Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jo Churchill]

I gently say to my right hon. and learned Friend that I am sure she would agree that any system has to be balanced and fair for the taxpayer, but also for those who need it most. Many working families do not see their incomes rise when they have to make choices, and we have to make the system fair. I would be more than happy to sit down with her and explain how we do that.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Maternity allowance, contribution-based jobseeker’s allowance, contribution-based employment and support allowance, bereavement benefits, basic state pension and the new state pension: these are all calculated using our contributions to national insurance. Given the Chancellor’s announcement of his desire to abolish national insurance, costing £46 billion, what discussions has the Secretary of State’s Department had with the Treasury about how he is going to fund it?

[Mel Stride]

This scaremongering about the state pension and the £46 billion on the back of what is an aspiration through time—maybe more than one Parliament—to abolish national insurance is frankly disgraceful, particularly from a party that gave us the 75p increase in 1999 and, on its watch, saw us have the fourth highest rate of pensioner poverty in Europe.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

As somebody who has fought really hard over the last four years to overcome the difficulties presented by long covid, I am sure that the Secretary of State will appreciate that a significant number of the people not in work because of health conditions will have some form of post-viral fatigue linked to long covid. What assessment has he made of the effect of long covid on the workforce, and what is he doing to help people who have it get back to work?

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Gentleman specifically raises long covid, which is one of many health pressures in our society and post covid in many other countries that were also affected by the virus. We have a number of approaches, including universal support, which places people in employment and gives them critical support for up to 12 months. We also have WorkWell, and we are looking at occupational health and what tax incentives we might put in place to encourage employers to do more on that front. We are doing a great deal.

State Pension Changes: Women

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon]

Absolutely, and we all say hear, hear to that.

The WASPI women also contend that they have been discriminated against on the grounds of sex and age and that they have been disproportionately impacted by the changes, compared with men and younger women. On behalf of those in the audience today, I very much agree with that assertion.

Actions to inform the women are felt to have been inadequate—I am using very gentle language in saying that—and did not go far enough. The changes to the state pension age were primarily enacted through legislative measures such as the Pensions Acts of 1995 and 2011. The Government claim that those changes were publicised through official Government publications in the belief that those were accessible to the public, but the fact is that they were not.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I too commend the hon. Gentleman on securing this really important debate. He puts his finger on the nub of the unfairness here: it was not just one Pensions Act that affected these women; many were subsequently affected by a further Pensions Act in 2011, so they were hit twice by the same injustice. It is all fine and well for the Government to say they do not accept that unfairness, but the reality is that the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has already ruled that there was maladministration in the functioning of the policy. Is it not time that the Government just accepted that and did what is right by these women?

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. Just a reminder that interventions should be brief.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, which goes back to the point about knowing what jobs are just down the road for young people, so that the labour market comes closer to home for them. That is what our youth employability work coaches do, and we saw that with the kickstart programme: 163,000 jobs were created by employers who want young people in their businesses. Their feedback shows that they absolutely got something from having young people in their businesses, and I appeal to employers to keep doing what is happening in Whitby.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

But the number of young people unemployed in Denton and Reddish is still far too high—the latest figures show a 7% youth unemployment claimant count, which is not good enough. Given that the share of young people not in full-time employment or education rose last year, what more is the Minister doing to make sure that young people in places such as Denton and Reddish get the life chances they deserve?

[Mims Davies]

I absolutely agree that, in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and more widely, it is absolutely right that young people get the opportunities they deserve. In fact, since September 2020 the DWP’s youth offer has seen over 600,000 starts. As I mentioned earlier, our comprehensive support for young people now encompasses those from age 16.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work that he has been doing in his constituency on this matter. I can inform him that for the week commencing 12 December, for example, there were 7,200 claims, which is a 177% increase compared with this time last year.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

This is not party political; we all want to make sure that pensioners in need get the help and support that they can get. The Secretary of State will understand, though, that in communities such as mine there are still too many pensioners eligible for pension credit who are not yet accessing it. Given the success of his campaign so far, what further will he do to ensure that the really hard-to-reach pensioners get the support that they deserve and need?

[Mel Stride]

I very much welcome the hon. Gentleman’s question and the non-partisan way in which he presented it. He is absolutely right; there must be no let-up in this matter. Two thirds of those we believe are eligible for pension credit receive it, but that means that one third do not. We cannot identify them precisely in advance, which is why communication is so important. We will write to 11,000 pensioners soon to tell them about the uprating and to stress the point about pension credit. From today, we are launching television advertisements to further that message.

