Disability Employment Gap

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Owen Smith

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

I am going to finish this point. I might give way to the hon. Lady later.

Can the Secretary of State tell us how many fewer disabled students will go to university this September? I would be really interested to know, but I am not sure that the Government gather statistics on that. It would be good to know whether the cutting of that grant will mean fewer disabled students going to university. Can he explain how putting up barriers to disabled students is going to help his mission to halve the disability employment gap?

The biggest barrier that this Government have raised for disabled people seeking to enter the workplace is the cut to the work-related activity group under the employment and support allowance. That is a cut of around £1,500 a year for 500,000 disabled people whom the Government are meant to be helping into employment.

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

I am glad that my hon. Friend has mentioned the fact that the cuts to the employment and support allowance will leave 500,000 disabled people £1,500 a year worse off. Those measures were passed by this Parliament only once the former Secretary of State had given an assurance to this House—and particularly to Conservative Members—that there would be a White Paper on a settlement package for disabled people before the summer recess. Is my hon. Friend as disappointed as I am that that White Paper does not appear to be forthcoming?

[Owen Smith]

I am deeply disappointed. I suspect that lots of Government Members, many of whom were sold the ESA cuts explicitly on the promise that the White Paper would come through, will be deeply disappointed. In fact, I may find it in my speech to mention a few of them in a couple of minutes’ time.

Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Owen Smith

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

The hon. Lady is entirely right. Even if 40% of women were unaware, that is 40% too many. As I said, five or six other surveys were done by academics and those in other institutions that suggested that 80% of women were unaware that they were going to be affected, so the reality is that the number was far greater.

The scale of this problem only truly started to dawn on people when the Government decided to double down on their calamity with the Pensions Act 2011.

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

My hon. Friend is about to come on to the injustice of the 2011 Act. Is not the real issue not only that these ladies have been hit not once but twice by an increase in their state pension age, but that no transitional arrangement was put in place? Is that not why it is absolutely right that we support the Labour motion to get the Government off the fence and provide these ladies with the transitional arrangement they deserve?

[Owen Smith]

This House and Government Members would do well to heed the words of my hon. Friend, because, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), he has been the doughtiest campaigner in this House on behalf of these women. He speaks the truth when he says that Members from across the House should back our motion to provide transitional protections for them.

The 2011 Act not only broke the Government’s promise that the pension age for women was not going to rise until 2020, but broke the promise that no rises would occur without at least 10 years’ notice, because the women who suffered the double blow were given just two years’ notice. The former Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, has described that decision as an ill-informed “mistake”. He tried to make up for it in office, and secured some mitigation for 300,000 of the women who were due to see their state pension age go up by more than 18 months. The Minister on the Front Bench will no doubt mention this shortly, telling us that it cost £1.1 billion, but I bet he will not remind us that his predecessor was looking for £3 billion in order to offer these transitional protections. I suspect he may only say sotto voce that half of that £1 billion went not to women but to men.

Universal Credit Work Allowance

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Owen Smith

Wednesday 6th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

We have repeatedly asked for any sort of impact assessment in respect of these measures, and as usual the Government signally fail to offer one. I believe that in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency 13,000 households will lose out by the end of this Parliament as a result of these cuts, and in the constituency of the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden) I believe 5,000 people will lose out by an average of £950 by the end of this Parliament; perhaps he ought to reflect on that when he votes on this motion later today.

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

I commend my hon. Friend on bringing this motion to the House today, because the impact of these changes will be devastating to a very great number of my constituents in Tameside who, because they go through the Ashton-under-Lyne jobcentre, were part of the pilot for UC. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is another con here in that the Secretary of State has indicated that the £69 million support fund will help to bring in transitional arrangements, but that fund is used for myriad other purposes, and we already know the impact of the cuts to working families of UC changes this year alone will be £100 million?

