Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

We are getting feedback from various businesses on how they think we can best enable and support them. Any knee-jerk reaction might result in unintended consequences. Shining a spotlight on one area could close down loopholes, only for others to open up. This has to be looked at in the round, but, as I said, stakeholders, shareholders and the executive team should be held to account. We will make sure that that happens.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

Can my right hon. Friend reassure my constituents that the UK’s pension protection system has responded effectively to the Carillion situation?

[Ms McVey]

I can indeed reassure my hon. Friend that what it is doing, and the avenues it is pursuing, are correct and thorough. I met the regulator last week. It is making sure that it investigates these key matters and provides the necessary pension support. Where we need to strengthen in future, we will do so. Equally, I would like to make Members aware of what the pension regulator has done in the past. With regards to the British Home Stores fiasco, which is totally different from this situation, it employed an anti-avoidance measure and got Philip Green to pay his pensioners £363 million. Further prosecutions are coming forward for Chappell, who bought that company for a pound. That is the kind of good work the pension regulator is doing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms McVey]

This reviewing will be an administrative process, so we will not need to see the people, but what is most important is that the right people get the right amount of money, and that will take the time it needs.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

We had a very interesting session on assistive technology in the Select Committee on Work and Pensions recently. Will the Government commit to looking at how assistive technology can be used to help more disabled people into work?

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and I really welcome the work that the Select Committee is doing. I believe that the fourth industrial revolution has the most enormous potential to transform the lives of disabled people, and of course I will read that report thoroughly.