Labour Market Activity

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to the debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (James Murray). It is a shame that so few Government Back Benchers seem to be interested in labour market activity, especially given that so many of them will be in need of these services in the not-too-distant future. I take issue with what the hon. Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew), who is not in his place, said about trade unions being the problem in the economy. It is not trade unions that are the problem in the economy but an intransigent and uncaring Government who will not sit down and negotiate and who will not deal with the underlying causes of industrial unrest.

[Chris Stephens]

It is also bad employers, and they should be tackled too.

[Andrew Gwynne]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. What is reckless for the economy is a disastrous mini-Budget which has left millions of householders with mortgage rates higher than they would otherwise have been that are locked in for the future, as well as higher inflation and spiralling energy costs as a consequence. That is the real impact of this Conservative Government on the economy.

In the north-west today, there are 57,000 more people who are economically inactive between the ages of 50 and 64 than there were in 2020. We hear a lot from this Government about growing the economy, but there seems to be no appreciation of the fact that, unless we get people back to work, the economy will remain stagnant. I represent brilliant, talented and hard-working people who are effectively being shut out of accessing the labour market because of long-term sickness or because the support just is not there to get them through the door.

Denton and Reddish straddles two local authorities, Tameside and Stockport, so I see two of everything. Sadly, that means I have seen two almost identical rises in the economic inactivity of my constituents since 2019. In Stockport, we have seen a 2.1% rise, and in Tameside, that figure sits at 1.7%. Across both local authorities, there are over 12,500 people currently claiming universal credit because they cannot access a job that pays sufficiently. Let us be clear: these are not people who have decided that work is not for them and have dropped off the grid—these are people who want to contribute but are finding that the door is locked.

Let us take long covid as an example. I speak with personal experience on this subject, because I suffered from, and indeed still have some of the symptoms of, long covid after my first bout of covid in 2020, and it is of great interest to me in my other role as shadow public health Minister. We know that there are around 2 million people living with this condition in the United Kingdom—that is 3% of the population—but there has been no meaningful effort from central Government to ensure that reasonable adjustments are being made in the workplace, and it can be done. Mr Speaker and those in the Speaker’s Office accommodated me. I found that bobbing up and down was exhausting and basically wiped me out, and a simple, reasonable adjustment was for me to hold up the Order Paper so that I could be called to speak. For everybody else, however, it is business as usual, with long covid sufferers being forced to navigate a system that has not adapted to their needs.

The Government have failed to provide specialist help for those with long-term ill health, to invest in upskilling or to target employment support at hard-to-reach groups. Instead, they have outsourced large sums of money to deliver schemes such as kickstart and restart, which are massively under-delivering. They are obsessed with slogans, but not bothered about whether they deliver on their promises. In the last 13 years, regional inequalities have widened, health inequalities have soared and our economy has flatlined. Despite that, Government Ministers still parrot the phrase “levelling up” without an ounce of shame or self-awareness. We can do much better.

Labour’s plan will devolve employment support, overhaul work capability assessments and provide targeted help for the over-50s and those with long-term ill health, which would be truly transformative for the people I represent. My constituents are tired of warm words with little substance. It is time for the Government to move out of the way and let Labour get on with the job of breaking down the barriers to opportunity and getting our economy firing on all cylinders again.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley]

It is always a good idea to meet my right hon. Friend, and I will look forward to that. He is absolutely right: the best way to assist people is to help them gain the skills they need to move into work and to progress in work. In Gainsborough, the local jobcentre has worked in partnership with the local council, training providers and the owners of a local business park to recruit staff for a new hospitality venue called the Caldero Lounge through a sector-based work academy programme to help get unemployed people back into work, and there is another SWAP already in train in his constituency. I look forward to meeting him.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Back in the real world, we have seen food bank use rocket over the last 12 years—the Trussell Trust alone distributed 2.5 million emergency food parcels in 2020-21, compared with 40,000 in 2010—and it is set to balloon further as the cost of living soars. That is not tackling poverty through the benefits policy. What does the Minister think went wrong with the welfare state under the Conservatives?

[David Rutley]

With a record 1.3 million vacancies in the UK, our top priority needs to be to get people into work. We have the household support fund to help people who have vulnerabilities in their lives. That has played a very important role, with £500 million.

British Sign Language Bill

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 18th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rosie Cooper]

I thank my hon. Friend for those comments. BSL is such a rich, vibrant, brilliant language, which relies not only on signing but on body language and facial expression. It is great fun. When I was Lord Mayor of Liverpool I got the children to finger-spell 26 letters of the alphabet for sponsorship. The money they raised in sponsorship was used to buy minicoms for deaf people—although mobile phones would soon replace those; none the less in those days that too was a revolution.

