job opportunities without finding themselves in a financial mess due to having to pay out for travel costs when they should be reimbursed. This is a big issue in my constituency in Northern Ireland. Will the Minister help directly those constituents who have been accordingly disadvantaged?
Sir Stephen Timms
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I am not familiar with the arrangements in Northern Ireland, but certainly in the rest of the UK it is very clear that contractors ideally need to pay up-front, buy tickets and give them to the jobseeker before they embark on their journey, or, if not, reimburse them very quickly on production of a receipt.
Torsten Bell (Swansea West) (Lab)
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The work of unpaid carers is vital and often heroic, and we are determined to give them the support that they need. We are currently looking at options for tackling the problem of overpayments, including the possible introduction of a text message alert service.
Alison Hume
Carers make incredible sacrifices to care for loved ones, but they can be left deep in debt as a result of repaying the allowance after unintentionally breaching the qualifying rules. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we, as a society, have a duty of care to carers, and can he say more about the progress that the Government are making in overhauling carer’s allowance and addressing the earnings cliff edge?
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I agree that we need to support carers properly. We want to get to the bottom of what has gone wrong with these overpayments and why so many people have been caught out. We have been piloting the introduction of a text message service, as I have mentioned, which has involved texting 3,500 claimants to alert them when His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs informs the DWP that they have breached the current earnings limit. We are currently looking at the results, and if they are positive, that will be the first step towards addressing the overpayments problem. We will need to do more, but it will be a good first step.
Anna Dixon
There are nearly 1,200 recipients of carer’s allowance in Shipley. The current earnings limit leaves people vulnerable to accidentally accruing overpayments if they become ineligible for the allowance, and it also acts as a disincentive, deterring people from working as much as they would like to. Will the Government consider raising the earnings limit?
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend has written to me about this matter, and I welcome her commitment to making progress. In an excellent piece of work, the former Work and Pensions Committee made a number of recommendations on the earnings rules, and once the new Committee is in place, we shall respond to the former Committee’s proposals.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
The Minister has referred to the army of carers that we have across the country, but we also have an army of unpaid carers who are being deterred from applying for carer’s allowance because of concerns about the financial implications. Can the Government reassure those who have not yet come forward that they will be supported properly?
Sir Stephen Timms
I very much hope that we can, because the hon. Gentleman is right: there is a good deal of anxiety about these overpayment problems. We hope that the alert service will at least inform people when they run into a problem so that they do not then develop a large overpayment, which has happened all too often in the past, but we also need to look at the other arrangements relating to carer’s allowance in order to provide the reassurance for which the hon. Gentleman has rightly called.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
I am not familiar with the report to which the hon. Member refers, but we committed in our manifesto to reviewing universal credit, nearly 15 years after it was first launched. The cliff edge issue and others will be among those that we will want to look at in the course of that review.
Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)
Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)
Sir Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend asks an extremely good question. The policy of the previous Government was to publish all such commissioned research reports within 12 weeks of receiving them. That policy was complied with until 2018, when Ministers stopped complying with it, so we have had to publish all these reports today. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s announcement is a vital first step in rebuilding the trust in the Department that was so shattered by the culture of secrecy, obfuscation and cover-up by Conservative Ministers.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
In response to several hon. Members, Ministers have spoken about the complexity of the ombudsman’s report on the WASPI campaign. While appreciating that, may I ask for a statement in principle that the Government will eventually offer significant compensation to the WASPI women?