Universal Credit: Managed Migration

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

Of course we do not want to push anyone into debt, but may I just be clear that these advances are interest-free, so over a—[Interruption.] Over a 12-month period people will get their monthly payment and then their additional advance which they pay back over that period, and of course we will be extending that to allow people to pay that back over 16 months. Many people have welcomed the advances and now about 60% of those coming on to UC are taking out advances.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Will the Minister look at a serious flaw in debt repayment between legacy systems and the UC system? A constituent of mine has been diligently repaying an historical tax credit debt but that debt also moved when she moved on to UC. HMRC deducted £11 a month, but the DWP wants to take £79.46 from an income of only £317.82 per month after housing costs. Will the Minister meet me to discuss this case and the unfairness in the system, because people cannot live on this amount of money?

[Alok Sharma]

Of course I will meet with the hon. Lady, as I have done previously on issues she has raised. As a general rule, one would not expect deductions to be more than 40% of a standard allowance, and of course that figure will come down to 30%.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

As my hon. Friend will know, we now have a new partnership with Citizens Advice to deliver universal credit support, and his constituency is part of the early mobilisation of that programme. However, it is important that for those who are not able to use such technology, we still make a freephone helpline available, and that, as the Secretary of State has outlined, home visits can be arranged.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

T6. Church of England figures suggest that 5,500 children in my constituency alone may be affected by the roll-out of the two-child limit, which will restrict all new claims for universal credit to the first two children in a family. By the time this policy rolls out, it will affect 3 million children, pushing them into poverty. Will the Secretary of State meet me and campaigners from different organisations, from the Church of England to Rape Crisis and women’s organisations, to discuss the impact that this policy will have? Will she pause the policy and stop it rolling out from 1 February this year?

[Amber Rudd]

We think this is the right thing to do. It is fair to taxpayers, some of whom are on very low incomes, to ensure that the support that we provide under universal credit is for two children so that people who are on benefits have the same choices to make as people on low incomes in thinking about whether to have a third child. On the other point that the hon. Lady raised, I am carefully considering what action needs to be taken.

Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit: Two-child Limit

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the two child limit in universal credit and child tax credits.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. It is surreal still to be here debating the two-child limit in universal credit and child tax credit. When I saw the limit and the cruel and pernicious rape clause that stands part of the policy laid out in the Chancellor’s Budget in 2015, I was sure that I had made a mistake. After all, no humane Government would propose such a blunt instrument as limiting support to the first two children in a family, or making a woman prove that she has been raped just to put food on the table.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. It is three years, four months and 20 days after that Budget, and the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has found that the UK Tory Government is exactly such an inhumane Government. Despite warnings from all manner of groups, cross-party support and U-turns on other policies over the years, the two-child policy is apparently the one that the UK Tory Government will stick to through thick and thin.

The policy stands in judgment on people’s lives and suggests that those who are less well off

“cannot have as many children as they like”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 24 October 2018; c. 52.]

as Tory social security spokesperson Michelle Ballantyne MSP said. The policy is damaging in the extreme, and I will outline to the Minister exactly why. I would also like to give him the opportunity to think again before the policy hits its next phase in February.

From February, all new claims will be subject to the two-child policy, regardless of when children were born. That means that, although someone might have planned their family in good times, when they could well afford to support three children, the UK Tory Government do not care—they will support only two. Life is unpredictable: it only takes somebody to get ill or die, a partner to leave, or someone to lose their job for life to turn upside-down. We note the plight of the Michelin workers in Dundee, who were not expecting to lose their jobs. None of us would be prepared for such eventualities.

Contraception can also fail. I note research from the Advisory Group on Contraception, which has produced stark figures on cuts to sexual and reproductive health services in England, so help is being lost to many on the ground. I challenge any hon. Member present to plan out exactly and specifically the financial situation for them and each of their children up to the age of 18. It is impossible.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend has been a tireless champion of tackling this issue. Does she agree that cutting child tax credits is tantamount to directly targeting children with austerity?

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

I absolutely agree. It breaks the link between need and what somebody receives. These families are no less in need, but their money is being cut.

It is impossible for just about anyone, other than the super-rich and perhaps the royal family, to make plans in the way I described. The UK Tory Government are hacking away at the safety net that a social security system ought to be.

