Personal Independence Payments

Debate between Alison Seabeck and Sheila Gilmore

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I apologise for not being here at the outset, Mr Crausby. I was keen to be here, but as a member of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, I also wanted to hear the statement on universal credit to find out whether there was anything new in it.

I find it surprising that, on the one hand, the Secretary of State takes great pride in having a safe and slow roll-out of universal credit—for the past two years, we have been told that it must be safe and slow, and consequently only 17,000 people are on it after all that time; perhaps that is the right way to do things, but it seems astonishingly slow—but on the other, the Department has presided over the roll-out of personal independence payments and, for the past year and a half, has turned the initial applicants into guinea pigs for a system that was not properly piloted or tested.

At the outset, the Select Committee was concerned that the Department’s ambitions and the speed with which it implemented the change were unrealistic. There are unresolved tensions between its desire to give people a longer and more thorough assessment than the much-criticised employment and support allowance assessments and its desire to get through a large number of people. I suspect that some of the problems encountered are due to exactly those tensions.

As a result—perhaps this is hearsay, but the Minister may have something to say about it—the number of face-to-face assessments has already been rolled back. At one point, about 85% to 90% of new applicants were given face-to-face assessments; I understand that it has fallen to 75%. That may be a good or bad thing, but it shows a lack of pre-planning. This really matters to a lot of people. Most new applicants—I will come to the reassessments in a minute—have no money to cover the particular need for which they are applying. Although the payment is backdated for successful applicants, the longer they wait, the harder it is for them.

It is important to realise how important this issue is. Although the Department has overcome its initial problems even with what are regarded as terminally ill cases, a lot of people have serious conditions that do not fit under the special rules provisions but nevertheless leave people in a difficult position. I have a constituent with motor neurone disease who was in exactly that position. Sadly, his condition developed quickly. He went from being a normal, fit, healthy young man in his late 20s to needing help to get places in only a few months.

[Alison Seabeck]

My hon. Friend speaks with a great deal of experience and knowledge. On her point about the time it takes to get a decision, like her, I have a constituent whose condition deteriorated over a long period. Although our constituents may have just scraped through to one side of the fence when the assessment was made, their conditions were much worse by the time the decision was made, and they should therefore have been assessed differently.

[Sheila Gilmore]

People in that situation find it very hard to deal with that problem.

Inter-City Rail Investment

Debate between Alison Seabeck and Sheila Gilmore

Thursday 9th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore]

They certainly do provide those opportunities, but occasionally I hear more about other people’s business on the train than I want to know. For that reason, I am glad to see more quiet coaches. When my father used to complain about people talking on mobile phones on the train, I used to think that he was being an old fusspot. However, I have to say that although it is good to have some sort of business interaction on the train, it would be nice not to have it right in my ear when I am trying to work. Interestingly, on the east coast main line, the quiet coaches are now the most popular and most booked up of all the coaches. That suggests that I am not in a minority on the matter. It is true to say that we can do a lot of work on trains that we cannot do flying.

[Alison Seabeck]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is perhaps a case for a business class on some of these long-distance trains, rather than a first class?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I suspect that the quiet coach operates to a large extent as a business class. Perhaps operators should consider expanding the number of those coaches. Many people want to use that time on the train—whether it is two hours, three hours or more—productively, even if they are only recharging their batteries and reading a book or whatever. If we are serious about the environmental advantages of rail over air, we need to make that journey as productive and as comfortable as we can, and also to speed it up. The big advantage of HS2 in Scotland would be a cut in journey times, even without the high speed rails reaching us. The city centre to city centre advantage of HS2 is huge, and it works both ways. For example, 11% of employment in Edinburgh, even after the recession, is in the financial service sector. The links from Edinburgh to other financial centres are important. If we are to continue to be the headquarters of some very important financial institutions, rather than a sub-office of somewhere else, it is just as important that people can come to us as it is that we can go to them.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Alison Seabeck and Sheila Gilmore

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alison Seabeck]

No, indeed. Someone looking at the issue from the outside, rather than from the Government Benches, could cynically suggest that the Government are seeking to build houses and support house building in the south-east rather than in the rest of the country. The figure has far more resonance in terms of trying to get people into the market in the south-east. The issue is not clear.

[Sheila Gilmore]

The figure might be more consistent with house prices in the south-east, but even there someone still has to have a very substantial income to afford a mortgage, even if it is discounted by a shared equity or mortgage guarantee scheme.

Localism Bill

Debate between Alison Seabeck and Sheila Gilmore

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore]

I rise to speak in support of the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck). There appears to be inherent conflict between different Bills that are proceeding through the House. I have been sitting on the Welfare Reform Bill Committee, and it seems to me that we are not looking at the whole picture. That Bill is concerned with, among other things, the amount of housing benefit that is paid out. There are concerns about the rising bill and what has to be done about it, and the Government are proposing measures to bring down the bill that will affect people up and down the country.

At the same time, there are proposals in the Localism Bill that would have the opposite effect. For example, it would create so-called affordable houses at 80% of market rate. However, the people who need those houses, the people everybody is wringing their hands about, will not be able to afford those properties unless they can get housing benefit, which means that the housing benefit bill will rise. The Government are cutting benefit for some people and making their lives more difficult, but at the same time creating measures that will inherently increase the housing benefit bill.

In the same way, increasing the use of the private rented sector for homeless families will have an effect on the housing benefit bill, because inevitably their rents will be higher than they would be if we could find genuinely and truly affordable homes for people. I am concerned that two parts of the Government appear to be proceeding in conflicting ways.

Another aspect of welfare reform that we hear about constantly, in the Welfare Reform Bill Committee and elsewhere, is the need to make work pay and get people into employment, which we all agree about. Flexible tenancies may well have exactly the opposite effect. I was not on the Localism Bill Committee, so it may have been different there, but I noticed today that the one issue related to flexible tenancies that the Minister was comfortable in talking about was the vexed question of houses that are under-occupied or overcrowded. We all know that that is a problem, and it is not a simple one to address. Flexible tenancies are not only intended to address that situation, but that was what the Minister wanted to talk about. Perhaps it is the slightly more cuddly side of flexible tenancies. It might make people think, “Oh, I can see the point of that. We have to get a bit of flexibility to get that changed.”

Actually, flexible tenancies are about much more than that. If they are implemented in the way suggested in some of the speeches that we have heard and the articles that we have read, it will mean that people who are trying to get back on their feet and have found jobs may be told that it is time to leave their home. What incentive does that give people to enter employment or work harder to increase their income?

[Alison Seabeck]

My hon. Friend is making some very strong points. Does she—

[Alison Seabeck]

Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Does my hon. Friend share my surprise at the fact that the Minister has signed a number of early-day motions on the subject, including one clearly saying that is he a supporter of security of tenure, for all the reasons that we have been giving?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I certainly find that extremely surprising given what is in the Bill.

We have to ask the Government why they are moving in different directions in different legislation and why they cannot get their act together. Surprisingly, however, there is an underlying similarity between the two Bills—they are about shrinking the welfare state and leaving only residual provision, whether it is residual housing for the poorest and neediest or residual benefits for the most vulnerable. That illustrates the difference between the Government and Opposition, about which we must be clear. There are inconsistencies in the Bills, but at the same time there is a united theme to which we are opposed. We are concerned that in four or five years, the welfare state will have shrunk out of all recognition.