[Owen Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right as usual, and I think 10,000 of his constituents will eventually be affected with lower incomes as a result of these changes. He is also right about the transitional protections and the way in which the Secretary of State has, I think, sought to misrepresent those as covering the losses; I will come to that later in my speech.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Owen Smith

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

May I start by thanking everybody on the Opposition Benches for all the contributions they have made not just today, but during the passage of this enormously important Bill? May I also thank the Secretary of State for gracing us with his presence today? I would like to be able to thank the Minister for offering some detailed answers to the questions put to her throughout the Committee stage and today, but there were not many answers, so I will not be able to do that, I am afraid.

Labour will be opposing the Third Reading of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. Combined with the other measures in the summer Budget, this package of tax credit and benefit reforms penalises millions of working families and will risk pushing hundreds of thousands of children into poverty. It is a cruel, pernicious Bill that breaks Tory promises in almost every clause and will hit more than 10 million families in Britain. It is also indiscriminate: it hits the young, the old, those unable to work and those working every hour they can.

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

I am pleased we will be opposing the Welfare Reform and Work Bill on Third Reading. Is not the real problem for the Government that their record so far on welfare reform has been entirely counterproductive? The facts speak for themselves: on this Government’s watch welfare bills have shot through the roof. They have cut welfare, but the bills have gone up.

[Owen Smith]

This is the first Government who have ever spent more than £1 trillion in a Parliament on social security. That is an extraordinary rise, and it has happened on the watch of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

In this Bill we are seeing the Government break their promises repeatedly. They are breaking their promises to older people, for example. Before the election, the Conservatives’ manifesto said they would “maintain all pensioner benefits”, but after the election it appears that there is a different story. Some senior Conservatives have talked about this being a “great opportunity” for deep cuts to pensioner benefits. The Minister for Community and Social Care said that pensioner benefits should not be cut immediately, but that raises the question: when are they going to cut them?

The answer appears to be that the Government are cutting pensioner benefits now, in this Bill, because 70,000 pensioners are being hit by more than £1,000 a year through the changes to support for mortgage interest. That support is a vital lifeline for many, but through this Bill the Government are chipping away at pensioner benefits and charging a 2.9% interest rate—profiteering from pensioners. By refusing our amendment 24, the Conservative party is breaking its promise to our pensioners. We will act as the watchdog for our older people on that, as we will on pensioner freedoms. A scathing report from the Work and Pensions Committee has warned that the next great mis-selling scandal will be coming soon, after the Tories introduced pension freedoms. We will be watching that, as we are watching tonight.

Just as with older people, the Conservative Government are tonight letting down young people and our children. Before the election the Conservative manifesto spoke of

“boosting the self-esteem of young people”,

but after the election the Government are failing our children, failing young people and failing the next generation.

This Bill will push 600,000 children into poverty over the course of the Parliament while fiddling the figures and hiding the Government’s shame by abolishing the child poverty target. It is a scandal that any Government can seek to withdraw income—the money people have—from a measure of poverty. If it were not so disgraceful, it would be laughable. They are stripping housing benefit away from 18 to 21-year-olds, patronising our young people with “earn or learn” boot camps and introducing a so-called living wage that kicks in only when people are 25, and the Business Minister is running down young people, saying that they do not deserve a living wage because they are not as productive.

What about the Tory promises to the sick and disabled people of Britain? Before the election the Tory manifesto said that the Conservatives would

“aim to halve the disability employment gap: we will transform policy…so that hundreds of thousands more disabled people who can and want to be in work find employment.”

But what is the truth? After the election, they are cutting support for sick and disabled people. Half a million people in the ESA WRAG are set to lose £1,500 a year. That will reduce the likelihood of a return to work, increase the number of long-term unemployed and act as a work penalty for sick or disabled people seeking to get back into work.