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

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Women are carrying the brunt of austerity—let us be frank about that—whether we are talking about nursery provision, tax credits or the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign. The list is endless. Women have made a major contribution in terms of austerity, in the sense that they have carried the burden of the £14 billion of tax adjustments. It is the same with the WASPI women and the savings that have been made on their pensions.

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. The Womens Budget Group has found that 86% of welfare cuts have come out of women’s pockets. The Government are taking a gendered and targeted approach, and they should be wary of that.

[Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)]

The charity Refuge found that the two-child limit is forcing domestic abuse survivors and their children into poverty as a result of an increased financial dependence on their perpetrators. Does my hon. Friend agree that women are ultimately fearful to leave abusive relationships because they cannot support themselves, and that that is another example of where the policy has gone wrong?

[Alison Thewliss]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I will talk about some of Refuge’s evidence later, because it is stark and the Government should take heed of it.

A social security safety net ought to be there for everybody—each one of us—when they need it, but by April 2018, the two-child limit had already affected 73,530 households. Well over half of those households—43,420 of them—were in work, so I will not have it if the Minister, or anybody else on the Tory Benches, which I note are remarkably empty, gives us the old Tory trope that the policy is about people on benefits making the same choices as those supporting themselves solely through work. The benefit is designed to give people in the lowest-paid work a top-up, to help support them and to make sure that their children are fed and clothed.

Of those 73,530 households, 2,900 were able to keep their entitlement for a third child by claiming an exemption to the policy. There are largely three exemptions to the two-child limit. None of them is entirely logical, and I would recommend that hon. Members check out the Child Poverty Action Group’s page on the exemptions to see how mind-bendingly arcane they are.

The first exemption is the rape clause. I put on record again my absolute disgust at a policy that forces women to fill out a form to say that they have conceived their third child as a result of rape. It is absolutely inexcusable as a policy. For someone to have to put their child’s name on a form and say that they were conceived as a result of rape is beyond contempt, and the Government should know better than to treat women in that way. We know from the figures that, up until April, 190 women across the UK claimed under that exemption. That is 190 women who have had to replay the most traumatic experience of their life to put food on the table. The Government should hang their head in shame.

The second exemption is for twins, but it is not as simple as it ought to be. It applies if twins are born after a single birth, but not before. If someone has twins after two previous children, only one twin is eligible for payment, but both those twins need to eat. There may be two almost identical families with three children—one that had twins and then a single birth, and one that had a single birth and then twins—but only one is worthy of support from the Government, which is completely illogical.

The third exemption is for adoption, but not if someone has adopted from abroad or if they were a step-parent before they adopted the third child, so that is not simple either. An additional exemption has been made for kinship care. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), who successfully campaigned for that on behalf of her constituent Alyssa Vessey, who lost an entitlement for her own child after taking on caring responsibilities for her three younger siblings. The clear result of the policy and the exemptions is discrimination. Families may have similar circumstances and needs, but some will lose out simply due to the order in which their children were born—something that those children certainly have no control over.

I understand that CPAG will be back in court on the issue before Christmas, and I wish it the very best with its case. It believes, and I agree, that the two-child limit breaches articles 8 and 12 of the Human Rights Act 1998. It is also beyond me how the limit could possibly be compliant with the UK Government’s obligations under the UN convention on the rights of the child.

There will also be an impact on blended families and families who may be encouraged to separate to avoid being hit by the limit. A friend also pointed out that women who have children from previous relationships will be caught should they wish to have a child with a new partner, which is very common, whereas the male partner may be able to go off and start a new family more easily without having the children with him.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Is it not depressing that we have debated this issue two Tuesdays in a row? I thank the hon. Lady for coming to the all-party parliamentary group on single parent families. She talked about blended families, which will be hit hardest. The Government abolished the cross-departmental work on child poverty; they are trying to abolish these things, but they have really mismatched priorities. The churches have been very vocal about it, and the Bishop of Oxford spoke last week. Does she have any comment about that?

