Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Jones Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Will Quince
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. The Department has an ongoing positive relationship with a range of food bank providers. It has regularly engaged with them throughout the coronavirus pandemic and will continue to do so. We quickly introduced welfare changes worth an additional £9.3 billion, and worked closely with other Government Departments on the cross-Government taskforce on food and other essential supplies. Further to my earlier answer, the hon. Lady will have to wait for future fiscal events where benefit rates are set.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Will Quince
My hon. Friend rightly pays tribute to the incredible team at Harrogate Jobcentre Plus. As he knows, we have seen a surge of over 3 million claims since mid-March, and I agree that UC has stood up to the challenge, with payment timeliness remaining high at over 90%. We will continue to closely monitor our services across the country and will continue to keep staff numbers under review. As he also knows, we have committed to doubling the number of work coaches.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Jones Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)
We have launched A Good Place to Start, a new labour market campaign that includes two key websites—Job help and Employer help—which provide additional information, tools and links to other sites, including DWP’s Find a job service, for current vacancies, and the Department for Education’s Skills Toolkit.
Mims Davies
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue. I highlight the work that our staff in jobcentres are doing tirelessly to support people with their claims throughout the pandemic, and that work continues. Indeed, our work coaches have made more than a quarter of a million outbound customer-support calls each week, and they are also organising virtual job fairs. In Blackpool, they are working with the local authority on a virtual adult learning and education programme, hosted online and through Google Classroom. Upcoming from 4 July is a sector-based work academy for recruitment around the pleasure beach, and we are also training people through our mentoring circles. I encourage every Member in the House to contact their local jobcentre to find out about what we are already doing to support their local community.
Andrew Jones
As the economy reopens, it will look different. One sector that has grown fast and will continue to grow is the digital sector. The Federation of Small Businesses in North Yorkshire has told me that a key need of its members is increased digital skills—it wants to see more training. How will my hon. Friend ensure that as they work to match people with vacancies, jobcentres are handling the changing needs of employers in the digital economy?
Mims Davies
I regularly meet Ministers from DFE and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to ensure that we are doing exactly that. Work includes figuring out how claimants can be supported to gain those key skills and to pivot into those sectors where there are vacancies as the economy recovers. Jobcentres work with their local training providers to ensure that a range of courses is available to help claimants to find that new opportunity or some better-paid work.
Universal Credit: Delayed Roll-Out
Andrew Jones Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Will Quince
I think I have already answered this question. Around 1 million disabled households will receive an average of £100 more per month under universal credit. Importantly, the claimants will have access to around £2.4 billion of previously unclaimed benefits that, for all sorts of reasons, they did not claim under the legacy benefit system.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Harrogate and Knaresborough has been a trial area for universal credit since it started, including being the location for the legacy migration. I have therefore followed universal credit for many years and I have spoken with claimants, employers and the team at Harrogate jobcentre who have done a great job. They all report positive feedback. There are obviously some problems, but there were problems with the previous system. Universal credit is helping people to get into work and to make work pay. Will the Minister continue the focus on making work pay?
Will Quince
I thank my hon. Friend for his very helpful question and for his support of universal credit and his local jobcentre. I am full of praise for those staff working in the jobcentre at Harrogate and the work that they are doing on the pilot. That is hugely important work, because it sets the scene and gives us the all important data and learnings we need to move out universal credit at scale and pace.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Jones Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Justin Tomlinson
Yes, absolutely. This is an important point, and that is why we have improved the training for all work coaches to identify as quickly as possible those who need that additional support. It is a really important and key part of UC.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)
We support disabled people into work through a wide range of initiatives, including our £500 million Work and Health programme and the £330 million personal support package, and Access to Work supported over 25,000 people last year. I had meetings all through the summer with our Work and Health Programme providers, including Reed in Partnership in Yorkshire, and I saw fantastic work being done to take a health and wellbeing approach to enable people back into work.
Andrew Jones
Many employers have signed up to the Disability Confident scheme—as I have—to ensure that disabled people have the opportunity to achieve their ambitions and employers can choose from a wider selection of talent available. I am now encouraging businesses in Harrogate and Knaresborough to sign up. Will the Minister join me in encouraging employers right across our country to sign up to this impressive initiative?
Sarah Newton
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his fantastic leadership in his constituency. I am delighted to say that hundreds of employers are signing up every week to the Disability Confident scheme, with more than 8,300 having signed up in total, including well over 800 in his own constituency. Many Members have taken up the community challenge, and it is not too late for those who have not participated. I encourage everyone to help people to sign up to be disability confident.