Where are we today? Deaf representation in the media is at an all-time high. Just in the last year we have seen a deaf superhero using American Sign Language; Troy Kotsur, a deaf actor, is nominated for an Oscar and last week won a BAFTA, and Rose Ayling-Ellis won “Strictly Come Dancing”. In 1987, all those years ago, Marlee Matlin won the Best Actress Oscar for “Children of a Lesser God”, but it took another 35 years for Troy to become the second person nominated for his role in “CODA”, which stands for “child of deaf adults”—I know, I am one, but sadly I will not be getting an Oscar.

Since 1987, other movies have been roundly criticised for using hearing actors to play deaf roles. A sign of the times is that “CODA” actually cast deaf actors in deaf roles—what recognition! That is magnificent. The times they are a-changing. The country is supporting deaf people, and we cannot let Parliament fall behind. I believe we must capitalise on this revolution by passing the Bill and taking every step we can to push it as far as possible.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend started her speech on Third Reading by paying tribute to all those campaigners who went before her and the magnificent landmark changes that they fought for over the years. It would be remiss of us not to get on the record our thanks to her for bringing this Bill to Parliament and getting it through to Third Reading today, and to wish it Godspeed in the other place.

[Rosie Cooper]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind comments. My dad would be really pleased with himself today—not necessarily with me, but with himself.

[Rosie Cooper]

Absolutely; I will come on to my mum very soon. As with all those things that happened in the ’60s and ’70s, my dad took pole position; my mum took care of home affairs. As Members will see, she played just as much of a role in me being here today as my dad did, but he was more vocal. People would say that I am my dad’s daughter. He did not care; he would just bowl on and try to get what he needed. My mum would be more diplomatic—go it slowly and get there eventually. Sadly, I got too much of the former and a lot less of the latter, but we are who we are.

Before I discuss the incredibly positive things that I believe this Bill will do, I want to address what could not be included in it. Some campaigners have made the fair point that this Bill does not give specific legal rights to deaf people, or feel it does not go quite far enough. To be absolutely clear, this Bill is not a silver bullet for the deaf community that will cure overnight all the injustices they face. As Members of this House will appreciate, this is a private Member’s Bill, one that has been brought forward by an Opposition MP and was drawn 20th out of 20 in the ballot. There are limitations on private Members’ Bills that have to be accepted, but I am pleased to say that working together with the Minister for Disabled People, we have pushed for this Bill to be as strong as it can be. I am proud of the Bill and proud of the work we did. It is going to make such a difference to the lives of deaf people, and they will be proud of it too. They might want it all today, but they can have nearly all of it soon.

Deaf people have long felt that the one-size-fits-all disability legislation that should have given their language the protection it needs is inadequate and disregards deaf culture and heritage. In bringing forward this Bill, I knew that we could not rewrite or replace legislation; instead, we are opening the door for deaf people to have their voices heard and their language protected. With this Bill, we are planting our feet firmly in an open doorway. There are those in the deaf community who used another analogy—they said, “It’s like being in a lift. We’ve gone in the lift on the ground floor; the only way is up.” I really quite like that analogy, too.

The requirements on the Government to produce guidance created by clause 3 of the Bill will be carried out in direct consultation with a non-statutory advisory board. This will be an essential mechanism for deaf people to say, “This isn’t working. This is what would help. This is what needs to change”—and we all accept that a lot needs to change. Since introducing the Bill, I have been contacted by hundreds of deaf people from all over the country, telling me about situations in which a public service has failed them, and I have shared some horrific stories with the Minister. Those stories are truly unbelievable, yet a significant portion of the population faces those issues every day. These are issues that have shaped deaf culture and consequently, I totally admit, make me the person I am today.

Deaf culture is important because it allows individuals to be who they are and live in a way that is unique to them. People who have not been exposed to deaf culture may not know what I mean by that. A simplistic way of starting to talk about it is to say, for example, that deaf people look at each other when they are communicating, but in our hearing culture it is common to look away—to break eye contact. Try keeping up with that if you are trying to lip read! It is impossible. In deaf culture, it is absolutely acceptable to tap another person to gain their attention; it is marked by physical proximity, directness, even thumping on tables and floors—I am not going to go on about that because I will start to recognise my own behaviour. Deaf culture is all about challenging injustices—fighting to be heard and understood through whatever means necessary.