[Alison Thewliss]

I absolutely agree, and I commend the hon. Lady and her colleagues for their work in the all-party parliamentary group on single parent families, because those families will be hugely hit by this. It provides huge disincentives for those families to go into work or to progress. It simply puts them further into poverty and makes it harder for them to get out of that poverty.

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

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Does she agree that this obscene policy is fuelled by the Government’s abolition of the child poverty target, which would have compelled them to look at such policies and realise that they could not possibly be compatible with such a target?

[Alison Thewliss]

Absolutely. I will return to the issue of the policy’s objectives and how unmeetable they are, given the child poverty that will result from the policy.

It is absolutely clear that nothing in the policy fits with the Government’s objective of giving people a more stable family life. In fact, it plunges families further into uncertainty and crisis, and puts them under tremendous strain.

It is also clear that it will be children who lose out as a result of this policy. It is estimated that this policy will affect—in time, when transitional protections run out—around 3 million children. The Church of England estimates that in my constituency alone 1,600 families and 5,500 children will be affected, which amounts to 36% of the children there. I cannot begin to say what impact this policy will have on the health, education and life chances of those young people.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Once again, my hon. Friend is making a passionate speech on this issue. Does she share my concerns that there is another issue here, namely that families expecting a third child might be forced to have an abortion as a result of this policy? Often, those are people in faith communities, who are likely to have larger families.

[Alison Thewliss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and there is clear evidence on this issue, which I will touch on later in my speech. The ends that this Government are forcing families into, and the decisions that those families are being forced to make, are really disturbing.

The cut in this benefit is £2,780 per child, per year, which is a sum that families will struggle to make up through taking on extra work. The Church of England calculates that a single parent with three children who is working 16 hours at the minimum wage—I should say the Chancellor’s pretendy “living wage”, because it is not an actual living wage that one could live on—would need to work 45 hours to compensate for the loss of income and for this Government’s cut. That is assuming that work is available to them in their community and that their children can be looked after by somebody when they are not home. If not, who will do the homework with those children? Who will tuck them into bed at night? Who will make sure that the family is looked after? And what is the mental health impact on that family and the impact on the physical health of the parent, who will be absolutely exhausted after working 45 hours a week and looking after three children, which is a job in itself? The impact on family life must be taken into consideration by the Minister.

There are also real disincentives within this policy, because it will be much harder for families to move into work. The policy will take away the incentive to try to get around the benefit cap, as families will end up losing more if they try to work more.

There is also a disproportionate hit on particular minority groups. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has found that families of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin are particularly badly hit by this policy, losing thousands of pounds. For years now, I have been flagging up concerns that 60% of Muslim families and 52% of Jewish families have more than two children. There are also concerns, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) mentioned, among religious faiths that will not use contraception for moral reasons and clearly cannot access abortion services. Therefore, they have very little choice in the decisions that face them.

Of course, this is a particular issue for women in Northern Ireland, where family size is traditionally larger than in the rest of the UK and where, as we in this House well know, women cannot access abortion services on the same basis as we can here. I wonder what the Minister expects women to do in such circumstances.

I want to mention a further point about abortion, because it is becoming the reality for many women. I would like to read directly from the testimonies of women who have spoken to the benefits helpline, Turn2us, because they are absolutely stark and I want the Minister to pay particular attention to them. One woman said she had

“to have an abortion as”

she “can’t afford” another child. Another said:

“It makes me want to give up my child for adoption.”

Another woman said she was:

“already due another baby when the new tax credit cap came into play. Now I worry I can’t afford to budget for a baby as I won’t get any extra help.”

Another said:

“I found out I was 5 months pregnant and now in a complete panic. I’m too far on for an abortion but I have no way of supporting this child. I was taking precautions and definitely did not plan or expect to have any more children. The marina coil is meant to be more effective than being sterilised.”

One woman said she was

“worried that I will not be able to afford the child. I am pregnant at the moment but I am worried it may be twins.”

Another woman said:

“I was already pregnant so I could not reconsider.”

Another said:

“I didn’t plan this child but it’s beaten all the odds to get here and I believe in things happening for a reason and also do not believe in abortion, so here we are expecting our 3rd child any day and no help financially. I have worked since I was 15 years old and I can’t get help when I need it.”