Universal Credit
Andrew Jones Excerpts(9 years, 12 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
My hon. Friend is right. I set out to change the roll-out plan because I felt that we would just replicate all the problems of previous roll-outs, in which people tried to rush against an artificial deadline and ended up with a big crisis because they had not thought things through properly. The process of testing, learning and implementing is the way that I believe future programmes should be rolled out. It may not be delivered in the fastest way, which is what people want, but it is about securing people’s lives and, to my mind, that is more important than meeting artificial deadlines.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement. My constituency has been included in the roll-out of universal credit so far, and I visited the jobcentre to see the progress that has been made. I met a team there, as well as employers and, most importantly, jobseekers, and the feedback was universally positive. They said, “Universal credit is simply making work pay.” That is why I welcome the roll-out, but may I specifically ask how universal credit will support child care?
Mr Duncan Smith
I have been to many such jobcentres. I was in Hammersmith last week, when I talked to a number of people who have claimed the benefit. They were very clear about the difference that being able to stay with an adviser in the jobcentre has made to their lives. All of them said that it had allowed them to develop, get on and get a better job as a result.
On the second part of my hon. Friend’s question, we have announced the child care package today. Basically, people will get child care support at 85% of the costs. The reality is that that will be for every hour that they are in work. Unlike with tax credits at the moment, whether they are doing five or 10 hours or 20 or 25 hours, they will get help with child care. That will be a huge help for those with caring responsibilities, particularly lone parents who have to get back to work as well as look after their household.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Jones Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Steve Webb
The largest number of people who have benefited most from tax cuts during this Government are those who are in work and paying income tax. Under this Government, a typical basic rate taxpayer is £800 a year better off in cash terms as a result of our changes to the personal income tax allowance, and over 3.2 million individuals will have been taken out of income tax altogether.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Harrogate borough is part of the roll-out of universal credit, and the feedback from jobseekers and employers has been universally positive. Will the Minister explain a bit more about the benefits to the UK economy as a whole when this roll-out is completed?
Steve Webb
My hon. Friend is quite right that the early indications from those receiving universal credit have been positive, in line with the expectations of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. We are designing the system to be simpler for people and to make sure that when they take work, work pays. Already those on the front line who are working with unemployed people are welcoming the new freedoms universal credit gives them to support people back to work.
DWP: Performance
Andrew Jones Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
This is a cynical, mean-spirited and dubious motion. It was tabled by a Yorkshire Member, and, as a fellow Yorkshire representative, I cannot tell the House how surprised I am. The economic results achieved by the Government in Yorkshire are incredibly positive. Business confidence is growing: the number of business start-ups in north Yorkshire is now double the national average, and we have more private sector jobs than we have had for years. However, as we get set to welcome the Tour de France to Yorkshire at the end of the week, the economies of Britain and Yorkshire are being been talked down, and that is a total disgrace.
The Government’s welfare policies are key to our long-term plan, and also to our economic recovery. There has been a 22% drop in the number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants in Yorkshire, which is at a five-year low. We have seen a bigger reduction in the number of claimants of employment and support allowance than the national average, and 920 new businesses have been set up under the new enterprise allowance. The hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) failed to mention any of the 80 success stories in her constituency: she did not refer to any of the businesses that have been set up under NEA over the past few years. Just last week, I heard from a company called Lime Tree Europe in Halifax, which is a key marginal seat. That company has been trading for three weeks. It is delighted by the benefits that the NEA has brought, and is greatly looking forward to building its business.
Even more odd and sinister is the fact that the Labour party has kicked the men and women who work in our jobcentres and at the DWP—and who are working hard to change the culture—firmly in the teeth. Anyone who has been to a jobcentre and observed people working hard to return our fellow citizens to employment will know that there has been a complete revolution in the way in which those organisations operate. When I visited a jobcentre in Skipton recently, I went from desk to desk and saw every woman and every man working flat out to get my constituents back into work. Everyone knew their numbers; everyone was on top of what had to be done. It is not surprising that 300,000 people are now in sustainable jobs, thanks to the Ministers and other hard-working people in the DWP.
A couple of weeks ago, with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), I visited a jobcentre in Harrogate. The first person whom we met was Paul, who was doing work experience and was showing older people how to use Universal Jobmatch.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making some important points about the success of universal credit. When we visited that jobcentre, we met users who emphasised the fact that universal credit was making work pay. Surely that is something to which Governments have been aspiring for decades.