Finance (No. 4) Bill

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Owen Smith

Wednesday 18th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

I knew it would be worth while giving way to the Treasury spokesman for the Democratic Unionist party. His intervention offers a contrast to some of the more pedantic contributions that we have heard from Conservative Members. He is right to say that it was far too early to make a decision, ostensibly based on evidence, just one year after the implementation of the new tax rate. That is what the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded, and it is what the Office for Budget Responsibility has effectively concluded in suggesting how uncertain the conclusions are. It is also, unfortunately, what the country is concluding.

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

The information in the report shows that the cost to the Treasury of the tax cut will be £3 billion. That is rather conveniently predicated on behavioural change bringing in an extra £2.9 billion. Given that scorn has been poured on that figure of £2.9 billion, what confidence does my hon. Friend have that this tax change will not end up costing the Treasury far more than its report suggests?

[Owen Smith]

I have absolutely no confidence whatever. My hon. Friend’s point goes to the heart of the dodgy economics in the dodgy dossier. The figure of £100 million is entirely predicated on the assumption that there will almost be a net offset of the £3 billion static loss as a result of the change to the 50p rate, through people deciding to work harder, save less, take their income in the current year, and hide their income less. Those are the behavioural changes that the Government are assuming will take place, but there is no real evidence base for the change. It is fundamentally dodgy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Owen Smith]

That would be entirely consistent. The Minister knows that our amendment merely asks the Chancellor of the Exchequer to review the possibility of incorporating a bank payroll tax in the bank levy, and to publish a report within six months on how the additional revenue might be spent. We have suggested that we would spend it on creating 100,000 jobs for the unemployed youth of our country, 1 million of whom are still out of work today despite the recent small but welcome fall in unemployment. We would also spend the money on building 25,000 affordable homes, which are equally vital at a time when homelessness is rising at a rate that has not been seen for 25 years.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling case. May I share with him the figures that I have obtained from the House of Commons Library for the 16 to 24-year-olds in the borough of Tameside who are not in employment, education or training or on an apprenticeship? The figure for 2010 stood at an appalling 20%, or one in five. The most recent figure is 33%, or one in three. Does not that show how urgently we need to tackle the underlying structural employment issues in constituencies such as Denton and Reddish?

[Owen Smith]

It absolutely does. On Monday night, I put it to the Chancellor that he and those on his Front Bench were entirely out of touch with the reality in constituencies such as mine and that of my hon. Friend. Pontypridd is fortunate, right now, to have the prospect of a new supermarket opening, which will create 200 jobs, but 2,500 people queued 600 yards down the main street to try to secure one of those jobs. They came not only from my constituency but from right across south Wales. That is the desperate reality that many people in this country are facing. I saw the queue myself, and I know that many of those people were young and eager to work. They also felt that the opportunities for them were diminishing under this Government, rather than increasing. They are looking to the Government, and the Opposition, for action. They want us to put on the table solutions that will deliver growth and jobs and that will stop the economy flatlining.

Unfortunately, the net effect of all the measures in the Budget, including those in clause 209, will be an increase of only 0.1% growth in GDP—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) shakes his head, but those are the numbers in his Government’s documentation that have been agreed and validated by the OBR: growth of 0.1% in GDP and growth of 0.7% in business investment, which is down almost seven points from where we thought we were going to be just 18 months ago. That is a desperate state of affairs. How on earth can he defend it?

Health and Social Care (Re-committed) Bill

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Owen Smith

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

No. I shall move on now. We have debated the topic long enough.

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

My hon. Friend is right to be concerned about the way this part of the Bill is drafted. It is incredibly open-ended for the consortium to decide what is exempt from public knowledge. That is quite different from the situation in local government in England, where the Local Government Act 1972 prescribes what is exempt from the press and the public.

[Owen Smith]

Indeed. The key difference is that it is for the clinical commissioning groups, in establishing their constitution, to determine what the rationale will be for allowing the public in or not. That is not set down in statute or in direction from the Minister or the Secretary of State. It is for individual CCGs to determine when they should let the public in. I give way to my colleague on the Bill Committee.