Another woman said:

“This was a surprise and an unplanned pregnancy and I only found out at 20 weeks that I was pregnant due to an NHS mistake and I don’t have the money to raise a child. But due to religious reasons I cannot terminate the pregnancy, especially this far along.”

How can the Minister possibly justify that? Could he look each woman in these circumstances in the eye and tell them that this policy is about fairness?

Furthermore, Refuge has outlined the risk of this policy to women who are at risk of domestic violence, because the two-child limit exacerbates the control that perpetrators of abuse have over a woman and puts more pressure and risk on the woman. [Interruption.] I would like to share that experience, too, with the Minister, if he wants to stop shuffling his papers and pay attention. Refuge has said:

“Women have felt more trapped and unable to stay as there was no available money to help them move and leave. The 2 child cap means that some women will be pressured into having more children and becoming financially reliant on the partners for support.”

One resident said that

“whilst pregnant with a 3rd child her ex demanded she have an abortion because he said they could not get any more money for it and when she said she didn’t”

want one

“he tried being violent to enforce a miscarriage.”

Refuge also said:

“Women struggling to manage after fleeing if they have three children feel like they have no support and no money to support the family. It means they feel like they should stay or return to the perpetrator.”

I remind Members that the rape clause form itself states that women are not eligible for support if they are living with the father of the child, which forces women to leave their home before they can do so safely, and we all know that the evidence suggests that that is the most dangerous time—the time that women are most likely to be murdered—if they leave without any kind of safety planning.

Before I finish, I want to tackle the suggestion that the Scottish Government should set about mitigating the two-child limit. First of all, we do not have full control over the welfare benefits system. Why not? Because Labour, through the Smith Commission, would not trust us to have it. We therefore end up being lumbered with a system that Scotland did not design, with policies that Scotland did not vote for, and with the ability only to tinker round the edges, thanks to the work of the Labour party.

For those on child tax credits, which is still the majority of people within the system, we have no way of mitigating these things, because that is a function of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. For universal credit, at the moment we have “administrative flexibilities”. The Scottish Government have changed payment schedules and allowed for direct payment to landlords and separate payments to tackle financial abuse. However, the use of those flexibilities incurs a payment to the Department for Work and Pensions for the administration of them—money I am sure all of us agree could be spent directly on the frontline.

I want to make it absolutely clear that I want this policy to go everywhere and not just throughout Scotland. I have campaigned on a cross-party basis to that end, particularly for women in Northern Ireland, who have often been unrepresented in this place and who have to fill out a separate rape clause form, because they were at risk of prosecution just for filling out the original form. That is why I want to make sure that no woman in the UK gets left behind by this policy. We should be campaigning against this Tory Government and focusing all our fire on the Conservative party, which wants to make women go through this trauma.

However, let us not forget that the Labour party’s official position back in 2015 was to support the two-child limit. Perhaps if Labour Members had voted with us back then on the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, we would not be here—three years, four months and 20 days later—discussing this issue today.

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Alison Thewliss]

I am coming to the end of my remarks; I am sure that Members will get in later with what they want to say.

All of this policy is illogical and bad for the economy. In other parts of my casework, I see working people being denied leave to remain with their families. I see EU nationals being scunnered and moving away from the country that they had called home, due to this UK Tory Government’s Brexit shambles. On DWP policy, I see people being discouraged—actively discouraged—from having children. Who will participate in the labour market in the future? Having children is an economic good. Who will look after the Minister and his family when he is old and in need of care? The UK Government should wise up to the demographic time bomb they are creating with this policy and so many other policies that make no sense. The “Unhappy Birthday!” report produced by End Child Poverty, the Child Poverty Action Group and the Church of England states:

“If you set out to design a policy that was targeted to increase child poverty, then you could not do much better than the two-child limit.”

I would like to know what assessment the Minister has made, other than the numbers released in April, of the impact of the two-child cap on all the areas I have mentioned in my speech—not just one or two of them, but all of them—because there are still too many flaws in the two-child cap, as I have laid out, and as I am sure other Members will wish to. I want to know how he can roll this policy out without that assessment having been done. The assessment has been left to the third sector, the Church—as the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) pointed out—and to so many other organisations. The Government have not taken on this work; they have left it to others to do, which is absolutely unacceptable. They need to know what the impact of their policies will be on the ordinary people we represent.