People on the edge of the deaf community sometimes think deaf people are demanding and unreasonable, and sometimes they are, but they need to be—they have to be; they have to challenge in order to be heard. As we know in this place, it is the people who challenge the system who change things, and I am proud to come from a community that does not sit back and complain, but that gets up and challenges perceived injustices again and again and again until they are rectified. That shows why the BSL Bill will be so powerful: if we remove the barriers restricting the potential of deaf people it will be truly amazing to see how much they can and will achieve.

Many years ago my four-year-old niece explained to her young friends, who had never seen people sign before, that her grandparents were actually just the same as them except their ears did not work. When we accept that some people are deaf and accommodate that, rather than just trying to ignore it, deaf people will be able to make so much more of a difference; but before they can make that difference, we must tackle the precise details of the problems deaf people face, and we will tackle that in the guidance accompanying this Bill.

One important matter the guidance must address is the lack of forward planning for BSL use. We must not continually have a system that creates a service for hearing people and then retrospectively and half-heartedly attempts to add the provision of BSL. BSL needs to be a consideration when services are being designed, not an afterthought. This will cut out huge amounts of wasted time and money, because public services have had to scramble to throw some sort of BSL provision together, or, even worse, many do not bother at all. Through this guidance we will start to see the Government becoming proactive in considering deaf people and the need for BSL, specifically with increased and improved interpretation and a wider understanding of BSL as a language.

In every aspect of public service there are failings; I have so many examples to draw on from my own life growing up with my parents, from years of doing casework for my constituents, and from the hundreds of letters I have been sent since introducing this Bill, and, sadly, a lot of these problems are things that a hearing person would never have considered.

In prisons, for instance, frighteningly little is done for deaf people. The isolation a deaf prisoner might experience from not having any other BSL users to talk to, and not being able to watch subtitled TV or make telephone calls, is absolutely terrifying. I have read reports of deaf prisoners committing suicide because they simply could not bear the isolation. This cannot be allowed to happen again and we need to do all we can to stop it. Mental health provision in prisons is already an area of great concern to me; if we add to that the difficulties a deaf person in prison would experience this could be considered a crisis.

As I have said, these are problems that a hearing person would not consider, but a BSL advisory board would be able to draw on its members’ own life experiences to ensure the guidance the Secretary of State issues is much more than just a vague commitment to do more—and it has to be. It will target problem areas and say how they need to be addressed and what needs to be done differently.

I know that a huge focus of the guidance will have to be on education. When I speak to deaf people about what they feel needs to be prioritised, education is more often than not the first thing they mention. Deaf people currently have little faith in the education system. On Second Reading, I explained how my mum would give her three children lessons every day at home, before we were even pre-school age. She would explain, “Because we’re deaf, they’ll think you’re daft.” We had to do those lessons. We had to learn to read and write and to do our sums, and we had to be absolutely proficient before we got to school.

A tale is told that, having had the bit drummed into me that people would think we were not capable because my parents were deaf, when I got to school and found that my classmates could not read and write or do sums as quickly as I could, I came home and expressed, “And they thought we were daft?” I genuinely do not remember that, but the tale is that, when I got home, I could not wait to tell my parents, “It’s not us.” There it goes.

My mum did not trust the system to treat hearing children of deaf parents as capable. I think that, sadly, at the time, she would have thought that deaf children would have even less of a chance than us. That was so very wrong. Of course, that was a long time ago, but while things have improved, many challenges remain. People will simply assume that a deaf student is learning more slowly or struggling when most of the time that is not the case.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful contribution. The nub of what she is saying is that this is a battle for equality: equality of opportunity for children and young people going through education; equality of treatment for deaf people, ensuring that they are treated with respect; equality of access to public services, with deaf people treated like everyone else; and equality of language through communication. Alongside English—the spoken word—British Sign Language is how deaf people communicate. Is it not all about equality?

[Rosie Cooper]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That runs right through the Bill and through my comments. Given an equal opportunity, deaf people can achieve so much. This will make my hon. Friend’s case: I was told about a deaf student whose class was visited by a specialist interpreter. At the end of the day, the teacher told the interpreter that he was amazed, because he had never seen the student talk so much. When the specialist interpreter asked the student why that was, he found that the so-called communicator whom the school employed had only the most basic BSL qualification, so he could not do the job. He could not transmit to the deaf student what the teacher was saying; ergo, the student had the ability but no chance to prove it.

We take simple things like that for granted, but deaf people have to battle that day in, day out. It would be outrageous to think of a hearing person being taught history by someone who had taken only the most basic English lessons, so why do we accept that for deaf people? Why are we allowing deaf students to receive information from their teachers through people who know the bare minimum of BSL and who are not qualified interpreters? We are wasting both taxpayers’ money and the untapped potential of that student.