Julian Smith
Absolutely—and the two people whom we met said that it was giving them the confidence to go out and find work. Representatives of recruitment firms told us that universal credit would make it much easier to place clients, because they would not be losing their benefits.
A surprising aspect of the shadow Minister’s speech was the implication that she and her colleagues had not visited a jobcentre in recent months. If they had done so, they would have heard from jobcentre staff that they want more of the Government’s reforms. They want people to have more work experience and zero-hours contracts, because those things will give them a foot on the ladder leading them back to employment. They want universal credit to work, because it gives them an opportunity to motivate people who are not currently boarding the work bus.
If the hon. Member for Leeds West will not listen to jobcentre staff—the people whom I have met—she should listen to the Yorkshire people, her constituents. What they want is a lower benefit cap. They want the Government to get on with introducing their national insurance cut for young people, which will encourage employers to take on more of those young people, and they want the Government’s benefit reforms to include even tougher measures.
Following what my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough and I saw in Harrogate, I hope that universal credit will be rolled out throughout the country as quickly, but as responsibly, as possible. Rather than hearing criticisms of the DWP and jobcentre staff, I want to see more incentives given to those staff, who are performing incredibly well. They currently have an opportunity to receive a bonus amounting to 0.25% of their salaries. I want them to have more such opportunities.
Labour Members have to admit that if they ever get their hands on the tiller again, they will never reverse the reforms that the Government have introduced. They have to come clean about their proposals for a national insurance rise. Are they going to place a burden on British business as a result of which it will again fail to employ the necessary numbers? We want the Secretary of State and other Ministers to press ahead with these reforms. I say to them: please turn up the volume.
Quality Workplace Pensions
Andrew Jones Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Steve Webb
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Our central interest in all this is the well-being and welfare of scheme members. We would not put transaction costs, for example, into a cap if we thought that might result in certain transactions that would benefit scheme members not taking place. On the other hand, if we thought that there was overtrading or that people’s money was being invested in a way that generated income that did not benefit them, we would need to take account of those issues. One of the challenges we face in making policy in this area is that so little is known about what is going on. Step one is therefore to get transparency so that we know the scale of what is going on and what sorts of charges there are out there, and then we can make an informed decision.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
I warmly welcome the statement. Strong, quality workplace pensions are critical to dignity and security in old age. Who does the Minister think will be the big beneficiary of these changes?
Steve Webb
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As I have said, we estimate that around £200 million over the next 10 years will go from the pensions industry to savers, which we think will cover around 2 million pension savers, many of whom will work for smaller firms, because we know that the biggest firms have been able to negotiate good deals with providers. That is good news for people who work for Britain’s small firms, in particular, who might not otherwise have got good value for money in their pensions.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Jones Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Esther McVey
My hon. Friend is right. Most of Europe is looking to us to see how we get people into work, whereas the Opposition are looking to France where the exact opposite is happening. This is a very complicated journey for people who are in the ESA group and for most of them it is about understanding their lifestyles and getting them closer to the workplace and then into a job.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
10. What recent assessment he has made of trends in auto-enrolment.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
I am pleased to update the House and say that more than 2.5 million workers have now been automatically enrolled into a workplace pension. That puts us roughly a quarter of the way through the entire programme of automatic enrolment.
Andrew Jones
What have the Government done to ease the burdens on employers, particularly the small and medium-sized enterprises that play such a dominant role in the business mix in my constituency?
Steve Webb
My hon. Friend is quite right. Every change that we have made to the administration of automatic enrolment has been designed to reduce the burden on firms. For example, we have raised the wage threshold at which people are automatically enrolled, and we have delayed the staging for the smallest firms so that no one who employs fewer than 50 people will have to stage before April 2015.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Jones Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
As I have said in earlier responses, we are continuing to build on the system that we inherited from the previous Government. We have also had the fourth independent review of the work capability assessment and our own independent review, and we are seeing that the proportion of people going into the support group has increased in recent years.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
T3. What assessment has my hon. Friend made of the number of people who have come off the main unemployment benefits since May 2010?
Mr Hoban
If my hon. Friend looks at the three main benefits—jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance and lone parent income support—he will see that, since the general election, there has been a reduction of 300,000 in the number claiming those benefits. That is a consequence of the measures that we have taken to get people into work, and of welfare reform.