I also want the Minister to explain why he is pressing ahead with extending this policy to all families come February next year, because, on the basis of this policy, people could not reasonably have planned the children that they have had. It is completely unreasonable to expect somebody in good times to think, “Perhaps six or seven years after I have had my child, I might—might—be made unemployed and I might need to claim universal credit.” That would not be in their head; that is not how people make decisions about their families. It is an absolutely flawed notion that people can do that. I want the Minister to pause and reflect, and to tell us that he can pause the policy, stop it rolling out further and end it for good.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

I thank all hon. Members who have come along today and contributed to the debate. The opposition to the policy is overwhelming; the fact that not one Tory MP could be bothered to turn up and defend it tells us all we need to know.

The Minister continues to be in denial about this indefensible policy, which takes no account of people’s circumstances, instead punishing them for circumstances that they can do nothing about. It is based not on the reality of people’s lives but on an entirely twisted perception that poor people should not have children and that women should be forced into having abortions rather than proceeding with healthy pregnancies.

There is overwhelming evidence of the harm that the policy will cause. Figures suggest that it will move the dial on child poverty from 33% to 42%. It has united people across all faiths and all women’s organisations around the country—a very unusual thing to achieve. It leaves people in a poverty trap; as has been outlined, a single mum with three kids would have to work a 45-hour week to make up the gap that the Government are leaving in her budget.

I plead with the Minister, as we have all done today. He has the option to halt the policy and prevent it from proceeding in February. I beg him to do so.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

The key to universal credit is that, for the first time, a claimant will get personalised, tailored support that can help them navigate all the forms of support available. Under legacy benefits, more than 700,000 people, among whom are some of the most vulnerable people, miss out on an average of £285 a month. Those on universal credit will typically spend 50% longer looking for work. This is key to unlocking the potential of all claimants to improve their life chances.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Thenue housing association in my constituency tells me that errors in universal credit, such as the system retaining the wrong landlord details despite the claimant having asked for that to be corrected, have meant that some tenants have ended up two months in arrears through no fault of their own. What will the Minister do to fix the system before people end up in debt as a result?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I am very sorry to hear of that. If there are specific cases, please do not hesitate to highlight them. Through the roll-out of the landlord portal, which has been warmly welcomed by social housing companies and local authorities, there is an opportunity for claimants and housing bodies to work together to manage this migration process smoothly.

Employment and Support Allowance Underpayments

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

I reassure the hon. Lady, if she has any doubt in her mind, that we take this matter extremely seriously. We want to make sure that everybody who is underpaid gets their payment as soon as possible. We absolutely have to get this right. We talked about how vulnerable some people are and the complexity. It is really important that we get this right. There is a lot of legislation around official error and the laws that apply to underpayments and how they should be repaid.

The hon. Lady has raised a specific case that I am not familiar with, so the best thing to do is for me to write to her on that specific case, because I do not want to mislead the House in any way.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

A constituent of mine, a young woman with fibromyalgia, had her ESA stopped and was told by the DWP to move over on to universal credit while waiting for a mandatory reconsideration. My understanding is that if she had done so, she would not be able to move back on to ESA even if the mandatory reconsideration was successful. How are people being tracked through this labyrinthine system and how certain is the Minister that everybody will get back-payments who is entitled to them, particularly if they have moved from one benefit to another over this period?

[Sarah Newton]

It is always very difficult to comment without the full details of the specific case. As the hon. Lady knows, I am always happy to meet Members of the House and go through particular cases. If I may talk in general terms, ESA within UC is the same: people apply, they have a work capability assessment and they are assessed. I reassure her that the process is the same and that if the Department makes mistakes, we do back-pay, as we have heard today. But let us meet on that specific case, so that I can give her the best possible advice for her constituent.

Universal Credit

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I do not have much time, so I will concentrate on the three myths about this system that the Tories are perpetuating again and again. The first is that we somehow want to go back to the system of legacy benefits, but that is patently nonsense. The National Audit Office says that we are now past the point of no return and cannot go back. Ellenor in my office is brilliant at helping my constituents navigate the complex system. She has the Child Poverty Action Group book, which is inches thick, and she navigates the system every day and gets people the money they are due. However, the system is incredibly complex, and we need to see universal credit fixed before people are hurt further by the system.