In the past year alone, we have seen a seismic shift in understanding and acceptance of deaf people and BSL. Continuing to fail them over and over is just not right, and it cannot be ignored any more. It never was right, but at least now people are starting to understand the situation.

With social understanding of the need for BSL inclusion, we must address some shameful and frustratingly obvious oversights.

Throughout the covid pandemic, deaf people have been met with a constant reminder that we are not treating them as equals. Every statement made to the nation, every change in lockdown policy, and every announcement of a support scheme was done without a BSL interpreter on many channels. In fact, interpretation was available on one channel only. We had a simple way to include a sizeable proportion of the population and to prevent people from being left behind, but we failed to do so and must ask ourselves why.

Clause 2 requires the Secretary of State to publish a report on what each Department has done to promote or facilitate the use of BSL in its communications with the public. Any public announcement made without an interpreter or any White Paper released without BSL translation will be reported to the Secretary of State, and that failure will be published for everyone to see. That will be another powerful tool by which each Department will be held to account. Deaf campaigners will be able to compare the guidance from the Secretary of State directly with the published reports. Hiring a registered qualified interpreter for a briefing or to create a BSL translation is an easy commitment with such a minimal cost, so we will soon see Departments make their services and announcements accessible.

That aim is the Bill’s central point: the complete and total inclusion of deaf people. They should be able to watch and understand a national address by the Prime Minister. They should be able to go to a meeting at the jobcentre and talk freely with their adviser. They should be able to have a fully trained and registered qualified interpreter available for them at medical appointments. I have talked at length and could go on and on, but I will not. We are failing at all those things on daily basis, but with the support of Members here today and Members in the other place later, we can start along the road towards fixing such injustices once and for all.

As a nation, we cannot afford to waste the talents of our deaf population. When this Bill becomes law, as I hope it will, I say to the deaf community, and to all those watching at home or in Trafalgar Square or wherever, “Now it is over to you to achieve your potential and to live your best possible lives. That will enrich us all.” I thank the Minister for everything she has done to get Bill legislation through, and I hope that we will agree to give it its Third Reading today, and that it whizzes through the other place. I hope that today will mark the end of the campaign to recognise sign language as a language and the start of the campaign to liberate the potential of every deaf person in this country.

DWP Estate: Office Closures

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley]

This will not impact on services because the services we are talking about are primarily telephony and digital. Clearly, our primary concern now is to see what we can do to support people who might be impacted by the changing terms for staff. I will of course meet the hon. Gentleman after this, or during the course of today, to discuss his concerns more fully.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

On two occasions now, the Minister has referred to the equalities impact assessment, saying that this amounts to relatively small numbers of people at each site who will be affected, but over the whole estate, “small” can add up to a lot of individuals. Given that these jobs are located disproportionately in more deprived communities, the loss of good-quality public sector jobs is a really important issue. What conversations are the Minister and his Department having now with those people who may be affected, and what efforts is he really putting in place to ensure that nobody loses their job and everybody is redeployed?

[David Rutley]

As I have said before, we are working with the vast majority of the individuals who can be relocated very close to their current facility. We will continue to work hard with others, too. This is our top priority. We value our colleagues, who have helped the Department through some incredibly challenging times over the past couple of years, and we want to support them through the period now. I highlight to a couple of Members who have made this point that we continue to be committed to the Newcastle area, but I will meet those colleagues after this urgent question.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. In Lincoln, the armed forces champion is already receiving good feedback in their role. They work with several councils and local homeless veterans to make sure that those veterans get suitable housing. In fact, in the case of West Lindsey council, they worked with adult social care to get permanent housing for a claimant with a history of alcohol addiction. They are also helping claimants who are veterans back into work, using the flexible support fund and working with local employers and employment agencies.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

In theory this should be an excellent initiative, but the Minister will know that the previous veterans action plan, for 2019 to 2021, promised to

“increase the number of Jobcentre Plus Armed Forces Champions and District Leads from the current position of around 45 unfunded, part-time posts to funding an Armed Forces lead in each Jobcentre Plus District and 100 support posts.”

That is not happening, so how can the Minister claim to be supporting the work of armed forces champions, while cutting the number of paid posts?

[Mims Davies]

We have a new model of 11 armed forces champion leads across the DWP districts. We are working with armed forces champions and the covenant locally. We have 50 armed forces champions across the jobcentre network. With covid, of course, some of this upskilling and these add-ons were paused, but we are absolutely committed to making sure that our veterans get the best service at DWP.