The second is that advance payments are somehow the solution to the problem. They are not. They simply make people rob themselves months in advance, but the Grinch who is stealing Glasgow’s Christmas suggested yesterday that that is what people in Glasgow should do. I spoke to a local primary headteacher in Glasgow last week, and she knows the parents whom she deals with in her school. She knows that they will do absolutely everything they can this Christmas to ensure that they can put food on the table for their kids and that they will get presents, but the cost of that will be severe in January, February, March and all the way through next year. Those families will be in severe debt, and they will not be able to get out of it.

The final myth is that work always pays. Work does not always pay under this Government, it does not always pay under universal credit, and it will not pay for the woman who came to my advice surgery who currently has five children. If she moves on to universal credit, she will be out by £700 a month. There is no way on God’s green earth that she will be able to make that up through work or through any other means. All that universal credit will do is put her family into poverty. The system needs to be fixed, and it needs to be stopped before Glasgow gets into serious trouble.

Universal Credit

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

As I have said, we will be bringing forward the managed migration regulations later this year. If the Opposition want to support people and ensure that they are protected, they should vote for those regulations together with us.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Someone making a claim on 5 December, the day that universal credit starts at Shettleston jobcentre—not Bridgeton, as the Minister found out yesterday, because he has already shut that jobcentre—will receive no money until 9 January. Is the Minister happy to be known as the Grinch that stole Glasgow’s Christmas?

[Alok Sharma]

I have never been described as a Grinch before. The hon. Lady ought to be encouraging her constituents—clearly this discussion is had by work coaches when claimants come in—to talk about the advance that is available for people. [Interruption.] Well, it is interest-free. Also, as I have said, those on housing benefit get two weeks’ run-on.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I recently held a drop-in surgery at the Kinning Park Complex in my constituency, because roll-out in Glasgow has already begun. The big issue that people raised was that they did not even know that this was going to affect them. There is a huge gap in awareness. What is the Minister going to do about this so that people actually get the benefits they are entitled to and do not lose out on transitional payments?

[Alok Sharma]

As I said, when I go to jobcentres, it is very clear to me that they are working extremely hard in engaging and in letting claimants know things ahead of time, and indeed in engaging with local Members of Parliament. I hope the hon. Lady has had a chance to visit her jobcentre. If she wants to have a detailed discussion about this, I am very happy to have a discussion with her after these oral questions.

Widowed Parent’s Allowance

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

This issue was considered at great length in debates on the Pensions Act 2014 and the subsequent regulations. It is not straightforward. How do the Government act as judge and jury in situations in which someone could be living with a different partner? At a time of great distress, the emphasis has to be on providing appropriate and quick support particularly targeted at those in the most need. Following the ruling in the Supreme Court, the points raised will be considered and I will come back as quickly as is appropriate to provide an update to the House.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It is an important principle that social security should be a safety net for us all, because we cannot predict circumstances such as the death of a partner or parent, which could happen at any time. Children should not lose out regardless of the marital status of their parents. How much has the Department spent on fighting the decision in the courts, and can the Minister confirm that it has ruled out appealing the decision?

[Justin Tomlinson]

It is right to highlight that we should provide support, and that is why in the new benefit we have widened the support available to anyone of a working age and to younger spouses and civil partners without children. They will now get support, and it will not be lost when someone moves into a new relationship. We will continue to review the situation following the Court decision last week, and I will fully update the House.

ESA Underpayments

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

I have repeatedly said that we are very sorry that this happened in the first place, and that we are doing everything possible to rectify the system—not just in this particular case, but to learn across all our benefits. Of course we take underpayments very seriously, and we have a well-resourced team that is taking up that issue.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The arrears being paid to people may be quite considerable in some cases. Will the Minister confirm to the House that these will be disregarded for their current benefit entitlement, because people should not lose out now for mistakes that the Department made previously?

[Sarah Newton]

The hon. Lady raises a very important point. I am more than happy to put it beyond any doubt for people who are receiving payments for these underpayments that those payments will be disregarded for the purposes of other benefits.